Month: August 2007

Tangents (Basie, Tenori-On, Triggerman)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Quote of the Week: “It is hard to leave the subject of Minimalism without mention of Count Basie, master of the art of leaving out.” That’s Bernard Holland in his entry as part of a roundup, last week, of the New York Times’ classical-music critics’ take on recorded milestones in minimalism (nytimes.com). The list of composers is repetitive enough (Reich, Adams, Glass, repeat) to constitute a minimalist piece of its own, though Poul Ruders, John Cage and Terry Riley get mentioned, too. But no Michael Nyman, no Janice Gitek, no Arvo Part, no La Monte Young.

News, Quick Links, Good Reads: David Byrne talks, on his blog, journal.davidbyrne.com, about the learning experience of composing his score for the TV series Big Love: “increasingly I wrote less overtly melodic pieces, and more pieces that could play as underscore and gently create a mood or add some tension without resorting to melodrama. I wrote tunes that were less busy and that tried not to draw attention to themselves.” … Business Week on Theodore Watson‘s interactive video designs that include a human-scale turntable (businessweek.com). More on Watson at his website (muonics.net) and on open-source code he’s working on with Zachary Lieberman (openframeworks.cc, thesystemis.com). … The Last.fm website has teamed with Yamaha to create a web hub for users of the Tenori-On, a musical instrument created by Toshio Iwai, also known for his Nintendo DS cartridge, Electroplankton. … The New Statesman covers sound art: “It helps that technology has finally caught up with the imagination of the artist” (newstatesman.com). … The Disquiet project Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet, which features a dozen remixes based on open-source samples from Brian Eno and David Byrne’s album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, is coming up on its year anniversary, and has been downloaded just shy of 5,000 times as of this writing (disquiet.com, archive.org). … Speaking of Eno, the Nokia 8800 Sirocco Edition has ringtones he composed (mobilebee.com, nokia.com). … The new issue (September/October 2007) of the great magazine Scratch (scratchmagazine.com) has a solid piece by Oliver Wang on the overlap between hip-hop and techno (Kanye West snatching from Daft Punk, Africa Bambaataa having built “Planet Rock” on a Kraftwerk foundationg). There’s also a lengthy history, by Andrew Noz, of the way a sample of single song, the Dragnet-themed “Drag Rap” (aka “Triggerman”), became the wellspring for an entire genre of Southern hip-hop; according to one tally, the Cash Money record label sampled the song 34 times on its first 19 albums. … R.I.P., concert-hall acoustician Russell Johnson (1923-2007), who is quoted in a 1998 interview as having said, “you have to work very carefully to get the silence right”(nytimes.com, latimes.com).

Score Keeper: Cliff Martinez (Solaris, Traffic) is on Vice, by director Raul Inglis. … Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream) is on Definitely, Maybe, from director Adam Brooks. … Michael Nyman (The Piano, Gattaca, countless Peter Greenaway productions) is on Genova by director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, Code 46). … Jeff Rona (the Traffic TV series) is on Jonna’s Body, Please Hold, by director Adam Bluming. … All via imdb.com.

Heavy Rotation: Kristin Miltner‘s recent album, Grains (Praemedia), is built largely from eviscerated samples of her voice, which is so melodious that even the most purposefully torturous processing can’t erase its inherent appeal. ”¦ At the website of the Getty Museum, getty.edu, there is a significant amount of streaming audio to complement its Evidence of Movement exhibit, a broad-ranging overview of performance-based art, which is on display through October 7, 2007; the “Close Radio” jukebox includes some 111 tracks, including material by Pauline Oliveros and Fluxus figure Allan Kaprow, all drawn from KPFK radio broadcasts between 1976 and 1979. (Via the blog of Jeff LeVine, jefflevine.blogspot.com.) … The Disquiet Downstream entry of the week is Pe Lang‘s single, half-hour drone, available from the Term netlabel (MP3, 12k.com/term, disquiet.com).

