Random moment #12 – only this moment

Random moment is our playlist series which was started during the 2020 pandemic. We cannot travel and postings on our trips here have slowed to a crawl. So we thought sharing music is another way to communicate with friends and fans.

Nowadays, sharing a playlist with the world is effortless and generating a playlist can even be automated by Spotify’s algorithm. I (Chris) is old enough to have made and shared mixed cassette tapes and remember the sweet labor in selecting and sequencing analog music. Why do it now ? Part of the fun is to re-listen to your favorites and savor that melody, beat or performance – the magic that entertained or entranced you. As music is likely associated with a period, a place or certain events and people in one’s life, it is also a trip down memory lane for many people.

With a music streaming service, almost the entire universe of popular and classical music is available. It allows the boundless discovery of new groups, new music created by people you like, covers for an old song, or even old music you did not like before but like now. I(Chris) is particularly interested in discovering new or faint musical mood connections between the music, old and new. Playlists are the products of us amusing ourselves in this musical sandbox.

Depending on the music, the number of songs in a playlist is limited to about four on average, totaling around 10-20 minutes. In our listening experiences, there is enough time for the listener to form an impression of the overall musical mood. And the bite-size playtime is about right for a short break from chores/work.

This is the 12th playlist. The earlier playlists can be found by searching for the tag “music” on this site.

random moment #12 – only this moment

https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/0dBSC1QHlSb8loNBOn8tTu

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #royksopp #electronic #neworder #depechemode #randommoment

Random moment #11 – life on your own

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#11 – life on your own

80’s electro-pop

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #humanleague #duranduran #OMD #depechemode

Life, Life – Ryuichi Sakamoto & David Sylvian

Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian, both my very favorite artists, collaborated again on this video – the music, poem and time-lapse photographed images of New York City. Meditative and beautiful.

How did I miss this by almost three years? It was released in 2017 when Sakamoto’s “async” came out. And I just discovered this video. See bottom of page for more music.

Don’t forget you can enter full screen. More immersive on headphone. Hope you enjoy it as much as I (Chris) do.

 

music by Ryuichi Sakamoto
voice by David Sylvian
poem from Andrei Tarkovsky’s father,
the famous Russian poet Arseny Tarkovsky.
video by Cameron Michael

The text of the poem:

And this I dreamt, and this I dream

And this I dreamt, and this I dream,
And some time this I will dream again,
And all will be repeated, all be re-embodied,
You will dream everything I have seen in dream.

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To one side from ourselves, to one side from the world
Wave follows wave to break on the shore,
On each wave is a star, a person, a bird,
Dreams, reality, death – on wave after wave.

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No need for a date: I was, I am, and I will be,
Life is a wonder of wonders, and to wonder
I dedicate myself, on my knees, like an orphan,
Alone – among mirrors – fenced in by reflections:
Cities and seas, iridescent, intensified.
A mother in tears takes a child on her lap.

. . .

Apparently, the press release for the album states that async was a soundtrack for an imaginary Andrei Tarkovsky film (who made Solaris), and there is a track named Solari.

“async” was released in 2017, his 16th solo album but the first after 8 years and a battle with throat cancer. Mindful of his mortality, in the track “fullmoon”, Sakamoto included the author Paul Bowles reciting “Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, …” which came from Bowles’s book – “The Sheltering Sky” that was also made into a movie. Sakamoto wrote the soundtrack and won a Golden Globe award for Best Original Score. See our earlier post (here) about this book which Chris read during the Morocco trip.

 

Some of you may remember their collaboration from 37(!) years ago – “Forbidden Colours” for the 1983 movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence also known as Furyo. It won a BAFTA award for Best Film Music.

 

As a bonus, here is another collaboration by the two – “World Citizen” from 2003.

A slightly different version of “World Citizen – I won’t be disappointed” was included in the soundtrack for the 2006 movie “Babel” by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

A version of “World Citizen” remixed by Taylor Deupree appeared in Sakamoto’s 2006 album “Bricolages”.

