Yes there is a new mix playing in the Seattle Center Fountain and in the background of the Center House.
Keep in mind this mix plays in the fountain when the big show is not playing. Big shows run on the hour and half hour for five to ten minutes. This music mix plays the rest of the time.
Artists in the mix include:
Herb Alpert with Ozomatli, Benny Goodman, The Jesters, Mint Royale, Ghostland Observatory, Phillip Glass, Wax Stag, Ratatat, Run DMC, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Astor Piazzolla & The New Tango Quintet, and J-Dilla.
Attached below is a link to one of the tracks in the mix “Little Words” by Mint Royale.
Yes there is a new mix playing in the Seattle Center Fountain and in the background of the Center House.
Keep in mind this mix plays in the fountain when the big show is not playing. Big shows run on the hour and half hour for five to ten minutes. This music mix plays the rest of the time.
Artists in the mix include:
Herb Alpert w/ Ozomatli, Benny Goodman, The Jesters, Mint Royale, Ghostland Observatory, Phillip Glass, Wax Stag, Ratatat, Run DMC, Duke Ellington Orchestra, Astor Piazzolla & The New Tango Quintet, and J-Dilla.
I ran this mix in April when it was sunny, it seemed only proper to bring it back now that, fingers crossed, we have days of consistent sun.
Here’s one of the tracks in the mix: “Little Words” by Mint Royale.
OK, now the secret of what is playing in the fountain this weekend can be revealed!
It’s the annual “Mashup the Fountain” mix in which I feature cool mashups, clever covers, and fine remixes.
Keep in mind this plays when the “big show” music isn’t going. Big shows have the big shots of water in them and play at the top of the hour and half hour.
With this sort of thing it’s hard to decide who to list as performers so I decided to break it down into the artists who created the track and then the artists that are being spliced/covered:
Artist making the tracks:
Prodigy, Baba James, Faroff, John King, 8 Bit Ninjas, Pomplemousse, Section Quartet, Loo & Placido, Thievery Corporation, Kleptones, Taha & Khaled & Faudel, Phillip Steir & Ramin Sakurai, Aber N Stein, La Funk Mobb, Mocean Worker, Apolyptica.
Artist being remixed/mashed and or covered:
DST, JVC Force, Primal Scream, Beastie Boys, Barry White, Public Enemy, The JBs, T-La Rock, Yann Tiersen, John Williams, Herb Alpert, Salt N Pepa, Beyoncé, Muse, Black Eyed Peas, Ludacris, Kelis, Astrud Gilberto, Cypress Hill, Daft Punk, Rare Earth, Boston, Frank Sinatra, Devo, Booker T. & the MGs, Spinal Tap, Salif Keita, Fugazi, Charles Wright & The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Metallica, West Street Mob, Hijack, Renegade Soundwave, The Beginning of the End, The Jimmy Castor Bunch.
So many clever tracks in this mix, since I can’t share them all here is one with a great video:
Yes! the International Fountain is back in operation and there is a new mix playing there, when the big show is not going, and also playing in the background of the Center House.
Artists in the mix include:
Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Kim Hiorthøy, Bud Powell & Charles Mingus &Charlie “Bird” Parker & Dizzy Gillespie & Max Roach, Bonobo, Ulrich Schnauss, RJD2, The Lushlife Project, Gimmik, Manu Dibango, Stereolab, Andrew Bird, Williamson, The Appleseed Cast, and Loess.
Two tracks in the mix:
“Kaneda” by Geinoh Yamashirogumi from the “Akira” soundtrack.
[Warning: There are some loud harsh treble soundtrack sounds at the start of this beware! FYI: I edited some of it out when I put it in the mix and ran a multi-band compressor on the high end to control some of the treble harshness.]
Yes I have a new mix running at Seattle Center. Some nice music for, fingers crossed, nice Summer weather. Seattle is ever unpredictable.