Man Ray’s Metronome, Digital War Shirt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Sound art artifacts at the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey (montclairartmuseum.org):

1. Man Ray‘s “Objet Indestructible” (Indestructible Object), 1923/1965, is a metronome of lacquered black wood to which is affixed by paper clip a photo of the eye of Lee Miller. The museum wall text notes: “A music lover, Man Ray painted to the beat of the metronome,” adjusting his speed to its tempo. “He attached the eye to create the illusion of an audience. … Originally titling his work ‘Object to Be Destroyed,’ Man Ray obeyed this command in 1923 by smashing it when he found the silence of the now static metronome unbearable.”

2. Bently Spang‘s “Modern Warrior Series, War Shirt #3, The Great Divide,” 2006, is a contemporary take on Cheyenne garb. The war shirt, Spang explains in his artist statement, is traditionally decorated with symbols of the tribe’s history. It’s “a physical way of honoring and protecting … and speaks of the past, present and future all at the same time.” The piece is made from photographs, hemp, glass beads, wood, UV resistant plastic, compact flash card, metal plastic, reservation deer horn — along with compact discs and plastic CD case spacer rings.

Cello Drone MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The cello lends itself to ambient music, what with the instrument’s human scale, its inherent depth of sound, its deep self-reflecting resonance. It’s a fascinating instrument, physically imposing yet often relegated to the background, especially in most writing for string quartets. Ted Laderas is one of several musicians who employ technology in order to expand the cello’s range. Think also of Joan Jeanrenaud, David Darling and Hank Roberts, among others.

They do this not so much to bring the instrument into the foreground, as to make the most of that background space in which it is already so comfortable. Laderas has posted a live recording of what he calls the Oo-Ray, a drone-oriented solo-cello technique he’s developed, which produces vapor trails and prescient flash-forwards (MP3). He credits My Bloody Valentine’s so-called shoegazer mope for his electronicized worldview, but the end result is more space than pop, more stargazer than shoegazer.

More on Laderas at his website, 15people.net, where there’s a whole lot of video snippets and other evidence of the Oo-Ray’s potential — and, for that matter, of the cello’s. Also at myspace.com/ooraygun.

Cepia-tone MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A new album’s due out shortly from Cepia, titled Natura Morta, and the releasing label, Ghostly International, has made a full track, “Opening Parade” (MP3), available as a teaser. Cepia’s had two previous appearances in the Disquiet Downstream: back in February 2006 (disquiet.com) with “Hoarse,” which helped mark glitch’s transition from vision of technological unease to cozy background of the technophilic, and back in December of the year prior with a holiday-timed take on the Charlie Brown theme (disquiet.com).

This time around, Cepia — that is, Huntley Miller of Saint Paul, Minnesota — is pursuing a more bouncy and rhythmically playful mode. “Opening Parade” has a pretty steady beat, and a cute Casio-style melody, but somewhere in between the beats start to waver off the path, as soon too does the odd note in that disarmingly simple tune.

There’s an exclusive, digital-only single (name: “Brown”) currently for sale at bleep.com, which will have the Natura Morta album available on August 14 — the meat-space edition arrives 14 days later. More info on Cepia/Miller at ghostly.com, cepiamusic.com and myspace.com/cepia.

Swiss Drone MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The new entry at term (12k.com/term), the occasional netlabel for experimental music that’s a branch of musician Taylor Deuree’s 12k label, is a half-hour drone recorded just last month by Swiss musician Pe Lang. Drones are categorized more often by flavor than by structure. This one has, as its key ingredient, a static (as in noise, not as in stasis) texture that suggests either rain or a needle on vinyl (MP3). Of course, in an age as technologically mediated as ours, don’t both those possible interpretations have the same basic impact on the listener: a mix of romance and mild annoyance? The title of the piece, “Shellac,” tips the scales toward the surface noise of early analog recording technology. More info on Pe Lang at untitled-sound-objects.ch.