So, what are you listening to these days?

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Last weeks Fred. Pub Choir has 10000+ hits ... imagine that ...

Our Christmas edition on Dec 11 is to be on CBC Radio and TV. Last year we raised something in the range of $80K for the foodbank ... imagine such a group! Some say the abstract is dark and just isn't ... leaving us something else!
 
Luce NDs said:
Last weeks Fred. Pub Choir has 10000+ hits ... imagine that ...

Our Christmas edition on Dec 11 is to be on CBC Radio and TV. Last year we raised something in the range of $80K for the foodbank ... imagine such a group! Some say the abstract is dark and just isn't ... leaving us something else!
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I had forgotten about that pub choir. Either you or Seeler posted about it years ago 10000+ views is pretty good for a local group.
 
I'm looking forward to watching the concert celebrating k.d. lang that was held at the National Arts Centre on Oct 2.
It is supposed to be broadcast on CBC Gem sometime this month.
 
Sadly, probably will have Sass Jordan on later today. The 63-year-old powerhouse blues-rock vocalist passed away the other day. I have known her basically since the start of her career, first from her work as a session singer with Quebecois band The Box and then her incredible solo albums. 1 Juno (Most Promising New Artist) and 3 other nominations (all for Best Female Vocals). She was actually born in the UK to French and English parents but they immigrated to Canada when Sass was 3 and she grew up in Montreal. No surprise with its diverse and vibrant music scene that she found her way into music.



 
One thing I learned about Sass today that I had not heard before: The late drummer Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters began his career as her drummer on a tour back in the 90s and they were good friends. Here, from 2015, is Sass appearing on stage in Toronto with Foo Fighters, introduced by Taylor.


Cute note: This is the tour where vocalist-guitarist Dave Grohl was touring with a broken leg. Notice he's playing seated and you can see his walking cast.
 
"Viking metal" is a term used for metal, mostly melodic death metal or power metal, inspired by the Vikings and their lore. One of the leading bands of this style of metal, though they themselves seem to have an ambiguous relationship with the term, is Sweden's Amon Amarth. I had their new album on this morning and love it. Very heavy instrumental work and vocalist Johan Hegg has a deep, gruff growl that fits the Viking themes very well. The title of the album is The Allfather Awakens, "Allfather" being a title of the Norse god Odin, who figures on the cover and in a lot of the songs. One of the best bangers on the album is "Eight Legs of Thunder" which refers not to spiders, but to Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse. And as befits a song about a horse in the modern world, the video is a modern Western in the vein of Yellowstone featuring Hegg as a cowboy version of Odin.

 
I once wrote a short story about a cellist being approached by a metal band to play with them, hinting at some possible romance with the lead singer as well. Cello is surprisingly common in metal and for good reason. Of the major classical string instruments, it has a fairly nice range for rock and metal and takes well to the downtuned sound that is characteristic of heavy metal. One of the leading players of rock cello is American Tina Guo, who is a featured artist on this next track.

This song is destined to be one of my favourites of this year. It's a rare acoustic power ballad from Orbit Culture, a Swedish band better known for heavy, thunderous death metal (they are usually classed as progressive death metal). Vocalist Niklas Karlsson gives a stunning performance, starting off clean and fairly high for him, dropping to his thrash-y sounding normal clean voice, then ending on one of his trademark growls. And Tina is amazing, giving as good a performance as I have ever heard on the instrument in any genre.


Oh, the story: Heavy Cello Love
 
Mendalla said:
I once wrote a short story about a cellist being approached by a metal band to play with them, hinting at some possible romance with the lead singer as well. Cello is surprisingly common in metal and for good reason. Of the major classical string instruments, it has a fairly nice range for rock and metal and takes well to the downtuned sound that is characteristic of heavy metal. One of the leading players of rock cello is American Tina Guo, who is a featured artist on this next track.

This song is destined to be one of my favourites of this year. It's a rare acoustic power ballad from Orbit Culture, a Swedish band better known for heavy, thunderous death metal (they are usually classed as progressive death metal). Vocalist Niklas Karlsson gives a stunning performance, starting off clean and fairly high for him, dropping to his thrash-y sounding normal clean voice, then ending on one of his trademark growls. And Tina is amazing, giving as good a performance as I have ever heard on the instrument in any genre.