In any case this mix plays in the background of the Center House and in the International Fountain when the Big Show music is not running. Big Shows music runs on the top of the hour and half hour for 5 - 10 minutes. The rest of the time this mix will play.
Artists in the mix include:
Ananda Shanka, Salif Keita, Tim Paris, De Phazz, Enrico Rava, Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd, Trüby Trio, Nina Simone, Jaffa, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Celtic Fiddle Festival, Soul Providers, Tapani Varis, and The Other Side.
Here’s a link to a sample of one of the tracks in the mix “Due Note” by Enrico Rava.
Yes I’ve got a special mix going for the Bastille Day celebration at Seattle Center. Artists in the mix include: Yann Tiersen, St. Germain, Edith Piaf, Plan B, MC Solaar, Gainsbourg, Les Négresses Vertes, Gotan Project, Yves Montand, Yann Tiersen/DJ Baba James, Khaled, Satie, Téléphone, Carte de Sejour, & Ghislain Poirier.
This mix plays in the background in the Center House and in the International Fountain when the big shows are not running. Big shows run at the start of the hour and half hour.
Best musical regards,
Hey good people! I’ve got two new mixes running at Seattle Center. The mixes will be playing in the background in the Center House and in the International Fountain when the big show water jets displays are not running. Big shows typically run on the top of the hour and half hour, the rest of the time you will hear the following mixes:
“July 3rd mix,” running July 3rd and July 5th - 10th
Artists in the mix included:
DeVotchaka/Michael Danna, Sounds From The Ground, Herbie Hancock, Umami, The Chemical Brothers, Darkstar, Thievery Corporation, Bexar Bexar, Blockhead, Funky Lowlives, Mrs Jynx, and DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo.
Woody Guthrie, New York Philharmonic, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington & his Orchestra, Sones de Mexico Ensemble, Peggy Lee, Bob Dylan, The Kings of Dixieland, Mahalia Jackson, Glenn Miller, Simon & Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix & Ray Charles.
“Koo Nimo & Vishal Nagar” is a CD I produced in 1999. It’s a release I am proud of. It captures a raw and fortuitous collision of West African and Indian music as palmwine style guitar and vocals meet tabla.
Koo Nimo is a living legend of Ghanaian music. Koo revived palmwine style guitar music, and in his group Adadam Agofomma he played palmwine music along with deep Asante drumming styles such as Kete, Fontomfrom, & Adowa.
Vishal Nagar, was at the time a youthful tabla prodigy, and has grown up to become one of the top tabla players of his generation. Trained in the classical tabla traditions of Delhi gharana tabla by Ustad Latif Ahmed Khan, he also has a vast knowledge of Indian folk beats, and is a heck of a good tabla teacher!
[Koo, James & Vishal in the studio]
I had been studying palmwine guitar music with Koo Nimo and tabla with Vishal, and when I presented the crazy idea of them playing together, they both were willing to consider it.
[Yaw Amponsah (Koo Nimo’s son), Koo Nimo & James Whetzel playing palmwine in 2001]
So we got together and hashed out an idea of songs that might work. It was, from a music geek’s standpoint, an utterly fascinating process. In South Asian classical drumming, where the initial beat of a rhythm falls is of architectural importance. In Asante music, what holds songs or beats together is the relationship between parts. Which is to say it is the space between parts and how they converse with each other that is important not necessarily where they lie in a cycle of time. In fact their places in the cycle can change or be intentionally shifted, but that’s a whole other blog for another day . . .
[Tabla students of Vishal Nagar circa 1999–who’s the metallically expressive one I wonder?]
And then, of course, Ghanaian and Indian musicians swing time differently! With all this in our minds and ears we searched and found that certain palmwine styles such as Odonson worked best with the caffeinated push of tabla.
[Vishal Nagar & James Whetzel Playing at The “Capitol Hill: Secret Tracks” CD Release Party in 2003]
And so after a series of rehearsals we went to Conrad Uno’s Egg Studios to record. Egg is famous for being where The Presidents of The United States recorded their breakout debut album and I think some of that manic happy Seattle energy rubbed off. Conrad Uno was great.
