Archive for October, 2006

Links for the week

31 October 2006 at 11:43 am · Filed under Links for the week, Music, mp3

A lovely post at Tim Mangan’s Classical Life reproducing a 2003 article on Tower Records’ classical sales guy, Charlie Brand.

This (warning: sound) animated, automatic music box is way cooler than you’d first think. (Via Dial M/Crooked Timber.)

Get ‘em while they’re ‘ot: mp3 live recordings from the Whitney museum’s recent Reich extravaganza.

Matthew Guerrieri tracks down a man who could play those ‘impossible’ chords in Charles Ives’s piano music.

Be sure to check out the Pianoless Vexations mp3s recently added to Ubuweb.

And this story’s a few days old now, but I love it, so here you go: Teen Using MySpace to Lure Bands to Los Angeles.

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Cool Earth

25 October 2006 at 12:10 pm · Filed under Non-music ·Tagged , , ,

A change of pace, but bear with me, this is important.

As climate change rapidly bears down upon us, please give a few moments to adding your support to Cool Earth.

The only effective option for controlling carbon emissions and halting climate change is by tackling tropical deforestation. Cool Earth is a unique organisation that works with the world’s biggest names in business and the world’s biggest eco-resources to arrest global warming. With cross-party support, unrivalled levels of corporate funding and the full co-operation from local communities, Cool Earth is addressing climate change on a global scale.

I don’t know about you, but my TV is switched off standby, my phone charger unplugged, my lightbulbs switched to low energy, my loft insulated and my food (mostly) locally produced, so it comes as a hell of a relief to know that as the weather gets scarier and the news gets worse there is something more, and more effective we can do. There is much more about the Cool Earth idea here and here; please read the articles and consider lending your support (they just need names, not money at this stage) to the campaign. The only good thing about climate change is that it is still, just, in our hands. Let’s not lose that too.
Thanks.

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Links for the week

24 October 2006 at 3:36 pm · Filed under Links for the week, Music

Phil Ford of Dial M on (non-)ironic distance in music:

There’s a common point of view within popular music scholarship that understands such moments as instances of critical trangression — that is, moments in which mass-culture dreck is redeemed through an artist’s creative redefinition of it. … This “ironic distance” style of interpretation clearly doesn’t explain Mixmaster Mike’s cut-up of “Ramblin’ on my Mind.” Mixmaster Mike isn’t keeping his distance from the song he’s cutting up; neither does his scratching represent some kind of triumph over or diminishment of it.

Matthew Guerrieri of Soho the Dog has more:

I always assumed that it was pretty much the same thing we all do when we find a really wicked piece of music and immediately begin pestering everyone we know to listen to it. You have to hear this. And the more I thought about it, the more I decided that the whole concept of “ironic distance” was dissing hip-hop musicianship.

The moral: assume an artist is working with “ironic distance” at your peril.

Another excellent post from Matthew – estimating what it would actually cost to fill a sympony season with new music. Not as much as you’d think is the answer.

The 13th post in tokafi’s series ‘The Crisis of Classical Music’ tackles the distributors.

Just in time for the mid-terms, DJ C puts out a mix of the Bush-dissingest tracks around.

Also on the mix tip, deeptime’s contribution for Blogariddims is a choice selection of grime and UKG from the London pirate scene.
And remember – dyb dyb dyb, dob dob dob, don’t infringe copyright.

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That Sting Dowland album

19 October 2006 at 10:44 am · Filed under Music

Amid all the hoo-ha (Scott has links) surrounding Sting’s new album of songs by the apparently obscure John Dowland (England’s greatest songwriter? Nope, never heard of him), ANABlog has a couple of taster tracks to listen to. And you know what – they’re alright. Not great, but well-intentioned stabs at some great music that everyone deserves to hear. No surprise there, then. But what did surprise me in my reaction is that I wish that Sting’s voice actually sounded more like Sting; unlike Jessica Duchen, for example, I sort of wish there were more breathy pop articulations – those are what makes Sting’s voice distinctive after all – rather than a poor impression of plummy Early Music Specialist Type A (I agree with Jessica though that the twangy vowels are off-putting). I think Dowland’s songs are robust enough to take plenty of roughness to the edges, and it’s a pity that Sting didn’t push that a bit himself. That said, the close mic’ed production on ‘Can she excuse my wrongs’ is way off. I hear what you were trying (some punky energy, no?), but the song’s too busy already for it to work.

