Ilya Monosov‘s “Music for Electronics and Hurdy Gurdy (2)” will infuriate nearby dogs and intrigue anyone with the patience and concentration to weather its eight and a half minutes, as it builds steadily from a hum to a screech. It begins with sounds pitched high enough to be mistaken for fluorescent lightbulb interference. When the hurdy gurdy makes its presence known, it’s not with the familiar folksiness of the Renaissance Faire favorite, but with rough scrapings that sound like mice are tunneling their way out of your speaker cabinets. Eventually that scraping reveals itself as a harrowingly bowed solo, a gritty howl that occasionally pitches up in the range of that intensely quiet sine wave, the electronic and the acoustic merging in the audiological stratosphere. As intense as some druidic funeral cry, “Music for Electronics and Hurdy Gurdy (2)” is the lead track from Monosov’s Architectures on Air and Other Works, recently released on Elevator Bath label, which has made the piece available as a free promotional download (MP3). More info at elevatorbath.com.
Month: July 2005
Greg Davis Dead Mix MP3
Looking for some good picnic music on the Fourth of July? Well, here you go. Greg Davis (of the folktronic Arbor and Curling Pond Woods albums on Carpark Records, and the artfully drowsy drone-minimalism of Somnia on Kranky) has posted an hour-long melange of 17 Grateful Dead performances in the podcast section of the soundarc.net site. Call it Greg’s Picks. The set emphasizes, as he puts it, “the weirder, more psychedelic side of the grateful dead at the same time supplying you with the catchy classics.” The mix (MP3) opens with inchoate static, culled from a live recording at the Fillmore West in 1968, before crossfading into the catchy “China Cat,” off the Aozomozoa album. Davis’ set moves back and forth accordingly, between recognizable folk-rock favorites and sonic experimentation that reminds you whence the Dead came, from the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid- to late 1960s, when social and cultural experimentation was peaking (as, of course, were its participants).
Hearing all the sonic collages and freeform sound experimentation here puts those noodling, moebius-strip guitar solos in perspective. And when “Uncle John’s Band” fades into what is, apparently, a Merry Prankster sound collage, you know what Jerry Garcia means when he sings, “How does this song go?” If you want to better appreciate Dead bassist Phil Lesh’s anecdotes about Luciano Berio, Steve Reich and the San Francisco Mime Troupe from his recent autobiography (Searching for the Sound), not to mention Sonic Youth member Jim O’Rourke’s association with alt-country group Wilco, or Davis’ own adaptation of Incredible String Band and Beach Boys tunes on Curling Pond Woods, this extended Dead mix will be your spirit guide.
There may not be a rock band, especially one that came out of the late-1960s, whose fame is so counterbalanced by their relative absence from FM radio more than the Grateful Dead. Perhaps podcasting will prove to be their appropriate broadcast medium. Davis’ soundarc.net post helpfully includes a detailed setlist (link). Happy holiday.
Tangents (NIN, synaesthesia, Common)
Quick Links: (1) Industrial act Nine Inch Nails has put another of the songs off its new album, With Teeth, up for public re-construction. NIN’s Trent Reznor had previously made “The Hand That Feeds” available as a series of raw production files for Apple’s GarageBand software. Now the song “Only” is available as part of a remix contest, sponsored by acidplanet.com and myspace.com. While GarageBand was Apple-only, the new contest also makes the song available in the Pro Tools, Sony Acid Xpress and Ableton Live formats. Reznor wrote on his website, “there is no agenda here other than for you to explore, experiment, and have fun with it. depending on how this goes we may construct a more formal community for remix postings and/or possibly some sort of ‘official’ endorsement by means of an EP or something.” Download the files here. Meanwhile, a question for philosophers: Since Robert Henke (aka Monolake) is one of Ableton’s software engineers, does that make any Ableton remix of “Only” a Monolake co-production? … (2) Video of a “physically programmable drum machine,” created by Andy Huntington (link), and (3) details on the prototype of a CD package, designed by Matthew Falla, that includes tools to remix the enclosed sounds (link), both via engadget.com. … (4) Tips on how to listen to your computer’s data (link): “The more cluttered the data in your drive is, the more interesting the sound is,” via makezine.com.
