08/04/2023

Swallows flying over the pyramids

 
Nostalgique Egypte - Chansons d'amour, de charme et improvisations 1925 - 1960 is an Egyptian tribute compilation made by French label Buda Musique.
 
During this golden age that runs from the interwar period until the early 1970s, Egyptian music will literally flood the region, from the Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean, undergoing profound and complex change; the greatest are all there: Oum Kalthoum, Mohamed Abdel Wahab, Abel Halim Hafez, Farid El Atrache, but also remarkable artists, less known outside the East, like Laure Daccache, Egyptian of Lebanese origin, not only a singer but also one of the first Arab women to compose her own songs and to accompany herself on the 'oud, or even Asmahane, sister of Farid El Atrache.
 
(This post is dedicated to the wonderful crew of Dream Weapons, who have allowed to open portals of awareness and learning for many years to those who are eager for this ancestral knowledge).
 

Not suitable for claustrophobic minds

 
Basil Kirchin (8 August 1927 - 18 June 2005) was an English drummer and composer; he pioneered techniques which are now commonplace but were considered radical at the time. These included recording sounds he came across and then cutting, splicing, slowing down or stretching the tape to create strange, new noises.

Nights under the red moon

 
Tandy Love (real name: Andrew Shallcross, AKA Andy Votel, 1975) is an English producer and musician who co-operates Finders Keepers Records, Pre-Cert Home Entertainment & Dead-Cert Home Entertainment.
 

07/04/2023

Expressions that arise from the deep interior

 
Daniela Casa (1944-1986), also known under the pseudonym Elageron was an Italian singer, composer and synthesist . A genuine pioneer of experimental pop music, abstract electronics, Giallo jazz and even heavy drone rock jams, her elusive and infectious music joins the dots and loops between other Italian female electronic composers such as Giulia De Mutiis (later Giulia Alessandroni), Doris Norton and Suzanne.
 

The essence that motivates life

 
Giancarlo Barigozzi (1930-2008) was an Italian jazz saxophonist, flautist, clarinettist, composer and sound engineer; he has played with Franco Cerri, Gianni Basso, Gil Cuppini, Giorgio Gaslini, Tony Scott, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, Jack Teagarden, Frank Sinatra and many others.
 

Rhythmic echoes coming down from Ararat

 
The Armenian musician Hamlet Minassian was born in Tabriz (North-Western Iran) in 1940. After graduating from the music school of his native city, he attended advanced courses at the Teheran Conservatoire followed by musical research work in Europe and the United States. His career began with composing chanson type songs. 
 
He then moved into the film industry where he rapidly built up a reputation as the composer of a number of popular themes. Hamlet Minassian has also produced original vocal and orchestral arrangements of Armenian folk tunes and has composed a number of romances and the ballet.
 
Awinsome and dizzying spin on disco pop, recorded in westernized Iran during the last moments before the 1979 revolution. All but criminalized in the wake of Ayatollah Khomeini's theocratic repression, Hamlet Minassian's solo masterpiece is a testament to the Middle East's forgotten dance music culture.
 

A journey furrowing dark skies

 
Босса Нова Навсегда Самая Красивая Музыка В СССР is a Russian Bossa Nova Tribute compilation made by Мелодия Label.
 

A dance for two serpents

 
Michel Legrand (1932 - 2019) was a French composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific film and television scores composer and wrote many memorable songs. His scores for the films of Jacques Demy, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - 1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort - 1967) earned him Academy Award nominations and he won his first of three Oscars for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). 
 

05/04/2023

Overwhelmed by the vertigo of modernity

 
Alessandro Alessandroni (1925, Rome, Italy - 2017, Rome, Italy) was an Italian composer, arranger, vocalist, whistler, conductor and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, sitar, keyboards, mandolin, mandocello, accordion, banjo, flute, harmonica, jew's harp, recorder, melodica and ocarina). He was the founder of the vocal ensemble I Cantori Moderni di Alessandroni. Husband of Margaret Courtney-Clarke. Previously married to Giulia Alessandroni (Kema) until her death in 1984.
 
Also collaborated with his childhood friend Ennio Morricone on a number of soundtracks for Spaghetti Westerns. Morricone's orchestration often calls for an unusual combination of instruments, voices, and whistling. Alessandroni's twangy guitar riff is central to the main theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Alessandroni can be heard as the whistler on the soundtracks for Sergio Leone's films, including A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Pervirella. He also collaborated with Morricone in scoring the 1974 film Around the World with Peynet's Lovers.
 
He founded the octet vocal group I Cantori Moderni in 1961. The group, which included his wife, Giulia De Mutiis, performed wordless vocals on several Italian movie soundtracks. Most notably, I Cantori Moderni are featured on the song "Mah Nà Mah Nà", written by Piero Umiliani for the 1968 Luigi Scattini mondo film Svezia, inferno e paradiso and popularized on The Muppets Show.  
 
Alessandro has also composed film scores, including Any Gun Can Play (1967), Johnny Hamlet (1968), The Reward's Yours... The Man's Mine (1969), Lady Frankenstein (1971), The Devil's Nightmare (1971), The Mad Butcher (1971), Seven Hours of Violence (1973), Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad (1973), Poker in Bed (1974), White Fang and the Hunter (1975), Blood and Bullets (1976), L'adolescente (1976), La professoressa di scienze naturali (1976), The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976), Women's Camp 119 (1977), Killer Nun (1978), L'imbranato (1979), and Trinity Goes East (1998).
 

The beauty of psychotic thoughts

 
Suzanne Ciani (Indiana, 1946) is an USA musician, sound designer, composer, and record label executive who found early success in the 1970s with her electronic music and sound effects for films and television commercials. Her career has included works with quadraphonic sound. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album five times. Her success with electronic music has her dubbed "Diva of the Diode" and "America's first female synth hero".
 

Harmonies to relive the past

 

 
Gogo People - Fabulous Gogo Music From Tanzania is an Ethnic African Compilation made by Kenyan label Sapra Studio.
 
(The Gogo/Gongwe are a Bantu ethnic and linguistic group based in the Dodoma Region of central Tanzania).