Uploading Sunday at Bob's #15 - Two Birds

We are back after skipping a week, which might happen quite often but it is for the best. For this week's playlist I tried to keep it interesting by going from one genre to the other while borrowing songs that still have some sort of common atmosphere. A bit rough, in a chill way.

We start with a song form a wonderful album that was recently re released but dates back from 1975. I did not know much about Ernest Hood but I sure am glad to have stumbled upon that piece of work. I find in it some poetry but more specifically some sharp reflection about what music is. There is something very odd about having sonor sceneries turned into music and listened to as such, I can't really put my finger on it but it would be something interesting to analyse. Maybe it is the musical pendant to a landscape painting?

"Hood remains an enigmatic and largely unknown figure—Neighborhoods was his only album, and he pressed it himself in limited quantities. He had played in jazz groups with his brother Bill and the renowned band leader and saxophonist Charlie Barnet. But in the early '50s he contracted polio, which resulted in a year-long stint in an iron lung; he relied on a wheelchair to get around. Confined to Portland, Hood started experimenting with field recordings, slowly gathering the material that would imbue Neighborhoods with such indelible sepia tones." (source)

Two weeks ago I went to see the Russian classic Amphibian Man (fun to watch after having seen The Shape of Water) and I chose to include today a piece from its soundtrack composed by Andrei Petrov. I strongly recommend the movie, not only for its music, the whole thing is an alien, the colors and ambiance just stick with you and it is difficult to make sense of it.

Then we have a nice tune of Philip Cohran (who has been featured here already) and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble in which eight out of nine musicians are his sons. That album they made together is really a brass album like I like them, it makes me want to dance for hours until I bathe in my own sweat and forget if I am stepping on the roof or dancing upside down.

It goes on with a very nice tune I stole from a compilation I listen to on regular basis. It is followed by the greater of the greatest French rappers, MC Solaar. I never get tired of this dude. Seriously, listen to Qui Sème Le Vent Récolte Le Tempo and tell me its not the shit. After that comes a song I find as beautiful as funny, Melody Gardot's attempt to sing in french is extremely cute but also very on point and fit for that song. Bert Jansch was mentioned here last time and now you have an eight minutes long cut to appreciate his guitar talents. After that comes one of my favourite folk songs this time interpeted by Ramblin' Jack Elliott who lets us know he first heard it through the lips of Reverend Gary Davis. A comment on the youtube video suggests that the song was originally an old medicine show song in the 1900s (!). We finish with a gem from Bob Dylan that makes me cry everytime. The last track is for pleasure.

That's it for this week!
The check out time is 10h30, you be warned.

Enjoy,
the receptionist

Playlist:

1. Ernest Hood - At The Store
2. Andrei Petrov - Song from The Amphibian Man
3. Kelan Philip Cohran & The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - Spin
4. Demba Camara Et Son Groupe - Exhumation Folklorique
5. MC Solaar - Et DIeu Créa L’Homme
6. Melody Gardot - Les Etoiles
7. Bert Jansch - Instrumental Medley 1964
8. Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Cocaine
9. Bob Dylan - Love Sick
10. Harlem Gem - More Than You Can Wish

Sunday at Bob's #14 - A Humid Return

Two or three weeks ago I posted a Moroccan special Sunday at Bob's, started to wrote a long text about it but eventually had to give up. I couldn't finish it on time and I realised it was more than the usual weekly post. The material and informations I gathered during the two months I passed in the Cherifian Kingdom additionned to the lack of knowledge I have of this area of music made a too big obstacle to casually jump over during a sunday shift at Bob's. However you can listen to the playlist here, you might still enjoy it. Today I finally get back to business, the high season is over, the roads are wet, writing warms. I prepared an unusually short playlist in lenght but with as many songs as usual, here it is, let it dry you.

We enter it with an extract from Fellini's Satyricon soundtrack. Composed by Nino Rota (La Dolce Vita, The Godfather...) and named after Jérôme Bosch's painting, which makes sense given how the whole movie feels like walking around an ancient Roman version of one, Il giardino delle delizie is a bit less than a minute long. I heard a connexion with the following song that I found interesting to exploit. Maybe some oddness in it is mirrored in the use of a sitar in The Pentangle's Cruel Sister.

