Room 25

Room 25

Room 25 by Noname; Bandcamp Link: Room 25

Number 38 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

There are things I like about Room 25 and things I don’t.

The music and beats are Jazz/Soul/Gospel inspired, which is interesting for a rap album. Noname has an interesting speak-sing delivery. Her poetry is clever and enjoyable.

However, the music is on the AOR side of Jazz, Soul, and Gospel, just a tad too pleasant for my tastes.

The combination of her quiet speak-song delivery and a bit of muddle in the Mids makes it a not very good album to listen to while driving. You just can’t hear her very well over the road or if you are listening to it from something like the speakers on your phone.

Coincidentally, I was reading a pretty cool interview with Dennis Bovell in Wire Magazine (Issue 416, if you want to track it down,) where he talked about aspects of mixing instruments so that each one has it’s own aural space in the mix of a tune.

They didn’t do that and the mix suffers a bit unless you are listening on headphones or in a quiet room.

#Room25 #Noname #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMagazineTop50

Room 25

Hydrorion Remnants

Hydrorion Remnants by Embassador Dulgoon; Bandcamp Link: Hydrorion Remnants

Number 37 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

If there’s anything you can glean about me from these reviews, it’s probably that I like to be surprised by the music I am listening to.

Embassador Dulgoon is, apparently, a Chilean musician named Nicolas Carcavilla. He has recorded under various guises over the years. This is his first album as “Embassador Dulgoon”.

The music here was recorded, seemingly live in the studio, between 2014 and 2016, yet it all feels of a piece.

Environmental sounds and animal noises rustle and shiver beneath tuned percussion, marimbas and glockenspiels. Simple melodies evoking childhood keen over complex repetitive rhythms.

Every once in a while the whole thing lurches into something like a krautrock groove, as on “Archways of Lepidodendron”, only to collapse back into percussion, synthesizer, and animal noises.

A thoroughly enjoyable album, my only real complaint is it is over far too soon.

#HydrorianRemnants #EmbassadorDulgoon #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMagazineTop50

Hydrorian Remnants
Hydrorian Remnants

Queen of Golden Dogs

Queen of Golden Dogs.

Queen of Golden Dogs by Vessel; Bandcamp Link: Queen of Golden Dogs

Number 36 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

Yellow Magic Orchestra meets Early Music meets the 21st Century Electronic Dance Music, this time with a little gypsy music thrown into the blender.


Most of the songs are pretty filler-esque, building up to Paplu, which is the most fully realized song on the album.

Paplu is a good song, but I don’t think it makes Queen of Golden Dogs a great album

#QueenOfGoldenDogs #Vessel #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMusicTop50

Queen of Golden Dogs

The Return

The Return by Kamaal Williams; Bandcamp Page: The Return

Number 35 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

The Return is sort of like Herbie Hancock’s 1973 band from The Head Hunters album were practicing. They decided to put down their instruments and take a break.

They retired to a nearby closet to smoke a joint.

It turned out that closet was a TARDIS.

During the course of several mind bending intergalactic and interdimensional adventures, on a remote planet, with a particularly smoking native population, the horn players decided to stay, and pass on their legacy of love and woodwinds.

When the remaining players finally re-opened that door again into their practice space, they discovered it was 2019.

They picked up their instruments and started playing again.

#KamaalWilliams #TheReturn #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMagazineTop50

Hilja

Hilja.

Hilja by Cucina Povera; Bandcamp Link: Hilja

Number 34 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

I had no real idea what to expect when I put this album on. Initially, from the name, I had a vague idea it might be some sort of South American Prog Rock, but then the song names made me think it might be Greek Prog Rock.

It turns out it is a Glaswegian vocalist, Maria Rossi, who originally is from Finland.

The music is primarily multi-tracked vocal harmonies with various loops and field recordings, frequently percussive, playing beneath them. Beyond the rich textures of the vocals, the music is fairly spare. Most of the vocal melodies are based from the classical/folk vein and they are sung in several languages, even one in English.

It’s a beautiful album, almost other worldly.

#CucinaPovera #Hilja #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMagazineTop50

“Bo Ya” Gushu and Wild Tea

“Bo Ya” GuShu & Wild Tea Sheng Puerh

Spring 2018 “Bo Ya” Gushu and Wild Tea Sheng Puerh Sheng Cha from King Tea Mall.