 

They have more collaborations – I will let you discover them.

 

Random moment #10 – things in life

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#10 – things in life

Jamaican gold, enjoy + like.

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #dennisbrown #reggaediscorockers #althea&donna #sugarminott

Random moment #9 – march of the trolls

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#9 – march of the trolls

a few urgent instrumentals, enjoy + like.

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #alicesarahott #edvardgrieg #valentinalisitsa #michaelnyman #gyorgyligeti #philipglass

Random moment #8 – all i wanna do

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#8 – all i wanna do

… is have some fun …  a bunch of feel-good pop, enjoy + like.

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #sherylcrow #sergiomendes #blackeyedpeas #theB-52’s  #pharrellwilliams

Random moment #7 – infinito particular

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#7 – infinito particular

from brazil mostly, new and old, enjoy + like.

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #marissamonte #madonna #maluma #bebelgilberto #céu

Random moment #6 – working man

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#6 – working man

time for some heavy metal headbanging air-guitar, enjoy + like.

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #rush #blacksabbeth #acdc #vanhalen

Random moment #5 – enjoy the silence

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

#5 – enjoy the silence

one for the weekend, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #cher #petshopboys #depechemode #royskopp

Random moment #4 – libertango (four exceptional versions)

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

Libertango (four exceptional versions)

Four different genres, instrumentals & lyrics, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #tango #astorpiazzola #gracejones #yo-yoma

Random moment #3 – Thinking of you

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

Thinking of you – disco

Four songs, Nile Rodgers, old & new, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #chic #daftpunk #sistersledge #roisinmurphy

Random moment #2 – There is an end

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

There is an end – soulful

Four songs, old & new, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #thegreenhornes #direstraits #elviscostello #donaldfagen

Random moment #1 – Stronger

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

Stronger (what doesn’t kill you) – earworm

Four songs, old & new, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #kellyclarkson #selenagomez #ladygaga #kylieminogue

Our 600th post !

We are caught a bit off guard when the admin page of WordPress indicated that our next post will be the six hundredth (600th) that we published. As previously said several times, we are surprised that the interest in keeping up this blog has not fizzled out over the last 5 years. True it is, that we are still living in Europe and away from our friends and families, the primary reason for starting the blog. But we also find that this blog is a convenient medium to capture and frame memories of our time in Switzerland and our travels, and it became a habit and a hobby (at least for Chris).

The blog was launched on November 4, 2009. The first trip ever reported here was our visit of Playa de Carmen, Mexico in November 2009 (click here to see). We had not yet left the US at that time but were starting to pack our belongings and worried about the move.

Fast forward to now, posts on our quick tour of three cities – Taormina, Siracusa (Ortigia) and Catania – on the east coast of Sicily, taken during Easter, are under preparation now. Our most recent visit to Berlin and Copenhagen earlier this month has not yet been written up. Most of the photos are still in Raw format.

Since March 2013, we have been posting a series of photos on Facebook, one a day except Sunday and Thursday when the blog is updated. There is no theme – just something random and per se visually interesting. They are essentially pictures that did not make the blog for some reasons. We gave each a serial number, a minimally-worded title and a mention of where it was taken (to the extent we could remember the location). But we wanted to share them with the readers here too – so we started showing 5 of them in a post – somewhat irregularly. This is the first of the series – #1 – “the history of cool” –  Munich.

So far we have shown about 150 of them here, but on Facebook, we are at #444 – there is a backlog of almost 300 random photos! On days when we are not writing the blog, these photos could keep the blog going for a while. This is #443 – “dark 3” – Taormina.

The readership of this blog has stabilized at around 50-70 views per day. Apart from posting a link in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ each time a post goes public, we made little attempts to drive up the statistics. We also signed up Pinterest but have not seen much changes (perhaps we are not leveraging the site properly). But other people have pinned our photos on pinterest.  So if you do not feel like writing a comment, pin a photo.

