May
2020

Country of Origin

Global

Musical waves N°4

With millions of music tracks at our daily beck 'n' call, off the cloud like sweet rain on demand, here are a few which I recently cued up whilst being in a particular groove not melody mood. As you'll find out, I faked myself out. Perhaps some of these tunes will be new to you yet welcome discoveries. So we'll kick off with "Loom" from the Robert Miles & Trilok Gurtu collaboration Miles_Gurtu.

With "Wanna Mako" from Hector Zazou & Swaha's In the House of Mirrors, we segue directly into the Dream Time. This is also sonically a very good production.

To emerge from Hector's deep space, a BuddhaBar type remix, of a Prem Joshua track by Maneesh de Moor, serves perfectly to re-emerge into light-hearted sunshine.

To veer into something slightly more abstract, Michael Brook with Cobalt Blue is ideal so we cue up "Red Shift".

Next we're entering the realm I call organic ambient, here with Mercan Dede's contribution to the Cheb i Sabbah benefit album Samaya.

Staying in the mood, here comes Bombay Dub Orchestra's "Blue Mosaic" from their Tales from the Grand Bazaar.

This naturally leads to Bob Holroys' A different Space, here with "The Sheer Weight of Memory".

Making a de rigueur appearance with one of his own albums, I picked Mercan Dede's "Engewal" from Breath.

This leads seamlessly to his remix for Burhan Malcok's "Gecer Gecer" from Sakli Nefes featuring the breathy ney flute of the sufis.

From mood to melody—without giving up on serious mood—we now arrive at Erkan Ogur's stupendous "Elif'e Ninni" from Dokunmak. What musicianship!

Not to be outdone in the memorable melody department is Fahir Atakoglu, here with "Agir Roman Bale Süiti N°2". It's from his beautiful album Iz. The arabesque clarinet is compliments of Göksun Cavdar who also plays in the Rubato ensemble.

Once caught by this particular aroma, I find it hard to escape. So we go with more instead, here a lovely track by Yildiran Güz from his Renkler ve Sesler album which translates as colors and sound.

To finish up, here's one of my favorite instruments, the Middle-Eastern qanun. My favorite tour guide for that isn't Göksel Baktagir but Aytac Dogan, here with "Khallik Fekini"…

… and for good measure, "Herkes Kendi Gördügüne Dogru Der". This track exemplifies minimalism whittled back to absolute perfection. What a gem!

Finally, here's something very different from kirtan prince Jai Uttal who sets to song psalm 23:4. Baul meets gospel? Whatever it is, it's pure heart.

And now time's really up.