Past Programs
World Music - 2008
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Two-Faced Friday
21/11/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Juan Carmona
18/11/2008
Juan Carmona was born in France of Spanish Gypsy background. The gift of a guitar for his 10th birthday set him on the path of discovery of his roots which has led to the CD's Caminos Nuevos and Orillas which we feature today.
He blends the expected sounds of traditional and contemporary flamenco ... guitars, singers, hand clapping and percussion ... with the more unexpected textures of a Morrocan orchestra, complete with strings, brass and woodwinds. The result is a fine exploration of the Moorish roots of flamenco.
Silk and Bamboo
17/11/2008
Simply titled Traditional Chinese Music , the new CD from UK-based The Silk and Bamboo Ensemble delivers exactly what it promises ... beautifully.
Silk and Bamboo music gets its name from the fact that the instruments use both materials in their construction, and comes from an ancient (8th Century BC) classification of musical instruments according to their construction. This CD features 5 virtuosi on a wide range of instruments including erhu (upright fiddle), pipa (upright lute), guqin (unfretted zither), Guzheng (plucked zither), yangqin (hammered dulcimer), sheng (mouth organ), guanzi (oboe or shawm), dizi and xiao (flutes) and hulusi (gourd-based reed pipe)
CD of the Week - Taj Mahal
17/11/2008
40 years as a significant figure in the diverse worlds of blues, soul, reggae and world music is no mean feat, and rather than just compiling a greatest hits retrospective, Taj Mahal has celebrated this milestone by putting out a brand new album Maestro.
In keeping with recent trends, he has decided to include many tracks which are collaborations, and so has joined up with a very fine list of well-known acts for this record, including Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Toumani Diabate, Angelique Kidjo, Los Lobos and Ziggy Marley. As you’d expect, the result is a CD which covers everything from hard-edged blues through reggae and soul to West African sounds.
Two-Faced Friday
14/11/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Solas
10/11/2008
American Irish band Solas has been described by the Washington Post as ’one of the World’s finest Celtic folk ensembles’, and by the Austin American Statesman as ’the standard by which contemporary Celtic groups are judged’. That may or may not be a bit of jingoistic hyperbole, but there is no doubt that they are the real deal ... no pun intended.
They’ve been around for enough time to have had both a "best of" CD and a re-union concert, which means that they’re veterans of the scene. They now how to perform, how to write and arrange, and how to make really good records. Their new disc For Love and Laughter is no exception. It features the fine tune writing of multi-instrumentalist Seamus Egan, accordionist Mick McAuley and fiddler Winifred Horan, and has special guest appearances by Canadian roots-and-beyond band The Duhks.
Two-Faced Friday
07/11/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Buena Vista Social Club
03/11/2008
More than a decade after the concert, and after the huge success of the Wim Wenders film Buena Vista Social Club, the ground-breaking concert At Carnegie Hall has finally made it onto CD.
From the opening Chan Chan, featuring Compay Segundo, to the closing Silencio, a duet between Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, this CD shines as a tribute to the wonderful musicians young and old who took Cuban music out of years of embargo and into the consciousness of music lovers the world over. The joy of this performance is coloured by the fact that three of its stars, Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer and Ruben Gonzales, are no longer with us to enjoy the release of this CD.
Omara Portuondo
03/11/2008
From the title (Gracias = thank-you), her age (78) and the retrospective photo album in the CD book, you might think that Buena Vista Social Club veteran Omara Portuondo is about to retire, but her latest CD proves that there are still plenty of good songs left, even after her long and illustrious career-to-date.
She came to the world’s attention a decade or so ago as the only female performer in the Wim Wenders/Ry Cooder project that brought Cuban music into the spotlight and launched (or rather re-launched) the careers of many wonderful musicians. The new disc features a star line-up of latin and jazz musicians including Swami Jr. on guitar, Roberto Fonseca on piano and keyboards, Trilok Gurtu on percussion and Avishai Cohen on bass, along with duets with Chico Barque, Pablo Milanes, Jorge Drexler and Richard Bona.
Visit Omara Portuondo’s website
Fiona Boyes (Repeat of 31/12/07)
27/10/2008
Blues singer/songwriter/guitarist Fiona Boyes latest CD, Lucky 13, is her best yet, but don’t just take my word for it.
