Hola my dear blog readers (if there's anybody of you left)!! I've been absent the longest time, and I am sorry about that, but my control over life is once again (and more and more) slipping through my fingers as more and more duties pile up on each other... My parents came to visit me in Hong Kong last week, their first time in East Asia, and it's been a pleasure to have them here, show them around and spend some time together, even if of course it's been challenging to try and keep up with school rhythm and everything too...! I have a couple big papers due by the end of the month and I have barely started working on them, as (school-related) housekeeping duties keep me busy week in and week out, and by devoting some time to the people who matter to me here in HK (a special one in particular) and to friends and family via Internet, eating, sleeping (poorly) and few more basic human needs, I keep on running out of time (and most of all of productivity). I keep needing a holiday, but I have to clench my teeth and keep it up until May at least!! Good thing is that this 2017 has been giving me a shitload of music satisfaction already, and I'm so sad I can't manage to share it all with you, but I'll give you as many little pills as I can! And apparently I gotta start from way back then, as I recently started listening to 'Bat for lashes' and I'm quite liking her! I think this song works perfectly for the working, semi-lazy, grey-sky Sunday I've just been spending! I hope it works well for the start of your new week too!! Hope to be back up here in a shorter time than last!
Hello my dears, I am back from a 2-day trip to Guangzhou/Canton with friends, first time to Mainland China, super tiring but worth it! After a Sunday of morning rest, afternoon work and dinner out, I am ready to start a new week (am I?)! The year of cock, so let's also get ready for this Chinese New Year!! I'll leave you with a perfect tune for a chill end of the week, with vocals by Sia. Hope you enjoy!
I didn't start this 2017 much better than I left off 2016 on the blog, so I will try to make it up at least today! The new year kicked off being social and lazy for me, both things not being beneficial either to my studies or to any other commitments I might have taken, including the blog... so today, mostly out of guilt, I tried to put my down and read some papers, trying to turn things around. It's been going quite ok, also thanks to the fact that my nth sore throat + fever is getting better and so, being forced at home with a relatively clear mind, I took advantage of the good chance I had to work. And to write on the blog too, of course! It's hard to feel these days as winter days, with temperatures outside constantly over 20°C, but I found myself in a winter mood this afternoon and put on some Dido, so I'm going to share with you one of my favourites out of her latest studio album!
Some interesting new music has already been released in these few days of 2017 so stay tuned and be patient, I'll get to share it with you soon!!
Sometimes you need to take a few days more slowly, take your breath, and maybe you let a whole week pass by without posting... well, it didn't go so slow after all I guess! Then you have great Friday nights and Saturday nights when... well, let's say your mood swings, to use a euphemism. Letting people in is what makes your life better, but also what makes you vulnerable and sometimes make you feel like shit willy-nilly. Add stress onto it, and the picture is complete. Thanks goodness destiny sends to your path other people , that can help you get it out in a better way than you could do by yourself. Words are powerful. Remembering what is important is important. Cyclical relationship. We float. Take life as it comes.
Today has been a very Dido day: as we all hoped last night, thyphoon Haima passed quite close to here and so the weather observatory issued the typhoon signal and all day activities have been cancelled! No lectures, no conferences, so I've had quite a bit of time to... well, work on papers and assignments of course! Busy life, but with the colder season slowly coming in (is it actually?), the rain and the quiteness of working in front of my computer, Dido on the soundtrack... it's not been a bad day in the end! I've produced some output and hope I didn't deplet my energies so that I can keep on being productive! Not time to enjoy the weekend yet, but maybe Sunday I'll be able to put my papers aside for a while! I hope you'll be having a more entertaining weekend than me anyway!
Hi guys, I've been away from the blog in the last few days due to a busy life and among submission deadlines, paper-reading, hiking and sea-bathing, social gathering (not ever enough of that) and so on, I often find myself at the end of the day exhausted and with no spare time, not even 10 minutes to sit down and write a stupid blog entry. I'm striving to find my own balance, to carve some me-time in my schedule, so hopefully I'll be able to get to write a bit more constantly than now, but perspectives are not best...! Anyway, this way I need to be more picky with the songs I choose to share with you. So there you get an angry angel!
Fistful of love - Antony & the Johnsons (feat. Lou Reed)
Antony's music is always weird, often inaccessible or anyway hard to access for the first few plays (to me at least), but then some songs bloom like beautiful flowers and spread a devastatingly good perfume around themselves. Like this one. The atmosphere always remains partly gloomy but in some way also hopeful. Beautiful anyway. I hope that my time in Hong Kong is about to flower too: I finally got my house furnished to a basic level so that I have finally been able to cook my first meal here! I hope things are going in the right direction! Listening to this music I can't help thinking that even in the darkest times, things are somehow going to adjust themselves. Not that I'm living a "darkest time" now, just to be precise!
Not being in love (yet) with PJ's new album, I found this song ringing in my mind for a short while yesterday (or was it today?) and I think it really works well with the environment I am surrounded by: in the end it's PJ Harvey, and what is more British than her? Rain, wind and cold. Yep, that's exactly what I'm talking about, what I've found here in Riga. Besides a potentially quite nice city, if only I got the chance to see it with a hint of a blue sky in the background. Maybe next time, if there's gonna be a next time. Let's just roll with the music for now!
One of the... well, probably THE most anticipated 2016 album (by me) was for sure PJ's new work, which was actually supposed to be released last year. Five years after her last work, 'Let England shake', which I didn't immediately fall in love with but which has grown a lot inside of me over the years, I was expecting something special. PJ is usually an artist who, over the course of her career, has made consecutive albums that were often quite different from one another, so I was quite surprised to listen to 'The hope six demolition project' and to find out that it sounded like 'Let England Shake' 2. I haven't been particularly positively struck by it for now, but given that it really sounds similar to its predecessor, especially in terms of sounds and concept, I am waiting for it to walk the same path. In the meanwhile, this is the second single (if such things still exists) released off it, which I have started to greatly enjoy lately! I hope you like it too!
I'm going on with the "posting songs that I just got on my mind I-don't-know-why" blogs, and today there's a big, big one for you. I mean, it's a big, big one for me so it's a big deal sharing it with you here. As I might have told you already, ∆ are a band I found out thanks to my friend B. and they are probably my most relevant and impactful music library addition of the past few years. They also hold a sentimental value, but I won't talk about that here. Matilda is the first song of theirs I fell for and, even maybe it's not in my super top favourites anymore, I can't help being stunned and amazed every time I listen to it. I know you will too.
Today I got to hear Dido songs around twice, so I take it as a sign I should be posting a song of hers on this special day! She's been this hugely influential singer for me in my teenage years, she's been my favourite for a long time and most of her (older) songs still hold an incredible affective value for me. I got to listen to a sh*tload of music in the last years and many artists entered my heart, yet Dido still does and will retain her special place in it. Today is also my birthday, a day that didn't start well, I was in a bad mood for no reason in particular, but it's been improving by the minute and hopefully it will continue to! After all, 26 years later "I haven't really ever found a place that I call home, I never stick around quite long enough to make it..."
Hello my dear readers, here I am after a couple of exhausting days I had to get through even if I'm not yet recovered by the toughness of my recent trip in Japan. An exhaustion that has been absolutely welcome on my side, as it was paired up with a Florence + the Machine concert in Bologna and thus with a couple of days spent with a friend from university that I haven't got the chance to see often lately as she lives near Bologna. I've been having an absolutely great time, seeing a couple of cities I hadn't got the chance to see before, enjoying yet another great concert by my favourite band and spending time with a friend! So, in order to celebrate the release of 'Delilah' as single in vinyl in occasion of the record store day (happening two days from now) and my latest concert, here is for you the awesome demo of 'Delilah' that is contained on the to-be-released vinyl! Hope you enjoy!!
