Dengue Fever - Little Drummer Boy

Pa Rum Pum Pum Pum is the same in all languages, apparently...

Death Cab For Cutie - "Black Sun" (Official Video)

Watch the video, no small symbolism...

The Decemberists - This Is Why We Fight

Portland make you better...

om jai jagadish hare - anuradha

Jai mata di

BOXED IN - NO JOKE (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

Good music, good vids....

HAIM - The Wire

Khmer Surin CVM v21 04 មេម៉ាយខូចត្រង់ណា​?

คิดถึงบ้าน

Raury - Friends ft. Tom Morello

Trip hop...

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Man On Fire [Official Video]

Everybody want safety (safety love)
Everybody want comfort (comfort love)
Everybody want certain (certain love)
Everybody but me

Bebe - Siempre Me Quedara (translated)

Time calms everything, la tempestad y la calma...

Evi Vine - Inside Her

Watch the VDO: rainy day woman, rainy day roominations, chiaroscuro, mostly cloudy with a chance of afternoon sunshine, crispy words on soggy backgrounds, prepositions without objects, pronouns without antecedents, propositions with no promises, proposals lying naked on autumn leaves quickly turning to winter...

Glen Hansard - "Love Don't Leave Me Waiting"

Americana, don't leave me wanting...

tUnE-yArDs - Bizness (Official Video)

Nice song, cute video...

Ray LaMontagne - Beg Steal or Borrow

Think this won Grammy song of the year a few years back; who knew?

Foxygen - San Francisco (Official Video)

Riffing on a theme, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...

Ladytron - Seventeen [Official Music Video]

They only want you when you're seventeen, so what happens when you're thirty-nine?  Sixty-four?

Din Main Kab Socha Karte Thay - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Ghazal

Perfect antidote for New York...

Bombino, "Tar Hani" Live

Tuareg rock, big sound big desert...

Nada Surf - Electrocution

Rock n Roll lives!

Beirut - Gibraltar (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

Only 3699km/2000mi+/- from Beirut to Gibraltar, almost 10 hours by flight, taking you over parts of Cyprus, Greece, Tunisia, Algeria, and LOTS of water, and air...

First Aid Kit - Wolf

From the mouths of Swedish babes: shades of Emmy Lou, shape-shifting images from the Far North...

Youth - Daughter

"If you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones..."

Buscabulla -Sono

Airespanol... chevere'...

Nicolas Jaar - Aphex Twin + Notorious B.I.G Mashup

Mashed potatoes on Sunday, yum yum....

Wolf Alice - Giant Peach

Riffing on a theme...

Pedestrian At Best - Courtney Barnett

Garage rock, carport locks, biker chick with pedestrian kicks...

Martin Courtney - Northern Highway (Official Video)

Good ol' fashioned tuneage...

Korey Dane - Jules Verne

Shades of Dylan, not-so-dark shades...

LHASA -LA FRONTERA

Border towns of the world unite!

Dillon - Thirteen Thirtyfive at Studio 8

Sometimes pain is its own reward...

Yuna - LANGIT #flyinghigh

Flying high in the sky...

Suavecito - Julieta Venegas - Soundtrack Elvira te daría mi vida pero la...

Muy suavecito, no malo...

Crimes of Paris by the Incomparable "Napoleon Dynamite"

Riffing on a theme, by Elvis Costello...

Omar Souleyman "Bahdeni Nami" (prod. by Four Tet)

Who says Syrians don't rock?

ST GERMAIN - REAL BLUES (Official Video)

Blues for Paris, naked and unafraid...

Mdou Moctar - Adounia

Is this the new face to Saharan desert-rock? Will Mdou Moctar be Jimmy Cliff to Tinariwen's Marley, Bombino's Tosh?  We'll have to wait and see the movie 'Akounak', the harder they fall...

سلام-عبدالرحمن محمد ومهاب عمر/Peace-Abdulrahman Mohammed&Mohab Omer

Published two weeks ago: "With all the distractions and difficulties we have in life, I'm so happy and proud that we are still able to make some Arts, some music, some hope, living some freedom dreams through the arts we are trying to make. Deeply Thanks for all your deep understanding to the difficulties we are facing as independent artists in such a delicate and hard time for all the arts and artists in the Arabic countries and the Middle East in the current time."

Giant Sand & Rainer - The Inner Flame.wmv

How do you know that you've been in Tucson too long? When is death day really a birthday?  Happy birthday, Rainer Ptacek!

Gardens & Villa - "Fixations" (Official Video)

yeah yeah yeah

De Lux - "Oh Man The Future" (Official Video)

I guess the future is not so cool, after all...