Recently, we noticed that the page view of one of our posts in April on eating durian on the street of Petaling Jaya (click here to see) has gone through the roof (more than 120 views last week alone and maintaining the momentum). It must have caught the attention of certain netizens in Malaysia (as reflected in WordPress statistics), and got linked to an index or a popular site.

The reigning champion of page views is still our first post on HSBC’s poster ads as seen around major airports in 2010 (click here). Its two siblings are receiving decent traffic too.

This blog has changed its theme (a WordPress term for the overall look and feel of the blog) only once which happened within the first month of its launch. So the appearance remains constant for the last few years and it is getting a bit aged. But we are hesitant to change to a more modern theme as it could affect somewhat unpredictably the old posts. More experimenting is needed (if we have more time).

One day we might want to make a book (or several books) using these photos, like the ones we did for Yellowstone National Park and Iceland back in 2007.

We have been buying books showing photos of a city “then and now” or aerial views of an area.

Before signing off, we want to thank our readers for their interest and support, and Susie who has been responding to our posts consistently and ranks No. 1 with the highest number of comments.

Your feedback is important as it is the only way we know someone is reading the blog. So please comment, like, retweet, follow, clip, subscribe, pin, bookmark, repost or do some good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. In the meantime, we will continue to share words and images of our adventures.

Cheers.

ChinaHouse, Penang – part 2

Continuing our exploration of this great hangout place in Georgetown …

ChinaHouse is a combination of 3 heritage buildings, linked by an open air courtyard and converted into 14 spaces comprising shops, cafes, restaurant, galleries, live music and bakery. Part 1 showed the Canteen from which we entered the ChinaHouse complex from Victoria Street.

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In the middle of the complex, a moon gate leads one into a courtyard of shady trees and a rectangular pond. The mood is so very different from the Canteen we just exited.

One can order a hotdog and burger here in the courtyard. Different areas of the complex have different menus and price points for the food.

Individual visitor is invited to sit next to and at the lower left corner of the graphic to form a vertical stroke, thus completing the Chinese character for “fortune” –

福

Passed the courtyard, walking indoors again, one enters a cafe.

With bookshelves, long communal tables …

… aspirations and attitudes …

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The cafe features a cake shop – the Beach Street Bakery – that serves home-made baked products in seemingly huge portions.

 

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Off to one side of the cafe is an event room – suitable for meetings

There is even a bar for wine and whisky tasting.

Next to the cafe is a restaurant with an imaginative fusion menu. IT and I had dinner here one night.

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Sharing the storefront on Beach Street with the cafe is a small shop that sells handicrafts.

All in all, ChinaHouse succeeds in offering something for every one … what a great place to meet people and hang out.

Wish there are more places like this.

 

Tosca @ Hungarian State Opera House

The night before we left Budapest, we saw an opera with my colleague A and her husband M at the Hungarian State Opera House (i.e., Magyar Állami Operaház).

We saw Tosca despite the giant display says Cosi fan tutte.

The foyer was very ornate, reminded us a little bit of Versailles (see pictures here).

Months in advance, A booked the tickets online but we were lucky that tickets were still available online just a few days before.

We picked up the tickets up just before the opera starts. The house was full.

The horseshoe-shaped, three-floored auditorium is intimate and a dazzling construct of red and gold.

It was built in nine years and completed in 1884. Miklós Ybl’s neo-renaissance palace has remained virtually unchanged in the 130 years.

The boxes are decorated with gilded balustrades and arm rests.

Between the boxes are dividing guardrails made from gilded tin and shaped to resemble leaves and the head of a Greek or Roman soldier.

The round ceiling is decorated with Károly Lotz’s monumental cupola fresco.

Refreshments during intermissions.

The buffet hall where patrons can drink, socialize and walk outside to a terrace overlooking the main street.

There were several couples, dressed elegantly or flamboyantly (depending on your sensibility) in formal wear, posing for selfies on the grand staircase.

While in NYC, we went to the opera occasionally. But we really enjoyed this performance of Puccini’s Tosca. These are our Mario, Floria and Baron Scarpia. Bravo.