… Good Reads: (1 – 4) The “Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900” exhibit, previously at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (click here to read the Disquiet.com review), has moved to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. The New York Times has a lengthy review, “With Music for the Eye and Colors for the Ear” (July 1), and the Washington Post has published three: “‘Visual Music’s’ Colorful Cacophony” (July 1), “Music to Your Eyes” (June 23) and “A Visionary Attempt to Catch Sight of Sound” (June 23).
… Select New Releases: A relatively slow week, perhaps due to the Fourth of July break. (1) Rapper-producer Missy Elliott‘s The Cookbook (Atlantic) means plenty of new instrumentals to dig for. … (2) Arch sentimentalist Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks, A Very Long Engagement) scored the new horror flick, Dark Water (the CD’s on Hollywood). It’s directed by Walter Salles, whose The Motorcycle Diaries featured an electro-acoustic score by Gustavo Santaolalla (who’s at work on Ang Lee’s forthcoming Brokeback Mountain).
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Common’s “The Food (Instrumental),” a Kanye West production off the rapper’s recent Be (Geffen), offers up a nostalgic, low-key mix: a bit of chordal piano, edited to fit within the confines of a steady beat. No schmaltz, no sheen, and certainly no irony (this is Common we’re talking about, perhaps as close as hip-hop has to a “conscious rap” star, “conscious” meaning “socially conscious”). The album version was recorded live with conflicted Comedy Central comic Dave Chappelle, but the 12″ has a studio rendition. If its coziness feels familiar, the track credits samples from the Chi-Lites‘ “I Never Had It So Good” and Sam Cooke‘s “Nothing Can Change This Love.” Did the “Food” piano part really originate in that Cooke song? If so, West is truly amazing, having shaved what started out sounding like country and western into bluesy shards of its former self. … (2) The hip-hop duo Platinum Pied Pipers consists of Saadiq and Waajeed, the latter of Slum Village, and while “Act Like You Know (Instrumental),” off their recent Triple P (Ubiquity), is undistinguished, just a muted heavy-metal guitar crunch played against light cascades of synths, the 12″ includes a strong left-field remix by Rich Medina, clipping the synths, if not yanking ’em entirely, in favor of push-button sci-fi touches and substantially hardened beats. It’s tremendous. (The 12″ also features a somewhat less distinct remix by Ge-ology.) And why didn’t they call it Quadruple A instead of Triple P? … (3) “This” may be as good as it gets. That is, “This,” the lead track on Brian Eno‘s new Another Day on Earth (Hannibal), surpasses everything that follows it. Another Day is Eno’s first full-length vocal outing since Wrong Way Up, recorded with John Cale, of the Velvet Underground, back in 1990. The album pretty much never bests that first cut, with its deeply intoned, loner of a vocal, its underbrush of percussive churn and its cautious grace. … (4) Marvin Ayres‘ Cellosphere, electric soundscapes built from strings, was originally released on Ritornell, a subsidiary of the Mille Plateaux label, and it’s back in print, this time on Burning Shed, plus it’s expanded from three cuts to four, with the additional, very heady, 10-minute “Sensory.” Fans of David Darling’s mid-period ECM recordings will find much to like here. (More info at marvinayres.com and burningshed.com.)
… Quote of the Week: Comic book creator Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta) recounts meeting Brian Eno at the studios of BBC Radio 4: “I was surprised when he insisted on polishing his own shoes just before we went on air. I pointed out that this was wireless and that nobody would notice, to which he replied by asking if I didn’t think that an impression of one’s dusty shoes could somehow be transmitted over radio? I was transfixed, and honestly had no response to this spontaneous Zen koan. What’s the sound of one shoe gathering dust?” From a “salute” by Moore to Eno in the July 2005 issue of Arthur magazine, which also featured an interview with Eno. Neither is online. More info on Arthur at arthurmag.com.