92-year-old Muddy Waters Band veteran pianist, Pinetop Perkins, said ‘I ain’t never heard a woman finger-pick a guitar like that since Memphis Minnie. She’s the best gal guitar player I heard in more than 35 years.’ The CD reached #1 on several US Blues charts and has been nominated for ‘Contemporary Blues Album of the Year’ for the Blues Music Awards, the world’s premier accolades for Blues Music, making it the first Australian album to be nominated in the 27-year history of the awards. Lucky 13 is a fine album, indeed. It features Fiona’s ebullient guitar picking and vocals and 10 of her own songs which run the gamut of the blues, from female blues styles of the 1920s to Texas and New Orleans genres. Recorded in Austin, Texas, with some of the city’s best players, another Muddy Waters Band vet, guitarist Bob Margolin, joins her on a few songs that nail the raw sounds of early Chicago blues.
http://www.fionaboyes.com/index2.htm
Jeremy Spencer (first aired on 13/2/07)
09/10/2008
When Jeremy Spencer disappeared during a Fleetwood Mac tour in 1971, who would have dreamed that he would resurface with his first blues album in 35 years, recorded with a Norwegian band?
Before Fleetwood Mac were a multi-million selling, bigger than Ben Hur rock band with two female singers, they were a blues band that included two of England’s most authentic electric blues guitarists. But there seemed to be a hex on the band’s guitarists. Peter Green succumbed to drug-induced psychosis, Danny Kirwan gave up playing in public and was homeless for a long time. In the middle of an American Fleetwood Mac tour, Jeremy Spencer went AWOL and the tour was cancelled. While visiting a bookshop, he met a representative from the religious group the Children of God. He joined them immediately, and has been happily living with the controversial group, travelling the world, playing music for the group and making cartoons for their publications. Since leaving Fleetwood Mac, he has received many offers to record, but he finally accepted the offer that was to become his new CD, Precious Little, because he was so impressed with the all-Norwegian band’s love of and ability to play the blues. Spencer’s twin early musical loves, rockabilly and Elmore James, are both represented here and it’s his beautifully nuanced slide guitar work that stands out, whether on resonator guitar or on electric guitar.
http://www.jeremyspencer.com/
Donal Clancy (first aired on 12/2/07)
07/10/2008
Donal Clancy’s new CD of of Irish guitar instrumentals is called Close to Home because, he says, ‘These are songs I grew up with, songs I can’t truly remember learning.’
Donal is the son of Irish music pioneer Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers and is a founding member of the artful County Waterford group Danú. Although he does some multitracking on Close to Home, it’s only Donal and his guitar on this nicely arranged selection of Jigs, Reels, Airs and Hornpipes.
www.donalclancy.com
06/10/2008
There will be no CD of the week this week as we bring you a selection of Daily Planet favourite programs.
Reem Kelani (First aired on 14/3/2006)
03/10/2008
Reem Kelani was born in Manchester to Palestinian parents, but moved to Kuwait when she was quite young. She worked as a marine researcher by day, a singer of jazz standards and show tunes by night. After moving to London she discovered Palestinian music and culture about which she started producing TV and Radio documentaries and singing Palestinian songs. Sprinting Gazelle - Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora is her debut CD - a fine selection of mostly traditional songs with Jazz/Middle Eastern backing and Reem’s intense, emotive voice.
29/09/2008
There will be no CD of the week this week as we bring you a selection of Daily Planet favourite programs.
22/09/2008
There will be no CD of the week this week as we bring you a selection of Daily Planet favourite programs.
Maria Muldaur (First Broadcast on 16/02/2006)
18/09/2008
Maria Muldaur has gone back to her roots for her new CD, Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul, which is a tribute to female blues singers, especially Memphis Minnie. She’s joined by fellow singers Taj Mahal, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Tracy Nelson, and by guitarists Del Rey and Steve James, pianist Pinetop Perkins (91 years old and going strong), and by Fritz Richmond who, until his death in November, was the world’s only remaining professional jug player.
Richard Leo Johnson (First Broadcast 3/4/2006)
16/09/2008
Richard Leo Johnson was raised in a small town in the Mississippi Delta and was first inspired by a cassette tape that had Leo Kottke on one side and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra on the other. Practicing on his own, he developed an idiosyncratic style that employed 30 different tunings on guitars of 6, 12 or 18 strings. His new CD is called The Legend of Vernon McAlister and it’s entirely played on a 1930s National Duolian guitar with the name ‘Vernon McAlister’ etched into its steel body. With it and some effects devices, Richard creates an original soundscape that blends blues with 20c minimalism in a way that would have baffled Vernon.
