April 27, 2008
Brahms's Double Concerto
Dear classical music lovers: If I'm a great fan of Brahms's Double Concerto in A Minor (Op. 102), in particular the LSO recording featuring Menuhin and Rostropovich, what else might I like? I'm open to all suggestions, preferably sent by e-mail. Thanks in advance.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
January 7, 2008
Visual Interlude
Brian Chippendale (performing as Black Pus) at D'Amelio Terras, New York, December 16, 2006
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 21, 2007
Valgeir Sigurdsson
Today’s Independent runs a profile of Icelandic producer and musician Valgeir Sigurdsson, who has produced records for Björk since 2000 and released his first album earlier this year.
Driving through the ash-black lava fields around Reykjavik airport to his home studio, the Greenhouse, the isolation that Sigurdsson's clients agree to becomes clear. It is here in the suburban sprawl in the hills around the city, in a street built for artists in the 1970s, that he and Björk first conceived their philosophy of "domestic music". "She would bounce crazy ideas off me, like making a song out of all the sounds in the kitchen," he says. "Quite early on, the conceptual side existed in [her Vespertine of 2001]: the intimacy of the vocal performance, and using chamber music, because that was created in the home.
"I've carried on that domestic way of working here," he continues. "It's full on. There's no divide between living and music. Will Oldham [aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy] created pressure for himself when he brought all his musicians here to Iceland in the middle of winter for last year's The Letting Go. It could fail, and it would be a disaster if it did. But taking musicians into my home feels like the right way to make music. It's obviously very personal, because you can't escape. I get really involved emotionally. Ending a project feels like ending a relationship."
I’ve listened to Sigurdsson’s album, Ekvílibríum, several times. Fans of Björk’s music will certainly find much to like in its sliced-and-diced organic sounds and plethora of guest performances. What surprises me is that no one seems to have yet made the connection to Cornelius, another musician who runs (ran?) his own label and whose music is marked by many layers brought together with stunning precision. (There is a reason, I think, that Cornelius named his 2000 album Point and Sigurdsson titled a track “Focal Point.”) On Ekvílibríum, as on Cornelius’s 1997 album Fantasma, every note identifies itself to the listener’s ear: Strings, electronic beats and clicks and pops, synthesizer swells, guitars, and vocals snugly interlock to create organic-seeming compositions. Most reviewers have been correct in identifying the two Sigurdsson tracks featuring Oldham—“Evolution of Waters” and “Kin”—as the album’s best, although I’m also partial to the syrupy strings of the short interlude titled “Before Nine.”
Sigurdsson performs with Nico Muhly and Sandro Perri on Friday, October 5 as part of New York's Wordless Music series.
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September 20, 2007
Doug Aitken returns to familiar territory
Doug Aitken, an artist whom I respect but who I feel peaked approximately five years ago—his video installations since interiors, 2002, have increased in scale and complexity and budget, but not necessarily in quality—has returned to his early stomping grounds: the music video. Pitchfork has posted a new video that Aitken directed for the LCD Soundsystem song "Someone Great." As music blog Stereogum put it in its gloss on the vid,
Award winning/MoMA-commissioned short film maker Doug Aitken shot the "experimental film" for the track, which captures James's use of the mundane (phones ringing, lovely weather, not-bitter coffee) to hit at something interpersonal 'n' bigger ("you're smaller than my wife imagined / surprised you were human") with similarly trivial-yet-somehow-heavy shadows 'n' strolls. James ain't in it, but we're thinking he's comfy with the amount of mug exposure he got in his spaceman getup / Peter Gabriel facepaint.
For more commentary, keep an eye on this Google Blogs search.
Posted in Art, Music. Found always via this permanent link.
October 2, 2006
Two new MP3s: Christopher Willits and Joseph Suchy
At the bottom of the middle column you will find two new MP3s available for download. The tracks are by two of my favorite experimental-guitar-and-laptop musicians, Joseph Suchy (Germany) and Christopher Willits (USA).
