See You |prod. Michael Harrison |

A song about one of the characters in Anand Gopal's great story 'No Good Men Among The Living' about Afghanistan, framed by the situation there in 2021. Lyrics:

Power in your hands
hands that can't hold no pens 
you claim those desks holdin' your guns
and a dark time comes

40 years of war
not one without a scar
not in sight a life worth livin'
it s a fight for surviving 					

On his run for bread
was where they shot his brother dead                          
and out of hunger pain and pride		
Gul joins the other side

Are there no good men among the living
Are there no helpful men among the dead
what kind of men have you become 
no more allowed to hear a woman sing


Been in the poor man's trap
he can't find America on a map
the least of problems here to have					                 
for who kills for a day alive		

Gul whipped who he saw
whipped to enforce what they called law
with a cable, that's what he had                                                                   
they call it holy djihad

Then America
would turn the fights into a war
they drew a good and bad divide					
and thought all pick a side

Are there no good men among the living
Are there no helpful men among the dead
what kind of men have you become 
universal soldier in Afghanistan


At first they turned the tides
and Gul lost hope, betrayed allies
don't count on mercy, die or flee                                           
now you're a refugee

And still a Taliban
that's what he knows, commanding men				
fight for something with a gun   				
peace has no space for him

[flute]

The door falls in the lock
those who got out can help no more
have no strength to look back
how guards and inmates swap

No more nation building
now mothers sell their children
one more power gave up shell fires
in this graveyard of empires

Are there no good men among the living
Are there no helpful men among the dead
what kind of land will this become
where 20 million women fear lockdown 
and not one word made up in such a song

No Good Men Among The Living

Y Los Cubanos Postizos

Aurora En Pekin

The Mandé Variations

Cantelowes

Format: CD + Digital + LP
Cat#: CCS105 + CCCD019
Release : 07.04.2017
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http://www.ezechielpailhes.com

Beautiful piano melodies, ballads drawing their inspiration from jazz, classical music and cinematic imagery, hummed choruses, a mood at the crossroad of nostalgia and reverie, instruments with uncanny timbre and charm, chiseled percussions, added to a subtle electronic production, this is the recipe for Tout Va Bien, the second solo album by French composer Ezechiel Pailhès.

All this is reflected in the opening track, River Day, which begins with “prepared piano” sounds (a technique mastered by Ezechiel, which consists in placing different objects on the strings of the piano, to create singular percussive notes). This deliberately mysterious and poetic introduction, supported by light electronic effects, is soon combined with a light beat, organ chords and vocalisations by the artist, which gradually transform the track into a ritornello, with both nostalgic and lighthearted tones.

As the artist states it: “We could describe this type of emotion as a kind of endearing nostalgia, close to saudade,” i.e. the Portuguese term expressing the idea of ​​a light melancholy stripped of its sickly aspect, or a “haunted craving” as the singer and composer Pierre Barouh nicely put it. “This feeling comes naturally to me when I write. Generally, in my music, I seek a form of soothing, of eternity even, (without meaning to sound pretentious). This is something I encounter in classical music, which is what I listen to most.”

Even if he defines himself as a “jolly fellow” (which is confirmed by the music and reputation of his electro-pop duo Nôze), when chatting to him, he comes across as quite gentle and stellar, just like this collection of eleven tracks that he composed “in autarky”, entirely alone, in his Montreuil home studio. Following the footpath of Divine, his first solo release from 2013, this album is however more intimate, marking Pailhès' taste for finely crafted moods and drifts. Songs like Tout Va Bien, but also Éternel Été and Promesse, whose lines have been borrowed from Shakespeare's sonnets, seem to shift between carelessness, bliss, bitterness and anxiety.

“Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day
And make me travel forth without my cloak,
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
Hiding they bravery in their rotten smoke?”
(Taken from William Shakespeare's Sonnets that inspired Promesse)

As for titles such as Octobre, Boyd London or Le Fou Du Phare, they illustrate Ezechiel’s gift for composing instrumental ballads, with equally versatile emotions though drawing from cinema, supported by whispered or sung vocalisations. Ezechiel explains: “No word can quite describe this type of singing, it's a kind of ritornello, these are songs without lyrics, which is all down to the fact that I always think of my melodies as songs. The absence of words is not a form of laziness. My songs simply say enough for people to imagine their own story. It is more about suggesting or evoking a feeling, an emotion. "

Even though he composed on the piano, in this album Ezechiel plays and toys with numerous other instruments, such as the Clavietta (a type of Melodica), a Moog Little Phatty synth, an analog Korg Lambda organ, rare virtual instruments, and a whole array of exotic percussions, gleaned along his tours. He insists, however, on the sculptural dimension of his compositional work. For him, it is about “revealing or masking the sound of the original melody” through various processes, including percussive ones, whether using a prepared piano (which he even calls "transformist”) or several digital cuts and superimpositions enabling him to generate what he calls “sound illusions”, through unusual associations between the timbres of various instruments.

Blessed Is the Memory

Rosemary Standley