Month: January 2010

Field Recordings: Cooked & Raw (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Lasse-Marc Riek‘s latest field-recording set is a matter of the cooked and the raw. It contains two tracks, the first of them (“Juringels Warten”) a composition constructed from field recordings, and the second (“Astra Park”) an unretouched field recording. Titled Das Teilen Der Flügel, the mini-album includes liner notes that help single out the elements from which it is built. This is more of a concern for “Juringels Warten,” in part because of its composite nature, but also because, as it turns out, of the intention Riek had when making it: “themes of contact, wind, insects and snow.” The track is largely tumultuous. Following an initial quiet passage, it’s a rousing, chaotic affair, with turbulent noise, rattling percussion — like the sound of a small raft caught in a storm (MP3).

“Astra Park” is, despite being a straight field recording, no less stress-inducing. Though it is a record of birdsong, this is not the sort of tweeting that serves as a setting for a romantic day in the park. The birds are so thick that they almost drown out the passing traffic (MP3). These are, as Riek suggests in his note to the track, the sort of thing that Alfred Hitchcock had in mind when he came up with The Birds.

[audio:http://and-oar.org/audio/andp35/01_Lasse_Marc_Riek_juringels_warten.mp3|titles=”Juringels Warten”|artists=Lasse-Marc Riek]
[audio:http://and-oar.org/audio/andp35/02_Lasse_Marc_Riek_astra_park.mp3|titles=”Astra Park”|artists=Lasse-Marc Riek]

More information at and-oar.org. (Thanks to mrbiggs.com for the recommendation.)

Phillip Wilkerson’s Classical Ambient (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The ethereal washes of Phillip Wilkerson‘s recent album, Daybook, are what probably is summoned up in the minds of many people by the long since common — and, conversely, increasingly ambiguous — phrase “ambient music.” The four tracks on Daybook could have been composed at any point since the birth of the synthesizer, though the absence of melodic intent in them certainly marks them with an admirable spartan reserve generally lacking in the early, heady days of synthesis. Take “A Dream,” the album’s fourth and final track (MP3).

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/PhillipWilkerson-Daybook/4_a_dream_daybook_Phillip_Wilkerson.mp3|titles=”A Dream”|artists=Philp Wilkerson]

This is classical ambient music. Not classical as in string sections and movements and thematic development all deployed in standard notation. No, it’s classical as in dreamy sound that could just as easily melt into the background as command your attention. And it’s classical as in atmospheric to the point of invisibility, with a tonal quality that is just shy of clinical. And it’s that use of a clinical sound, a gossamer lightness virtually devoid of texture or inaccuracy, that distinguishes Daybook, because Wilkerson’s pieces posit a tension — a tension between the reflective intention of his music, and the steel-hard, if stiletto-thin, sounds with which that intention is committed.

Get the full set at bfwrecordings.com, the releasing netlabel, or archive.org, where the audio is housed. More on Wilkerson at phillipwilkerson.blogspot.com and phillipwilkerson.net.

Tangents: Oscarless Eno, New Autechre, Symphonic Nortec

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Been awhile since the most recent Disquiet.com overview of notable stories elsewhere on the web. He’s a quick rundown, to bridge the gap from 2009 to 2010:

● Why Brian Eno‘s score to Peter Jackson‘s The Lovely Bones is reportedly not eligible for an Oscar (thewrap.com, via moviescoremagazine.com).

● Thanks to Google Translate, an interview with composer Cliff Martinez (commeaucinema.com).

● Great list of movie scores to look forward to in 2010, including Howard Shore‘s Edge of Darkness, Daft Punk‘s Tron Legacy (which we’ve been hearing about for so long you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s already come and gone), and Elliot Goldenthal‘s The Tempest (moviescoremagazine.com).

● Promising development for gadget and software hackers: French court “dismissed a lawsuit filed by Nintendo over the use of flash carts on the DS” (engadget.com).

● Software that emulates vintage 1950s music synthesizers (synthtopia.com, via contemplation.archipel.cc).

● Tom Moody continues the discussion about the proliferation of music apps, referencing something I’d noted about user-interface challenges in casual-gaming applications (tommoody.us, re: disquiet.com).

● Instructions on how to bend an existing RjDj scene to your wills (makezine.com), plus a fun video explaining the RjDj iPhone/Touch software, a great bit of propaganda if you want to introduce people to it (the-palm-sound.blogspot.com). Though before you get too excited at the prospect, note that the instructions look like this:

● On February 2, be sure to check out jasonsloan.com/1444, Jason Sloan‘s Cageian, day-long composition.

● William Gurstelle introduces the Atlantic‘s audience to the Arduino, the DIY artist’s “physical computer” of choice (theatlantic.com); also from the Atlantic (same issue), how composer David Dunn and colleagues might fighting insect infestation (theatlantic.com).

● Video footage of the Orchestrion, backing automaton music machine on what is certainly the Pat Metheny album I’ve looked forward to more than any other in (yow) a quarter century — that is, since his 1985 collaboration with Ornette Coleman, Song X (createdigitalmusic.com).

● Sneak peek at the upcoming Autechre album, Oversteps, due out March 22 (package design by Designer Republic). Definitely the most visually striking Autechre album since their Hafler Trio collaboration, æ³o & h³æ (bleep.com).

● Cool little USB hub that looks like a tape cassette (gizmodo.com):

● “How has the Internet changed the way you think?” Among those to offer answers to the World Question 2009: Tony Conrad, Olafur Eliasson, Brian Eno, and Ai Weiei (edge.org).

