Tag: spain

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 63: Early Choral Music Special V

My newest episode of Getting Warmer on NTS Radio is the fifth installment in the annual Early Choral Music special. Entirely acappella and sacred, with a little bit more of a Spanish focus this year. I’ve listed the performers as the artist, and then the composers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm, and happy holidays!

Previous early choral music specials: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018

Tracklist:
1. Sequentia – O Pastor animarum (Hildegard von Bingen)
2. Tonus Peregrinus – Missa Da gaudiorum premia: Sanctus (John Dunstable)
3. La Capella Reial de Catalunya – Sibil·la Valenciana: Gloria Tibi Domine (Bartomeu Càrceres)
4. The Cambridge Singers – Justorum animae (Orlando de Lassus)
5. Anonymous 4 – Ave Maria gracia plena (Anonymous, 13th century France)
6. The Tallis Scholars – Funeral Motet: Versa est in luctum (Tomás Luis de Victoria)
7. Discantus – O rubor sanguinis [Antienne] (Hildegard von Bingen)
8. A Sei Voci – Messe Vidi Turbam Magnam: Graduel [Exaltent Eum] (Gregorio Allegri)
9. The Tallis Scholars – Osculetur me (Orlando de Lassus)
10. Capilla Flamenca – De profundis (Sebastián de Vivanco)
11. Ensemble Project Ars Nova – O gloriosissimi lux (Hildegard von Bingen)
12. The Tallis Scholars – Missa Papae Marcelli: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
13. Anonymous 4 – Codex Calixtinus: Portum in ultimo (Anonymous, 12th century France)
14. Capilla Flamenca – Quae est ista (Sebastián de Vivanco)
15. The Tallis Scholars – Motet: Sicut lilium inter spinas (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)
16. Discantus – Ave rosa novella (Anonymous, 13th century France)
17. Pro Cantione Antiqua – Missa Aeterna Christi munera: Kyrie (Giovanni Pierluigi Da Palestrina)

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 47: Late Summer Ambient Special

Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. It’s two hours of late-summer ambient and ambient-adjacent sounds, meant to capture the hazy, humid, golden quality of August and September, featuring field recordings, sunbeams, and bugs. It’s ideal for mid-day napping. (It’s also kind of a sequel to this mix from two Augusts ago, if you’re curious!) A modified one hour version of this was broadcast live on the air last week, so this extended two hour version is a director’s cut of sorts. Thanks as always for listening and being here; I hope this can serve as a moment of quiet in what, to me, feels like a very loud time. You can download an mp3 version here.

Tracklist:
1. Richard Burmer – Riverbend
2. Jean C. Roché – Nightingales: In A Waste Ground Beside A Stream In Provence, June
3. CFCF – Lighthouse On Chatham Sound
4. Finis Africæ – Ceremonia Màgica En El Estanque (Magical Ceremony In The Pond)
5. Elicoide – Mitochondria
6. Takashi Kokubo – 満月の木陰
7. Notte & Bush – Wake Up In Baby’s Room
8. Steven Halpern & Daniel Kobialka – Pastorale
9. Toshifumi Hinata – ミッドサマー・ナイト (Midsummer Night)
10. Hiroshi Yoshimura – Green Shower
11. The Durutti Column – Vino Della Casa Bianco
12. Susan Mazer & Dallas Smith – Kalimbo
13. Haruomi Hosono – Wakamurasaki
14. Joanna Brouk – The Space Between (Excerpt)
15. Goddess In The Morning – 14
16. Virginia Astley – It’s Too Hot To Sleep
17. Constance Demby – Om Mani Padme Hum
18. Michael Stearns – As The Earth Kissed The Moon (Excerpt)
19. Ghostwriters – Slow Blue In Horizontal

Guest Mix – Holidays By The Coast by Oscar Huerta Plaza

Guest mix by Oscar Huerta Plaza (Youtube / Radio Aporee), Barcelona

This is a mix of mostly Spanish, Brazilian, and American orchestral pop music, largely from the 60s–cinematic songs that you would want to listen to while driving along a sunny coastline. It also includes some recent field recordings that I did on the Maltese coast, sounds of the mountains in the outskirts of Barcelona, inside the Barcelona subway, the jungles in Puerto Rico, and the mangroves of southern Florida.