15/09/2008
There will be no CD of the week this week as we bring you a selection of Daily Planet favourite programs.
Einaudi/Sissoko (First Broadcast on 12/6/06)
09/09/2008
Diario Mali is the meeting place of Italian classical/pop crossover minimalist composer/pianist Ludovico Einaudi and Malian kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko.
It’s a CD of 10 co-composed tracks that pair the grand instruments of Western and West African classical musical styles, mostly in Manding tonality except for a semi-blues and a semi-boogie, on the whole leaning to the quiet side.
08/09/2008
There will be no CD of the week this week as we bring you a selection of Daily Planet favourite programs.
Two-Faced Friday
05/09/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Rodney Crowell
01/09/2008
Rodney Crowell’s Sex and Gasoline is an ambitious CD of his songs about women, often told from a female point of view, the final piece of his cycle of songs of social commentary that grew out of his struggle to come to terms with the new millennium.
Houston-born Rodney followed a well-worn path that Texas singer-songwriters made on their way to Nashville, moving there in the early 1970s. He was a key element of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band in the ’70s and his 1988 CD Diamonds and Dirt generated 5 number-one singles. Since 2001, he’s left the constraints of mainstream country music behind to follow his own vision. Sex and Gasoline epitomises Rodney’s empathetic song writing and Joe Henry’s fine production brings his sensitivity to the fore.
CD of the Week - Rosa Passos
25/08/2008
Rosa Passos’ new CD Romance showcases her sublimely subtle and expressive voice with a small Brazilian jazz band on a selection of 12 beautifully arranged Bossa Nova ballads.
When the cellist Yo-Yo Ma first heard a recording by Rosa, he ‘felt she was speaking to me’ and wrote her a letter saying, ‘I've fallen in love with your voice.’ Whether you understand Portuguese or not, you know that there’s a wealth of meaning, play and nuance in every song she sings. Putting down her guitar for this album, the bell-like clarity of her voice is heightened by the varying arrangements, mostly by her band members. Paulo Paulelli is especially wonderful on the double bass.
Two-Faced Friday
22/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Loudon Wainwright III
18/08/2008
Since he was a young man, Loudon Wainwright has been writing songs about getting old, so the 13 songs he revisits on his new CD, Recovery, the last one composed in 1974, have a richness gained from the singer-songwriter’s actual ageing.
Joe Henry and Loudon worked together on his previous release, Strange Weirdos, Music From and Inspired by the film ‘Knocked Up’, and it was Joe who finally got Loudon to respond with more than a shrug to the idea of reworking some of his early catalogue. The new arrangements build subtly on Loudon’s original guitar-only accompaniments and the songs are still great - no one plumbs the emotional life of the self-obsessed as funnily, or as lovingly and insightfully, as Loud-O.
Two-Faced Friday
15/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Ry Cooder
11/08/2008
Ry Cooder is in fine form on his latest CD, I, Flathead, his humorous and loving vision of California of the ’50s and ’60s, a world of Western Swing lovers, unsuccessful songwriters, carnies and drag racers.
On this, the 3rd of his California trilogy, Cooder’s voice is rich and confident, whether singing or speaking, and his liner notes, in the persona of the record’s nominal author, Kash Buk (and the Klowns), are as surreal and funny as anything out there. The music is spare, held down by three fine drummers, and Cooder’s guitar is on the mark with a big tip of the hat to Hollywood emigrant Merle Travis. The songs are well-written vignettes of the colourful characters who came from elsewhere to make Southern California the land of a million dreams. Ry’s song Steel Guitar Heaven manages to evoke the maverick world of early Californian Western music with nary a steel guitar played. This tribute to this unique time and place is so subtle and real that you can smell the knotty pine panelled country music clubs, the petrol fumes and the California eucalypts.
Two-Faced Friday
08/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Eliza Carthy
04/08/2008
Eliza Carthy’s new CD, Dreams of Breathing Underwater, uses her extensive knowledge of English folk and reconstructs it into an edgy, post-rock collection of her songs which bristle with magical realism.
The daughter of English folk doyens Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, Eliza’s fiddling is impeccable, as is her sense of how much to sing or write into a song. The production is big, mixing melodeons and fiddles with strings and brass, and the songs have an elusive quality that demands your participation. As Tom Waits has refashioned American music into his crooked frame, Eliza does the same with English music, with more than a touch of English Music Hall mixing strangely with her acerbic vocal delivery.