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 25, 2006
Two new MP3s: Kopernik
For the past week I have listened repeatedly to a self-titled album released in 2003 by Kopernik (record label link), a duo comprising Tim Delaney and Brad Lewis. The former plays upright bass, the latter works with a computer. It is strange music, melancholic, cinematic, and somewhat awkward; the compositions—they are defiantly not “songs”—occasionally sound as if they are about to collapse. Brad Lewis cossets the dirge-like bass with strings or a choir, buttresses it with an occasional drum beat, and sends it twisting and turning, eddying. I picture gunmetal-gray clouds when listening to these sounds. “Theme for Grace” is resolutely contemporary: The introductory notes are played by dropping the bow onto the bass strings and letting it bounce, and are accompanied by sweeping, hazy, synthesized washes of sound. And yet it feels otherworldly, timeless, sliding metronomically from low notes to high before fading out . . . gracefully. “The Sea and the Marsh Are One” opens with a man speaking the title’s words alongside a plaintive bass line and small string section playing ominous notes, which roil for nearly two minutes before being joined by an orchestral swell, including horns, and a choir offering heavenly, indiscernible words.
From the band's biography:
Lewis explains, "The pieces are slowly built up off of my initial abstracts of both organic and synthetic sounds, with an equally abstract narrative in mind. Then, Tim comes in and adds new melodies, chord stacks and strong but supple bass lines to the original themes and phrases. Finally, after adding a few highlights and accents, we both step back and strip the piece down in layers, sometimes revealing new simpler and chance discoveries . . . new colors."
There are other compositions on the album—“Faraday (Goodnight)” and “Kopernistan,” especially—that can be compared to other recent music, including the Chicago group Brokeback, whose album Field Recordings from the Cook County Water Table is quietly masterful. But the majority of Kopernik is unlike anything else I have heard, and I urge you to download the two MP3s at the bottom of the middle column. Remember to right-click and “Save As” instead of streaming it directly from my web server. Thank you.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 22, 2006
Two new MP3s
The weather turned this week, and the crisp air has led me to quieter precincts of my record crates and iTunes library. The two new MP3s just uploaded reflect that. The Max Richter composition is from is 2004 album Blue Notebooks, released on a FatCat Records subsidiary named 130701. Richter, who plays and composes for piano, wrote these pieces for piano, violin, cello, viola, and electronic instrumentation. The record is inspired by Kafka, and quotes from the writer's Blue Notebooks read by the actress Tilda Swinton are interspersed throughout, though thankfully not too frequently.
The other track is by Portland, OR–based musician Matthew Cooper, who records for Temporary Residence under the name Eluvium. This track is from his 2005 release "Talk Amongst the Trees" (another track off the record is available at that link), and captures succinctly my mood when on the beach in northern California. (See picture above.)
As always, please right-click and "Save As" rather than stream the songs from my web server. Thank you.
UPDATE, 5:55PM: An apropos quote, via About Last Night:
There comes a day, in the ripe maturity of late summer, when you first detect a suggestion of the season to come; often as subtle as a play of evening light against familiar bricks, or the drift of a few brown leaves descending, it signals imminent release from savage heat and intemperate growth. You anticipate cool, misty days, and a slow, comely decadence in the order of the natural. Such a day now dawned; and my pale northern soul, in its pale northern breast, quietly exulted as the earth slowly turned its face from the sun. — Patrick McGrath, "The Angel"Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 13, 2006
Two more MP3s
At the bottom of the middle column you'll notice that I have uploaded two new MP3s. The first is the opening track off of Tortoise's 2001 album Standards; the second is the penultimate track off of Convocation Of's album Pyramid Technology, released the same year. Both have a kind of swagger: The former that of its musicians' consummate technique, and the freedom that gives them (especially drummer John Herndon, whose beat here is stupendous and forceful), the latter that of its' players harder-to-pin-down bravado, something I would almost describe as a macho-ness were that not a term freighted with negative connotations. The title gets it right: "Walk Like a Panther." Both are great songs.
As always, the files linked at the bottom of the middle column are big, so I ask (as always) that you please right-click, "Save As," and play them from your computer rather than stream them directly from my web server.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 8, 2006
New MP3s: The Rapture, Ted Leo
My apologies to anyone who tried to download the Keith Jarrett MP3 that sat on this site for the last thirty-six hours. Apparently the file doesn't work, and caused some people's browsers to freeze or crash. I've substitutued the first track off the new Rapture album, mentioned yesterday, and a song off of Ted Leo's fantastic 2001 album The Tyranny of Distance.
