Score is a new album collecting background music by someone who has recently been pursuing a spot in the foreground. It’s a retrospective compilation by Herbert (born Matthew Herbert and aka Doctor Rockit) of pieces he’s written over the years for film, cues of churning, introspective textures by someone whose modus operandi of late has [...]
Quick Links, News and Good Reads: (1) In the early 1960s, Yoko Ono was an interpreter for Japanese novelist Kobo Abe (Box Man, Woman in the Dunes), translator Donald Keene recounts in his ongoing memoir in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper (yomiuri.co.jp). Ono’s new album, Yes, I’m a Witch (Astralwerks), is due out this Tuesday, February [...]
Quick Links, News and Good Reads: (1) Excellent interview with soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone, ever cantankerous and reticent to share (guardian.co.uk), though he does take the time to (advisedly) criticize Hollywood’s distinction between composing and arranging: “In the history of music, composition is instrumentation.” … (2) A review of a solo show by William Anastasi [...]
Quick Links, News and Good Reads: (1) Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” has been posted for free download by the BBC as part of (yeah, you guessed it) a remix contest. The winning track, to be selected by Reich, will appear on a Nonesuch release, along with remixes by Four Tet and Alex Smoke. [...]
Quick Links, News and Good Reads: (1) Just closed at the Migros Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, the exhibit “While Interwoven Echoes Drip into a Hybrid Body: an Exhibition about Sound Performance and Sculpture,” curated by Heike Munder and Raphael Gygax, and featuring work by Banks Violette, Dave Allen, Mileece*, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Peter Coffin, Seb [...]
Thomas Dolby has posted on his blog a funky nugget (”Groksploitation,” MP3), a collaboration with JJ Abrams, who’s contributed to the music of his own productions, including the TV shows Lost and Alias and the new Mission Impossible film, M:I-3. It’s in the middle of M:I-3 that this little Dolby-Abrams team-up appears. Explains Dolby, “While [...]
It was billed as “Philip Glass — In Conversation with Robert Osserman,” but as they say in the late-night TV commercials, “Wait, that’s not all!”
Glass was in San Francisco this past weekend with his ensemble for live performances on three consecutive nights of what’s come to be known as the “Qatsi Trilogy”: the three movies [...]
This generally un-musical “meme” has been jumping from site to site. I was “tagged” by my friend Andrew (andrewjaffe.net).
Four jobs I’ve had:
laundry room attendant at summer camp
office manager at graphic design firm
senior editor at Tower Records Pulse! magazine
editorial director, music, at citysearch.com
Four movies I can watch over and over:
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Planet of the Apes
Playtime
The [...]
Quick Links, News and Good Reads: (1) Apparently this (link) is a half-hour video of the duo FM3 (Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian) playing chess with their Buddha Machines at the De Appel museum of contemporary art in Amsterdam, November 2005 (via chaile.org). The sound quality isn’t great, but eventually people shush and the music [...]