Fischinger to Fantasia with a dash of Penderecki

Friday 10th November

Hi All!

Here are Friday’s Music Fragments, adding some colour to the week.

Feel free to pass along if it lifts your luggage.

Song Sketch 7

With a bit of a turn in the weather, I pulled out this track from the archives, ‘It was cold’ A bit of a scrappy recording, but holds some charm to it in places. It was really a guitar based noodle with a constant swirling picking pattern, sparse lead guitar on top and a rattling harmonic line. I like the picture it paints of finding our way beneath the stars, shivering quietly in lost lives. Track and lyrics below.

Ear Candy

This week I was introduced to Alex G and his track Pretend. I like the low fi feel, simple grooves, ramshackle harmonies, scratchy lead guitar with a rich acoustic guitar shimmering over the top. The same goes for Easy, more of the same in an enjoyable way. Others on the radar have been Loreen with Is It love and Jorga Smith with Feelings.

Gig in Town

If you have the time available, you could mosey on down to see Nils Frahm’s matinee show on Nov 14th at Barbican Hall - take a listen to Mussel Memory, such a delicate, beautiful track. Tonight, Green Day play the Electric Ballroom in Camden, this after their impromptu gig at The Marquis in Covent Garden last night! However, if jazz is your bag, then you are in for a treat with either, Alex Hitchcock and Ant Law: Same Moon at the Outernet, or Tyshawn Sorey and Pat Thomas at Cafe Oto as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival.

Song I am learning

So this track is just so beautiful, Arpeggi Radiohead. The floating chord progression has a layered mix of syncopated guitars wrapped inside a minimalist looping drum pattern, with counter melody’s producing increasing tension, all washed in a whirling mass of reverb. The song modulates to B minor towards the end and just sinks you further down into its depths. When trying to work out the track, I am reminded of the interviews with Jonny Greenwood discussing his love of Krzysztof Penderecki (have a listen to "Polymorphia for 48 stringed instruments") in Anna Schmidt’s documentary. There are wonderful scenes of the composer walking out to a young festival crowd in Poland and being cheered as if he was James Brown. Arpeggi, breathtaking, so many beautiful examples of this track. Simply stunning.

Film Friday

Oskar Fischinger, one of my all time visual music film hero’s. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at Disney’s Fantasia, through the lens of Fischinger and his work as a pioneer of experimental animation. At an unusual time in Hollywood, when Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky were LA neighbours, Fischinger found himself working on the eclectic Disney film, Fantasia, mixing modern day cartoons with conceptual art work. Building animations using Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Fischinger finally quit after he considered his work was being adapted and made too realistic. An interesting look at the works behind the Disney classic.

Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a fun way to bring some colour into the week. If you’d like to support my work, please pass along and help build this community taking a peak at music, life and the whole enchilada.

Sketch - It was cold

Lyrics - It was cold

Well there is a darkness

and it feels cold upon my chest.

I didn’t realise you were here

It would not have come to this.

My breathing come on quickly

I see your red shoes in the room

So this is really happening

And there’s nothing left to do

It was too cold, it was too cold.

Yeah it was too cold, my love.

What worries me is if you’ll suffer all alone.

I didn’t mean to break you off

a cold and shattered bone.

I always seem to find my way

better under stars

but I need to understand

just what we came here for.

Was it love, was it love, was it love?

Well, yeah it was.

You kissed me tenderly beneath the burning stars.

Gases blooming slowly

Blood orange in the skies.

I could have told you

what I nearly didn’t see.

The point is just believing

in everything you need.

But it was cold, it was cold, it was cold

inside my love.

Sometimes there’s laughter

and other times there’s fires.

Sometimes you drew faster

than a sharp shooter when you lied

but it lit me up

like old stars inside my mind.

Everything that could be there was,

everything was fine.

Was it love, was it love, was it love?

Well, yeah it was.

You wore that white dress

and danced all through the night.

I watched you shiver quietly

Tryin’ get my - head right.

I meant just to leave you

out of harm in the moonlight.

Nothing ever seems that way

when I’m out of your sight.

It was love, it was love, it was love

that we lost