...As Though The Shame Would Outlive Him

Der Prozess

2011-11-13T18:57:00.000-08:00

'Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong.'

In response to such absurdity I present Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K..., an hour of ambient music.

Download: Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K...
Tracklist:

1. mark mcguire emergency exit
2. novisad sommersonnenschen
3. pass into silence big and small waves
4. clem leek at the mercy of the waves
5. gas pop
6. elluvium ogives redistributed
7. raphael anton irisarri voigt kampff
8. angelo badalementi nostalgia
9. rene hell adagio for string portrait
10. jurgen paape ein schone land
11. oneohtrix point never adagio in g minor
12. ulf lohmann on frozen fields
13. brian eno chamber lightness
14. chihei hatakeyama mirror
15. a winged victory for the sullen all farewells are sudden
16. morton feldman palais de mari
17. the caretaker the sublime is disappointingly elusive

House, Hipster House & Underground House

2011-11-01T20:11:00.000-07:00

blissblog speaks more on hipster house versus 'House' proper, and the problems with nostalgia for- and exclusion from- a music culture very much alive and well. This is a good point, and worth elaborating: hasn't there always been a kind of hipster house, an 'underground' house standing apart from the mainstream? Or has this current branded hipster house sprung up from an absence of underground house, as a reaction to the subsuming of underground house by the mainstream? I'm thinking of the likes of Kassem Mosse in RA charts, of the Amsterdam House of Clone and Rush Hour becoming a universally known and respected style, of FXHE and Underground Quality high-ranked staples of Juno and Beatport, Jamal Moss' big feature in The Wire...

But it's also that the leveling has occurred from both sides. What exactly is mainstream house music these days? Is it RA's most charted track for October, Miguel Campbell's 'Something Special'? And how different essentially is this from the Dial, Workshop, 100% Silk etc. catalogs? Maybe its all in the intent, but any notion of distinction seems pretty flimsy.

... Also, given the major focus hipster house has received from blogs, websites, etc who don't usually engage with dance music, has hipster house eclipsed both underground and mainstream house to become bigger, more mainstream than them all? Isn't the notion of indie kids dabbling in beats, divorced from mainstream dance culture, all too close to the new rave of Klaxons? With its lazy appropriation of vintage Chicago tropes cloaked in ironic low-fi credibility, it's acceptable for indie kids to listen to hipster house as it's not officially dance music (Note that that description also pretty much applies to the Mathematics catalog which is 100% dance music).

This doesn't work as such the other way around. Blissblog mentions the suspicion that 'hipster house = people whose productions wouldn't cut it on a contemporary dancefloor', but there's plenty of interest in hipster house from mainstream quarters - LWE's 100% Silk Talking Shopcast; Sex Worker in Scuba's DJ Kicks mix; Blondes praised by Detroit-Chicago authenticity purists Blowing Up Your Spot...

But doesn't everyone listen to everything and anything these days?

Year of House 2000

2011-10-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

Re: Simon Reynolds' recent posit of 2011 being a big house year:

is 2011 house's biggest year internationally since 1989-90 or whenever it was crystal waters was in the US top 10?

This is in reference to the myriad house genres and subgenres presently blossoming, from the various 'hipster house' sprouts of the 100% Silk-ilk and post-dubstep angles, to the house-y standard of established-underground generic minimal tech-house, to the dominance of house within contemporary chart pop. A quick scan of the FM dial confirms the latter, at least here in Australia, and given our complete reliance on following the trends of others and with it a complete inability to start trends of our own, I'll take this as evidence of conditions in the UK and US.
(*I'm always surprised at how much chart pop-house I enjoy - it's as though they understand certain underground traits better than the underground do, and with their mainstream musical proficiency and knack for using highfalutin' equipment, blow them up to absurd but nonetheless functional proportions)

This reminded me of chart music in 2000-2001, the year I first came to London, where everywhere I went I heard commercial house that I openly enjoyed. I'm not sure how then compares with now, but there seemed to be a lot of house in the air, and most of it fucking great. The following were inescapable:

Spiller feat. Sophie-Ellis Bextor 'Groovejet' - a friend of mine used to date her, apparently

French Touch maintained a gentle caress on the charts - Modjo's 'Lady'

... and Daft Punk 'One More Time' - their biggest hit

Black Legend 'You See The trouble With Me' - re-do of Barry White and Ray 'Ghostbusters' Parker Junior

Kylie Minogue 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head' of 2001, which put her in Madame Tussauds as the attraction's most fondled exhibit requiring an 'anal makeover'

Chicane 'Don't Give Up', featuring a vocodered Bryan Adams

Sonique 'It Feels So Good'

Fragma 'Toca's Miracle' - mash-up featuring vocal from Coco Star's 'I Need a Miracle'

Madison Avenue 'Don't Call me Baby' - Australian surprisingly, actually from late 1999 but it lingered

But it all ended with this. The inevitable conclusion of house, popular music and seasonal festivities?

2000 was also a turning point in music, with Napster contributing to a decline in sales, leading to singles spending less time at the summit. 2000 still holds the record for the year with most #1 singles in a calendar year (43) and also contains the longest run of consecutive one-week #1 singles. We know how it ended - the strange swill of flotsam and jetsam that defines contemporary music and listening habits.

Minimal Piano: Robert Haigh and Machinefabriek's Sol Sketches

2011-10-23T17:22:00.000-07:00

Minimal piano albums by 'home-listening' composers are a dime a dozen and usually dull as dishwater, but so inoffensive, calm and polite as to make antagonism seem unnecessarily harsh. Nonetheless it is easy, lazy and indulgent music, and itself largely unnecessary when there's so much old music to discover and rediscover. Given the vast volume of the stuff being churned out, I'm not alone in finding minimal piano music particularly enjoyable.

One such artist I've only just been made aware of is Robert Haigh. He's a firm Satie devotee, borrowing liberally in places, but respectfully, and only the most 'Satie-esque' stuff - those modal suspended patterns that define the Gnossiennes and Gympnopedies (No one seems brave enough to take on the late-Satie of Parade or Socrate).

So it's certainly lite, but never pathetic, and successfully avoids any George Winston new-agey Muzac comparisons, just. Apparently his 1980s releases are where it's at, but those from 2008-, such as Written on Water and last year's gorgeous Anonymous Lights show a return to form. Just avoid those in between, as he slathered awkward breakbeats over them and called himself The Omni Trio.

Machinefabriek's Rutger Zuydervelt demonstrates his knack for acoustic simplicity with Sol Sketches, a series of supremely reduced piano miniatures released in advance of the documentary film on artist Sol LeWitt they soundtrack. Zuydervelt looks to Morton Feldman and specifically Ligeti's infuriating Musica Ricercata, basing each sketch on mere handfuls of notes, with subtle processing allowing notes to continue to sound long beyond their usual decay. This gives them a form analogous to Akira Rabelais' Satie and Bartok deconstructions Eisoptrophobia, or Jonathan Coleclough's excellent Period, but Zydervelt is purer still. Even those pieces most reliant on processing, droning strings humming beneath slow, sparse triads, retain a minimalist purity absent from all but the most refined compositions, like Arvo Part recorded in an anechoic chamber. Those with some cash to spare ought to shell out for the limited 4 x 10" vinyl release + bonus eraser, as the artwork matches the beauty of the sounds.

Ruckverzauberung 4

2011-10-16T21:40:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised at the lack of attention that has been paid to Wolfgang Voigt's latest ambient project Ruckverzauberung, especially given its similarities to, and expansion beyond, his universally praised Gas productions. Only two tracks have been released thus far: the typically-functionally-titled 'Ruckverzauberung 1' and 'Ruckverzauberung 2', the former on Pop Ambient 2011, the latter the A-side to Profan 34. Both are sonically dense, texturally rich, heavily processed treatments of classical music fragments, inviting close listening and further scrutiny. '1' is calmer and more peaceful, while '2' is dark and foreboding, employing warbled tones reminiscent of Oneohtrix Point Never. Here's '2':

So like Gas then, only here the gaseous element is largely absent, replaced with cleaner lines and more discernible source material, and in place of the surging drone we have shifting fragments and a greater sense of linear development. Certain patterns are repeated, shot through with delay and reverb, and then retreat, like motifs in classical composition. There is also a more overt focus on electronic timbres, bringing a sharpness entirely absent from Gas and also his work as All, which adds an element of menace more closely associated with the soundtracks of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth. There's none of the sheer aural bliss that oozes from parts of Konigsforst, Pop or Alltag 1-4.

Ruckverzauberung is clearly a significant work for Voigt as it's soon to be released in a limited art edition LP-sized double CD with Kafkatrax, an awkward format and pairing to be sure.

The latter though is good, prompting reviews in two subsequent issues of The Wire, with my take for Cyclic here. Appropriately confused videos by 29Nov to these too:

I wonder whether Kafkatrax get much play for the floor out at clubs? Figure it could work well within your contemporary dark Techno set a la Berghain etc. Does Voigt perform them? I'm still longing for the tranced-up version of Roxy's 'More Than This' he played with Jorg Burger back in 2008 at the Millenium Dome. What a song! Settle for this rendition in the meantime:

Annual Eighties Compilations

2011-10-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

Like most of my vintage I grew up on 1980s pop compilations, and you can pick them up pretty easily in charity shops nowadays on both LP and cassette. Doubtless the latter graces all manner of low-fi synthesist-hypnagogues shelves and car glove compartments, but I opt for the vinyl. I found some beauties yesterday in the Moonee Ponds Arthritus Foundation Op Shop: 1980 The Summer and 1985 Comes Alive - $1 a piece.

The former demonstrates that they hadn't quite nailed the rhyming title theme yet, and the track selection is more slapdash, with MOR folk-rock alongside what-would-become the established synth-pop norm, and plenty of utter bilge: John Farnham's 'Help' chief among these. Worth mentioning for non-antipodeans oblivious to his unique brand of grandma-appealing dross. Youtube features dozens of clips of Farnsey performing this, which I thought bizarre, until I recalled seeing dozens of performances myself on telly, usually on Hey Hey It's Saturday:

But the hits hit hard. Diana Ross's 'Upside Down' is surely among the grooviest tracks ever made, and I'd bought more than one Best Of searching for it in vain, settling for early greats like 'Reflections' and 'Love Child'. Here she is in 1980 with doppelganger Michael Jackson:

Good but inferior version by Carol Cool, from Soul Jazz's Hustle! Reggae Disco comp:

Also features Korgi's easy one-hit favourite 'Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime', this clip a slightly warped video take:

Popularised for modern types by The Field:

'Let's Get Serious' by 'lesser' Jackson Jermaine:

By 1985 the genre of annual pop compilations was firmly established and 1985 Comes Alive is among the finest examples. Synth pop was pop music's lingua franca, and artists were adept at injecting real emotional weight into three minute throwaway ditties. I picked it up for Murray Head's 'One Night in Bangkok' (discussed below), rightly critiqued by Floatinghead for it's Middle Eastern fetish(?!), and what's with all the chess references??? I've clearly not paid attention to all the lyrics, perhaps there's a story there? But each time I'm sucked in by those eerie synth shudders and I'm overtaken with weird eighties pop bliss.

The same confused euphoria is derived from these babies:

Didn't realise this featured Moroder, but after watching the film again last week it's obvious:

Th rest is more humdrum - Huey Lewis, Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, U2 for fuck's sake, the nadir being this big-downunder comedy blip from Cuban-born Jewish Romanian George Smilovici:
.

I also bought the 12" single for Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' which features the instrumental version on the flip. Many claim to hate this song but 39 million youtube views say otherwise. Right after paying for it I entered Moonee Ponds Shopping Mall and what was to come on the muzak channel but...

Am I alone in succumbing to delusions of solipsism when coincidences of this nature take place?

Dropped Pianos

2011-10-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

Good to see Tim Hecker deliving further into the material of Rave Death 1972 with Dropped Pianos, which extends the opening 'Piano Drop' into 9 bleaker, more reduced sketches, literally titled such. There's the granular smear of yore, but with mournful piano patterns featured there's a stronger similarity to Leyland Kirby. Nothing on YouTube yet (give it time...) but here's the original 'Piano Drop':

... Which, given the '1972' in the original album title, could be a reference to 'MIT's first piano drop, 1972', now an annual tradition. This footage ends with very famous piano noise indeed:

Here it is again in 2009 (no 2011 yet, and more interesting than the 2010 footage):

Nothing new in destroying pianos, here 'Fluxus artists' destroy one - look like dickheads to me:

This was more interesting - performance art on Northern Exposure, when Chris flung Maggie's piano:

Pranks from annoying idiots on telly. Premise is almost interesting:

And a round piano - Christian Marclay's Pianorama at London's Roundhouse, featuring the hands of Steve Beresford:

I once had a piano I bought for a pittance in Japan and made a drunken racket with Onkyo koto player Brett Larner, dancing on the keys, jumping on the lid, kicking it. Here's Brett playing with Ko Ishikawa and Ellen Fullman in Shinjuku in 2005:

Brett's girlfriend was a dreary prude, but got drunk and vomited her false teeth down my toilet. She had to fly back to the States to see her dentist and get a replacement, given that her front teeth were all missing. Another friend at the time lusted after her as the archetypal girl next door, and I belive even wrote fiction about her.

Bangkok Thrills

2011-10-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

As a positive flip to the whinge over Andres' Jackson mixes, Mark Knight's glitzy tech-house jam on Murray Head's eighties pop smash 'One Night In Bangkok', 'Devil Walking', is a stunner. Who cares if it relies entirely on obvious drops and tropes, it works wonders and I unashamedly love it:

The original was one of those songs that wriggled deep into the pleasure circuits of my 9 year old brain and begged repeat plays:

... like Dave Dobyn's 'Slice of Heaven' theme tune to the Footrot Flats film (yeesh!) and apparently considered New Zealand's 'alternative national anthem'. Did anyone beyond the antipodes catch this?

To try and come full circle, from the Murray Head of the above classic (actually British) to Murray appearing to be a classic New Zealand name: Murray Ball being the creator of Footrot Flats, and the classic Murray Hewitt of Flight of the Concords:

Ambient 7

2011-09-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

Just discovered Eno's Shutov Assembly from 1992, apparently his 'Ambient 7'. What happened to 5 and 6? Anyway, it's wonderful, exactly what my sleep-deprived nerves need right now. Dedicated to Russian artist Sergei Shutov, of which the image above resemble Picabia's multiple image paitings.

The music is reminiscent of a stripped back On Land, with fewer threatening gestures, although threat never seems far away.

Highlight is the 16 minute 'Ikebukuro' - props to Eno for finding such beauty in that rat infested consumer cesspit, although the slow-motion flapping of wings could represent the crows that come out in the early hours to eat the shit the rats left behind.

100% Silk

2011-09-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

The charming Amanda Brown at 100% Silk has kindly linked to my $2,000 Leaking Oil Mix, which I thought she might enjoy after listening to a slew of Silk records I bought. They're doozies (the Silk records), a breath of fresh air in the often mirthless world of contemporary house music. Someone likened Silk productions to Omar-S meeting Mathematics, but they're warmer and more approachable than even that enticing description suggests.

I've already spoken highly of Octa Octa's 'I'm Trying', but the title track 'Let Me See You'

OCTO OCTA - HIGH REFLECTION teaser from 100% Silk on Vimeo.

... and 'High Reflection' are also tops

Maria Minerva showcases the mustier Not Not Fun side:

And Ital seems to be making the greatest strides into the wider dance music world, with Wire and LWE reviews, which when you hear these is no surprise

And with videos like this he'll keep the hypnagogs happy

Italo's clearly an influence, and not just on Ital, and this clip he highlighted is utterly supoib. It also shows just how little we've progressed, but then why should we need to?

At 2008's Dissonanze festival I shared a cab with Alexander Robotnik and Daniele Baldelli (!) after they finished killing it on the rooftop stage overlooking Rome. I took the front seat and listened to them talk about how they play Italo to get the ladies, and how minimal doesn't so they don't like it. Fair enough - here's a nod to these masters

Country Sewing

2011-09-21T22:13:00.000-07:00

Spent the other night playing Country & Western records while the missus sewed some clothes for the lil' 'uns, it seemed an appropriate soundtrack. So, here is 'Country Sewing' - a bit over an hour of C&W gold from the fifties, sixties and seventies. Tracklist to come, but expect the usual suspects: George Jones, Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner, Wanda Jackson, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn... Songs are short, so there's plenty in there.

C&W is love or hate music, but skeptics could learn a thing or two from prime country production. There's a great sense of stereo space to these recordings, and a crispness brought about by an economic use of instrumentation. The lyrics are all cliched, but what cliches! Plus, what genre today isn't completely reliant on cliche. I might be spreading myself thin with this mix, but I don't care - I'm proud to like both kinds of music.

Download: Country Sewing

Here's some of what you'll find:

As We Rock On, and on, and on...

2011-09-20T04:32:00.000-07:00

Reading about Andres' Michael Jackson deep house edits got me very excited, but the results are so deep house-lite it's a blatant denial of all the seething emotion, sweat and invention present in the originals. As basic deep house tools they're pleasant and functional and chilled as the tamest examples of the genre demand, but their basis in the Jones/Jackson originals is baffling.

I was hoping to get my daughter excited by these babies, but she'll certainly be bored and like me disappointed. How much - of everything, audible and beyond - has been lost from 'Rock With You' to 'As We Rock On'? Furthermore, with its slow sensual pace, wispy synth solos and subdued strings, wasn't 'Rock with You' a kind of dreamy proto-deep house anyway?