I just recently discovered The Pentangle. After having been smashed in and out of the three dimensioned world as we know it by Bert Jansch's self titled debut album I had to look more into that guy's stuff. I was not disapointed. I find the song Cruel Sister rather impressive, by the way it manages to keep it interesting while having that melody repeated over and over for seven minutes. I also very much enjoy the way the sitar is used to support that melody, while it happens often that sitars sounds like absurd additions to my ears (but who am I if not a modest listener whose brain isn't trained to the subtleties of Indian music, let alone the combinations of that music with a western one?).

Then we have a jazz tune by the Recifense piano prodigy Amaro Freitas, and we go on with the playful Chicken is Nice by one of my favourite folk musicians Dave Van Ronk. It took me some time to figure out excactly what were the Robert's Falls, Cape Palmas, Sinoe and Monrovia (spelled Quepamas, Cyno on google lyrics). I recently found out there is an older version of that song from which Van Ronk got his inspiration. Eventhough I haven't had the chance to listen to it, I know it is on a compilation from Liberian folk songs, those places are in Liberia. It also explains why he finds chicken with palm butter and rice nice since it is a typical West African dish.

I stumbled upon Cécile McLorin Salvant's work about a year ago and am still evenly amazed by the power and rocket science precision her voice hits the right spots each time I listen to The Window. That album is really one of a kind, at least I had never heard anything like it in terms of variety and intensity.

Sullivan Fortner, who played with Roy Hargrove amongst other, does a fantastic job on the piano and gets the space to expand some very cool things.

I started listening to The Village Callers after watching Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood, which has a great soundtrack album where I rediscovered Neil Diamond amongst other. Then we have the recently passed multi-disciplinary artist Daniel Johnston (may he rest in peace). I had the chance to see his exhibition in the Collection de l'Art Brut in Lausanne some years back and was quite impressed by his productivity in both his music and his drawings. We go on with Richard & Linda Thompson, as well discovered very recently as I started craving for folk music after getting back to Amsterdam's life, Champion Jack Dupree who we had in Bob's in the past already.

The playlist ends on a gem that was featured in Floating Point's Late Night Tales. I didn't know the story of Bobby Wright nor his music before and I must say that I can't get enough of it. "Wright, who now goes by Abu Talib, worked as a construction worker and cab driver while moonlighting as a bandleader in New York City. After his band was torn apart by the Vietnam War—two members were drafted, one of whom was killed in action—he recorded two songs with the only remaining member, his bassist. The label says "he self-released the record in 1974, one which holds its own alongside the all-time greats."(source)

That is all for this week! I will do my best to be mor constant from now on.

Enjoy!

Please do check out before 10.30,

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Nino Rota - Il giardino delle delizie
2. The Pentangle - Cruel Sister
3. Amaro Freitas - Rasif
4. Dave Van Ronk - Chicken is Nice
5. Cécile McLorin Salvant - À Clef
6. The Village Callers - The Frog
7. Daniel Johnston - Favourite Darling Girl
8. Richard & Linda Thompson/Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
9. Champion Jack Dupree - Ain't That A Hard Pill to Swallow
10. Bobby Wright - Blood of an American

Sunday at Bob’s #12 - Chant des Cèdres

I unfortunately had to give up last week. I apologize, I overestimated my ability to look for a place with wifi, to sit down and to write. However I am discovering tons of amazing music and I will talk about it starting the end of september when I get back to Bob's. For now I think I will take a break so I can gather information and gems for more interesting posts.

Enjoy the summer!
Check out time is forever 10h30.

The receptionist.

Playlist:

1. Intro - Chant des Cèdres
2. Gnawa Diffusion - Gazelle au fond de la nuit
3. Dom Pescoço - Tchau
4. Interlude - Shukran
5. Oscar Brown Jr. - Rags and Old Iron
6. Kiki Hitomi - Samurai Spoon
7. LNRDCROY - Land, Repair, Refuel
8. Mansur Brown - Straight To The Point
9. Megapuss - Sayulita
10. Snarky Puppy - Palermo
11. Davy Graham - Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair
12. Charles Lloyd & The Marvels + Lucinda Williams - Vanished Gardens

Sunday at Bob's #11 - Bab El Ifrane

Due to complicated wifi conditions out here in the Middle Atlas, today's text is delayed. It should arrive in the coming hours though, I am not giving up.

Enjoy,
the check out time is 10h30, no matter what.

