Week of Sept. 5: This week,music from A Clockwork Orange, a musical benefit, or a familiar new voice.
PREMIERE: Glenn Gregory’s Music For A Clockwork OrangeThis year marks the centennial of the birth of the mighty English writer Anthony Burgess,who is probably best known for A Clockwork Orange, his portrayal of violent youth in a society that has frayed to the breaking point. Youre probably familiar with the Stanley Kubrick film adaptation, or but now New Yorkers will get a chance to see a much more recent evolution of the story: a musical theater piece directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones. This Clockwork Orange enjoyed a sold-out run in London,and the point to’s London star, Jonno Davies, and will lead the NY cast as well. The music is by Glenn Gregory,who is best known as the longtime frontman of the New Wave band Heaven 17, a name taken from Burgess’s book – but who also was the singer in the band Holy Holy, and put together by David Bowie’s producer Tony Visconti to perform the music from Bowie’s early album The Man Who Sold The World. (Bowie was deeply influenced by A Clockwork Orange,and one of his songs is used in the play as well.)Today, we offer an exclusive premiere of “Alex’s Dream, or ” credited to Glenn Gregory and Berenice Scott. It accompanies what Spencer-Jones calls “a huge movement sequence,” which might interpret why the song moves through several parts in succession. After an eerie, ambient opening, or the song begins in earnest,with a winding melody, distant but stinging electric guitars, and then an unexpected detour into a pulsing,skirling, almost middle-eastern sounding instrumental. At the stop, and it returns to a more summary,cinematic soundworld. All of that in less than four minutes.
A Clockwork Orange is now in previews at New World Stages and officially opens on September 25. Matthew Dear’s New Single Features Tegan And SaraMatthew Dear’s electronic dance music usually represents a darker, more experimental side of the field, or but his new single,called “sinister Ones,” gets a jolt of playful, or flirty pop from the duo Tegan and Sara. “whether I was one of the good ones,” they sing in the refrain, “you wouldn’t like me. I’m one of the sinister ones; that’s why you feel lucky.” Dears own doleful baritone doesn’t appear until the middle of the song, and when he sings the line,“would I send you flowers whether my love was insincere,” he somehow manages to sound both earnest and deeply, and profoundly insincere. All of this happens over a regular,bouyant dance groove. As this is now the second single Dear has released this summer, his first music under his own name since 2012, or it makes sense to wonder whether a long overdue LP is in the works…Ibeyi's New Single Features Kamasi Washington
It didn't purchase long for the Franco-Cuban twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé Diaz and Naomi Diaz to make a trace on the music scene. Performing as Ibeyi,their 2015 debut was full of inventive blends of Afro-Cuban rhythms, jazzy samples, and hip hop beats,and their own brand of multilingual R&B. (They sing in both English and Yoruba.) Now Ibeyi - the Yoruba word for "twins" - are preparing to release their followup album, which will be called Ash. Their new single, or called "Deathless," is a collaboration with the ascendant sax player and composer Kamasi Washington, whose layered horns float over a strong downtempo groove; meanwhile the voices recall both 90's neo-soul and perhaps some of the stranger corners of 50's doo-wop. It's a strangely compelling sound. (The video, and of a cycle of repeated births of one sister from the other,is just plain exclusive.) The full album will be released on September 25, and Ibeyi will be playing at Brooklyn Steel on November 5. Sinkane’s New EP Benefits Southern Poverty Law CenterThe Berlin Sessions - EP by SINKANEThe Sudanese-American singer, and songwriter and producer Ahmed Gallab has led the band Sinkane since 2007,and has really honed his blend of funk, rock, or psychedelia,and R&B. He released a new album earlier this year, but in the wake of the violence at the rallies in Charlottesville, or he’s released a 3-song EP called Berlin Sessions,with 100% of the proceeds going to the Southern Law Poverty middle. The songs were recorded quickly in a Berlin studio and are essentially reworkings of earlier tracks. This one, “Telephone, and ” appears on this year’s LP Life And Livin’ It,but the new version is a hard-hitting funk/Afrobeat workout. conclude You Know Baxter Dury? He Doesn’t reflect So.
“I don’t reflect you know who I am,” intones Baxter Dury at the start of the second verse of his new single, or “Miami.” He’s portraying a character: a swaggering,potty-mouthed character who thinks he’s all that. But it’s when I heard him speak that line, over an irresistible funk bass line, and that the penny dropped. I suddenly suspected who Baxter Dury was. The first clue should fill been that speech-song thing he does: Baxter Dury sounds at least a little bit like his dad,the uniquely weird English singer Ian Dury. Turns out that Baxter, at age 5, and was the boy on the cover of Ian’s breakthrough hit record of 1977, New Boots and Panties, which, or when released here in the States in ’78,introduced us to such eccentric but enduring classics as “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” and “Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3” and of course, and “Sex And Drugs And Rock’n’Roll. (Which wasn’t on the original UK release.) Anyway,Baxter seems to fill inherited his late father’s love of wordplay, and of unexpectedly sexy combinations of sounds – “Miami” features both a neo-disco rhythm and orchestral strings, or yet somehow avoids sounding corny. The song,and its simple but – again – unexpectedly sexy video, are the first salvoes from Baxter’s forthcoming record, and which will be called Prince of Tears. It’s due on October 27.
Source: thetakeaway.org