As we rock on indeed, comatose, numb, too jaded by overexposure to everything to reach those previous peaks of excitement or, heck, ecstasy. Andres' spin on 'Blame it on the Boogie' is marginally better, more stuttered and distanced, but it too suffers from the same ills.

Perhaps Andres is telling us something with these, critiquing current music malaise, that the Jones/Jackson pop pinnacle of Off The Wall and Thriller can never be equalled, let alone topped, and it's all mourning from here. And if so, deep house is the language to use for this, mired within a dance music structure of resignation, defeat and depression, the music actually most well suited to Jackon's 'Thriller' zombie dance. I doubt it though, this sounds too cosily genrefied, too subservient, in thrall even, to the laziest of deep house tropes.

House House House

2011-09-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

Forgetting novelty for a moment here's some great newish House:

Kassem Mosse's return to Nonplus features the scorching A-side 'Enoha' alongside three of his more experimental rhythmic cuts. Structure and tones are reminiscent of the Omar-S-impressing '578' but 'Enoha' is more reduced and downbeat

Mark Ernestus refines and polishes Basic Channels linear drive on his Shangaan remix for Honest Jon's

Slow squelchy throb from Gunnar Jonsson of Kontra Musik Records

UK Funky diehards Funkystepz keep the flag flying with 'Face Off', four kooky but eminently workable tracks

'Get Down' is your standard high-quality looped disco flange mantra from Kyle Hall, of which the non-youtubed B-Side 'Xero' is more interesting, a gorgeously sloppy instrumental chugger which keeps dying, then reviving, dying, reviving...

I've spoken of my fondness for Jared Wilson's 'Girl I'm Waiting' before but the A-Side is also a winner, more primitive and Chicago obsessed but also more gnarled and nasty

Mind Bomb beat me to the punch with praise for 100% Silk (and Johnny Turncoat dubstep traitors) but more praise is deserving. I'd previously felt ambivalent about the label's more Not Not Fun leaning releases, those cloaked in delay and fuzz, but the latest by Octa Octa is crisp and incredible, all four tracks utter killers. 'I'm Trying' is the winner

... which samples Amerie's mindblowing '1 Thing', a hit at a cheesy New Years Eve party I once held

Earlier came Ital's incredible 'Queens'

... and Magic Touch with the lovely rough-hewn Chicago of 'Clubhouse'

I could go on...

Sonic Fatigue and the Craving for Clarity

2011-09-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

As many commentators have cautioned, (myself included), contemporary digital listening practices can be hazardous to your musical health. Recent voracious downloading of much intriguing youthful new music has resulted in intense aural fatigue, and an inability to process complete recordings - even single tracks. I'd say that it's the process that's chiefly responsible, overenthusiastic press hype and promo is partly to blame, but the music itself is responsible for its own effects.

Consequently I'm suffering an exhaustion with all things fresh, young and hip - synths, arpeggios, delay, haze, pastiche, irony, the know-it-all jaded world-weariness pervading Altered Zones; all the clued-up wide-arc influence and diverse underground sampladelica with the ceaseless winking chummy irony, and the get-out-of-jail-free card of crackle, surface noise and washed out shoegaze moire obscuring all obscure reference and contemporising all dated source material... it's made me feel tired, and old. The latter particularly in this old-man need craving for cleaner, purer, and more earnest music. And this is what's hit the spot:

Bernard Gunther: Time Dreaming Itself (Trente Oisseaux)
Pristine lowercase drones. Nothing on youtube but this is comparable:

Morton Feldman: Palais de Mari
Just piano, and silence.

Buck Owens: Hello Trouble
Shimmering Bakersfield country. Ironic too but not arrogant - speaks to its audience, not down to them. And such an ordered, finished product.

But there's only so much pleasure to be had in historic cleanliness. I'll get to grips with what the kids are up to and speak of modern things later...

Bellows

2011-09-13T19:06:00.000-07:00

Bellows make some of the filthiest music around. Grime in the lowercase sense: grey, murky, dusty muck - utterly gorgeous.

The project of Giuseppe Ielasi, whose Stunt recordings explored similar terrain, and Nicola Ratti, Bellows music is made by manually cutting and manipulating vinyl, capturing this live on a Revox tape recorder - like Thomas Brinkmann's Klick meeting Philip Jeck, with more grit.

Their LP originally came out on Alga Marghen, the perfect home - they don't even have a website!

Peter Kersten Appreciation

2011-09-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

The previous post on Lawrence's Timeless was not intended as a criticism of the work itself or of his mixing and selection, both of which were rather good, but of the medium itself. Mix CDs are dead, time to shovel on the dirt, Timeless it 'aint.

The twelve inch vinyl record however lives on, and stronger than it's been in a long while. Since wifey and I have started our exclusive listening practice I've been buying more of it, and am especially keen on the archival mystery and bargains to be had in secondhand shops. Beyond the classical dregs you can occasionally find cheapish house and techno nowadays, a sure sign that it's grown old and crusty. Nothing looks worse than old dated house and techno records (aside from progressive house and trance ones, and Nana Mouskouri), but the good stuff still looks good, and its interesting what has aged gracefully (and what hasn't).

Peter Kersten's Sten alias offered a harder, more Detroit angled techno version of the Lawrence sound, more bleeps and less chimes and crackle, but retains the same downbeat gloom. I reviewed his Essence LP for RA some moons ago and was largely unimpressed, but I've found a couple of 12"s for $5 or less and they're great. A slightly dated mnml structure but the drums are far from. 'Sponk' is quite agressive, with gruff Auftrieb-esque pulses along with the typical sinuous linearity:

Also picked up Restless/Frost:

His best track however is 'Faces' from 2004's badly titled and patchy Sender comp, Receiving Data... Ah It's Coming!, a dark pseudo acid Detroit stomper:

I thought that was it for Sten, but he returns on the forthcoming Laid release Never As Always with two dubs of Lawrence's 'Rise', a staple of recent Carsten Jost sets.

But Lawrence has really been pumping out the quality of late, for Smallville, Laid, Dial and Mule Electronic, my pick of which is 'Treacle Mine' from Dial's 2010, with that staggered cascading thirds offbeat thing going:

Lawrence tracks, and indeed much of the Hamburg bunch, epitomise the kind of subdued, downbeat and cosy deep house I love right now, a kind of comforting sound, almost ambient, files nicely alongside Terre.

The Timeliness of Mix CDs

2011-09-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

Lawrence of Hamburg has released a mix CD - yup - on Sven "a-pill-an-hour-keeps-Sven-at-full-power" Vath's Cocoon label. Entitled Timeless and filled with plenty of classics (Aril Brikha, Delano Smith, Plaid) and fresh(ish) contributions from Lawrence's Dial/Laid/Smallville chums (Isolee, Pigon, Smallpeople and Rau), it's a hark back to the glory days of mix CDs, particularly those released by Kompakt.

The title alone is more than a subtle nod to Michael Mayer's timeless mix Immer ('Always'), and the tracklist, mood and pace all recall mix CDs by Mayer, Tobias Thomas and Triple R. Most of the tracks are great, mixing is tight, and the flow effortless, but why does it sound so boring? There's something constrained, preordained and squashed about it, such that it sounds almost lifeless. Maybe this is the only way forward for mix CDs, a closed, flat, tightly mastered product, based closely on the medium's turn-of-the-century prime. How else can they compete with podcasts?

That said it's probably the sort of mix I dream of making, given the number of tracks off it I own, but mine 'come alive' with all that sloppy mixing, dirty records and hiss.

Speculation

2011-09-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

As a corrective to the disarmingly soothing tones of Kyle Bobby Dunn I felt the need to point to a gutsier example of contemporary electronic music that has recently impressed, baffled, and frightened, but mostly baffled.

Florian Hecker's Speculative Solution sonically explores ideas expressed in current philosophical 'movement' speculative realism. I'm not sure how well the keening shards and pointillist scatter of Hecker's crisp computer noise is intended to demonstrate speculative realism's theories, whether its a hoax, whether a hoax IS an expression of speculative realism, or some combination of the above. The concepts underlying speculative realism are summarised by Mark Fisher as a reaction against the 'naïve realism' dominating current continental philosophical thought, 'the view that the world is just as it appears to us'. Fisher goes further here for Frieze, discussing some of speculative realism's major strands in a report from the 2009 ‘Speculative Realism and Speculative Materialism’ conference in Bristol.

Instead, the speculative realists each opened up a weird world, foreign to human experience and commonsense. Returning to Descartes, Meillassoux maintained that the real is what can be rendered as mathematical symbols. Harman’s ‘object-oriented metaphysics’... argued that the world is made up of ‘entities with specific qualities, autonomous from us and from each other’; Grant’s ‘nature philosophy’... sees nature as a ceaselessly productive machine, throwing out particular bodies only as the visible side effect of a perpetual, invisible mutation; while Brassier’s pulverising equivalence of scientific naturalism with nihilism was made in Nihil Unbound(2007)

Whether you examine the music in relation to these ideas or otherwise (which chimes with aspects of speculative realism's cold indifference), there's plenty here to intrigue, and it's a welcome alternative to all that youthful impulsive synth jizz flooding the ether. For the most part this is cold, dissonant, rapidly fluctuating sheets / pricks / blocks of sound, united by an unfeeling and chaotically-controlled hand. What initially surprises is the clearly ordered repetition that springs up, most notably in 'Octave Chronics', perhaps explained by the following in the notes:

With ‘Speculative Solution’ Hecker proposes that the concepts of absolute contingency and hyperchaos offer a rigorous new alternative to the employment of chance and randomness in avant-garde composition.

Sample: Octave Chronics

This is a powerful piece, and its luminous immediacy offers a welcome hook after the preceding apparent disorder. Here Hecker sounds like Mark Fell's Multistability, which further makes it possible to hear Hecker alongside contemporary electronic noisemakers like Keith Fullterton Whitman or even Surgeon. Here how it fits within this context on snd's mix for FACT.

Good review of Speculative Solution for Braiwashed here and check out samples below, and scour the internet for more on the thoughts behind it.

Sample: Speculative Solution 1 (excerpt 1)

Sample: Speculative Solution 1 (excerpt 2)

Out on a Limb, 2

2011-09-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

I've only got two albums to speak highly of for 2011, for now anyways, as I realise I've spent most of my time really enjoying old classical vinyl (yawn), polished genre music or reissues. The year's been great for the latter - John Beltran's Ambient Selections, Soul Jazz's Mysteron Killer Sounds, <i>Gene Hunt Presents Chicago Dance Tracks, with plenty of good House genre work from Workshop, Omar-S, Roman Flugel, Morphosis and plenty others. But adventure is hard to do, which is why these impressed:

Surgeon: Breaking the Frame
Much contemporary techno leaves me cold, particularly when heard in non-club contexts (all my listening these days). Its general lack of melody and reliance on more physical properties - volume, textural density and sheer thrust - make for lackluster listening through headphones. But Surgeon's latest was astounding, particularly the beatless tracks - my focus here. By channeling the surge of Whitehouse Noise and Alice Coltrane Free-Jazz Spirituality into vast, multilayered throbs Surgeon has created a kind of rhythm-less dance music, and proposed a new(ish) direction for techno producers/DJs to explore. Like much of the zeitgeist it works by ferreting about with existing music (A Coltrane, Whitehouse) but the result in tracks like 'Presence' and 'We Are Already Here' remains firmly Techno despite the absence of drums. Mind Bomb noticed something peculiar about the physical record too:

One is that the vinyl version beginsinside the run-in groove, especially for the techno track “The Power of Doubt” suggesting perhaps that it has “broken the frame” as it exists outside the physical space of the record' is interesting here too.

Kyle Bobby Dunn: Ways of Meaning
This is like the polar opposite of Surgeon, a record so soft and wispy as to have almost no momentum nor substance. Kyle Bobby Dunn works in vapour, gorgeous scented mist on Ways of Meaning, an album so amorphous and shamelessly pretty it feels unnatural in 2011. Nothing structurally new here, tones mostly taken from Eno's Apollo soundtracks, but the sustained cotton wool nebulousness, and Dunn's ability to keep us interested within such uniformity, makes Ways of Meaning a geuinely outstanding ambient release.

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Canyon Meadows by desire path recordings

Kyle Bobby Dunn - Canyon Meadows from joe morgan on Vimeo.

Out on a Limb, 1

2011-08-31T23:31:00.000-07:00

Good piece at from PC at mnmlssgs on favoured recent releases, all three of them: John Maus' We Must Be The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves, Kangding Ray's OR, and Tim Hecker's Ravedeath 1972. The limit's a good thing, much better than your standard December top ten. More of a stand from PC, and easier to engage fully with.

I've not properly heard the John Maus - a quick scan on the computer last night, which revealed... something of genuine interest and invention. Definitely linked with the bleaker, goth-tinged end of seventies synth pop, but not tied to that. Christo at Mind Bomb was baffled by its success:

It seems just like synth waves hypnagogic retromania (sic) for 80s synth pop done by a guy brought up listening to indie music. “Streetlight” has some lovely synths, but the singing just isn’t up to it, while “Quantum Leap” (also known as “Dead Zone” is just a hidden cover of Mission of Burma’s “Academy Flight Song” done with a vocal delivery somewhere between Ian Curtis and Suicide.

which led to my lack of interest, but I will give it a proper go. Also interesting to see the launch of a new book on Maus - Adam Harper's Heaven is Real: John Maus and the Truth of Pop for Sale at The Wire Bookshop.

PC quoted Badiou which certainly resonates with my feelings, and links with much of what's been argued on the lack of adventure in much contemporary music by the likes of Simon Reynolds and Stefan Goldmann:

The audacity of thought is not to repeat 'to the limit' that which is already entirely retained within the situation which the limit limits; the audacity of thought consists in crossing a space where nothing is given.(emphasis mine)

And here's what I said about Tim Hecker:

Tim Hecker seems to be doing this with Ravedeath. Given his previous dissatisfaction with his work as Jetone and the need to work away from rhythmic structures, he's clearly an artist intent on challenging himself. As I wrote for RA, An Imaginary Country offered little beyond a retread of what he'd been doing since Haunt Me..., so he needed a rethink, and found it in Ben Frost. The point you make about time is pertinent here - the tracks seem to snake, swell, bloat, empty, divorced from any sense of strict timekeeping. This reminded me of VDelay's Anima. Pieces within suites bleed into eachother, as do the suites themselves, almost organically. If he's saying anything about the current state of things its that machines have lives of their own (clearly a Frost influence), with the fusion of instrumental and electronic timbres more fused than ever (without completely erasing themselves). Also he's feeding us our own thoughts with titles like 'Hatred of Music' and even the album title, and it sounds lovely! Worth hearing Janek Schaeffer's organ electronics album In the Last Hour for Room 40 alongside, it too is a doozy. http://www.room40.org/releases-inthelasthour.shtml

... and Kangding Ray:

I find Kangding more difficult, as he's working from within a predefined genre, and one I'm not personally fond of, and he offers little in terms of breaking out of it. There's no denying the depth and richness of the sounds he uses, which reminds me of a more musical Monolake, with more acoustic tones, but beyond this what does it offer or question? Good to hear voices creep in, but its done in just the way that artists like Burial and Actress have done previously (albeit more sparingly). Yes, he'd be great to hear live and loud, but beyond sound design I'm not sure what he's giving us.

PC has commented that OR is like a culmination of a genre, and also a true album statement, both of which I'd agree with. The former doesn't interest me so much, given my personal distaste for IDM-tinged techno (just can't enjoy that drum programming) but the latter is something at least - OR does proceed like an album in the traditional - almost retro - sense, something rhythmic electronic music has always struggled with. But beyond this...? I'm not so sure.

The genre question is one PC touches on too with regard to house and techno - that maybe all the experimentation and novelty was done by the early nineties, something I'd agree with. Also hinted at is the prospect of an examination of the return of microhouse:

Then there's the 'second coming' of microhouse, with new work from so many of my old heroes (call it Perlon and Playhouse, Kompakt and Krause... and Dial). Are the many returns happy? I think a whole post on Pampa and Re|dial (as the 'houses' of all the microhouse refugees) is warranted. I'm not sure I quite have the interest.

I hope he does, but not sure what can be said on the subject. My view is that all these labels and artists are treading well worn paths, tweaking things slightly, making slight improvements, but doing nothing new, and I mean NOTHING. Deep house in particular, the 'proper' US variety, seems overtly retro in its pursuit of indeterminate soulfulness and its championing of vinyl (something I'm guilty of), reminding me - unpleasantly - of retro jazzbos.

I still buy tons of it. More from me on this later.

For Part 2 I'll highlight my picks for the year so far, those that seem to be doing something new, addressing the strange world we find ourselves in, in line with the electronic focus of the mnmlssgs selections. Not so easy...

Internet Voids

2011-08-29T23:44:00.000-07:00

When I used to work in classical music retail (2003-7) it wasn't always easy to find references to specific recordings on the interweb, particularly if it was old vinyl. Then, such absences were frustrating, and such was my faith in the web's omniscience that it had me doubting the existence of the real object (cue dismissive attitude to eager customer). Now if such a thing occurs it's so rare as to be exciting, discovering a fissure in the system, and seems somehow subversive, illegitimate, spectral... There's a covert pleasure to holding something in your hand which does not (yet) exist in webworld: music not downloadable, books not for sale, events unmentioned, photographs not jpegged... The 'Universal Library/Celestial Jukebox/Datacloud' is constantly expanding, almost faster than history is moving, and one shudders at the thought of it somehow someday eclipsing its real shadow, but for now these gaps remain.

