David Sylvian has been working out on these minimalist reaches of the sound universe since his ‘blemish’ album. This set of variations brings a fractured coherence to the experiment which generates a whole new experience. This is not a remix album – typically they are derivative of the original. Instead, using the original source material a completely new mood piece is created. Impressive.

I’ve been listening to Sylvian’s music since the mid-70s when I first heard ‘Quiet Life’ by Japan. What an immense journey to reach the point of this album. And it’s a journey I have thoroughly enjoyed following with him.

It is fantastic to hear a musician who continues to explore and push out the boundaries.

“And the radio falls silent
But for short bursts of static
And she sleeps in a house
That once too had a name”

One podcast I have been listening to for over a year now which shrinks journeys and has me laughing out loud is a podcast from Absolute Radio. It’s produced twice a week – the Saturday download is the spoken pieces from the radio show featuring Frank Skinner with Emily Dean and Gareth Richards. It’s about an hour long. Then, mid-week the same team produce a download only 30 minute show. Both of them are incredibly funny. It’s difficult to tell to what extent they are improvising. The whole thing sounds incredibly spontaneous.

The itunes feed is here.

I love it!

Well, if you want to reconnect with your imagination you could try listening to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s album “And in the endless pause there came the sound of bees”. In the very first track where there is the sound of seagulls arising out of the orchestral strings, the imagination can’t help but build pictures out of the music.

It is deeply emotional music, which will lift and drop your spirits as you listen. And just when you think you are listening to traditional string-based soundtrack music, things veer off into ambient distortions that drop your head underwater in a dramatic way.

The whole thing is just under 37 minutes long (that’s what vinyl used to be on average), and leaves you feeling both soothed and disturbed. It’s a beautiful achievement and a landscape of your own mind which I recommend you spend some time building. Enjoy.

ECM is unusual in the world of record labels because it has such a strongly defined aesthetic. The label produces an incredibly diverse range of artists, but there is always that ECM sound which is difficult to define, but very easy to identify.

So, after so much music, I am writing about ECM again now because they have just produced two wonderful albums:

• Jan Garbarek Group -Dresden
• Keith Jarrett – Testament: Paris / London

Both are live albums. I was surprised to realise that this is the first live album for Garbarek. It’s a double album, and captures the excitement of seeing him live. The group has gone through some changes over recent years, partly because of bass player Eberhard Weber’s stroke. He is replaced by Yuri Daniel. This is a tough place to fill – Weber’s playing is so distinctive. Daniel’s playing is beautiful, lyrical and underscores Garbarek’s saxophone perfectly. The other change is Manu Katche on drums – he has worked with Garbarek a lot recently. He replaces Marilyn Mazur. She was always more of a percussionist than a straightforward drummer. Katche brings more of a rock drummer feeling to the music. Between them, Katche and Daniel make for a very different rhythm section which brings some different interpretations of some of the older material. Rainer Bruninghaus remains as the keyboard player, his playing ranging from the frenetic to the achingly lyrical.

The Keith Jarrett album is a triple album covering two live concerts from last year. I’m always amazed by Jarrett’s live work. The idea that he appears on stage to improvise new compositions then and there is remarkable. He says that he always begins with an empty mind – no preconceived ideas. Then, through a series of pieces (short for Jarrett)  he builds a collection of 20 remarkable performances. They are incredibly diverse. The two concerts are very different. As ever, Jarrett is at his best when he searches out a rhythmic melody and then works it to a beautiful conclusion. This is an extremely emotionally laden collection – his best work for years.

So, from two artists who I first heard nearly 35 years ago, come two beautiful albums. A real treat.

If you like the work of Garbarek, and would like to read a book about his music, I think the best book available is probably Michael Tucker’s “Jan Garbarek: Deep Song” – the book focuses on the music of Garbarek but it is also a marvellous exposition of the broader work of ECM.

I was surprised – 300 people turned up. They weren’t disappointed. The evening began with 3 young poets from the Wirral Young Poet Laureate scheme who each read a group of poems.

Carol Ann Duffy presented for just under an hour. Her readings were magnificent. Just the right amount of explanation, description and context setting for each poem. I loved her poems based on myths, with a feminist twist or a different take. Excellent. She ended the reading with a poem she had been working on that afternoon – a poem about war, with many place names read out like the tolling of a bell. The presence of local place names gave a particular resonance to this. Powerful stuff.

The evening was organised by the local library service – it’s good to see something which draws in readers and writers to the enjoyment of literature. And it was also great to have some of my preconceptions dispelled so effectively. A good night out.

His latest album was talked about on internet based mailing lists for the few weeks before release, and there were clips on his website to listen to. It was clearly not going to be an easy listen. Alongside Christian Fennesz who worked with Sylvian on his last solo album (the stunning track “Fire in the Forest” from ‘Blemish’) are a wide range of avant garde musicians including Evan Parker and John Tilbury.

