The best music of August: The Tedeschi Trucks Band sets new standards
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Loading... - Vanessa Davis
- 05 Sep 2022
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"I Am The Moon", the mammoth work of the twelve-piece American rock orchestra is a hot contender for album of the year. The band Kokoroko, Poppy Ajuda, both from England, Danger Mouse and the Swiss singer Rislane provided further highlights.
1. Tedeschi Trucks Band: I Am The Moon
The Tedeschi Trucks Band, the famous rock orchestra of wonder guitarist Derek Trucks (43) and his singing wife Susan Tedeschi (51), has adapted itself to the oriental love epic "Layla and Majnun" by the 12th-century Persian Sufi poet Nizami Ganjavi. Accepted in the 19th century and created a concept album of monumental proportions with “I Am The Moon”. The venture started three years earlier with a remake of "Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs". But it was singer Mike Mattison who, during the pandemic, encouraged people to delve into the work of the Persian poet and to incorporate "the lyrical and romantic class of Nizami Ganjavi" into new songs.
“Nizami's art is almost a thousand years old, but it's not a bit dated. Many of his thoughts on topics such as loneliness, isolation, despair and love have been very timely, especially over the past two years in which we have spent a lot of time with ourselves and our loved ones at home,” says Trucks.
Each member of the twelve-piece band worked separately on the joint project. It's a nice paradox that the Tedeschi Trucks Band created this joint effort at a time when working together was either impossible or very difficult. "When we got together in the studio, the band exploded with creativity," says Trucks. So Corona made this unique work possible.
The result is the concept album «I Am The Moon», a mammoth work of outstanding musicality and quality. 25 songs and a total of 150 minutes of music, which have been divided into four albums since the end of May and have been served to the audience in digestible doses monthly: starting with “Crescent”, then “Ascension”, “The Fall” and finally “Farewell” (end of August) . "I Am The Moon" is a wonderfully old-fashioned work. A quadruple album that shows the spirit of the times and the trend towards single songs with conviction and yet does not overwhelm.
"I Am The Moon" is a kind of sequel, a sequel to "Layla Revisited". In terms of subject matter and content, however, the work is much broader. And above all, the perspective was rotated: While Eric Clapton was still about the emotional distress of a man who is being eaten up by his unfulfilled love for Layla, "I Am The Moon" is primarily about Layla's needs, including the unbearable isolation in the tower, gradually driving insane. It is this change of perspective, this ingenious trick that creates the connection to today, to isolation in the pandemic, and culminates in the realization that meeting other people is vital for us. Or expressed with the image of the moon: The moon is nothing without the sun, it only becomes visible and real through the sun. Read More…