Below is the post I'd written to accompany the Jarrett track:
I've uploaded a thirty-eight-minute long performance by Keith Jarrett as the newest MP3 of the moment. It was recorded in Paris on October 17, 1988, and it is my favorite of his live recordings. He has himself suggested that a concert at La Scala is his greatest work of improvisation, and by consensus his fans have anointed the Köln Concert as their favorite. Yet there is something about the Paris recording, more classical (Baroque, specifically) in its orientation, that grabs at me, especially the quieter passage that begins at about 17:15 and runs until about the 21:30 mark. It also contains some of the longest single-note, drone-like passages of any of his concert recordings, many of which I've been able to borrow from the New York Public Library, import to my computer, and spend excessive amounts of time listening to.Seeing Jarrett live last September at Carnegie Hall (New York Times review here), which was his first solo performance in New York in a decade and perhaps the best birthday gift I have ever received, was absolutely fantastic; each of the five encores was entirely earned.
I'm relatively new to Jarrett fandom, having only come across his music in Ellen B.'s apartment in Berlin in early 2005. One night, while alone, I slipped in five of the six discs documenting Jarrett's 1976 "Sun Bear" concerts in Japan and was mesmerized. I'd consider some of the music from those sessions to be my favorite, but I know that I'm letting the ideal situation of my first listening experience color my opinion of the music.
Anyway, the files linked at the bottom of the middle column are big, so I ask (as always) that you please right-click, "Save As," and play it from your computer rather than stream it directly from my web server.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
August 21, 2006
Some new(ish) music
I'm on vacation in San Francisco this week, so posting may be lighter and somewhat off-topic. To wit: Beneath the heading "Some MP3s" at the bottom of the middle column, you'll see that I've uploaded three new MP3s. All are recent piano-led jazz numbers. The first, hip-hop producer El-P's "Intrigue in the House of India," is from his album High Water (2004), created in collaboration with members of Thirsty Ear's improv stable for the label's "Blue" series. The keynote performer (no pun intended) is the much-celebrated Matthew Shipp. Click here to read PItchfork's review of the album.
The second track is the energetic "A Picture of Doris Traveling with Boris," from the Esbjörn Svensson Trio's ninth album, Viaticum (2005). Prior to picking up this record last year, I hadn't heard of the group, but apparently they're a big hit in Europe and have played shows in the US with k.d. lang, of all people. According to the band's website, they're playing in New York next April at the Merklin Theater.
The third track comes from Australia. Triosk is a piano trio I first came to know through their collaboration with German electronic musician Jan Jelinek (record label link), of whom great enough things cannot be said. That record, 1+3+1, was created through the mail—Jelinek (1) to Triosk (3) and back to Jelinek (1). For The Headlight Serenade, Triosk's new record, released last month by the Leaf label, distances itself from Jelinek's trademark sounds without sacrificing his penchant for picking melodies apart and putting them back together in unexpected ways. "Visions IV" leads off the album, which I highly recommend.
I'll leave these up until Friday, so right-click and "Save As."
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
May 17, 2006
MP3 of the Moment #4: Junior Boys, "Teach Me How to Fight"
I don’t remember when I downloaded the Junior Boys’ debut album, Last Exit (read reviews here). It must have been sometime in late 2004, when the group was riding to prominence on a wave of MP3 blog attention. I immediately took to the group’s intimate, yet chilly, bedroom electro-pop; the record’s best songs seemed like the perfect soundtrack to the liminal moments on either end of a long night out—dressing up for the bar or club, or, more pertinently, lying awake in bed at four in the morning, unable to sleep. “Birthday” and “Last Exit” were both released on EPs or as singles, and were treated to remixes courtesy of big-name musicians (Fennesz, Manitoba). But, returning to the album again recently, it’s “Teach Me How to Fight” that I cannot stop listening to. The song possesses all of the group’s signature elements: quiet, insistent, micro-house-style beats (here nestled in granular texture); atmospheric keyboard melodies; and singer Jeremy Greenspan’s whispery, come-hither vocals.
The group’s second album, So This Is Goodbye, comes out on August 14th from Domino Recording Co. (You can read all about it on this post at k-punk.) In the meantime, “Teach Me How to Fight” is available for download at the bottom of the middle column.
UPDATE, 9/13: Jonathan Liu raves about the new album at the New York Observer, in a column titled "When Sexy Met Indie."
