Month: August 2008

15 x 3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Via a nudge from Tim Prebble’s substation.co.nz:

1. What are the last 3 things you purchased? Cab fare home. Dinner. Lunch. 2. What are the last 3 songs you downloaded? Tracks from Miles from India, Kosma’s New Aspects, and Earth’s The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull (all from emusic.com). 3. Where were the last 3 places you visited? New York. Boston. Portland. 4. What are your 3 favorite movies? Dawn of the Dead. Planet of the Apes. Playtime. 5. What are your 3 favorite possessions? Fujitsu Lifebook P1510D. Original comic art by David Lasky. Robot painting on discarded window pane by Doolittle. 6. What 3 things can you not live without? Iced black coffee. Spicy food. Fujitsu Lifebook P1510D. 7. What would be your 3 wishes? More time. Better organization. More wishes. 8. What are 3 things you have not done yet? Visited Berlin, Hong Kong, or Minneapolis. 9. What are your 3 favorite dishes? Chinese tan tan men. Greek avgolemono soup. Thai gai kaprow. 10. What 3 celebrities/heroes would you want to hang out with the most? Kobo Abe. Teo Macero. Dennis Potter. 11. Name 3 things that freak you out. Aggressive driving. Myopic nationalism. Brand self-identification. 12. If you could describe yourself in 3 words, what would they be? Living. In. California. 13. Name 3 unusual things you are good at. Writing small. Typing fast. Listening to noise. 14. What are 3 things you are currently coveting? More space. Visiting David Byrne’s “Playing the Building” exhibit in Manhattan. Whatever the successor to the Fujitsu LifeBook P1620 turns out to be. 15. What 3 bloggers would you like tag? Brian Biggs (mrbiggs.com). Roddy Schrock (fundamentallysound.org). Jeffrey Stock (fooditude.com).

Images of the Week: Olympic Mettle

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Best known previously in the west for visual extravangazas in the form of such films as Hero and Raise the Red Lantern, director Zhang Yimou oversaw the 2008 Olympics August 8 opening ceremony, a spectacle with a heavy emphasis on light and sound — and arguably the world’s largest site-specific multimedia art installation.

The literal fireworks by no means overshadowed the figurative ones, notably the initial 60-second countdown, as pictured in the five pictures immediately below. Some 2008 percussionists battered on drums that emitted light, which in turn allowed them to, in synchronization that was a theme for the entire evening, form patterns of Arabic numerals and Chinese characters.

A later sequence showed a rectangular mass of oversized Chinese moveable-type characters (see below) that created an intersection between ancient and modern information technology. While the individual objects signified the long history of invention in the East, each character also served as a pixel in a grid that, like the 60-second-countdown drum-lights, could be choreographed to depict images, shapes and movement.

(Images courtesy of shropshirestar.com, nzherald.co.nz, espn.go.com/olympics, en.beijing2008.cn, and nytimes.com.)

Quote of the Week: That’s Coldplay

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is Sasha Frere-Jones of the New Yorker (issue dated August 4) describing the guitar techniques and effect in common between U2 and Coldplay:

chiming, small chords played high on the neck and repeated, over and over, pushing the song away from the divisions of song form and closer to the ecstasy of the drone (when it works)

Full piece at newyorker.com.

Future Folk MP3 from David (Ghosts and Strings) Molina

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Of the three songs that make up David Molina‘s Canciones del Futuro EP (recorded under the name Ghosts and Strings), two feature prominent vocals, which as is so often the case with songs end up relegating the instrumental material to the role of mere backing tracks. That’s unfortunate, because Molina has a way with murky electronic textures. The welcome exception here is the opening piece, “Heights,” which has some verbal material buried in the mix but emphasizes the electro-pneumatic pulse that serves as a downbeat, the hovering whirl of tone that is the piece’s substance, and in place of a vocal a searing yet understated woodwind line that commands the listener’s attention (MP3).  That woodwind matches the voice heard early in the piece, where Molina just intones some syllables with an emphasis on sound rather than on lyrics. There is some earnest spoken-word material toward the close of “Heights,” but it’s purposefully muddied, stuck amid the music rather than above it. The song is further enhanced by a slow guitar line, and Molina achieves something special when he occasionally tweaks the woodwind, just briefly, into a glorious feedback-laden moment of electronic noise. More info at the website of the releasing netlabel, restingbell.net.

Romantic Electroplankton MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Newfangled, electronically based musical instruments like the Tenori-On, the Monome, and the Nintendo DS port of a popular Korg synthesizer aren’t just for so-called non-musicians. Take Electroplankton, the most restricted, or creatively circumscribed, of this batch. A sound toy (or audio game) built on the Nintendo DS platform, its fairytale interface is a child-friendly aquarium of music-emitting fish. (See image at left for a glimpse of one of its many environments.) But that hasn’t kept trained musicians from taking a dip in the Electroplankton pool. Italian pianist Fabio Ranghiero has posted a recording of an Electroplankton-derived composition at his musicalblog2.blogspot.com website (“Whiteplankton,” MP3). The track starts off with tones familiar to anyone who’s used the DS stylus to direct melodic fragments into swirling, gently pulsing compositions. Ranghiero takes it a step further, layering the material into what approaches a Romantic, in the classical sense of the world, intensity, suggesting not only that the software is good for making music, but that it may be complicated enough to allow for virtuosity.