On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ Just Duet: The musician Linus Fung, born in Hong Kong, has been doing some fantastic work folding his clarinet playing into a modular synthesizer format, essentially dueting with himself and transforming his melodic approach live. Here he is heard — and seen, bird’s eye view — building on the Canonic Duets of composer Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767).
▰ ’Tis the Season: Glacial stasis these days doesn’t necessarily come too easily. I’m not certain I would put it that way. But with so many available tools to achieve it, listeners can benefit from recordings that explore now common granular lushness as an element or a context rather than an end unto itself. Case in point, the way metallic slurry and vibrant shifts in tonality push beyond standard harmonic haze on autumnal_city_01 by autumnal_city.
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▰ Back in Court: Half of the classic early-1980s lineup of King Crimson is currently touring music from that trio of great albums: Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair. I’ve been spending a lot of time tracking fan uploads of video from the various concerts, and a highlight is this rendition of “The Sheltering Sky,” with original guitarist Adrian Belew and bassist (and Chapman Stick player) Tony Levin, plus Steve Vai riffing on Robert Fripp’s work, and Danny Carey (of Tool) playing — literally, I believe — Bill Bruford’s drums. The quartet goes simply by the name Beat.