Martyrs Elcamino

The performances on this lovely album of vocal and instrumental music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier make it a recording that should delight the composer's fans and anyone who loves the music of the Baroque. Listeners should be warned that the packaging and even the composer's titles create expectations of music of a very different character from what is actually presented. The three Leçons de Ténèbres of the title, scored for bass and chamber orchestra, refer to baleful texts taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah describing the fall and abasement of Jerusalem, and were written for services on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Holy Week, the darkest days in the Christian liturgical calendar.

“Fear is a theme that comes up pretty quickly if you try to understand the strange mood of our society,” says GET WELL SOON’s Konstantin Gropper about his stylistic volte-face from LOVE to THE HORROR. “It seems to be a big common denominator.” Inevitable then, but also entirely in keeping with an artist who has already made an album about the apocalypse – 2012’s grandiose The Scarlet Beast O’Seven Heads – and writes songs titled ‘I Sold My Hands For Food So Please Feed Me’ and ‘We Are Safe Inside While They Burn Down Our House’.

David Sylvian - Sleepwalkers (2010) {Samadhisound sound cd ss020}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 379 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 158 Mb
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© 2010 SamadhiSound | sound cd ss 020
Experimental / Art Rock / Experimental Electronic / Avant-Garde

Like everything else he does, musical iconoclast David Sylvian's idea of a retrospective compilation is very different from the norm. Sleepwalkers is a 16-track, hour-plus collection focused on his many collaborations during the previous decade. Included are alternate takes from his own albums, remixes, reworked material and his contributions to the albums of others. There is one new cut, pointing to the future: "Five Lines" with Japanese composer Dai Fujikura, is a complex art song with a string quartet. (According to Sylvian, Fujikura is working with him on a completely new, orchestral version of Manofon.) This new piece is one of the many highlights.

La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment) is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti, set to a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard. It was first performed on 11 February 1840 by the Paris Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse.