Arcane Candy

Tropical Punch Tour: South Korea Video presents some downright captivating and moving performances of traditional South Korean music on instruments like the haegum and the komungo, caught during a layover at Incheon airport in Seoul.

For tons of photos and a detailed travel journal, visit the Tropical Punch Tour page.

Enigmatic and intriguing, Myanmar is land of contradictions. It boasts some of the nicest people on Earth who are, ironically, ruled by an oppressive military regime. On the religious front, Buddhism reigns supreme, yet a subculture of nat (spirit) worship continues to thrive in its shadow. The country’s pagoda-dotted landscape maintains layers of dust despite frequent downpours in the rainy season. And despite its considerable distance from the equator, most of Myanmar is oven hot.

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Spooky Actions is, ironically, a very non-spooky-sounding ensemble that employs guitar, bass, drums, woodwinds and cello to reinterpret Early, Western classical and Native American music in a light jazz setting. Retrospective gathers together truncated versions of lenghty recordings from the band’s voluminous vaults. (Most of these tracks include both straight and improvised versions.) Hailing from 200 BC and the 11th century, “Early Music” starts it off with two super-mellow flute-led excursions–one peppy and propulsive, and another that could lull you to sleep on a Sunday afternoon, no problem.

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Like some kind of overture to an epic krautrock adventure, the first track of this album brandishes some prime chiming acoustic guitar all a-pickin’ and a-riffin’, surrounded by strange swooshing and twittering sounds. But, on track two a few moments later, the proceedings quickly descend into a quirky, experimental sound world. That’s when you find out that the while, I mean whole album is comprised of a set of freely improvised guitar duos that have been electronically transformed post-mortem, in whole or in part, by one of the players. On most of the tracks, one guitar is left mostly intact while the other is run through the sonic cheese grater. What it all amounts to is a prickly yet atmospheric album of attention-holding guitar improv that is sure to please fans of this genre. And clocking in at just 33:49, this Sonic Infestation of your ears won’t eat up too much of your life.

Label: Muse Eek Catalog Number: MSK 149 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 11 Total Time: 33:49 Country: United States Released: 2008 More: Bruce Arnold, Muse Eek, John Stowell

Text ©2011 Arcane Candy

One could easily imagine the title London Fix attached to an obscure heroin-based concept album by some mid ’70s British glam rock band. Thankfully, in the case of Tom Hamilton’s London Fix, that’s definitely not the case. In fact, it’s practically a whole universe away. Subtitled “Music Changing With the Price of Gold, An Environment of Continuous Electronic Music,” it features one hour-long track teeming with nothing but layer upon layer of pleasantly percolating and droning synths. These real-world instruments were activated by “fluctuations in spot gold price charts via an electronic pitch-making system, mapping the charts to control individual pitch possibilities, range and even portamento.” Fortunately, the composer took pains to avoid any literal, linear transcriptions, yielding musical results that are far more complex, interesting and beautiful. I highly recommend London Fix for fans of Terry Riley, Francois Bayle, etc. Although it may very well be one of a tiny handful of CDs with liner notes that ask the listener to, “Please play softly,” I liked London Fix so much, I just had to crank it up to 11. Sorry, Tom.

Label: Muse Eek Catalog Number: MSK 118 Format: CD Packaging: Digi-Pack Tracks: 1 divided into 6 sections Total Time: 59:45 Country: United States Released: 2003 More: CD Baby, Muse Eek , MySpace

Text ©2009 Arcane Candy

Shaped exactly like an elephant’s head, Thailand is a vast, sweltering hot tropical kingdom whose landscape ranges from powder white beaches with turquoise water to ultra-green, lush jungles and mountains full of traditional hill tribes. Insanely ornate, gold-splashed Buddhist temples dot the villages and cities, where ramshackle shantytowns nestle up to glitzy shopping malls. Ladyboys, tuk-tuks and picturesque floating markets also await the foreign visitor’s dollars. Welcome to Thailand, one of the world’s top tourist destinations.

Tropical Punch Tour: Thailand Video begins in quaint Phuket Town, deep in the Southern part of the country, where a loud and colorful school parade, gleaming Buddhist temples, huge golden dragon sculptures and gorgeous Sino-Portuguese shophouses grab the eye and won’t let go. Next up comes a quick look at the tropical idyll of the Phi Phi islands, followed by a cruise up the rainy Chao Phraya river in Bangkok. There, in the sprawling capital city, we sample myriad sights and sounds, including magnificent Buddhist temples like Wat Pho and Wat Phra Kaew, and May Kaidee’s vegetarian restaurant, home of the most delicious food to ever hit my tastebuds. Then comes a stop in the Northern town of Chiang Mai, dominated by the gold-splashed intricacies of Wat Phra Singh. After a pleasant morning bobbing in the rainbow-hued Damnoen Saduak floating market in Central Thailand, we head back to Bangkok to grab a gander of astonishing Buddhist temples Wat Kanlayanamit and Wat Arun. The clip draws to a close as we witness a couple of raw street musicians in the blown-out tourist mecca of Thanon Khao San.

Background songs from Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan Volume 2, Siamese Soul, Shadow Music From Thailand and Molam: Thai Country Groove from Isan CDs, courtesy of Sublime Frequencies.

For tons of photos and a detailed travel journal, visit the Tropical Punch Tour page.

First, there was Vincent van Gogh. Then came Vincent Price. Following him was Vincent Furnier. And now there’s Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987)–the latest in a long line of distinguished Vincents, each of whom has made a huge impression on the worlds of art, music and film. Just kidding. This here Piano Sonatas 10 and 11 CD is a reissue of an old LP that collects three works for solo piano composed in the 1950s and ’60s, but not recorded until the 1980s. The liner notes describe Persichetti as “one of the major figures of American music of the 20th century.” Really? Before this CD was released, I had never even heard of his name before. No matter, let’s get down to the music.

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If you’re a fan of John Coltrane–the not-so-jolly giant of ’60s jazz–you already know that footage of the man in action is more rare than a Kinetoscope film of a pterodactyl crashing a Tupperware party. So, imagine my surprise when a whole DVD’s worth of moving images chasing the Trane winked its way into existence inside that as-yet-unamed reality that we call home. The disc rolls out the red carpet for no less than three performances from small town Europe in the early 1960s.

The first set was filmed on March 28, 1960 in Dusseldorf, West Germany on an off night during a Miles Davis Quintet tour. (Having been Davis’ sideman for years, Coltrane begrudgingly did this one last tour with him as a favor.) With Coltrane at the helm, this set boasts five examples of super-mellow, late-night, smokey supper club ballads occasionally salted with Coltrane’s rapid-fire sheets of sound approach that he had developed in the mid-’50s. Featuring Davis’ rhythm section–Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums and Wynton Kelly on piano–the whole lilting thing was filmed for a TV broadcast in stark black-and-white with multiple cameras, which allowed for some pleasantly artistic montages of already nicely composed scenes. Fellow sax man Stan Getz and pianist Oscar Peterson guest on a couple of tracks.

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Vast jungles crawling with rare, exotic animals, insects and plants. Pristine beaches and islands supporting fragile, beautiful coral reefs. Traditional kampung thatched roof houses. Sprawling urban centers sprinkled with shiny glass high rises next to run-down alleys sporting a generous helping of dirt and grime. All of these elements and much more make up the Muslim-dominated country of Malaysia, which lies under the stinging equatorial sun, right between Thailand and Singapore.

Tropical Punch Tour: Malaysia Video takes a quick look at the colorful seaside colonial town of Melaka, including flower-festooned trishaws, a musical performance and dance party stirred up by Hiasan Budaya and a sardine-packed night market in Chinatown. Up in the sprawling capital city, Kuala Lumpur, we briefly encounter a plethora of traditional Malaysian dances offered up at various tourist centers, plus stops at the lovely and lush Taman Rama Rama, also known as the Butterfly Park, and the home of some of Earth’s most brightly hued birds at the KL Bird Park.

For tons of photos and a detailed travel journal, visit the Tropical Punch Tour page.

“Made in Singapore.” Throughout your whole life, you’ve seen those three words stamped on many a product. I’m finally here! But I haven’t seen any smokey factories belching out all of that stuff. Maybe they’re hidden underneath the neatly swept and polished surface. Singapore is a small and tidy island / city / nation that measures only roughly 12 x 24 miles. It’s highly Westernized, ultra-modern, and as far as diners and shoppers are concerned, it can easily compete with any city on the globe.

Tropical Punch Tour: Singapore Video takes a cursory glance at all of the architectural eye candy around town, plus live music performances in the form of a shrill buddhist temple ceremony at Thian Hock Keng, a couple of random street musicians and performers on Cavenagh Bridge, and a chorus of frogs singing their hearts out down inside a sewer in Fort Canning. Background songs courtesy of the Singapore A-Go-Go compilation CD on Sublime Frequencies.

For tons of photos and a detailed travel journal, visit the Tropical Punch Tour page.