Recently in Music Category

Being stuck in the middle of a huge traffic jam just south of Amsterdam is no fun, especially when you know that it will take at least another hour before you got back home.

To make things worse, it was pouring down rain, dark and gloomy, and the wind was blowing so hard that my car was bouncing back and forth slightly, like it was drifting on some stormy seas, dancing across the water.

Listening to Neil Young, turning up the volume real hard, hearing him singing the lyrics emotionally out loud, made me feel better.

Before I realized it I was already back home. How did that happen? The album just finished the moment my car entered the driveway and came to a gently stop.

That was when I realized that every single song on the Zuma album is amazing and that perhaps that album is the best collection of songs Neil has ever created.

I'm going to listen to it again this evening, I thought, and write about it. So here I am right now.

He came dancing across the water with his galleons and guns looking for the new world in that palace in the sun...

Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song.
I'm goin' 'round the world, I got to find my girl, on my way.
I've been this way ten years to the day, Ramble On,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.

- Led Zeppelin, Ramble On

First of all the music is chosen at Radioparadise Internet Radio, broadcast over various fixed backbones, bifurcating land-line meshes, and travels through the ether and time ...

... then it enters by Vodafone Connect USB Modem via mobile broadband ...

... is processed by Audacious Audio Player running under Xubuntu Lucid Lynx on my little MSI Wind U100 netbook ...

... finally passing through my Sennheiser NoiseGard PX 250 headphones to my ears.

That's alot of fancy technology doing all kinds of complicated stuff, all the while the train speeding north towards Amsterdam.

In the end after all that processing, preprocessing etc, the music sounds great. As if I had decided to stay at home listening to the normal old-fashioned fixed radio from there.

The moon shook and curled up like gentle fire
The ocean glazed and melted wire
Voices buzzed in spiral eyes
Stars dived in blinding skies

Traversed the planet when heaven sent me. I saw the kings who rule them all
Still by the firelight and purple moonlight. I hear the rested rivers call
And the wind is crying, from a love that won't grow cold
My lover, she is lying, on the dark side of the globe.

- Led Zeppelin ( Radioparadise song page )

Every time I hear this number and no matter how often it gets better and better. That guitar playing is nothing less than a miracle as the solo parts vibrate through my bones and inner soul. I have to crank it up and risk blowing out my eardrums, but the risk is worth it.

The other day while listening to Radio Paradise I was charmed to discover Imogen Heap.

Smooth variation combined with a subtle reverberation between this and that.

Here's a review for those interested.

And I know she's living there
And she loves me to this day
I still can't remember when
Or how I lost my way.

-- Neil Young, Cortez the Killer.

I just happened to hear about this fine artist while listening to radioparadise.com one late evening. Nitin Sawhney creates music which is soothing to the soul, his Indian and mathematical upbringing producing profound subtle female vocals strengthened by sitar and tabla background sounds.

You might want to check out his website for more information: http://www.nitinsawhney.com.

I've been listening to three of his CD's, namely: Human, Prophesy and Philtre, the second of which is my favorite up until now.