tunequest

I came across Susumu Yokota's Grinning Cat (2001), amazingly enough via Amazon.com. I've had an account there for nine years and, before this record, I cannot remember a single time that the store recommended something relevant to me. Over the years, I've become fairly adept at glazing over the recs altogether. Maybe it just took that much time for the site to gather enough information about ...

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This holiday season just past, a new Flash greeting made the rounds. You probably received it at least once (and possibly more) from someone you know. It featured an animation of Santa Clause and a handful of reindeer crooning White Christmas. It was cute, in that way a lot of those Flash greetings are. But it was the song that really made it work. This particular version ...

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London's The Herbaliser is one of those bands that takes its inspiration from just about whatever it can find. Featuring some extremely above-the-bar production values, the band specializes in a kind of funk-laden rap that borrows from and incorporates just about every musical style under the sun. Yet, despite the amalgam, each song is distinctly Herbaliser in its nature. Lest you think that the band is all ...

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Continuing the tunequest within a tunequest today, I listened to a handful of tracks by Argentine composer Luis Bacalov during the morning's rainy commute to the office. Bacalov rose to prominence writing film music for 60s and 70s era spaghetti westerns and hard boiled Italian dramas. Prolific, he's got more than 140 composer credits to his name and even won an Academy Award in 1996 for ...

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Always the maestro; always the master. The track is Introductions from The Russia House. Jazzy and smooth, Goldsmith plays it cool for you. I generally find the timbre of a solo saxophone rather grating. Plus, it's usually too "adult contemporary/smooth jazz" *ahem-kennyG-ahem* for my tastes. But that melody that starts around 2:11 is addictive as all get out. Pure genius. [audio:061101Introductions.mp3]

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A Night at the Drugstore, found on National Skyline's 2001 album This=Everything. The band started by Hum's bassist after that band's demise. This song is smooth and laid back with a looping, but grounded ethereal quality. [audio:061031NightAtTheDrugstore.mp3] I think it belongs on your iPod; I know it's happy on mine.

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Here's today's song of the day. Michael Jackson's Pretty Young Thing from Thriller. For all Michael's recent problems, the fact remains he was absolutely amazing in his time. Thriller, Off the Wall and to a lesser extent, Bad are still phenomenal albums. I like the quasi-funk backing on this song. Groove it. [audio:061030PYT.mp3] Oh, and tomorrow is Halloween; you know what that means.

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This album is wonderful.

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I knew this day would eventually come, since the tunequest made it into the "i"s many months ago. Back in 2001, I ran across a posting on the usenets called Italian Cinema Lounge. It was 225 songs taking up 700 MB and spanning eleven and a half hours of music culled from various Italian film composers from the 60s and 70s ranging from Alberto Baldan Bembo to ...

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