Covid19 Lockdown Music - 2 : twitch edition

 

It's been so long since I last blogged here. I plan to catch up with some album and artist posts, but today, I present the second part to my lockdown music findings, as I've  been expanding my search on twitch, and also discovering new musicians via the streamers' raids into other channels. 

Covid19 Lockdown Music

These past couple months have been trying to most of us. Even as an introvert, there have been times that I struggled with the imposed changes in routines and other impacts on daily life. 
One of my coping tools this entire period, like mentioned in my mental health blog entry 427, has been listening to music. 

Immaterial VS Disc

Modern trends have been shifting from physical to immaterial formats, for all cultural products, not just music. Thus, you can nowadays find files for books, movies, tv-shows, and, for the main purpose of this blog, music, for just about any genre each. 

Wolfsheim (7) - Casting Shadows

Back in 2003, I stumbled on a song that I loved instantly, though I didn't understand a word of its all-German lyrics: kein zurück. Peter Heppner's vocals, mixed with the haunting and mellow synthpop melodies just captivated me. The videoclip didn't really help understanding the story, as it shows a young woman in a laundry service room, throwing laundry in anger, and escorted out by security - making eye contact with Wolfsheim members within and without, before knocking someone off a bike... 

New EU policies : privacy etc

New EU POLICIES :

To comply with the new EU privacy and cookies laws, which came to effect on 26th of May 2018, I now add to what blogger displayed, additional information and disclaimers.

Songs in 7ish minutes

So, this is a special blog post. Today I celebrate 33 months of blogging, and counting all 5 blogs, this is my 700th entry, and so, after running a poll, I follow my wife's suggestion of a post with songs in the 7 minutes bracket.

As a curiosity, I calculated and found that I posted a medium of 21.212121 posts per month, which will remain the medium until 16:27 GMT today. 

Somewhere over the rainbow

On the occasion of LGBT history month, I thought to share this blog post, which I've been composing on and off throughout this month. I present it with the newest and fullest current acronym. 

Despite being an ally, and considering myself NB (Non-Binary), I'm not the most knowledgeable person, and since time is running out, I won't be able to discuss all the includes letters/ types of LGBT persons, so if I concentrate on a topic or two, it's not out of disrespect, but not finding other kinds of songs.

The Idan Raichel Project (1) - International version

I'll get straight into the topic and compare the tracks between 'CD1' which is the original Israeli release version of The Idan Raichel Project, and 'CD2' the international one.

Yehuda Poliker (9) - Eich Korim La'Ahava Sheli ?

Yehuda Poliker's 9th solo album is probably my favorite. It was released in 2001 and contains 10 songs, lasting 45:43.

They are all pop-rock songs, and in Hebrew. 

Poliker mixes personal experience-based lyrics, as well as sociopolitical commentary, and uses many allegories and poetic wordings.

The Idan Raichel Project (1)

Idan Raichel Project's 1st album was first released in 2002,  with an eponymous album-title. 

Idan Raichel (part 0)

I'm not even sure where and when I first heard of Idan Raichel and his Project. I only know that at first, I liked just a few of his/their songs and that in time, as I listened more often, I grew to appreciate the talents, and more songs, albeit not all.

North by Northwest soundtrack

Hitchcock's North by Northwest is one of my favorite Hitch movies. Today I discuss the movie soundtrack. 

It's engaging as a movie-accompaniment, in what I think the best Hitchcock soundtrack that there is. Hermann's music is engaging, full of suspense and actions, of mystery and romance. However, aside the great ouverture, I never listened to the full soundtrack alone, without the movie, as I don't own any of the CD versions, and youtube has only a few pieces. 
I may borrow the cd from our library, or buy the most affordable and complete version that I can get. 

H2O in music

Note : the image is a copyright free one that I found and edited. It depicts a drop of water into which I added a musical note clip-art and is also used as the O in the H2O formula representing a water molecule. 

Water is essential to Life as we know it. Water surrounds us, in rivers, lakes, the oceans. They have inspired many authors of fiction and, for this blog's needs, lyricists. So, I thought to share music in regards to this very topic of water, but expand to allegorical uses as well. 

ZOYA's trancemusic podcasts

I already presented ZOYA, so today I'll discuss her new trance music podcast series, which started on 14/11/2017 and airs live every second and fourth Tuesday at 16:00 GMT, on Trance Energy Radio.   Note:  it seems this website works better on Edge than on Chrome, at least on my PC.
You can get notifications through her Facebook or Twitter pages, as well as that of the radio's twitter. 

During live, the player tells you that you are listening to ZOYA's podcast, and a few days later, you can read the track listing on her upload to soundcloud. This is her main page, and 
Podcast 1 (14/11)  & 2 (28/11), 3rd podcast (12/12) and soon, the 4th from (26/12). 

Each show has a very varied set of pieces and songs, cohesive in itself and yet a part of a whole. 

So, if you like trance music and want to discover any of ZOYA's inspirations, head over to her podcasts, which I enjoyed quite a bit, with very few exceptions.

Schiller (album 3) - Leben

Schiller's third album, Leben, is one of my favorite of his albums, and there are quite a few versions of it in the market, with varying tracks.

