Last weekend we were in Antwerpen and while looking around a massive shop with sellout prices for cds and dvds (of course all crap), my eye fell on a booth with what seemed to be comics. There were a variety of book on the shelves with a strange format. Apparently they contained cds or dvds, so when I had the “Cinema Fantastic” in my hand, I had the idea that this was a book about music and fantasy films with a dvd with examples. There were also books about jazz and things I couldn’t quite make out. I decided to just buy two (they were cheap, so…) and I went home with “Cinema Fantastic” and “Left For Dead”, since most of the others had French texts. Well, the “Cinema Fantastic” is indeed a comic with some information about classical music used in fantasy films and contains two cds with parts of scores. “Left For Dead” is not really a comic, but a story about the suppression of the native American culture by the imported culture. There are some drawings, but mostly text. Also here two cds and however I expected (Amer)Indian music, there is actually a variety of some kind of 70′ies progrock, jazz, blues and soundscapes and here and there alternated or mixed with traditional Indian singing; not really bad actually, but there is always the monotous speaking voice with pro-Indian and anti-American texts.
There seem to be a lot more of such books available, about individual artists, but also about subjects. The website of the publisher has these releases as “BD”s, contrary to “CD”s or “DVD”s, so I guess the idea is “book disc”. Quite an interesting development, especially when you think of it that I only paid 5,70 euros for each book, while Nocturne.fr has them for 14 euros or more.
I have been thinking if I should include these two items in the musicreviews section, but eventually thought that that is not quite the right place.