archives

[ February 9, 2008 / bookmark ]

field notes / Quote of the Week: Mungiu’s Realism

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu on the absence of music in his recent film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days:

“I don’t create emotion with music or closeups, and I don’t make the rhythm from the editing.”
The film has …

[ February 8, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Half-hour Robert Henke MP3

It may be my imagination, but it seems that with each new “Free Track of the Month” that Robert Henke posts at his website, his descriptive abilities get stronger, more precise, and more illuminating. The latest download is an uncut …

[ February 7, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Early 1970s India Field-Recording MP3s

The great wired-world guru Marshall McLuhan commented that artists are the antennae of the human race. That is perhaps nowhere as close to literally true as with artists who use radio and field recordings in their art, and the phrase …

[ February 6, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / MP3 of “Wordless Music” from Cepia

A live half-hour Cepia set recorded at the Wordless Music Series in Manhattan back on November 28, 2007, is true to its name — not the “wordless” part, because in fact voices are heard low down in the mix, but …

[ February 5, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / MP3s Damaged by Sega Genesis

In the world of 8bit music there are retro tunes and there are reanimated tunes.

Retro tunes are newly recorded pop melodies that sound like they’d been programmed toward the end of the Carter …

[ February 4, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / Larry Johnson Gets Vozme MP3 Religion

A week ago, I posted an MP3 I’d created in a matter of seconds at vozme.com, a free service that takes any text and transforms it into an audio file (disquiet.com). Shortly thereafter I received an email from …

[ February 3, 2008 / bookmark ]

the crate / Heavy Rotation: Lou Reed’s Zen Machine, Snöleoparden’s Child’s Play, a sci-fi reprieve, more

What I’ve been most focused on, listening-wise, this past week:

(1) White Noise, Yoga Heat: The CD showed up in the mail late last year, and on first appearance it seemed like a prank: …

[ February 2, 2008 / bookmark ]

field notes / Quote of the Week: Kitano’s Dragonflies

From the opening story in the book Boy (Vertical), the newly published collection by Takeshi Kitano, who is best known in the United States as a filmmaker (Sonatine, Fireworks/Hana-Bi, Zatoichi):
Soft sunlight was pouring in through the classroom windows and …

[ February 1, 2008 / bookmark ]

downstream / James Tenney Guitar MP3

It’s hard to keep track of the ever-expanding catalog at ubu.com, but among its “Recent Additions” is a slew of old Tellus cassette compilations. Tellus number 14, issued in 1986, was focused on just intonation and included recorded work …