Oh, the story: Heavy Cello Love
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There are stranger things under the midnight son my children ... said someone we don't know ... PEDE?
 
Serena Belle has a soft, lovely soprano voice. Unfortunately, she has mostly used it in YouTube Shorts and Tiktoks, so just snippets of songs rather than full songs. But she did release a new full song this week, a cover of "Now We Are Free" from the film Gladiator. Songwriters are Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard. It's a much covered song but Serena's voice really captures it well. Here's hoping for more from her. We did get her first original song a while ago so holding out hope for more of those, too.

 
"California Dreamin'" is almost as old as me, coming out when I was all of one year old. I encountered it later in life, of course, and it has wormed its way into my heart. If I was compiling my "all time favourite songs" list, as I sometimes muse about doing, it would be on it.

So I felt a bit of trepidation when English songstress Lucy Thomas' new cover came up on YouTube. After all, she normally sings solo and this is a song noted for its harmonies. Would she cop out and just layer her own voice? Nope, she did it right. Got herself some backup singers and practiced the hell out of it to get the harmonies right. So it got a Like from me after all. Lovely rendition, even if it won't make you forget the Mamas and Papas original.

 
And I thought I had posted this here, but apparently not. Orbit Culture is one of my current favourite bands, a Swedish melodic progressive death metal band noted for aggressive, powerful metal. So when I saw that they were featuring cellist Tina Guo on a track for the deluxe edition of Death Above Life, their latest album, I was curious to see what the band and Tina had up their sleeve. Yeah, it's tearjerker, heart melter, however you want to put it. The power ballad features some of the best vocals I've ever heard from lead singer Niklas Karlsson, starting clean and descending through his gruff thrash metal voice (reminiscent of James Hetfield of Metallica) and finishing with his powerful death metal growl. On top of that, you have a lovely cello performance by Tina. Easily one of my top songs of 2026.


And just so you can hear their "usual", here's a live performance from this years Summer Breeze festival.

 
My apologies to your eardrums, but I just have to post one more, another track from the Deluxe Edition of Death Above Life. Footage is from their summer tour.

 
Some new releases I've listened to this week:

Tango pairs Finnish vocalist Tarja with cello trio Apocalyptica. It's from her recent album Frisson Noir.


And we have a new song and video from Norwegian prog folk act Kalandra. New album is coming soon (November, I think).


And Faeroese singer-songwriter Eivor dropped her new album today. She's a funny one. Stylistically, she's not really much different from Kalandra at times but has somehow gotten lumped in with folk metal and frequently appears at big metal festivals (as she did this past summer at Hellfest).

 
I went on a rant a while ago, maybe earlier in this thread, about acoustic versions of Nightwish. A new one dropped yesterday and I love it. It's Finnish violinist Jessica Koskela playing an arrangement of "Sleeping Sun", a ballad that is one of my favourite songs period, not just by Nightwish. Sadly, there are no recorded versions of this song by now departed lead Floor Jansen, just a video clip from the film of a show in Tampere, Finland in 2015 and some fan vids of other shows from that tour. That said, it is one Nightwish song where I still prefer original vocalist Tarja Turunen and she still pulls this one out in concert from time to time.

 
JayneWonders said:
i've been listening to sound tracks

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Thus formal writ ... as scratched out ... those that don't want to know subtle material ... don't want to know either! It is a leaning or inclination where the essence races down the mountain ... look out John, Henry, Sam, Fred ... underneath is a deep conspiracy of learning ... hated by real power!

Avoid real power go for the virtual thought ... you can retain it ...
 
Maybe because I don't watch movies much anymore, I haven't really listened to any soundtracks in a while. The odd Vangelis piece from a soundtrack when I have a New Age or Electronic playlist on, but not full soundtracks.
 
JayneWonders said:
Just a way to continue the smiles from watching the show.
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It is a chit chow ... and like the phantom in the subway in the movie ghost ... some of us can do nothing about earth powers ... except observe!

Thus we bend to knocking the crown cap about ... abstract? Certainly with some flexibility!
 
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