la folie

It beats within, and without
then seeks the wherewithal
before time runs out

It cries silently, and alone
then attacks the cerebral
before senses reach home

It bleeds profusely, and cold
then ignites the pulse
before all else is told

It gives love, and envigours
then shelters the hurt
before winter finally disfigures.

l6

Tonight's music: Craig Armstrong: Glasgow (1997)

Max Richter: Last Days from Memoryhouse
BBC Philharmonic
Rumon Gamba (conductor)

This afternoon, (15h30-16h00) was my teabreak from checking student essays, and Radio 3 once again played something so exquisitely beautiful, that I'd forgotten the true value of the words themselves.

I knew Max Richter from his work with my favourites, the Future Sound of London, but I was not so familiar with Memoryhouse, however, I am now becoming well acquainted with another masterpiece...really, the world is full of beauty...even melancholic beauty.

This type of music I absolutely adore, equating with FSOL, Craig Armstrong and the like.

Max Richter

Max Richter is an award winning composer and producer. He trained in composition and piano at Edinburgh University, The Royal Academy Of Music and with Luciano Berio in Florence.

Max's Solo CD "The Blue Notebooks", on cult label Fat Cat, featuring texts recorded by Tilda Swinton, was described by Pitchfork.com as "not only the finest record of the last six months, but the best Classical album of recent memory" and was included in dozens of best of year lists.

Max has just produced the long awaited 2nd album from 60s folk legend Vashti Bunyan, also featuring contributions from Joanna Newsom, Fourtet, Adem, and Devendra Banhart, as well as a guest appearance by legendary arranger Robert Kirby. The new album has received five stars in Mojo and was picked as Record of the Week in The Times.

"The Blue Notebooks"

Opening to the muted clatter of a typewriter and hushed, delicate reading from Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks, the source of its title, this work by modernist composer and pianist Max Richter evokes that great author's writing through its simple, understated style and lyrical melancholy. Also present are Kafka's hallmark sense of surrender and acceptance, if not the darkly comic undertones of ridiculous tragedy. The atmosphere is one of space and calm, of a spiritual ascendance that conjures up Max Richter as a monk abiding in a massive cathedral, in stark contrast to Kafka's cramped quarters and isolated life witnessing the mechanical agony of others. These recordings are possessed of a tranquillity that is occasionally tinged with unease, but lacks any undercurrents of rage or violence. All is peace.

Which, given Max Richter's many and varied accomplishments, must be derived from fulfilment rather than any spans of reflective inactivity. Born in 1966, he studied composition in Edinburgh, at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and under the renowned avant-garde composer Luciano Berio in Florence. Co-founder of the Piano Circus ensemble and active member for a decade, he commissioned and performed works from a selection of stellar talents (including Philip Glass, Brian Eno, and Steve Reich) with them. His forays into the realms of live sampling whilst with them are evident in the occasional field recordings here. His tinkering with analogue electronic instruments and immersion in the beginnings of that scene led him to collaborate with pioneers the Future Sound of London, who named a co-written track after him on their 1996 release Dead Cities and then enlisted him during the two-year crafting of their recent prog-classical-electonica epic The Isness. He's even worked with the diminutive drum 'n' bass messiah/maniac Roni Size, and in 2002 his first album, the acclaimed Memoryhouse, was recorded with the aid of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

Which brings us to his second "solo" offering, where Richter is assisted by a string quintet of regular collaborators, comprising two cellos, two violins and a viola. These soar as bare strands of light over his sparse piano and organ lines, swelling and twisting -- as on Memoryhouse-referencing opener "On the Nature of Daylight" -- to stir and caress the heart. Neither needless grandeur nor elaborate complexity are present here, as Max Richter places the emphasis soundly on the breathtaking clarity of his production and its seemingly immense span; as in the best deep house and melodic dub, the music is as much a demonstration of the beauty inherent in both sound and consciousness as it is an articulation of any musical notation. And dub is present here, in the slow, drifting sub-bass pulse of "Shadow Journals", as is electronica, in the softly fluttering percussion, reminiscent of Autechre, on "Arboretum". However there is no sense of amalgamation here, just as the patter of the typewriters behind Kafka's and Czseslaw Milosz's lines cushion and further Tilda Swinton's diction rather than lending it a nervy air: rather, the listener bears witness to a minimalist form of contemporary music that feels natural and perfectly whole.

