A Picture for a Poem

Firstly, sorry no content has been posted recently… I’m working hard on the album and it’s getting closer and closer to completion with each week that goes by – not so long now.

Anyway, a week or so ago, a thick layer of snow covered the ground like icing on a cake. I took some pictures, this being one of them… and a short poem.

A cold winters walk

Charcoal edges of black leafless tree’s cut through misty voids.
The silence is thick with foreboding, but everything is still.
A clump of melting snow falls and explodes effortlessly in to the stone cobbled ground – it’s bits finding nice warm corners, among the stone engraved cement valleys, or the cobbled edges of what once was a curb – before the snow came.
Birds fly from tree’s, alarmed at this minor sound, amongst the mass of quiet.

The woodland is like a criss-crossed-maze of sticks standing upright falling orderly into the unknown whiteness of the mass of morning dew, laying stagnant here in this valley – it will stay in to the day.

Ghost of the Gully – Pieces EP

Ghost of the Gully in the Studio

Last year, before I started my solo material… I used to be in a band. I sung / spoke and played guitar… here’s our e.p. Free Download for everyone!

http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Fusers%2F2434243&show_artwork=true

To every Syrian man and woman…

My heart today goes out to all those suffering in Syria. A country of great people, who were hospitable to me, open and warm. It makes me very sad to see such a ruthless regime killing their own people. Yesterday they bombed a hospital, with all the doctors in it all the nurses, all the patients…

How long will Assad’s bloody reign continue…

Below I am copying an old post from my travels in Syria… the Syria that should be remembered, the Syria that I remember.

Aleppo

The Great Bazaar by night

Aleppo, (Halep) is an ancient city in the north of Sryia. Traders and merchants have travelled through this city for over a thousand years. And during Ramadan, as I wondered through the Great Bazaar. Men haggle over cuts of meat, women find new hijabs for their daugters, boys sell coffee and pistacio cake, donkey ridden by beduins carry exotic birds and cases of burgul wheat to sell – he see’s his frend selling saffron by the street.

“Asalem alakum keef halcum habiby!”

“Alhumdulilah, lesh, Ramadan!”

All comes to life at night here in this maze that is the Great Bazaar!

The Dead Cities

The Dead Cities of Aleppo

Ruins of the Byzantine Empire lay scattered on this heat scortched earth, like ghosts of the past, where Crusaders came, and Arabs, and now Tourists.  The land is vast and flat here. The people who inhabited these lands must have been enduring people with dark skin and heavy wrinkles like the rocks they built their houses on.

The Persian Mosque

The Persian Mosque of Aleppo

Outside the ancient Old City of Aleppo, among the towering apartments that look as if they have risen out of the very desert itself there is a grand monument. A massive new mosque built in the enchanting Persian style of Iran. We exlpore it’s vast rooms and are able to walk on top of the roof, witnessing the obscure skyline of Aleppo.

Aleppo’s Skyline

The Skyline of Aleppo

Aleppo looks as if it has risen out of the desert iteslf. This dry land echoes with calls to prayer and the clatter of mule’s hooves on dusty cobbled floors.

The Souq

The Souq of Aleppo

The charming souq of Aleppo is situated next to the cities central citadel. Aromas of perfume from the Gulf enchant the nostrils, and rugs from Iran fill tiny shops with an array of warm colours. Shop keepers great me and invite me in for tea. They expect nothing in return except for a good shake of the hands and an honest smile.

The New Town

The Jigsaw building

The new town roads choke with traffic all moving at an easy un rushed pace. People barter and sell on just about every street corner, tiny shops are packed into every nooke and crany of the city, coffee stalls,news agents, ciggeratte vendors, and falfel stands. It’s a bombardment to the senses, you have to keeon your toes.

Barren Lands

Olive Trees

I leave Aleppo, bound for Hama. And I pass through barren lands where olive trees grown through tumbling ruins and the ground is red and dry. A few birds circle above, hoping to find some morsel of food. Dust blows around, small tornadoes form far off on the horizon, this land is alien to me, but great.

