Today's DailyOM Offerings...
November 29, 2007
Torch: A Six Degrees Collection of Modern Torch Songs
Various Artists
2003
To "carry a torch" for someone means to be in love with them and have that love be either unrequited or unfulfilled, thus the "torch song" came of age in the World War II era, with soldiers and their sweethearts longing for each other across the ocean, sharing their sorrow via crooners on the radio or in a smoky café. The torch song walks along at a slow ballad tempo, with heavy sighs and footsteps, expressing a deep romantic longing that no amount of alcohol or moonlight can cure. On Torch, that longing is brought up to the postmodern era, where it’s diffused over dub-influenced beats, mind-altering melodic introversions, and sultry, sexy-cool vocals. So curl onto the couch with a strong drink and a picture of your long lost love and let the tears flow; wars come and go, but love hurts everyone sooner or later in almost the same sweetly unendurable way.
Highlights among this collection include the opener, a rendition of "Harvest Moon" sung by Cassandra Wilson. Slow and drifting, the tune gradually pulls itself off the floor, with Wilson delivering a truly heartbreaking, deep, drowsy vocal. "There’s a full moon rising / Let’s go dancing," she sings over a minimalist piano and acoustic guitar. Though one doesn't really believe her character is going to go dancing that night, subsequent tracks indicate that there is some dancing left to be done. These songs explore more clubby terrain; listen to the drummer boy-style march and synth buildups of David Holmes, with Sarah Cracknell dropping a half-dream of a vocal like a mountaintop vision.
Elsewhere there’s late-night soul jazz with timbale, flute, and jazz guitar (the very groovy "Seasons Change"). The chill-out styles on display are varied throughout the album, with remixes and ambient side trips. Norway's Xploding Plastix does a very chilled late-night, lurch-groove thing (name-checking "all the James Deans in this world")-with Portishead-style rhythm and dreamy unidentified girl vocal-called "22-Carat Tearjerker," and there’s a live closing performance by Elvis Costello and Cyrus Chestnut crooning in high jazz style in front of Roy Nathanson’s band for "Fire Suite 1." All in all this is a solid and classy downtempo affair, perfect for just about any entertaining occasion, the ideal CD to appeal to both young cool cats and their older siblings, for whom the more subtle intricacies of slow jazz are now being made apparent. Torch is where adult class and taste meet the forward-thinking turntable sensibility of the young, and beauty is the result.
November 29, 2007
Discovery through Curiosity
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
Your curiosity about the world around you could compel you to explore new things today. Maybe because you recognize that you cannot develop further without stretching the boundaries of your experiences, you might feel the need to try something completely different. Infusing your life with a sense of adventure and change could allow you to bring not only new knowledge based upon your experiences, but also a deeper awareness of the multifaceted and marvelous gifts that are present in the world around you. Perhaps you might consider making a list of things that you wish you could do but have never gotten around to doing. As you look over your list, choose one thing that you can easily try today. You may find that your sense of wonder and fascination with this experience could bring a more profound level of understanding and awareness to your life.
New life experiences give our lives greater meaning and depth. It can be easy for us to get caught up in the routine of our daily lives - doing what is safe and comfortable just to get through the day. Trying something out of the ordinary, however, challenges our current view of the world. When we step beyond the boundaries we tend to set for ourselves, we see that there is an infinite amount that is yet to learn in life, and that it is only through experience that we can fully embark on this journey. Follow your curiosity today and you will discover new aspects of both the world around you and yourself.
November 29, 2007
Back In The Driver’s Seat
The Passenger
It’s easy to go through this fast-paced world feeling as if you are being dragged through your weeks on the back of a wild horse. Many of us go from one thing to another until we end up back at home in the evening with just enough time to wind down and go to sleep, waking up the next morning to begin the wild ride once more. While this can be exhilarating for certain periods of time, a life lived entirely in this fashion can be exhausting, and more important, it places us in the passenger’s seat when really we are the ones who should be driving.
When we get caught up in our packed schedule and our many obligations, weeks can go by without us doing one spontaneous thing or taking time to look at the bigger picture of our lives. Without these breaks, we run the risk of going through our precious days on a runaway train. Taking time to view the bigger picture, asking ourselves if we are happy with the course we are on and making adjustments, puts us back in the driver’s seat where we belong. When we take responsibility for charting our own course in life, we may well go in an entirely different direction from the one laid out for us by society and familial expectations. This can be uncomfortable in the short term, but in the long term it is much worse to imagine living this precious life without ever taking the wheel and navigating our own course.
Of course, time spent examining the big picture could lead us to see that we are happy with the road we are on, but we would like more time with family or more free time to do whatever we want at the moment. Even if we want more extreme changes, the way to begin is to get off the road for long enough to catch our breath and remember who we are and what we truly want. Once we do that, we can take the wheel with confidence, driving the speed we want to go in the direction that is right for us.
