Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLICE

Madrid’s police dogs are learning to relax with Mozart

Madrid’s police dogs have new digs. And the new kennels not only come with air conditioning but piped classical music in a bid to reduce stress.

Published: 2 April 2018 12:49 CEST
Madrid’s police dogs are learning to relax with Mozart
Photo: Policia de Madrid

The 22 dogs that comprise the canine unit at Madrid’s municipal police force have moved into new kennels this week where they will experience music therapy, an innovation thought to aid relaxation.

A video of the dogs in their cages relaxing to classic music was posted by the Madrid Police on their Twitter account:

Known as ‘the Mozart effect’, a recent study by animal psychologists published in the Journal of Veterinary Behaviour determined that regular sessions listening to music can help reduce anxiety in dogs.

The study found that classical music had the most calming effect but that dogs also respond well to soft rock, jazz and reggae. Heavy metal, however, was shown to increase stress levels.

Each of the dogs in Madrid's Canine Unit, which was created in 1983, have different roles in the force.

Some are trained to sniff out narcotics, explosives and even counterfeit money, while others are dedicated search and rescue.

The newly refurbished kennels also provide outside grass play areas for the working dogs, air conditioning in summer and heated mattresses for winter.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

SHOW COMMENTS