Today’s Magic Hour hosts are The Orielles! Check out their individual music and film recommendations below…
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SID: Gil Scott-Heron – Nothing New
This is one of my favourite records and it’s been bringing me so much comfort during this tense and uncertain time. The record makes me feel at peace, but also the lyrics are so poignant that it can also bring me to tears and make me full with emotion. I am teaching myself keyboard at the moment and so getting deep into Gils way of writing chord progressions and his signature changes has been really helpful and inspiring. I’ve definitely been writing a lot in a similar ilk to this record, stuff that at the moment is just piano and vocals and is so raw. What I also love about his songwriting is the way in which he experiments with metre and phrasing of his poetry in unconventional ways. I’ve also revisited some documentaries about Gil recently, reminding me again why I love and treasure this musician so deeply.
Every track on the record is so beautiful but really recommend ‘Your Daddy Loves You’ or ‘Pieces of a Man’ as an introduction into the pure brilliance and soulful quality of Gil’s playing, singing and poetry!
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HENRY: Delicatessen (1991)
An absurd-dark comedy I watched quite recently after watching a series of increasingly weird modern French films. This one was definitely my favourite. The opening theme song is brilliantly discordant introduction into this qausi-dystopian setting. Its sound design is immaculate and so playful with the absurd imagery you are experiencing on screen. It is a sonic masterpiece and has no problem magnifying into particular soundscapey pieces throughout the film. All of the films characters are so uniquely weird.
I found great comfort in the absurdism philosophy of Albert Camus and in surreal films such as this one and its ability to take you out of the world we are living in at the moment but it can also allow you to see the humour in these unsettling modern times.
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EZ: The Lake Sutra: Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s Keyboard Fantasies
Wonderful short film that depicts Beverly Glenn-Copeland returning to the woodland environment in which he wrote and recorded the seminal Keyboard Fantasies album. The short offers a meditation on how the environment and nature can shape creativity in such a way that I think many of us are becoming more aware of right now (with our state approved walks etc!). Copeland refers to himself as merely the ‘messenger’, using these beautiful sounds to create an interplay between himself and the nature he’s surrounded by.
Fusing together the technological experimentation that defined the album’s sound with a peaceful meditation on place and being, the short helps us to understand the album in a new light and I think anyone who’s listened to the album already will enjoy it even more after watching this!
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