Tatran - Anew

Lately there's been quite a buzz surrounding Tatran but only when I heard this song did I really get what's so magical about them. Much more melodic than their other singles and also more emotional. It reminds me a bit of Camel's majestic 'The Snow Goose' which first introduced me to the wonderful world of instrumental music only it's much more complex and somehow feels like 2013. It's also a perfect soundtrack for this refreshing time of the year when "after the holidays" has finally arrived and it's time to start anew.

LFNT - I Won't Tell

What an exhausting holiday, and it isn't even half over yet. After a double weekend (because Wed night was Erev Sukkot), I'm not sure if I'm mentally prepared for another double weekend (Simchat Tora, which my family never really celebrates because there's a limit to how many holiday family dinners you can handle) and in between Chol HaMoed which just seems like an excuse to take vacation off from work and go shopping or travelling. I would feel pretty okay about this endless holiday if I didn't have paper deadlines looming over my head, getting frighteningly closer. Even going out just to "clear my head" is starting to be accompanied by a guilty conscience, which is maybe why I can relate to this video so much. It's quite frustrating not to be able to join the careless party, for whatever reason. L.F.N.T stands for Live Free Not Troubled, Ran Nir's philosophy, which I sometimes need to remind myself to do! Nir is the bassist and one of the founders of the very successful Asaf Avidan & the Mojos. His debut album, 'Tales of a Drunken Man,' consists of songs he wrote while on the road with the Mojos and immediately after they split up. Listening to the album, you can really tell that Nir had a lot on his chest and he's able to express his emotions perfectly through the lyrics and music. This is one of my favorite songs from the album, but it works even better when listening to the album as a whole. L.F.N.T. recently released a new single from their 2nd album, "What Passes Off for Love," which sounds more musically developed while still maintaining the candid lyrics and high energy from their debut. They filmed an acoustic version of it as part of the Indie City Jerusalem project, and it's really charming with the tourists and Purim atmosphere. Hopefully, that will be a holiday I can fully celebrate this year!

Never been to Vietnam, I never fought the war.
Didn't know that living in the city can be such a bore.
One guy plays the trumpet and two girls play the drums.
They think it's pretty clever, but I think it's pretty dumb.
The more I know about tomorrow, the less I care about today.
And I've never been so sick in my life.

The people on the streets, they act like fools.
People on the streets, they try to look cool.
Every girl's fashion and everybody's drunk.
Every man has a passion some keep i in the trunk.
Some sink to depression, others only smile.
And I've never been so sick in my life.

And I know all about the world my friend, I do and I won't tell.

I'm a very young man, I'm just twenty five years old.
But I've got all the answers, Yeah I know it all.
I never claimed to be some kind of god.
Yeah, I'm just skin & bones, I'm just flash & blood.
It may upset you every once in a while.
To know that you've been living in a lie.
But ever since I've known and until the day I die.
I've never been so sick in my life.

And I know all about the world my friend, I do
All I know about the truth my friend, I know, but I won't tell!

I've never been so sick in my life.

Dudu Zakai - We Met Again

We met together again
The guys from '67
Yehezkiel, Gidi and Hanan
And the poet too
There was a feeling of no choice
Grey was the color
There was loneliness, the heart was heavy
There was that feeling
As if we were being planted here in nature
I knew then, that you I love

Sing to me my homeland your beautiful songs
How much I loved to sing them during difficult times

We met again the same half-track
From '67
The same smile, the same gaze
The same touching laugh
One was singing softly a song
About Dan and about Beersheva
Another sat absorbed and thinking
And around us the thundering of the night
Nature scowling his face
Irritated by the stranger approaching

Sing to me my homeland your beautiful songs
How much I loved to sing them during difficult times

We met together again
The guys from '67
It was hard, what is there to say
The heart was sad
We knew we'd overcome, simply
We did this for permanency
We knew this despite all the pain
We felt it in every valley
On every mound and hill
We let the ambusher feel it

Sing to me my homeland your beautiful songs
How much I loved to sing them during difficult times

I usually try to post the newest Israeli music, but today is a day for looking back. Since Rosh HaShana, we've been in the Ten Days of Repentance, a time for reflection, and it feels like the New Year will only officially start on Sunday after Yom Kippur. Since Rosh HaShana, the newspapers have been filled, alongside current news regarding Syria, with special articles regarding 40 years since the Yom Kippur war, whose importance as a defining moment in our small history as a country seems only to grow with time. I vaguely remember learning about the war in high school. I just remember the key terms: post '67 euphoria, Intelligence failure, the Bar-Lev line... I also remember a school trip to the North and Avigdor Kahalani recalling to us the battles as if it were yesterday, pointing at hills where there were tanks, and I just couldn't grasp that this was a former battlefield; it was so peaceful and pastoral. The information about the war feels endless, and new items are popping up even today, for example, Golda Meir's testimony at the Agranat committee, released for the first time on Thursday. I was especially interested not really in what exactly happened, but its effect on Israeli culture, even today. This article is about the artistic response to trauma, specifically in recent literature, and touches on collective memory in general. I got a bit lost in all the articles, but what did leave a lasting impression on me was the photo albums taken by soldiers, mostly reservists, who brought their cameras with them into the battlefield, completely aware that for some of their friends they photographed might be their last picture. All of the albums are intriguing and give important insight into what it was really like during the war, at least in "off-time", but a few really stood out for me:
The first is Danny Barzilay Goldstone's. Goldstone heard about the war when leaving the synagogue in Miami, and after some difficulty, he managed to catch a flight to Israel and went straight from the airport to the battlefield. Because of his experience in the Intelligence, he was recruited to the Jerusalem Brigade, which headed towards the Ismailia line. He recalls being impressed with the Egyptian Third Armia's pedant and sharp appearance, which stood in contrast to the Israeli soldiers who didn't shave and maintained a somewhat unkept look. Goldstein's album is so surreal. Posing by the bridges of the Suez he looks more like an amused tourist happy to be reunited with the guys rather than a worried soldier at war.
Another reservist who flew in from abroad is Amnon Horev, who was working in Colombia. Horev joined his troop, where he was a commander in the past, and they helped rescue the headquarters of Battalion 71, while he was still in his civilian clothes. He was able to get hold of a Uzi gun from a soldier who stayed behind because of illness. He recalls Moshe Dayan's visit towards the end of the war and how he turned his back to him. "I was mad at him because we had learned in the Attrition War that the strongholds aren't for stopping the enemy, and during the war they'll be evacuated. Up till today, I still don't understand why there wasn't a command to the guys to just get up and flee. It would have taken a few minutes and would have prevented hundreds of casualties." He says that the command probably wasn't ordered because of Gorodish, whom he had critiqued in '67, when he came to Horev's troop to lecture about the battle in Jersey and had said about him then, "They should kick him out of the army. He's arrogant and dismissive of the enemy". Yossi agreed before his death and said, "they should have kicked him out back then".
Another fascinating album is Eran Ronen's. Ronen, who was from Kibbutz Chulda living there with his wife and 7-month-old daughter, was recruited at 31 and served as a Zelda driver in Brigade 271. He died years later and during the war kept a journal in which he recorded the battles and entertainment performances. IDF archive just released documentation of those performances, which served as much-needed momentary escapism, a bit of which you can see here.
But one of my favorite albums is Tzvi Shiler's, not only because of the thoughtful photographs but also because of his recollections of the war 40 years later, which give the photos a whole new meaning. Here is a partial translation:

