colleen

2006 was a big year for me : I got my viola da gamba, recorded Colleen et les Boîtes à musique, in summer learnt that I had been granted at the last minute a one-year sabbatical from my teaching job (which led to my resignation the following year), in November went to Japan and totally fell in love with the country, and in December recorded Les ondes silencieuses! I had a big obsession at the time with John Coltrane and listened to a lot of sixties music… Saw The Innocents for the first time…As for This Heat, their first album changed my life when I first heard it in 1995 and still sounds way ahead of its time (released in 1979 and recorded even earlier than that!) …And I still love that Blue Rondos song soooo much – every single instrument sounds so right -long live Joe Meek’s legacy!!!
A big thank you to Luis J.Menendez for commissioning this mix for his La Noche Inventada radio programme!

Harry Partch – Two Studies On Ancient Greek Scales

The Innocents – O  Willow Waly 

Sibylle Baier – Tonight

Chet Baker – Grey December 

Half Asleep – Morning Dust – Soon

Anne Briggs – Fine Horseman

Medicine Head – Next Time The Sun Comes Round

The Index – Rainy Starless Nights

Mississipi John Hurt – Frankie

John Lee Hooker – Rock House Boogie 

John Coltrane – My Favorite Things

This Heat – Horizontal Hold

Broadcast – Black Cat 

Carole King – He’s A Bad Boy

The Blue Rondos – Little Baby

Photo from EME festival, Setubal, Portugal, 7th October 2006, by Rui Minderico: my first time playing the gamba live!

This fourth mix was made for the release of The Golden Morning Breaks in 2005, and it’s probably the most eclectic I’ve ever made, pointing both to my past and future music. Hip hop definitely influenced Everyone Alive Wants Answers, and I’m surprised it took me so long to feature hip hop in one of my mixes (that GZA song…). The viola da gamba piece by Carl Friedrich Abel is one of my favourite pieces for viola and influenced my decision to buy the instrument and make Les Ondes Silencieuses. African music has been crucial to the way I play my string instruments, especially my treble viola da gamba (for instance on 2013’s The Weighing of the Heart). The Gamelan Son of Lion song is part of my long-standing love for anything gamelan, and you can hear gamelan’s echoes in so much of my music… As for Lee Perry’s “Roast fish and corn bread”, it’s a very special song for me: in the early 80s, my parents miraculously bought a Jamaican compilation tape, mostly made up of some seriously weird and powerful Perry productions from his best period, and that’s how I was introduced to the best of Jamaican music at a very young age, on long road trips!!! This of course resurfaced in 2015’s Captain of None.

Gamelan Son Of Lion « Sleeping Braid » ( From The Complete Gamelan In The New World Performed By Gamelan Son Of Lion) 
Loobke « Adhd »
Magnetic Fields « Josephine »
Steffen Basho-Junghans “Smiling Penguins”
Dimi Mint Aba And Khalifa Ould Eide « Yar Allahoo »
Movietone « The Sand And The Stars »
Vashti Bunyan « Train Song »
Pg Six  « Introduction (Letter To Lilli St.Cyr) »
Bridget St John « Autumn Lullaby »
Tiémoko Sissokho « Diagha » Sénégal – Kora Malinké
Björk « Amphibian »
Roots Manuva « Movements »
Harry Partch « Two Studies On Ancient Greek Scales 1 »
East Flatbush Project « Tried By Twelve »
GZA « Liquid Swords »
Martha And The Vandellas « Jimmy Mack »
Jan Bradley « Mama Didn’t Lie »
Brenda Holloway « When I’m Gone »
Lee Perry « Roast Fish And Cornbread »
Carl Friedrich Abel “5 pieces in D minor”
Love “Alone again or”

Photo from Tanned Tin Festival, Castellón, Spain, 5th November 2005, by Zoe T Vizcaino

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This very quiet hour-long mix done while working on my second album The golden morning breaks spans even more genres and decades than the previous ones, though its geographical area is restricted to Western music (apart from Hamza El Din). France is featured three times – incredible by my standards! – and the Django Reinhardt is from a 7’ that belonged to my mum (there was a cable problem while I transferred it digitally – this was before these things could be done easily ).

Mark Fry « Dreaming With Alice – Verse 1 »
Duke Ellington « Fleurs Africaines »
John Cage « Sonata 1 » (Sonatas And Interludes For Prepared Piano)
Barbara « Gottingen »
Django Reinhardt « Minor Swing »
United States Of America « Cloud Song »
Rachel’s « Honeysuckle Suite »
Rolling Stones « Lady Jane »
Animal Collective « Doggy »
Hamza El Din « Munshah »
Delia Derbyshire « Blue Veils And Golden Sands »
John Barry « Mountains And Sunsets » (You Only Live Twice)
This Mortal Coil « Another Day »
Anne Laplantine « Hambourg » 1
Skip James « Devil Got My Woman»
Catpower « Sophisticated Lady »
Stone Poneys « Evergreen Part 2 »
Nico « These Days »
Half Asleep « The Twilight Was Probably Right »
Supreme Dicks « Blue Elephant »
Half Asleep « Tu Sens Le Sommeil Et Les Larmes »
Mark Fry « Dreaming With Alice – Verse 9 /10 »

The first mix for my first album was very representative of my various obsessions of the time, among which Indonesian music (and East Asian music in general), African music, weird songs (Sun Ra’s “Rocket# 9” ), sixties girl groups, with a bit of contemporary electronics thrown in and “classics” that transcend their time such as My Bloody Valentine or Terry Riley.

At the time of this second mix, December 2003, I was already thinking about a second album, and reading a Lou Harrison interview in The Wire and hearing the piece that opens and closes this mix convinced me definitively that I would give up samples and start to build up a collection of instruments and learn how to play them. This mix also features some of my all-time old school favs Delia Derbyshire and Raymond Scott, but I’ll let the tracklisting do the talking.

Lou Harrison « Double Concerto For Violin, Cello And Javanese Gamelan » (Music And Arts)

Philip Jeck « Spirits Up » (Touch)

Nobukazu Takemura « Curious Child » (Wea)

Tim Hecker « Hello Detroit » (Alien8)

Delia Derbyshire – BBC Radiophonic Workshop (BBC)

Clangers « Intro Music – Dialogue From Episode One » (Smallfolk / Fellside)

Half Asleep « Sea Shells » (Demo)

Penguin Cafe Orchestra « Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter » (Virgin)

Flip And The Dateliners « My Johnny Doesn’t Come Around » (Hmv)

Brenda Holloway « When I’m Gone » (Tamla Motown)

Raymond Scott – Portofino / Good air (Basta)

Amalia Rodrigues « Troca De Olhares » (Pharaon)

Pauline Oliveros « The Fool’s Circle » (Lovely Music)

Lou Harrison « Double Concerto For Violin, Cello And Javanese Gamelan » (Music And Arts)

The photos are from a concert at Les Les Voutes in Paris in December 2003, a place where I played many times, and I must have started to play the cello very shortly before that (I was pretty reckless at the time!).