Eno’s Jacket
This is a household where DVDs are rented, on occasion, based not on the director, or actors, but the score’s composer. Usually it’s just to see the music in action, as it were — to witness, say, how Cliff Martinez’s contribution to the lesser thriller Wicker Park functioned (it abetted the stylized visuals, but certainly didn’t save the show), or whether David Holmes’ tracks in Code 46, an above-average dystopian sci-fi mystery, made sense in a future setting (they did). In both those cases, CDs of the music are (or, at least, were, as score CDs quickly go out of print) available commercially, but not every situation is as fortunate.
Brian Eno has, since the turn of the millennium, contributed full or partial scores, or pre-existing tracks, to at least a dozen movies (from Moulin Rouge! to Fear X) and television shows (Numbers), according to IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Database, and very little of that has been made available as a straight audio recording. So, if you want to hear his music for, say, The Jacket, the time-travel tale starring Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley, you pick up the DVD and witness Eno’s contribution in situ. Some DVDs offer, as a bonus feature, a score-only viewing, but The Jacket does not. So, you pop the DVD (released within weeks of Eno’s new pop album, Another Day on Earth) into your Netflix queue in order to check out the soundtrack cues.
The Jacket opens with a piano theme, reminiscent of Eno’s collaborations with Harold Budd, set against images of the first Gulf War. Familiar Eno found elements, such as Middle Eastern voices, come into play, and what follows fits well with the film’s overall sound design, which is often foregrounded to aid the director’s interest in disorientation. The Eno cues in the film range from hazy shades of digitalia to rhythmic loops that lend the scenes dramatic tension. At times, they mix particularly well with the external elements, such as in two scenes where the sound of approaching cars is lightly distorted. The Jacket soundtrack, by the way, includes a pre-existing track by Roger Eno (Brian’s brother), and another by one of its supporting actors, Brad Renfro. Also included, to cement the early-’90s period, is EMF’s pop hit “Unbelievable,” which Eno remixed for the Red Hot + Dance compilation. (Maybury’s best-known previous work is Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” music video, which he directed.)
Eno’s music doesn’t appear in films by chance. The Jacket was directed by John Maybury, whose Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon was scored by Eno contemporary Ryuichi Sakamoto. (In many ways, The Jacket resembles Jacob’s Ladder, another supernatural psych-ward drama, and one in which the visuals were based on Bacon paintings.) The Jacket was produced by Steven Soderbergh, who has favored electronic musicians in his scores, temp-tracked his directorial debut (sex, lies and videotape) to Eno songs, and included a segment of Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks in his Traffic. The same piece, “An Ending (Ascent),” later appeared in 28 Days Later, based on a screenplay by Alex Garland; The Beach, based on Garland’s novel of that name, featured original work by Eno. Beyond all of which, we can just wish and wait for Music for Films 3. View Eno’s IMDB.com filmography here.
Hungarian MP3 EP
The second track on the new Tigrics EP, Mint Egy Befejezono (Highpoint Lowlife), moves with some speed from a treated field recording of a train, with its locomotive rhythm, to something syrupy, in which mechanized drums keep slipping up, like a maudlin robot caretaker stuck in some glutinous murk (MP3). The whole set, six tracks in all, is a marvel of rhythmic ingenuity, from the hyper opening track (“He, Jelfej!”), which initially appears almost dismissible, just a blur of blippy colors, until its utter coherence, worthy of Underworld on a particularly good day, makes itself evident (MP3). “Aztan Varosokban Ebredtem” (MP3) may appear pure gauze in comparison with the EP’s more foot-forward entries, but it’s a metrical achievement nonetheless, especially how a woman’s voice, the rare vocal element in this otherwise all-digital affair, is edited to continuously move one syllable forward and two back. Vocals appear again, briefly, on “Kossuth Lajos Tca mix,” minced to blipvert-length beatboxing (MP3). Tigrics is the pseudonym for Robert Bereznyei, based out of Budapest, Hungary. Mint Egy Befejezono, the 14th download release from Highpoint, will be followed by a full-length album later this year. Get Mint Egy Befejezono as a download, for free, at highpointlowlife.com.