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
April 18, 2006
The Life Aquatic with Matthew Barney / MP3 of the moment #3
Still from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9.There is little new to be said about Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, which was released a few weeks ago and is now screening at the IFC Center in the West Village. There were, of course, reviews in all of the major media outlets—the New York Times and the Village Voice, among many others—as well as numerous posts on blogs. (Girish's comments were among the earliest and remain among the most well thought out.) As is to be expected, there is little impartial commentary; like all extremely ambitious artists, Matthew Barney seems only to draw fulsome praise or withering criticism, and the film, loaded with visual cues referencing the Cremaster series with which he made his name, will convert few critics and dissuade few fans. Overwrought pageantry and meticulously observed ritual, a fetishist's appreciation of elaborate costuming, and all manner of viscous semiliquid materials figure prominently.
I enjoyed the film. A few brief comments:
- I agree with those who criticize Barney's editing skills, as the film seems like an endless succession of eight- to ten-second takes; were it not for the Björk's evocative soundtrack, there would be even less narrative thrust than can now be discerned. The film's action hovers somewhere between nonnarrative and narrative states, and it suffers some for it.
- While there are plenty of striking moments, there is no single image in Drawing Restraint 9 as beautiful as individual scenes in his Cremaster films. (I'm thinking specifically of the use of the Chrysler building as a maypole in Cremaster 3 or the scene in which Barney jumps off a bridge into the Danube in Cremaster 5.)
- The ending seems tacked on, as if Barney had extra visual material—the kabuki clown, the woman vomiting pearls into the sea, etc.—that he wanted to include but couldn't otherwise fit.
- Some commentators have glossed the reference to Douglas MacArthur in the beginning of the film, but I'm surprised that none yet have reached back to Matthew C. Perry, the original "Occidental Guest." I know that the coincidence of their first names is just that, but it is a suggestive one nonetheless.
Anyway, posting about the movie grants me the opportunity to update my "MP3 of the Moment," listed at the bottom of the middle column. I have uploaded "Gratitude," composed by Björk and performed by Will Oldham, Zeena Parkins, and a choir of Japanese children. From bjork.com: "In the film's moving opening sequence, we hear Will Oldham sing in English the text of a letter from a Japanese citizen to General MacArthur thanking him for lifting the U.S. moratorium on whaling off the nation's coasts; this text was adapted by Matthew Barney and set to music by Björk for harp, here played by Zeena Parkins. Its delicate delivery acknowledges the folk-culture roots of whaling, while it also subtly flags the barbed history and politics surrounding its source text." The song is not as powerful as "Storm," which, along with Funkstörung's remix of "All is Full of Love," hovers near the top of my all-time-favorite Björk song list, but it has its own charms—namely that adorable choir.
Posted in Art, Film, Music. Found always via this permanent link.
March 29, 2006
MP3 of the Moment #2: Jan Jelinek, "Moiré (Piano & Organ)"
From the ~scape records website:
With the aid of his sampler Jelinek has developed an exclusive music discovery approach, building on three central themes: jazz, the loop-finding modulation wheel and Moiré. Jazz sequences from the 60s and 70s are cut up into second-long loops, shifted by the wheel of the sampler and combined into spatial arrangements with maximum depth of field, re-creating the notorious Moiré effect, this ground-breaking painting technique of creating three dimensional space in a plane without the classic tools of perspective.This is the opening track on Loop-finding-jazz-records, released in 2001 and my introduction to Jelinek. Since then he has collaborated with an Australian jazz combo called Triosk and (supposedly) an obscure '70s German TV-music production trio called The Exposures. I say "supposedly" because it remains unclear whether or not The Exposures, who have since released an album titled Lost Recordings, were described as a "fictitious backing band" on the collaborative release. Here is an excerpt of the Pitchfork review of Lost Recordings:
The Exposures are best remembered for being credited as a "fictitious backing band" on microhouse snake charmer Jan Jelinek's 2003 sleeper, La Nouvelle Pauverte. Whether Jelinek saved or robbed them is unclear: Conflicting reports tell us that he shined the light on these 25-plus year veterans by inviting them to perform on that record, while the liner notes on the group's Lost Recordings—which compiles their obscure pieces from the past four years—claim Jelinek sampled their shimmering wah-wah guitar without permission for his "Ifs ands & Buts". Hell, judging by the songs here, The Exposures could really be Jelinek himself in b-boy drag.Either way, I hope you enjoy the song. Right-click the link at the bottom of the middle column to save the file to your computer. Click here for Jelinek's discography at Discogs.com.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
March 19, 2006
New Feature: MP3 of the Moment
Here in New York, you have to pick your battles, so to speak. You can't be an art buff, a film geek, a music nerd, a theatergoer, a balletomane, and an opera fanatic; there just isn't enough time in the day. My life is filled with art, writing, music, and the events attending to those three passions. The rest I experience haphazardly at best. In acknowledging this I have just frozen my Netflix account, which was perhaps a losing venture for me from the start.
