Earlier this week, The Secret Song, the latest album from Paul Miller (A.K.A. DJ Spooky) hit shelves everywhere. It's been a while since he's put out a new album of his own material, but that's for good reason; he's most certainly a renaissance artist, with his creative hands in film, print, visual arts, and music. And when I say music, I mean a wide swath of everything from remixing artists from Metallica to Yoko Ono to compiling and editing Jamaican dub and reggae (the excellent In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records).On this newest collection of materials, Spooky draws in a diverse range of collaborators such as Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, The Jungle Brothers, The Coup, Rob Swift, Mike Ladd and many others. The resulting notes are just as diverse, pulling in slices of this and slices of that, everything from hard hitting hip hop beats to reggae to jazz to a dub interpretation of Led Zeppelin's Dazed and Confused. If you're already familiar with Spooky, you know what I'm talking about. If not, be prepared to be amazed by the sonic distances covered in these twenty tracks. On top of his explorations, or perhaps more adequately, alongside is an exploration of the current global economic situation within sound bytes and lyrics.
This collection is really a dizzying assemblage of sounds and ideas that I've been enjoying for weeks now. The distance it travels really begs you to follow it numerous times, each time discovering a new aspect that reels you in that you might have missed previously because you were drawn to some other facet. In many ways it feels more like a compilation rather than an album of original material because of its breadth. I'll share two of the album's twenty tracks below, but they can't really represent the full range. For that, check out the complete album.
DJ Spooky - Measure by Measure (featuring GW Bush, Golden Hornet Project) : The Secret Song
DJ Spooky - Azadi (The New Complexity) (featuring Sussan Deyhim) : The Secret Song
DJ Spooky - Azadi (The New Complexity) (featuring Sussan Deyhim) : The Secret Song
2 comments:
I was surprised to see the persian word "azadi" as a song title here and became even more surprized to see it in front of the name of a DJ!
"azadi" is a Great and pleasant song for me, and to add some info here, the songtitle "azadi" means "freedom" in persian language and the poem that is heard through the song is from a famous persian classical poet from 13th-century called "mevlana rumi" (http://www.mevlana-jalaluddin.com).
that was quiet a experience for me, thx.
after all if you're interested in persian folk music you can check out "Axiom of choice"(www.axiomofchoice.com). they're not pure folk but more alternative/ambient somehow. i recommend the album "Unfolding" or "NIYAYESH" both are valuable albums IMO.
Behzad,
Thanks for all the background info on the track. I'm checking it out right now.
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