Two-Faced Friday
01/08/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Les Amazones de Guinée
28/07/2008
Unlike scores of ‘girl groups’ put together to make a quick buck, Les Amazones de Guinée are the real thing - an all-female band who are all members of Guinea’s Military Police Force and who have been making great music since their formation in 1961.
Guinea’s first president after independence in 1958, Ahmed Sekou Touré, saw culture as an essential weapon to cut across tribalism, heal colonial wounds and forge a national identity. Along with scores of other musical groups that were instrumental in forging a new West African music, he formed L’Orchestre Féminin de la Gendarmerie de Guinée.
Originally an acoustic band, they added electric guitars, drum kit, sax and horns in 1965 and later abandoned their military khaki for colourful traditional Guinean clothes and began touring internationally. They recorded their first album in Paris in 1982. Sekou Touré’s death in 1984 all but killed Guinea’s music industry. The Amazones did better than most, continuing to play around West Africa as a working band in the army, but tours outside the continent were no longer an option.
A new studio in Bamako, Mali, and the interest of Paris-based producer Ibrahima Sylla sparked their return to recording after a 25-year lapse. Led by bassist Commandant Salématou Diallo (who is actually the head of a 650-soldier camp), the group hopped in a minibus and made the difficult journey along muddy roads from Conakry to Bamako to record their spirited and inspiring CD Wamato. Although death and retirement have left them with only five original members, the group is strong and tight, with some great guest vocals from Aminata Kamissoko and a set of songs that celebrate Africa and womanhood.
Two-Faced Friday
25/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis
21/07/2008
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis may come from two different corners of the record store, but when they came together for two days of concerts in New York, that became their CD Two Men and the Blues, they brought out the best in each other.
Willie’s relaxed vocal and guitar phrasing and his instantly recognisable sound contrasts and merges with Wynton and his band’s sharp, cheeky, big city take on this selection of blues, jazz, country and gospel tunes. As Ben Ratliff said in his review of the CD for The New York Times, the hidden inspiration of the album is Louis Armstrong, who did a similar thing in his duets with early country performer Jimmie Rodgers in 1930 and whose deceptively simple trumpet improvisations are the cornerstone of Marsalis’ style. On this CD, Willie, Wynton and their band members follow Louis' lead in eluding ‘American stereotypes of country, city, blues, jazz, race, class humour and sadness.’
Two-Faced Friday
18/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Bennetts Lane Big Band
14/07/2008
Bennetts Lane Big Band’s CD The Snip contains a diversity of composition and playing, from straight ahead jazz to more adventurous and personal expression, from a gathering of some of Melbourne’s finest jazz musicians.
Compositions are all by band members - Trombonists Jordan Murray and Adrian Sheriff, Trumpeter Eugene Ball, Saxophonists Jamie Oehlers, Ian Whitehirst and Adam Simmons, Pianist Andrea Keller and Bassist Nick Haywood.
Two-Faced Friday
11/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Ale Möller Band
07/07/2008
On the CD Djef Djel, multi-instrumentalist Ale Möller blends Swedish, Greek and West African styles into a selection of music that bears his distinctive, adventurous stamp.
Ale has long been a central figure of the Scandinavian music scene, spurred by his experience playing Greek folk music to discover his own Swedish musical language. To do this, he applied the mandola to Swedish tunes, an innovation that influenced many others. He’s also an excellent player of flute, shawm, accordion, harmonica and trumpet. Bringing together his various musical influences, his band includes Greek singer Maria Stellas, West African singer and fiddler Mamadou Sene, fellow Swedish multi-instrumentalist Magnus Stinnerbom, French Canadian double bassist Sébastian Dubé, and Mexican-born percussionist Rafael Sida Huizar.
Two-Faced Friday
04/07/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Pat Metheny with Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez
30/06/2008
Tokyo Day Trip Live EP is the latest release from Pat Metheny with Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez - a virtuosic and cohesive trio exploring the current landscape of jazz today.
The five tracks on the CD explore acoustic ballads, post-bop exuberance, ECM-like sounds and a piece that might make some happy that Pat chose Jazz over Rock.
Two-Faced Friday
27/06/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Calcutta Express Band
23/06/2008
The Calcutta Express Band is the brainchild of Australian guitarist Guy Strazz who, with his 7-string East-West guitar, plays a mixture of Bengali folk, Hindustani Classical and Afro-Brazilian styles with two percussionists and santoor player Sandip Chatterjee.
