Classical

Tango | Francisco Tárrega

my contribution to the open collaboration "lucid dream" of 
@StanLeonard.
Hear the original here: https://soundcloud.com/stanleonard/lucid-dream
Photo: Burano Island, Venice, Italy
Hope you enjoy this dreamy music.


lucid dream    -    stanleonard/jensfelger

Written and self-recorded in 2014 by Brad Wilson (Guitarist).
Denver, CO. Art credit: Charmaine Gurule

La Serpiente

Truenjos Lejanos

Written and self-recorded in 2014 by Brad Wilson (Guitarist).
Denver, CO. Art credit: Charmaine Gurule


Sin Miedo

Pachanga Miramar - El Sexteto Miramar

M.A.K.U. Soundsystem: Mezcla
Order here: https://glitterbeat.lnk.to/Mezcla
Release date: May 27th, 2016
Glitterbeat Records

M.A.K.U Soundsystem’s Mezcla is Out May 27th on Glitterbeat Records

The immigrant experience is an opportunity to create, to find a voice that speaks loud and proud, to connect past and future. A chance to make history. That’s what the eight-piece M.A.K.U. Soundsystem does on their fourth album, Mezcla (‘Mix’). Through the eyes and ears of Colombians who’ve arrived and made their homes in New York City, it is, in every way, a mix, an invitation to think and to dance.

The band passionately elaborates, “The immigrant experience is complex. Though reasons and conditions for migrating vary greatly (modes of transportation, access to resources and language, fear of violence, health, etc.), one thing we can certainly say is that it is a life-changing, identity-shaping experience. As a group of curious and creative people, our immigrant experience manifests itself through the playful exploration of our musical roots and cultural heritage, while making commentary on our day to day realities, inevitably reflecting our times. For the past several years, M.A.K.U Soundsystem has come together week after week to practice communicating in multiple ways; musically, culturally, politically, and straight-up emotionally growing closer as we continue to develop a shared language. It’s not always a tight groove, but the point of our mixing is not to become homogenous. Our album “Mezcla” is about us coming together through and with our differences, to create a musical experience where we can all be truly present as unique and essential elements of that mix.”

Mezcla is a relentlessly honest record. The music hits the feet and the hips, powerful and overwhelming, while the lyrics reflect the lives the band members live. There’s the giddy flirtation of a summer Saturday night on ‘Haitiana’ and the thought that comes from looking around somewhere so different and asking ‘What Do You Wish For.’ But it also embraces darker political questions that don’t have easy answers. The opening track, ‘Agua,’ for instance, wonders why some people own the seeds that should be for everyone – who are those who have and who are the dispossessed? And ‘De Barrio,’ the warm, inviting waltz that closes the disc, examines the journey so many coming from Latin America to the US undertake.

M.A.K.U. Soundsystem is a powerhouse that’s been built over years of rehearsals and gigs, criss-crossing America from the Lincoln Center Outdoors -in their adopted hometown of New York- to Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Canada and around the globe to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark and onto the Atlantic Music Expo in Cape Verde. Everywhere they’ve won over friends: a storming appearance at globalFEST saw the band awarded a touring fund, while new outlets have kept heaping praise on them. 

Mezcla is a statement, an embrace. Think and dance. A way forward delivered with the urgency that’s become a hallmark of M.A.K.U. Soundsystem. It captures the live sound of the band, that thrilling rawness where the rough edges become a vital part of the whole, plenty of freedom but with the tightness honed by night after night of gigs. 

It’s passionate and blazing, turning from anger to tenderness, to endurance and hope. M.A.K.U. Soundsystem is the modern immigrant experience in a microcosm – and it’s not so different from all the generations that have gone before. People carrying their own mix of the past and the present, the old and the new, tradition and modernity. Mezcla reflects the lives they’re building.

“We try to keep it human,” Ospina says. “To give people something they can relate to.”

To think and dance.

Mezcla

M.A.K.U. Soundsystem - Thank You, Thank You

BIXIGA 70: THE COPAN CONNECTION - BIXIGA 70 MEETS VICTOR RICE
Release date: April 16th, 2016

This is Bixiga 70, an instrumental dance band from Sao Paulo, Brazil known for their high energy and mix of styles. They combine American funk, Colombian cumbia and Nigerian afrobeat, and it's made them really popular around the world. ---Banning Eyre, NPR 

Hot on the heels of their highly acclaimed Glitterbeat album “III” -- an album The Guardian called “imaginative, progressive afrobeat”-- Bixiga 70 returns with a limited-edition, vinyl-only release for Record Store Day: The Copan Connection: Bixiga 70 meets Victor Rice.

Whereas “III” was a highly contemporary take on the Afro-Brazilian, “Black Atlantic” musical conversation, The Copan Connection looks northward from Brazil to Jamaica, and embraces the repeat-echo history of dub music as its inspiration. On the album, Bixiga 70 producer Victor Rice applies shimmering, kaleidoscopic dub reinventions to tracks from “III” and the results are jaw dropping and ear opening. Rarely has the full arsenal of dub techniques and philosophies been applied to music that isn’t reggae, and while dub and Afro-Brazilian stylings do not immediately connect in one’s mind, once the album is heard pumping out of the speakers it is clear that this is both a natural fit and a ground-breaking idea. 