Tracklist:
1. Waves in Dwejra Bay at the collapsed Azure Window, Gozo Island, Malta. June sunset 2018

2. Antonio González “El Pescaílla” – Chica de Ipanema
3. Antón García Abril – Sor Citroën
4. Breakwater in l’Escala, Spain. July afternoon 2018
5. Los Stop – El Turista 1.999.999
6. Augusto Algueró – Será El Amor
7. Frogs and a fountain in the Abbey of Montserrat, Spain. July night 2018
8. Henry Mancini – Party Poop
9. Canoeing in the mangroves, outskirts of Hobe Sound, Florida. August evening 2018
10. Papa Topo – Milano
11. Evinha – Estorinha
12. Alfonso Santisteban – Brincadeira
13. Crickets in a night hike by Collserola mountains just before raining, outskirts of Barcelona. July night 2018
14. Elsa Baeza – Dubeque Dublin
15. Antón García Abril – El Turismo Es Un Gran Invento
16. Taking the subway to rehearsal, Barcelona. July evening 2018
17. Alfonso Santisteban – Manías de María
18. Flipper’s Guitar – Coffee-Milk Crazy
19. Wildlife in Toro Negro rainforest, Puerto Rico. August night 2018
20. Me singing a vocal harmony
21. Le Mans – H.E.L.L.O.
22. Cicadas in Devil’s Millhopper, Gainesville, Florida; and weather forecast in Spain. August evening 2018
23. Marcos Valle – Êle E Ela
24. Stereolab – Miss Modular
25. ユキとヒデ (Yuki & Hide) – 白い波 (White Waves)
26. Los Mismos – Puente A Mallorca

Javier Somarriba ‎– Llegaron Los Colores, 1981

Peak private press folk. Moody, gorgeous, stripped down acoustic guitar and flute, all written and performed by Javier Somarriba. Plenty of warm room tone and vinyl static if you’re into that sort of thing. The last track of the b-side, “Dos Samurais Continúan Luchando Aún En Las Nubes” (“two Samurai still fighting in the clouds”) reminds me, perhaps very deliberately, of the Kwaidan soundtrack, with its howling wind flute dissonance and metal-edged koto mimicry. Ideal reading indoors music.

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 23

Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. If it isn’t painfully obvious, I recently revisited the 1993 version of The Secret Garden, something I watched obsessively as a kid. This time I was struck by its gorgeous soundtrack, the moody world it lives in, its textural depth, and, as is often the case with my childhood movies, its easy elision of colonialism. This mix is about the pastoral, in the British countryside sense but also seeing the pastoral elsewhere. It’s about the projection and fantasy of exotica, musical migration as a result of colonialism, escapism, and essentialism; and is somewhat of a continuation of this mix. It’s also full of birds, bells, and field recordings, because it’s spring, sort of. You can download an mp3 version here. Thanks for listening!

Tracklisting:
1. Fernando Falcão – Revoada
2. Jean C. Roché / Birds – Palmar
3. Toshifumi Hinata – Fire And Forever
4. Mecano – Hawaii-Bombay
5. Per Tjernberg – They Call Me
6. Zbigniew Preisner – First Time Outside
7. Francis Bebey – Forest Nativity
8. Virginia Astley – Sanctus
9. Kudsi Erguner & Xavier Bellenger – Rahat-Ul-Ervah: Le Repos Des Esprits
10. Virginia Astley – From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
11. Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy – White Nile
12. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Yvette Mimieux & Charles Baudelaire – To A Passer-By
13. Raul Lovisoni – Hula Om
14. Bridget St. John – Ask Me No Questions

The Tallis Scholars – Victoria Requiem, 1987

This endless, drizzly winter has put me in a major early choral music rut, and it’s been so good that I almost don’t want the sun to come out. If you’ve never stomped around slushy Brooklyn subway stations in too many layers listening to this stuff in headphones, I’d highly recommend it–it’s a very easy way to lend some potent saintly gravitas to whatever you’re doing and thinking about, however trivial. Along the way, I’ve decided that Spanish Counter-Reformation composer and priest Tomás Luis de Victoria’s requiem, written in 1605, is one of my favorites.

I will say that because this was written right along the outer edges of what’s defined as “early music,” it shows a lot of early baroque tendencies, which is to say that it’s lacking the stark, alien-sounding movements of really early polyphony, like Pérotin. This Requiem is more along the lines of the traditional, baroque kind of prettiness that sounds pretty familiar to 2018 ears. I don’t think that’s at all a bad thing, but if you’re after more brutal, ascetic medievalism, this isn’t it. This is gorgeous, gut-wrenching, deeply pleasurable harmonies all the way. It’s remarkably versatile, too–if you want to make whatever you’re doing at home feel very important and beautiful (reading! writing! washing dishes! brushing your dog!), pop this on. You won’t regret it.

Note that the first ten tracks are Victoria’s Requiem in its entirety, and the last track,  “Versa Est In Iuctum,” was written by Alonso Lobo, one of Victoria’s contemporaries. For more early sacred choral music, including more work by always great Tallis Scholars, see here, here, here, here, and here.