"Saturday, October 6th, 1973, two years after discharge from the military service as a division sergeant in the Golany brigade. I was a student at Tel Aviv University, on my summer break before starting my third year in Mechanical Engineering.
I passed the fast sleeping until the hours before noon when I got a phone call from a friend who told me that there was heavy movement on the roads. Geha road, by Ramat Efal, was bustling with traffic. It was clear that something had happened but we didn't know yet what it was. At 14:00 in the afternoon, a siren was heard, so we turned on the TV and realized that a war had broken out. Later in the day, we saw helicopters evacuating the injured to the nearby Tel HaShomer hospital.
On the radio, we heard recruitment passwords as if there wasn't a general recruitment. My twin brother, an officer in the Combat Engineer, received a command on that same night to report to his unit the next morning. My unit was less organized, and because I hadn't heard from them until the next morning, I drove on my own to the Squad Commanders School in the North. As usual, I brought with me my Zurky C Camera, a Russian imitation of Leica, which I received from my father for my school trip in the 4th grade, and has accompanied me since on every trip, in regular service and in reserves.
I saw in photography during the war a mission: to document the people and to tell in photos what we went through. I photographed out of the fear that some of the subjects wouldn't survive the war. For this reason, I spared no photos of soldiers, even those I didn't know.
On Monday morning, the 8th of October, I arrived with the rest of the brigade soldiers in Rosh Pina. We waited for what was to come while Air Force Skyhawks passed by us on their way to the Rama. Because of a lack of half-tracks, we couldn't join the fighting force. The few half-tracks were used by the regular forces who passed through Rosh Pina on their way to the Rama.
At the place, a war room for the brigade was set up from where the troop's Operation Officers followed the movement of the forces in the first fight on Hermon.
There was tension in the air, and it was clear that the situation wasn't good. At a certain point, the Operations clerk brought to the war room the list of casualties in the fight on Hermon. The Operations Officer, I don't know his name, quietly went over the list, but you could see the shock on his face upon learning the names of those killed.
On the commanding network, I heard Raful commanding the forces as if it were an exercise. In his voice it was difficult to tell the proximity of the Syrian forces...We passed the time reading newspapers and watching the foreign reporters broadcasting to the world about the war. Yoram Gaon passed by, not clear to where.
The next day, Tuesday, the 9th of October, we put our equipment on the buses and drove up to the Rama. We reached Kilaa ... Once in a while, Israeli planes who avoided Syrian rockets flew above us. Major Amanual Hart, whom I knew from my regular service, and who later became a Golani brigadier, arrived in the area and told us about the difficult battles taking place at the outposts.
From Kila we moved to a forest by Bukata, and from there we crossed the border in buses on Thursday evening (October 11) or Friday. A strange feeling. We are in the midst of fighting and sitting in an Egged bus...
...From Chaadar we went out to actions in the conquered area and on the way defended ourselves from strikes by Syrian aircrafts. When we received a warning of an air attack, the routine was to get off the half-tracks, keep one soldier on the heavy machine gun, spread out in the area, and be prepared to shoot at aircrafts. Luckily, we weren't attacked.
...On one of the nights, I was assigned to replace a half-track commander who was taken to action deep in the Syrian area. On the half-track were regular soldiers from Battalion 17, and they were quite indifferent to what was going on around them. I didn't know them and didn't question what they had gone through, but I figured they had had enough battles.
...The last mission in the war was to reinforce troops stationed during the second battle on Mount Hermon on one of the peaks in control of the Wadi descending from the mountain ridge. We carried water, equipment, and coats so that the forces on the mountain wouldn't freeze. On the mountain, we received two Syrian captives caught on their way from the Hermon post. We shared with them the coats we brought so they wouldn't freeze, and brought them down to the camp the next morning.
With the end of the fighting, we stayed in the enclaves and performed additional tasks such as assisting forces on one of the peaks over Bet J'aan. In the first round of releases home after the war, we passed by a Syrian convoy destroyed in the east of Kunetra by the Israeli Air Force.
After more than six months in reserves, I returned to my studies and successfully completed them after two years. I worked for a few years before I was sent by the Aerospace Industry to study a master's degree in Robotics at MIT. The studies lengthened to a PhD and a position at UCLA.
After more than 20 years, I came back to Israel in October 2001 to establish the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics at Ariel College, which recently became Ariel University, and in which I am a professor today.
The photographs of war take me back 40 years, and they connect the hazy fragments of memory from that bloody war. It's strange to see in the pictures "war routine" which does not reveal the horror of that time. Moments of fear have been pushed out and forgotten, and made way for memories of brotherhood between fighters, mutual aid, and common fate in a seminal event that will not be forgotten for a long time.

The feelings of brotherly compassion Shiler describes are what I felt when I heard this gem by Dudu Zakai. He highlights how, despite the difficulties, there was a sense of solidarity and a very admirable and somewhat positive outlook. The song is part of a collection of songs released in the mark of 30 years after the Yom Kippur war and features a variety of songs from the period, some of which went on to become classics.
It reminds me of where I was 10 years ago on Yom Kippur. My family decided to take advantage of the long weekend, and we went down to Eilat. It was surreal but very peaceful and relaxing. There was a really calm atmosphere that I had never experienced in Eilat before. One vivid memory I have is from the beach, of my father attentively reading the commemorations about the war he experienced as a child just months after emigrating with his family from Romania. It seems so normal to read the paper at the beach but something about it struck me as strange, maybe the realization that you can't completely disconnect from everyday war-filled reality, which is what trips to Eilat are basically for. I feel that now that I have commemorated the war in my own way I'll now switch off the laptop and spend the rest of Yom Kippur reading books I have put aside because of lack of time, not newspapers. And of course I'll go on my annual ghost city walk which always helps me clear my head before the official beginning of the New Year.

