From Yoni Mayraz's bandcamp: A rush through steaming sidewalks and urban clutter.
'The Rat' is an intense contemporary jazz tune featuring sought-after Israeli trumpeter Itamar Borochov (Yemen Blues), and mixed by Grammy-winning engineer Qmillion, known for his work on Robert Glasper's 'Black Radio'.
Well, here we are again. It could be worse, I guess. The words 'fifth election' started floating around even before the first ballots were cast, in an election that felt like a full-frontal car crash. I voted more out of civic duty than excitement and like many of my friends I deliberated a bit between Meretz and the Labor party. In the end, I went with Meretz and was very happy that they passed the threshold and at the same time I was very happy about Merav Michaeli's success as the leader who brought back Labor from the dead. Everything else about the elections was pretty depressing. When the Tuesday night exit polls gave Netanyahu's bloc 61 seats together with Naftali Bennet's Yamina party, an extreme right-wing government seemed closer than ever. But the exit polls missed the Arab population that voted for Mansour Abbas' Islamic Ra'am party which in itself speaks volumes about the poor relations with the Arab society. The final results gave his party four seats, making both him and Bennet kingmakers. There's still the possibility that some kind of government will be created out of circumstances but there's no doubt that it will be a strange and incohesive one, and it's not clear how long it could hold up. I'm disappointed that Gideon Sa'ar didn't get more votes though it seems that he did take away some votes from the Likud party to the 'Just Not Bibi' camp, which as opposed to last year's elections didn't have a major contender but included two right-wing parties-Saar's 'New Hope' party and Avigdor Liberman's secular-focused Yisrael Beytenu party. The true winner of the elections was Eretz Nehederet which stole the show with a sharp satire skit that put an ugly mirror in front of us and laid out the true state of the nation.
Ran Danker's extremely catchy new single 'Madhouse' also seems to give a glimpse into the state of the nation in these almost post-Covid days. Everyone is still wearing masks, and there are still some limitations, but the general feeling is 'let's just open everything and party' at least until the next lockdown, which at the moment isn't a possibility but could become one if a new and more dangerous variant shows up.
From her FB: In this first piece out of my upcoming debut album I've tried to paint a better place for myself. It's about changing our perspective, realizing that the only true human power is the power of choice.
