We Are KING - Space Oddity

BBE Music announces forthcoming David Bowie tribute album ‘Modern Love’ with first single ‘Space Oddity’ reinterpreted by Grammy-nominated twin sisters We Are KING.

Much lauded by the likes of Rolling Stone, TIME, Glamour and The New York Times, We Are KING‘s ethereal, synth-laden soul sound has earned them the #1 position on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, and their self-titled debut album placed within the Top Ten on the Independent and R&B Album charts. The duo has also contributed writing, production, vocals, keys and arrangements to Corrine Bailey Rae, Bilal, Robert Glasper, Sam Sparro and The Foreign Exchange among many others.

Released on David Bowie’s birthday (January 8th 2021), their cover of his surprise 1972 hit ‘Space Oddity’ is a paean to this wholly singular and somewhat eccentric anthem. Smooth, subtle and assured, We Are KING’s version remains true to the original, while blending in just enough soul to make it their own.

Good Morning

Robert W. Service, 'Carry On!'

Cross-post from war_poetry:

Carry On!

It's easy to fight when everything's right,
And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:

Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't much punch in your blow.
You're glaring and staring and hitting out blind;
You're muddy and bloody, but never you mind.
Carry on! Carry on!
You haven't the ghost of a show.
It's looking like death, but while you've a breath,
Carry on, my son! Carry on!

And so in the strife of the battle of life
It's easy to fight when you're winning;
It's easy to slave, and starve and be brave,
When the dawn of success is beginning.
But the man who can meet despair and defeat
With a cheer, there's the man of God's choosing;
The man who can fight to Heaven's own height
Is the man who can fight when he's losing.

( Carry on! Carry on! )

By Robert W. Service
(1916)

Pieces of Eight

After listening to Haydn for most of the day, and reading History Today magazine, I have changed tack and decided to do a music post -


Raymond Scott - Limbo: The Organized Mind

Sparkle Division - You Ain't Takin' My Man

Gabriel Prokofiev - Six Hesit Heist

( info on Gabriel )

Francis Dhomont - Chambre D'Enfants

Arthur Russell - This Is How We Walk On The Moon

Electrelane - The Valleys

Robbie Basho - Bride of Thunder

Anne Briggs -The Snow It Melts The Soonest

ENJOY

Okkyung Lee

Okkyung Lee - Teum (the Silvery Slit)

Okkyung Lee is a South Korean cellist, improviser, and composer. Lee moved to Boston in 1993, where she received a dual bachelor's degree in Contemporary Writing and Production and Film Scoring, and a master's degree in Contemporary Improvisation.

Teum (the Silvery Slit) is, as the title suggests, an overture, an opening to the game of multiplications, fragmentations, duplications. But it is also the opening understood as the void that blossoms between two borders, a break from which escapes a double tension, both the pulling force of these two edges which move apart and the opposite force of reconciliation, of compression. Okkyung Lee invites us to a truly telluric moment, a rare moment of expression where tectonic movements and shear stresses become music. If the earthquakes were, as we thought in the 18th century, due to underground thunderstorms, there is no doubt that this piece of music, both celestial and continental, could have been their audible manifestation.


Springing from a decade's deep body of work, defined by a rigorously singular and adventurous approach to sound, cellist, composer, and improviser, Okkyung Lee, returns with Yeo-Neun, her first outing with Shelter Press, and arguably her most groundbreaking and unexpected album to date.

A vital, present force in the contemporary global landscape of experimental music, Okkyung Lee is widely regarded for her solo and collaborative improvisations and compositions, weaving a continuously evolving network of sonority and event, notable for its profound depth of instrumental sensitivity, exacting intellect, and visceral emotiveness. Yeo-Neun, recorded by Yeo-Neun Quartet - an experimental chamber music ensemble founded in 2016 and led by Lee on cello, featuring harpist Maeve Gilchrist, pianist Jacob Sacks, and bassist Eivind Opsvik - represents the culmination of one of the longest and most intimate arcs in her remarkable career. A radical departure from much of the experimental language.

Okkyung Lee - Yeo Neun

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Mabe Fratti

Mexico city-based, Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti is set to release debut LP, Pies Sobre la Tierra (Feet On The Ground) on new experimental label Unheard of Hope (Peter Zummo, Military Genius). Reconciling Mabe’s steps throughout her musical past, the debut LP features pop and experimentation that reflects her time working amongst the improvisation scene in Mexico City.

( More info here )

Mabe Fratti - Pies Sobre la Tierra

ENJOY

Just Wondering

Were you quick to jump into fads when you were younger?

What fad were you over with before it started?

What fad do you wish would come back?

Good Night