2008年 11月 4日 火曜日 17:31

Woven Hand, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, Orchestre Baobab, Department of Eagles, the first CD of Buena Vista Social Club Live, Chet Baker and John Eliot Gardiner: these are my downloads of last month on the great Emusic.com service. Some words about them.

As you might note, I've been trying to go across the traditional rock/pop boundaries this month. I've never been much of a jazz fan, but there is some stuff I've been wanting to pick up, and Chet Baker is one of them. I chose for Chet Baker In New York, an instrumental jazz album. Later on, I might as well decide to download a vocal album by Baker, as a few of them are available on Emusic as well. On the classic side I downloaded a Brahms album by Gardiner; as far as I'm concerned, everything he touches seems to become gold.

On the world music side (I term I despise, BTW) I also chose for a couple of albums: Orchestre Baobab's Made in Dakar, and Buena Vista Social Club Live at Carnegie Hall. GPS-wise miles apart, but musically very close. I knew about the quality of the BVSC album, and had heard lots of good stuff about Orchestre Baobab - and all of this seems to be true.

The remaining three albums can as easily be placed in the world category as well, as I now realize - In Ear Park by Department of Eagles, Ten Stones by Woven Hand and Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. All three of them quite enjoyable albums. Still, I have to give In Ear Park a few more listens, I'm not fully certain this will be in the hors-category of my record collection. If I have to choose now between this record and say, Celebration or Yeasayer, my vote would be for the latter two.

Let me round off by a question - given my appreciation of the last two artists, should I give Fleet Foxes a listen? For some reason, I tend to think they head to much in the freakfolk direction, and that's not something I like.