Category Archives: Music

What’s New for the 29th of September: A Glen Cook series, a novel that comes with its own soundtrack, people with ‘special powers,’ … and Maddy Dances, Danish jazz, the folklore of bees, and other bits and bobs as well

The novel should be understood as a structure built to accommodate the greatest possible amount of cool stuff. — Steven Brust in this Strange Horizons interview The Huddled Masses Ensemble just sent us several cases of Pendle Witches Brew, an ale with a thick, malty, … Continue reading

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Humbird’s Pharmakon

Humbird is a project of Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter (and pizza waitress) Siri Undlin, working with several other local musicians. As the album opens on an acoustic country-folk song, her voice is pure country, and I suppose she could be working out … Continue reading

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Dori Freeman’s Every Single Star

In the three years since her self-titled debut took the Americana world by surprise and garnered critical and popular acclaim, Dori Freeman has gone through a lot of changes. The songs on Dori Freeman mostly centered around the breakup she … Continue reading

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Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia’s La misteriosa musica della Regina Loana

It was on a particularly melancholy night as summer faded to autumn that I first heard the exquisite, sad and slow rendering of “Moonlight Serenade” by Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia on their 2019 album that is a tribute to … Continue reading

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What’s New for the 24th of September: Traffic’s version of ‘John Barleycorn’, Dissing neo-paganism, Vess’ Book of Ballads and Sagas and other matters

If I told you the whole story, your head would burst. There is no one story, there are branches, rooms… corridors, dead ends. — The Storyteller as played by a John Hurt in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller It’s definitely not Summer here … Continue reading

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Enrico Rava and Joe Lovano’s Roma

Italian jazz is a world all its own, one which I’ve only barely begun to explore. But even I know and love the great Enrico Rava, the 80-year-old flugelhornist and composer and eminence gris. In late 2018 he joined up … Continue reading

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Jens Carelius’s Opsi

Norwegian guitarist, singer and songwriter (and visual artist) Jens Carelius has turned a legendary figure in his ancestry into a unique album. Opsi is a song cycle based on the diaries of Carelius’s great-great-grandfather Fritz Doerries (known to his family … Continue reading

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What’s New for the 1st of September: June Tabor does grim ballads, a Latina rocker named Cecilia Villar Eljuri, Lucky Peach’s guide to cider, a Breton peasant’s memoir, music by Guy Clark, a film from Guillermo del Toro, a noir comic, and other matters…

Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact hidden in it, you know, which you can find if you look. — Diana Wynne Jones in Fire and Hemlock Now it is by some storytellers said … Continue reading

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What’s New for the 1st of September: A Firefly novel, our most criticised review, a pair of dark mangas, recreating Medieval English Ales, Balkan music history, ‘Excitable Boy’ in Bluegrass style, Emma Bull’s favourite tune, on blackberries and less tart matters…

“Stories,” he’d said, his voice low and almost husky, “we are made up of stories. And even the one’s that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.” — Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose We raise a lot of … Continue reading

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Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s Jazz And Art

Jazz at Lincoln Center is doing as much as any other institution in America to preserve and promote jazz music. In addition to the regular program Jazz Night in America in conjunction with NPR and WBGO, there’s the Jazz at … Continue reading

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