Lykke Li - No Rest For The Wicked

Sometimes peace is hard to find...

Beck - Dreams (Official Audio)

This how it's done, Kanye, words and music...

Syria Sufi Music Part 1

Joaquin Lievano - The Art of Bowing

      

TURN IT UP and you just might get a buzz... this is one of my jazz favorites of all time, don't know why it's not famous....

Angus and Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane [Official Music Video]

I think I found a new theme song...

Band of Horses - Laredo

Welcome to Laredo, x-roads of the world, x-roads of your life...

Chucho Valdes & Archie Shepp Afro-cuban project - Jazz a Porquerolles Li...

Magic fingers, golden horns, kinky sax...

SOFI TUKKER - Drinkee (Original Mix)

Now for something completely different, mixing drinks mixing metaphors... genial, gabacho, aproveche...

The Helio Sequence - October (not the video)

October's gone, but hopefully there will be another one; fingers crossed...

Fatoumata Diawara & Roberto Fonseca - Baloise Session 2014

I think I'm in love...

Timbuktu Official Trailer (2015) - Oscar Nominee, Best Foreign Language ...

DVD Review: Timbuktu—Jihad for Dummies

A gazelle zigzags through the landscape while macho maniacs fire at it with guns. That represents fragile systems under attack. Remember 'Bambi Meets Godzilla'? The same macho maniacs then destroy cultural artifacts as a matter of (religious) course, anything a threat to the doctrines and dictates of dogma. People are corralled and cajoled into concentration camps of convenience for the sake of religion without reason and even less rhyme: neither cigarettes, music, nor football—God forbid alcohol—are allowed.

I think everybody has at least some vague recollection of the events that occurred in northern Mali in 2012, when Arab jihadis basically co-opted the desert nomadic Tuaregs' long wished-for dreams of an Azawad homeland, using them in their quest for a fundamentalist Islamist state, then basically hanging the Tuaregs out to dry before the central Bamako government—with French help—regained control.

Soko - I'll Kill Her

Confession-rock at its best...

Steve Earle -- "Mississippi, It's Time"

I'm officially casting my vote, right here right now.  Lock it up in a museum!

Habib Koité & Bamada - Massakè

Mali has the best music of any country in the world; this is just one of many...

Erykah Badu - Your Mind (Live)

Live soul, bordering on the blues, bordering on the badlands, bordering on the news...

JR JR - Gone [Official Music Video]

Whistlin' while they work...

Tei Shi - "See Me" (Official Music Video)

Sea of fog, sea of humanity...

The Mastersons - One Word More [Official Video]

Gem of a song....

Geoffrey Oryema - Ye Ye Ye

Classic world music...

Temples - Shelter Song

Pure pop for NOW people...

Dengue Fever - Tokay (opbmusic)

ตุ๊กแก the gecko, not the cheap wine...

Sylvan Esso - Coffee (Live on KEXP)

Morning coffee, riffing on TJ & Shondells, diving for dough, nuts...

Silversun Pickups - Nightlight (Official Video)

Like day for night, blanc pour noir, LA for Paris, leaves me breathless; still miss that auto dealership on Sunset for some reason, don't know why, residual memory from another dream; what was the name?  

Nu - MAN O TO (Original Mix).wmv

Persian;
khonak an dam ke neshinim dar eyvan, man o to
be do naghsho be do soorat, be yeki jan, man o to
khosh o faregh ze khorafat-e-parishan, man o to
man o to, bi man o to, jam' shavim az sar-e-zogh
English;
the pleasant moment of sitting in front of the door, me and you.
with two figures and two faces, with one life, me and you.
joyful and careless, free from distracting myths, me and you.
me and you, without us (ego), gather because of virtu (love)--Rumi

Elemotho - Kgala!Namib (live)

Greetings from Windhoek, the other South (West) Africa...

DVD Review: The Lunchbox--Like Chilies for Curry...

Talk about Bollywood movies and the natural assumption is that there's a few lines of plot to punctuate the extended song-and-dance that Indian audiences seem to want in large doses, sweet as the sugar-laden confections that spike the carbs at the end of an otherwise mostly veg plate of Indian food—with curry. There has to be curry: season to taste. Some like it hot. But 'The Lunchbox' plays for subtlety; that means there are changes in the Indian market or this movie is made for foreign audiences, or both. Stay tuned for more...

Radio Krioyo Live

Live stream from.... Curacao?  Papiamento language?  Somebody help me here...

Ylja - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

Icelandicana, evoking images of long lonesome geothermal midnight suns...

Gigi - "Enoralehu"

Now for some exotic product from Ethiopia...

