Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
“If you come in peace, then drink from the bass within.” Raz Mesinai While in the real world the clash of cultures can lead to violence and heartache, it can also lead to brilliant art, as sparks fly from the nexus of conflicting, competing or just plain different worldviews. I …
Read More »Tag Archives: International/World
Long Riders: Jam Band Circuit As Business Model
Although one of the biggest players is leaving the scene, the jam band model of steady touring, long and varied shows, and encouraging fan community is now a viable alternative to the label-dependent radio and CDs model that has become a victim of the changing market of media consolidation, file …
Read More »Deep Forest – Essence of the Forest
I vividly recall when Deep Forest’s first hit, “Sweet Lullaby,” first poured into my ears, a beguiling hybrid of spacious ambient house and verdant pygmy chants and throat singing, an oddly intimate and organic music tickling something familiar in an atavistic corner of my brain. The entire ’92 Deep Forest …
Read More »Sacha Distel Dies
I am trying to understand what this says about me, who has in theory closely followed popular music for 35 years, that I have never even heard of this guy: Tributes have been coming in for French singer Sacha Distel, who died on Thursday after a long illness at the …
Read More »23rd International Reggae and World Music Awards
New Yorkers get to have all the fun – you get the Sam Bisbee CD release party at the Mercury Lounge tonight, and then you get this: The International Reggae and World Music Awards produced annually by Martin’s Inter-Culture announced today the performance line up, which will include the legendary …
Read More »Bill Laswell – ROIR Dub Sessions
Beautiful dubby weirdness plumbing the subterranean depths and playing laser tag among the stars. ROIR Dub Sessions is a sampler of one song each from Laswell’s four dub CDs for the NYC indie punk and reggae label ROIR: “Dread Iternal” from Sacred System Chapter One: Book of Entrance, “Thunupa” from …
Read More »Bill Laswell – Emerald Aether: Shape Shifting Reconstructions of Irish Music
My St. Patty’s Day contribution: Ireland is a country of intense contradictions: religious, political, cultural and artistic. With a deep mystical and poetic tradition that predates Christianity, the Irish feel intensely the staggering natural beauty of their homeland, but also see beyond it to powers invisible and even unknowable. Bill …
Read More »Savina Yannatou – Terra Nostra
Recorded live in her native Athens, Terra Nostra, by lovely Greek diva (in the best sense) Savina Yannatou and her Primavera en Salonico ensemble, romps in a wildly entertaining manner across an international traditional music landscape over twenty songs and 74-minutes, from the lightest Enya-like levitation to ululating Mediterranean passion, …
Read More »GRAMMY – The World of Ghazal
Ghazal’s profound The Rain is nominated for the Best Traditional World Music Album award. Profoundly oceanic, stunningly accomplished, subtle and moving, the new Ghazal live CD The Rain continues the duo’s groundbreaking fusion of the Indian and Persian musical traditions. Kayhan Kalhor on the droning Persian bowed string instrument the …
Read More »Katell Keineg, “Shaking the Disease”
The title track of SHAKING THE DISEASE, a three-song “CD single” from the Dublin-based, Welsh-Breton singer Katell Keineg, is one of the most delightfully energetic numbers she’s ever done. Where many artists mellow with age, on the evidence of “Shaking the Disease” it’s clearthat Keineg’s songwriting is as strong and …
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