Buttering Trio - Little Goat

I'm a little goat
My mother was a goat
But I still dare
Even though I'm small

After a very tense weekend, it's such a relief to return to normalcy, even if it's just temporary. And what better way than to dig into Kol HaKampus's (the national college radio station) end-of-the-year album chart? It was an outstanding year for Israeli music, and Aviv Guedj really deserves to be #1. It was also a lot of fun discovering new music which I had overlooked over the year, such as Buttering Trio. I remember reading about them when they released their LP and being very curious, mainly because of the amazing cover art. I never really got around to listening to them, except for Falafel and Voyage, which caught my eye on YouTube. The album was made in Berlin, Tel Aviv, and Kibbutz Dunietz, and it makes a lot of sense when you listen to it. I love how each song has its own style and story, and the band isn't afraid to experiment while still maintaining a signature sound. This specific song isn't from the LP-it might have been done as a parody, but it's a really adorable and catchy song. It's also a sharp reminder that even though it's very easy to forget, we live in the Middle East and also happen to share a border with Syria. I really like the Arabic influence in the song and once you start thinking about it, it's quite surprising how unusual it is. I've heard grown ups recall with nostalgia the Friday afternoon Arab movies on the TV which everyone would watch and cry to and it's a pity it doesn't exist anymore. In any case, I hope that the new year will bring with it great Israeli music just as amazing as this past year and maybe even with some more local influences. Shana Tova!

Gabriel Balachsan - Even with my eyes open

Even with my eyes open I do not see a thing

Even with my eyes open I do not see a thing

And I'm the one who saw from above I heard

And I'm the one who kept her so long

Particles of air are fading and floating thinly above us

Even with my legs standing there's a widening pit below me

Even with my legs standing there's a widening pit below me

And I'm the one who caught fire

And I'm the one who roared

And I'm the one who chased signs

Particles of fog are coming towards us to cover us in the dark

Nothing fills me

Maybe god maybe a woman maybe drugs

Will I last another week another year

Only with my eyes closed a world is discovered before me

Only with my eyes closed a world is discovered before me

And it's not pink and has no fairies

And the angels sang toothless

But full of ideas

Which have a clear truth

Nothing fills me

Maybe meat maybe heavy breasts

Maybe eternal sleep and enough…and enough

Last Tuesday afternoon, the buzz of Yehuda and Ninet's split quickly spread through the web, mainly joking about the "national tragedy" and the shock it brought to the entertainment world. But a few hours later, we mourned a real tragedy-the untimely death of 37-year-old Gabriel Balachsan, famous as the guitarist of Algiers with Aviv Guedj but also a highly respected singer and songwriter in his own right, who suffered from Bipolar disorder. He was never shy about his illness, as it was a huge part of his life and his music. I first came across Balachsan in an interview he did a couple of years ago. I can't quote sentences, but I was very impressed with how he was able to express his complex inner world in such a clear and honest way. I tried to check out his music, but it was too overwhelming for me. The emphasis was on the lyrics - long, endless monologues which were difficult to digest, also due to their dark content. I felt that I really needed to put aside time to listen carefully to his music while reading the lyrics, like reading a book, and I kept putting it off, I was never in the right mood. Several months ago, I came across his songs again, and this time I made an effort to really listen to his music. I couldn't hear more than a few songs, but this one, maybe his most famous, caught my attention the most:

Bad flowers and the depression is sour and damned

I lie on the bed all day and think

About how I will end my life,

An air balloon lost in the sky

Steel weights in the body, in the head

I'm sick God I'm looking at the sunrise in a movie on TV

And miss the sun I knew before I broke down

Miss the color of things before they became dark

Nothing moves me

I want to vomit all of this despair

And time crawls about, a door opens, the sun dies

Iron birds are chirping, my eyes are half closed

Watching the grass and it hurts it hurts to sink like this

In the middle of life and to die every day from everything that moves

To chain-smoke to hug the cigarette

To ask her to pray that here you'll get up in the morning and everything was and isn't

Absorbed in memory

And Gabriel gets up from the sick bed and begins to sing

A sing of praise to the real time in which you breathe

The real breathes which are full of glory

And the dew lands on your happy body and fills you with life

To breathe the skies to walk barefoot on moist ground to smile

To dance in the air as if without weight

To feel the music in the body floating in the breathing space

To sing, to jump from the bed in excitement from a day full of surprises

From just a kind of excitement

To drink coffee and to feel the taste

To hug someone, hug something, touch the spirit

To see the color of things

To talk with someone just because without hurting no hurting

Where is it where did it disappear

Darkness shadow of death sandman crumbling with every step

The pounds of feet on the earth are crumbling me

I'm hiding from the world in bed

The eyeball stares stillness visible darkness

A shadow from the past passes by, I choke

What's worth a round eye in front of the sun

All of my writings I burned in the sink

The hand that holds the pen scares me

Like the big abyss in which my world fell which is small and narrow

Like a dark alley

And the eye sees all of the cars and all of the towels hanging on the rope

Moving in the wind whispering to the stones which whisper to the plants

Gabriel what happened to you, moving like a shadow seeing the sights and not being able to

To speak is to whistle the words from the lungs and it leaves me exhausted

Tikun of my grief guides before you

A dog with an injured eye is bitten in a battle in the night of Telmy Eliahu

And there's no one to pray to and no one to ask

Because the night that fell on Sodom is very dark

And the morning doesn't bring light and the sun has no color.

