Friday 31 October 2008

Tyour Gnaoua Avec Abdessalam Allikane

This is a beautiful album of Gnawa trance music - a musical technology that transports the listener/dancer into a liminal realm from which they can perform magical operations and communicate with spirits and the djinn. Gorgeous stuff that just sends you off into a blissful reverie.

Here's a film I made that uses one of these songs as the soundtrack. The images are from Bill Morrison's fantastic film Decasia, which is well worth checking out. The film uses decayed stock footage to present us with a different view of the past, and I think there may be some parallels between this decayed footage and the crackly old sounds that emanate from the old vinyl that is posted by many bloggers, but particularly Excavated Shellac.

You can get the zip of the whole album here.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That would be Bill Morrison's "Decasia"

Mr Tear said...

That's right anonymous, it's Bill Morrison's Decasia not Bill Wells who is a completely different person, but this is what happens when I'm trying to pay attention to too many things all at once. Its nice when people comment, even when it is to point out my carelessness. Thanks :)

Mr Tear said...

Also anonymous, did you enjoy the video???

Anonymous said...

Hi Mr T. Thanks for posting this, and the video, which I enjoyed enough to dl the music and investigate the source. Cheers. Andrw

matti said...

do you know were can i find a link to Decasia

Mr Tear said...

Hello Matti,
This link will take you to the Veoh website's 5 minute preview of the film:
http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/entertainment/watch/v5132724pDCJyn35
If you want to watch the whole thing then you have to D/l the Veoh player (which I haven't done, so I can't tell you anything about it), other than that you can try the torrent sites (freakyflicks might have it) or you could buy the dvd, or order it from your local library. Hopethathelps:)