Monday's mp3: Think Cooling Thoughts

If you're hearing a whimpering sound coming from the direction of Seattle this week, don't think less of our vigorous Western manliness. It's just that we're not used to this kind of thing. Yes, I know that many of you endure longer, hotter summers than what we're going through, but as our general panic at even modest snowfalls also reveals, we're not used to extreme weather. Give us the mildewy hazards of short rainy winter days, or long but cool summer evenings and we're fine. But push the mercury towards 100 degrees (that's, what, around 38 degrees Celcius?) and we begin to droop a bit. Not only are we unused to extremes, we're ill-prepared for them. Take me. Neither my home nor my car has air-conditioning. It's 9pm now, and the first floor of my home is around 80, the top floor around 90. I'm sure the car's not much cooler.

All this is not to complain, but to explain. It'll cool off soon enough, probably even rain. In the meantime I've got a great excuse to eat lots of ice cream. But I'm just saying. And this explains why today my thoughts for a musical offering turned to cooler climes.

I've mentioned the ice music of Norwegian Terje Isungset before; conveniently he's released a new CD called Hibernation, which continues his chilly flirtation with the sounds that can be made through the careful carving and application of mallets and lips to chunks of ice.

This album was recorded in an igloo at Geilo, in Norway, on January 2008. Isungset plays some ice percussion, an ice horn, and an iceofon (ice balafon), and sings. Sara Marielle Gaup sings some joiks. Peter Paelinck plays an ice didgeridoo. And Eilif Gundersen plays an ice horn. Cooling music, indeed. Enjoy.

[mp3] Terje Isungset: Vena Leikros
from the album Hibernation

More Terje Isungset:
Terje's blog
download the song "Igloo" from WFMU's Beware of the Blog
website
myspace
ice music videos