Toro Y Moi "Rose Quartz"

Nice song, cool video....

Tame Impala - Let It Happen

All this running around... I can't fight it much longer

Chet Faker - I'm Into You

Sunday Serenade

MGMT - Electric Feel

Share it with a friend...

Sarah Jaffe - Clementine

Life by the 50's, time wasted? Think not...

Heartless Bastards - Parted Ways (Official Music Video)

Good tune, weird video...

Novalima - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

Un poco de ritmo y color desde la niebla de Africa hasta la niebla de Seattle por via de la niebla de Lima, loco viaje... 

Nouvelle Vague - Dance With Me [Bande à Part - Anna Karina]

Tres francais, le new wave....

DMA'S - Laced (Official Video)

Brit pop

Grimes - Oblivion (Live at Grimey's)

Sunday Serendipity...

The Shins - New Slang [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

"There's nothing worse than old slang..."

Princess Chelsea - The Cigarette Duet

Hindi Zahra - Beautiful Tango

DVD Review: Automata—Clunker with a Heart of Gold

I missed this movie when it came out a year ago, but that's nothing new. I miss a lot. And foreign-made films don't always rate first response from the American press. I suspect that's why the reviews were not so good, either. Hollywood loves nothing so much as itself, even with Antonio Banderas in the lead role and Dylan McDermott and Melanie Griffith backing up. It's just not a Hollywood flick and that speaks volumes. Even Robert Rodriguez rates better press than this from his Texas stronghold, but then he follows the bang-bang playbook to a 'T'.

Okay, so 'Automata' might not be 'Birdman' or even 'Matrix', but it's not bad, not bad at all. It's not easy making a good sci-fi film. It has to be 'scientific' enough for that crowd, yet realistic enough to be believable, and still satisfy the human need for narrative and sympathy—not easy. Apparently the main beef seems to be that it doesn't live up to its promise. Geez! Give it credit for even having a promise! Most sci-fi flicks don't, and action films don't even pretend to..

'The Matrix' was great, but totally unbelievable. 'Star Wars' doesn't even count. That's just live-action animation based on the 'Hero with a 1000 Faces' mono-myth like 1000 other stories. And space-based tales like it and 'Star Trek' are largely a failed paradigm now—too bad—though '2001' will never be surpassed in that genre. Space is dead—for now. Wait for the Mars space program—if we're lucky. So we're left with robots for our science fix, still relevant if kept up-to-date.

Laura Marling - Sophia

Natalia Lafourcade - Hasta la Raíz

"I carry you inside, down to the root"....

Beach Baby - Ladybird

Just one more day of summer, please? And a liter of eternal youth on the side...

Bonobo - Black Sands

Sunday Serenity: Get it while you still can...

Santigold - Disparate Youth [Official Music Video]

These are disparate times...

Shake It Off

Remember the old Taylor Swift classic from a few months ago? Brilliant exercise in musical relativity, what goes around, comes around...

BØRNS - 10,000 Emerald Pools

Terakaft: New Album 'Alone', Still Second Best, and that's good...

Any discussion of the musical genre 'Tuareg Desert Blues” starts and

ends with one word: Tinariwen. They basically invented the genre,
built the playbook and have since spawned dozens of friends, fans,
and imitators from all adjacent regions, from Libya to Burkina Faso,
from Bombino to Tamikrest, usually with native costume, always with
jangly guitars. I've even considered learning the language myself
just to get some lyrical insight...

Allah Las - Tell Me (What's On Your Mind) (Official Video)

Song with a certain 'tude, no religion required إن شاء الله

New Order - Restless (Official Video)

New tunes from old masters are always welcome, especially when they're good...

Khruangbin - A Calf Born In Winter - Official Video

เครื่องบิน = Airplane 

Sunday Serenity: Sometimes the best things from Thailand are not Thai at all...

DVD review: Rosewater and Julep, Movies and Reality, USA and Aryan Iran...

Imagine a place out on the steppes of Asia, the stepping stones to Europe, maybe the Caucasus, or somewhere farther east, out on the outskirts of the civvies and the cities, say maybe 5-6000 years ago, with the climes warming up and paths leading north, where a group of people probably only a few thousand strong, not so urban, but not so stupid, playing around with wheels and ales and axles and weapons, found a will and a way in this world, spreading outward until they gradually lost contact with each other and their languages became harder to understand, eventually to become the Celts of Europe and the Persians of Asia and the Greeks of the Mediterranean, and the Hittites who never really left, now North Europeans, South Europeans, Indians, Iranians, and... Armenians, who never really left...