I am not usually a hater (ok, that's a lie), but today I am particularly bored and tired of seeing 'Happy easter' wishes everywhere... I'm getting old and grumpy, I know, but I can't change the way I feel...! Easter has always been a weird holiday for me: I was born on an easter Sunday, then I spent most of my last 5-6 easters away from home for one reason or another, and there were all pretty good ones (one in Central Park NYC, one in Toronto, one in London...). This year we had one couple of grandparents at home for lunch (which is eventful, as it's always us going there usually), a very placid meal and now I just wish to go back to sleep, not a particularly special day. Still, even not special days can be perfect in their own way... let's get it over with and try not to exaggerate with the chocolate!!
My goodness... very rarely did I have to wait a few hours before writing a post that I had ready in my heart and (used to have ready) in my head for quite a long time. I noticed that the biggest highlight off 'How big, how blue, how beautiful' that I still hadn't posted here was 'Third eye', and I already knew I would post it in conjunction with the Florence and the Machine concert I've been waiting for SO LONG. But, my dears... I am messed up. I am messed up because of last night and I am just starting to realise it now and I don't know how much time it's gonna take me to get back on my feet. Hopefully it's holidays time and I will have other things to think about, but... my goodness. Last night right after the concert I just said to myself "Wow, once again what a great concert I've been to!". But now... after I drove back to my hometown with my friends, had lunch with them and got home alone, the whole mess in my head started. Apart from the fact that I've been having this song in my head since last night, so that's an even more compelling reason why I am posting it now... I keep on listening to all the songs, one after the other, than the first one again, then another one... How big how blue how beautiful, Queen of peace, Third eye... unbelievable. Let alone when I think about last night's 'Cosmic love', the first time in my life I've seen a whole arena fall silent in the middle of a song, when she paused singing for a few seconds... how intimate, how powerful, how simple, how fantastic. And then I started watching the videos of the concert... goodness gracious, I teared up again while watching HBHBHB, all of us with our blue balloons in hand... I started jumping around the house with the balloon I still have from yesterday, almost crying tears of joy and excitement. And then Long & lost, Mother... I'm gonna stop now because I realise none of you will still be reading at this point. All these words just to say that I am speechless after last night. This is the power of music. I feel alive. I feel my life is worth it.
"You don't have to be a ghost, here amongst the living.
You are flesh and blood,
And you deserve to be loved and you deserve what you are given!"
I couldn't find an album version, so I'm sharing with you the live debut of 'Third eye', a beautiful performance whose video came out a few months before the album was actually released.
The darker days of me and him (live 2004) - PJ Harvey
It's always the same story... whenever I get to be at home for a period of time without any compelling work (or else) events, I end up having even less time for my usual activities: between meals at grandparents', video gaming, courses to carry out downtown and any other business, I neglect the blog, I neglect my Japanese study and everything. But here I am finally! Last week told you I wanted to do something special, which I ended up not doing, so after missing a sunday post, I will start it now (late, as it's already been Tuesday for two hours, but whateeeever)! What I want to do is to post live performances of music I love for one week, so how could this be called, you might ask... well, #liveweek of course!
I might allow myself to post tunes that have already seen the light on the blog, but this time I will share them as live performances. For this opening post though, I chose a song that has not been featured here yet, and it's one of my absolute favourite PJ Harvey tracks. 'The darker days of me and him' tells the story of a girl who has been burned by (unfulfilled) promises and who dreams about "a land where no man was ever born, with no neurosis, no psychosis, no psychoanalysis and no sadness". It's a beautiful, beautiful song and this version is absolutely great, so don't miss out and stay tuned for more great live music!!
Tonite I've seen ONE of my friends in my hometown for about an hour before she went to the movies with her "new" boyfriend, that I also met for the first time. Sometimes it feels that our fellowship is somehow breaking, we are all somehow spread around (but not that much actually) and it looks like we are never able to see each other these days... big changes ahead, as more or less we have all started working or will soon by now, and that will probably mean even more spreading around (me first). Tomorrow (well, actually today) I'll be moving near Venice for the beginning of my training: I'm not living this very well, as the town where the training is taking place is supposedly shitty, a Venice suburb where all the port and metalworkers are based, not exactly engaging for a hippie youngster like me, plus the course is supposed to be very technical (more than I need) and not-so-exciting, but I'm trying to look at the bigger picture, as I can't really wait to start a new adventure after that, getting a real job! Today I went to visit a couple of grandparents with my parents and while driving back home we got this song... I was about to say on the radio but that's not true, I got just the beginning of it while we were getting out of a textiles outlet we stopped in on the way! Well, anyway, it stuck in my head and it seemed a legit post, as I've been in love with it since it came out in the summer of 2006!