Simon Reynolds speaks on this in Retromania:

...'Everything that has ever happened is available, all at once, all around us'... a vast cultural database containing every book and magazine article ever written, in all languages, and eventually every movie/TV programme/cultural artifact EVER.

But these cracks are being covered over, the Wikipedia/Googlemaps/Ebay/Discogs/Amazon steamroller streamrolling unstoppably onwards, ensnaring all of cultural history within its web. Strange too that the ensnaring is done largely and willingly by us, driven by a stupid self-willed urge to catalogue.

A recent record shopping expedition turned up a few unmentioned relics: some mail order classical releases with surprisingly high-calibre personnel involved; a French-issued Satie LP, reissued on CD but this pressing a mystery; John Field on an unknown and unrepresented Irish label. Struck by their online absence, I instinctively went for a camera to photograph and document, to 'put right'. Why? What forces us to add to the completion of the online archive? I have them right before my eyes! I can listen to the grooves! There is absolutely no need for mp3 versions or jpegs of album covers!

We should clutch at these occurrences as they won't last. We are experiencing this void. It will be filled.

Needless to say the voids I discovered will remain voids (and I urge others to keep discoveries of similar voids to themselves), but here's what I found that was legitimate:

One of Karajan's numerous adagio collections

Boulez doing Ravel vocal

Looks like a fifties country singer of the Chet Atkins/Eddy Arnold type

Tired Chopin hits

Steal - early modern masters for $2

Nice - pastoral English music with more bite than I'd expected

Pretty-but-spineless flute bonbons

Like Greensleeves, yet part of an old record club incompletely detailed online. Note the eighties wine bar font

The Argo logo here resembles Kompakt's Auftrieb. I like that this advertising photograph by professional online record dealer is so obliterated by easily avoided glare

Snappily-dressed Hungarians play Schubert (very well). They're in casual attire on the back, but as it's not online you'll have to track down the record to see it

I covered the title track with pal Benedict Moleta, downloadable here. Also produced a very shaky 'Spatial Dub', here.

Double LP for $1 of guitar music from around the world by Aussie virtuoso Williams, featuring an excellent transcription of a Japanese piece. The cover I have is much better, featuring a mock cross-stitch image of a guitar head, but no one has posted it online (ha!)

Can stop listening to a shitty mp3 version now of 'Can You Feel It'. On vinyl it revealed instruments and passages never-before-heard on grainy digital.

Marc Romboy predating the current Jack revival, and Steve Bug's titular remake, by 6 years.

And I almost bought the CD

Can You Cream It?

2011-08-28T17:29:00.000-07:00

Knew there was a Kompakt rerub of the Jacksons' 'Can You Feel It' and found it this morning: 'Cream' by Jurgen Paape from Total 6. Paape reduces it to the opening bump n' grind bass n' drums intro, adds a chord change, and introduces a snaking buzzing synth late in, but its pretty barren, as per standard Paape formula. What it lacks are those tolling bells, which could have been brought in somewhere, adding disco glitz.

Shameless Giddy Abandon

2011-08-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

Not much to say about this apart from that it's fucking great and has ruled my roost for the past week. The summation of Sebo K's set praised not-unjustly-but-a-little-too-enthusiastically here, which must have brought the house down in Barcelona. My daughter likes it too, but not as much as Michael Jackson.

The High Quality of Contemporary Classical Music Releases

2011-08-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

It's hardly surprising that classical music is among the genres least affected by the digital music revolution. Its consumers are for the most part financially well off and happy to pay for CD releases; budgets remain for new classical recordings to take place, funded by relatively stable record labels and a healthy base of philanthropic support; live performance of classical works continues in well-funded halls and venues around the (Western) world; schools and academies around the world continue to support performers and composers to continue the tradition; the classical tradition exists as an always-available pool of repertoire for new recordings, performances and arrangements, with a financially healthy pool of consumers all-too-happy to continue to purchase new recordings of old work; state, private and community radio stations worldwide continue to promote the established tradition, and promote new recordings of work from the tradition; classical music relies on intensive listening and high quality sound played through expensive systems, not MP3s played through earbuds and computer speakers; classical music benefits from wordy written analysis, written by learned academic critics, made available within a discourse of books, magazines, CD liner notes, radio commentary (and websites and blogs); etc. etc. etc... *

There's plenty to get frustrated about here, but there is also an exciting, niche industry for the creation of new classical music. Much of this music works most effectively by engaging with classical music tradition and providing options for ways in which this tradition can be pushed, pulled, tweaked, mocked, followed, discarded, celebrated or destroyed. An understanding of this tradition helps to engage with new composition, but it's by no means essential. I came to classical music through an interest in sound as sound, lured by the shamelessly pretty yet dark and mystifying piano music of Ravel and Satie, the orchestral drones of Ligeti and Penderecki, primitive electronics of Xenakis and Stockhausen and the intriguing processes of Cage and Messiaen. Listening to all this as abstract sound is thrilling, and, in me at least, inspired a pursuit of further understanding, which fortunately the canon is more than able to provide.

The quality behind a lot of contemporary classical CD releases is inspiring, particularly in the current industry climate. The care, effort, commitment - and expense - that go into releases on labels like Bis, hatHUT Kairos and Wergo, is consistently impressive. Naxos too have gone from budget label to major player, regularly releasing the work of new young composers and unearthing under appreciated music from little-known composers throughout history, and from composers from wider parts of the world. Liner notes, recording quality, packaging, all point to a devotion to the music recorded, and whatever issue one has with classical tradition the care and attention to detail cannot be faulted. It's difficult to criticise this aspect, particularly given the incredibly narrow, specialised, hand-to-mouth status of many of the smaller classical labels.

Exemplary of this standard is the Dacapo label, "The Leading Label for Danish classical music", who recently sent me a swag of new releases on chamber music by contemporary Danish composers (reviewed here). Everything about these discs was impressive, as they proudly proclaim at their first rate website:

We present a vast selection of Danish music, encompassing everything from contemporary electronic music to the earliest notes of the Middle Ages. Since Dacapo was founded in 1989 we have released over 450 CDs of Danish music. And with each new CD the picture only gets clearer: There is so much original and exciting music in Denmark that you forget how small the country actually is!

Our recordings are made in the best possible sound quality that is based on proud Danish traditions of a natural, precise and spacious sound. Every link in our productions are of the highest quality, which has among others brought Dacapo a large number of distinctions that include the Cannes Classical Awards, Grammy nominations and lots of Danish Music Awards.

In our new Dacapo Music Store we now offer our full catalouge instantly available with just a few mouse clicks: You can download the music in various formats, from the popular mp3 format to 24-bit digital audio, which will deliver far better sound than you're are used to from CD playback. It has never been easier to explore the world of music - and it has never sounded so good. We would like to welcome you to discover Danish music. And the journey begins right now at your computer.

Enough flattery, but others could learn a thing or two from Dacapo.

* I'm also happy to hear that Harold Moores Records, the independent classical shop I worked at in London, is still going strong while HMV, Virgin, ZAAVI etc. have died. They certainly weren't doing well when I worked there.

Recorded Music in the Digital Age

2011-08-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

For me, much of the joy in listening to recorded music, particularly acoustic music, has to do with hearing the recording process itself, acknowledging - celebrating even - its artifice, self-referentially incorporating this process into the finished product. This is why records are such a rich medium: the noise of needle on vinyl is inescapable and intrinsic to vinyl playback.

The Hi-Fi phenomenon of the twentieth century was obsessed with noise reduction, a 'problem' which seems to have been largely mastered (pardon the pun) by the advent of digital recording and CDs. Or, more likely, no one cares anymore in the frenzied everything-for-free fileshare deluge, heard as low bitrate MP3s through little white earbuds or computer speakers. I'll moan about some of the other issues with MP3s at another time, but the sound quality alone is enough to champion vinyl, or CDs even. Since we've gone all-vinyl at home I find even CDs sound shit, and now view digital files purely as the 'reviewing tools' argued by music giveaway blogs. I'm a prolific 'previewer' of digital files, I'll admit, but I feel less guilty about it now.

This hot issue has kicked off a regular series in The Wire featuring various arguments on digital music and quality, value, storage, listening habits, etc, and its been interesting to follow. I feel strongly that musicians need to get paid, but I also feel that policing the ceaseless flow of stolen music on giveaway blogs is an impossible task and one that now its too late to start trying to enforce. As one side of the argument has articulated, the landscape has irrevocably changed and the past cannot be recaptured. Given this, that the initial shock over music freely available everywhere online has passed, we've reached a kind of plateau and something has been realised: there exists a demand for quality music releases on physical formats, and that some people are willing to pay for music in these forms.

The issues here lie around the idea of 'quality', and the volume of music that people are willing to pay for versus the volume of music they want to acquire and listen to. The quality argument came up at mnmlssgs and by Stefan Goldmann at LWE, and touched on in varied forms by countless others, and cannot be overstated - given the saturated market we find ourselves in, and the lack of financial reward available to most music producers, its more difficult than ever to create original music work of high quality and have it recorded and released to a high standard. I'd argue that this is less of a problem in certain genres, particularly classical (and I'll post about that soon), but in most areas of music there's complacency and tedium from the many issues that digital music has raised.

As for how much people are prepared to pay for music, this area will continue to be defined as time passes within this situation, ie as those listeners prepared to pay AT ALL for music begin to cement their spending habits in this age. I still buy far more music on vinyl than I need/ought to, but never as much as I'd like to. I also trawl charity shops for bargain records, something no one aside the charities benefits financially from, but given that most of the people involved in the production of the record are long dead, who cares?

I also download a lot of music, scan, promptly forget and/or abandon in search of the next new cheap hit. This seems symptomatic of current music consumption habits, that given the lack of investment, in all senses, in music downloaded and skimmed through portable devices, music consumed in this way can only be heard cursorily. This practice is wearying, causing exhaustion and depression (and guilt), but can be corrected. Sit back in your listening space, turn on the stereo, dust off some records, have some people over, play whole albums, talk about them, let them lead you to other records, study the covers, read the notes, buy some more ...

Reviews

2011-08-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

Cyclic July roundup:

The Machinist – Of What Once Was

(Moving Furniture Records)
Two deep long drones with field recording and distorted guitar fuzz.

Leonardo Rosado – Opaque Glitter (Feedback Loop)
Mournful synths and crackle veering from blissful ambient to deep unease.

Rytis Mazulis – Musica Falsa (Megadisc Classics)
Thrilling canons and overtones from the Lithuanian superminimalist and ATTSWOH favourite realised by flute virtuoso Manuel Zurrio.

Lucia Mense: Electric Counterpoint (Satelita)
Excellent survey of new music for recorder from live Cologne performance.

Eisuke Yanagisawa: Ultrasonic Scapes (gruenrekorder)
Buzzing ultrasonic frequencies from organic and inorganic sources in Basic Channel steel box.

Mompou: Piano Works 6 (Naxos)
Positively dreamy undiscovered piano music from the willfully naive Catalan composer.

Nicolas Bernier: Usure Paysage (Hronir)
Award-winning musique concrete from the prolific Bernier.

Various: Contemporary Danish Music (Dacapo)
Impressive and high quality productions and performances of obscure chamber music by contemporary Danish composers. More on this label soon.

Villalobos and Loderbauer: Re:ECM (ECM)
Expertly pitched electronic doodling of ECM samples by Berlin techno duo.

Yoshio Machida: Scape Dance (Amorfon)
Patient Feldman-esque tin-pan improvisations and processed digital tin-pan digitalia accompany strange pastel visual cut ups on DVD. More on Amorfon, "the music adventure label and hair salon", soon.

Angélica Castelló: Bestiario (Mosz)
Chaotic sampladelica by Mexican subbass recorder player.

Coming up: New ambient stunner from Chihei Hatakeyama on Room 40.

G.R.R.L.

2011-08-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows what a producer Terre Thaemlitz is but he's also a good DJ, not in the deft Q-Bert/Jeff Mills turntablist manner but as a selecter, crafting cohesive and convincing narratives from a string of distinct records. This set for Made Like A Tree is an understated stunner, crafted entirely from Thaemlitz productions it's naturally consistent, but the blend between subdued house and beatless ambient is beautifully achieved, creating a wonderfully downbeat whole linked by gaseous synth swirls and jazzy piano interludes.

Thaemlitz's ivory twinkling can actually become quite dissonant, which upsets the usual mold of mindless jazz-house riffing, but it's so washed out by processing that it's easily overlooked. Listen up though and you'll hear Cecil Taylor-esque forearm chords and dynamic atonal stabs, doubtless played on the same overtly plastic midi piano used on her Rubato records.

I'd read about Thaemlitz's penchant for playing whole tracks, crossfading at song's end, but it's more complicated than that sounds, and in part closer to Michael Mayer's late beatmatch approach. The tempo is consistent(ly slow) throughout, and the beatless selections that link most tracks segue effortlessly, as do those with drums. It's inspired me to want to try and play records differently, and mix ambient more readily with rhythmic house music.

Right Click to Download: G.R.R.L. Mlat46

1. Terre Thaemlitz - There Was a Girl / There Was a Boy Declaramation [Mille Plateaux]
2. Terre Thaemlitz - Taking Stock in Our Pride [Mille Plateaux]
3. Terre Thaemlitz - G.R.R.L. : Face (Extended Dub Edit) [Comatonse]
4. Terre Thaemlitz - Double Secret [Comatonse]
5. Terre Thaemlitz - Chugga : Theme From Buck Rogers Light Rope Dance (500 Year Orbit Mix) [Comatonse]
6. Zeitkratzer & Terre Thaemlitz - Down Town Kami-Sakunobe [Zeitkratzer Records]
7. Terre Thaemlitz - Commodité Sexuelle [Mille Plateaux]
8. DJ Sprinkles - Brenda's $20 Dilemma [Mule Musiq]
9. DJ Sprinkles - Ball'r (Madonna Free Zone) [Mule Musiq]
10. Terre Thaemlitz - Chugga : Theme From Buck Rogers Light Rope Dance (Deep Space Probe Mix) [Comatonse]
11. Terre Thaemlitz - Systole.009 [Mille Plateaux]
12. Terre Thaemlitz - Residual Expectation [Caipirinha Productions]
13. Terre Thaemlitz - Resistance to Change - 4. Transformative Nostaligia [Mille Plateaux]
14. DJ Sprinkles - Midtown 120 Blues [Mule Musiq]
15. DJ Sprinkles - Grand Cental Station. Pt. II (72hrs. By Rail From Missouri) [Mule Musiq]

The Sight Below / Rafael Anton Irasarri

2011-08-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've been a big fan of Rafael Anton Irisarri's work since I heard his incredible The North Bend on Room 40 - bleak Badalementi-esque ambiance evoking some terribly sad place, less defined by portentous Lynchian horror than by the barren aftereffects of such menace, the alienation of a world emptied of hopes and dreams. After that I tracked down all his stuff, the Lynch connection made concrete on 'A Great Northern Sigh':

... and 'Lumberton' (a favourite of bvdub):

... along with his other influences - 'VoigtKampff's nod to Wolfgang:

... recordings of Satie's 'Gnossienne #1' (with Goldmund):

... and Part's 'Fur Alina':

... all demonstrate just how close his tastes are to mine. It's fortunate, and oddly rare, that I like his music, as all too often one comes across artists who cite fantastic influences only for their work to be total shit.

I'd read somewhere about Irisarri's other project The Sight Below but only heard it this morning, thanks to my dear friend Christo. Here the Voigt influence - read Gas - is clearly audible: dark, slowly unfolding synthetic waves powered by steady bass drum. There's less presence than with Gas, and less detail in the midrange drones, which Irisarri creates from effected guitar, not samples. There's also ample originality to justify its independent existence - a kind of shoegaze Voigt, or 'Gas meets Grouper' as one friend put it. These from 2008's Glider:

By 2010's It All Falls Apart there's less Gas and more Grouper, with Slowdive's Simon Scott on board to deliver added whoosh, as on 'Stagger'

... and there's vocals even, by Jesy Fortino of Tiny Vipers on Joy Division cover 'New Dawn Fades':

Beautiful and interesting music. I'm reminded too that other titan of ambient techno, Markus Guentner

Irissari favours vinyl, so check here for links to buying it.

Riot Music

2011-08-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

One victim of the London riots was PIAS Music Distribution who had a lot of their stock in a warehouse in Eltham which burnt down. Lost in the blaze were releases from such labels as Soul Jazz Records, Fabric, Poker Flat, FourTwenty, and many many more. Blissblog have pointed to suggestions of how to help out these fledgling labels linking to a Quietus Feature on recommended purchases. I'll second them and say buy these:

Various: Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds (SJR) - praised here.

GAS: Nah Und Fern (Kompakt) - absolutely essential classical-ambient-techno collection reviewed for RA here.

Robert Hood: Fabric 39 (Fabric) - Fast and furious Detroit techno.

Various: Forward to the Past (Poker Flat) - cheeky collection of retro Chicago-esque house.

And while it won't help Pias it's a fine time to dig this out:

Kraftwerk: Ralf Und Florian

2011-08-07T19:59:00.000-07:00

While the synthesizer continues to be the instrument of choice among hipster youth I thought it worth celebrating an un(der)sung gem of the genre from when such things were relatively new and fresh. How incredible this still sounds!

Interesting to note the strobing flute smeared all over 'Tongebirge', later to throb more purposefully beside the motorik railway chug of 'Autobahn'.