The receptionist.

Playlist:

1. Interlude - Bab El Radio
2. Rogiński, Zimpel, Zerang, Robinson - Once In The Desert
3. Mathieu Boogaerts - Pourquoi pas
4. Joshua Redman - Never Let Me Go
5. Mathieu Chedid - Est-ce que c’est ça?
6. Jai Mahal - The Officer Was Singing
7. John Williams - Marlow in Mexico
8. Interlude - Alfama Woken Up
9. Mdou Moctar - Amer Iyan
10. Hasna El Becharia - Smaa Smaa
11. Christy Azuma & Uppers International - Naam
12. Marijata - I Walk Alone
13. Outro - Alameda

Sunday at Bob's #10 - Zoubaba

On friday I had the great chance to see Ambrose Akinmusire play at the Parc de La Grange, in Geneva. It was free of charge and kids were running around, sometimes crying as the violins and the cello were playing. It was lots of fun. I had a bit of time on thursday to prepare something for today, however I won't have time to expand on what is there, I will most likely do that again in two weeks.

In the meatime, enjoy!
Check out time is 10h30,

The receptionist.

Playlist:

1. Maalem Mahmoud Guinia - Bania
2. Markos Vamvakaris - Taxim-Zeimbekiko
3. Interlude - A regular
4. Ratgrave - Fantastic Neckground
5. Takeshi Terauchi - Sa No Sa
6. Forss - Characteristics
7. Julian Lage - Wordsmith
8. Ezra Collective - Enter the Jungle
9. Hailu Mergia - Gum Gum
10. Shuggie Otis - Island Letter
11. John Martyn - Back To Stay
12. Munir Bashir - La voix de l’orient

Sunday at Bob's #9 - Closing the Shift

Just the once will not hurt: this week's Sunday at Bob's is a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and it isn't even at Bob's, with my apologies. I take this opportunity to add that next Sunday at Bob's will unfortunately be cancelled due to the fact that I took a day off work to enjoy the Roots Festival in Oosterpark that will feature Asmâa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou amongst other. The coming ones might also be very irregular up until the end of september. Today I am really proud to anounce the release of the magnificent album of a very good friend of mine: Jason Daskalakis. The playlist starts with a very powerfull song taken from his debut album Leaving the Tribe.

Memories from the Sea is the closing song of Amsterdam-based Greek guitar player Jason Daskalakis' Leaving the Tribe, and the only one where you will have the chance to hear him sing. It is a seven minute long composition that I see as a slow development of one theme, almost as if the whole song was an introduction to the last melody that is very much so as to hit the nail on the head if you may. If the song was a video footage, I would compare it with one of these one shot demonstrations of unheartly powerfull zooms that start with a landscape to end on a stone in the moon. The whole album is a gem and I strongly recommend it, here is a link to listen to/purchase the jewel.

After that comes a song from an album I listened to the point of damaging last summer: Moodymann's Black Mahogani. Equally reclusive and prolific, Moodymann (a.k.a. Kenny Dixon Jr.) writes loping, laidback music that burrows into the mind, unfurling deft keyboard flourishes from subtly raw production that has as much to do with jazz and blues traditions as modern house music. (source) And it is precisely for the brilliant way jazz and blues are present in his music that I enjoy Moodymann so much.

It is followed by an interlude recorded at Bob's without anyone's permission (since then obtained). And then the playlist takes a rather melancholic turn with Michael Galasso's take on St James Infirmary. Blue is a song featured in the soundtrack of the great In the Mood for Love from Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. It is quite slow and sad version of the Gambler's Blues in my opinion but the fact that it is played with violins which I never heard elsewhere gives it a whole new garment.

New turn taken afterwards with the rock couple Judy Henske & Jerry Yester's Raider, from their 1969 album Farewell Aldebaran released on Frank Zappa's Straight ! An album that goes in many different directions and remains exciting and very innovative all along the way. We stay in the same musical area with a song released two years later by the British band Universe, introduced to me by a very good friend in my teenagehood as a secret to keep. The album remained in our gang for a couple of years and would be played here and then between two hardcore french rap songs.

Another interlude I recorded going home after a late shift. Sound of frogs getting down interupted whatever was in my ears at the time and I couldn't resist, it was so loud I had to record it. Round of applause for the Slotermeer Frog Orchestra.

