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Key Topics: #audio-games #copyleft #comics
There must be a third round coming. These things come in threes, don’t they, like celebrity deaths and blockbuster movie franchises? The “thing” in this case is the mass popularity of — the sudden mass consciousness of — what, generally speaking, is a matter of sonic composition relegated deep in left field, in the outer [...]
If merely the list of ingredients entices you, then know in advance that “Glitch” by Daniel Wohl does not fall short, does not disappoint, and if anything is more than the sum of its equally spare and excellent parts. Those ingredients are the musical elements “string quartet” and “electronics,” plus the tantalizing “and” placed in [...]
Saiph‘s Diffusion limns that space where electronic drone and classical orchestration meet. There is no doubt, in “Einsames Element” (MP3), that those are, indeed, tremulous strings amid the woodsy percussion, even if the strings are playing a role more likely to be handed to a synthesizer these days. And even on repeat listen, the knowledge [...]
The recent feature story on John Lurie published in the New Yorker (“Sleeping with Weapons,” newyorker.com) reads like the plot to what could be a recent-vintage Paul Auster novel. It’s the tale of an aging Manhattanite artist who retreats to the desert, fleeing perceived fears. He is as vain as he is talented, and as [...]
No one told me Red was a comedy. I caught the play-about-Mark-Rothko yesterday on Broadway, the matinee performance. It’s a two-person show. There’s Rothko, performed with late-1950s urbanite-Manhattan sturm’n’drang self-hating self-aggrandizing ebullience by the irrepressible Alfred Molina, and there is his studio assistant, Ken, played by Eddie Redmayne with just the right amount of ingenue [...]
Another season, another puzzle. Each year when the San Francisco Symphony announces its forthcoming concert schedule, my conviction is reinforced: among the many reasons that classical music has trouble enticing new listeners is because the promotional materials associated with it speak primarily to those who are already fluent in the culture of the orchestra, not [...]
Adam Williams plays piano and Leonardo Rosado provides the electronics, and on their collaborative album, Take This Longing, recorded under the combined name Subterminal, it’s difficult to imagine either without the other. There are moments when field recordings of water lap, as if against Williams’ piano itself. And there are moments when the light beeping [...]