Guy Strazz (formerly Strazzullo) received one of the Arts Music Fellowships from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2001. An accomplished jazz player with a strong interest in intercultural music, he went to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in 2004 at Sandip’s invitation where he recorded the bulk of this CD with him and ‘young lion’ tabla player Biplab Bhattacharya and multi-percussionist Somnath Roy.
Two-Faced Friday
20/06/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas (Originally Broadcast on 10/8/2006 )
19/06/2008
Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas’ latest CD, Hang it High, Hang it Low runs the gamut of the Zydeco styles you’d hear today if you did a creole dancehall crawl in South Louisiana.
It’s been nearly 20 years since a young Nathan Williams first recorded for Rounder Records and a lot of Zydeco kings have come and gone in that time -Clifton Chenier, Rockin’ Dopsie, Boozoo Chavis, Zydeco Force and Beau Jocque, while Nathan has continued developing his piano accordion mastery by absorbing various influences. It’s a fun album, with down home songs like Don’t Worry ’Bout The Mule and I Was Born at Night (But Not Last Night) which reflect Nathan’s upringing in a creole-speaking household in St. Martinville, Louisiana.
Painting With Music (Originally Broadcast on 19/7/2006)
17/06/2008
We’re painted into a corner for this Daily Planet thematic about songs and tunes about painters, paintings and the world of visual art.
Best of the Daily Planet
16/06/2008
This week we bring you a selection of Daily Planet shows from 2006 and 2007.
Two-Faced Friday
13/06/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Eddy ‘The Chief’ Clearwater
09/06/2008
Produced by younger-generation guitarist Ronnie Baker Brooks, Bluesman Eddy ‘The Chief’ Clearwater’s new CD, West Side Strut, is the record he’s been meant to make for years.
Eddy says that if you worked on the West Side (of Chicago), you had to have a lot of energy. That’s why he was drawn to the powerful, soul tinged and often minor-key blues of West-Siders like Magic Sam and Luther Allison. Ronnie Baker Brooks adds to the power with his solid production and in-your-face guitar work on this CD of Eddy’s originals and one Lowell Fulson song that takes us through a variety of strong blues grooves.
Two-Faced Friday
06/06/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Oregon
02/06/2008
On 1000 Kilometers, Oregon continue to explore the fusion between jazz, chamber music and music from around the world, still fresh after 37 years of being together as a group.
Sprinkled with freely improvised cuts, the pieces are mainly composed by Ralph Towner and are mostly new. Oregon are a group whose early recordings have stood the test of time and have shown them to be way ahead of the pack in blending composition and improvisation and genres. They are also adept at integrating the strong musical personalities of their members, guitarist/pianist Towner, multi-reed man Paul McCandless, bassist Glen Moore and their only member who hasn’t been with them since their inception - Drummer Mark Walker, who’s at least 15 years younger than any other member of the group. The album is named after and dedicated to their late, beloved European promoter, Thomas Stöwsand, whose tours sometimes necessitated a drive of over 1000 kilometers between venues, a distance that came to be called, with a bit of light-hearted grumbling, a ‘Stöwsand’ in the band’s parlance.
Two-Faced Friday
30/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Sambasunda
26/05/2008
The Sunda Music is an overview of the music of SambaSunda, the 16 or so strong innovative Bandung, Java-based group who mix Javanese and Balinese gamelan with Jaipong, Middle Eastern music and Latin grooves.
It’s a compilation of 5 of their albums, each with its own flavour. SambaSunda is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Ismat Ruchimat whose work with a non-traditional orchestra in Norway expanded his vision to the potential of a bamboo gamelan orchestra.
Two-Faced Friday
23/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Raphael Imbert
19/05/2008
On Bach/Coltrane, French saxophonist, composer and student of sacred music Raphael Imbert explores the connections between the spiritual music of Johann Sebastian Bach and John Coltrane, playing with a church organist and a string quartet.
Working on his premise that Coltrane is the only true mystic in the history of jazz, Raphael improvises on some of his lesser known compositions - Crescent, Song of Praise, The Father, The Son and the Holy Ghost and Reverend King, and also on Bach’s The Art of the Fugue. Recorded in a church with a bassist, percussionist, counter tenor Gérard Lesne, the Quatuor Manfred String Quartet and organist André Rossi, it ranges from the quietly devotional to the ecstatically exuberant.
Two-Faced Friday
16/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson
12/05/2008
Husband and wife team Kasey Chambers’ and Shane Nicholson’s debut CD, Rattlin’ Bones is a laid-back, delightfully relaxed and artfully written acoustic alt-country album.