In this playlist you will hear as well the British brothers Mark and Clive Ives' band Woo for a relaxing happy song called AWAAWAA. The usual Brasilian song is by Vinicius de Moraes (his daughter was on the last playlist) & Baden Powell. There is a majestic tribute to Ornette Coleman by Dollars Brand (on the album Underground in Africa that I strongly recommend, would it be only for the first track Kalahari). You will also hear a band I had been boiling to include, Ambiance and their song Atiji that makes me feel like a character of Martin Scorsese's After Hours who didn't appear in the film but was there somewhere, when I paint in my studio at night listening to it. It ends with a very crazy recording of Clydie King rehearsing for the soundtrack of The Long Goodbye and basically trashing everyone in and out the room for 8 minutes straight, I can't get tired of it.

That's it! I apologize again for the delay, I hope I can keep up with the rythm from now on but I will most likely skip a week or two.

However the check out time remains 10h30,

The receptionist.

Playlist:

1. Jason Daskalakis - Memories from the Sea
2. Moodymann - I Need You So Much
3. Interlude - Lydia
4. Michael Galasso - Blue
5. Judy Henske & Jerry Yester - Raider
6. Universe - Cocaine
7. Interlude - Nightshift
8. Woo - AWAAWAA
9. Vinicius de Moraes & Baden Powell - Canto de Xang
10. B1 - Ornettes Cornet (In Tribute To Ornette Coleman) - Dollar Brand
11. Ambiance -Atiji
12. Clydie King - Adlibs Rehearsal

Sunday at Bob's #8 - Goodbye Casual

Goodbye casual sundays at Bob's, high season is back and the reservation list is getting longer and longer. My last shift ended at 2AM instead of the usual midnight. Late check-ins and errors in the counting delayed everything but well, the rest of the year is so pleasant that it's already forgotten. All that to say that the following two or three posts might include more quotes than usual since I have less time. This week's playlist is a bit in the continuity of the last one in the sense that I tried to remain consistent, picked songs that take their time to express themselves and did not make exagerated jumps in between moods. I hope you will like it, here it is.

It begins with the outstanding greek musician Kostas Bezos and The White Birds. Outstanding by his Hawaiian inspired version of Rembetiko (some of his songs even include yodel) which I find very unexpected but beautiful. Who knew that Greek popular music had a real kink for Hawaiian steel guitar music since the 1920’s? (...) If we consider the connection between the guitar’s ancient arabic roots, and the way it mutated into lap steel and ukulele styles out in the middle of the Pacific during the 1800s before becoming absorbed into Greek middle class and popular music of the 1920’s, then Kostas Bezos And The White Birds pushes the concept of Greek folk music as a bridge between East and West to totally new, extreme degrees for any listener who has a taste for this sound unmatched by their knowledge of it provenance. (source) I will probably include and write a bit more about Rembetiko in the coming weeks because it is very interesting.

Then we have a song by the marvelous Francis Bebey that was introduced to me five years ago by a Dutch drawing teacher of mine who was really into it. One song in particular stayed with me since then, Sanza Tristesse is not featured here but I strongly recommend it. Bebey was born in a poor family of Douala, economic capital of Cameroon. His dad, a pastor who plays accordeon, introduced him to music and raised him to the sound of Bach, Haendel etc. He also had an ear for traditional music through his neighbour who would play the mouth bow at night. Apart from being a great musician, he worked as a journalist for french and african radios. He was also a remarkable writer (Sanza Tristesse testifies) and in 1968 he won the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire for his book Le Fils d’Agatha Moundio.

After that come Les Filles de Illighadad (the girls from Illighadad), a band I discovered live in OCCII two years ago and I was instantly struck by the power and the mastery they express over their music. They truly use their voices the same way they use their instruments (it might sound like I am breaking through an open door but I think that in that case it is particularly true). It is very impressive on Imigradan how the vocals in the beggining echoe with the electric guitar that comes after. If you want to know more about them (and if you understand french) click here.

We go on with Nâ Hawa Doumbia from Mali who I encountered first on Awesome Tapes From Africa. I don't know much about her, I have four tracks on my computer that I play once in a while. I find the (complex) simplicity of her songs almost holy and could listen to it for hours.

