mountain masala

lying, listening....

have stuffed my back for the second time this year. the result of 2 days in the car, 3 days in someone else's soft bed, and half a day painting the ceiling...

so I'm horizontal for a couple of days. can't even sit up without help!

lucky i can download from emusic and play iphone games.....

the clientele - "bonfires on the heath" - retro-sounding pop/folk, lush sound

erin mckeown - "hundreds of lions" - multi-instrumentalist folk singer, self-recorded, vibrant, sounds like frente at times

susan enan  - "plainsong" - NY singer/songwriter, nice acoustic sound, like an older missy higgins

yo la tengo - "i can hear the heart beating as one" - my first foray into this multi-styled group. like a different band on each song. 

shearwater - "rook" - here's the monthly 'crooner' album. fabulous modern folk, with brass andother stuff.

keith jarrett - the koln concert" - the man himself on emusic! one album - four 'songs'

the frames - "for the birds" - glen hansard's former band. 

and "abbey road" remastered for my birthday....

free music

go and sign up at http://jonsi.com (lead singer of sigur ros) and get a free track from his forthcoming album. with lyrics in english!

martin kennedy of all india radio and kilbey-kennedy is giving away a free track every day leading up to Christmas!

http://allindiaradio.bandcamp.com/album/once-a-day-free-tracks

my song online

you can buy a recorded version of my advent/christmas song "oh, God today has a human face" on online here.

as i've said here earlier, they got one bit wrong, singing "grub by grace" rather than "grubby grace".

music for easter

i have no idea why, but my worship year is focused on holy week, the pre-Easter stuff. every year I want to run our holy week chapel service, and whenever i hear music that might 'fit', a part of me files it away. i'm sure that it is because i am always deeply bothered by easter. i've spoken at a few easter camps (not a lot, actually), and easter saturday has always been a big hole in the weekend. i pretty much crawl away and hide. i could say a lot more about easters. maybe i will.

anyway, i'm blogging to say that I just bought "white lunar", a double album by nick cave and warren ellis, containing music from films etc. some is from the brilliant soundtrack to "the assassination of jesses james by the coward robert ford", which i blogged about here re our 2008 holy week chapel.

O God Today Has a Human Face

Apparently quite a few people have been searching this site for this song. It has been published by "Seasons of the Spirit" for use in Advent and the sheet music and their recording of it are supposedly available online, but I'm still trying to find out where.

i don't want to undercut the Seasons people, even though neither of us make more than a few cents out of any online 'sale', but if you want the melody sheet or my GarageBand recording of it, email me. 

i mainly want people to use it in advent if they want to. I'll post the "Seasons" link when I find it.

new music

in havent blogged about new music for ages, so I won't list everything. fortunately emusic.com saw sense and reverted their pricing structure, so i'm getting 75 songs a month for A$36, usually about 6 albums.

favourites of late are

- the felice brothers (self-titled)- very dylanish, and side project from one of the brothers - the duke and the king - described as neil young meets marvin gaye
- the phenomenal handclap band (self-titled) - upbeat, dancy, clappy, a real mix of styles, some very retro, love it.
- annie lynch & the beekeepers (self-titled) - a freebie album from pastemusic.com (for susbscribers...) - accordion, guitar, lazy crooning swing. gorgeous
- julie feeney - "pages" - irish album of the year - i bought it through HMV UK - multi-layered vocals and an orchestra - great melodies, orchestral pop
- 7 worlds collide - "the sun came out" - double album from Neil Finn and a broad group of family & friends. listening as we speak - very varied, lush, beatlesque in places - johnny marr, kt tunstall, pearl jam, liam, tim, etc....
- pete yorn & scarlett johansson - "break up" - this is surprisingly good - kind of 60's folk-pop
- and arctic monkeys, kasabian.....

speaking of irish music, an album back on rotation around our house is duke special's "orchestral manouevres in belfast". this is a live BBC recording with the Ulster Orchestra largely based on his album "Songs from Deep Forest". duke special is a dreadlocked pianist-singer who writes broadway-type songs for musicals that don't exist yet. we have no idea what most of these songs are about, but they are brilliant and the orchestra sounds fantastic. i mail-ordered it from the uk ages ago.

duke currently has a free sampler album for download.

meanwhile, here are pete and scarlett...

that incarnation thing

my song "God Today Has a Human Face" has just been published and recorded as part of the Seasons of the Spirit curriculum for Advent. They called the lyrics 'profound' and it is used as part of the advent candle lighting for the 4 weeks. i just wish it was easier to sing, but since it's my first public attempt at lyrics AND melody together I'll live with it.

other Aussies David MacGregor and Trish Watts are also in the book and on the CD.

you can supposedly buy the songs online but I don't know where as yet.....

i suppose its funny (NOT) but the recording messes up one line....

the first verse says

"heaven's child in earth's embrace
blanket wrapping grubby grace"

but the singer sings

"blanket wrapping grub by grace"

the original lyric was meant to be about grace being found in this 'dirty' birthplace
instead jesus is called a caterpillar or something i don't quite understand

what were they thinking i meant?????

sigh, such is fame.......

this is our story

when i preached at "the corner" UC the other sunday, the music leader mentioned that their congregation sang "this is our story", a song that tim beale and i wrote for ncyc 1999. i think its the first church that i've heard of that actually sings the song! anyway, i told them that the ncyc songbook had some words missing. so for posterity's sake, here are all of the lyrics. btw the ncyc theme was "it all depends". thank you U2 for the bridge...

this is our story

this is our story, this is our song
this is the dream that we depend up
written on pages, carved in stone
rebel people become God's own
freed from oppression, captured by grace
shake off your boots, it's a holy place!
now living in exile, alien land
got a strange way, strange hope, strange plan

gather us into your history
gather us into your song
take us along on your journey
Yahweh, with you we belong

you are our story, you are our song
you are the one we depend upon
God of the cosmos, walking the earth
Jesus you came, giving hope new birth
woman and children, beggars they came
those on the edge, you called their names
voice of forgiveness, healing, release
crying for mercy, singing for peace

gather us into your story
gather us into your song
take us along on your journey
Jesus, with you we belong

(bridge)
red moon, red blood, red sky
joshua tree standing oh so high
poured out Spirit, cyclone fire
sons and daughters, prophesy!

we are your story, we are your song
we are the ones you depend upon
breaking the claim of the gods of our age
money and power, fashion and fame
dangerous message, whispering word
reckless compassion washing your world
called to walk in a costly way
welcome God's future into today

gather us into your future
gather us into your song
take us along on your journey
Spirit, to you we belong

gather us in, take us along
gather us in
your story, your song
gather us in, take us along
gather us in
with you we belong
gather us in

lyrics by craig mitchell, music by tim beale
(c) 1989.May be copied for non-commercial church use.

i might post the sheet music tomorrow. mind you, i thought at the time that the word/melody combination needed a bit more work due to the changing metre of the verses (my fault, not tim's!).

free music site

bands giving away free sample songs from their albums - from the looks of it largely unknown bands...

www.rockridgefree.com

looks like a music management company or record label. some nice stuff there - got to it from paste music.

new moby music

i'm posting this as my 'soundtrack' category for worship music has been rather quiet.

i like the new moby album "wait for me" even though some of it seems derivative of himself....

recently i used the track "grit" in college chapel with a looped video of dripping water in the forest (one of the free monthly videos from istock) to go with Psalm 63.

i also used the track "wait for me" with Psalm 51 - a video series of people in confessional poses.

both seemed to work well.

a few other tracks on the album that immediately stand out. its lush, looping, moody, but at times seems a tad contrived.