By Rolf & Florian (1973) Kraftwerk were tiring of the free synth doodles of #1 and #2, with this album functioning as a bridge, finding novelty and purpose in the pop gloss and bleakly kitsch thematic concept of The Beach Boys. With today's flood of low-fi formless synthesists riffing on eighties shapes one can't help but wish more would look to such bold and shiny models, as Kraftwerk did, for inspiration (although we hardly need another Animal Collective-esque Beach Boys visitation) instead of just than keep running around that mill.

Here's a link but it belongs on vinyl:
Kraftwerk: Ralf und Florian

Good Generic Minimal Tech House 2: Sebo K

2011-08-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

After my Maya Jane Coles appreciation/generic minimal tech-house moan , I'm going to sound hypocritical commencing a series of posts praising the very generic nature of this music, but what the hell... this is pretty darn good. Sebo K makes strong tracks, and was among those responsible, along with Efdemin, Lawrence and doubtless a bazillion lesser-known-and-unsung others, back in the mid-late naughties for championing bigger housier sounds within the pervading mnml scene of the day, and it's a sound he's hardly altered. Indeed like everyone in minimal house land its one they do nothing but refine. I first heard him on Mobilee's Back to Back comp with the still stunning 'Moved' with Prosumer, then via his podcast for RA in early 2007. This, along with Efdemin's two podcasts later, seemed to signal a shift in mainstream-underground minimal house, at least as sign-posters like RA documented it.

Sebo K feat. Prosumer: 'Moved'

Sebo K: RA Podcast 55

I saw Sebo K and Efdemin play shortly after their 'casts at RA's June '07 off-Sonar party in Barcelona, and while too wasted to actually remember anything danced my socks off from open til' close. Philip Sherburne was there too, playing to an empty room upstairs, but when he heard Sebo K he rushed to the front of the floor and danced all night too. As we see today, it's an endearing sound.

Four-and-a-half years later and the variants of minimal house have actually narrowed, with more tracks than ever trading on the basic template these - and yes many many others - housey minimalists have been hammering for years. We're at the asymptote of the development of a kind of perfect dance music, or at least a perfected form of minimal house, but one that, of course, can never be reached. It's this kind of fruitless pursuit, this Quixotic quest for the unattainable, that good generic minimal house sets capture, driving along that endless highway, on a dead-straight road, devoid of the kinds of heights and dips that come with more dynamic, and less focused, sets. Even mnml jerked and twitched in ever so annoying ways.

So, to Sebo K's mix at the 2011 Mobilee Off-Sonar Party: 3 hours of sleak, streamlined, bumpin' generic minimal tech house. All changes are slight, with each track offering subtle variants on the tools and structures of its neighbours. Like the digi-dancehall instramentals praised here these tracks are (for the most part) cookie-cutter jigsaw pieces, pure 'tools' with little identity outside of the group (but where I celebrated the isolated oddness of those dancehall tracks here there's little to get excited about individually). Where Sebo K is good is in his restraint, holding back the tension such that you're always (almost) on the edge of your seat but, it being the kind of wishy-washy genre it is, you never are, really... This teetering contradiction is the whole point and one Sebo K does well here - avoiding boredom by embracing sameness, celebrating it. Like Cage said: If something is boring for one minute do it for ten, then an hour, then two hours... Sebo K does it for 3 and it pretty much works.

In its fluid linearity this reminds me of stellar microhouse sets like those by Kettenkarussell , but with a different agenda: Sebo K - and most/all minimal tech house DJs - is more about funk, groove and sashaying movement, albeit in a compressed and blankly repetitive manner, with a shallower expression of emotion, more warmth, greater diversity, more by-rote and perfunctory (all intentional and not necessarily pejorative), whereas Kettenkarussell... is another story...

Sebo K - mobilee & friends - Sonar 2011 - Hotel Diagonal Saturday by mobilee records

Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds

2011-08-02T00:03:00.000-07:00

I'm rather new to the digital reggae and dancehall thing, although my entrypoint to reggae proper was via the digital techno-dub of Pole, Basic Channel, Kit Clayton and co. There was a big ignorant Bob Marley stigma to overcome, but from there the floodgates opened...

I'm still hesitant with vocals, but after hearing the Honest Jons + Mark and Moritz's Basic Replay comp I was sold on digital production methods, heck, more than - enthralled. My boredom with contemporary house and techno has led me more and more into dubstep realms without ever being quite sold, but these earlier strands of bass heavy digital Jamaican sounds have become very appealing.

The whole package of Soul Jazz Records' Invasion of the Mysteron Killer Sounds is enticing, particularly the focus on hitherto critically disregarded digi riddim tools, as highlighted in the cheesy sci-fi ad emblazoned full page on the back cover of July's The Wire:

Invasion of the Killer Mysteron Sounds brings together the most exciting electronic producers in Jamaica with current sound artists in the UK and beyond who all create music based on revolutionary sounds in 3D – Dancehall, Digital and Dub.

The Wire went on to review it finding it simplistic and lacking in this exposed, unmixed format, but I find the very nakedness what makes it so weird and appealing. The oddball pinball bleeps and clunky computer basslines are thrilling from the get-go with Steely and Clevie's 'Streetsweeper':

Highlight is King Tubby's 'Fat Thing' riddim, much better without the vox.

The contemporary tracks are good, but like contemporary Chicago house remakes lack the historic roughness.

As a taste of what's in store, get Tubby's Fat Thing Version here.

Shamelessly uncritical and promo-heavy this post, but jeez its good. Listen more and buy here.

New Orleans Part 2

2011-08-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

... and episode 2 of Treme features Allen Touissant no less! Here's 'Night People' from Motion which I picked up from a used furniture store for $1.

And from 2009's The Bright Mississippi

That is where Elvis Costello linked in. Here he is playing 'Holy Cow' on Costello's Spectacle:

Takes, Dubs & Versions

2011-07-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Been listening to Scratch over the past few days and stumbled upon the numerous versions of the 'Underground' rhythm he worked on. Not being a complete dub obsessive (although I certainly like it, and a lot) this was something of a revelation, they're all fantastic!

Here's the original (apparently), 'Underground' from Super Ape, 1976, prime Black Ark production:

And a trio of independent dubs, here strung together, also from 1976. Clive Hylton is involved somewhere...

Also appeared in a weirder, scratchier version as 'From Dub Four', perhaps a 'Creation Dub 4'? on the recent Sound System Scratch collection from Pressure Sounds. Not on Youtube but this is, and is equally impressive:

The Return of Sound System Scratch is even better. The Wire tried to link these to hauntology, what with all the disembodied crackle and spectral space; initially straighforward productions spun off their axes, ending up decayed husks.

Studio One recordings do riddims to death, but given how good they are it's hardly surprising. Here's Delroy Wilson, Jennifer Lara, Bobby Crystal and George Nooks playing with Errol Dunkley's 'Movie Star' riddim:

On a similar note I've also been listening to the boxset of Miles Davis' Complete Jack Johnson Sessions. It was one of those trophies I thought I couldn't live without at the time, but must confess to having barely scratched the surface. 5 discs of takes and edits that made up the original album, it's intimdating. But, having given it some time of late, there's a real charm to this approach, revealing aspects of the sessions which were subsumed by the whole in the finished product. The guitars of John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharock are particularly interesting, each taking different approaches, Sharrock usually just adding the odd distorted smear here and there, shot through with Echoplex.

The seemingly bottomless reserve of tape offcuts and unreleased material here functions as a positive deconstruction of the final production process. The appearances of multiple takes of various tracks allows listeners to attempt to piece together the final takes, and even construct their own edits. The Silent Way box was more consistent and complete, but these fragments possess more interest, I'd even be curious to see it stripped down to soloists. Imagine what Sharrock's spurts would sound like surrounded by nothing but space...

Detroit Nu Wav

2011-07-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Bought some records recently including the weirdly hyped Detroit Nu Wav collection on Planet E.

Unlike the above promo none of the tracks mindlessly slather the word 'Detroit' over them in a shallow attempt to gain cred, but they're all employ Detroit tropes - searing neon synths, heavy percussion, bleak electro-inspired melodic patterns - in varying degrees. 'Another Place' by Reference is particularly impressive:

But they're all solid:

Earlier tracks by Monty Luke and Ezana Harris also pretty good:

Detroit techno hardly needs my support, from the opposite arse-end of the world no less. I'd say that I'm immune to the promotional angle, actually antagonistic to it, but I do so like the music, as this tracklist attests.

Also picked up the latest on Steffi's Dolly label by another Detroit youngster, Jared Wilson. Four tracks of vintage Chicago-esque acid, the following is my pick. Vocal is kinda silly, inane club-set antics targeted to goofed up dancers, but tweaked into gloom and menace and very catchy.

On Sale

2011-07-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

Sales are depressing things. All the enthusiasm and hyperbole of the "new" reduced to a desperate attempt to offload surplus units. Items that looked so fresh and irresistible mere months ago now wear the hangdog look of a dying man. Obsolete cultural detritus which failed to deliver on its promise, clogging up the warehouse, unwanted. Beware: most everything makes this transformation.

Utterly enchanting pop music from Austin TX's Sleep ∞ Over, readied with a remix from ethereal electronic auteur, Laurel Halo... Another impressive drop from Hippos in Tanks - Highly recommended!

*LP version limited to 500 copies for the world, pressed on high quality virgin vinyl at RTI with a free download coupon redeemable from the label*

**Lavish foil-embossed 5LP boxset limited to just 600 copies including individually numbered certificate of ownership.**

**3LP + 7" + DVD lavish boxset with individually-numbered certificate of ownership - limited to an edition of just 600 copies for the world**

Another precious document from the mighty Vinyl on Demand - don't miss it.

This is the gut stuff, make no misake, and thanks to this timely reissue, you don't have to sell your gran to get hold a copy.

Unless your gran's worth £2.95.

Maya Jane Coles & Good Generic Minimal Tech-House

2011-07-18T23:51:00.000-07:00

Minimal Tech-House is a hard genre to get excited over but it's also one capable of giving me some of the biggest thrills... sparingly. That there's so much, oh so much, bilge to trawl through doesn't make the rewards any better, but the prospect of foraging for them too daunting to bother with. Anyone viewing charts from tipster DJs and listening to them will realise how predictible, perfunctory, samey and boring they mostly are. I DLed a couple of chart lists - Steve Bug and Loco Dice - recently to check out what the kids were digging and my how bored I was. I'm sure these pieces fit together adequately and get the drugged-up young feet shaking on the floors (they'd have done it for my younger feet), but how bland, blank and aesthetically neuter these sets must be.

I know little about Maya Jane Coles aside from that she's 23 and British with an RA podcast under her belt. With minimal tech-house it's a fine line between generic button pushing and outstanding but somehow she wrings noticeable quality from tired formula; nothing earth shaking but, like the ol' Raymond Chandler analogy, genre work done very well. There's a deep house girth to the rhythms and she's fond of nice rotund bleeps, as heard in Anja Schneider's 'Belize', which she crafts into bright groovy melodic shards. Read more from one of her current homes Mobilee here which put out her excellent Beat Faster 12", and they seem the right place for her sound. But she's done plenty and it's mostly very good:

... And Anja Schneider's influential 'Belize':

Fennesz: Seven Stars

2011-07-18T20:05:00.000-07:00

Viennese guitar-electronics maestro Christian Fennesz has a new album titled Seven Stars; four-track 10" out now with full length CD in September. The title track features drums, first time to be included on a Fennesz release I believe?

His last album, 2008's Black Sea, was a high point in a career of them, but we all have our personal favourites. Here Fennesz allowed for more pieces featuring the guitar largely untreated, naked ringing tones against a backdrop of relative emptiness.

Grey Scale:

Glass Ceiling:

Elsewhere his trademark granular wash was present and as beautiful as ever:

"Seven Stars" is also a leading brand of Japanese cigarettes. I smoked "Mild Sevens" when I was there, both available for international purchase here.

"The Seven Stars" is also a pub in London. Located behind the Royal Courts in Holborn, It was one of a handful of local buildings to survive the Great Fire (1666) and in 2002 celebrated its 400th anniversary with a street party.

The proprietor is eccentric Australian ex-pat Roxy Beaujolais with a penchant for French cuisine, so the food is tops. My first visit I was befriended by the barman who gloated about England's Ashes victory over Australia. We stayed until closing whereupon the barman pulled the blinds and kicked off a "lock-in" - allowing us to drink past legal closing time.

The pub is famed for its cat which wears a choristers collar.

Cheap Vinyl

2011-07-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of being a fan of classical music, aside from the implicit knowledge that you are smarter, more sophisticated than and superior to non-classical listeners, is that classical records are dirt cheap in most record stores. My boss is away - an extreme rarity - so I hopped on a tram to Fitzroy Hipsterville and visited some record shops. First up was Northside Records, known for their soul-jazz-funk-hip-hop, had some good stuff at acceptable prices, including Motor City Drum Ensemble's "Monorail" double 12" for $26, a bargain round these parts, and were I more flush I'd have picked it up.

...with John Roberts, usually boring but this is good:

But not as good as the Hundred20 old-skool tracks:

I also thought it would make me look cool next to the bundle of bottom shelf $2 clutter I actually bought:

Beethoven Piano Concerto #5, Wilhelm Kempf, old pressing

Berg, Schonberg, Webern - Those dudes don't know the gold they're sitting on - Second Viennese School for 2 bucks!!!

Debussy: Prelude etc. Nice Rousseau cover

Mussorgsky: Pictures, probably never listen to this, I think I find it annoying, but maybe the Ravel will get an airing.

Dexter in France. Could be in poor shape, their jazz collection was generally more highly regarded, and costlier.

It being 2011 and record stores a different beast these days, the owner shmoozed me, asked me my taste in electronic music (flustered, I said "house and ambient") and pulled out full-price recommendations to hopefully snag more of a sale. I'm probably being cynical though, if they've made it this far they're probably safe. His interest sagged when I asked whether he had any classical music, replying "down in the $2 bin". Bonanza!

Ten bucks lighter but five records heavier I strolled around the corner to the The Searchers book & record exchange. Less disregard shown for classical, stored above ground and in the same racks as rock, pop, hip-hop etc, but here they went as low as $1. I bought this:

Adams and Reich. Never really liked Adams but the Reich is good, and minimalism on vinyl always welcome, in some vain hope I'll someday mix with it

Debussy Images etc. Add more yellow to the sides of the casette image below for what the vinyl looks like.

Vivaldi chamber music. Hadn't really seen Hyperion LPs, they look identical to their CDs.

Beethoven by the Menuhins.

Mine is an EMI HMV LP with Arnodl Bocklin's "Ein Fruhlingstag" on the cover

Mozart Clarinet Concerto, from the recording below, but mine is a 10" without the horn work, on Decca, with a reproduction of an uncredited Dutch outdoor tavern scene on the cover. The previous owner was named "Bennett" and they bought it 17 April 1964, according to the sticker in the corner.

Felt ok with Steve Reich in the pile but purchasing anything valued at $1 is a degrading experience. The look I received from the clerk, not dislike but utter disinterest, was revealing: I'm too old to look young and cool listening to Vivaldi, especially in my work strides; now I resemble the 100% classical penny-pinching cranks I used to serve at Harold Moores.

Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer: Re:ECM

2011-07-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

Review of the above is up at Cyclic here. Interesting release, and I feel I've just scratched the surface. The initial weariness over duration has been replaced by excitement at the sheer quantity of sound to explore. How rare does that happen!

Ricardo and Max are on a roll. They've also remixed Vladislav Delay's latest for Echochord, the originals are pretty good too, decent updates on the classic V Delay sound.

Moments of Re:ECM recall the submerged piano doodles of Loderbauer's NSI Plays Non Stanards. That is wonderful album. I don't mean for this to sound like the words of an ignoramus, but I once played it on Resonance FM alongside wax cylinder recordings from the 19th century and you could hardly hear the difference.

$2,000 Leaking Oil Mix

2011-07-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

Life sometimes goes from bad to worse. Penniless, sick, glum, all got a bit shitter when I noticed a bad smell from below the car. That and the big wet oil stain on the driveway sent me to my friendly neighbourhood mechanics. Their assessment: oil leaking into the engine, $2,000 and week without car. Fuck!!!

So Saturday night I tried to cheer myself up and play some records while the family slept, and it worked! Headphone monitored, all vinyl (as you'll hear), deep house. Features tracks from the new Styrax In Loving Memory 4:4 collection which arrived promptly from Delsin last week, a doozy.

Download: $2,000 Leaking Oil Mix

The Visitors: No Under On The Ground
Space Dimension Controller: Cosmo 30 Travel Duration
Theo Parrish: Dreamer's Blues
DJ Qu: Be Who You Wanna Be
Christopher Rau: Do Little
Julius Steinhoff: Zealand
Lawrence: Treacle Mine
STL: Laio
Roman Flugel: Brasil
Omar-S: Always There
Reggie Dokes: Black Thoughts
Aaron Carl: Crucified (XDB Edit)
Cassy: Yeyah
Lowtec: Stamping Ground

'Live' vs. Alive

2011-07-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

Learned that Seth Horvitz's Eight Studies for Player Piano was 'performed' at Mutek. interesting the idea of attending a concert without human performer. Basic Sounds attended and said this:

Seth Horvitz opened A/Visions 2 with his “Eight Studies for Automatic Piano.” Performed live without the presence of a human on stage, a single computer controlled piano played minimal repetitive rhythmic compositions. Visually you could see the keys going down on the piano, as if a ghost was playing. Projected behind the piano was a large linear line mimicking the keys, which helped the audience members have a better understanding of what was happening on stage.

'Helped the audience members have a better understanding of what was happening on stage' - in other words, plain old music is difficult to receive without assistance. Mediation is required.