Shane and Kasey co-wrote nine of the songs and, rather than one vocalist taking the lead, their voices usually intertwine in the tradition of the Louvin Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
Two-Faced Friday
09/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Jeff Lang
05/05/2008
On Half Seas Over, Jeff Lang, accompanied only by his own guitars and Grant Cummerford’s bass, channels the dark Appalachian and Celtic sounds and tales that Greil Marcus referred to as the ‘Old, Weird America’ on an outstanding set of original songs.
Jeff seems to be going from strength to strength - his voice and guitar work continue to evolve in a beautiful way and his songs, like dark short stories, go way beyond the ‘Moon in June’ school of songwriting. He ends the CD with a dark joke of a song set in Newman, Western Australia, in which attempts to force a local to sing the Appalachian murder ballad Pretty Polly result in the creation of a new murder ballad story.
Two-Faced Friday
02/05/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - The Audreys
28/04/2008
On their second CD, When the Flood Comes, Adelaide group the Audreys stay their course as purveyors of understated gothic country tales with surprise twists.
Their excellent debut CD, Between Last Night and Us, won the 2006 ARIA award for best Blues and Roots Album and put them on tour more than they’d ever been, bringing on a songwriting drought of 18 months which they finally broke, then teased out more songs by staying at New York’s famous Chelsea Hotel, one time home to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jack Kerouac and Dylan Thomas. As on their first CD, Shane O’Mara is the engineer, producer and mixer and he does a great job, achieving an even darker sound this time.
Two-Faced Friday
25/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Dick Gaughan
21/04/2008
There are no half measures on Dick Gaughan’s new CD, Live at the Trades Club, in which he snarls and rails out against hypocrisy and prejudices of all sorts with only his acoustic guitar and voice to back him up.
The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, UK, was built in 1924 by the textile and tailoring unions of West Yorkshire and taken over by the Labour Party in the 1970s after the demise of those industries. Since then, it’s developed into a multi-purpose venue presenting various activities and music from around the world. As one of Dick’s favourite places to play, he reserves it for the final night of his annual tour of England and Wales.
Two-Faced Friday
18/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Jean-Marie Machado
14/04/2008
On his new double CD, Soeurs de Sang (Sisters of Blood), Moroccan-born, Portuguese-Italian jazz pianist Jean-Marie Machado beautifully and inventively interprets songs sung by Billie Holiday and fado queen Amalia Rodrigues in solo and trio formats.
Jean Marie quotes from Japanese poet Okakura Kakuzo’s poem that says ‘Flowers, teardrops from the stars’ to set the tone of this album in which the stars are Billie and Amalia whose teardrop-drenched songs have become everlasting flowers. When Jean Marie plays songs they made their own, he makes them his own, with little resemblance to the originals in style but much similarity in feeling. He finds the mutuality between Fado and Jazz in these songs that ‘teach us to wait patiently until joy returns on the path of our lives.’
Two-Faced Friday
11/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Joe Chindamo's Romantic Project
07/04/2008
Duende is Melbourne pianist Joe Chindamo’s recording of the excellent, unusual quartet he put together for his Romantic Project.
Asked by the chairman of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival to make something along the lines of his Paradiso project - a CD of film music - Joe put together a group with Sam Anning on double bass, Nigel MacLean on violin and Doug DeVries on guitar to play the Tangos, Tarantella and Italian Operas of Joe’s youth, imbued with the nostalgia and melancholy of one revisiting the old family home after many years. It’s called Duende after the Spanish word for something having passion and inspiration, and according to Joe, ‘Duende is there to challenge us to keep our ears open to the ‘dark sounds’, to keep our touch with the earth and with the ghosts of those who have come before, to never refuse the struggle which is needed to keep the spirits working on the side of truth.’
Two-Faced Friday
04/04/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Jackson Browne
31/03/2008
On Jackson Browne’s new CD, Solo Acoustic Vol. 2, Jackson’s acoustic guitar and piano accompaniments beautifully frame and illuminate his fine songs.
With four songs from his most recent studio CD and others dating back to the early 1970s, you get a chance to appreciate the depth and breadth of Jackson’s songs in unadorned fashion, with their unique take on politics, matters of the heart and the questions raised by everyday life.
Two-Faced Friday
28/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
CD of the Week - Shannon-Goodrich Ensemble
24/03/2008
On Worlds Within Worlds, pianist Clare Shannon and vibraphonist Elissa Goodrich and their ensemble apply their jazz composing and improvising backgrounds to music inspired by the ancient Sufi saint, Rumi.