Moses Melkonian – Beirut Lights

I’m back in the UK after a great trip with my family to the French Alps (more later…)

For now I wanted to give you guys the back story to the folk song ‘Beirut Lights.’

I wrote it in a little hostel in Beirut, the melody kept creeping into my mind throughout my trip…

All these photo’s were taken with my canon 300D in 2010

Road tripping is a casual thing in Lebanon. The sun sets on a long drive east, to the mountains…

We  stop off for a coffee. A Bedouin and Beiruti exam out attire, we get talking and drink together… A cultural crossroad, A place of many secrets.

Epic ruins of a by gone age stand tall in empty plateau’s among mountains carved out by great storms many ages ago… Lebanon is a land of great history.

We navigate our way back to Beirut, through narrow mountain passes, and across open plains.

We picked up some soon-to-be buddies and hit the famous Beirut rooftop bars for a night I will never forget.

The next morning was hazy. I wondered Hama and admired the elegant Parisian / Maronite architecture… only in Beirut.

Lebanese families greet the morning, very casually, very Lebanese, no rush, just sunshine and smiles

 

The sun set’s in our palms. The night is ours, we were mighty were young…

Moses Melkonian Exclusive Interview with IDIOTEQ.COM

Click on the image below to read an exclusive interview I had with idioteq.com

Review: Lana Del Rey – “Born To Die”

Reblogged from The Alternative Nation Podcast:

Photo Courtesy of: Interscope Records Don’t let her failed “Saturday Night Live” performances fool you; Lana Del Rey is one to watch in 2012. The singer has been the center of controversy with people questioning her plump lips to her “manufactured” image and history. The hype over Lana Del Rey was overwhelming. Media outlets like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum and many more pimped her for months only to frantically type hypocritical reviews that tore the album apart. But Lana Del Rey’s …

She’s made a massive amount of noise on the Internet… I liked this review and wanted to know your thoughts on her as an artist and her music. Big love guys x

A tattered old journal

It was one of those errands that linger over your mind, silently nagging until you get it done. A bunch of my old books, candles, magical objects, sketches, letters from loved ones and journals lay in a heap, with no shelf and no owner in my old flat.

So after much procrastinating, I went over with a few empty boxes to collect all my old books, and how good I felt for it. Among the heaps of penguin classics I found, amongst other things, an old journal that i had written in daily during my travels in the middle east. There are some memorable stories in there.

So, having made this important discovery (no really, very important!) I’m going to write out these disjointed entries and rambling into something of a Novella… Just for you guys. I will also include some photo’s I took with my Canon 300D in the relevant entries.

It starts in Istanbul and ends in Byblos, Lebanon…. Good times x

Triberr shutout

Thanks to everywho has have posted my music on their blog. This post is for you!

I don’t know if you guys have heard of triberr.com …. It’s a tool where bloggers can team up into tribers and automatically retweet each other, so everyone’s posts get to a larger audience. Here’s an article about it in more detail:

http://livingthebalancedlife.com/2011/what-is-triberr-and-how-does-it-work/

I’ve set up tribe called Fresh Tunes dedicated to sharing good music. If any curious bloggers would like to try this out with me sign up to triberr.com and join Fresh Tunes.

Big Moses Love to you guys….as always x

Monthly Round-up

So it’s been a busy month.

Thanks to all you guys for showing your support, it really is very humbling… maybe one day we can all have a party in the woods some place…

Here’s a round up of everything I’ve released since December. Big shout out to A.Leaman on this for making all my videos and being a lovely dude…

You can show your support by downloading my singles from below.