● Nortec Collective‘s Bostich and Fussible on teaming with an orchestra (latimes.com).

● Keen visual of the “Visual History of Loudness” (mediateletipos.net):

● The magazine Vice reports that dismissing the skill required to DJ brought in more negative comments than just about anything else it’s ever published (viceland.com).

● Growing database of who’s sampled whom: whosampled.com.

● The Significant Objects project (in which mundane items are given meaning and, hence, value through storytelling) focuses its narratives on a music box (significantobjects.com) — speaking of which, really pleased to see two Disquiet Downstream entries made Significant Objects cofounder Rob Walker‘s list of songs he listened to most this year (murketing.com).

● Alan Rich‘s review of Terry Riley‘s In C from March 10, 1969, in New York magazine (books.google.com, via twitter.com/aworks).

● Yuki Suzuki‘s “White Noise Machine,” which calculates “the quantity of street noise and then generate the same amount of white noise” (designboom.com).

● A documentary I want to see badly, Trimpin: The Sound of Invention, by Peter Esmonde: trimpinmovie.com.

● The plusses and minuses of music in galleries and museums: “‘Am I alone in finding the word “soundscape” mildly terrifying?’ asked one critic” (entertainment.timesonline.co.uk).

Goin’ Back to Tropicália

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s near impossible that an art exhibit focused on Brazil would not have some sort of musical or otherwise sonic content, and the current show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco is no exception.

Titled When Lives Become Form: Contemporary Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present, the sprawling show takes for its poster a retouched photo of young (and almost comically well-endowed) Tropicália leader Caetano Veloso, his red cape and exaggerated smile making him look like an art superhero.

Key among the exhibited works is “Cabeça Acústica” (Acoustic Head), a 1996 object made from aluminum, rubber, and a single hinge by the artist Marepe, a Brazilian born in 1970. It is shown here:

The acoustic head is situated in the show below a framed photo of its employment in a performance, as shot by Marcondes Dourado, and made available courtesy of Galeria Luisa Strina in São Paulo, Brazil. The same photo appeared in another show, How Latitudes Become Forms, at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis back in 2003:

The Marepe “Cabeça Acústica” object holds its own, whether used as an icon of Brazilian art, or of culture in an age of globalization. As with any sound-related art that is presented in silence, the Marepe piece embodies a certain ambiguity. In this case, does it symbolize focus or myopia — is a human whose head is placed inside the gadget benefiting from the emphasis on sound, or cut off from site, smell, and other senses?

In addition to the Marepe piece, there is in the back of the YBCA exhibit a large room in that pulses like a daytime rave, its colorful installation walls featuring an ongoing projection of Warhol Factory”“style communitarian art playfulness by the ensemble Assume Vivid Astro Focus (AVAG), aka Eli Sudbrack and Christope Haimade Pierson, plus various friends.

The When Lives Become Form: Contemporary Brazilian Art, 1960s to the Present exhibit opened on Nov 5, 2009, and will close on Jan 31, 2010. More details at ybca.org.

Killing Prog: Amendola, Dimuzio, Evans, Mendoza & Dominique Leone

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It wasn’t the night that prog died, though it was billed as “This is what happens when you kill prog.”

On the postcard for the concert held last Wednesday, January 13, at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, “Kill Prog” was in large letters in the center, set in blood red against a darker background image that seemed to show the ceiling of a tunnel.

The image was appropriate, even if the musicians assembled at the basement-level speakeasy had come not to kill prog but to unearth it. They were tunneling back in time, to an era of jazz and rock fusion, and approaching it with a mix of rigor and affection.

If they were killing prog, they killed it they way one kills one’s heroes — to whittle away the lesser aspects, until what’s left is admirable enough to hold up to one’s standards.

The headlining quartet (shown below) featured Scott Amendola (Nels Cline, Charlie Hunter) on drums, Thomas Dimuzio (more adventurous, noise-minded projects than even could be hinted at here) on keyboards, Jon Evans (Tori Amos) on bass, and Ava Mendoza (Mute Socialite) on guitar. Together they summoned up a mix of Discipline-era King Crimson, and more broadly the fusion bands that flourished as various individuals left various “electric-era” bands of the late trumpeter Miles Davis and ventured down various different paths. Mendoza in particular mixed Crimson leader Robert Fripp’s looping and arcane scales with Adrian Belew’s penchants for backward effects and squawking seagull sounds.

At times I found myself thinking of MVVP, the New Orleans supergroup consisting of Stanton Moore, Johnny Vidacovich, Rich Vogel, and George Porter, though Amendola and company were less interested in trance-like communal music-making, and more in simultaneous individual soloing that allowed for stark, illuminating contrasts.

The opening act, the Dominique Leone Band, was a modular ensemble led by Leone on keyboards and vocals (the latter as nakedly impassioned as they are self-effacingly thin) — “modular” because a trumpeter and saxophonist occasionally joined the core of Leone, Matt Ingalls (clarinet), Shayna Dunkelman on Xylosynth (the sonic palette of which shifted with each song), and a guitarist whose name I didn’t catch, and who moved between electric and acoustic. Leone’s original songs channel pure-pop melodies and emotions through a performance style that is deeply informed by minimalist composition, by intricate melodic patterning and extended, dreamy repetition — the result suggested Animal Collective covering the works of Steely Dan, or of Steely Dan covering the songs of Philip Glass.

More on the musicians at scottamendola.com, thomasdimuzio.com, avamendozamusic.com, and dominiqueleone.com. Above image of Amendola and company from a set at flickr.com/photos/michaelz1.