The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I've tried to come up with some way quantify the links that hold together these selections but I can't so I ask you to listen along and see if you can hear it for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy7iV68zRDI
Corvus Corvax's (http://www.last.fm/music/Corvus+Corax) "Filii Neidhardi". I pulled this one out of a recent DJ Purple set list. If you think Goth bellydance is cool, and bagpipes are severely underappreciated then you should listen to this. Corvax are known both for their innovative use of bagpipes and for their dedication to the art of recreating "people's music" from the medieval time. The Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Corax_%28band%29) gives a good summary of their musical theories and interpretive projects.

http://music.skinnywhitechick.com/track/we-are-shangri-la
SJ Tucker's "We Are Shangri​-​La", also pulled from that same DJ Purple set. This is very different from the music I heard her do at Arisia and I like this style a lot. It's similar to the Corvax tune in having a drum-dance rhythm but with a very different feel due to Tucker's vocals. Still, the two tunes connect strongly, for me. I'm not sure I can explain it to anyone else.

http://audioporncentral.com/2010/04/complicated-universal-cum-i-can-hardly-wait.html
OK, I'm just going to sit here and wait until you've finished watching the video because nobody's going to read a word I have to say while THAT's playing. As I said to MizA... disTRACTing!

Done now? Fan yourself off, wipe up the drool, whatever it takes. The composer/performer goes by the unflattering name Complicated Universal Cum - it's one Danish psychedelic/techno/blues artist. So, yeah, complicated. The other tracks you can get from his MySpace page (http://www.myspace.com/complicateduniversalcum) have a lot more psychedelic and blues influences but this one, "I Can Hardly Wait", has the kind of jangly guitar bits that would be at home on a folk album.

http://www.mashup-industries.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=264&Itemid=36
Time to shake up those folkies a bit - here we get Dan Mei showing us what it would sound like if Phil Collins had gone on to front a heavy metal band. Mei is blending Genesis's "Mama" with Nordman's "Om Gud Var Jag (If I Were God)" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzzFWii80NA). I really recommend listening to that underlying track because damned if the same steel guitar isn't in there from the start. That guitar sound links this this one back "Hardly Wait and back again to "Shangri-La."