Today's playlist features as well Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, a fresh and modern super-quintet which performs an electrified and highly danceable set of Turkish music led by Derya Yıldırım’s hypnotizing Saz and vocals. It combines Anatolian Folk and modern grooves, often contaminated by hints of Psychedelia, Jazz and Funk. (source) A band that, with Altın Gün and other, are spreading a contemporary version of the Anatolian Rock inherited from Erkin Koray (who was mentioned here a few weeks ago) and more, around the world. Ibrahim Maalouf and his breathtaking take on Oum Kalthoum's Alf Leila wa Leila. In Movement I we can hear him play around with the sentence Winta wana, ya habibi ana, ya hayati ana (you and me, my love, my life) sung so wonderfully in the strongly recommended original version. I wanted to make a comparison between that melodic repetition and the one happening right after in Mixed Feelings of Jean-Paul Estiévenart (who I saw completely randomly in Brussels a few months ago and then again in the Bimhuis with Urbex and was blown away). That pam-pam-pam coming back is the reason why I put those two songs back to back. I have the feeling they have a lot in common. 

We also have the South African Jazz band Mabuta, the intergalactic Luiz Bonfá from Brasil and the Moroccan band of the 70s Jil Jilala who I will most likely expand a bit more about in the coming weeks since I am off to Morocco from July to September and intend to explore.


That's it for this week!
Enjoy, and remember to check out before 10h30 (tea and coffee are served at the reception until 11h00).

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Kostas Bezos and the White Birds - Τ’Άσπρα Πουλιά στα βουνα (The White Birds In The Mountains)
2. Francis Bebey - Binta madiallo
3.  Les Filles de Illighadad - Imigradan
4. Na Hawa Doumbia - Demisen kulu
5. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek - Nem Kaldı
6. Ibrahim Maalouf - Movement I
7. Jean-Paul Estiévenart - Mixed Feelings
8. Mabuta - As We Drift Away
9. Luiz Bonfá - Leque
10. Jil Jilala - Hada Wa'dek Ya Meskin

Sunday at Bob's #7 - Rain in June

We were unlucky with the weather this week, I had gotten used to have sun in June but recently we had rain. It made me think of a verse by Jacque Brel: J'en suis venu à prier Dieu - Mais on sait bien qu'il est trop vieux - Et qu'il n'est plus maître de rien (To the point of praying to God - But we all know He’s far too old - And no longer in command). Although he is sad about a woman and not the temperature, I believe he expresses a feeling of powerlessness that can be transposed when witnessing climat change. One rainy day of June I stayed in and assembled this playlist. This time I allowed myself to include a few rather long track when I usually limit myself to one, underestimating the patience of the listener. I also tried to remain consistant and not jump from the donkey to the roaster. Whithout further delay, here it is.

It starts with a song by the Paulistana band (and by that I mean to say they are from São Paulo) Höröyá which is composed of West African and Brazilian musicians. Höröyá means freedom, autonomy in mandeng (...) their music brings some important African roots, it is a summary of some musicalities and it has a musical construction that does not follow the Western standard, not based on harmonic sequences or on melodic themes for instance. Höröyá´s  music is more focused on percussion bringing with it an essence of the African yards, the dance groups found in the Mandeng culture, a culture that has in Famoudou Konate one of its greatest representatives.(source)

We go on with a musician I discovered this year and cannot get enough of, for his capacity to explore so many different areas of music while remaining very coherent. I admire him as well for managing to greatly combine two genres that I love particularly: jazz and gnaoua. He has been featured here once before with Joachim Kühn and Ramon Lopez on the powerfull Enjoy. Majid Bekkas is also the co-artistic director of the festival Jazz au Chellah in Rabat since 1996. The song Bossoyo seems to me like a version of a song that comes back often in gnaoua music, I think that the song of Babkou Mustapha in the first playlist is one example. Although I have no proof of that at all.

The third track of the playlist is taken from an album that followed me since I am a kid, it was always around. Alla (Abdelaziz Abdallah is his full name) is an Algerian musician who built his first lute at 16 with a plastic can, a wooden piece, and bicycle brake cables as strings. Along his career, he developed a style he called Fondou, made of calm, improvised melodies that borrow to berber and arabic traditional music amongst other. A hypothesis as to the why of the term Fondou is that it is a combination of fond and doux which are French for substance and sweet, roughly, because fond is a difficult word to translate. I like that suggestion. His album is called Tanakoul, which means I am eating and I always found that intriguing but rather playful.