DOWNLOADS

We are Mighty, We are Young // From the forthcoming album

DOWNLOAD

Like Gods //From the forthcoming album

DOWNLOAD

Like Gods (live)

Foolish Words

Fire//From the forthcoming album

Big Moses Love to everyone x

It was windy in the Sahara

Moses Melkonian – Fire

 

SUPPORT
Wrote this song when I was about 15.  One of the first songs I ever wrote… First time it has ever been recorded.  Filmed and recorded by Aaron Leaman x

 

Thanks for all the support people… Big Moses Love x

Moses Melkonian – Like Gods (Live)

live, stripped back.  How this song began… Thanks as always to Aaron for making this video….

Help support this unsigned artist and DOWNLOAD

Moses Melkonian – Like Gods

Please share around, or repost as i’m trying to really get this out there!

Video By Aaron Leaman // Website
Music By Moses Melkonian // Facebook
HELP SUPPORT THIS MUSIC AND DOWNLOAD

You came like a cloud, bearing rain for parched ground,

And upon it grew, food for a soul,

Old and bruised,

Old and bruised,

“I wrote this song about someone whom I’d met, and it was like a miracle… I was afraid they were going to leave… “

So last summer Aaron Leaman gave me a call…  After having such a busy summer making videos for various local artists, somehow, he had no place to stay.  He was so dedicated to the local scene and to all the people within it that he had forgotten about himself… He slept in fields, wrote poems, made songs, fell in love and out of love… all within a few weeks.

The details are pretty chaotic… but during these series of events (which could be made into a pretty hilarious but beautiful short story) I went to pick up Aaron so he could live at mine for a few days.

The scene was classic… I went to the train station… all he had was a suitcase with his mac, camera and a few clothes inside it – that was all he needed, he wasn’t a materialist in anyway.

It so happened that on that exact weekend I had decided to set about recording and scoring out my debut album at KMD studios.

I had already recorded a few tracks from it and we decided to shoot a video for this single ‘Like Gods’ which has been collecting dust for a while now.

The way in which we shot this was by using a whole new video production technique which I simply can’t leak… It would be like a magician telling you how a great trick worked….Let’s just say no editing and lots of projectors.

Aaron and I are both very fond of a kind of film-making that we like to call “Real-Time.” This means shooting something where the final product has not been colour graded and hardly edited – the film-maker focuses all his/hers efforts on the capabilities of the camera to capture a raw and real emotions of the subject real-time.

Because of this technique the video took no longer than half an hour to shoot and there is not one cut in it.

As we drove home from shooting, we saw a massive corn field, stopped the car and simply walked around enjoying the vast space we found ourselves in, taking pictures and messing around… Here are a few snaps from the moments after shooting that video, I took these on my phone for no reason and tweeted them… now they are a part of a story… I love that.

It was a good weekend 

Something to warm these cold winter nights….

Here’s a little video that me and Aaron Leaman made after cleaning his kitchen!

It was a pretty cold night, we made ham sandwiches, had a strong brew of green tea, talked about girlfriends, paris, berlin….then made this…it was cosy.  

Something until the next single which is going to be released….very soon!

Thanks for supporting x

 

Moses Melkonian – We Are Mighty, We Are Young

Video By Aaron Leaman // Website

Music By Moses Melkonian // Twitter

HELP SUPPORT THIS MUSIC AND DOWNLOAD

Tolstoy once said… “Everyone wants to change the world, but no one thinks to change himself”

I’ve always thought heavy ideas that are personal and subjective are best translated by music that’s easy to listed and to makes you feel good.
Like how a comedian deals with controversial issues, but breaks the ice and everyone laughs.

We are mighty, We are young came from a simple piano riff.  I never even knew this song was going to be on the album as it wrote itself in a week during the recording process of the songs. I feel in love with the chords straight away, there seemed to be a lot of scope and space in those chords, I could do many things with it.  It took about a week to complete and during that time I was sending it to and fro a few friends.

I feel often, and especially within popular music. Artists are very constrained in their lyrical content (bar hip-hop!).  The lyrics in this song were not written or thought about, they just came out there and then in the booth.  It felt real to me, I didn’t know if it worked or if it was radio friendly, but it hit me so hard… so yeah it stayed.

