Quick Links and News: (1) The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum will exhibit AudioFiles, with work by Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Christian Marclay and Stephen Vitiello from September 9 through October 21 (usfcam.usf.edu). … (2) A woodpecker has been tentatively removed from the extinction list, thanks to analysis of field recordings taken in Arkansas (link, via boingboing.net). … (3) An overview of music-related activities at this year’s Burning Man, which starts tomorrow and runs through September 5 (via createdigitalmusic.com); (4) also via createdigitalmusic.com, using a railroad controller as a music interface. … (5) Experimental interface that recognizes sound waves inherent in specific objects (intriguing but not entirely clear, via gizmodo.com, Module Records). … (6) Jon Brion (Punch-Drunk Love) is still attached to score Paul Thomas Anderson‘s adaptation of Upton Sinclair‘s novel Oil!, but the film is now listed on IMDB.com as There Will Be Blood. … (7) A movie reviewer in the Framingham Tab (from Framingham, Massachusetts) used the phrase “visual music” to describe Wong Kar Wai‘s newest film, 2046 (link). … (8) Six days after he passed away, still no search return for composer Luc Ferrari, an early proponent of musique concrete, at news.google.com.
… Good Reads: (1) A Seattle Times overview of the sound art at this year’s Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle (link); among the participants are composers Janice Giteck, Marina Rosenfeld, Steve Roden, Stephen Vitiello and others. The festival runs from September 2 through 5 (bumbershoot.org). … (2) This is about a month old, but there’s a solid interview with sludge-metal king Dylan Carlson of the band Earth in the Seattle Weekly, noting a recent remix album with contributions from Jim O’Rourke, Justin Broadrick, Autechre and others (link). … (3) From August 25, the New York Times on a massive performance work, titled Patria, by sound ecologist and composer R. Murray Schafer (link). … (4) Also from the New York Times, a review of a performance of Terry Riley‘s In C that opted to drop the trademark “repeating C”: “That decision, though it made the piece sound slightly naked at first, allowed for an extra measure of fluidity in this already free-flowing score” (link).
… Select New Releases: (1) Library Tapes‘ Alone in the Bright Lights of a Shattered Life (Resonant) uses the piano as a starting off point for moody instrumental experimentation. … (2) DMX Krew‘s Wave arrives on Aphex Twin’s label (Rephlex). … (3) Rapper-producer Kanye West enlisted Jon Brion‘s assistance on Late Registration (Def Jam); expect plenty of instrumental 12″s. … (4) One-time rave regular BT scored Stealth (Varese Sarabande). … Also, (5) noise-meister DJ Scotch Egg‘s KFC Core (ADAADAT), (6) Sovacusa‘s Centrepoint (Expanding) and (7) Arvo Part‘s Lamentate (ECM) with the Hilliard Ensemble, Andrey Boreyko conducting SWR Radio-sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, and pianist Alexei Lubimov.
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) I’ve spent much of the past week trolling for audio in the growing repository of the Freesound project, freesound.iua.upf.edu, though as of this writing the web link seems to be dead. … (2) The CD that accompanies Katharine Norman‘s self-admittedly “quirky” book about sound as art, Sounding Art (Ashgate), includes tracks by Terre Thaemlitz, Paul Lansky, Francisco Lopez, Francis Dhomont and Norman herself, among others.
… Quote of the Week: Robert Moog, quoted posthumously in the Los Angeles Times (link), speaking of his namesake invention: “One of the many things you could do was imitate vocal sounds — make it go ‘Weeoooooww.’ That really upset [people]. The reaction was a bit like that of primitive cultures believing cameras could catch your soul.”
PS: This post initially had an account of the passing of film composer Elmer Bernstein, which apparently happened a year ago. Sorry for my error.