Wednesday 21 July 2010

Blow That Horn

Okay so recently a friend of mine did a video with a soundtrack by Parov Stelar, called Charleston Butterfly. I looked into it further and found it was a title track to an EP, and I now have it coming on vinyl. Very excited! It seems to be pretty niche but there's one online record store that stocks Parov Stelar's albums, Daily Records. I've also got his 2009 album Coco on .mp3 and it's a long lovely jazzy album with beautiful vocals he got from a number of different sources. While the Charleston Butterfly EP is from 2006 the retro vibe is noticeably in right now, with a number of musicians incorporating it into their sound or capitalising on the vintage-fan subculture.
At a gig DJ Otloader played a segment from this song - I think (hope) he was playing it ironically - and a friend pointed out to me something I hadn't realised - that Doop curtailed the development and integration of jazz, charleston and swing into pop and dance by some 20 years by the sheer uncoolness generated by that song becoming a one-hit wonder. But now it seems most people (except the ones who go to The Vestry) have forgotten Doop and saxophones and charleston swing is here.
On the subject of saxophones, I've been watching through the HBO series Tremé, which features a huge amount of New Orleans jazz. If you enjoy the music or are at all curious as to what's happened there since the Hurricane Katrina story fell out of the headlines, that is definitely a series to watch. I'm not even halfway through yet but so far the writing, cinematography and performances have been surprisingly good and the story is well plotted. Worth taking a look at, definitely.
Have fun listening to these, and check out Parov Stelar's most recent EP, The Phantom, out in a variety of formats.

Parov Stelar - Charleston Butterfly (feat Gabriella Hänninen) (From the Charleston Butterfly EP)
Parov Stelar - Dandy (feat. Yola B) (From Coco)

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