This album is a quietly stunning meditation on silence, beauty, memory, and existence that, like its use of sampled choir voices, is as distanced from religion as it is undeniably spiritual. Get a copy, let the daily bustle recede before Max Richter's music of the spheres, and in the space between the traces of atoms and the paths of galaxies, find your place in its illumination.

MAX RICHTER
Memoryhouse
Late Junction 2002

Europe, After The Rain
Maria, The Poet (1913)
Laika's Journey
The Twins (Prague)
Sarajevo
Andras
Untitled (Figures)
Sketchbook
November
Jan's Notebook
Arbenita (11 Years)
Garden (1973) / Interior
Landscape With Figure (1922)
Fragment
Lines On A Page (One Hundred Violins)
Embers
Last Days
Quartet Fragment (1908)

To read more, about recording "The Blue Notebooks" click here

The power of music is boundless
like the shots that ring out
heard for a second
but more keenly felt

longing the soul to reach afar
or Within the guiding star
music is the universal awakening
Within each masterpiece's calling

-lauren6

Have you any buildings, or structures you love and admire?

There are many that I have visited, or seen, ingrained in my memory as bastions of sentiment, empowering my senses, and creating a deeper love of the world in which we live.

I have put a few below;

Clifton Suspension Bridge, which is a perfect example of humans and nature combining to brilliant effect, plus, I lived nearby for a short time.

Houses of Parliament, London. Not so much symbolically, but visually pleasing, and for such a severe style and purpose, this building strikes me as very warm and friendly.

Viaduc de Millau, France

What an exceptional 'bridge' this is! Bridge hardly seems adequate to describe what is described as 'the world's highest bridge', completed in January 2005, and gained the accolade thanks to the bridge piers, the tallest of which is 240 meters high, the overall height 336.4 meters, comprising seven seperate cable stays. Simply magnificent!

The architect was British, Lord Norman Foster, and it was constructed to eleviate the heavy traffic conjestion of the summer season through the valley, however, in creating a swathe through the valley, it has in my opinion become a tourist attraction in itself, by rights and virtue of it's otherworldy quality, a masterpiece of Anglo-French engineering. Magnifique~~!

Built: 2001 - 2004
Duration of works: 38 months
Status: in use
Cost: € 300 000 000
Location: Near Millau, Aveyron (12), Midi-Pyrénées, France
Crosses: Tarn River
Carries: Autoroute A75
Structural Type: Cable-stayed bridge
multicable, fan arrangement
Function / usage: Motorway bridge / freeway bridge
Designer Michel Virlogeux overall concept
Architect Lord Norman Robert Foster

a75
foster and partners
midi libre
wikipedia

Wat Phra Kaeo, Bangkok, Thailand
วัดพระแก้ว

Thailand's Temple of the Emerald Buddha (Wat Phra Kaeo) Bangkok is one of the world's
great sights, which serves as a Royal chapel and consequently no monks live there.
Beautiful Wat Phra Kaeo was built in 1782 and Phra Kaeo, the temple complex which houses the impressive Emerald Buddha, (the most revered in all of Thailand), is located within the grounds of the Grand Palace, and was built under guidance of Rama I in 1782, at the time Bangkok became the kingdom's capital city.
It is also the treasure house of exquisite Thai arts, some of the most beautifully decorated arts in all Asia.

This I saw in 1996.

bangkok site
thailand today

Golden Pavillion, Kyoto
金閣寺京都

Granted supreme status only quite recently, and is now a World Heritage site, and quite rightly so.
My dear friends took me here on my last day in Japan, in 2004, after what appeared to be a sumptiously and freshly decorated facade makeover, with the sunlight touching perfect gold, through pine needles. (See photo above)

My visit here was kept secret from me, until we entered the grounds, and the distant dazzle of gold caught my eyes. This for me was the greatest moment of all my travels anywhere in the world.

wikipedia: kinkaku-ji
japanese lifestyle

Tower Bridge, London

This makes my list for every obvious reason under the sun!! But also for the equally merited reason of sentiment, namely my very first visit to London, as a little boy, with my father...a cherished memory as much for being with him, as for the sights themselves. I could have added HMS Belfast too, but that is not a building or structure as such, on-land, but Tower Bridge captured my imagination and love for England that lives to this day. I know millions of other people, native, visiting, resettling, all feel the same, that Tower Bridge IS the spirit of England, you stand on that bridge, and feel all that has been, and all that will come from your own self. An outstanding design of enormous significance. And yet, it's only a bridge?
Not at all!

First visited in 1978, with Panini 78 under my arm!

wikipedia: tower bridge
towerbridge.org

Basilique du Sacré Coeur, Paris

Another slightly unusual but outstanding landmark, which captured my heart on my second ever visit to Paris...thereafter, I studied not too far from Montmartre.
Sentiment, imagination, France, flambuoyancy, audacity, confidence, beauty, elegance, boldness, worldy...all embody Sacre-Coeur.

paris.org
sacre-coeur

Two days ago my cycle therapy ended abruptly, not by choice, or necessity, not because of weather or health, nor idleness or other distractions, but for an accidental and freakish incident...

Along the Marriotts Way, the nice level ground near my hospital is ideal for my spinal exercise...as the spine is 'slumped' causing no pressure or complication, but the cycle motion enables my body to gain precious exercise and movement, when walking has become impossible, and ALL other activities frozen.

Therefore, I can enjoy this one last freedom of physical will.
I passed the lake, the new housing estate,
the effects of which I never negate
Across the cycle priority, which vehicles frequently forget...why a give way sign only applies when giving way to cars, and not bicycles, I'll never know...so over I went, safely once more, and down the dry route beside the road, gathering speed, nearing my 'turnaround point', when my metal part, attaching the back wheel to the frame, snapped clean in two, jamming the chain, peddles, and throwing me over onto two parts;
the good part: landing on the bottom
the bad part: also landing on my already split spine
the ugly: phone went 'blink' and nobody able to help me home, so I had to hobble 4 miles.

My spine is now totally useless, as if the NHS could yawn any wider, and I have damaged my hip this time, together with both ankles.
It seems all avenues are closing-in, however, I'll try what I can;
out of the hardest elements of adversity
where hope falls just out of one's grasp
comes the myriad of nature's diversity
with which renewed faith will tightly clasp.

I had the strangest dream again last night, one of living about 100 years ago, and being rehoused as a child, (like the 1940's), to live with a tiler, an elderly greyish man, kindly, quiet, of the earth, rather tall for the time, and alone. His home was rough, but pleasant, small but cosy, to the far-side was clear sunshine, though he only had one window as far as I could see. The floor was hardened sawdust, he had only bread and savouries, no proper food as such....though he offered me some bottled lemonade, so out of keeping with the times.
My mother visited and brought my things, for my sleep and living, which all seemed so terribly normal. My age must have been around 7 or 8.

The tiler was very kind, and shared what he had, though I asked very little.
It would seem that there was some greater issue at hand, bigger than either the tiler or myself, or my family. I never discovered what it was in the dream, but it must have been of great significance, because all in the dream accepted the new circumstances dictated by 'the event' as many surrounding houses were in good repair, but empty.
So what was it?

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.
Aristophanes