I had been enjoying John King’s Instagram feed when he posted the following summary of a new tea, a wild tree tea from the Bulang region in Menghai county.

“Regarding these wild tree, we still don’t know how old they are.
What it attracts me was the unique bitterness and soon coming Huigan (sweetness from aftertaste) and fell in love with it when I first tried it accidentally in Menghai.
Always hard to find accurate description words on this bitterness.
It is a wild, naughty flavor.”

I do really enjoy the way John describes his teas. It is slightly poetic, yet at the same time highly specific and descriptive.

As someone who enjoyed bitterness, (Broccoli Raab is one of my favorite vegetables, when I was drinking I imbibed copiously of the Amaro…) I almost felt like he was daring me to try this tea!

Who wouldn’t want to try a tea with, “a wild, naughty flavor”?

When I finally got around to ordering a cake of the tea he was describing, he said he would include some samples of others he thought I might like, given my interest in his Bitterly Wild and Naughty Tea.

I suppose I should have considered myself warned.

This tea is a blend of tea leaves from Wild trees and Old trees from the BanPen (班盆 which belongs to BanZhang tea area).

The opening flavors are quite bitter, they lead to middle flavors that are OK, but not amazing. Tobacco, Leather. Where this tea shines is in its outstanding and lengthy finish, camphor like flavors which seems to almost evaporate from your tongue. Oh, and it is one of those teas where you’re a couple cups in, and realize that it is zippy. Very Zippy. Or as John says, “Strong ChaQi makes mind clear and breath smooth and clear.”

Isn’t something like that the Mental Mantra from Frank Herbert’s “Dune”?

The Tea Must Flow!

#BoYaGushuPuerh #KingTeaMall #Cha #Tea #DrinkTea

“Man Ka” Puerh Style Tea

Man Ka Puerh Style Tea

2018 Spring “Man Ka” (Laotian Village) Puer Sheng Cha from King Tea Mall.

Another sample which came along with an order from King Tea Mall.

As I mentioned before the Chinese region of Yunnan borders Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar in a sort of indistinct mountainous area. Tea trees grow naturally in the neighboring areas of of all three countries.

As I understand it, John King, the proprietor of King Tea Mall tried some teas in small villages of Laos near Burma and became entranced with the potential of the tea trees there.

Usually, when we say “tea trees”, calling them “trees” is being generous. Most are kind of bushy and spindly, not getting much taller than a man. In commercial tea producing areas, it doesn’t make much sense to let them get too big, it just makes them harder to harvest.

In these areas of Laos, some of these tea trees have been growing wild, apparently for years or decades.

John has some great pictures of the workers climbing trees like squirrels to harvest the tender shoots and leaves of these enormous tea trees.

I’ll let him describe the tea.

“That is a flavor I have never tasted before. Though there is near the south border of YI WU tea region in China, but the taste is far different. Also different from teas from other regions in Yunnan.

“Ever the bitterness turns out in the beginning or sweetness which comes from aftertaste are obvious like a weather I experienced these days in that tea sourcing trip. The sun was shining brightly. Soon a group of cloud dropped by and brought a sudden rainfall. Meanwhile, the sun was still shining from higher sky. When the cloud passed by minutes later, sky turned back to normal as before.

“Rich taste with complex. The mouth feeling varies when tea liquid passes into throat.”

I can’t do any better than that, but I will say the later steeps of this tea exhibit some great fruit flavors that I believe will only be enhanced as it ages.

Usually, the term “Puerh” is reserved solely for tea made in Yunnan, China. Others can be called “Dark Tea”, but they aren’t Puerh.

John brought in tea harvesters and processors from Yunnan, did the early stages of tea processing in Laos. Then moved the tea to Menhai, Yunnan, where the processing was completed. So, at the very least it is Laotian Tea processed in Puerh Style.

#Tea #Cha #LaotianTea #DrinkTea #PuErh #KingTeaMall

Raw Silk Uncut Wood

Raw Silk Uncut Wood by Laurel Halo; Bandcamp Link: Raw Silk Uncut Wood

Number 33 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

Raw Silk Uncut Wood starts with what sounds like Church Organ, but with some odd whistling floating above, and, eventually, the lower organ tones step down the ladder beyond what is possible for organs to play and into the range of electronic dance music.