I knew this was going to be the main single on the album, knew it was Moses but more catchy and knew I loved it a hell of a lot. Just felt right. Aaron Leaman was like “i’ve got the perfect idea” !! So we made this video. More Coming soon.

Halfway Through the Voids

The Voids – the space from where ideas emerge.  The sheer emptiness of oblivion.  The intent.  The air that we breathe, and the light that we rejoice. This is The Voids.

I’m currently halfway through my debut album – The Voids.  Details of release are currently unknown, but here’s the back story.

In March this year my good friend and musical supporter Gary Bull encouraged me to work on my own music after recent complications with previous band Ghost of the Gully.

All the members of this band I love dearly and I feel that we will be brought together to make music again one day.

Ghost of the Gully at the studio during the recording of the Pieces EP

So during March I created the single Lunar Lull and it was released by The Clockwork Club - founded and run by musical partner and friend Charlie Costello.

Charlie and Moses working in KMD studios

Lunar Lull was released under the name Moses Melkonian, and many people have asked me why I chose this name.

Moses or rather Movses Melkoninan was the name of my Grandfather who fled his homeland of Armenia. He fled as an Orphan after his parents were massacred during the Armenian genocide in 1915. I wanted to honour him and my heritage in my music, hence Moses Melkonian.

A subtle reminder of the Armenian genocide in 1915

I received a lot of support after the release of Lunar Lull and my dear friend and supporter Gary Bull offered me a management deal and his studio to record an album in.  I have known Gary for years, his passion and energy has never failed to inspire me.

Gary Bull rehearsing at KMD studios

It is those people who have stretched their hands out to me that are as responsible for the creation of the forthcoming album than me.  It is for those people that I compose.

Another great friend who has given me so much is Aaron Leaman.  He came on to the scene back in Summer. In fact before he came, there was no scene. Just loads of great people in about a 20 mile radius making great, great music . To name a few Xuuki, Hugo Willams, Nick Bryne As Elephants Are

I remember Aaron saying, “I love this scene here cause everyone does it for the music for art, not for girls and ego shit.”

He came along with a camera and spent every day of every week filming promo videos for free for anyone he liked.  From that emerged the label, the channel, the idea Young Exeter TV.  Not only is Aaron a great film maker but he is an all round artist who understands where art fits into our daily lives. Check out his website Aaron Leaman

Aaron rockin' the harmonica

Another great friend who has inspired me with his dedication work ethic and… sick humour! – is Max Saidi.  Drummer from Ghost of the Gully, member of the Clockwork Club Collective and all round Mediterranean dude.

Max on the kit at KMD studio

Max Saidi has offered his time and skills on the forthcoming album.  Having his input makes the whole process more exciting and real.  Making music by myself in the studio is a thrill, but having someone else come in and play on it, or give me their opinion is surreal and refreshing.  Max’s style of playing has always made me go crazy, and I’m sure he will do justice to the album and on the road.

This post is just a round up. I’m halfway through and thanks all you lovely people above for helping me make this real.

With Love.

Photo taken by Aaron Leaman

Fragment 1.

Layers

 

The dust has risen from the holy ground, where she lay before the thunder struck

Before she uttered those white words, rising from the depths, ushering out, in a breath, like the first child born.

Foetal petals meander among stars kept in bottles with ships and sunken islands.  My thoughtless bow renders a sigh among the holy wed, they dance among spirals, in hidden corners of space – those ones.

And in all things the seeker of love will be heard, for gravity and such forces are laws, and in them codes are hidden: order, and symmetry.

It re-affirms this life given blessing; this simple knowledge, this state of thought, my mere awareness, aligns the chaos, un-clouds my thoughts,  and denominates, all states all realities, into a simple pulse – a truth.

Calamities, forces battling, rifts of light – swim through the void, and disappear.

There is a space that is infinite and it’s part of us.  Dive in below and dance.

ce that is infinite and it’s part of us.  Dive in below and dance.