Torch: A Six Degrees Collection of Modern Torch Songs
Various Artists
2003
To "carry a torch" for someone means to be in love with them and have that love be either unrequited or unfulfilled, thus the "torch song" came of age in the World War II era, with soldiers and their sweethearts longing for each other across the ocean, sharing their sorrow via crooners on the radio or in a smoky café. The torch song walks along at a slow ballad tempo, with heavy sighs and footsteps, expressing a deep romantic longing that no amount of alcohol or moonlight can cure. On Torch, that longing is brought up to the postmodern era, where it’s diffused over dub-influenced beats, mind-altering melodic introversions, and sultry, sexy-cool vocals. So curl onto the couch with a strong drink and a picture of your long lost love and let the tears flow; wars come and go, but love hurts everyone sooner or later in almost the same sweetly unendurable way.
Highlights among this collection include the opener, a rendition of "Harvest Moon" sung by Cassandra Wilson. Slow and drifting, the tune gradually pulls itself off the floor, with Wilson delivering a truly heartbreaking, deep, drowsy vocal. "There’s a full moon rising / Let’s go dancing," she sings over a minimalist piano and acoustic guitar. Though one doesn't really believe her character is going to go dancing that night, subsequent tracks indicate that there is some dancing left to be done. These songs explore more clubby terrain; listen to the drummer boy-style march and synth buildups of David Holmes, with Sarah Cracknell dropping a half-dream of a vocal like a mountaintop vision.
Elsewhere there’s late-night soul jazz with timbale, flute, and jazz guitar (the very groovy "Seasons Change"). The chill-out styles on display are varied throughout the album, with remixes and ambient side trips. Norway's Xploding Plastix does a very chilled late-night, lurch-groove thing (name-checking "all the James Deans in this world")-with Portishead-style rhythm and dreamy unidentified girl vocal-called "22-Carat Tearjerker," and there’s a live closing performance by Elvis Costello and Cyrus Chestnut crooning in high jazz style in front of Roy Nathanson’s band for "Fire Suite 1." All in all this is a solid and classy downtempo affair, perfect for just about any entertaining occasion, the ideal CD to appeal to both young cool cats and their older siblings, for whom the more subtle intricacies of slow jazz are now being made apparent. Torch is where adult class and taste meet the forward-thinking turntable sensibility of the young, and beauty is the result.
November 29, 2007
Discovery through Curiosity
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
Your curiosity about the world around you could compel you to explore new things today. Maybe because you recognize that you cannot develop further without stretching the boundaries of your experiences, you might feel the need to try something completely different. Infusing your life with a sense of adventure and change could allow you to bring not only new knowledge based upon your experiences, but also a deeper awareness of the multifaceted and marvelous gifts that are present in the world around you. Perhaps you might consider making a list of things that you wish you could do but have never gotten around to doing. As you look over your list, choose one thing that you can easily try today. You may find that your sense of wonder and fascination with this experience could bring a more profound level of understanding and awareness to your life.
New life experiences give our lives greater meaning and depth. It can be easy for us to get caught up in the routine of our daily lives - doing what is safe and comfortable just to get through the day. Trying something out of the ordinary, however, challenges our current view of the world. When we step beyond the boundaries we tend to set for ourselves, we see that there is an infinite amount that is yet to learn in life, and that it is only through experience that we can fully embark on this journey. Follow your curiosity today and you will discover new aspects of both the world around you and yourself.
November 29, 2007
Back In The Driver’s Seat
The Passenger
It’s easy to go through this fast-paced world feeling as if you are being dragged through your weeks on the back of a wild horse. Many of us go from one thing to another until we end up back at home in the evening with just enough time to wind down and go to sleep, waking up the next morning to begin the wild ride once more. While this can be exhilarating for certain periods of time, a life lived entirely in this fashion can be exhausting, and more important, it places us in the passenger’s seat when really we are the ones who should be driving.
When we get caught up in our packed schedule and our many obligations, weeks can go by without us doing one spontaneous thing or taking time to look at the bigger picture of our lives. Without these breaks, we run the risk of going through our precious days on a runaway train. Taking time to view the bigger picture, asking ourselves if we are happy with the course we are on and making adjustments, puts us back in the driver’s seat where we belong. When we take responsibility for charting our own course in life, we may well go in an entirely different direction from the one laid out for us by society and familial expectations. This can be uncomfortable in the short term, but in the long term it is much worse to imagine living this precious life without ever taking the wheel and navigating our own course.
Of course, time spent examining the big picture could lead us to see that we are happy with the road we are on, but we would like more time with family or more free time to do whatever we want at the moment. Even if we want more extreme changes, the way to begin is to get off the road for long enough to catch our breath and remember who we are and what we truly want. Once we do that, we can take the wheel with confidence, driving the speed we want to go in the direction that is right for us.