Study No. 4 for Automatic Piano from Seth Horvitz on Vimeo.

Did Nancarrow have purely musical performances? None that I can find. Here's 'Study #21'

Instead we get reductions, realisations or transcriptions, as though the music can't be left to stand unplayed by human, that it only gains life / credibility once performed by living being. Here's the above '#21' arranged for trumpet, bassoon and guitar.

Even techno isn't allowed to take place without human agent - be it Ableton button pusher or DJ. I heard a rumour that Kraftwerk would play chess when performing live (nowadays, not with their old contraptions)

I attended a performance of Rytis Mazulis' player piano music at Huddersfield Festival in 2007 and they just played it through a stereo. Accompanying it however was a fluxus performance of somethign by fellow Lithuanian Georges Mancuinias which aside from their nationality had nothing to do with Mazulis' music.

Can't recall what the Maciunas piece was, but it wasn't this, which would have been much more approriate.

Performer-less performances of classical electronic music still takes place. Stockhausen's final published work Cosmic Pulses was staged at the Proms no less. The Melbourne Recital Centre has staged Xenakis works in their smaller room. I wonder whether they're performed in darkness or accompanied by some kind of pyrotechnics? Stockhausen was probably keen on the latter.

Recent Electronic Music

2011-07-05T23:29:00.000-07:00

Villalobos and Loderbauer: Re:ECM
Saturday began with a visit from a distributor friend who brought round a copy of the new ECM album, and pretty good it is. Review forthcoming, but I reckon V and L have nailed what could have been an utter snorefest, and isn't, completely, or unintentionally. Villalobos has been increasingly headed in this chamber direction anyways, so its hardly the coup its been made out to be, and the music can certainly be said to retain the ECM aesthetic, while adding aspects of the duo's own thinking-tinkering techno. It's adequately varied while projecting a clear vision, but I'd perhaps have liked to see them stretch further afield for source material than their limited selection. It's also marginally more exciting than ECM at their most exciting, hardly the label's objective, but in terms of mood, ambiance, sophistication it's on the mark.

Two discs is a lot to digest, and perhaps not entirely necessary, but I'm sure they've hundreds of hours of decent music discarded too. Plenty to explore though, so value for money for those beyond the ECM devotees thinking of shelling out. Keep the dancing shoes in the cupboard, and get the beard manicure ready.

Surgeon: Breaking the Frame
I've never been a fan of Surgeon's output, too damn heavy and fast for my old bones, but the hyperbolic press fluff for this, his first LP since 2000's Body Request, had me curious. It's certainly a departure from straightforward techno, whilst clearly an extension of what Surgeon's been doing all along. What remains is that relentless forward drive, given greater urgency ironically in those tracks devoid of overt rhythm.

Its here that Breaking the Frame works best, Surgeon creating a kind of anti-ambient: beatless electronic textures which feverishly jerk, throb and scream rather than drift. There's no chance of passively listening or dancing to these, aside from performing a kind of punk-ish St Vitus dance, as one would during Surgeon's live sets when he plays Whitehouse records, I guess.

Basic Channel have always been an obvious reference, but tracks titled 'Radiance' and 'Presence' make it concrete. Both employ the kind ceaseless gaseous flow that whorled through the entire BC catalogue, without any of the space: here it's all densely packed, and firing with energy, the former crashing waves into a kind of 2-step lunge (above), the latter stretching Ikembe chatter over cicada whine, everything toppling and collapsing.

The intensity and techno basis reminds me of some of Porter Ricks' beatless tracks:

Anthony Rother: The Machine Room
Surprised this hasn't received more press. Rother's an electro purist, recording as a host of aliases including PSI Performer and Family Lounge, and responsible for the first bit of electro I ever bought (aside from my adolescent purchase of the Escape from New York soundtrack), 1999's Simulationszeitalter

Machine Room then is hardly a thematic departure, but musically it is, somewhat: Rother drilling down into the core of his machines and coming up with much amorphous vapor, confused arpeggios and lonesome, dusty pulses.

13 The Machine Room - Part XIII by Anthony Rother (Official)

Could this be an electro analogue to Stott's Pass Me By?, a vision of 'post-electro' stripped of its rhythmic base and highlighting the used, abused, and obsolete matter within?

Resolutely and impressively bleak sonically, the cliched subject matter remains, most unpleasantly presented in the pseudo conept-album / 'rock-opera' framework:
The music is based on a story of a factory worker who supervises and controls the machines in a huge steelworks.
His thoughts and dreams have been infiltrated … the machine is everywhere he goes.

No youtube links but certainly worth checking:

Anthony Rother – The Machine Room [PS08/120]

Falty DL: Make it Difficult
Know little about this dude and what he's about, but I like it. Kinda house, but bucking at its constraints, making for unusually snappy, sinuous-yet-dense, brittle music. This is probably about as current and cutting edge as house can get, sticking dubstep and Chicago on top of eachother, pressing the 'quantize' button, and letting the loose ends hang out.

Composer Pianists on Vinyl

2011-07-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

As part of our vinyl-only-at-home policy we listened to a series of recordings of composer pianists playing their own works.

Poulenc Plays Poulenc and Satie
Poulenc has the right French cheeky irony to get the wit, and solemnity, from Satie, and his own tunes sound equally worthy alongside, and perhaps more cleverly thought through, in a traditional structural sense. That he goes beyond the requisite Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes also helps his cause. No youtube videos but here he is with Rampal playing his flute sonata.

Shostakovich plays Shostakovich
Great pieces these, recorded by some of the greats. Richter used to play some of them, and when asked by Shostakovich why he didn't play them all, responded 'I only play the good ones'. These and his concertos are available on CD, EMI I believe:

Always good to hear composers play their own works, but Tatiana nikolayeva plays them best. Worth picking up the complete set on Regis for ten quid, but here are the first ten to DL in FLAC:
Download Part 1
Download Part 2

Ravel plays Ravel
My aunt played me this when she gave me piano lessons and I fell in love with it; it's still among my favourite recordings, for all his technical faults. Recorded from player piano rolls or somesuch, so the sound is good and you get all the creaks and clunks of Ravel's hands and feet on instrument.

I don't have this on vinyl but my how great it is! Ives playing and singing his bonkers 'They are There', makes Tom Waits sound like a goodie-two-shoes choirboy:

Reviews

2011-07-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

Here's what's been happening at Cyclic Defrost:

Ben Gwilliam/Jason Zeh – Brombron 16: Dots (Korm Plastics)
Nicely packaged single track of mysterious tape haze, silence and low-fi scraps; looks better than it sounds.

Seth Horvitz – Eight Studies for Automatic Piano (Line)
Refined experiments for player-piano by ex-microhouse producer, discussed here.

Alfredo Casella – Symphony No. 3 / Elegia Eroica (Naxos)
Blustery Italian orchestral music from between the wars.

Burkhard Friedrich – Citta Utopica (Ahornfelder)
Hour-long collage of subtly crazed electro-acoustics.

Alfred Schnittke – Complete Violin Sonatas (Naxos)
Bleak, muscular yet refined chamber music from Russian genius.

Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang – Aesetaurium LP (Ideologic Organ/editionsMego)
Mournful, droning black-chamber-folk for viola and voice, endorsed by Steven O'Malley.

Steve Reich – Three Movements/The Desert Music (Chandos)
Grand performances of grand Minimalism for orchestra

Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad – Casals Encores (Hyperion)
Flighty miniatures and Chopin arrangements for cello and piano.

Forthcoming: selection of twentieth century Danish composition on DaCapo; excellent static, samples and synthesis by Viennese artist Angelica Castello; Villalobos and Loderbauer's Re:ECM; Mazulis' Musica Falsa ...

Marsen Jules / Deaf Centre

2011-06-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

Marsen Jules has been pumping out ambient music for a while now without me having paid much notice, but his new album Nostalgia is a beauty. Even better though is his contribution to Pop Ambient 2010, 'The Sound of One Lip Kissing'. It's the opening track, and traditionally I'd skip it in favour of the wispier, less abrupt music that follows, but that was a mistake. When I finally listened closely and got past those initial shuddering tones, it slowly envelops you in a hushed, gentle rocking motion, like a rocked cradle. It's the storm before the calm, of sorts, the opening assault disarming you for the subsequent lull.

'Once in a Moment' from Pop Ambient 2011 works similarly, but lacks that subtle violence:

I'm not sure how Jules constructs his tracks, but there appears to be classical instrumentation in there, strings at least, but they're obscured beneath layers of glistening processing. In Nostalgia they're often more foregrounded, as in the cellos in the titles track:

... and 'Kundera's Dream':

Here he's close to the deep strings of Deaf Centre, particularly their Pale Ravine in which strings joined gloomy Badalementi synths, the lot doused in reverb:

Their recent Owl Splinters eschews much (but not all) of the processing in favour of simple patterns and acoustic purity, and while I find this approach less convincing their arrangements do reach a state of droning beauty generally absent from the work of most pseudo-classical 'home listening' composers.

Rytis Mazulis: Musica Falsa

2011-06-27T19:28:00.000-07:00

Just as my displeasure with the music world was reaching a peak - MP3 exhaustion and related quandaries - as articulated by mnmlssgs here, the new(ish) Mazulis recording arrived in my letterbox!

Beyond the music, which is startlingly original, confusing, strange, thrilling, and annoying, this release as product is professional and convincing. We're given detailed biographies of both artists and passionate accounts by both composer and performer of their excitement in one another's work. Flautist Manuel Zurria became obsessed with Mazulis' music, contacted him, they exchanged many emails, Zurria worked on the project (transcribing and recording all works live), before finally meeting Mazulis in person. Mazulis was awed by Zurria's technique, and amazed at his realisation of his music. This artistic satisfaction and pride comes across in these notes, and in the smiling portrait of the two artists.

In addition, there's a faintly cosmic vibe to some of the notes, 'recorded at night, on Pleanet Earth', making the whole thing warmer and more approachable. The music is formidable, but rich with meaning and sufficient hooks to penetrate.

More later...

New Agenda

2011-06-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

This blog now has a narrower focus, and will look only at music, listening, and music related issues. Literature can now be found at Paper and Card. I realise this sounds like a crappy stationary chain, but I've put too much into it already and now I'm stuck with it.

As for Epherema, I guess its goodbye to Webster and them smoking chimps.

Limits

2011-06-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

We all know the displeasure and cynicism that comes from having access to everything all the time, the ennui and jadedness, the burnout from digital music overload. I often try and burn FLAC files to CD, nerdily making compilations, somehow trying to recapture the thrill of earlier music times. It always fails.

Surely this is partly because the CD is dead, an ugly, plastic, jagged thing too easily replicated to possess any intrinsic value. My CDs were stored in cardboard long boxes, artifacts from CD store days, stacked on top of one another in the corner of the living room, the corners covered in dust and cobwebs, difficult to find anything, harder to take out, and too numerous - and unappealing - to choose from. Sunday evening I selected a random bundle and stored them conveniently in a cupboard near the stereo, hauled the rest to the shed, and feel a whole lot better.

As a further tool to aid more concentrated listening and appreciation of music we decided to enforce some restrictions: vinyl only, 14 LPs a week (or until we grow properly exhausted) (I still listen to the ipod to and from work). So far it's been great. Here's what we chose for week one:

Waylon Jennings: I've Always Been Crazy

Waylon always sounds the same, which is alright by me. This was good.

Astrid Gilberto: The Astrid Gilberto Album

I know this album intimately, as I do the image on the cover, which I fell in love with when 20 years old.

Bartok: String Quartets 3 and 4

The cover I have is betetr than this, but couldnt find it on the interweb. More dissonant than I recalled, and for our conservative daily tastes, but the famous pizzicato movement is wonderful.

Brahms: Clarinet and Horn Trios

Various: The Bristol Sessions

Yet to hear but missus found annoying, even in small doses. She used to love this stuff!

Coleman Hawkins: At Ease With Coleman Hawkins

We listen to this often already, easy indeed.

Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye: Diana and Marvin

John Field: Nocturnes

Not the edition pictured, ours is by Veronica McSweeney on a weird Irish label Ceirnin somethingorother.

Julius Steinhoff: Where the Wild Things Are

Attempt to squeeze deep house into my partner's listening. Figured this ought to go down better than most.

Lyle Lovett: Pontiac

A side ok, B side less so. The most memorable first song "If I Had A Boat", the hhit I guess, is about riding a pony on a boat, with the line "Just me upon my pony, upon my boat" in the chorus.

Michael Hurley: Armchair Boogie

An old favourite.

Oneohtrix Point Never: Returnal

Strauss: Four Last Songs

Found an A5 lyric sheet inside, which revealed the last songs to have been mostly penned by Herman Hesse. Everyone probably knew that, but I didn't.

Still a few days to go before we refresh but already we're finding the practice of listening to music much more pleasurable. My partner is even more disenchanted by CDs and digital music and even wants to start buying records again! My craving for the new remains, but I'm more interested in buying vinyl too. Looking forward to the weekly chanegover, which alone brings freshness to a potentially stale collection.

Hauntological House, from Sturm to Stott

2011-06-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

In using the dreaded 'H' clarifier I'm not about to dive into an analysis of whether the following fit the hauntological bill, I'll leave that to the English critics, but I do want to point to a clear trait that's been appearing in strains of dance music over the past few years. Much of this isn't at all new anymore, just that with Andy Stott's Passed Me By it seems we have a new critically acclaimed release to assess within this vague realm. I'd also like to draw attention to some earlier forbears that seem to have been overlooked.

Stott's new album is marked by a gravelly rawness, a reliance on basic rhythmic details covered in cobwebs and rust, each beat fighting to quantise through the murk. In this struggle they sometimes miss, and we get a slightly broken kind of house, slipping, like much recent UK bass music, between regimented thud and skipping dubstep. These are both areas Stott's explored in earlier projects.

There's hints of the dub techno of yore, but its been rubbed out, leaving bits, traces and smears. Through this vocals may appear, as in 'New Ground', spectral R&B gasps lifted from Burial's songbook. Otherwise it's the creaked hinge rhythms of Actress that dominate, further degraded and given less urgency, more resignation.

It's difficult what to make of this retreat from tonal and structural clarity, aside from the obvious - a disenchantment with the tradition, methods and effects of dance music orthodoxy. As genre boundaries disintegrate altogether, what purpose, aside from retro revival of past styles (a la today's Chicago house), is there in furthering existing avenues? Furthermore, the bleakness present in the music of all these artists - Stott, Actress, Burial, etc. - appears to be declaring a dead-end, reversing - off-road - out of the creative cul-de-sac, then amplifying all the dings and bruises incurred while thundering through the scrub.

With this comes a confusion over contemporary music's place in music history, part of a widespread contemporary confusion with history fullstop, as Simon Reynolds argues below:

Under the Analogue regime, time was tilted forward. In Digiculture, time is lateral, recursive, spongiform, riddled with wormholes. It is characterised by operations like cut and paste, simultaneity (keeping open multiple windows), rewind/fast-forward/pause using mouse and cursor, saving things ‘for later’, fitting cultural or news experiences into your schedule (I won’t watch that major Obama speech as it happens because I can always catch it later on YouTube).

Stott's album in particular seems excavated from the ruins, literally pulled from cracks in the earth, or as FACT puts it: "haggard and caked in petrified dirt: everything here sounds broken, sawed-off, obfuscated, even Hellish". This grit, crackle and obfuscation then functions, obliquely and largely unintentionally, as a kind of carbon dating, signifying contemporary status much like the glitch did in the late nineties. This resigned end-of-history approach is limiting, pessimistic and cynical, however alluring it is in the short term. I do feel there's something more to Stott's album, but the continued use of such processes, particularly as they become mere aesthetic markers, as perhaps Burial is guilty of, is problematic.

Interesting note on this from Nina Power reviewing The Caretaker's new album:

...The Caretaker walks a fine line between resurrecting the past as it was and imposing contemporary ideas of what it should sound like. It’s not entirely clear how effective the scratches on ballroom records are as a means of exploring this temporal slide. It’d be more interesting, perhaps, to clean up old tracks, removing rather than multiplying their scratches, to restore them to the way they might have been originally heard in all their clarity, rather than digitally replicating the experience of listening to 78s as something ragged and barely present.

This is a situation Actress appears wary of, given the direction of his latest release 'Gershwin'/'Harrier Attk':

Pole's Stefan Betke invited similar criticism for his Yellow 3 album, since which he's seemed lost, not releasing anything of comparable worth. In one sense the clicks and pops that marked that trilogy seem a stepping stone to current hauntoligical concerns, but given Pole's immersion in technology, both literally - his trademark sound the result of a faulty Waldorf Pole filter - and conceptually, it embodied all that glitch represented.

Now glitch's insecurity with technology and fearful embrace of its faults have been replaced with a brash confidence in (ab)using it to its utmost, and a desire from producers like Stott and Actress to explore the grittiest depths of what it can do. Where glitch nervously worshiped technology, today's producers lord over it, commanding it to do their bidding, then concealing its hand in the process. The self-consciousness of glitch has gone. The work of Stott and co. might possess a rough, handmade sound, but this has come about through the intricate and skilful handling of technological tools.

Music from a similar period and conceptual agenda to that of Pole but far closer in spirit to current music branded hauntological and/or hypnagogic is that of Sturm, a side project of Cologne techno producer Reinhard Voigt. I always viewed Sturm as Reinhard's version of brother Wolfgang's Gas, yet where Gas is all amorphous clouds Sturm is granular corporeality.

