POING and Maja Ratkje live in Belgium

How about John Lennon´s "Working Class Hero", with POING and Maja S.K. Ratkje, live in Vooruit, Ghent (Belgium) in June 2013?

Poing is Rolf-Erik Nystrøm (sax), Frode Haltli (accordion) and Håkon Thelin (bass).

More videos on Frode Haltli´s YouTube channel: Brecht/Weills "Der Song von Mandalay", "Ein Liebersversuch" and "L'Internationale" + "Solidaritätslied" together with 100 singers.

Ketil Gutvik Weekly

Anyone going to Oslo in the late summer?
If so, you may want to take notice of the Norwegian guitar player Ketil Gutvik´s concert series "Gutvik ukentlig" ("Gutvik weekly"), that has been going on for 10 years now.

The program is quite impressive, and you will find the last four concerts this year in the bottom of the blog post. The concerts are held in a record store called "Stein and Jord" and the entrance fee is next to nothing. The "Gutvik ukentlig" site is in Norwegian, but I think you will manage to find your way, no matter what planet you come from.


Tuesday 13 August
Akira Sakata (JP) / Fred Lonberg-Holm (US) / Paal Nilssen-Love / Ketil Gutvik
/sax/cello/trommer/gitar/
+ Ungsoloen: Natalie Sandtorv
/stemme solo/

Tuesday 20 August
Okkyung Lee (KOR) / Jørgen Mathisen / Andreas Wildhagen / Ola Høyer / Ketil Gutvik
/cello/sax/trommer/kontrabass/gitar/
+ Ungsoloen: Johan Lindvall
/keyboard solo/

Tuesday 27 August
Per-Åke Holmlander / Kjetil Møster / Ståle Liavik Solberg / Ketil Gutvik /tuba/saksofon/trommer/gitar/
+ sesongstart for konsertserien Blow Out: TBA
/NB! Venue: MIR, Toftesgate 69/ (only this concert)

Tuesday 3 September
Steve Noble (UK) / Rolf-Erik Nystrøm / Ketil Gutvik
trommer/sax/gitar/
+ Ungsoloen: Ole Mofjell
/trommer solo/

Metric: Synthetica

I must admit I have not listened much to the band Metric, but take a look at this video with Emily Haines and James Shaw doing "Synthetica", backstage at the Sasquatch! Music Festival in 2012. And hey, watch out for flying motorbikes!

I was really looking for news on Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, but I couldn´t find anything.

So what to do? Let´s have a blog post from 2007 on Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton´s great album "Knives don´t have your back" (Last Gang 2006), and that will get us a Robert Wyatt link to! Robert Wyatt has been singing lyrics by Emily´s father, Paul Haines ("Curtsy" on "Darn it" American Clave, 1993), and he even wrote liner notes for the "Knives don´t have your back" album.

Here is most of the blog post from 2007 (the video and links in that post are not working any longer):

"Check out the new record from Emily Haines, "Knives Don't Have Your Back".Who, if not Robert Wyatt, wrote cover notes for her album? "Haines doesn't take a predictable route to the inside of your head. No grandstanding. She's a true daughter of the revolution, and has inherited wisdom beyond her years. So how does she reach us? By quietly closing the stage door behind her, dodging the limelight glare for now. She slips around the edge of the stage, almost disappears, keeps to the shadows like her parents taught her, then is suddenly positioned right beside your ear. She's speaking your language but don't be so sure you know what she's thinking - this might be all in code. She's drawn in breath and drawn you in, too. You're hooked but it's not her fault; maybe she was just saying "Hello". (RW)".

Emily Haines is Paul Haines' daughter, and the cover of her album looks like a nod to "Escalator Over The Hill"

Susana Santos Silva / Torbjörn Zetterberg: "Almost Tomorrow"

Trumpet and bass, what a great combination!

You better check out Portuguese Susana Santos Silva and Swedish Torbjörn Zetterberg´s new album "Almost Tomorrow" on Clean Feed (2013).
I really don´t know how much of the music that is improvised, and how much that is composed (downloaded, no cover, you know how it is) but it sounds like we get both kinds. And it is great music all the way!

Clean Feed puts it this way: "This is music with a research quality, almost a scientific experiment. But don’t worry: what you have here is not a dry, cold, difficult, pretentious record. Completely the opposite: this is a dance of sounds, a permanent discovery of the one’s and other’s selves and of that elementary social sum obtained when a 2 comes from an interpersonal encounter", and I won´t disagree.

Below you will see a live video from Associação Verde-Rubro, Porto, Portugal May 24 2013.

Sidsel Endresen and Stian Westerhus – Porgy & Bess, Vienna

Watch Sidsel Endresen and Stian Westerhus at the Porgy & Bess club in Vienna 1 February 2013. Full concert.

Mirror To The Soul

OK, I might have had too much sun the other day, but I came out of a record store with a double vinyl album of rhythmic fun from the Caribbean!

This is usually not my kind of stuff, but still, it is great fun! Experts on the area might have something to say on the selection of songs (please comment), but at least to an amateur like me "Mirror To The Soul. Caribbean Jump-Up, Mambo & Calypso Beat 1954 - 77" (Soul Jazz Records 2013) seems close to perfect.
Click right here for a list of artists and songs.

Jump-up, calypso and mambo it is, but also with traces of reggae, ska and jazz.

I have to admit I fell for party songs like Lord Brynner´s "The queen sings calypso" and Fabulous McCleverts´ "Don´t blame it on Elvis", and not to forget Lord Flea´s nods to jazz in "Calypso be bop".

It seems like you may buy several versions of this release (CD, CD-box ?, double vinyl), with or without download codes, and +/- a documentary on the Caribbean 1920 - 1972.
The documentary is a selection of what seems like news clips, and contains little music.

"Don´t blame it on Elvis
for shaking his pelvis.
Shaking the pelvis has been in style
ever since the river Nile".

August

Alright, let´s face it, it´s August already!

To "celebrate", check out Motorpsycho and Reine Fiske, and their version of Arthur Lee´s (Love) "August" (Rome, May 2013).

"August" is a track on Motorpsycho´s highly recommended album "Still life with eggplant" (Rune 2013).