Update 1: Jonathan Bellman has a few more thoughts on Sting’s vowels, and hits the nail with this one: “Sting, to my ear, is giving the songs such a careful, kid-glove kind of treatment that his natural enunciation has gone into slow motion.”

Update 2: Pliable believes this is nothing more than a commercial move on Sting’s part; an argument I I take issue with on two counts – 1) who’s bothered? Sting’s a commercial recording artist (as, for that matter is everyone who has recorded Dowland for money); 2) Sting could have done plenty more commercial things with his brand name. (John Dowland, however – now there’s the sell-out. A pox on him.)
Update 3: Guthry Trojan has some interesting points – maybe a folk recording approach might have worked better? Also, he has a fine response to Pliable, above:

I think it might be more revealing if we were to ask who was responsible for bringing Sting’s “labour of love, labour of curiosity” to the notice of Deutsche Grammophon. This, I imagine, is where the commercial exploitation begins – and it exploits Sting as much as the rest of us. An aging rocker, living a super-real life, whose lasting fame is founded on fickle, transitory pop music, is easy prey for a culture monger like DG.

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Ixion tomorrow night

18 October 2006 at 4:38 pm · Filed under Music, Rambler at large

Anyone going to the Ixion/Finnissy concert at the Warehouse tomorrow? (This one.) Drop me a line if you are and want to say hi.

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Links for the week

17 October 2006 at 4:45 pm · Filed under Bloggers, Links for the week, Music ·Tagged

Somewhat Dial M-oriented this week, to whom first thanks for pointing me to Mark Zobel’s new musicology blog (that’s a musicology blog that’s new, not a blog on new musicology), The Key of Z. We’re going to take over the world!*

Also on Dial M, Phil Ford is “totally stoked” about the upcoming AMS annual conference, but blogs cautionary about the terrors of being a young graduate/apprentice scholar at such events. I recognise myself all too well. Jonathan Bellman has an alternative view, and some words of advice to cling to in such times of need.

Elsewhere, Woebot has a typically tasty survey of Nonesuch’s electronic output. Gutterbreakz responds in kind with a survey of the best of the Moog albums.

*At this rate, 24 more and we’ll have taken over the alphabet too…

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Musician Deathwatch

17 October 2006 at 4:23 pm · Filed under Musician Deathwatch ·Tagged , , ,

del.icio.us/skills/obituary | About this list

This week we bid farewell to the following members of the musical community:

:: Klaus Renft Rock bassist
:: Basil Deane Musicologist
:: Edgar Summerlin Jazz composer
:: Freddy Fender Tex-Mex singer
:: Prentiss Barnes Doowop bass singer
:: Claude Luter Jazz clarinettist
:: Isabel Bigley Broadway singer and actor
:: Uncle Josh Graves Bluegrass Dobro guitarist
:: John W. Peterson Gospel hymn writer
:: Don Walser Country singer, guitarist and yodeller
:: El-Hachemi Guerrouabi Chaabi musician

Rest in Peace.

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Stockhausen on YouTube

17 October 2006 at 10:22 am · Filed under Music, Video ·Tagged , , , ,

Spot the difference:

Guy Coma, mistaken for Guy Kewney

Karlheinz Stockhausen interviewed on the BBC’s Culture Show

Stockhausen

Taxi driver Guy Coma interviewed on the BBC’s News 24

Thanks to Avant Music News for spotting this absolute gem. A 7-minute clip from an edition of BBC 2’s Culture Show, featuring Stockhausen. It includes a rare interview with the man that must rank as one of the stupidest I’ve ever seen. You’ve got just 11 minutes (we only see 5 here – how bad must the rest have been?) with one of the towering figures in 20th-century musical history. What’s your first question?

‘Could you tell me what the most beautiful, or most interesting sound you’ve ever heard is?’

And your second question?

‘So what do you think about melody? Do you hum tunes?’

To his great credit Stockhausen is by turns patient (the Berg/Schoenberg/’degenerate music’ question is a shocker), honest, talkative, and keeps exactly to time. Bonus material – ideologically edited archive material of Stockhausen looking like a wacky atonal weirdo, and some nice snippets of him rehearsing 3x Refrain.

