j4: (music)
[personal profile] j4
Tagged by [livejournal.com profile] camellia_uk. (Don't make a habit of this, now.)

List five songs that you are currently digging - it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. Post these instructions and the five songs (with artist) in your blog. Then tag five people to see what they're listening to.

The meme doesn't mention writing about the songs in any detail, but I've got to make this more interesting somehow, if only for me. So, five tracks I'm "digging", as they call it, at the moment are:

1. Beats International feat. Lindy Layton, "Dub be good to me"

Who would have thought that mild-mannered Norman Cook would take the dance scene by storm? Answer: anybody who heard this. I first heard it on "Smash Hits 1990" -- the first chart pop album I ever owned, given to me for Christmas by one of my more trendy aunts. I expected to file this "pop" stuff (which involved putting posters of boys on your wall -- weird!) in the same category as all that "makeup" stuff that equally well-meaning relatives were starting to give me, but it was love at first listen, and this was one of the best tracks on the album.

At the weekend I picked up a cheap copy of "Let them eat bingo", the 1990 album by Beats International. None of it is quite as jam hot as the hit single, but it's all good.

2. "Closer to Mario" [MP3]

This. Is. GREAT. It's a mashup of a NIN song and the Super Mario theme. (Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] mobbsy for pointing me at it, and to all the people who explained to me what a "mashup" is.) It's simultaneously the best joke I've heard in weeks (yes, [livejournal.com profile] addedentry, this does include the one about the man with an orange for a head) and a huge, bouncy, crunchy bucketful of pure get-up-and-dance. Where can I find more like this? Who does this stuff?

3. Zimra Ornatt with Leon Rosselson, "Ashira Ladonai"

When Oxfam throws out a huge pile of battered and scratchy records in foreign languages, I'm there -- even if it means a half-hour trudge manhandling a bike and a rucksack along narrow pavements, struggling to carry a paper bag full of records that's slowly disintegrating in the rain. Among the predominantly Hungarian pickings (surprisingly intact after their journey home) was an LP of "Israeli Songs" by these two artists.

I know nothing about Israeli music, but to an uninformed Westerner this sounds like the best bits of the 1970s folk movement (a confidently clear-voiced female singer, accompanied by sensitive but precise and deliberate fingerstyle guitar) with added maturity, depth and passion. I've picked the first track on the album because it made me sit up and listen, but it's all good.

4. The Magnetic Fields, "Strange Powers"

I first heard the Magnetic Fields nearly a year ago now, playing live at the Royal Festival Hall. They were so fantastic that I fell in love with the boy who bought my ticket for me. :-)

"On a ferris wheel looking out on Coney Island / under more stars than there are prostitutes in Thailand / Our hair in the air / our lips blue from cotton candy / when we kiss it feels like a flying saucer landing / and I can't sleep / 'cause you got strange powers / you're in my dreams / strange powers"

Thomas Tallis, "Spem in Alium"

Having finally got my CD of Tallis back from a long-term loan to an infrequently-visited friend, I'm delighted to have this around to listen to again. It's breathtaking in its scope (with forty separate vocal lines) and in its sound, a shifting and shimmering kaleidoscope of closely interwoven melodic patterns and seamless, effortless harmonic progressions. When music reviewers start babbling incoherently about sonic cathedrals, this is what they're looking for.

*

I'm not going to tag anybody explicitly, but I'd be delighted if people wanted to follow up with something that's currently on their "must listen" list. Extra bonus points if they provide an mp3 link so I can listen!

Date: 2005-09-13 02:16 pm (UTC)
ext_44: (games)
From: [identity profile] jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com
you wind up in the land of people who are constantly remixing obscure C64 tunes that weren't even written by Rob Hubbard

I would say "You say that as if it were a bad thing", but, on reflection, you don't actually make much judgment about it at all. Well done!

For things which err more on the video game side than on the real tune side, I direct you here (http://www.ocremix.org/). As to which game to try, depends of which games you have fond memories, but I always enjoyed this cheesy disco remix of Space Harrier (http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00009/), and know just what you ([livejournal.com profile] j4) mean about a song being funny. Oh, and yer C64istry (http://remix64.phatsites.de/).

Date: 2005-09-13 02:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] uon.livejournal.com
Well, I do have slight reservations about C64 tunes that weren't written by Rob Hubbard, but that might be because I just can't remember any good ones offhand.

I have a strong suspicion that my taste in music (such as liking electroclash (whatever that means) despite never really liking eighties synthpop, and in particular my unreasonable affinity for space-alien psytrance) is a consequence of overexposure to coding demos at a vulnerable age.

Date: 2005-09-14 06:33 am (UTC)
ext_44: (bostonducks)
From: [identity profile] jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com
Fire up the Martin Galway directory in your local PlaySID, though David Whittaker has some good ones too, and lots of people like Ben Daglish. (etc. etc.)

Overexposure to coding demos? MTV (http://www.demoscene.tv/page.php?id=229&lang=uk). VH1 (http://www.demoscene.tv/page.php?id=213&lang=uk), with all the relevant "ooh, I haven't heard that in years" thrills.

demoscene conversion

Date: 2005-09-14 06:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] uon.livejournal.com
"This content has moved" ?

Re: demoscene conversion

Date: 2005-09-14 06:54 am (UTC)
ext_44: (whoops)
From: [identity profile] jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com
I have this nasty feeling that LJ regards some of these consecutive strings of characters as reserved magic words, so

http://www.demoscene.tv/p a g e . p h p ? i d = 2 2 9 & l a n g = u k

and

http://www.demoscene.tv/p a g e . p h p ? i d = 2 1 3 & l a n g = u k

minus the spaces respectively.

Date: 2005-09-15 12:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] imc.livejournal.com
Actually it's because you are supposed to escape "&" to "&" in URLs¹ and LiveJournal [or actually Perl's HTML::TokeParser with the default settings] is too retarded to understand what you meant.

¹Hope you aren't reading the HTML source for that in the notification email, as that would be rather confusing…

Re: demoscene conversion

Date: 2005-09-14 09:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] addedentry.livejournal.com
Congratulations on that ap-Paul-ling pun.

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