We take a jazz turn for the two tracks following with one taken from a quite interesting album that reunites a five exciting young musicians: Walter Smith III, Matthew Stevens, Joel Ross (he was included in last week's playlist), Harish Raghavan, and Marcus Gilmore. The album in called In Common. I added Unconditional Love because it is a song that is a rather rare example of a fully instrumental song in which I feel I understand the idea of it almost as if it had descriptive lyrics. When I listened to it the first time and read the title, I tought "oh yes, indeed". It doesn't happen that often but when it does I find it impressive because I guess someone with theoretical music knowledge would be able to explain its structure and make sense of it on a conceptual level when to my modest ears it remains an intuition.

We also have a song by Les Rallizes Dénudés, a japanese group I got into after reading this small text about them that you cannot read without wanting to have a glimps of it. We have Peter Doherty who I don't think I have to introduce, I really like his stuff as a loner guitar-poet. We have Mariana de Moraes who I litterally know nothing about but heard one album a bit randomly and quite enjoyed (I guess by now you know I am have a sweet tooth for Brazilian music). And we end with Philip Cohran & the Artistic Heritage Ensemble who managed to make it twice into Sunday at Bob's with their majestic On the Beach.

Enjoy but only until 10h30 which is the check out time.

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Horoya - Travessia – Abu Bakr II
2. Majid Bekkas - Bossoyo
3. Alla - Espérance
4. Matthew Stevens - Unconditional Love
5. Mtume - Kamili
6. Morgen - Of Dreams
7. Les Rallizes Dénudés - Kioku Ha Toi
8. Pete Doherty - Music When The Lights Go Out
9. Mariana de Moraes - Reposta
10. Philip Cohran & the Artistic Heritage Ensemble - On the Beach

https://lyricstranslate.com/fr/sans-exigences-without-demands.html

To the point of praying to God

But we all know He’s far too old

And no longer in command

https://lyricstranslate.com/fr/sans-exigences-without-demands.html

To the point of praying to God

But we all know He’s far too old

And no longer in command

Sunday at Bob's #6 - Fuma col fuoco in bocca

 
Fuma col fuoco in bocca... per non fare da bersaglio nella notte. He smokes with the fire in his mouth... to not be a target in the night. Last week I went to see Padre Padrone, the 1977 masterpiece from the Taviani Brothers and it was a blast. Happening the 1940s Sardinia, it is a very powerful but sensitive movie. It is constructed in a very interesting way and eventhough it lasts over two hours it never gets boring and always surprises. It depicts the life of a kid whose father takes away from school at age five to teach him the sheperd's life. The kid grows up apart from human society and has all the troubles in the world to enter it once adult. Today's playlist was an attempt to reflect the spirit of Padre Padrone, its harshness and sometimes its absurdity. I believe it is a selection that tends to go in every direction but I wanted to try to make it a bit spicy. Here it is.

It starts with a track by Egisto Macchi (who composed the soundtrack of Padre Padrone) from his album Il Deserto, an experimental and intriguing trip in the desert recorded in 1974. I like how this song just constantly seems to be promising to unlock some explosion of treasures and then doesn't but somehow manages to keep us in this state of excitement for a great gift.

After that comes a song from an album I have been wanting to include here for some time but never really figured out how. First because it holds many gems, Universal Beings is composed of 22 tracks of various lenghts. Second because it is truly a complete album in the sense that if I listen to it and think: that song goes in the next playlist, I face the impossibility of not including the one that comes after given how relevant the whole they form is. Makaya McRavens is a Paris born drummer, raised in New England
who is an important figure of this exciting young jazz scene that explores new musical territories with musicians like Shabaka Hutchings or Nubya Garcia who were mentioned here in the past weeks. I particularly enjoy The Fifth Monk because it takes the time it needs to establish a deep texture and play with it.

Alain Peters is a recent discovery. He is a poet from the French island Réunion who started music at a very young age. In the 60s he surfed along on the pop rock wave that went accross the island and swallowed séga and traditional music helped by vinyls sent from England by his cousin. It is only in the mid 70s that he turned back to maloya and rediscovered a national treasure along with the band Les Caméléons. They mixed Hendrix and The Beatles influences with séga and maloya rythms. Now I really am not a specialist of music from Réunion but I am a lover of the Réunion's creole sonorities, which in my opinion sounds a bit like honey.