My three regular readers will see that I have removed the "From Netflix" listing at the bottom of the middle column on this site. In exchange I have added "MP3 of the Moment," which features a randomly selected song from my hard drive and which will change once or twice a week, as the desire strikes.
The first selection is JK Broadrick's remix of Pelican's "Angel Tears," taken from Australasia, the band's debut full-length. Broadrick, as you may know, was behind Godflesh and Napalm Death, and has recently begun recording music under the moniker Jesu; Pelican is a new-ish instrumental metal band from Chicago. (Coincidentally, I knew two of its members ten years ago, in high school.) The original version of "Angel Tears" is a plodding, eleven-minute behemoth, all chugging guitars and (two-thirds of the way through) double-bass-drum attack. Broadrick works solely with the initial melody, adding an ethereal synthesizer "chorus" that hovers behind the music and some echo/reverb to the guitars—essentially giving "Angel Tears" the metal-meets-Slowdive sheen of his current recordings. To my mind, it's an utterly stunning cocoon of noise. Due to bandwith usage concerns, please right-click and download the file rather than playing it directly from my web server.
A few related links: Pelican's record label, Hydra Head Records; reviews of Australasia; Jesu's homepage; and an informative review of Jesu's self-titled album.
Posted in Miscellaneous, Music. Found always via this permanent link.
May 12, 2005
If you are having a bad day, click this link
Click here for a direct link (.MOV file)to the Wormseye Films video for Kidz Bop's cover of Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone." This video makes my day! I found the link via Fluxblog, who lists twenty reasons why it's great. Says Matthew: "I can barely contain my enthusiasm for this video. It's beautiful, clever, cute, inspiring and joyous...the directors seem to have no shame about what they are doing. I think that a lot of people wouldn't fully commit to making a good video for a recording liket his, but they seem to genuinely appreciate the song." Bless them for it! Paired with Ted Leo's acoustic cover version, Clarkson's song is receiving (deservedly) royal treatment.
UPDATE 12:10PM: It appears that Wormseye has taken the file off their site, perhaps from too much traffic. I'll keep my eye on it. Sorry to be a tease!UPDATE 12:53PM: Matthew Perpetua has now posted the file to his own server. Click here to watch the video. So best!
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
May 8, 2005
One sentence reviews of new and upcoming records
Spoon: Gimme Fiction (Merge Records)
This is T. Rex set loose in the American heartland: taut, slightly funky songs with ultra-simple two- and three-note melodies (“I Turn My Camera On,” “Was It You”) contrast with ramblers replete with slide guitar and anchored by percussive piano (“The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine,” “Sister Jack”).Animal Collective: Prospect Hummer EP (Fat Cat Records)
More like cascading tides than songs, this is the collective’s Campfire Songs alter ego brought to bear on their own work, as gossamer, harp-like clouds of guitar surround ‘70s icon Vashti Bunyan’s delicate tremolo.Jesu: Jesu (Hydra Head) (Link to band site)
Add heavy, crisply recorded drums to the epic guitar feedback, keyboard washes, and the—surprise!—melodies of Slowdive and you get seventy-four minutes of Justin K. Broadrick’s most recent project, the name of which might as well translate to “emotional and aural oblivion.”Sufjan Stevens: Illinois (Ashmatic Kitty/Sounds Familyre) (Link to band site)
From "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," to "Casimir Pulaski Day," album two of Stevens’s fifty-release portrait of our union is too long by a third—even the peppy, beautifully orchestrated pop gems interspersed among filler tracks rarely clock in at less than six minutes—but a little fast-forward editing makes this one of the strongest pop releases so far this year.Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
April 30, 2005
Get It While It's Hot
This month's Certified Bananas MP3 mix is now online. Click here to get it. Once again it's loaded with great mash-ups—Destiny's Child and Three 6 Mafia over Liquid Liquid, Outkast over The Cure—and one unexpectedly great passage: a "chopped and screwed" version of Modest Mouse's "Float On." I cannot recommend these DJs highly enough. I may soon time one of my Boston art pilgrimmages to coincide with one of their DJ nights in Cambridge.