R Voigt's techno productions hardly inspire confidence in the producer's breadth of musical understanding (see singletted air-punching above), given their no-nonsense lumpen sound (done very well admittedly), but Sturm really is worth hearing. The first self-titled album featured a stippled, deconstructed image of Scritti Polliti on the cover, and the music was similarly bitcrunched and scattered - listen alongside Passed Me By in particular and the similarities become clear.

With Sturm Voigt fucked with myriad unrecogniseable samples, or rather anonymous pieces of audio salvage, until rotten, digital backwash, corralling this into vaguely structured 4/4 arrangements. Like Pole, the focus is on digital audio technology, but here the process is less obvious, and the results more open to interpretation. There's a greater wooziness, an intentional lack of clarity, that distinguishes this from the glitch mainstream and its magnification of neat razor cuts, a fuzziness that links it closer to today's artists.

Voigt's second Sturm album Sturmgesten keeps the wooziness but strips it right back until there's nothing but fogged out drums and bass pulses, and very little of those. I got the vinyl and never worked out the proper speed they always sounded better 33. See for yourself below.

Nothing on youtube but listen here:

Sturm: Sturm

And as they're completely unavailable (and I don't think many got them first time round) download both albums here:

Sturm (1999) & Sturmgesten (2000) (Mille Plateaux)

Seth Horvitz

2011-06-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

I recently received an album by Seth Horvitz in the post, Eight Studies for Automatic Piano, which is, as the title implies, eight studies for automatic piano. I recognized Horvitz's name, but it took me a while to place it - the man behind pioneering glitch and microhouse project Sutekh.

Sutekh was always about more than house, his filigree (algo)rhythms ideally suited to the conceptual playground of Mille Plateaux and Force Inc, but he was best suited to working in 4/4. He was relatively prolific in 1998-2000, when I first got into electronic music, and I picked up a stack of his 12"s from shops all over Tokyo.

His sound seemed to strike a chord with Japan at the time, certainly with me and my then-new surrounds; I felt it perfectly represented the fast-paced neon-drenched environment of the megalopolis, all sharp angles, clockwork regimentation and complex sound design.

I saw Sutekh live in 2001 in Tokyo at Club Asia, and it was an interesting set, more suited to stationary head-nodding than dancing, but that's no complaint. Far more stripped down and earnest than was usually played in Tokyo, even by with-it hipsters. Highlight was 'Untitled #3' from his Force Inc LP Periods Make Sense, a superlative example of raw, chilly microhouse, its influence audible in contemporary productions by DJ Koze, Matthew Dear's False and countless Minus cookie-cutouts, and the Giegling roster.

Now's as good a chance as any to link to this incredible live set by Kettenkarussell. I've listened to this often, and it proved a particularly stirring soundtrack to a long drive down snow covered mountains in rural Victoria. Get it from mnmlssgs here:

Back to Horvitz, it's interesting to hear him doing new stuff, especially for computer-generated piano - a favoured medium of mine. He joins Wolfgang Voigt in the pantheon of techno - computer-piano producers, and sits alongside such heavyweights as Conlon Nancarrow and Rytis Mazulis. It's not Horvitz's first foray into the 'classical' realm, last year's On Bach by Sutekh took that crown, but this hems more closely to classical instrumentation than did that digital Wendy Carlos update.

First listen revealed a simplicity and minimalism not present in any of the works by those composers listed above. As the title implies, each track explores a specific idea, Horvitz keeping these particularly narrow. Info on each track and the score can be found at the Line Imprint here.

More on this once I've given it a proper hearing...

Dolly Parton

2011-06-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

The inimitable Dolly Parton is coming to Melbourne in November, and I'm going.

I don't have anything to say about her, her looks and demeanor negate all analysis and criticism. Better to just bask in her glory...

Dolly's first appearance on the Porter Wagoner Show, 1967, with 'Dumb Blonde':

Joshua from 1971, also on Porter. I've always chuckled at the image of the oafish title character, alone in the woods, blushing before Dolly's charms:

Same date, 'There's something fishy goin' on, on those fishing trips you're goin' on':

Jolene, from 1974. Country Disco:

Title track from the new album Backwoods Barbie:

Collaborations:
Who wouldn't want to work with Dolly?

Truly haunting, 'The Party':

I'm the 9,525,473rd person to view this video.

Tammy may edge out Dolly in my book. Dolly's not collaborated with KLF... yet.

Tammy's beau George:

Linda and Emmylou, 'The Sweetes':

Hulk Hogan:

Polly Darton on Sesame Street:

I could go on...

Harry Matthews: Cigarettes

2011-06-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

Not sure how the title fits in but this book was as smooth and refreshing as a packet of Laramies. Weirdly pitched between realist melodrama, postmodern sexuality deconstruction and (subtle) Oulipo construct, Matthews ingeniously ties these ideas together such that they're less independent strands than a well-stirred stew, a multi-voiced multi-layered narrative of love, loss, art and aging in America. Dedicated to Matthews' mate Georges Perec, Cigarettes contains something of Perec's desire for structural logic, not that I'm sure how it works. I never grasped what Perec was doing with Life: A User's Manual though, but enjoyed the knowledge that something overarching was at work. That same sense is present here. Here, each chapter explores a different pair of individuals, the narrative developing as these characters interact, with one another, in the art - and horse - world, and across time. The cast is incestuous, and piecing together the historical web of relationships, and following their implications, is where much of the pleasure lies.

This structure allows for a complete flattening of hierarchy, with no character or narrative element allowed to dominate. Rather, the drama is less concerned with individual character development (although this does occur within individual chapters) than with overall relationships, the picture rather than the puzzle pieces. This isn't entirely true, as those chapters involving the extreme sexual antics of Lewis and Morris naturally stand out, yet by the final pages they too have been subsumed within the larger whole. I read an old Collier edition with the eighties graphics (see top) which seeped into my reception of the book, not the less leading current Dalkey Archive version (below). I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mathews was once assumed to be a CIA agent in Paris, due to his 'man-of-leisure' lifestyle. This swanning about Parisian high society itself attracted the attention of the CIA and was documented in Mathews' pseudo memoir My Life As CIA. He studied music at Harvard but no idea what, or whether, he composed.

I just finished Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, a hilarious study in uniquely Japanese misanthropy, which I'll comment on, and quote, soon.

Recent Listening

2011-06-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

Given my inability to keep this section regularly updated the vague 'recent' ought to do. This is what's been spinning, in no particular order:

The Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
This arrived in the post yesterday and while not as immediately swoon-inducing as Persistent Repetition of Phrases Kirby here is more challenging with regard to structure. The material itself is less overtly processed, but the arrangements are: short loops cycle blankly, then shift slightly to reveal more, or less, of themselves. Pieces end abruptly, and it's difficult to determine when one track ends and another begins. Very interesting.

DJ Rashad: 'Itz Not Rite'
Finally listened to Chicago juke via Planet Mu's Bangs & Works compilation and was very surprised. Expected it to be all jackhammer pummel and lightning fast low-fi jitters but there's real engagement and patience at work. This is the highlight, tipped by David Toop in The Wire. I'm sure it gets more violent than this, but I want to hear that too.

Moritz von Oswald Trio: Horizontal Structures
Nice to hear more voices in the mix, Tikiman's guitar particularly, and while the link to Miles circa Silent Way is made more clear it could benefit from greater pacing, more dynamics. As it is it's rather flat. Bought on vinyl too.

The Wire's Below The Radar 6
Usually miss these but glad I didn't with this, there's a lot of interesting music here. The following three in particular:
Borngraber & Struver: 'Dancing Queen'
Great slow-mo, low-slung, heavy house chug. Not much happens but so effective, remaining engaging throughout its long duration.

Mark Fell: 'Manitutshu 1.3'
I loved Mark Fell's Multistability of last year, for all its difficulty, but this is better: incredible sound design, but set to simple, effective arrangements. Tones like updated 303 blips, pulsing to disordered algorithmic functions.
Mark Bradley: 'Spiraling'
Know nothing about Mark Bradley but this is ace, doing what the title says in a Mego way, related to the Mark Fell but more painful in parts, more hectic, and less clinical.

Mokira: Time Axis Manipulation
Great beatless drifting dub shimmer. FloatingHead speaks more eloquently about it here.

Velvet Hands: Daily Session Mix 5/17
Find it hard to commit to mixes and podcasts with the deluge out there, usually need some kind of personal introduction, vouch of quality or somesuch. This set by an old chum for Brooklyn radio is worth sticking with: slow deep thud through to brash nineties house. Get it here.

Ryan Elliot: LWE Podcast 82
Decent streamlined techno from Detroit. Saw him at Sonar in 2007 and he was wonderful; this isn't as good, for obvious reasons, but still worth a listen. get it here.

Dean Martin: Italian Love Songs

Made pizza on Saturday and Dino is my favourite cooking music, heck, some of my favourite music fullstop. Not usually about offering downloads but he's dead and these labels aren't worth troubling yourself over, so do yourself a favour and get the album, in FLAC here:

Dean Martin: Italian Love Songs

Gyorgy and Marta Kurtag

2011-06-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

Listened to the Kurtags over the weekend, particularly their Bach transcriptions. This is gorgeous:

But they're all wonderful:

On disc they're part of Gyorgy's Jatekok (Games), the ECM recording is the one to get. They can get quite dissonant and harsh, and I recall annoying Barry Humphries aka Dame Edna Everage when playing it in the shop at Harold Moores. Barry was a regular with refined music tastes, particularly turn-of-the-century French music, but he didn't like Kurtag.

A knottier example, 'Perpetuum Mobile':

I missed seeing the Kurtag's perform in London, something I deeply regret. I always viewed the Jatekok as a new way to approach the piano, viewing the instrument as a strange wooden box with white and black 'keys' which depress and make sound, divorced entirely from tradition, but think i'm wrong, given the references to other composers. Here's a homage to Christian Wolff:

In one sense then 'games' is how they're played, especially by the Kurtags' four hands: "Teasing, caressing and attacking the piano, they literally play games."

Or indeed quarreling:

I also listened to Kurtag's Kafka Fragmente, songs comprised of elements from Kafka's diaries accompanied by solo violin. There's a pithiness recalling Webern in the short, sketch-like nature, amplified by the trailing off of violin gestures. Vivid and jagged yet hardly daunting.

Grouper - Re-Assessment

2011-06-05T22:27:00.000-07:00

Experienced a musical epiphany over the weekend which has forced me to amend my assessment of Grouper. I now get it. She's fucking great!

I was lazing on the sofa listening to the anodyne plinks of Akira Kosemura's How My Heart Sings and I fell asleep, only to awaken minutes later in that strange fug that comes from dropping off abruptly in the day. This was exacerbated by the foggy haze coming from the speakers, ebbing me into consciousness, feint traces of guitar and spectral voice piercing the smoke. It met this in-between state perfectly and head-on, as though intentionally targeting this headspace. That's where my comparison with shoegaze was incorrect; the signifiers might be similar, but the conception is utterly different - sadder, more personal, resigned, yet more desperate. A nerdy and hackneyed analogy, it reminded me of the way Princess Leia appears to Luke early in Star Wars, a frightened, shimmering image suspended in space, "Help me ObiWan Kenobi, You're my only hope."

This is analogous to how Nick Richardson describes Grouper's latest 2 releases Alien Observer and Dream Loss in the June 2011 issue of The Wire, as being essentially about listening, about the nature of media and reception.

Recently, there has been a proliferation of music about listening. Not the ‘listening as hard as you can’ of the Wandelweiser posse, or the ‘listening to musicians listening as hard as they can to each other’ of group Improv, but individual listening experiences of people with lives, minds, emotions, homes. How often over the last year or so have you read, “It’s like Steely Dan heard on a sun-drenched beach in Hawaii from a hammock as a warm breeze kisses your cheek”? Or, “It’s like an old Stax record playing from someone else’s car in the carpark after prom during your first real smooch”? And it’s not just a writer’s conceit: often musicians will imagine the back story of a projected listener in considerable detail. Tom Krell, aka How To Dress Well, has described his song “Ready For The World” as “what it would be like to be a little boy and to have this downstairs neighbour who’d just gotten broken up with by his boyfriend and you can hear him crying… and you can hear R&B music coming through the floor?” This new music takes a pre-existing musical substrate, bends it, abrades it, dips it in echo, in such a way as to imply, via a strange conflation of subject and object, the psychological/emotional/geographical situation of an imaginary listener.

Richardson goes onto to say it's like listening to Judee Sill playing from the next room, but I'd keep the shoegaze analogy: Slowdive or Lush, the original obfuscation further washed out through obstacles and distance, the voice nothing but gentle, indecipherable murmurs. I also think of unfinished artworks, the grey noisewash like the block of granite in Michelangelo's unfinished sculpture, Liz Harris's the emerging subject. Or the vague hints of landscape appearing through the empty canvas in Cezanne's late works.

It was 'Moon Is Sharp' from AIA: Alien Observer that I awoke to and which made such an immediate impression:

But the following few tracks were equally involving. What's so interesting about Grouper is how each of these pieces is constructed in a similar way but end up sounding so different.

This track even taking its name from one of Shoegaze's most iconic moments:

This is music that does not work through headphones, but requires high volume, speakers, and the space of a room to achieve its aims.

Blame It On The Boogie

2011-06-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm going to a disco at a local bowling alley for my daughter's kindergarten. There she and her chums will be performing Jackson 5's 'Blame it on the Boogie', involving a coordinated dance number. She's been practicing all week, should be rockin'.

Strobe effects on the above video impressively disorienting, but not as weird as this, the video to my favourite Jacksons song 'Can You Feel It'. No idea what the words at the start refer to, or the voiceover, but the image of the towering, godlike Jacksons sprinkling pixie-dust onto the awed populace, walking on water, making rainbows, is thrilling. The tolling bells work a treat too:

Michael Jackson was a regular visitor to my hometown of Perth, Western Australia. His first visit was in 1973 with the Jackson Five, where Michael was lucky enough to bump into renowned commercial radio presenter Gary Shannon, beating Shannon at a game of pool.
"I bumped into Michael in the hallway of 6KY FM. He told me he was a good pool player and challenged me to a game. He beat me."

Gary Shannon:

Gary Shannon was recently sacked from his position as breakfast presenter at 96FM last November. Shannon has no future plans. “I’m sure I’ll pick myself up. I will try to relax and get on with my life."

Michael Jackson's most famous visit to Perth was in 1985, where he was bribed there by Perth millionaire Robert Holmes A Court, who included a trip to Perth and appearance on Telethon as part of the sale of rights to Beatles songs to the pop-loving Jackson. This was an iconic moment in Perth cultural history:

He came back in 1996 as part of his HIStory tour, and stayed at Observation City Resort in Scarborough.

Observation City:

The Perth obsession with Michael Jackson continues, exemplified by these "world-class impersonators" from VIP Entertainment:

Tonight's performers have a lot to live up to.

The Devil Speaks...

2011-06-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

Straight after my Broker / Dealer appreciation post Kompakt announced a reissue of 'Dig Deep', on their Immer imprint. Thought it was called 'Boots and Pants'? It is on discogs. If 'Dig Deep' is 'Boots and Pants' then what is the other track called? Fuck, I don't know, anyways, well worth picking up, it's a doozy.

Speaking of Kompakt I shopped there recently, unable to resist this, Wolfgang Voigt's latest project Kafkatrax. The whole concept is alluring, particularly the image of Voigt as Kafka.

Comes with limited edition print by Voigt, perhaps a reference to Prague Castle? Somewhat disappointing in actuality.

It sounds as expected, woozy voices swimming around Voigt's trademark raw drums. Nothing surprising then, but still more adventurousness than 99% of humdrum functional techno. And I like that cheeky image...

Broker/Dealer

2011-05-25T22:10:00.000-07:00

Short appreciation for these guys from way back, San-Franciscan duo Ryan Bishop & Ryan Fitzgerald aka Broker/Dealer. Active in that historical grey area of dance music, the early noughties, Broker/Dealer favoured a synth-heavy neon kind of Cologne-esque house, releasing a mere handful of singles primarily for Traum and Spectral Sound. Their big hit was 'Boots and Pants' for Traum, which expertly delivered on the (short-lived) strobing, dubby, trance-tinged sound favoured by Dominik Eulberg and Michael Mayer back in the day. It showed up as the centrepiece on Riley Triple-R Rinehold's Friends mix CD for Kompakt, and a host of others; here it is as it appears on Doc Martin's Fabric 10.

Their only album Initial Public Offering for Asphodel showed promise, demonstrating consistent yet well-rounded sound and containing a few choice tracks:

The point of this post I guess is to highlight the fickle and ever-changing nature of the music industry and to remember once in a while some of the un(der)sung heroes of yesteryear. Chin Chin, Broker/Dealer!

Mathias Enard: Zone

2011-05-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

A number of things attracted me to Mathias Enard's Zone: hyperbolically hailed as "The novel of the decade, if not the century"; flaunting its modernist trappings: A book length (500+ page) sentence - overwhelming Thomas Bernhard's book length (under 200 page) paragraphs - examining all the war, lies and carnage that have stained the countries of the Mediterranean. This region is the Zone of the title, the protagonist (Francis Servain Mirkovic)'s patch in his spying profession. Intent on ending his shady career Mirkovic has amassed a briefcase full of documents collating bloodshed of the Zone, encyclopedically revisiting these events is part of the novel's aim, and is on a train from Milan to Rome to sell the contents to the Vatican. The narrative follows the protagonist's reflections on the Zone, from his involvement as a Croatian solider in the Balkan conflict through his collation of material relating to all manner of historical bloodshed, on this train journey, with each kilometre lasting one page. So, we start in Milan on page 1 and end in Rome on page 514.