...speaking related Indo-Aryan-European languages, Aryan the same word as Iran, long before it meant 'Nordic', swastika a Hindu symbol, Persian sharing words with English and Spanish, “Swas Ti Ka” meaning “hello” in Thai via Sanskrit, long before Hitler crapped on us all, long before Muslims felt like they had to fight for their lives to survive Western colonization, long before Jews decided they weren't really Middle Easterners at all, more like Europeans in fact, with all that represents...

Flight Facilities - Clair De Lune feat. Christine Hoberg

Kamasi Washington performing "Re Run Home" Live on KCRW

BOMBA ESTÉREO - EL ALMA Y EL CUERPO [HD]

"Body and Soul": 'I'm burning up inside"...

The Acid - Basic Instinct (Official Video)

The Gin One

Jenny Lewis performing "She's Not Me" Live on KCRW

Noura Mint Seymali - Tzenni (teaser)

The National - Don't Swallow The Cap (Live on 89.3 The Current)

Low - What Part of Me

Film Review: 'Force Majeure' Coolly Metafizzical...

Swedish movies are known for their brooding interiors, but brooding exteriors? Now there's fresh food for thought, a thought experiment, that is, which probably best describes this little peach of a movie from Swedish director Ruben Ostlund. The premise is simple enough: a 'controlled avalanche' in the French Alps goes a little bit out of control, giving tourists dining on the view and crepes a good scare, and their split-second reactions a good lesson in metaphysics. Spoiler alert: get your popcorn before the movie starts, because the climax comes within the first ten minutes. Everything else is denouement. Alternative title suggestion: 'Premature Extrapolation'....

The French title (better than the Swedish title 'Turist' BTW), translates most obviously to 'Major Force', but that sounds like a Charles Bronson movie, so 'Act of God' is probably the better rendition, referring as it does to the clause in most contracts that allows a way out for everyone, much harm but no foul; i.e. 'sh*t happens', responsibility must be shared, if the concept even applies. And that's the plot: when the 'little avalanche' comes, people revert to basic instincts for survival, if only for a minute. The wife and mother immediately protects her kids. The husband and father pulls a George Costanza and makes for the exit, reappearing only long after the fog of disaster has cleared. Food for thought? You bet...

Remember 2014? Remember 'The Interview'?

The year 2014 had to be one of the weirdest years ever, politically and socially, almost unbelievable even months later. First (but not necessarily most) was the wave of child refugees from Central America swarming the US border. That's weird! That makes Putin gobbling up Ukraine almost pale in comparison, way beyond the pale. And remember Ebola, aka 'Apocalypse Now'? Then there's Malaysian Airlines' MH370 and MH17, the one lost in water, the other lost in war. 

War! ISIS! ISIL! And the pseudo sorta' Islamic State! Just when you thought that Netanyahu could 'mow the lawn' of the Mideast with Palestinian bodies, accomplished with impunity and consummate skill, a group of jihadis decide to form a new state in their midst with a ragtag gang of hell-bent misfits armed with sharpened knives and blood in their eyes. But the weirdest part of 2014 had to be the movie 'The Interview'. Remember that, the Seth Rogen farce starring him and James Franco in character as television personalities assigned to interview (and assassinate) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un? 

I finally got around to seeing 'The Interview' this week. It's a farce, all right, and if I were a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy fanatic, then I would have to conclude that the North Korean threat of terrorism against the producers and distributors of this movie surely must've been factory-made PR to boost sales of what is otherwise one of the worst movies every made. Save yourself the streaming fee (this year's Oscar picks are all available on Netflix DVD by now BTW; streamers can wait).

Tucson's Hypertravel Hostel Proudly Supports Public Radio KXCI! (not Jay Z, just sayin')...

Is the new celebrity-studded 'Tidal' subscription music service, supported by the likes of Jay Z, Madonna, Beyonce and music's favorite bully Kanye, really a game-changer?  Will it succeed wildly where other streaming services like Pandora and Spotify have fallen short?  I have a better question: who cares?  Remember, we're just talking about a newer, arguably hipper internet-based form of radio, after all.  Huh?  Radio?  Maybe a little back story helps:

Radio: the word inspires... not much really, not any more, and yet it has been the soundtrack to many of our lives, up until now, not bad for a medium whose electromagnetic waves were not even theorized until 1873 by James Clerk Maxwell, and whose frequencies were first proven to exist by Heinrich Hertz in 1886, with practical applications first experimented in 1896 by Guglielmo Marconi, and commercial broadcasting begun in the US in the 1920's.  That's quite the international success story: kudos (and don't call it 'wireless' any more)...