If you are visiting Budapest, seeing an opera is a really enjoyable and affordable experience, and it was convenient since they have a helpful website.

Fake Kraftwerk songs ? 9 years already !

I(Chris) have been a Kraftwerk fan from when their music was played on the radio  in the 70’s. I have posted a German version of their 1977 international hit – “The Model” and Coldplay’s “Talk” which sampled it, here.

Kraftwerk is usually translated as “power plant,” but  one of the founders Ralf  Hütter said the band’s name can also be pulled apart for meanings: “kraft” is energy and dynamics, “werk” is simply work, or labor, and also (as “werke”) an artist’s oeuvre.

Since we are not living in NYC any more, I did not know until recently that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) organized a retrospective for the band:  Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  -:

Over eight consecutive nights, MoMA presents a chronological exploration of the sonic and visual experiments of Kraftwerk with a live presentation of their complete repertoire in the Museum’s Marron Atrium. Each evening consists of a live performance and 3-D visualization of one of Kraftwerk’s studio albums—Autobahn(1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986),The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003)—in the order of their release.

I would have loved to see them perform or visit the exhibition in PS1. Here’s a video with hilarious subtitles for non-German speaking folks titled “Hitler reacts to Kraftwerk MoMA ticket limit”:

 

 

Their most “recent” album Tour de France was released almost ten years ago.  The gap between the last two albums (Tour de France 2003 and Electric Cafe 1986) was 17 years while they spent a lot of time touring the world.  I saw them in concert in 2005 (if I remember correctly) and my sis saw them in Hong Kong in 2008?. With industrial quality bass and concert hall acoustics, they sounded awesome! But I cannot wait for a new album to come out once every ten or twenty years.  Please hurry.

On Youtube, there is a video: “Musique Internationale” which was released purportedly by Kraftwerk and the visuals effects look like something they would use in their concerts. Some media has accused it as a fake.

It was uploaded by 2011Klingklang from Romania?!  Klingklang is the name of Kraftwerk’s studio in Dusseldof.

Ralf  Hütter said in an 2011 interview around the time of the MOMA  retrospective that a new album was underway and would be released “soon”.

Another video was released on Youtube in July 2012 – “Electronic Music”  – it also claims to be Kraftwerk’s creation and was uploaded by 2012Klingklang from the US.

Again the fans said that it is a fake.  The video looks a bit like a Windows 8 promo. Neither of these video received much hits on Youtube (180,000 and 33,000).

Overall, both songs are quite pleasant, and listenable –  I would consider both efforts as “Kraftwerk light”.

I wonder how much longer do we fans have to wait for Kraftwerk’s  next release, and when will we find out whether these videos are real or fakes.

Rough Trade’s East End Flagship Store

I(Chris) have not visited London for many years, and while visiting during the Olympics, we heard a lot about the Spitalfields markets. So one morning we decided to check it out. This area of East London felt quite different from what I was expecting. The Spitalfields markets contain a new and an old section.

We wandered around the stalls, bought some stuff (including a London Underground shower curtain) and had lunch at Canteen. A pleasant, inexpensive chain serving British food.

Afterwards, I ventured further east and the streetscape changed to that which reminded me of Camden lock market. I did not have a chance to revisit Camden this time and am wondering if it has changed.

By chance, I stumbled into the flagship store of Rough Trade East just off Brick Lane – a record shop with a bit of history.

I bought their album of the month – Solo Piano II by Chilly Gonzales – a special edition containing an additional Rough Trade bonus track featuring some improvisation.

Here is a clip of video featuring a medley of the tunes on the album. Enjoy it while reading the rest of the post.

If you like it, go to his site – www.chillygonzales.com where several more videos are posted. The pieces are relaxing without being New Age-y – but a few are liable to be used as background music in Korean soap opera.

The front of Rough Trade has a cafe – the Broken Arms.