It's easy to get caught up in Mirkovic's ruminations, particularly if you've read Marias, also given the espionage connection, or Sebald, and the lack of punctuation allows you to freely roam his thoughts, like the blood flowing through his brain, and spilling across time. Stephen Burn made the following comment in the NY Times:

Removing periods, Énard leaves the reader floating free in the liquid of Mirkovic’s consciousness, where ancient and classical history interrupt more recent events. In this realm of eternal time, Mirkovic as a unitary subject dissolves, and across the solitary train journey he gains mythic dimensions, becoming Dante traveling through the rings of hell to a vita nuova; Hermes accompanying the dead across the Styx; and the harbinger of St. John of Patmos’s Last Days, carrying the names of the dead rather than the Book of Life.

Around the exploration of these grand themes, Enard's depiction of Mirkovic's comparatively humdrum immediate reality is vivid and equally engaging. He reads a novel about the Palestine-Israel conflict, itself presented in the book (and the only sections involving full stops), which mirrors his own history. He studies his neighbours and imagines their thoughts (again, Marias). He goes to the bar and drinks, admiring the label on a beer bottle. He smokes in the toilet. All this is rendered with the cold precision of crime fiction. Very well done.

Now I'm reading Harry Matthews' Cigarettes. Also note that Dalkey Archive Press are having a sale until the end of May - go shopping here.

Listening: Early Part of w/e 29 May 2011

2011-05-24T16:18:00.000-07:00

Was hungover yesterday morning after too much champers at my four-week-old's welcome party. Even codeine couldn't help. Forgot my ipod too so had to listen to humanity on the tram, ghastly. Got home and needed comforting, so listened to the following.

I hadn't played Eno's Ambient 4: On Land for a while, and my how wonderful it is. With the gently chirruping frogs he skirts close to scented candle territory, yet paradoxically it's also his darkest ambient work. Marked by indigestion-like groans and slow, grating stomach twists, it's relieved by a shimmering warmth and soothing Gaviscon glow; an expertly balanced album.

Also listened to Akira Rabelais's excellent Caduceus from late last year, another album with two poles to it: gorgeous, sinuous threads of sound, and Mego-esque noise bursts sharp like a scalpel. I skipped the latter and savoured the former: as beautiful as anything he's done, slippery threads of guitar tone sliding between faint gritty elements, his trademark processing needling them deep into your ear cavity.

Excerpt below from Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, shades of the art from Motion Sickness of Time Travel:

Above all from Caduceus, fantastic album. His website remains uniquely odd, based upon changes from the I-Ching, a la Cage. Developed years ago when the web was in its infancy, sad that it still stands out as innovative in an interweb choked with obedient blandness.

akirarabelais.com

His software Argeiphontes Lyre is also available here, Mac users only, although I've never worked out how to access anything from his cryptic website:

Argeiphontes Lyre

And a wee treat: Hollywood:

Hollywood

We'll hear more from Rabelais in future, he's long been a favourite of mine, but I'll leave you with this:

Reviews

2011-05-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

Latest at Cyclic Defrost:

Andreas Belfi and Ignaz Schick: The Myth of Persistance of Vision Revisited (Zarek)
Patient electroacoustic improv involving gamelan-esque gongs.

Mem1 and Stephen Vitiello: Age of Insects (Dragon's Eye)
Lowercase electronics with cello scrapes.

Donato Wharton – A White Rainbow Spanning the Dark (Serein)
Unremarkable Feneszian guitar haze.

Dalglish – Bennacah Drann (Highpoint Lowlife)
Unique, choppy post-techno.

Sylvgheist Maelstrom – Lahar (Connexion Bizarre)
Portentous, overlong and dreary industrial-electro.

Seth Cluett – Objects of Memory (L-ne)
Very slow and minimal Feldman-esque compositions, lovely.

Kyle Bobby Dunn – Ways of Meaning (Desire Path Recordings)
Sublimely beautiful ambient music, like Eno's Apollo made even more gaseous and amorphous.

Not on Youtube yet but this is from his earlier Young Person's Guide, also recommended:

Tupolev – Towers of Sparks (Valeot)
Piano-led post-rock reminiscent of Radian.

Koji Asano – Galaxies (Solstice)
Field recording as noise dominated by cicadas by prolific and always-interesting Japanese artist.

Luciano Berio – Berio: Differences; Sequenzas III & VII; Due Pezzi; Chamber Music (Newton Classics)
Old Berio classics given another outing. The Sequenza for Voice is particularly wacky, we featured a live performance of it by Majella Byrne for Resonance FM's Dead and Alive.

Marko Cicilliani – Jeanne of the Dark (Ahornfelder)
Strange and cluttered theatre music by a colleague of Terre Thaemlitz, who did the cover art.

Listening: Thursday 19 May 2011

2011-05-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

Here's what I heard the past few days:

Grouper: Alien Observer
Various friends recommended this (and the other simultaneously released album) and the press love her, but I feel I'm missing something. Have only skimmed it so far but seems like low-fi nineties shoegaze to me - the source material too obvious, even beneath the clouds of haze. I do like the vocals however, reminds me of Slowdive, but buried beneath all that fog such that it's a faint indecipherable whisper. Still, what am I missing?

Julius Steinhoff: Out in the Woods (Geography)
Stunning Hamburg deep house, emotional and downbeat, with expert use of vocal loops to increase tension. Long, flat, gorgeous. The B1 title track is the best but not on YouTube, so here's the A-side 'Mischief of One Kind and Another', what Max is up to in Where the Wild Things Are.

Mompou: Preludes
Lovely short lightweight piano works, Satie-esque but more naive, childish, less angular.

Got home and listened to CD of Horowitz playing Scarlatti, light and breezy, even in the heavy sad ones. Think I prefer weightier playing in these, but for the others, all the virtuosic speedy pieces, he's great.

The K 466 was used beautifully in Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Climates:

Here is the album:

Horowitz Plays Scarlatti (CBS) (FLAC)

Daily Listening - Tuesday 17 May 2011

2011-05-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I started this thing was to pause and take stock of some of the dataflood that scrolls, almost ceaselessly, through my system. So, starting with a daily listening log, I'm going to try and take note of some of what happens. Not only will I consider what I listen to but more interestingly how, where, and (if I can be arsed) why. This will prompt a realisation of how much listening takes place on ipod, what music I favour in certain situations, how often the turntables revolve, etc. I'll also attempt a quick summary / evaluation of what I've heard.

This is partly inspired by my brother's daily noon photo update on his Facebook page (itself inspired by Paul Auster's Smoke). Fortunately for my brother he leads the sort of pleasantly disordered life such that he's often doing something different each day at 12pm - unlike the majority of us. Mine would be static, repetitive and very boring.

Tuesday 17 May 2011
I get the tram to work each day, leaving the house around 8am. Lately I've been leaving a little earlier to avoid running into my neighbor who, while pleasant, insists on talking and preventing me my solitude. Sometimes I'll listen to music over breakfast with my daughter but not today. Usually it's ambient or classical piano music on CD, quiet like, so as not to wake the whole house.

I'd put some new stuff on the ipod the night before and always listen on the tram, usually to new stuff. Today it was this:

Leyland Kirby: Intrigue and Stuff (Vol. 1)
I love Leyland Kirby, especially as the Caretaker, but it's all good, and so was this - weird, crackly, neon synth workouts, very much of the hypnagogic zeitgeist but not derivative. More Ghost Box than Not Not Fun, slower, and spookier, with faint shades of the school science program stuff the English seem to like. Only heard the first three (of six) tracks from this single but will listen again, and more closely.

CM von Hausswolff: 800,000 Seconds in Harar (Touch)
Von Hausswolff is one of those names I always mean to hear more of but never do, being interested in the psychogeographic concepts he explores in his dense and forbidding drones. The idea here is something about a trip to the titular Ethiopian city as part of a theatre project on Rimbaud, incorporating local field recording - playing children, insects, background hum - over thick drones produced, apparently, using a stringed instrument called the krar. Three parts, the first was outstanding, very beautiful, atmospheric, geographic, all-encompassing.

Deaf Centre: Owl Splinters (Type)
I really liked aspects of Pale Ravine, all that reverb and glacial deepness, but that's been stripped for this, leaving barren, bland 'cinematic' arrangements for strings and piano. Heard the first two tracks and, while pretty, were annoyingly empty. I have a problem with much neo-pseudo classical music of this sort, Dustin O'Halloran's latest being a particular bore, so this move by Deaf Centre is disappointing. Perhaps they're aiming for rawness, a 'Nirvana Unplugged' kind of purity, but I much preferred the moody earlier stuff.

Also listened to:
Philip Sherburne: Best of 2010 'Home' Podcast for Make Like A Tree, freely downloadable here.
Appealing tracklist of hip non-dance tracks from 2010 (Forest Swords, Raime, Wildbirds and Peacedrums etc) mixed by scribe and DJ Sherburne, some of which I'd heard but little of which rocked my boat here. His 2010 house-techno mix however, also available here, is very good and kicks off with Omar S's outstanding Gunnar Wendell remix.

That was the tram to work, on the way home I listened to the Delsin Shopcast for LWE, mixed by Delta Funktionen. Excellent mix of well-paced, not too fast techno, with frequent acid squiggles, captivating.

When I walked in the door the missus was playing something unusual, Country Gazette by Harumi Hosono(of Yellow Magic Orchestra)'s World Standard. She was bored of our usual Mozart, so was I, and this was welcome.

I then put on Kraftwerk's Autobahn LP and we listened to both sides. This was the highlight:

Doubt I'll be able to muster this much info each day, now for tomorrow...

Mix: Preparing for the Aerotropolis

2011-05-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

While fretting over recent tumultuous personal events I found solace in the soothing tones of ambient music, and one night I hit the wheels of steel and came up with this. I call it Preparing for the Aerotropolis, a collection of sweet yet anxious pieces, reflecting the nervous yet hopeful state of mind of those awaiting vast change.

Preparing for the Aerotropolis
Ekkehard Ehlers: Rund (mille plateaux)
The Caretaker: It's All Forgotten Now (vv/m)
Philip Jeck: Chime Again (touch)
Loscil: Dub For Cascadia (kranky)
IMPS: Jonty's Way (Jan Jelinek Remix) (mule electronic)
William Basinski: DLP 1.2 (2062)
Brian McBride: Supposed Essay On The Piano (kranky)
Sawako: Air Aif (12k)
JZ+ARKH.CO.UK: Ddrhodes (kompakt)
Akira Rabelais: Pleure De Le Voir Gai Comme Un Oiseau Des Bois (orthlorng musork)
Ulf Lohmann: Falling Down (kompakt)
Brian Eno: An Ending (Ascent) (polydor)

Thank you. I hope that wherever you are the world is just dandy.

Disenchantment / Enchantment

2011-05-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late to this party (or rather wake) but this analysis of the contemporary music industry by Stefan Goldmann is right on the money (or rather poverty). Goldmann is something of a modern-day Renaissance Man: house-techno producer, DJ, founder of the Macro label, executor of his late-father's (composer Friedrich Goldmann) estate, experimental producer, agent-provocateur, and overpaid consultant (as he reveals here), and given his attempts to disrupt the bland flow of formulaic 4/4 blagghh with things like syncopated locked groove LPs, synchronised cassette experiments and deconstructed classical edits, he's in a good position to comment.

It's a dreary world out there in music land, a ceaseless flood of dreary bilge, drowning consumers - and fellow producers - in blank data. Goldmann's comment below most perceptively (and cynically) highlight's this situation:

The total de-motivation doesn’t manifest itself only in the musicians’ under achievements, but also in the annoyance of everybody else. A frustrated DJ plays lame tunes in front of people bored to tears.

Goldmann then goes onto urge artists to experiment, leaving the safety of established roads for less-charted ones, but I'm more pessimistic than that. Very few are interested in taking up such a challenge, and even fewer can find success - in any sense - from experimentation. However, now is a fine time to celebrate some of Goldmann's efforts.

Here's his "breakthrough" release, "Sleepy Hollow" for Innervisions. Formulaic tech-house but as good as it gets and still riveting:

B-side "The Bribe" from 2007:

His proggy, operatic anthem "Art of Sorrow", big with Sven back in the day:

His divisive pan-flute remix of Santiago Salazar. I like it:

... And from his intriguing cassette experiment "Haven't I Seen You Before" (excerpt 1):

From his locked groove double LP "The Grand Hemiola":

And last my review for Resident Advisor of Goldmann's Rite of Spring edit, not so successful but an admirable effort, and one we need more of.

Disenchantment has also been responsible for my lack of posts but I'll try and pick up the pace.

Debt

2011-04-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

Those bastards in the taxation department have me by the balls. Depression over this state of affairs is partly to blame for my absence around these parts, albeit a very small part, but at least blogs provide a space for one to vent spleen and invite sympathy. So listen up comrades: the world's a cesspit and doesn't deserve a red cent from us Joe Sixpacks, let alone the extortionate robbery they demand, while those greedy Daddy Warbucks bankers, bond traders and property developers trample us with iron boots. Smash it all up!

Of course nothing is going to happen, we'll all pay our taxes, perform our labour, grit our teeth, so here's a few country tunes celebrating our hopeless predicament:

There's plenty more but I'm too depressed to link them.

Those close to me will know I'm not really depressed, actually jubilant, but depression is far easier and makes for more interesting music. Not always however - what I've been listening to most over the past few weeks is something entitled Children's Music Therapy or somesuch,the nocturnal soundtrack in the cardiac ward at the Royal Children's Hospital. It's a medley of "Twinkle Twinkle" and the like, mixed seamlessly together and played very slowly on flute-y synthesisers, reminscent of Eno's Apollo Soundtracks. Gorgeous. No idea what it is but these are close to it, and tasteful:

Chin up and soldier on...

Rain

2011-04-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

We've had a lot of rain over the past few days, so much in fact that our bedroom flooded. Somehow a rock or piece of rubble lodged itself in the drainpipe, causing the gutters to fill and water to seep in through the roof. It also seems our house may be located on a sinkhole, as the front door has significantly shifted and now can't be opened, same with our bedroom door, and walls are looking crooked.

Rain is the finest time to listen to many types of music, and has inspired some fine songs. Here's a favourite, New Orleans' Soul Queen Irma Thomas' "It's Raining". She's in Melbourne this weekend!

Might be best heard in this context, one of the finest scenes in Jim Jarmusch's career filled with them - Roberto Benigni dancing with his real-life partner in the closing moments of Down by Law:

From a similar time and space, the combination here of childish xylophone "raindrop" plinks, tacky throwaway lyrics and all of Orbison's usual pre-Lynchian psychodrama - operatic wail, chorus of angels, strings, sax - make for a distinctly odd and unsettling song. Not one of his more well known tunes but deserving of being more so:

The Ronettes did as countless future wishy-washy pseudo-ambient bedroom producers and incorporated field recordings of rain and thunder in their "Walking in the Rain":

"It's more than woe begotten grey skies now":

Heck, Tom Waits has loads of songs about rain. Here's a promo for his Rain Dogs album:

... and a far from wishy-washy ambient album featuring rain sounds, "Atta" by Icelandic producer Yagya. From his album Rigning, Icelandic for "raining", I first heard him back in 1999 when he made The Rhythm of Snow for Force Inc. Guess he likes wintry weather:

Approaching Youtube overload, but will do another rain post and look solely at rainy ambient, some other time...

Bruce Duffy: The World As I Found It

2011-04-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

Finished this earlier this week, Bruce Duffy's novelisation of the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore, and enjoyed it so much I'm now diving into the real thing, sort of. Or rather, slowly: now on Ray Monk's How to Read Wittgenstein. There's enough quotes of Wittgenstein himself in the Monk, so almost there. Next, as recommended by a friend of mine, I'll try Wittgenstein's Culture and Value, apparently aphoristic nuggets on music, literature and assorted cultural topics. Not sure how that sits with the understanding I have of his philosophy, whereby "What can be said can be said clearly; and wherefore one cannot speak thereof one must be silent", but I'm very much a novice at this stage, led - kindly and with much patience - by Monk's helpful hand.

But first to Duffy's book. Written in 1987, The World As I Found It follows the relationship between the three aforementioned philosophers, from the turn of the century through two world wars and various philosophical upheavals. The focus is mostly on Wittgenstein, whose life was certainly the oddest and most deserving of fiction, although Russell's comes a decent second. With Wittgenstein we learn of his tyrannical father and his multiple suicide brothers, the family's position in Viennese high society, his problematic relationship with his Jewish past. Duffy was particularly good at setting the scene of fin-de-siecle Vienna, surely a fascinating period, of which I'd be interested to learn more - perhaps from Allan S Janik's Wittgenstein's Vienna. Contemporary Cambridge is equally well drawn, particuarly the air of intellectual squabble taking place between Russell and Moore, and Russell and the arrogant fops that hang off Russell's mistress Ottoline.

Wittgenstein's life and career(s) remains the focus of the book however, from his academic beginnings in Cambridge through the trenches of WWI, school teaching in the backwoods of rural Austria, architecture (touched on very briefly here) and his odd later years. All of this is expertly handled by Duffy and I was hooked throughout. I'd like to learn more of the house he built for his sister Gretl in Vienna, now the Bulgarian Embassy.

