Dailymotion Jazz Group

This made my day. Some of the videos are exceptionally good, just like Miles Davis.

Are you still here?

Listening to Kraftwerk

My three-part guide.

• Part 1: 1974-1975. Albums: Autobahn, Radio-Activity. The best way to discover what they were trying to do is to listen to their live is Köln from 1975, which was recorded and released by some Italian bootleg radio.
• Part 2: 1977-1978. Building the crib for industrial music. Trans-Europe Express is the cold hand, Die Mensch-Machine is the warm hand.
• Part 3: 1981-onwards. The stuff that inspired electronic dance music. Album: Computer World. Their last versions (Tour de France, Minimum Maximum) are funny tribute: “look guys, we're also doing techno now—But you invented it in the first place!”

Radiohead, “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”

To my own amazement, there is something in the last Radiohead (free) album that is actually interesting. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is their first song with more to it than some kind of weak lament covered by what I consider to be poor arrangements.

Funnily enough, the last track on the last Chemical Brothers, “The Pills won't Help you Now,” comes with an identical development in its rhythmics (well, at least in my twisted vision of the matter).

Precisions:

1. Yes, “paying what you like” means “free” to me, they still owe me for their previous overpriced records.
2. Yes, I do consider the full Radiohead career to have been less inventive than the first fourteen notes from King Crimson's “Starless.”
3. Wow, that's my first “plain rock” post!
   

Zeppelin fuel

Led Zeppelin is fuel you pick up on the road to keep going forward. Here's a very decent live recorded in Paris in 1971. Seven songs, two from I, one from II, two from III, two from IV.

Slayer - Raining Blood

The best version (followed by Black Magic):



All drenched in blood:



With better audio/video:



Get a glimpse at the audience:



Top 10 of all-time best hard rock.

Five favourite albums (Part 1: Soft Machine and David Sylvian)

I should not play this game (especially at 3am), but I am starting to identify my favourite albums with greater precision.

The first one is clearly Soft Machine, Third. Every note on this album has left a mark in my mind. “Facelift” and “Slightly All the Time” are my ideal representations of, respectively, tortured and groovy electrified jazz music. “Moon in June” is the prelude to Robert Wyatt's foundational album, “Rock Bottom.” (produced by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason). “Out-Bloody Rageous” shows how to compose and play in the idiom of Steve Reich, with added jazz-rock style. The remastered 2007 edition of Third has extra live tracks (Facelift was already live on the 1970 Columbia recording). I listen to it almost every night.

The second one is David Sylvian, Gone to Earth. If memory serves, I discovered it after drifting from Brian Eno to Brian Eno & Robert Fripp, then to Robert Fripp & David Sylvian, and finally to David Sylvian. The album shocked me as the best ambient album I had ever listened to, even if Brian Eno's experimental work had been my first introduction to the genre. I remember listening to it looped when reading my courses for the preparation of my brevet des collèges (the BEPC, a French equivalent to the GCSE which we take when sixteen).

The third album will be a King Crimson album from their first period, which started with In the Court of the Crimson King and ended with Red. I yet have to pick my favourite Crimson album. I have only little clue about the fourth and fifth ones, but they will probably feature Brian Eno and perhaps Harold Budd at his side, King Crimson's Robert Fripp, Robert Wyatt (solo) and David Sylvian.

Followers include Pink Floyd from their first psychedelic period (Animals is so amazingly brilliant), new ambient composer Biosphere for his 2004 album Autour de La Lune based on the French radio archives of Jules Vernes, post-rock band Tortoise for understanding Brian Eno so carefully, and Frank Zappa, for being Frank Zappa, the Boris Vian from the eighties.

Alphabet City

What came before Hardtechno vol.3, the excellent mix by Kvitta? Discogs tells me here and there. From what I can tell from the tracklist, it's the same kind of hard techno, I cannot wait to find them!