Colorful Simon

To open this oddball supergroup's debut, Paul Simonon hints at "Guns of Brixton," and when Tony Allen's flex rhythms come in, there's a shadow of Fela Kuti, too. Then Damon Albarn's slow grit of a voice enters–framed by Simon Tong's flecked guitar. And collectively, The Good, the Bad, & the Queen is quickly sui generis, adamantly different than anything you think you've heard. A band with this much power has at least two options: to cut loose raucously or to mute their overt power for a more covert, dub-inflected atmospheric potency. Smartly, Albarn and his crew opt for the half-light of elastic bass lines, the clouds between the parentheses of drums–the covert. It's not until "Kingdom of Doom," the erstwhile 'single' of the album, that motion expands beyond the languorous. And even then, Tony Allen largely sits out. You get the full flush of Simonon and Allen on "Three Changes" shuffling time even while holding the tempo to a dubbish gait. It's not Blur, the Clash, Fela, the Verve, or Gorillaz. It's more than just names on albums.

Jordi Savall & Andrew Lawrence-King - The Celtic Viol (2009) {Alia Vox AVSA 9865}
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© 2009 Alia Vox | AVSA 9865
Classical / Chamber Music / Celtic / World

Thanks to in-depth research into original manuscripts, Jordi Savall reveals the hidden beauties of Irish and Scottish music from 17th to 19th Century. The transcription from fiddle to baroque viol sounds so obvious that everyone realizes the closeness of traditional and ancient repertoires at once. Some of the pieces are irresistibly vivid and virtuosic, some are more melancholic-but all of them deserve the renasissance Jordi Savall offers them in this collection, where he partners with harp virtuoso Andrew Lawrence-King.

Aparis & Markus Stockhausen - Despite The Fire-Fighters' Efforts (1993) {ECM 1496}
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© 1993 ECM Records | ECM 1496
Jazz / Contemporary Jazz / Chamber Jazz

Three years after a self-titled debut, the trio known as Aparis set out for its second of two albums for ECM. Much of the sweep of the first can be found slithering throughout Despite the fire-fighters’ efforts…, only here trumpeter Markus Stockhausen’s lines swim eel-like in an even deeper ocean of electronics, courtesy of brother Simon (who also plays soprano sax). Drummer Jo Thönes is gorgeously present at key moments, as in the high-octane intensity that concludes the opening track, “Sunrice.” Before this we are surrounded by dawn-drenched ruins.

Andreas Hakenberger spent his entire professional career within the territory of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, remaining for 20 years as chapel-master at the Lutheran Church of St. Mary’s in Gdansk. Here he wrote his most outstanding works, a sequence of important motets written in cori spezzati, or polychoral technique. The rich tonal coloring obtained through the combinations of vocal parts is enhanced by the variety of the accompanying instrumentation. With astute use of imitation and rhetorical pauses, Hakenberger’s music emerges as richly colorful, graceful and vibrant. There have been very few recordings of the music of Andreas Hakenberger. This release offers by far the most of his music yet to be issued, and contains all of the 55 motets preserved in the Pelplin Tablature.

Recorded in 1995, this Esther was first issued as Collins Classics 7040-2 early the following year. Like Hogwood, Harry Christophers recorded the original 1718 version of what has gone down in history as Handel’s first English oratorio.
In point of fact, the complex and still largely unresolved history of Esther suggests that it was not originally composed as an oratorio at all, but rather as a staged work that would have formed a companion to the near-contemporary Acis and Galatea.