Bonjour a tous! Aujourd’hui, je suis content: mes plants de basilic poussent à lux de la fenêtre. Je les regarde tous les jours, et ils sont très grands maintenant! C’est bon 🙂
Je n’ai pas de chansons pour partager aujourd’hui, mais j’ai senti la nostalgie de “blogger,” et pour ça, à partir de maintenant, je vais écrire plus suivent, comment un petit blog des events routiniers.
J’écrirait en français aussi, car je besoin de pratiquer l’écriture.
I love House music. House music is probably my favorite genre of music, hands down. I love the optimism, I love the dreamy vibes, I love the both the hardness and the ethereality of the beats.
Don’t ask me about any artists, though. For some reason, house artist names don’t stick with me. Such is my curse; I remember sick beats but not the genius hands that made them, so a lot of songs only exist in my head now.
But! Not all is lost. At least I can remember Tiesto.
Like a beacon at sea, Tiesto’s In Search of Sunrise series always guides me back to House goodness. His In Search of Sunrise 4—the Latin American one—is essentially 10% of my personality. It is the first Tiesto album that I fully listened to, and I find myself returning to it time and again, each listen just as great as the last.
Brigitte Bardot wearing a sombrero. Source: ally43.fr
Salut à tous! I was pretty excited to share that the rains have finally ceased, though just found out that a new batch of downpours is expected circa New Year’s Eve… oh well. As the French say: quelle surprise.
I was also surprised with news of Brigitte Bardot’s passing. At 91, the iconic star led a full life, though not without its fair share of scandal. Rather than dive too deeply into her late-life politics and whatnot, I prefer to remember her as an aesthetic macaron with sultry, kittenesque sharpness on screen, iconic to francophiles everywhere (so vividly captured in Bardot by Julia de Nuñez).
Julia de Nuñez in Bardot (2023). “Le petit chat à mort.” Source: The Movie DB
While I can’t say that I was an avid listener of her sonic escapades (admittedly kind of dumbly blasé for a post kicking off with Brigitte Bardot), that one song with Serge Gainsbourg was pretty emblematic of French ’60s angst (though, due to its off-the-charts sexiness, it was released much later, in the 80’s! So, the Bardot was swapped out for Jane Birkin in the original release).
Regardless, some of that stylistic influence can be gleaned in Air’s “The Duelist,” feat. Jarvis Cocker & Charlotte Gainsbourg–who is actually Gainsbourg’s daughter with Jane Birkin:
Actually, that entire album is possibly Air’s masterpiece, so check it out from track 1!
My laptop’s battery is at its wit’s end right now, so I’ll end this post with two other songs to check out, if you feel like vibing to the new wave French existentialism and gutsy attitude which Bardot so cleverly embodied:
Marie Laforêt – Marie Douceur, Marie Colère
(You might recognize the beat from the Rolling Stones’ “Paint in Black.”)
Sébastien Tellier – La Ritournelle
I love this song. To me, it’s what synesthesia sounds like; but also like experiencing a diluvian outpour of nostalgia. Either way, great stuff, intense and sublime like only the French know how.
I have to admit, these LA rains have awoken a somewhat low-key, pragmatic sense of nostalgia (excepting the negatives, of course). But something about being semi-confined to a room these past few days, with the endless downpour softly pattering on the windows, has inevitably reminded me of home–a place where downpours were more commonplace, bestowing me with hours of daydreaming.
Well, circumstances have changed, somewhat–including the time and propensity available to endlessly plan and ponder what-ifs. Even my music tastes have shifted in the past few years, as I somehow pressured myself to not spend so much time either searching for –or listening to– new music, in a somewhat self-flagellating quest to “get stuff done.”
And, plot twist: I did get epic amounts of stuff done, at the cost of a somewhat more emotionally arid life experience–perhaps a post for my hypothetical memoirs.
Anywho! Back to the point. The gentle promptings of the rain led me through an existential rabbit hole where I drifted and typed my way back to an old Last.fm profile, driven by the urge to reclaim some of my idle musical proclivities, not without some apprehension: have I become one of those people who consider the music of yore better than the music of now?
Of course, that’s a rather close-minded assumption–the answer being that it depends. It depends on the music, it depends on the artist, it depends on where you look. Well, for the purposes of this expedition, I decided to look at my last.fm profile for some enticing jams. I stumbled upon Anouar Brahem’s “Eté Andalous,” which last.fm tells me I listened to only once 10 years ago.
Well, I decided to give it a second listen. It turns out that the song could have been picked by the universe itself, because the poignant guitar plucking actually aligns perfectly with the idealistic rain pattering on my window–the rain of idle musings, the cold softening into contemplation.
Gently intriguing with its minimalistic cording is also “Le pas du chat noir,” the title track of its album, evoking a sense of mystery and introspective flâneurism fit for rainy day contemplation:
Overall, a fortuitous foray into the plays of personal yore. Not bad for a song I played once. Like a vintage red, my ears needed some time to grasp the subtle beauty of its sounds.
As an added bonus, Matthew Halsall’s Colour Yes popped up as part of YouTube’s recommendations–a lively, jazzier counterpart to Brahem’s calmer, more introspective sounds, also worth a spin!