On a related note, did anyone else notice that this article in the Times ("The Strangest Sound in Hip-Hop Goes National," April 17) completely neglected to mention that DJ Screw's death was caused by his addiction to cough syrup? And how yes, the music is great and all that, but that there is a whole community of men (and women?) in Houston who are getting fucked up and giving themselves serious health problems? Maybe I'm just some sanctimonious white outsider, but I felt it deserved at least a passing mention. I digress.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 23, 2004
Music recommendation: Isis, Panopticon
Isis, the purveyors of methodical, elaborately constructed doom metal fronted by Aaron Turner (of Hydra Head records fame), lies near the opposite end of the musical spectrum from my last recommendation. Panopticon, their third full-length album and second on Ipecac Records, arrives in stores approximately one month from now. It is epic in scope (seven songs stretch to sixty minutes), and paradoxically can be described as disciplined (in its deliberately leaden tempo) and exploratory; it contains waterfalls of guitar pressed together so tightly as to seem impenetrable and delicately melodic interludes that are beautiful without being "pretty." What marks this album as an improvement over Oceanic, an admittedly spectacular record released two years ago, is the presence of those melodic passages hidden underneath the noise. Take "Wills Dissolve," the fourth track, as a key to the record. The first three minutes feature guitars and bass playing a melody that can be considered one step above funereal dirge (not unlike "Swimming in the Lake of Bile," from Canadian metal band Acrid's underappreciated 1997 album Eighty-Sixed); during the final four minutes that same melody is drenched in noise yet appreciably not abandoned. It is plodding, intricate, and mesmeric.
Something Chris Ott wrote in his Pitchfork review of Oceanic is true yet again of Panopticon: "Oceanic is an album that's at once more precise and more exploratory than the predecessor it upstages. Each song is an anthem on par with the three finest on Celestial...but their song remains the same: a huge chorus, and many lengthy breakdowns. Where Oceanic succeeds is in its ability to hold your ear during those lulls." Panopticon is the type of album that forces me to keep one foot in the metal and hardcore scenes while I explore further (and much quieter) realms of music elsewhere.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
September 11, 2004
Oren Ambarchi's Grapes from the Estate
A favorite recent release is Oren Ambarchi's Grapes From the Estate, his third solo record with British label Touch. (The link takes you to the album page at the Touch site.) Here are excerpts from two reviews compiled on a Touch webpage.
The most thoughtful I've read so far is from Bagatellen.com:
Two salient points stand out in Oren Ambarchi’s fine new album. Conceptually, the four pieces utilize a surprisingly song-like structure, albeit one that’s drastically extended and iterated in languid fashion. Formally, many of the guitar sounds share an unusual element. This latter becomes apparent from the very opening of the first track, “Corkscrew”. It’s made up of a series of humming tones, very organ-y in nature, but every tone is introduced with a kind of plosive click, as if each is being turned on independently and the sound of the switch itself is retained. [...] “Corkscrew” turns out to have been something of a prelude for the remaining works which amplify and elaborate on issues it raises. Throughout the disc, the pop-hum element is omnipresent as is the repetitive structure. [...] “The Girl With the Silver Eyes” introduces brushed drums and zither-like guitar, slathered onto the drones like icing on a cake, beguiling the listener with sheer lusciousness. In terms of quasi-pop structural allusions, things ratchet to their peak on “Remedios the Beauty”. The tempo is picked up to a gentle trot, there’s something of a melody in play, and the brushed drums become more insistent. Small morsels are appended: a faint raised pitch here, a small spray of static there, but you have to listen hard to notice them as you tend to be lulled by the sonic bliss. [...] The final track, “Stars Aligned, Webs Spun”, pulls back a bit from the relative delirium, playing off a clear, two-note figure (as always, with the popping intro) against low, sputtering tones, a calm, if bleak coda. “Grapes from the estate” is very much of a piece, four variations on a lovely conceptual theme.
