Arve Henriksen and Arcade Fire

On Places Of Worship, Arve Henriksen "inhabits the space between these two worlds, in a series of tone poems and mood pieces located around religious buildings and ruins. These still, silent quarters and abandoned houses of the holy can be where we experience our deepest moments of reflection, silence and occasionally fear. Making the aura of these places audible, Henriksen’s haunted horn and idiosyncratic treble vocals carry an air of treading on forbidden territory, stirring up the dust of forgotten spirits."

"As their Grammys-cabinet shows, Arcade Fire are the reigning monarchs of Big Music. Yet the Canadians’ fourth album achieves the seemingly impossible: making their massive music even massiver. The juggernauting anthemia that has become their signature is upscaled for ‘Reflektor’, a wider-than-widescreen, 70-minute, two-disc odyssey.

The need for a big canvas lies within the subject matter. ‘Reflektor’ is about opposites and conflicts: Celebrity vs. anonymity. Memory vs. the moment. Mortality vs. immortality. And while the themes are enough for an A-Level project, the music is a whole syllabus of styles." (The Fly)

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Arve Henriksen - Ascent.

Loved Later

Loved watching the last Later in this series on iPlayer tonight. With Arcade Fire, Robert Plant and the Band of Joy and Mavis Staples on, I was in musical heaven. Especially loved Mavis tearing up at the clip of Pops playing 'Gotta Serve Somebody' and ripping into 'I'll Take You There'.

What an incredible musical journey - taking in Stairway To Heaven and Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down - Robert Plant has been on! His career has been reinvented - as with Johnny Cash and more latterly Tom Jones - by plumbing the Gospel roots of rock and roll and doing so in the company of those who know them best both musically and spiritually, such as T. Bone Burnett and Buddy Miller.

Arcade Fire build a wonderful wall of sound with the angst and adrenaline of adolescence. Like them, I hope that something pure can last!  

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Mavis Staples - I'll Take You There.