Music of the day
• music • 3251 words
A new bit of music each day.
• music • 3251 words
A new bit of music each day.
I discovered this, like everybody else, reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It's a great book and very Murakami-esque. Granted a tad long. Anyways, the Sinfonietta is lovely and very good for listening during gym workouts.
So, this is not a niche song: It's got 1.1bn views. I was introduced to the album DAMN by a friend of mine in school - me and him have very different music tastes (back then, it was more rock/metal for me, and the only classical I listened to was Schostakovich, really). I like most every song on the album. He's good!
So, yesterday was a song my dad loves. Today, a song my mum loves. I ... sort of like it but not as much as Kinky Afro.
My dad loves this song and this band, and I learnt it from him. A banger.
We would sing this song each morning at some five a.m. each day in the temple. It's really good. I recommend, if you are ever in the Watford area, to visit the Bhaktivedanta Manor; or, in Soho visit the temple there just off Soho Square. Everybody is lovely and it's very pleasant.
An absolute banger of a Touhou song.
We saw this band in a small college pub in Amsterdam when we went there in Dec '25. They have a fantastic name and were pretty good! It was only a small floor pub floor but there was plenty of dancing and merriment, even one person crowd surfing!
This is a great little song by a Norwegian band that only lived for two short years between '79 and '81. They've got great songs generally, so I recommend listening to others.
Hue uten sanser, Se og hør, Jeg vil bli som Jesus, Instamatic, and Beat allegro are all great.
I regularly travel to and from St Albans for my mandolin hobby, and one of the stations on the Thameslink train back is Elstree and Borehamwood. So I have a bit of a game with myself to try to play this song, and start it playing at exactly the right time so that the station sign appears as he says Elstree! in the first chorus. I've never got it perfectly right, but I've come pretty close sometimes! (It's a very sad game, I know.)
The song is great though.
A nice little punk rock song by Die Ärzte, a quite popular German band. Lots of great songs by this band, here is just one!
A lovely, relaxing Touhou song.
One of Slipknot's best! Not exactly a niche song, but hey ho!
A lovely bit by Munier performed by Marissa Carroll, who is absolutely excellent. I knew this tune, but didn't realise it was by Munier!
A lovely piece by Debussy.
Whilst I'm generally more a fan of R.E.M.'s earlier work than their later albums (well, I suppose Up is not too late!), Lotus I think is a fantastic work from the later R.E.M.
A fantastic and very famous aria from La boheme, which is the first opera I ever saw and is absolutely fantastic. The version by Anna Natrebko is fantastic, and when I got to see her live (performing Tosca at the Royal Opera House) it was incredible. At one point she finished her aria and stood there a bit fed up for a good minute because the audience were cheering too much...
Anyways, I've also linked another version that's equally as good (in fact, more sultry, which is in keeping with Musetta's character), alongside the Anna Natrebko version.
"Sonority" is the first song of the album that also contains the more well-known (albeit not that well known still!) Teikoku Shoujo. It's a vocaloid song, which are generally very hit-or-miss, but this one, along with the rest of R Sound Design's songs in general I think, is a hit.
Lyrically it is beautiful as well:
biru no tanima de unadareteteita / in the valley between the buildings
bokutachi no awai kinou no me ga / our hopes' fleeting buds hung their heads
karenai you ni / so they won't wither
bukiyou ni donna uta wo sosogou / what sort of songs should we clumsily water them with?
Actually an album, but absolutely fantastic, every song. I'd say my favourites are Yıldız (star), and Neşe (joy). But it's hard to choose.
Again, this band has too many good songs, but here's one of their best imo.
There's a lot of good Yorushika songs, and it's hard to choose one to pick for this list, but this is a quite nice one from their album Sousaku (which, wow, was back in 2021). I am not a fan of their newer albums, but all the older stuff is great.
Here's a lovely little piece by Eileen Pakenham for the mandolin. All tremolo. And I'm on stage!
A very brief, but absolutely stunning piece.
This is a band called Japanese Folk Metal who are incredibly silly and play (unsurprisingly?) Japanese folk metal. I love it!
A metal band with an incredible singer. This song in particular is incredibly depressing though.
A lovely bit of oud!
Of course a song everybody knows, but this version of it from Texas is incredible, and in my opinion comparable if not better than the studio version... And yes I am probably just saying that because of the mandolin.
A Finnish wartime jig!
A clubbing song for a change! (Despite what it may seem I have been clubbing before)
15 minutes of pure bliss.
This is one of the pieces we play at the LME. It's nice enough.
This is a demo of the R.E.M. Photograph, definitely not one of their famous ones. I think this demo is miles better than the actual track. You can definitely tell it's a demo though as the whole second section is missing lyrics!
That reads "Undervud: Parabellum" for those not acquianted with Cyrillic.
This is a not very well know Russian band who nevertheless have released some pretty nice songs!
Parabellum is definitely not their best, but it is the first song I got to know of theirs.
A lovely bailonga!
It's long (well, it's a symphony. It's about an hour) but it's well worth it. Lovely piece.
A fantastic little bluegrass band, the violin is incredible and of course a nice bit of mandolin for any mandolin addicts like me...
A lovely Marissa Carroll's duo on the mandolin playing a bitta Bach.
From the same duo, Zigiotti and Merlante, who played the Calace pieces below.
Sounds a bit like an exercise from a mandolin method, but actually is a very nice piece!
A lovely quite upbeat Calace piece for mandolin orchestra.
This is a lovely little mandolin piece by Marucelli, called Serenade des amoureux.
This is a very pleasant viola and piano sonata by Szymanski, a Polish composer. The droning of the viola is lovely, and it's got a very pleasant call-and-response between the parts as well. It feels almost like the piano is beating the viola into submission at times.
Another bit of Raffaele Calace. This time is a piece called Capriccio zingaresco which I discovered on the Duo Zigiotti Merlante album of Munier, Marucelli and Mozzani, but I sort of prefer this version of it below. It's a little more hectic in the chorus, which in a way I like.
This is a bit of Alison Stephens mandolin music, an album where she plays Raffaele Calace music. I was recommended it by one of my mandolin lot, it's great fun to listen to. I especially like the Maestoso of the concerto no. 2.