This clearly corresponds to The Cone in Bernhard's Correction, and readers of that book will see many other connections between Wittgenstein and Roithamer, and I'll be reading Bernhard's Wittgenstein's Nephew too. I was disappointed that Max, Wittgenstein's savant-like friend, was not a real figure, so well is he depicted, but the conclusion gave that fact away. Knowing nothing of Wittgenstein I think was an advantage, as I might have been frustrated with Duffy's use of facts where and when it pleased him, but, as he eloquently states in the book's postscript, he ably demonstrates his decision which, given Wittgenstein's interest in such issues, seems an appropriate approach. Duffy is currently completing a similar "fictional biography" on the life of Rimbaud which I am anxious to read.

I also intend to read more of the How To Read Series. Monk is a brilliant guide, having also written the first biography of Wittgenstein, which incidentally came a year or so after Duffy's biographical novel, amazed it took so long, given his life! Anyway, this seems a better introductory series than the idiots guides and whatnot, so you look less like an idiot, while remaining sufficiently an idiot as to need help accessing the genuine article.

Valentin Silvestrov: Bagatelles and Serenades

2011-04-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

Listened twice over the weekend to Valentin Silvestrov's Bagatelles and Serenades and was further enchanted by the idiosyncratic compositional style of this Ukrainian composer. He's clearly fond of a particular kind of chord or interval, as every piece I've heard is distinctly Silvestov. I imagine musicologists could determine precisely what gives his music this particularly feel, it seems as though it's a unique pattern of notes, but what do I know.

I first heard his 'Elegie' and 'Der Bote' on Alexi Lubimov's excellent recital release Der Bote, sat beside similarly enigmatic work by Debussy, Glinka, CPE Bach and Cage. His symphonies get noisy and dissonant, but they too employ these same motifs. There's an aspect of the simplicity of Arvo Part, particularly in the Bagatelles, but combined with the suspended, anti-resolution of Satie, and a greater degree of melancholy than either. This is manifest as a kind of abstract nostalgia, a hauntological reaching back into classical piano music essences, the melodies of The Caretaker transcribed, slowed down, and saddened.

ECM release most of his music, and it seems tailor made for their aesthetic, without succumbing to the 'Nordic-wallpaper' blandness that taints some of their releases.

Night Drive (Thru Ballarat)

2011-03-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of visiting Ballarat, a medium-sized town 90 minutes North West of Melbourne. I took a company car, a Camry Altise, leaving the office at 5pm to get there for 7.00. I drove up Flinders Street through dreadful traffic, onto the Westgate, up the Western Ring Road and onto the Highway, straight and without incident from there on. After Flinders the traffic was fine, particularly so on the highway.

The Camry had cruise control so I stuck to 115 and cruised past slowpokes. It had a decent CD player and I'd come prepared: outbound I listened to something I'd missed, and a genre I've only cursorily examined: Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock and Electronic Musik 1972-1983, a fine survey released by Soul Jazz last year. It was quite something. I was familiar with the Harmonia, Can, Cluster and Neu tracks (I even shared a cab with Cluster at Dissonanze 2008 in Rome) but there were some super surprises, especially Michael Bundt's 'La Chasse Aux Microbes':

You can hear where the modern synth types Oneohtrix et al come from. Given the context, rural expanses rushing past the speeding vehicle, even the pastoral hippie twang of Popul Vuh and Amon Dul sounded good. See my pal Christo's review for RA here.

Ballarat itself was a decrepit shitheap. It might once have had charm, but was all washed out and overweight now: cracked and stained brickwork, rusted steeples, carparks, fast food chains and bogan pubs. I was there for a regional football club meeting - don't ask - and the members were a sorry, obese lot. To get into the spirit of the place I had one of these in the Camry before the meeting:

Ten minutes later I was back on the road, and listened to the first Hype Williams album on Carnival. It was dark now, the road was empty, and I needed my high beams. Hype Williams was terrifying:

Listened to Salem's 'King Night' after, but that seemed to be trying a little too hard. There's a dedicated 'Witch House' promoter at Killed In Cars which lends it credibility but I can't see much life left in that horse.

What worked a lot better was Portable's 'This Life of Illusion' / 'Find Me'. I featured his more recent single 'Inside Your Mind' here, but the more Portable we hear the better:

That brought me closer to home, traveling on my favourite stretch of Melbourne road the Citylink, particularly this curved bridge:

... where I listened to this:

Rather bogan of me, but there's nothing like the night, techno and cars.

Hitler House

2011-03-31T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is surely doing the rounds but is hilarious, especially the roof-hair. It would be good to see it animated to one of his speeches, with perhaps a crane next door doing "Heil!"

Dead and Alive

2011-03-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

Shameless self promotion, but heck, isn't that what blogging is all about? Anyhoop, I thought it time to mention my other blog Dead and Alive seeing as there's been recent activity on it, and there's unlikely to be any more a while. Dead and Alive was the name of a radio program I presented for London's Resonance FM, broadcast live 9-10.30pm every Friday from 2005-2008. We played classical music, mostly, and mostly contemporary music, interspersed with music of other genres, from country and western to easy listening to drones to techno, all largely pilfered from the shelves of my former employer Harold Moores Records. We also did live shows, DJing for Gabriel Prokofiev's Nonclassical events and No Signal concerts, supporting such artists as Tony Conrad, Richard Youngs and Fonal Records, and playing before such celebrities as Bjork(!).

Yeah, we rocked, but Dead and Alive officially died in 2008. I hear Resonance still air repeats from time to time, often on their night loop, so you might here us in London or on the interweb. I'm back of sorts in Melbourne doing graveyard shifts and sporadic shows for Triple R and keeping the Dead and Alive blog for all radio-related posts. To correspond to the demands of the longer, later hours the focus has shifted to include broader musical tastes, as highlighted on this blog, with a greater emphasis on electronics. Where possible I'll provide links to recordings of shows, with the 4 hour Graveyard of 25 March now posted here, with tracklist. It features music by Sun Ra, Oskar Sala, Kassem Mosse, Portable and a shitload more.

I'll be having a brief hiatus from radio while personal life revs up a few notches, but I'll try and keep these indulgent musings going. Resonance FM, Harold Moores Records, Nonclassical, No Signal, and Triple R are all wonderful institutions so please check them out, and community radio is truly life-enhancing so listen up.

Beethoven: String Quartets

2011-03-27T20:25:00.000-07:00

We've been spending most evenings with the telly turned off, reading, knitting and listening to music. What crafty sophisticates we are! Preference is usually for less demanding, lighter sounds, but last night Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik stabbed us both in the ear with its saccharine vapidity. We were eating chocolates at the time too, petit Viennese-esque bon-bons, the TV ad of which was surely soundtracked by Mozart. Beethoven's early string quartets seemed a suitable alternative, not too big a leap, enabling us to perceive the development between the two composers. After enjoying the first one so much (Op.18 No. 1) we decided to do the whole lot, DVD boxset style. So - to one or two quartets, or CDs, a night, anxiously awaiting the thematic development to come in the next work. 'Anxious' might be stretching it, but it should be interesting, providing a structure to our otherwise pleasantly ambling evenings.

They're played by Quartetto Italiano, from a box set on Phillips I scored gratis while at Wesley Classics. Recordings are from the sixties and seventies and sound great. I look forward to the wacky later ones, but the earlies are worth a listen, infinitely richer and more varied than Mozart's, but also more demanding, less pretty.

We heard two quartets, 1 and 2 from his first Opus 18 set. I enjoyed the first more than the second, whose jaunty melodies seemed rather trite and contrived after the more adventuorus contrasting lines of the first. Turns out the first was actually written second, but placed first after Beethoven's confidence in its execution. The second was written third, and the third first, so hisearliest one next.

I'll not bore you with a blow-by-blow account of how this adventure proceeds, but I do encourage others to try similar boxset expeditions. All too often they sit, prettily, on the shelves, dauntingly authoritorial, gathering dust. Get them out, read the dry, informative liner notes, and listen up!

Rytis Mazulis

2011-03-24T20:44:00.000-07:00

This won't be the last time ATTSWOH features Rytis Mazulis. Described as a 'superminimalist', this Lithuanian composer is responsible for some of the most exciting music currently produced. Mazulis works with canons, piling them atop one another until they shudder into your brain like a jackhammer. Check 'Clavier of Pure Reason' from his album of 'computer piano music', Twittering Machine:

Upon it's release I described Twittering Machine thus (from Grooves magazine):

Rytis Mazulis: Twittering Machine
Megadisc Classics MDC7809

Finding your way through the cascade of notes of Rytis Mazulis' "Twittering Machine" is like being caught blindfolded in a whirlpool, and as difficult as finding a white space on the pages of his scores. Labelled a "superminimalist", the Lithuanian composer uses repetition in a manner not dissimilar to pioneering minimalists Glass and Reich, but doesn't share their interest in melodic simplicity or phasing. Rather, Mazulis constructs wildly chaotic cells which only become more complex with each passing cycle. There is a symmetry to these revolutions, but it's fractured, with intervals broken into irrational micro-durations, making sense in the way chaos theory does.

"Twittering Machine" comes from the composer's early 'machinistic' period, applying regimented pulse, fast pace and repetition to medieval canonic forms (an ongoing fascination of Mazulis') with such intricacy and vigour that they are humanly impossible to perform. The four pieces here are electronic in that they are "performed" on/by a computer-piano ("Clavier of Pure Reason", for example, imagines a super-pianist with 48 hands), but electronics are merely a means to an end. The most obvious reference is Conlon Nancarrow and his player piano studies, only Mazulis' work is much more visceral and jagged and, being played on a modern disklavier piano, offers a richer, more resonant sound. The opening movement of the two part "Twittering Machine" contains the disc's most gripping riff, an almost hummable tune of dissonant zig-zagging notes which, after numerous cycles, sticks in the brain like a fishhook. Part II splits a Nancarrow saloon rag into multiple conflicting streams, a clumsy bass line thumped out with fists contrasting with families of fireflies dancing on the high notes. Snatches of tangible melody are heard briefly in "Ex Una Voce" only to be quickly subsumed in chords so thick they become blurred. The final, 20 minute "Hanon Virtualis" sets up continually expanding rows of ascending scales, piling canon upon canon until every note on the keyboard is violently and simultaneously struck. This is what being clubbed to death by 88 small padded hammers must feel like - some of the most powerful music I've heard in years.

The Belgian Megadisc Classics label are responsible for most of his releases, and I'm anxious to hear his new one, Musica Falsa, for the solo flute of Manuel Zurria.

All Mazulis' albums are outstanding, buy them all here.

Portable: Inside Your Mind

2011-03-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

This isn't brand new but it is phenomenal, Alan "Portable" Abrahams' latest on Karat. He borrows liberally from vintage Chicago and Detroit but the result is utterly his own. I played this at my brother's bucks party last weekend as it soundtracked a naughty show on a pleasure boat, suitably dirty music for cheap and depraved displays of flesh. He's been on fire for a while now, but this takes the cake:

His remix of Efdemin's 'Nighttrain' aint' no slouch either:

... and I remain hooked on this by his now-interchangeable Bodycode alias. There's something so bleak and yearning in his delivery:

Buy the vinyl here or check the Free Music links to the right for samples.

Geoff Dyer: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

2011-03-16T21:14:00.000-07:00

Finished this the other week, the first half of which I liked much more than the second, which read like a blow-by-blow exotic travelogue of first person narrator in the wilds of Varanasi. Crazy place, sure, but the cocaine-fuelled jaunts through the Venice Bienalle of the first part was much more enjoyable. Even here though it grates, Dyer clearly critiquing the lead character's lucky spree of sex, drugs and culture through the highbrow artworld, but he pulled his punches, and the refusal to resolve was irritating. Any references to Mann's book I missed, surely it was full of them, along with bridges between the two stories. Oh well, I applaud the adventurousness, but, like his earlier Paris Trance, I find his blokey style creates a feeling that you are reading a light airport yarn of the Best a Man Can Get variety.

Prosumer: Panorama Bar 03

2011-03-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

Heard a promo of Prosumer's Panoramabar 3 mix this morning, and it's a doozy. He's always been fond of bleeps but this is properly bursting with neon analogue globules, particularly through the latter half. Mix-wise it's full of quick transitions, more a live party style mix than your standard carefully crafted dinner party set, but with such a well chosen selection of tracks it works very well. I'd opt for this approach any day, and hopefully it might inspire a few others to loosen up a bit and listen closer to the music.

What to look out for will be the accompanying 12" of exclusives. These include Steffi's stunning opener 'Sadness' and a slew of killers by mystery artists Soundso, Sound Store, and T.S.O.S., surely involving Prosumer himself in there somewhere? It's as fine a celebration of his style of house - sharp, sexy and FUN - as one could imagine, surpassing the high quality casts and live sets out there, and one of the most entertaining mixes I've heard in a long while.

Read a mini interview with Prosumer for RA here.

Check Prosumer's excellent mix for mnmlssgs here.

Buy it here in May.

Mrs Dalloway

2011-03-03T20:46:00.000-08:00

Finished Mrs Dalloway this morning, impressed with Woolf's knack for internal monologue (what she's justly praised for) and her flight from character to character. The unstable Septimus Smith was a particular highlight.

My copy was a very well-worn paperback by Panther Books, with The Harlequin Hat , a portrait by William Strang, on the cover. The wearer of said hat bears an uncanny Woolf/Dalloway resmblance, an obvious choice for the cover then, but I've been unable to find reference to the work, or the edition, anywhere. What became of Panther Books, and this edition?

One of the great things about secondhand books, and records, is imagining their past lives. The back cover of my copy of Mrs Dalloway reveals Panther to have an impressive oevre - John Barth, Leonard Cohen, Kerouac, Vonnegut, Kingsley Amis, Lessing - selling for between 25p-60p, and their cover art is impressive. Here's their take on Barthes and Ballard, fit for the hauntologists:

Granta Book of the American Short Story Volume 1

2011-03-02T17:10:00.000-08:00

After finishing up with the dense misanthropy of Bernhard's Correction I was after something a little... lighter, so figured the straightforward narrative simplicity of the Carver-esque short story would be just the ticket. The praise heaped upon Richard Ford and his curating efforts, and the attractive hardcover edition of his first Granta anthology sitting on the shelf, lured me in but, especially after Bernhard, these pithy tales of suburban ennui seemed flimsy and self-absorbed.

I read three stories before giving it up (for Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway) and even the best of them managed only to be mildly diverting. That was John Cheever's "O City of Broken Dreams", about a family of bumpkins lured to New York by self-serving city slickers. The story: War veteran / bus driving amateur playwright Evart promised opportunities from big apple agent passing through the boondocks, impressed with first scene of his debut play. Wife and daughter initially dazzled by urban glamour, husband sleepless with writers block, bumpkins ridiculed, return to boondocks. This arc replayed itself in varied forms in the three tales I read.

Seems I'm not the only one disappointed:

I knew what to expect when I read the title and first two paragraphs of "O City of Broken Dreams." It's a nicely constructed story but I feel like I've read it before, though I haven't. I wasn't expecting Mama Finelli to show up at the end, but she seemed almost superfluous, as Evart's story is destined to be at least somewhat tragic from the title onward. Maybe its just Cheever's tone, but it seems like he doesn't want the reader to sympathize fully with gullible ol' Evarts' plight--he seems more like a sketch than a fully realized character.

I'm not sure why I expected anything different. I'd been unable to finish Ford's The Sportswriter when I tried reading it years ago, his brand of minimalist realism offering nothing of interest, apart from an awareness that I have no interest in minimalist realism. The meticulous construction present in Ford's writing, and in the writing he champions in his anthologies, is so tight as to be constricting, didactic, leaving no room for thought outside of the scenes established. Zadie Smith eloquently critiqued the vapidity of this style of writing and championed modernist experimentalism in the NYRB.

I'm still attracted by something in Ford's Bascombe trilogy, the idea of following Everyman USA through the travails of middle-aged middle-class melancholia, the covers of the later volumes Independence Day and Lay of the Land, but doubt I'll get to them. Let me know if I'm missing something.

Reviews

2011-03-01T15:48:00.000-08:00

These are the latest up at Cyclic:

Earl Brown: Synergy (Hat Hut)
Restless aleatoric chamber music.

Piipstjilling: Wurdskrieme (Experimedia)
The digital precisionism of Machinefabriek with added guitar crackle and spoken word.

Pierre Boulez / John Cage: Structures / Music for Piano (Hat Hut)
Chaotic machine music played by talented humans.

Stephan Mathieu: Remain (Line)
Slowly evolving 60 minute drone.

Nicolas Bernier: Courant Air (Ahornfelder)
Pedestrian guitar-electronics combo.

Markus Reuter: Todmorden 513 (Hyperfunction)
This was the surprise hit of recent times, gorgeous passages of sustained tones from a variety of instruments and electronics, shifting and overlapping according to pulsed algorithmic design, like a more regimented Morton Feldman. A single hour-long piece, perfect for lying prone and letting the changes wash over you. Check the first movement below.

More from the always impressive Hat Hut, and an intriguing return from Japanese anti-musician Koji Asano, soon...

Ligeti Etudes

2011-02-28T16:48:00.000-08:00

There's a number of good videos of Ligeti Etude performances but this is one of the more exciting, Ching-Yun Hu playing the No. 10, "Der Zauberlehrling". Ligeti was concerned with the tactile nature of piano playing, taking this well beyond the fingers into a forced whole-body dance, brilliantly demonstrated by Ching-Yun here.

Pierre Laurent-Aimard's performance of the second featured here, the "Blockierte Tasten", shows this tactile obsession more closely, the fingers of one hand forced to dampen keys while those of the other dance madly over and around. The gentle caress of flesh on key here is almost erotic.

For the Brahmsian romantic Ligeti look at Boris Feiner's take on the Etude No. 6 "Autumn in Warsaw". He even looks like Brahms with his to-and-fro sway.