Ali Alizadeh supplied free verse translations of Rumi which Ria Soemardjo sings. Phil Bywater guests on sax, Phil McLeod on accordion, with Anita Hustas and Tamara Murphy sharing the double bass playing, and Alejandro Vega on percussion for this very interesting project.
Two-Faced Friday
21/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Sam Baker
17/03/2008
Sam Baker’s brush with death from a guerilla bombing in Peru in 1986 gave him a thankfulness to be alive and a desire to ‘do one great piece of art’ - his debut CD Mercy - which is now joined by the equally beautiful Pretty World.
After the bombing Sam had to relearn guitar upside-down and had great difficulty finding words for things. The latter difficulty influenced his songwriting in that he has to find words - they don’t just come - and when he sings them, it’s in short, truncated phrases that emphasise the individual words, which he’s painstakingly edited to tell his stories in song. Another thing that has transformed him from a self-described ordinary writer is his abiding thankfulness and wonder at being alive and his ability to appreciate the charm of ‘ordinary’ life in his fellow Texans. Continuing with the pedal steel and violin dominated sparse landscapes of his first CD, Pretty World looks compassionately at his fellow humans, gives thanks for the ordinary things of life, and in one song, revisits the day that changed his life.
Two-Faced Friday
14/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Christy Moore (Repeat of 27/2/2006)
10/03/2008
Christy Moore says that ‘A song is a song no matter who’s written it. If I sing a song to you and it lasts four minutes, for those four minutes, that song belongs to you and me - the singer and the listener.’ His new CD, Burning Times, recorded at Moving Hearts’, multi-instrumentalist Declan Sinnott’s studio, is a return to form for Christy as he puts his unique touch to great songs by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson and other lesser known writers.
Enrico Rava and Stefano Bollani
10/03/2008
Trumpeter Enrico Rava and Pianist Stefano Bollani’s live CD, The Third Man, reveals the tremendous sense of space and musical empathy the two Italians have for each other.
Whether they’re playing free improvisation, Jobim, Italian song or their own compositions, the two play lyrically but are always open to surprising new directions. The two have played together since the early 1990s, Bollani hailing trumpeter Rava as his mentor, and Rava regarding Bollani as ‘perhaps the most gifted pianist since Art Tatum’. Rava, at 68, looks like a silver-haired quietly wise hippy, while Bollani, at 35 (and with a sideline as a comedic film actor) is full of fidgety energy. Their ‘odd-couple-ness’ works to their advantage to create a ‘Third Man’.
Two-Faced Friday
07/03/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
John Spiers and Jon Boden (Repeat of 5/6/06)
03/03/2008
John Spiers and Jon Boden, winners of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards ‘Best Duo’ for two out of the last 3 years, latest CD is simply called Songs.
On it, the powerful fiddle/melodeon/singing duo play a range of songs dating from the 17th Century to a version of a Tom Waits song that recasts it as a Victorian parlour ballad. Unafraid to play Morris dance pieces and other ‘less fashionable’ English musical styles with great verve, Spiers says ‘I’m a bit uncomfortable with the idea of anybody being a saviour of English music because I don’t think it needs salvation.’
Paco Peña
03/03/2008
Almost 40 years after he first performed at Wigmore Hall, Paco Peña returned there in December of 2006 to play a concert of solo flamenco guitar that affirmed his musical mastery.
Paco’s glorious technique and ability to get to the heart of a piece are evident in this concert in which he covers a wide range of flamenco styles from its beginning with the reflective sounds of a Granaína to its close with an explosive, festive Bulerías.
Two-Faced Friday
29/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu
25/02/2008
Gurrumul, the long-awaited solo debut CD by North East Arnhemland musical powerhouse Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, presents songs of his people, culture and land sung in his angelic voice, with elegant backing of guitars and double bass.
Blind from birth, Geoffrey, or Gudjuk as he is also called, is from the Gumatj nation, his mother from the Galpu nation. A former member of Yothu Yindi, his own band, The Saltwater Band, hail from Galiwin’ku on Elcho Island, NE Arnhem Land, and are a much loved and most popularly noted Indigenous band, partly because of Gurrumul’s influence and guidance.
Album launch, Darwin Entertainment Centre, February 28th and 29th 2008
Two-Faced Friday
22/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Erik Friedlander
18/02/2008
Block Ice and Propane is cellist Erik Friedlander’s set of 13 solo pieces evoking the summer journeys he took as a child in a camper on a ute, planned around the work of his dad, famed photographer Lee Friedlander.