The music swells, ebbs, flows, deconstructs and then blissfully reconnects in completely unexpected ways. The result is not a mere companion piece to “III” but a completely new, stand-alone sonic experience. 

The dubmaster on The Copan Connection, Victor Rice is a transplanted New Yorker, now residing in Sao Paulo. His contribution to the Brazilian music scene in the last years has been massive. Besides Bixiga 70, Rice’s production skills have been sought out by a who’s-who of established and emerging Brazilian artists including the legendary Elza Soares and the recent Latin Grammy winner Tulipa Ruiz. But Victor’s discography is also chock-full of reggae, ska and dub productions including a contribution to the dubbed out, Pink Floyd remake album “Dubber Side of the Moon.” He is no dub dilettante that's for sure. He works his magic in an old skool, King Tubby style, on a mixing board, with just a couple of effects and an abundance of inspiration and ideas. 

Rice’s studio sits high above the megalopolis of Sao Paulo, in the famed Copan building, a classic of modernist architecture. His mixing board is pushed against a window and looking out one gets the sense they are floating above the beautiful madness of the city. It is a surreal setting perfect for the creation of shape-shifting, surreal sounds.

The Copan Connection: Bixiga 70 meets Victor Rice is a summit of equals. It is the music of a sensational band meeting the soundworld of a sensational producer. It pushes Afro- Brazilian music into a mind-blowing, alternate dimension. 


The Copan Connection - Bixiga 70 Meets Victor Rice

The Copan Connection: Bixiga 70 Meets Victor Rice

Bixiga 70 Meets Victor Rice - Machado Dub

Friday Night

From Nashville to Santiago de Cuba, Memphis to Manchester, Liverpool to Laurel Canyon, and Belfast to Woodstock, the needles of musical diversity and political discourse glide elegantly over El Misti’s debut record.

El Misti

Kingdom

The Rose That Poisoned The Ground

Devil Won't Dance

Available on Analog Africa No.13 - The Skeletal Essences of Afro Funk
Release date: April 30th

Ecoute ma Melodie - Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou

Minister of Propaganda
Lyrics written/sung by Brother Culture
Music by Victor Rice
Total Running Time/ASCAP
Live set recorded by Brieuc Labiouse

Strikkly Vikkly in Mouscron, BE [4 May, 2013]: Minister of Propaganda

I love the blues and became determined to learn to play when I found my beautiful Eastman archtop guitar up for sale, second hand for a bargain price, in Jan 2012. As soon as I touched it I fell in love.

I first tried playing guitar several decades ago: with unrealistic teenaged enthusiasm I fully expected to sound like Hendrix within a month or two while practising just thirty minutes a week. I gave up when I still struggled to tune my guitar and the cowboy chords I'd learnt sounded really rough when I literally banged on them. Girls were much more interesting.

In my late thirties I had a mid-life crisis(!), so I  bought a US Strat and a Gibson LP Pro, determined to learn to be an ageing 'bedroom rock star'. I was working long and hard hours so only practised on odd weekends, always wondering why following tab and listening to CD lessons was not working. I decided I was tone deaf and incompetent, so yet again, I gave up, still unable to master bar chords, convinced I would never be able to play.

As an early retiree, I decided to give it a final attempt when I found my black beauty: the first few years were a journey of discovery, discipline and sore fingers. I practised most days (except when arthritis in my joints and a trapped nerve in my shoulder 'froze' my fretting pinkie and sent my thumb totally numb). Back then, I trawled YouTube and bought a DVD course of lessons, and plugged away. It was worth it as I really enjoyed the fairly limited range of things I could play.

When I first arrived on Soundcloud, I was not expecting to find such a talented and helpful community. I just wanted to upload a jam track for my friends to hear, then I found the amazing wealth of creativity here. 

Sadly, my frozen shoulder, trapped nerve and related problems have pretty much stopped my guitar ambitions since 2016.

However, I still have a blast exploring all the fabulous originals and covers so many relatively unknown, but hugely talented, musicians have conjured up for the SC community. In my first five weeks on here I downloaded c100 tracks and 'liked' hundreds more, and since then I have created many playlists that I regularly listen to depending on my mood...

Simon Cowell and his ilk (overpaid gatekeepers/brand creators/ubercapitalists) have, until now, throttled mass talent for the sake of creating a relative handful of extremely wealthy 'cash cow' celebs.

Who needs these supposedly 'professional talent spotters' and their artificially enhanced 'celebrities'? The internet rocks!

NB If you too suffer from joint pain, RSI or trapped nerves I highly recommend this free DIY pain relief site: it is not just for guitar related injuries but pain anywhere in the body pretty much, and the techniques used really do work - although for me, they provide just temporary relief. Good luck!

I am guitarist on a unique journey of musical exploration in Latin America.

I am travelling independently and researching world music genres with two aims:

TO CREATE MUSIC FUSIONS
- by combining genres in unexpected ways

TO BUILD GUITAR COURSES
- which empower others to do the same

Follow my journey at http://www.OpenSauceGuitar.com.

Tango | Francisco Tárrega

Open Sauce Guitar

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