A couple of days later I nipped into the ABC Centre in town at lunchtime and purchased the only copy of The Audrey’s CD that was there (to be honest I was surprised to find that they had a copy at all – given that there’s not a huge selection of music available in that particular bookshop in the first place).

As inadequate as my music vocabulary and reviewer experience is, that’s not going to stop me having a go at writing a mini-rewiew.

Now, having had the opportunity to listen to all the tracks several times, I’d class this CD as having a higher than average number of tracks that I rate highly (compared the other CDs in my collection).

Taasha Coates’s voice is described as being “smokyâ€?. Personally, I think “smokyâ€? has connotations of roughness and stinging – I’d suggest that “mellowâ€? and “sultryâ€? would be better adjectives (albeit not on every track). Perhaps the banjo of Tristan Goodall has swung the sound towards alt-country (and/or bluegrassy?) – I’m not one for rigorously classifying music into genres, though, I just like what I like. My musical taste is quite eclectic as a result.

The CD is called “Between Last Night and Us�, and my favourite tracks, thus far, would have to be “You & Steve McQueen�, and “Banjo and violin�. The former and a few other tracks can be sampled on their web sites. Why are they my favourite tracks? No idea. I enjoy music based on the total sound rather than, say, what the lyrics are saying to me.

The Audreys are currently on a European tour, then they’re off to Canada. They tour Australia during July/August/September 2006.

The booklet that accompanies the CD has some very nice, quirky, faux-1960′s(?)-Australia photography accompanying it (I’d suggest that may not have been photographer Wend Lear’s goal though, just how I interpret the style).

Resources:

• ABC2
• Dig TV
• The Audreys
• Banjo and violin (Real player, broadband only, perhaps only for 7 days after broadcast)
• The Audreys infoblog (low signal to noise ratio)
• The CD “Between Last Night and Usâ€? at the ABC Shop, and at Amazon

The music is of sentimental value to me in that a couple of the tracks, “Jig-a-Jig” and “Marcus Junior”, were amongst the very first vinyl singles I purchased as a youth. I still have that the vinyl, but, given that such things aren’t as conveniently played as ripped CDs, I haven’t touched it for years.

Some of the other tracks on the CD were new to me. Some are somewhat “strange”, perhaps “psychedelic”, and most certainly belong in the ’70s.

The band has been classified as 70′s rock but to me there are also elements of jazz, blues and electric folk.

More on those in a few weeks time.

Over the past few days I’ve been re-ripping a few hundred CDs at a higher bit rate. I’m also taking advantage of iTunes new feature whereby individual movements of classical pieces can be aggregated, or joined, to a single track. This latter feature makes per-track shuffling a more practical proposition.

The CD that I’ve just finished listening to, and re-discovering, is “World Fusion“, a Magnatune compilation. The compilation is a selection of works by musicians in Magnatune’s “World” genre.

Of the fifteen tracks there was only one track that I felt slighly disinterested in to begin with, but then it grew on me.

I think it’s the unusual (to me) mix of old and new, traditional and modern, that is most refreshing:

• Beth Quist: electro-Balkan/Indian meets New Age
• Curandero: Flamenco guitar meets Indian Tabla
• Falik: middle-eastern infused with electronica

Zöller mentioned that he played with a German early music group, “ESTAMPIE”. A track composed by Zöller, “Sine Nomine”, was played. I was hooked. I ordered the CD “Signum” from Amazon (I’ve given up trying to order anything even slightly unusual in Armidale).

The CD duly arrived, having been supplied to Amazon by ISOTANK MUSIC in Philadelphia. [Aside: A German CD, ordered from Australia, sourced in the USA, couriered (presumably) to Hong Kong, then parcel-posted to me from HK].

The CD contains a selection of sung and instrumental pieces. Most are from the 11th to 13 centuries. A time when man in Europe lived in fear of the end of the world, and the Church was all powerful. I was put in mind of pieces from a similar period in time, a time when many made Pilgrimage. The songs and chants from the “Red Book of Montserrat“, for example.

More on Thomas Zöller can be found here, and information about “Estampie” here.

A few snippets of Thomas Zöller’s performances can be found here. I look forward to hearing more from Zöller in time.

I had forgotten those days until I recently read a description by “but she’s a girl” of her recent attendance at a concert at Lichfield Cathedral. The remark that made me smile the most was the description of the work being “prefaced by a thunderous introduction”, by the use of the organ stop marked Armageddon with Knobs On. I could just imagine myself up there in that organ loft all those years ago.

BBC Radio 3 recently broadcast all the works of Beethoven and then made all nine symphonies available as MP3 downloads. The latter were performed by the BBC’s own Philharmonic.

In an article in The Independent, the Managing Director of the Naxos record label says something which I can only assume he later regretted. He said that by making these works freely available as downloadable MP3 files, “You are also leading the public to think that it is fine to download and own these files for nothing.”

Given that the BBC owns the recording and performance rights of a non-copyrighted work, and that it can decide what it can do with its own property, then it is fine to download and it is OK to own those files for nothing. The BBC has its own term and conditions attached, and the MP3 file quality was limited (to minimise file size and download time). I hardly think that record labels have anything to fear.

I can only assume that the record labels mentioned in the article are short-sightedly worried about their own company’s short-term profits rather than the promotion of Classical Music to an as yet untapped potential audience in the longer term.

“Holy Bagpipes”, Batman!

I am so impressed by the fact that every track has something to offer me. This is, most certainly, an wonderful example of a collection of high-energy, contemporary bagpipe compositions.

The take-home message is that the bagpipe is an instrument for playing music, not an instrument for playing bagpipe music.

Go visit Mark’s site at http://marksaul.tv/.

We humans have a tendency to put things into slots and categories (even on this blog), and my first thought was to think “he’s a Martyn Bennett or a Paul Mounsey”. Sorry, Mark, you’re a Mark Saul.

The track played on Celtic Connections was “Forget the Golden Rules” from Mark’s “Mixolydian” CD. I’m pretty sure some piping traditionalists may think that Mark broke the rules! And, boy, am I glad he did.

On visiting Mark’s web site I discovered that’s he’s based in Melbourne – a mere 1000 km from here – with an interesting history in the piping scene.

There’s not much more for me to say to say given that I’ve only heard the one track, but based on that I’m heading off to order the CD. Thanks be to Celtic Connections.

Archie Fisher interviewed Eric Bogle, a Scot now resident in Adelaide, South Australia. One of the reasons for the interview was that EMI have recently released a 5-CD set which showcases Bogle’s several decades as a performer. I’ve been a fan of Bogle’s since the 1980′s when I first heard him. During the course of the interview, a sentiment that caused me to reflect on my own situation was Bogle’s comment that Australia, rather than Scotland, is “home”. He’s been here for over 35 years. In my own case I think of myself as a Scot (I’ve not become an Australian citizen even after 26 years in the country), and, to some extent, I tend think of Scotland as “home”. Under what circumstances might I think of Australia as “home”?

The answer, I think, is “it depends”. I do recall thinking “I’m home” on returning to Australia after visiting Scotland last time (over 10 years ago). I also felt “at home” when in Scotland. Perhaps, for me, “home” is where I am comfortably settled at a given point in time?

I spent two years in Sydney (in 1997/8) – I can’t say that I ever thought of that as “home”. Does that mean that I wasn’t comfortably settled there?

So, it would seem that “home” is where the heart is – but it’s just that the heart moves around a bit that confuses the issue at times.