Rough Trade’s store front is disproportionately smaller than the inside. It is quite big inside, I guess the rent was cheap. Hope they signed a long lease.

Huh, Hang the DJ – Dance counter.

They have a photo booth, monochrome shots only – just 3 pounds.

They sell more vinyl than CD here.

They have mixers and keyboard for customer’s use and even a separate room for trying some synthesizers. I don’t think they sell synthesizers so I am not sure of the purpose.

Any one can go in to play assuming one knows how to operate the synthesizers. I have never seen this type of setup before but it is very cool!

There is a test listening area.

They also sell some books organized by the categories of Steidl, Caught by the line, London, Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll, Street art and Musical making and instruments.

They also have a “hobby” section – titled “Prick your finger” which sells knitting supplies for the ladies, and robotics kit “Technology will save us” for the boys.

This kind of stores are slowly becoming extinct but I hope this one can diversify and survive despite itunes, Spotify, … etc.

Electron Festival 2012, Geneva

Electron is a four-day festival that ran from April 5 to April 8, spanning the Easter weekend of 2012. Below is this year’s poster – the city in the background is Geneva.

It is an annual electronic cultures festival that included workshops, contemporary art exhibits, concerts, conferences and parties. These events took place at various venue in the center of Geneva and continued with music acts which finished at 4am each night. One can buy a day pass or a festival pass which allows entrance for a day or 4 days.

We went on Good Friday, checked out a few DJs playing sets in the park where people were having drinks, skateboarding, etc. –  a nice way to spend an afternoon.

Cycloïd-E Black Box was an incredible piece of art  – a mobile sonic sculpture. The thing made with five stainless steel tubes, each one hinged at the end of another, each with a loudspeaker at the end blasting noises, and swinging and waving about in a darkened room like a giant metal snake – very menacing and mysterious.

We saw it in the basement of a theatre. The segments move independently of each other, sometimes folding themselves up, sometimes extending fully.

If its base can move, it will become a very scary robot, something right out of the pages of 1960’s sci-fi novels. It will fit right into Patrick Mcgoohan’s The Prisoner.

No photo can do this piece of art justice. It is the highlight of the festival for me. Experience it with my video here.  I found another video of it online, embedded it at the end of the post.

Later on, we saw Mike Ladd vs Thavius Beck at the Rez in L’Usine.. They were energetic and made the most watchable performance. Most of the time, they were bashing their keyboards facing each other, a bit of rapping in between. Follow the link to find their youtube videos.

Cristian Vogel  at the Palladium. Interesting stuff, strung it together well but somehow did not seem to work up the crowd (possibly too early, his slot was before midnight). For the curious, follow the link for youtube videos.

Opuswerk at the Palladium – not bad but not great, house music.

Light year – they sounded more mainstream, electropop, played at the Zoo in L’Usine.

One of the venue was Le Commun at the BAC (Batiment d’Art Contemporain) – where the music by Eliane Radigue – “Trilogie Adnos” was performed.  She is a legend of classical electronic music of France, heavily influenced by Tibetan meditation.  The piece was at least 75 minutes of warm, undulating electronic background noise with some notes sprinkled here and there.  It was played in a darkened room where many people lied down on the platforms (cushion provided) or the floor to meditate or fall asleep.  It was very relaxing. At the end of the performance, she appeared personally to greet the audience.

A sculpture at the bar just outside Le Commun.

Here is somebody else’s video of Cycloid-E on Youtube – a much more professional job. The sounds produced by the sculpture in this video is different from the one we heard. They used several cameras here. Enjoy the performance.

Memories of blue – Vangelis

Another piece by Vangelis which is much warmer than and very mainstream when compared to the earlier posted Memories of Green – the piece that was used in the movie Blade Runner.  Other than the “Memories” in the titles, I do not know the connection between these two pieces, if any. It could have been used in the soundtrack of Chariots of Fire.

The images in this youtube video have nothing to do with Vangelis.

It is a very very soothing piece of New Age.  Perfect for me who is jet-lagged. Goodnight and sleep well.