A small interlude by Strong Arm Steady follows, they were mentioned in last week's post. And we go on with another recent discovery, music from East Europe that I discovered in the compilation Flammes du coeur - Gypsy Queens. I very much recommend that compilation which is made of very strong and deep songs that cannot leave you indifferent. These singers have amazing voices. Romica Puceanu has an intensity that I would be tempted to compare with the recent pieces by Elza Soares and reading about her makes me also somehow think of monuments of music such as Oum Kalthoum. I won't risk myself to write about something I really know nothing but here is a link to a text about Romica Puceanu that can spread some light on this beutiful area of music, if you understand french.

In today's playlist you will also find the Japanese rock band Kikagaku Moyo that I discovered on a Mixcloud page specialized in the matter, an extract of the Blue Note vibraphonist Joel Ross' first album KingMaker (he is also present on Makaya McRavens' Universal Beings), the guitar giant Baden Powell and James "Plunky" Branch who I have to investigate on a bit more. Susan Alcorn's beatiful take on Astor Piazzolla closes the selection.

That is all for this week, please mind the neighbours when smoking joints in front!

Enjoy,
Check out time is 10h30

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Egisto Macchi - L'Eco Delle Gole
2. Makaya Mccraven / Jeff Parker / Anna Butterss / Josh Johnson / Carlos Niño / Miguel Atwood-Ferguson - The Fifth Monk
3. Alain Peters - Plime La Misère
4. Strong Arm Steady - Smile
5. Romica Puceanu - Tinerete, Tinerete
6. Kikagaku Moyo -Dripping Sun
7. Joel Ross - III Relations
8. Baden Powell - Round About Midnight
9. Plunky - African Sunset
10. Susan Alcorn - Sodade

Sunday at Bob's #5 - First Leaves

I planted some flat-leaf parsley seeds last week and yesterday they finally sticked their green faces out of the soil to my great satisfaction and feeling of well done job. I spent most of my week painting in the studio and I must say I am very pleased with the works produced, I haven't had such a prolific week in a while. However being caged with oil paint and terpentine for entire days results in head pain but nothing that would discourage me from the thrill that it is. It is only the fifth Sunday at Bob's and I can already see some patterns in the music I select with Bubba Thomas' spiritual jazz or Alessandra Leão's brasilian vibes (eventhough musically Brasil is a continent). Anyhow, here is today's playlist.

We start with a song taken from the album of the Al tarab Muscat ud Festival of the Sultanate of Oman in 2005. I am really pleased to own a copy of this, which seems rather rare and expensive but more importantly very varied and impressive music. I don't know much about Mamdoh El Gebaly neither do I know about Abadi Al Johar or other masters present on the compilation. But I have listened to some of their songs thousands of times and keep on going back to that treasure of an album.

It goes on with a extract from the soundtrack of Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E by Daniel Pemberton (The Counselor and more recently Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse). I am globaly not particularly fond of that soundtrack however it made me discover some gems such as Roberta Flack's version of Compared to What or Che Vuole Questa Musica Stasera by Profumo di Donna.

Then we have the British progressive jazz rock band Trifle, I came accross their great album First Meeting through Strong Arm Steady's In Search Of Stoney Jackson where a few seconds of New Religion is played on a fast tempo. This song somehow reminds me of Cocaine by Universe though I am not sure why, probably because of its structure where the first half of the song contains sung lyrics and a large part is some trippy intrumentals that make you lose your mind.

Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen Plus One's album Fancy Pants is an album I stumbled upon super randomly after hours of scrolling blogs and I have to admit I wasn't disapointed. It is a piece of work in which the musicians take their time to transport us in a lot of different areas of their talent. I find it extremely vast, interesting and I doubt I am done discovering new aspects of it as I listen to it more and more.

I have to thank Youtube's algorithm for the next one because I was playing cards at the reception with a good friend when this song started playing and charmed us both by it's smooth take on Bill Wither's classic. I will probably try to dig in more into Sivuca's music I haven't had the time this week but from the little I heard he seems like a very exciting artist.

