The ever-popular "Currently Listening" thread

Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert (1975)

This live solo piano performance is absolutely phenomenal and truly one of its kind.

Genre transcending, ever evolving, passionate, thoughtful, fragile, haunting, and simply magical.
The sound is completely overwhelming and the whole performance just goes beyond improvisation. It´s the sound of existence streaming.
66 minutes of pure musical extasy.

One of my favourite live records.

Here are two snippets of this masterpiece:

Friggin´

Beautiful

I was going through my old records and found a nice box set with solo concerts from the same era in Bremen and Lusanne … sweet, sweet, stuff ..

Saturnus - Paradise Belongs to You

One of my new fave doom bands, this is the second cd of theirs that Ive acquired, and while I dont like it as much as Veronika Decides to Die, Ive only had it two days. It's different in that there's a lot more keyboards in this one, and a peculiar abundance of birds twittering between songs. Someone brought their canary to the recording studio or something?

I like it tho, it's pretty good.

On the 'box set train' this week apparently …

Complete 1964 Concert - 'My Funny Valentine' & 'Four & More' - just a great concert … I had both on vinyl, never got the separation, appreciated combining them.

Complete 'Live at the Plugged Nickel' recordings - 8 CD's encompassing the entire 7 night stand … that is an awful lot of music. The cool thing is that this was more or less all standards at a time the group was transitioning into the 'Second Classic Quintet' recordings … ESP was out and the follwing year they would do Miles Smiles … this was great stuff.

Ah, Miles Davis.

I think his last concert (or the one before his last one) was at the "Leverkusener Jazztage".

Unfortunately that was it for 2 or 3 other well-known Jazz artists, too …

Wikipedia entry:

Ironischerweise bestritten gleich mehrere Musiker in Leverkusen einen der letzten öffentlichen Auftritte vor ihrem Tod. Besonders prominente Beispiele sind Miles Davis (1990), Michel Petrucciani (1998), Lester Bowie (1999) und Jimmy Smith (2004).

If you're interested in that concert, you could try and ask at the local TV station www.wdr.de for a so-called "Konzertmitschnitt". It costs sometimes a heavy fee, but is on the other hand the only way to get these concerts - assumed the WDR really recorded them.

You can find more information about that here: http://www.wdr.de/tv/home/sendemitschnitte/

One example of the WDR recording concerts can be found in their shop: http://www.wdrshop.de/products/DVD-V…ec16541c913b53

More here: http://www.wdrshop.de/DVD-Video/Gesc…-Zeitgeschehen

I was very fortunate to have seen all four of those artists at one time or other.

I saw Miles 3 times from when he came back until he died … had a canceled show in '86, didn't think I'd get another shot, fortunately I did - and his chops were top-notch that night!

Recently, I've mostly been listening to stuff that I've already posted, so I didn't figure I'd bore y'all with rehashes, even though some of them are really, really good. Anyway, here's something new. It's a little hard to pigeonhole--there's a bit of gaze, a bit of Hispanic (strange, since I'm pretty sure these gents are Canadian), a bit pop, a bit who knows… Actually, reminds me a lot of Fastball.

"Insensate" by Way to Go, Einstein

After 85 pages there is likely to be some rehashing … as for me, still on the Miles 'Plugged Nickel' stuff …

Classic for me to today:
"Baker Street" by Gerry Rafferty

Just finished the CD "The heart of rock & roll - the best of Huey Lewis & The News".

I rarely say that, but this is nothing but a "must have" in my eyes. I can only recomment it !

Unless there are better compilations of their hits out there … (I know there are some, but I don't have them yet.)

2-3 times I was thinking "What ? They did THIS song ???" meanwhile listening to that CD.

To me, it's an "insta-classic" , so to say. (Of course now I'll try to track down all of their albums … the remastered versions of them ones seem to be quite rare …)

My Dying Bride - The Dreadful Hours

The first cd I ever got from them, and in my opinion their most atmospheric. The best? I dont know, I kinda think that goes to Turn Loose the Swans. Tough call tho, this is a great cd.

New stuff from bands I've put up recently.

Concert video from Honeybreath here. Generally gazer doesn't translate well live as all the interwoven layers get mushed in the venue acoustics. This is one of the better ones I've seen.

New tune from ex-Tearwave folks, Makaras Pen. A couple vague comments make me think the song is about the breakup of Tearwave. Very good tune, although I still like "Observing the Empty" best. Doug and Jenn are just too damn nice--I hope the new band does well.
"Flawed Design"

Maudlin of the Well - Bath (2001), Leaving Your Body Map (2001)

A very eclectic band with great interest in astral projection, lucid dreaming, etc.
A non-gimmicky mix of jazz, doom, folk, shoegaze and other words.
Sometimes a bit too all over the place for its own good, but for most of the time really interesting musical journey with a pleasant "otherwordly" vibe.
Despite band¨s experimental approach to harmonic progressions, there´s still a lot of really captivating melodies too.

Sleep Is a Curse

Gleam in Ranks

Bizarre Flower/A Violent Mist

Girl with a Watering Can

Birth Pains of Astral Projection

Some of you might remember me putting up a band called Fragile a while back. I think a few of you even liked them. Anyway, they've got some demos up on MySpace for a limited time. All instrumental at this point (other than "Sleeper" which has been up for a while), but I'm liking what I'm hearing.

Fragile

It's become an annual tradition. So, without further delay, today's song shall be:
Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford

New band to offer up today. Not sure which song I like best, so I'll just point to the page. Some gaze, some goth, some pop, a touch of psychedelia. Pretty cool. They're on the shoegaze board, but I'd never really taken the time to listen. Error on the play.

New Ghosts

I added an old 3CD collection called 'Great Saxophonists or the 30's and 40's'. Loads of great original Lester Young, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, and so on. CDDB has no clue, I bought it in the mid-late 80's, when it seemed like folks were just taking stuff and digitizing and releasing without concern about copyright … which is probably how much of it happened.

I got a copy of "Overcoat" from Honeybreath today. What a treat. Right now, it's not for sale anywhere, but they're working on a deal with CDBaby. Once that happens, I'd heartily recommend those of you that enjoy dreampop be ready to drop a few bucks.

New band again today. I've been doing a little digging based on recommendations over at the shoegaze board. This group is pretty good, although I think they're dead now. The tune I'm offering up has an interesting array of treatments. They clash a good bit, but somehow it works out. DeepO might find it interesting.

"Last Breath" by Edria

Listening to the new My Dying Bride album at Spotify.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify )

Seems pretty nice. They brought the violin and these cool wistful melodies
back that I missed in the last couple of releases.

I stumbled upon Jeff Beck Live at Ronnie Scott's and have been really enjoying that … that old man can sure cook!