12th of March, 2012. The first real day of spring. In order to celebrate, I wrote a post about it. The theme-song of that day was The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Today, the 4th of March, I will celebrate the exact same thing – the victory of the sun over dreary, cold and cloudy weather. I booted up iTunes to find a theme song to this joyous day. Searching for ‘sun’, I eventually came up with Cream’s ‘Sunshine of your Love’, which I put up above. Enjoy!
Forget all those generic fail-compilations. This is the real work. It’s got everything: action, drama, comedy, thrills and chills. Watch it, I promise it’ll be more than worth the ten minutes it takes.
1. Norah Jones is Ravi Shankar’s daughter.
You might’ve heard about Norah Jones, jazz-musician. You might not have heard of Ravi Shankar. Well, Ravi Shankar was an Indian-musician, renowned for introducing George Harrison and the rest of the Beatles to the sound of the sitar. If you hear Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hart Club Band, you’ll noticed the prevalence of the exotic sounding sitar, played by Harrison. Shankar thaught him how to play it. Sadly, Shankar passed away last week, but his spirit lives on in the form of his daughter, Geethali Shankar, whose full name is Geethali Norah Jones Shankar. (source)
I’m sitting here, behind my desk, trying to write an essay and a presentation. I’ve been sitting here all day long. I’m currently getting one of my infamous headaches. I’m not going to bitch about it, popped some aspirin, and I’m currently waiting for them to kick in. Meanwhile, I’m quietly listening to some relaxing tracks to pass the time. Then I thought, why not share these songs? I’m going to post three songs after the jump, which are really worth listening to. So be sure to ‘continue reading’.
As a preview, I’ll post one up front. Curious for the other two? You know the drill.
Seeing as this is a new blog, I shall grab this opportunity to introduce my favourite band – Faunts. Faunts is a Canadian post-rock indie band. That’s music-language for relaxing, almost atmospheric music. I’ll give you an example:
This band has made two full albums, an EP and an album full of remixes. They are sadly on hiatus, and little is known if they will ever produce a new album.
I stumbled upon this band as one of their songs (the one above) featured in the credits of a videogame I liked, some five years ago. I was around 15 or 16 at the time, and really only listened to heavy stuff like System of a Down, Metallica and Rammstein. This particular song opened a new world for me: that of indie-rock. I always disliked the britpop/rock, either because I was really stubborn or I was just a hipster, but this song changed that. One of the first songs my parents didn’t hate me for playing it.
Five years in, and this is still my most listened to song on last.fm (save for one, but that song was on autoplay by accident, when I had my sound off). Acknowledging that the original song is around 8:20 minutes, this is really a special feat.
I can’t really think of a song by Faunts that I dislike. Yes, there are songs that are a bit too slow, but I think these where just meant as an intermezzo between songs. You can’t judge a song on that.
If you decide to listen to a Faunts song, I recommend you listen to the whole album before passing judgement. You’ll feel relaxed and happy when the final song plays out its final notes.