The middle tunes, especially “Mercury” and “The Sick Mind”, are interesting and varied in their use of acoustic instruments and electronic treatments.

While I admire the arc of the album, starting in church-ey peace, losing it for a bit, and ending in major chord progressions, the last tune, is maybe a tad too Vangelis-ey and anthemic, as in Chariots of Fire, and leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Still overall, an enjoyable journey.

#LaurelHalo #RawSilkUncutWood #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMagazineTop50

The Dream My Bones Dream

The Dream My Bones Dream.

Special Stay-At-Home Holiday edition, aka Tai Chi Sountrack, edition of the Wire Magazine Top 50 Releases.

The Dream My Bones Dream by Eiko Ishibashi; Bandcamp Link: The Dream My Bones Dream

Number 32 in the Wire Magazine (@thewiremagazine) Top 50 Releases of 2018.

There was an interview with frequent collaborators Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O’Rourke in the December, 2018 issue of The Wire Magazine. In it they discussed their reasons for moving their living spaces and recording studios to a remote village in Japan. Ishibashi’s new album was recorded there, inspired by her father’s time in Japan’s Puppet State, Manchukuo, Manchuria, China.

While many of the songs are instrumental, others are sung in Mandarin.

It is a very atmospheric album, with unusual elements of sound drifting in and out from time to time. It is vaguely proggy, vaguely jazzy; indistinct in a hazy, yet compelling, way.

It does remind me, at times, of the records O’Rourke worked on with Wilco, specifically “A Ghost is Born”. Another reference point for me is, somehow, the band Slapp Happy, a brief confluence of band members from the band Faust and members of the band Henry Cow.

#TheDreamMyBonesDream #EikoIshibashi #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #WireMagazineTop50

The Dream My Bones Dream.

Songya Mudan

Songya Mudan

2012 Songya Mudan from Yin xiang hua xia tea.

I mentioned when I ordered a couple teas from Yin Xiang Hua Xia Tea, they sent along a few samples. One was this mysterious entity, marked only in Chinese characters.

The single serving Chicklet/Tile shape intrigued me, but I couldn’t find anything very similar on their website.

Opening the package, it seemed like a white tea of some sort.

I sent a note off the the tea company asking what it was, but went ahead and brewed it at the slightly lower temps I use for white tea.

When I tasted it, I was pretty sure it was a white tea, as it reminded me strongly of Fujianese Bai Mudan or White Peony type tea.

It was quite tasty and surprisingly zippy, with the typical tasting notes you’d give a white tea. Light body, floral, yet earthy/minty flavors. Good length of aftertaste and a bit more re-steepability than you would expect from even a Bai Mudan.

I did eventually hear back from the company and find out the tea is what they call Songya Mudan from 2012. Songya Mudan is a classification of Fujianese white tea with fewer buds than Bai Mudan.

It’s important to note that the main classifications of white tea are based mostly on the ratio of buds to leaves, Silver Needle, White Peony, etc., and that they aren’t exactly related to quality of the tea. Instead, the amount of bud in the tea will affect the character of the brewed tea. In general, the more buds, the more subtle the flavor, the more leaves, the more white tea will taste like the flavors you normally associate with tea. There can be very good (and very bad) teas in any of these classifications, so it is more important to find an importer you trust, and whose taste matches yours, than to decide based solely on Silver Needle vs White Peony vs whatever. Also, Silver Needle teas, because of the increased labor involved with picking more buds per gram of tea, will be more expensive.

There’s an interesting saying that the Chinese have about White Teas:

“一年茶、三年药、七年宝” or “First Year it’s Tea, In the Third Year it’s Medicine, after Seven Years it’s Treasure”

So, finding out Yin xiang hua xia tea, had sent me not just a sample, but an actual “treasure” was quite a surprise!

As regards the medicinal claims for white tea, I will say while drinking so much White Tea through December and January, I was rarely ill, while those around me in the office fell prey repeatedly to colds and flus.

Another point of interest, because the leafier versions of White Tea are so fragile, it actually makes sense to buy it in cakes. The last time I ordered White Tea from China, it was opened and inspected by US Customs. I think unpacking and squeezing the white tea bags was among their priorities, so my tea arrived pretty crushed. If I had, instead, ordered white tea cakes, it might not have been as damaged.

#WhiteTea #SongyaMudan #Tea #Cha #YinXiangHuaXiaTea