Instrumental Interlude
Friday, January 18th, 2002 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydThe intro to this entry is rather wordy. If you'd just like to see my Top N List, scroll down. On reflection, the post as a whole seems less valuable now than it did in my head before sitting down. At least it's not a "Which Instrumental Are You?" test.
For staff development purposes, I was recently asked to contribue a song which means something to me of less than six minutes to a CD. The CD will be played at our retreat and folks will guess who included what song. Of course, picking just one song out of even my 3100+ mp3s, to say nothing of the 150 or so CDs to my left, required lots of time and deep thought. Choosing one that's less than six minutes managed to make the choices much easier -- no Echoes, Alice's Resteraunt, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, The End, No Quarter, Stairway to Heaven, Pushit, Eulogy, Bleeding Me, ...
Although I finally selected Colcannon - Kilkelly (6:22, technically, but I included a shorter backup), instrumentals or songs with voice added merely for color make up a striking portion of the songs I considered, or wished I could have considered. Now, the vast majority of songs in my posession have words, and I fully adore a good many of these songs. However, many of them were unfit for consideration in this context. Some, excellent though they are, should be listened to in the context of their home album, to select them to stand on their own does a disservice to their excellence. Thus, most of the corpus of Pink Floyd is inellegible for this particular award. However, my mp3 list is chock full of neat songs that fill my mind on occasion, that I will seek out in a random playlist. Yet most of these songs don't seem strong enough to stand on their own, a statement of my aesthetics, side by side with the surprising selection of wordless tunes.
Thus, I present a list of stellar instrumental singles, in no particular order. If any of these pique your interest, contact me and I'll hook you up with an mp3.
Apocalyptica - Beyond Time, Romance (Selecting a second choice between these two was tough. They're both amazingly beautiful.) Also by Apocalyptica, Toreador, Fade to Black, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Unforgiven, Nothing Else Matters, and essentially all of the Cult album
Orbital - Halcyon & On & On, Belfast, as well as most of the In Sides album, which works excellently as both an album and singles
Booker T. and the MGs - Green Onions, and almost any of their other tunes
Moby - God Moving Over the Face of the Waters
Average White Band - Pick Up the Pieces (Funk rocks me)
Boom Boom Satellites - On the Painted Desert
Rob D - Clubbed to Death (This is the perfect music to walk to)
Jesse Cook - Breeze from Santes Maries, Rattle & Burn (Flamenco rocks me too)
DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt
Banco de Gaia - Drippy (from the Pi soundtrack)
David Holmes - No Man's Land (also from Pi)
Single Cell Orchestra - Transmit Liberation
Yo-Yo Ma (et al) - The Green Groves of Erin (From the excellent Appalachian Waltz album. Cello + Celtic = yay!)
Afro Celt Sound System - Release It
Metallica - Orion
Pink Floyd - Siles Lane
R.E.M. - New Orleans Instrumental No. 1
The Smashing Pumpkins - mellon collie and the infinite sadness
David Bowie - Moss Garden
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Clint Mansell/Kronos String Quartet - Lux Aeterna and Ghosts of a Future Lost (from Requiem for a Dream)
Honorable Mention (not quite instrumentals):
Pink Floyd - Echoes
Grateful Dead - Dark Star
Other artists who deserve recognition, but for whom I have not developed a favorite single:
Lots and lots and lots of ethnic, especially Celtic and African, music
Tera Verde (contemporary, ethnically influenced ragtime)
Bobby McFerrin (especially from Circlesongs)
The Orb
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Mucis
For staff development purposes, I was recently asked to contribue a song which means something to me of less than six minutes to a CD. The CD will be played at our retreat and folks will guess who included what song. Of course, picking just one song out of even my 3100+ mp3s, to say nothing of the 150 or so CDs to my left, required lots of time and deep thought. Choosing one that's less than six minutes managed to make the choices much easier -- no Echoes, Alice's Resteraunt, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, The End, No Quarter, Stairway to Heaven, Pushit, Eulogy, Bleeding Me, ...
Although I finally selected Colcannon - Kilkelly (6:22, technically, but I included a shorter backup), instrumentals or songs with voice added merely for color make up a striking portion of the songs I considered, or wished I could have considered. Now, the vast majority of songs in my posession have words, and I fully adore a good many of these songs. However, many of them were unfit for consideration in this context. Some, excellent though they are, should be listened to in the context of their home album, to select them to stand on their own does a disservice to their excellence. Thus, most of the corpus of Pink Floyd is inellegible for this particular award. However, my mp3 list is chock full of neat songs that fill my mind on occasion, that I will seek out in a random playlist. Yet most of these songs don't seem strong enough to stand on their own, a statement of my aesthetics, side by side with the surprising selection of wordless tunes.
Thus, I present a list of stellar instrumental singles, in no particular order. If any of these pique your interest, contact me and I'll hook you up with an mp3.
Apocalyptica - Beyond Time, Romance (Selecting a second choice between these two was tough. They're both amazingly beautiful.) Also by Apocalyptica, Toreador, Fade to Black, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Unforgiven, Nothing Else Matters, and essentially all of the Cult album
Orbital - Halcyon & On & On, Belfast, as well as most of the In Sides album, which works excellently as both an album and singles
Booker T. and the MGs - Green Onions, and almost any of their other tunes
Moby - God Moving Over the Face of the Waters
Average White Band - Pick Up the Pieces (Funk rocks me)
Boom Boom Satellites - On the Painted Desert
Rob D - Clubbed to Death (This is the perfect music to walk to)
Jesse Cook - Breeze from Santes Maries, Rattle & Burn (Flamenco rocks me too)
DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt
Banco de Gaia - Drippy (from the Pi soundtrack)
David Holmes - No Man's Land (also from Pi)
Single Cell Orchestra - Transmit Liberation
Yo-Yo Ma (et al) - The Green Groves of Erin (From the excellent Appalachian Waltz album. Cello + Celtic = yay!)
Afro Celt Sound System - Release It
Metallica - Orion
Pink Floyd - Siles Lane
R.E.M. - New Orleans Instrumental No. 1
The Smashing Pumpkins - mellon collie and the infinite sadness
David Bowie - Moss Garden
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue
Clint Mansell/Kronos String Quartet - Lux Aeterna and Ghosts of a Future Lost (from Requiem for a Dream)
Honorable Mention (not quite instrumentals):
Pink Floyd - Echoes
Grateful Dead - Dark Star
Other artists who deserve recognition, but for whom I have not developed a favorite single:
Lots and lots and lots of ethnic, especially Celtic and African, music
Tera Verde (contemporary, ethnically influenced ragtime)
Bobby McFerrin (especially from Circlesongs)
The Orb
Béla Fleck and the Flecktones
Mucis