A shorter, slightly less rapturous review comes from Will Montgomery in The Wire, an authoritative source:
Oren Ambarchi's latest, his 3rd for Touch, begins with a sinuous track exploring the soft, warm tunes with which his guitar playing is most associated. The notes loop gracefully, swerving as they go. There's a well gauged decay and an appealing capacity for low-register wobbling: Ambarchi can treat the guitar as essentially a tone generator. Pluck and twang are suppressed and the ear is asked to home in on the repeating notes themselves. But this focus on sound in itself is only half the story. It is brought together with the arch pop leanings that are given full head in Ambarchi's group Sun. The second track, "The Girl With The Silver Eyes", begins with looping tones but the atmosphere changes completely with the entry of a brush caressed snare drum. The loops are slowly overlaid with percussion, Hammond organ and strange, spangling guitar chords (all played by ambarchi himself). The result is a wistful lyricism with allegiances floating somewhere between tune and tone. The next piece, "Remedios The Beauty", at one pleasingly queasy point folds in on itself, dropping away to play deep, low tones against resonant bells. But Ambarchi oversweetens the mix with strings and a descending piano phrase that soon hangs heavy.
More satisfying is the final track, the 20 minute long "Stars Aligned, Web Spun". The wavering of the gong-like main guitar note gives the piece a sustaining ambiguity. Slowly, more tuneful material gathers around it and the piece moves into an easy-on-the-ear post-rock pastoral. Yet it's hardly challenging. There are plenty of strengths to this album: an open, improvisatory feel; a sound that's both dense and unfussy about hiss and loop-point clicks; a skilful layering of elements. But Ambarchi's personal third stream isn't as persuasive as some of his past work - yet.
I recommend the album wholly, but favor "Corkscrew" and "Stars Aligned Webs Spun," the more abstract tracks.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
March 3, 2003
Coltrane, J.
Transformative music listening experience for March 3, 2003: "My Favorite Things" from John Coltrane's performance at the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival. If you listen closely, you can hear the audience talking among themselves and clapping at all the wrong moments deep down in the mix; I can imagine they were five times as stunned by the beauty of what they were witnessing as I was by what I heard this evening. The nine to eleven minute mark features some of the best saxophone playing I've ever heard in my life. I am not critically equipped to tell you what kind of playing it is, nor do I think I want to. I'm still reveling.
Transformative music listening experience for March 2, 2003: Seeing Stephan Mathieu perform live in a one-off date at Experimental Intermedia, Phil Niblock's loft in Chinatown. He performed what sounded like an extended, forty-five minute remix of the sixteen minute piece from the Mutek 2002 festival. This rendition maintained the slightly shifting high-end tones throughout (three notes alternately shifting into and out of harmony with each other) but was marked by a greater number of glitches, clicks, pops, and general digital detritus filtering in and out of the multi-channel sound setup. The music was accompanied by a video projection that started off solid purple, and, with equal parts delicacy and patience, subtly flickered its way across the spectrum to pink, red, orange, yellow, and blue. Amazing.
I also had some great art experiences this weekend. More on those later.
Posted in Music. Found always via this permanent link.
December 1, 2002
Philip Glass at Society Hall
Last night I saw Philip Glass perform several of his pieces for solo piano. He played Mad Rush (1980) and five of the Metamorphoses (1989). After an intermission, Dennis Russel Davies performed six of the sixteen Etudes Glass composed between 1994 and 1999, showcasing his amazing dexterity. It was apparent that Davies is the more accomplished performer, and it was quite interesting to see how they both approached Glass' works. Davies approached the work with gusto, allowing his face to register emotional reaction to the pieces played, the technical ability of his fingerwork not interrupting a certain performative gusto. Glass, not as strong a player as composer, kept a straight face and bowed head while working his way through his two selections. The selection of pieces was wise. Glass' plain performance style was enhanced by the emotional tenor of the selections he performed. Davies played to his strengths, for in his short works the repetitive phrases were more complicated and shorter in duration, allowing for relatively wild (in comparison to Glass) fingerwork that wowed the audience. The man in front of me, obviously familiar with the Etudes, let out a "Yeah!" as Davies hit the last notes of the sixth piece. It was a stirring introduction to the live performance of Glass's works, and experienced for the meager sum of $10. Can't beat that.
Update: I was glad to read that the New York Times critic who reviewed the concert had almost exactly the same response as I did. It kind of validates my critical response.. sort of! If you believe in that kind of thing! Here's a link to his review.
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