March 22 – It’s a different world now, of course. I hope you are staying safe. Here is some music to warm your home: Pacifica.
At Public Citizen, from our respective remote working environments, we are working hard to spur the pooling of medical tools and technology, to accelerate the response to COVID-19, and ensure that medical equipment tests and eventual treatments and vaccines are available to all.
By turns a world music album, field recording, and power pop showcase, A Ring Around the Atlantic is thoughtfully written and orchestrated and features the standout production value of The Magpie Cage’s J. Robbins. Maybarduk’s voice, breathy and soft, reminds me of Hey Marseilles’ Matt Bishop and Michael Benjamin Lerner of Telekinesis. His songwriting is thought-provoking without being pedantic, helped by the album’s relentlessly catchy hooks and strong backing musicians.
We released No Hay Pueblo Vencido (No Defeated People) on March 19, 2009.
Vencido features kinetic electronic compositions, political rock and acoustic nueva canción, with the musical talents of producer J. Robbins, drummer Darren Zentek, vocalists Shawna Potter and Linsay Rousseau Burnett, pan flautist Marco Ovando and trumpeter Ronald Rollins.
In part, Vencido is a tale of the Americas; of people standing up for their dignity despite oppression. It’s also a personal story. Vencido tracks a dual narrative of social justice and personal evolution, and explores the relationship between them. In the words of Edward Abbey, Action is the antidote to despair
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Passengers, my first LP, is an introspective and primarily acoustic narrative recorded with J. Goody at Mega sonic in West Oakland, CA.
I made Passengers in 2006 under a routine of moderate solitude near the bay and trains. I recorded soundscapes from around northern California, linking songs together to hint at a unified story. Listeners can draw their own meanings from it, but I think the related themes of impermanence, travel and isolation, as both personal narrative and rising social illness, come through. I’m pleased to say it’s earned the affection of many careful listeners.
These weeks, beyond the dramatics of the proposed border wall, Brazil inaugurated a president of even worse impulses, a man publicly nostalgic for the days recent in his country’s memory when one could simply torture the opposition. These are our discontents. Read more
Here is “Failed States,” a new song of piano, talking drum and Gordon Withers’ cello we’ve just finished at Magpie Cage. The song’s story and double entendre refer to collapse in our societies and our relationships to each other. Read more.
Here is “All of Whom I Love,” a song I wrote in Hanoi, Viet Nam and have just recorded with Eamonn Aiken at The Bastille Studio in Arlington, Virginia. Kate Rears provides a cello quintet. I play nylon and steel … Continue reading