I don't know why, but I found myself listening to more and more Dido today, first only on the computer, than also with my ipod (and my new bluetooth earphones I got for my graduation!) walking in the streets of town and then cleaning home and finally also with my old ipod while having a quick shower! I still can't figure out what the trigger was, but I found myself having her song 'Go dreaming' in my head, and so it all started from there! I didn't even remember I posted a song of hers already a few days ago, and then I realised that I've been mainly focusing on her latest album, that is also my least favourite, and on her first album, which I love unconditionally. A love that is (almost) equally directed towards her second album, Life for rent, which I spent my whole teenage years listening to. I thus wanted to post 'I'm no angel' out of her debut, but I wanted to give some room to Life for rent more, and so here I am with See you when you're 40, a song that I remember I liked at the very beginning, then it kind of got lost just to be found again and fully understood and appreciated just in the last few years, to become one of the songs I love a lot (like, a lot!) on an album that I love a lot (like, a lot!). The song is about Dido struggling to end her relationship with a man she's attracted to but who is not good for her, up to the point when she finally decides that it's time to leave. Of course I didn't understand it fully when I was younger, I only loved the melody, but now I do and it's even more beautiful in my ears!
I woke up this morning with this lyric in my head and I knew instantly that it had to be the song I would post today! My temperature has (hopefully) gone, even though my throat is still sore. I think I can say that also because after sleeping from about 2 AM to past 2 PM and from about 5 PM to past 10.30 PM yesterday, last night I couldn't fall asleep, it took me quite a long time, thus further messing out my sleep-wake cycle but (methinks) showing that I didn't need anymore healing sleep. So here I am, getting through the late phases of this brief sickness in this sunny winter day with PJ Harvey, listening to music, watching TV series and reading books...! What else would you wanna do on the 29th of December?!
I'm back home, I travelled full of luggage (two trolleys, something like 5 big paper bags and a shoulder bag) full of clothes, papers and xmas gifts, both mine and my aunt's... Yes, I started transferring back my stuff from Milan quite seriously, it made sense after living these last few days there with a nostalgic vibe. The moving has been quite tough, especially as I've been doing it alone, and the worst part is finding room at home for all the stuff I brought back, but things are slowly taking a new shape! Of course I wanted to live my 1-hour drive back home at the fullest, and my music pick has been, as you can imagine, Florence + the Machine! Overlooking the fact that my singing in the car was probably comparable to that of Britney Spears at her concerts, it's been very rewarding and moving as usual, even more than usual I'd say, given the aforementioned nostalgic vibe. Of course one of the songs which I was singing myself hoarse was this one, Spectrum, big feelings, powerful singing, I'll never forget my times with Florence in the car... just chills, nothing else!
Ok, it's time for another great great song. I know this post won't be popular, and I'm sorry, but it is the music I love and the whole point of this blog is for me to share the music I love! I've got to know PJ Harvey thanks to the guys of the Italian Alanis Morissette forum, who also got me close to Tori Amos (goodness bless them for your influence)! I have approached PJ in 2010 and something happened with her that doesn't normally happen when I approach new music: I liked her debut album instantly. She's the one I started to approach with a rigorous chronological order and I think this helped me appreciate her even more, given the great difference that exists between her albums... seeing her evolutionary path really helps you get the best out of her music. Together with her debut, Dry, my most favourite album of her is the one titled after this song. I've been growing a special link with this album, as I always (and I mean always) use it as soundtrack when I'm practicing yoga with Wii Fit: today I started doing yoga again after more than one year, and I also started to listen to this awesome album again. Most people don't like it, I know, and I wouldn't expect anyone to understand how it fits with yoga (I don't understand it myself), but... here it is, and I enjoy it immensely and that's what matters!