Erik, his mother, sister and dad would travel all over in the USA in this 1966 pickup truck for months at a time in between Lee’s teaching jobs and photo shoots. Lee’s pieces on plucked and bowed cello (and tuning forks) are amazingly descriptive of his feelings of being on the road - you can imagine the big trucks, the white lines and even his envy of other travellers in sleek Airstreams with (incomprehensibly luxurious) showers and refrigerators. The Friedland family got by on a propane gas stove while blocks of ice, sometimes swiped from motel ice machines, kept their food from going off.
Two-Faced Friday
15/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Yamandu Costa
11/02/2008
Brazilian guitar virtuoso Yamandu Costa’s CD Ida e Volta (Return Journey) is a tour de force of mostly his own compositions, played in solo, duo and trio line-ups.
Born in Passo Fundo southern Brazil to a singer mother and a trumpeter/guitarist/bandleader father, he grew up in the music-rich place where Brazil borders Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Recognising his son’s musical ability, Yamandu’s dad took the 10-year-old on a musical odyssey around the country in a mobile home to introduce him to an even wider range of music, coupled with introducing him to a carefully selected collection of recordings of South American musical giants. Yamandu was still a teenager when his father was stricken with an incurable disease. The responsibility then fell to him to provide for the needs of the family, which he did by playing guitar. True to his father’s hopes, Yamandu Costa has become a guitarist beyond classification, one who takes the raw materials of choro, forro, tango and swing and uses them to create a dazzling style based on his powerful and imaginative improvisations.
The Austin Klezmorim (Repeat of 23/3/2006)
11/02/2008
The Austin Klezmorim’s new CD, Bubba’s Waltz, shows that Kinky Friedman isn’t the only Jew in Texas. With slightly different pronunciations, Bubba can be Yiddish for Grandmother or Texan for a good old boy. Join leader/trumpeter Bill Averbach and some of Austin’s best players in dancing the Cotton-Eyed Shmoe to pieces like the Bessarabian BBQ.
Two-Faced Friday
08/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Bebo Valdés and Javier Colina
04/02/2008
At the age of 86, Bebo Valdés debuted at New York City’s premier jazz club, the Village Vanguard, with Spanish bassist Javier Colina, playing inspired versions including Bebo’s own compositions and Cuban and Jazz standards.
Valdés was one of Cuba’s premier pianists and arrangers in the 1950s before he moved to Sweden, where he played mostly in obscurity until he was re-discovered via the film Calle 54. Since then he has won four Latin Grammies in three years. Bebo and Javier play beautifully together on this CD that collects the best of five 90-minute sets from the club. Bebo’s recordings are windows into a century of Cuban music and on this one, he’s in a broader, more improvisatory mood.
Two-Faced Friday
01/02/2008
Listening back over the last week, and forward to what’s on The Daily Planet next week.
Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters
28/01/2008
Ronnie Earl, ‘the heart with hands’, is a master of expressing deep emotions in his blues instrumentals, and he’s at the top of his form on his live CD, Hope Radio.
Whether he’s playing gospel, West Side Chicago, Howling Wolf or any number of blues styles, Ronnie’s sure and clean-toned guitar takes us from a scream to a whisper to a scream with a fine band playing in front of a live audience.
Best of 2007
21/01/2008
During Summer Season, we'll enjoy some of the best of the Daily Planets of 2007 but we won't have a CD of the week.
Best of 2007
14/01/2008
During Summer Season, we'll enjoy some of the best of the Daily Planets of 2007 but we won't have a CD of the week.
Best of 2007
07/01/2008
During Summer Season, we'll enjoy some of the best of the Daily Planets of 2007 but we won't have a CD of the week.
CD of the Week - Jeff Lang
05/01/2008
On Half Seas Over, Jeff Lang, accompanied only by his own guitars and Grant Cummerford's bass, channels the dark Appalachian and Celtic sounds and tales that Greil Marcus referred to as the 'Old, Weird America' on an outstanding set of original songs.
Jeff seems to be going from strength to strength - his voice and guitar work continue to evolve in a beautiful way and his songs, like dark short stories, go way beyond the 'Moon in June' school of songwriting. He ends the CD with a dark joke of a song set in Newman, WA, in which attempts to force a local to sing the Appalachian murder ballad 'Pretty Polly' result in the creation of a new murder ballad story.