It was recorded in 2002-2003 and released in Germany on 13/10/2003. 

  

Shore's LOTR soundtracks

The Lord of the rings movie trilogy soundtrack's my favorite music for any movie and for any type, ever. Howard Shore's composition is so rich, intricate and engaging, that it's an integral part of the movies ; Yet, I also love listening to it independently. 

This kind of experience is actually quite interesting, because without the added sounds of dialogues, fights, footsteps and general ambiance from the movie, the soundtrack offers a pure musical field, which I love listening to either on headphones, or, better yet, on the 7.1 hifi setup, even if the CD's only in stereo, as the speakers take over the entire range. 

Off course, if I had the full recording editions (which i'll discuss further in this entry), I'd get a 'superior' sound but even a simple CD spread over 7.1 channels is quite impressive in itself. 

Domestic Violence in songs

***trigger warning***

It's domestic violence awareness month, so I thought to share songs (and a few external lists) about this serious topic that we must address. Indeed, there are so many couples who direct violence towards one another, in most cases men who abuse their girlfriends and wives, either verbally or physically, and quite often both. 

Legal

Hello all, I thought to specify a few disclaimers.

1. I post youtube/ etc video/music links to promote artists you may not know, to stir your curiosity. I don't promote piracy, and this is why I use as much as possible official channels.
2. I hope that when you like something, you'll try to buy the disc or official download (I personally prefer physical discs for numerous reasons I'll discuss elsewhere). 
3. The images from covers are copyrighted to the original artists, never to me. They are there to show you what each edition looks like, and to avoid sterile appearance on the blog.
4. Images such as the one here are free to use that I find on google images or other copyright free websites such as unsplash or pexels. In other case, I use my own photos or art, or art made by my wife, and edit their appearance or text. I never ever use other sources.  
5. All reviews are my own ideas and interpretations of meanings. I may be totally off the intended symbolism and personal experiences of the artists
6. I don't post full lyrics or full translations, to avoid legal lawsuits, as I learned this can happen and could potentially cost me millions of $. If I ever get an official permission, I will share and display the source, but until then, I'll only discuss the overall ideas conveyed in songs and quote partial verses when applicable, because that seems to be legally allowed. 

Rita (Yahan- Farouz) - 5B : Open the window (2)

To CD1's review

As my entry for this album grew, it quickly became clear that I needed to split it to have one per CD, so now I continue with the 10, or rather 11 songs this second cd has.

Here are the translated titles

1 On independance day’s eve

2 How ironic

3 It’s either yes or it isn’t*

4 Rain song

5 Close your eyes my brother

6 Sing for me, Autumn

7 A kind of love

8 Only you

9 Mahawal

10 You don’t know what goes on your mind

Bonus 

If you want to listen, the entire album's on this playlist, songs 11-20 

Rita (Yahan- Farouz) - 5A : Open the window (1)

Rita 'tiftah halon'' is my favorite Rita album, and was released in 1999.  It's her 5th album and its title means 'open the window'. 

Excluding a best-off released in 2015, Tiftah halon is the only 2CD release, proposing 10 songs on each disc. 

This blog entry is only about the first cd, and immediately after that, I'll post an entry for the second cd. 

Rita ( Yahan-Farouz) (part 0)

You would think that having a simple, one word name a simple matter to find everything about a celebrity... It might be true, sometimes, but not so when the simple name is Rita - a very common first name for so many actresses and singers that search engines on online merchants yield massive thousands of results. 

Schiller (part 0)

Let me introduce you to my second biggest musical obsession of the past couple years: German electronic DJ Christopher Von Deylen, aka Schiller - named after the famous poet and dramatist of the same name (and with the first name Friedrich).

In the early days, Schiller wasn't a one-man band with guests, but also included Mirgo Von Schlieffen, who remained with Christopher from 1998 to about 2001 or 2002. 

Like many other DJ's, Christopher/ Schiller never provide any vocals. Instead, he has a plethora of guests who sing - usually in English, but sometimes in German or other languages.

Schiller (vid 1) - Weltreise

Schiller's second album is also the first to get a video release in the form of a DVD, released the same year as the regular and limited edition CD. But, why would anyone buy this since that CD is made in dolby surround? I'll tell you why : because it offers more than the album itself.

Schiller (album 2 - Weltreise (world travel) / Voyage

Schiller's second album marks a shift in its entirety: if you recall, the first album, Zeitgeist had a few spoken word lyrics, all in German. The music was Trance and Ambient. 

Weltreise ( meaning World travel), is the first Trance and Synthpop, and also the first to invite vocalists for several songs as you'll see on these images of my special, 2 cd, limited edition

Yehuda Poliker (album 5) - For your blue eyes

In 1992, Yehuda Poliker released his 5th solo album, and which is mostly instrumental. Indeed, only tracks 2  15 are songs with lyrics, and all the other 13 tracks are instrumental - though not devoid of background vocals. 

Yehuda who was working on another album, shelved it to compose what would become this fifth album ; it is a requiem to his nephew, Kobi Poliker, who was killed during an argument with a member of his military unit.