Roger’s Year in Music 2015 (Part 8): How did I die? A WWI lamentation.

Speaking personally, there are several obscure cultural markers attached to this Lament.

The work was commissioned by the town of Diksmuide in West Flanders, which happens to be the home of De Dolle Brouwers, a favorite Belgian "craft" brewer of mine. I've visited there a few times, and it's worth remembering that the town was so completely obliterated during WWI, they had to guess at the location of streets to rebuild it.

Einstürzende Neubauten also covers James Reese Europe's "On Patrol in No Man's Land". Very early in my readings about jazz, around the age of 12 or 13, there was a book at the NA-FC library that included information on Europe's short career. I can't remember the name of the book, just that I was fascinated by his story, and have been ever since.

Lament is impossible to classify. It was released in 2014, and I became aware of it in winter of 2015. It has been almost a year between listens, and that's about right. Add it to the "if I ever decide to smart smoking marijuana again" list, please.

Einstürzende Neubauten: Lament review – the weirdest first world war commemoration of all, by Alexis Petridis (The Guardian)

The centenary of the outbreak of the first world war was commemorated in a variety of ways: sculptures were made, statues unveiled, lights switched off. But for out-of-the-box thinking, you have to take your hat off to the Flemish town of Diksmuide, site of the battle of the Yser in October 1914, which decided to mark the centenary by commissioning a performance piece from fearsome German experimentalists Einstürzende Neubauten.

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Roger’s Year in Music 2015 (Part 8): How did I die? A WWI lamentation.

Roger’s Year in Music 2015 (Part 9): Kamasi Washington and his Epic.

Roger’s Year in Music 2015 (Part 10): But first, some 2014 leftovers.