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[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 20: Early Choral Music Special

Here’s my most recent episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio. This one is comprised of entirely early Western vocal music (technically some of this is toeing the line into the Baroque period), completely a capella, and mostly sacred, though at least one of these songs is a non-devotional love song. I’ve listed the composer as the artist, and then the performers in parentheses after the song title. In full transparency, I’m neither an expert on this stuff nor am I at all religious–I just really love this music, and I think it makes an ideal winter hibernation soundtrack. I hope you like it too. You can download an mp3 version here. Stay warm!

Tracklist:
1. Hildegard von Bingen – O Lucidissima (Rosa Lamoreaux & Hesperus Ensemble)
2. Claudio Monteverdi – Ah Dolente Partita
(Emma Kirkby & The Consort of Musicke)
3. Pérotin – Plainchaint: Viderunt omnes fines terrae (Tonus Peregrinus)
4. Tomás Luis De Victoria – Kyrie (The Tallis Scholars)
5. Léonin – Viderunt Omnes, 2 Part Organum (Tonus Peregrinus)
6. Claudio Monteverdi – Donna, Nel Mo Ritorno (La Venexiana)
7. Unknown composer, 12th century Aquitanian monasteries –
Lux refulget (Sequentia)
8. Carlo Gesualdo – Sabbato Sancto, Responsorium 5 (The Hilliard Ensemble)
9. Walter Frye – O florens rosa (The Hilliard Ensemble)
10. Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina – Motet Nigra Sum (The Tallis Scholars)
11. Pérotin – Beata viscera (The Hilliard Ensemble)
12. Unknown composer, 13th century England – Conductus:
O Maria stella maris (Anonymous 4)
13. Léonin – Pentecost: Repleti sunt omnes (Red Byrd)
14.Thomas Tallis – Spem in alium (Motet for 40 Voices) (The Tallis Scholars)

[Mix for Blowing Up The Workshop] #73

Honored to contribute a mix to Blowing Up The Workshop, which is a very useful archive of mixtapes including many from my own musical and curatorial heroes. I was thinking about escapism, cinematic déjà vu, anime soundtracks, hyper-optimistic fantasy about the experience of tourism, courtyards, commercials, and ruins as I put this together. If you like it, you can download it here. Thanks for listening!

Tracklist:
1. Jun Miyake – Good Morning Yamanashi
2. Giovanni Venosta – Woman In Late
3. Lena D’Água – Tao
4. Nuno Canavarro – Untitled 8
5. Forrest Fang – The Luminous Crowd
6. Einojuhani Rautavaara – Cantus Arcticus I: Melancholy
7. Kurban – Masto A Iran
8. Maria Marquez & Frank Harris – Canto Del Pilon
9. Iury Lech – Barreras
10. Marcel Pérès & Ensemble Organum – Offertoire “Diffusa Est Gratia In Labiis Tuis” (comp. Machaut)
11. Masami Tsuchiya – Never Mind
12. Pale Cocoon – Sora
13. Connie Francis – Siboney
14. Kenji Kawai – Nightstalker
15. Jansen / Barbieri – Breaking The Silence
16. Hiroko Yakushimaru – Tomeina Churippu

Patricia Escudero – Satie Sonneries, 1987

Another one from the Grabaciones Accidentales treasure trove. Virtually nothing online about the artist or the record, but suffice it to say that these are synthesizer reworkings of Satie compositions, except the synths sound more like music boxes that have been splashed around in dirty puddles in a dark alley. Hard to say how much of the murkiness is a product of deliberately damp reverb vs the quality of the rip, but either way, the crackly, sinister nostalgia is a major selling point. For fans of synthetic reworkings of classical pieces in the vein of Tomita or Wendy Carlos, except this one is way less shiny and could easily score an art horror movie.

Note that I spliced this together from two different rips of differing quality, and the tracklisting on Discogs is a little confusing (and possibly incorrect), so let me know if you notice anything off about the song titles.

[Mix for NTS Radio] Getting Warmer Episode 5

Listen to my fifth episode of Getting Warmer for NTS Radio below. I wanted it to feel like an ideal limousine fantasy soundtrack. If you like it, you can download an mp3 version of it here. Image by whtebkgrnd. Enjoy!

Tracklist:
1. Cantoma – Maja
2. Interior – Hot Beach
3. Paul Hardcastle – Return of the Rainman
4. Tabo’s Project – Feel
5. Ice Choir – Unprepared
6. Regrets – L’avion
7. Colin Blunstone – Touch
8. Joan Bibiloni – Sa Fosca
9. Billy Mackenzie – In Windows All
10. CFCF – Fleurs Laisses Dans Un Taxi
11. Software – Island Sunrise