We recorded several tracks, sometimes having the tabla stay more Indian in style and vocabulary and sometimes having the tabla try to approximate what an African rhythm section would do. We found that five tracks we recorded were the best ones.
[Koo Nimo in the studio, 1999]
The album was released in time to be sold at Koo & Vishal’s performances at the 1999 WOMAD USA festival at Marymore Park, Redmond, WA . Most of the albums were sold. About 15 copies remain and these collectors items are being sold at CD Baby, for a collectors price. You can hear one full track “It Takes So Much Energy to Hate” at iLike, and the full album is available for download at Amazon.com & iTunes.
1. “Aguado”: An adaptation of a Spanish classical guitar etude to fit an Ewe children’s song set to the Agbacha rhythm.
2. “It Takes So Much Energy to Hate”: An odonson style song by Koo Nimo in which he praises all people, Africans, and Europeans who have helped to preserve the cultural treasure of proverbs in the Twi language.
3. “Mohammadu/ Odo Yewu”: A medley combining a sufi muslim devotional song in Hausa/Arabic, and a love song in Twi “Odo Yewu (To Love Is to Die).”
4. “I’ve Worked in Vain”: An odonson style song about the establishment of intestate law in Ghana. The establishment of intestate law made certain that wives would inherit upon their husband’s death even if there was no will. “I’ve Worked in Vain,” refers to the state of affairs before intestate law was established, where it was possible for wives to inherit nothing at all upon the death of their husband. The song title refers to wives singing laments about this state of affairs.
5. “Christ Ne Ndaase Ne Owu”: A Christian devotional song in Highlife style.
[Vishal Nagar in the studio 1999]
If think this music is both beautiful and uplifting and raw and authentic. I hope you enjoy it. And don’t forget it takes so much energy to hate!
I was talking about the Das Dhoom album with my buddy/musical cohort Shree D the other day. I asked him, “Do you think people will realize how well produced this album is and how much work went into it? He replied, “No, people won’t realize unless we tell them.” I’ve had much the same conversation with Sebastian Lange on several occasions.
So, OK, consider yourself are put on notice, there are insane amounts of work in the mixing and production of this album. Incredible attention to detail has and will continue to be paid until it is done. Super-tankers of love and passion have been sunk into the creative crucible of this project and the volatile stew has been carefully been simmered and reduced into ten brightly shining tracks which clock in at 50 plus minutes.
I hesitate to use the complimentary word we were bandying about yesterday to describe the production quality, but suffice it to say the production is pretty friggin’ awesome if I don’t say so myself and better than probably 95% of the albums out there. Not that other producers don’t have better technology and are not smart or capable enough to produce good quality music. It’s just that us Das Dhoom guys are extra devoted! to this album. No slack. No lazy half-soul. Every part has been weighed and considered. We are going the extra mile for every single track. There is no filler whatsoever. That’s why it is taking extra time, but it will be worth it you shall see. And don’t get me started on how many times I have rewritten the lyrics and vocal melodies to a track called “Six Tiger Dhoom” . . . probably at least ten times. This one is driving me a little crazy–friggin “Six Tiger Dhoom”–started working on the vocals/lyrics in November of 2009. . .
Si, I have new DJ mix playing in the background of the Center House and in the International Fountain at Seattle Center, when the big show water display music is not playing. The big show runs on the half hour and hour, the rest of the time you will hear this mix with music by various artists including:
Symbion Project, Ludovico Einaudi, Bonobo, Cocteau Twins, Manu Dibango, The Album Leaf, Groove Armada, Windsor For The Derby, Weathertunes, The Daktaris, Explosions in The Sky, Incredible Bongo Band, & Sigur Ros.
Here are two tunes in the mix as it’s a sunny day in Seattle, the occurence of said solar phenomenon always being a moment to be marked with celebration:
