7 posts tagged “music”
Great online review of Zut Alors from their recent gig at the Camden Barfly. Word is the boys will be supporting Manchester Orchestra at Kings College next week... bit of an excursion from Amsterdam, but if you happen to be in London...
Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt, for they shall inherit what's left of the Earth... 'Wave of Sorrow' is a song Bono wrote whilst visiting Ethiopia with his wife Ali. It was one of the tracks recorded at the time of The Joshua Tree, but it never made it to the album. Apparently it will now be released on the bonus CD to accompany the re-mastered 'Joshua Tree'. In a very unrehearsed interview, below, Bono explains how the song came together, and why it matters to him...
If you can't quite catch the lyrics on the video, here are the rest of Bono's re-worked Beatitudes:
Blessed are the meek who scratch in the dirt
For they shall inherit what’s left of the earth
Blessed are the kings who have left their thrones
They are blessed in this valley of dry bones
Blessed are you with an empty heart
For you have nothing form which you cannot part
Blessed is the ego if it’s all we’ve got this hour
Blessed is the voice that speaks truth to power
Blessed is the sex worker’s body sold tonight
She works with what she’s got to save her children’s life
Blessed are the deaf who cannot hear her scream
Blessed are the stupid who can dream
Blessed are the tin can cardboard slums
And blessed is the spirit that overcomes
The new album from London-based Athlete is now out (download from 7Digital here)
Once upon a time Athlete were a worship band called 'Wondercub' and then just 'Cub', and very good they were. Something or someone whispered to them that a wilder and wider world was calling, and they disappeared from view for a year in East London. They wrote songs, rehearsed and sweated over their decsion, until their new name and first album 'Vehicles and Animals' was born. Acclaim was almost instant (they were nominated for the Mercury prize), and the follow-up 'Tourist' was even more enthusuatically received (the biggest single release 'Wires' received an Ivor Novello songwriting award).
'Beyond the Neighbourhood' sees the band growing in confidence and maturity. Joel Potts remains an excelllent lyricist, and the band are still willing to experiment - this time with the beats of European electro-dance.The title is ironic, since the band have built their own studio a stones-throw from their various homes in Deptford.
Best of all, these boys are still a worship band. Not in the same way as before, and not with quite the same lyrics, but Joel's passion and honesty remain, and there is something hugely uplifting, creational and joyous about their songs.
If you think Bono is the only faith-born poet to dress the heart of a Psalmist in the jacket of rock and roll, have a listen to athlete and think again... you can hear samples of the new album at http://www.athlete.mu/ .
I'm not often a fan of avant-garde music - Philip Glass's score for Koyaanisqatsi drove me crazy - but when I came across this video trailer for a new recording of Steve Reich's 'Music for 18 Musicians' I felt it had something really special about it. Reich, who turned 70 this year, wrote the piece in 1976 and intended it to be a "leaderless collaboration" - somewhere between classical and jazz; a piece taylored to the musical skills of the composer's own group 'Steve Reich and Musicians'. The original piece didn't have a written score - this was created later and published from notes and recordings. What I loved about this video is the evident pleasure found by these these young musicians in playing together (they are students and friends from the Grand Valley State University in Michigan http://www.newmusicensemble.org/index.html). The piece in incredibly difficult, and took over a year to learn, painstakingly built-up one section at a time. But there is real joy in the end result - a performance in which the concentration and effort of each player is rewarded by the rhythmic and melodic convergence of their sounds. The whole is very much more than the sum of its parts, and the players have the real satisfaction of knowing that they have contributed to something no one of them could have achieved alone, and yet in which each one of them is needed.
At the risk of over-cooking an over-used analogy, this 'sang' for me as a powerful metaphor of the best kind of human community, and the joy of building church. Each plays a part. Each is needed. But the end result is more beautiful than any one could achieve alone. Church: I am essential to it, but it's not about me. Stretched out between these two realities is the joyous, creative playground we are called to.
watch the video and see if you too are reminded of the joy of building together...
Just a brief glimpse of Zut Alors playing at Kings college in london last month - they were supporting Scouting for Girls. The Kelly boys are Joe on bass and Aaron on guitar and organ.
I've been listening to Sigur Ros whilst cycling around Amsterdam... all in all a good experience. I nominate the band for the title 'Best Worship Band in the World who don't know that they are one...', they make a connection with the raw emotion of the music that takes them into the very heart of the territory of worship. Maybe it helps that I don't understand a word of it, and can tune into the voices not as as words but as pure sound or raw emotion.
Adding rich visuals to the depths they have already achieved in sound, they have released a movie - Heima - in various cities around the world over the past two months [see http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/press/heima.php ]. As well as being a tribute to their music the film is a sustained love-song to their homeland, Iceland (heima means 'at home'). Even the trailer is a worship experience. As I watched it I found myself envious of the sense of rootedness that these guys have retained, even though (or perhaps because) their success has taken them away from Iceland and into the urban sprawl of the world's capital cities. I also found myself thinking 'this is what we are losing' - not just because of the images of ice melting, but for the whole sense of connectedness with land, and of simplicity of community lived out in spaces that speak without words of the sheer beauty of the created world. I don't suggest that it is impossible to find the beauty of God in the urban - we can and we must. But there is something expansive and soul-enriching about these images of Iceland. The music helps, of course, but so does the expereince of hearing it in the very shadow of the hills that gave it birth. I am reminded of C S Lewis's claim that his journey to faith began when, in his childhood and adolescence, he was gripped by the beauty of norse culture and the sheer breadth of the Northern skies...
Also in the genre of 'accidental worship', the Texas band Explosions in the Sky are becoming popular amongst the same people who used to play Sigur Ros tracks in worship... The 'Explosions' sound is more raw than Sigur Ros; less varied; more guitar-dependant, but resonates in much the same way. I recently got a copy of the 2003 album 'The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place', and rumour has it that 2007's 'All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone' is as good if not better. These bands (and there are others) seem to understand that rock music can and should be transcendant - that worship (even if you don't use the word) is what people are searching for. Ironically, 'Explosions' have played many of their recent US gigs in empty churches... [see http://www.jivemagazine.com/article.php?pid=8202 ].