Cos Ochto all of the words and tunes and talk

Only the coffee has taste and the cigarettes burn and this too barely in this hell

I'm stuffed of pills and can't see the end of this damned thing

Walking around like in a particularly bad dream

And I have no words at all to explain the feeling

Everything is sour and thick how can you describe this suffering

Everything's dead, dead

Everything's different

I'm not me

Sealed and sticky

Cos Ochto for everything

The song is very hard to digest, but for me it was extremely helpful because at the time (and still today) I was trying to deal with the mental illness of a close family member, trying to understand, just a bit, what's going on in her head, and for that I'm very thankful for Balachsan. I talked to her about his death, and she had a bit of difficulty understanding why everyone's so sad, he's obviously in a much better place. Maybe, but there was still hope for recovery, for a happy ending. I recently saw the documentary about him, and he was so full of life, so full of love for those around him

He was also an amazing guitarist and really shone when he performed with Guedj in Algiers

I smoke only when I have to

Never more than I have to.

If I had the energy I would get up and shout.

Run away break down never come back again.

A million pills,

The doctors give me.

So I won't scream won't laugh,

Won't wake up anymore. That's the game.

A well designed game,

Not like in dreams you need to move. Move and quickly.

From the sniper's fire from the thought's fire from the sword's fire.

I'm in the pipe.

Now it's four in the morning,

Sweating under the black cotton blanket,

Looking at the crooked ceiling.

I would like to love you.

Without waiting.

Without breaks.

Here and now among the ruins.

To take you with me into the pipes.

Now begins the music of illness.

Music of hell it's not happiness.

It's just depression.

I don't like when they bother me to concentrate in my dreams.

Autumn will come and get rid of all the dirt on me.

And tonight,

You are going to dream the most beautiful dreams.

Our dreams are the true story.

Now I'm perfect.

Now I don't remember any little thing,

Not even a little detail.

And there is and there is and there is

And there is all the time possible, that's left, a month, two.

Maybe a year maybe more.

The pill is already in the blood,

There are no more thoughts,

No more voices,

There is only love among the ruins.

I am in the pipes.

For already several days.

Already several weeks.

Already a good several years.

Maybe I lost all feeling,

Thinking I'm flying but actually on the ground.

So I drink the salty rain.

Stoned from the sea or drunk from the wind, drunk from the wind.

http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/.premium-1.542844

The Angelcy - Dreamer

The Jewish New Year is right around the corner, and with it comes the annual songs of the year lists on the radio. I was looking through Galgalatz's (the national radio station) picks when I came across this gem, which, for some reason, I haven't posted yet. The song is from 2011, but it only began to receive heavy air play on the radio this past year. One of the songs I'm still not sick of hearing after so many times! I love how it slows everything down and makes you just want to enjoy the moment. They have amazing stage presence and their indie-city performance of "My Baby Boy" is a must-see and one of the best in the series. Right now they're making big waves abroad (follow on fb here) which is very exciting and they're set to release their debut album in December but you can hear and buy their demo EP over at bandcamp -it really gives a taste for more!

O dreamer dreamer fold your wings the rain is coming
Illusion feeds your lucid dreams the rain is coming
It's time to fade to simple things all hail the emptiness
So dreamer dreamer fold your wings it's time to feel blessed

And when I howl honey I love you don't you know I love you I need you

O dreamer dreamer fold your wings the rain is coming
It's time to shed this naked skin the rain is coming
Illusion feeds your lucid dreams all hail the emptiness
So dreamer dreamer fold your wings it's time to feel blessed

And when I howl honey I love you don't you know I love you I need you
And when I howl honey I love you don't you know I love you I don't know what am I supposed to do

I am not here no more I am now just a shadow of your grace
You have become the face of everything I wish I had of everything I wanna have
My childhood dreams they have taken me to this dead end at you doorstep
And I've got nowhere else to go and nothing else to do ever since I laid eyes on you

The Hybrid Lavas - I-D-N

At first I thought this video might be too over the top but it manages to be very accessible and catchy and it's a really great song. Really captures the Tel Avivian fashion scene and mindset (or at least a dominant part of it). Interesting article on fashion and culture with Maayan Goldman, the video's stylist here. More Hybrid Lavas here.