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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: French pop duo the Dø and Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen.
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Listed: The Dø + Jana Winderen
The Dø
The Dø – that’s French/Finnish vocalist/ guitarist Olivia Merilahti and multi instrumentalist Dan Levy – released its charming, genre-skipping debut A Mouthful in France more than two years ago, putting a fresh-faced, multi-lingual, insouciantly-rhythmed gloss on the female confessional genre. The record went to No. 1 in France, launched a couple of ear-seducing singles (“On My Shoulders,” and “At Last!”) and garnered some early, fairly swoony reviews stateside. That set the stage for this year’s U.S. release, our April 6 on Six Degrees, which adds a couple of demos to the mix.
1. Umalali - The Garifuna Women’s Project
This is a brilliant album. Each voice is stunning. The sound is amazing. The songs, too. It could be Afrobeat or Senegalese music, but it comes from somewhere in the Caribbean and Central America, Belize and Venezuela – the Garifuna minority. (Olivia)
2. The Knife with Jenny Wilson - "You Take My Breath Away" (from Deep Cuts)
Totally ’80s, but I love the Knife and Jenny Wilson. I chose this one mainly for the chorus. The Swedes are so skilled in indie-pop. (Olivia)
3. PJ Harvey and John Parish - “Pig Will Not” (from A woman A Man Walked By)
A pretty extreme track, especially with all the shrieking and aggressive vocals. It’s brimming, noisy and wild. (Olivia)
4. Leo Brouwer - Estudios Sencillos
I played some of these guitar pieces when I was a teenager. They were very dear to me. I guess these are part of the things that educated my ear to dissonances. They still inspire me today. (Olivia)
5. Elizabeth Cotton - “Shake Sugaree”
I heard this song a short while ago and I could not tell if it was a young boy or an old lady singing. Her musical interpretation is the purest and simplest ever. No pretending. No showing off. That’s exemplary.(Olivia)
6. The Arcade Fire - “Ocean of Noise”
This band gave me a lesson: When I first listened to Neon Bible, I hated it. Then I heard it at another moment in my life, and this particular song struck me so hard. I couldn’t listen to anything else for weeks. (Dan)
7. Gaggle - “Hidden Army”
I discovered Gaggle during the last Transmusicales de Rennes in France. We love choirs, but these girls are no saints. If we could tour with them, it would be so much fun. (Dan)
8. Liars - “Scissors”
I really like this band. The video of this song is amazing. Punch me now! (Dan)
9. Toru Takemitsu - Ran OST
I love this music. Takemitsu’s music in a movie is always very important — it’s never in the back. He brings another dimension to a movie, as in Suna no onna (Woman in the Dunes). When I was a kid, this movie hit me — I thought it was 3D! (Dan)
10. Nina Simone - “Plain Gold Ring”
Nina Simone never compromised. I love every song she’s written or performed. She’s a goddess, a queen and a mother to me.(Dan)
Jana Winderen
Educated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and with a background in mathematics and chemistry from the University in Oslo, Norway, Jana Winderen has worked as an artist, curator and producer since 1993. She researches the hidden depths with the latest technology; her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. Says Winderen, “"I like the immateriality of a sound work and the openness it can have for both associative and direct experience and sensory perception. I have been occupied with finding sounds from unseen sources of sound, like blind field recordings. Over the last four years I have collected recordings made by hydrophones, from rivers, shores and the ocean, and more recently also from glaciers in Greenland, Iceland and Norway.” We asked her to pick 10 records that inspired her sound recordings on the forthcoming Energy Field, out in April on Touch.
1. KK.NULL/Chris Watson/z’ev - Number One
The combination of the electronic and natural sounds. I have played it so many times, and keep giving it to my friends (sometimes several times to the same person).
2. Philip Jeck - Sand (and all his live concerts I have been to)
The sense of a collective memory that he evokes…a sense of not wanting it to end, wanting to stay within the laps of time he creates forever. I will never get tired of going to Philip´s concerts.
3. Chris Watson - Outside the Circle of Fire
”Waiting,” his recording of an adult cheetah, made a huge impression on me a long time ago. The bass tone of the purring is scary and intriguing — as was the thought of how Chris was able to get the microphone so close to the cheetah’s breast when it was sleeping, though still absolutely alert.
4. V/A - freq_out
I have been a member of the freq_out gang since 2003. The artists involved in freq_out are a great bunch of people to know, wonderful artists and brilliant to work with. Kent Tankred, Maia Urstad, BJ Nilsen, Jacob Kirkegaard, Brandon LaBelle, JG Thirlwell, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Mike Harding, PerMagnus Lindborg, Petteri Nisunen, Tommi Grönlund, Franz Pomassl and Finnbogi Petursson.
5. Leif Elggren & Kent Tankred - Sons of God
I especially remember a concert when Leif and Kent played Husqvarna sowing machines. A very beautiful piece of Swedish machinery. It was at the Norberg Festival in 2005.
6. The Tapeworm - Cassette releases (2009-2010)
The Worm rules! I have the whole collection, and it has made me look again at the whole pile of cassettes from the 1980s stored in my mum’s loft — thinking about the recordings I did of Radio Luxemburg and John Peel sessions on my first recording device.
7. BJ Nilsen - Live at SightSonic festival, 2006 and The Short Night
Particularly this live concert in York. It happened around midday on a great sound system at York University, An unusual time for a concert, but it made it very special, and has stuck in my mind since. He created a wonderful, huge space — a dream of flying, suspended in mid air.
8. Fennesz - Venice
Quite simply, a masterpiece. Fennesz is superb at producing albums, each with their own amazing web and flow. I have learnt a huge amount from him.
9. Verdensteatret - “The Telling Orchestra”
An extraordinary piece of work. Håkon Lindbäck in Verdensteatret told me about the icebergs in Greenland and the sound they made, I then decided to go there, which was the starting of the work on Energy Field. They had been to Greenland while researching for the piece.
10. Geir Jensen - Live concert at Sight Sonic festival, York 2006
I remember the cold stone floor I was lying on, listening to the sounds from his trip Cho Oyu in Tibet. Together, in hindsight, it was a great experience.
By Dusted Magazine
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