It has taken me a couple of weeks to get to listen to this album properly. It is not the sort of album to put on in the background. Over the last few days I have listened to it on headphones. Sylvian’s voice is placed way up in the mix and the other instruments create a subtle soundtrack in the background. Most of this is missed unless you use headphones. It is a difficult listen, but one that is rewarded massively. The sounds are so stripped down that it takes a while to figure out what is going on. But there is structure here, and the lyrics and voice of Sylvian hold the whole thing together. Many critics, including Ian Penman writing in the latest issue of The Wire, say that they have lost it with Sylvian. They think that he has pushed his music into a cul-de-sac. I don’t agree. I think this album is a staggering achievement. To take the fractured, fragmented and skeletal sounds of the two groups which he worked with on this album and craft the resulting work, is remarkable.  I feel like I have really only scraped the surface of the nuances in this music. It is a work that truly repays the effort put in.

1. Porcupine Tree – The Incident

Already reviewed this. It’s their best album to date. The range of music and variety from intense to melodic.

2. David Sylvian – Manafon

Review coming – music that requires effort to listen to. Worth it for the pay-back.

3. Jonsi & Alex- Riceboy Sleeps

Best ambient album I have heard in a while.

4. The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method

An album about cricket from two Irishmen! Neil Hannon from Divine Comedy shows what a great lyricist he is. It’s ELO meets 10CC.

5. Madness – The Liberty of Norton Folgate

A concept album from Madness – whatever next. Great tunes and a massive track to finish the album.

6. Bach – Mass in B Minor

Listening to this is like a marvellous antidote to modern living.

7. Porcupine Tree – Stupid Dream

An older album by the band – not as good as the new one, but great tunes and it really rocks.

8. A-ha – Foot of the mountain

I’ve always loved the music of A-ha. This new album by them is a return to form (a cliche I know, but it is!)

9. Jan Garbarek Group -Dresden

If you search for Garbarek in this blog you’ll find earlier reviews including a live concert I saw. This new double live album is wonderful. Eberhard Weber is still not around, due to having had a stroke, but this new line-up produce great music.

10. Keith Jarrett – Testament: Paris / London

ECM go from strength to strength. This is a live triple CD of two concerts. Spontaneous composition / improvisation. Beautiful melodies plucked out of the air by Jarrett.

It’s a two disc collection – the first disc comprising an extended piece of 55 minutes. In the form of a suite of 14 songs, the music and lyrics are the reflections of Steven Wilson arising from an accident he observed whilst waiting in a traffic jam. The title comes from the road sign “Police – Incident” which he thought was a really cold way to describe what was happening.

This disc does bring us to the realisation that prog rock is well and truly back. The idea in the 70s that punk swept away prog excesses with the return of the 2 minute hit (‘New Rose’ by The Damned had a cover of ‘Help’ by The Beatles that went so fast it was under 2 minutes!) – was never very convincing when you look at the speed with which bands like Public Image were experimenting with form and length.

Porcupine Tree have always pulled themselves in two directions probably led by the fact that Steven Wilson seems to like melody and noise in equal parts. At its most pop, this album is beautiful – at its noisiest it does something wonderful too.

The second disc is a short EP-length work of 4 tracks. The whole thing needn’t have been spread over two discs but I think it works better that way. I’ve listened half a dozen times so far, and am getting hooked into this album…

A couple of weeks ago I bought this album, just as it came out. I have been a big fan of Sigur Ros since I first came across their music a few years ago in Wire magazine. I love Wire magazine – every issue introduces you to heaps of bands and musicians you will never have heard of. They push the musical boundaries (sometimes too far, but that is the point!) Anyway, after hearing a track by the band on a compilation CD given away with the magazine I set off to explore their music. This was around the time of their untitled album known as () which I bought and thought was the most original music I had heard in years. So why am I telling you all this? Well, having continued to follow their music and their ascent to wider fame I was very interested when this new album came out. Jonsi is the lead singer in Sigur Ros and Alex is his partner. It’s a deeply ambient album. On first listen I was struck by the subtlety of the music – there’s immense depth but it is masked within a deeper wash. There are tracks that are very reminiscent of the work of Brian Eno – but, whereas Eno uses repetition and mechanistic approaches, this music has a deeper layer of emotion.

 After many listens now, I sat down last night to listen to the album again – but this time through headphones. It was a revelation. There is so much going on in each track which is simply lost to the room when listening with speakers. It opens up a whole different perspective to the music. Each track creates a stunning soundscape which depicts a combination of melody (just, as far as is possible in the domain of ambient), rhythm and a backdrop of found sounds which prompt visual imagery in the listener. The use of children’s choir on a couple of the tracks is breath-taking.

I know it is tempting to stop liking a band when they become so popular that they can be heard behind countless trailers on the BBC, but I am still in love with the music of Sigur Ros, and this album shows that the band members are still pushing the boundaries and prepared to explore new challenges.

This book, written by James Redfield and Carol Adrienne builds on the original book “The Celestine Prophecy” written by Redfield.

Sometimes these add-on books are just an excuse to sustain an idea, keeping sales going by selling second book to those who bought the original book. In this case though, this books adds a lot to the original work with plenty of thought-provoking insight. It is a fascinating read with plenty of useful exercises. Each chapter takes one of the nine insights from the original texts, expands on the ideas behind the insight and then has a series of exercises for individual use and workshop ideas for group work.