Today's playlist features as well the brasilian-influenced jazz trio from Turin Gialma 3, the great Alessandra Leão who doesn't stop to surprise me since I first discovered her music, Mr. Airplane Man who I saw for the first time live last year at Butcher's Tears in south Amsterdam, Timmy Thomas who, like a lot of people, I first heard sampled on Drake's Hotline Bling and Momo Wandel Soumah's unbeatable saxophone whose album I bought as a kid on a street market in Essaouira, the Moroccan city that hosts every year a Gnaoua festival.

It's already the end of this week but very soon the beggining of a new one!
No smoking in the rooms and remember to check out before 10h30.

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. Mamdoh El Gebaly - Musiqa, Hawatir Misriyya, Maqam Rast
2. Daniel Pemberton - Out Of The Garage
3. Trifle - New Religion
4. Bubbha Thomas & The Lightmen Plus One - Blue Tip
5. Sivuca - Ain’t No Sunshine
6. Gialma 3 - Brushes Samba
7. Alessandra Leão - Partilha
8. Mr. Airplane Man - Don’t Know Why
9. Timmy Thomas - Take Care Of Home
10. Momo Wandel Soumah - Toko

Sunday at Bob's #4 - Home Is Where

I had already prepared a few playlists for the coming weeks when I decided last minute to come up with something new. I got a bunch of new plants in my room including a pancake plant (pilea peperomioides), a plant endemic of the Yunnan province of southeast China which got imported in Scandinavia in the 40s. It is a very beautiful plant with flat leaves that doesn't exceed 30cm in height and width. Sometimes I think the plants listen.

This week's playlist starts with an extract from the soundtrack of the 1974 movie The Conversation, composed by a young David Shire, Francis Ford Coppola's brother-in-law. It is a rather sober but very beautiful and tragic soundtrack that is almost solely composed of one piano. The main theme, which is a sort of slow ragtime, comes back every now and then with a delightful little twist to it.

We go on with a piece by the Pierre Nadeau Trio from Canada, discovered on the compilation Ready or Not: Deep Jazz Grooves from the CBC Radio Canada Archive 1967-1977 that I strongly recommend. Pierre Nadeau aka Le gros Pierre (1944-2004) was a Canadian pianist who was active since the 60s. If you understand french I can lead you to that small text about him. His album Extra-Ordinaire is currently available entirely on youtube, which is nice.

After that comes a freshly discovered artist I was very much impressed with, Philip Cohran and The Artistic Heritage Ensemble. Born in 1927 in Oxford, Mississipi, Philip Cohran was known for playing the trumpet in Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1951 to 1961 and it is something that I think you can hear in his own work as well. Early in his career, he invented an instrument he called the Frankiphone or the Space Harp, which is actually an electrified mbira or kalimba; he played it on some of Sun Ra's early albums. This instrument inspired Maurice White to use an electrified Kalimba in performance with Earth, Wind and Fire.^[4] Cohran said that he taught White and his brothers music in their youth, much as The Wailers were tutored by Joe Higgs. On the Beach features the Frankiphone on the title track, as well as a piece called "New Frankiphone Blues". (Wikipedia)

Écoute-moi camarade (Listen to me, comrade) is a song were the long forgotten Mohamed Mazouni, who can be rediscovered on the compilation Un dandy en exil (Algérie-France, 1969-1983), tries to convince a friend of his that the girl he is after is not worth it and doesn't care about him. It is a quite powerful song with a very catchy melody. Here is an interesting text about Mazouni and Agleria (both in French and English).

The playlist features also a track from Nat Brichall's Cosmic Language that is I think a contemporary echo to Philip Cohran, Sun Ra and other's spiritual Jazz. This week again the British intense Jazz scene is well represented apart from Birchall by as well Zara MacFarlane and the Portico Quartet. Very dancable songs by the almighty Wally Badarou and Seu Pereira & Coletivo 401 are also present.

Enjoy,

no late check out, still 10h30.

The receptionist

Playlist:

1. David Shire - Whatever Was Arranged
2. Pierre Nadeau Trio - Consuelo
3. Philip Cohran and The Artistic Heritage Ensemble - Frankiphone Blues
4. Sampa the Great - Healing
5. Mazouni - Écoute-moi camarade
6. Nat Birchall - Dervish
7. Zara McFarlane - Angie La La
8. Wally Badarou - One Day, Won’t Give It Away
9. Seu Pereira & Coletivo 401 - Tomara que Suba
10. Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In the North Sea