Category: Music

4 new ReR CDs; looks like some more winners

Cover of Brian Woodbury's Variety Orchestra CDOne of the happy things in the huge box of post waiting for us when we returned was a packet with 4 new ReR CDs — Huzzah!! I haven’t had a chance to listen to them all yet, but a quick skim suggests that this packet includes some definite winners.

  • Radio banana by Aki Peltonen. How could you not love a title like that? Reminds me a bit of Brian Woodbury’s exceptionally fine Variety orchestra from last year; we’ll have to see if that comparison holds up. (ReR doesn’t have cover images up for any of these yet, so the cover above is from the Woodbury release.)
  • Songs from hurt by Robert Iolini. This is a combination of music (sort of film score style) with actual “field” recordings of the forgotten (in Australia, but most could be anywhere) talking about their lives and circumstances. Could be really powerful stuff.
  • Nita, L’Angelo sul Trapezio by Paulo Angeli. I really liked his earlier Bucato CD. This sounds totally different, but still good. More stuff that sounds vaguely orchestral and film-score-esque.
  • Acnalbasac noom (try it backwards) by Slapp Happy. A re-issue of the original version (before Virgin Records gurped things up) of this 70’s release. Based on a quick listen it’s aged really well, and Dagmar Krause’s singing is some of the smoothest and least strident I’ve ever heard from her (although I like it when she’s strident :-) ).

Cover of Charming Hostess' Punch CDI love the international nature of ReR’s releases. In this set, for example, Peltonen is Finnish, Iolini hails from Australia, Angeli is Italian, and the members of Slapp Happy came from Germany, the UK, and the U.S. In a world so over-dominated by U.S. and U.K. music it’s cool to be exposed to such excellent music from other parts of the globe.

I don’t suspect there’s anything in this packet quite as surprising and wonderful as Charming Hostess‘ Punch from ReR’s last release (or Chris Cutler’s excellent Twice around the earth), but it’s still early days. Regardless, it does seem like there’s some really nice stuff and a I look forward to digging into them more deeply.

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So, what would you do with £1M?

Club AnthemsIn their excellent song “A day in space”, Ballboy makes the case for spending a windfall million quid on a day in space:

And then I say
“What better place could you go to than space?
What’s a better holiday than that?
Think about lying there in your 100’s,
110 or whatever,
looking back on your life and thinking, well,
what did I actually do?
What did I actually achieve?
Oh, yeah, I saw the pyramids.
Big deal.
You can apparently see those from space anyway.
You see all the rest of the blue and green globe
twisting and turning below you.
You can see the sun lighting up the moon,
feel the stars shining down upon your back.
You don’t get that in Egypt,
and you don’t get that in the pyramids,
and you don’t get that by pissing away your million pounds
on something everyone else can do
if they save up long enough.

Sue and Tom in Florence, June, 2001If presented with a £1M, I’m pretty sure we’d do the safe thing, socking most of it away to ensure Sub-Evil Boy‘s college education and our happy (and perhaps early) retirement. I suspect we would travel a lot more, but we’d be much more likely to spend extended periods in Florence than a day in space. And then there’s be the neat opportunities for charitable giving, as well as nifty consumer electronics to feed WeatherGirl‘s habit (and help prop up Our Fearless Leader’s U.S. economy).

If I was totally unattached, the idea of a day in space would probably sound more appealing. I’m not, though, and it would have to be a family thing (which is a cool thing to look back on when I’m 110). For now, I think family time works better on the surface than in space. The possibilities of (incredibly expensive) “space tourism” are becoming sufficiently real, though, that the government is now starting the regulatory wheels, leading to the predictable clash with those who wish to profit from people’s desire to see “the blue and green globe twisting and turning below”.

So what would you do with a £1M?

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