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Quay Brothers DVD

16 October 2006 at 10:43 am · Filed under Music ·Tagged , , , ,

Another press release, but this one looks interesting, and comes via Michael Brooke of Mischievous Constructions who also produced the DVD. The attention of avant music fans is particularly drawn to the Stockhausen collaboration In absentia, as well as two His Name Is Alive videos (from the Stille Nacht series) and original scores by Leszek Jankowski and Gary Tarn. Looks cool, anyway.

The BFI has collaborated with the inimitable Quay Brothers to release a truly comprehensive compilation of their short films on DVD; a world first. The Quays were extensively involved with the preparation of the DVD, personally supervising the transfers, recording commentaries on selected titles, and contributing an exclusive 20-minute illustrated video interview.

This two-disc set, in deluxe packaging, collects 13 of the Quay Brothers’ short films, spanning 24 years, in brand new restored and re-mastered editions (six of them with new Quay commentaries), plus a collection of ‘footnotes’ including interviews, alternative versions, unrealised pilot projects and more. An accompanying illustrated colour booklet features an encyclopaedic guide to the Quays’ universe, plus the original illustrated treatment for their best-known film Street of Crocodiles.

Born in Philadelphia and based in London, but with a creative sensibility derived from the remoter corners of Eastern Europe, identical twin animators the Quay Brothers have produced a unique body of work, and have also made a major contribution towards establishing the puppet film as a serious adult art form.

Filtering a huge range of literary, musical, cinematic and philosophical influences through their own utterly distinctive sensibility, each Quay film is a dialogue-free and usually non-narrative experience, riveting the attention through hypnotic control of décor, music and movement. With a grasp of the uncanny that rivals Luis Buñuel and Lewis Carroll, their films evoke half-remembered dreams and long-suppressed childhood memories, fascinating and deeply unsettling by turns.

The collection ranges from their very first puppet film Nocturna Artificialia (1979) to the recent The Phantom Museum (2003). In between there are all the classics: The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984), a tribute to their great Czech counterpart; This Unnameable Little Broom (1985), a reduction of the Epic of Gilgamesh into a ten-minute frenzy; their acknowledged masterpiece Street of Crocodiles (1986), a visualisation of the labyrinthine world of Polish author Bruno Schulz; the tantalisingly suggestive Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987) and The Comb (1990); the playful documentary Anamorphosis (1991), uncovering hidden meanings in outwardly conventional paintings; the Stille Nacht quartet (1988-94) of twisted music videos, and In Absentia (2000), their acclaimed collaboration with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The second disc, ‘Footnotes’, contains numerous extras including a newly commissioned filmed interview, distinctive idents for the BFI and BBC2, the satirical short The Summit (1995) and a rare ‘acting’ appearance (albeit in stills) in a clip from Peter Greenaway’s The Falls.

The DVD has been produced by the BFI’s Michael Brooke, Content Developer for Screenonline, the BFI’s extensive online resource dedicated to the history of British film and television. To tie in with the release, Screenonline will be providing extensive background material for each individual title, together with a biography and filmography of the Quays.

DISC 1 – The Films
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984)
*This Unnameable Little Broom (1985)
*Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987)
*Stille Nacht I – Dramolet (1988)
The Comb (1990)
Anamorphosis (1991)
*Stille Nacht II – Are We Still Married? (1992)
*Stille Nacht III – Tales From Vienna Woods (1993)
Stille Nacht IV – Can’t Go Wrong Without You (1994)
*In Absentia (2000)
The Phantom Museum (2003)

DISC 2 – Footnotes
Filmed introduction by the Quays
Nocturna Artificialia (1979)
The Calligrapher (1991)
The Summit (1995)
Archive Interview (2000)
The Falls (1980)
BFI Ident
Alternative versions

*With new commentary by the Quay Brothers recorded for this DVD.

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Links for the week

11 October 2006 at 1:38 pm · Filed under Links for the week

Deeptime has a huge review of the forthcoming Kode9 and Spaceape album.

Soho the Dog picks at the musical differences between America and Europe. As a European, I’ve got to say this does feel abou right, and I’ve often thought much the same – there’s a whole tabula rasa thing in America that we just can’t begin to imagine, but then we’ve got history and tradition and all that cool stuff so let’s call it even – but I’m also naturally suspicious fo such generalisations. Can anyone point me to (or better, make themselves) the counter argument – that actually American music is much more preoccupied with historical ancestry, and that European composers mostly don’t bother engaging with the past? That’d be cool, thanks.

And WFMU has the audio from a recent illustrated talk given by Negativland’s Mark Holser.

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