On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ There’s upstream, and then there’s up upstream. As you find your curiosity pulling you deeper into the making of music, you take pleasures in demos of new functionality for pre-existing gear. A “no-talking” (YouTube category of demo) performance for a couple minutes on an instrument called the Tonverk is also a master class on ambient glitch, with a minor in dub influences. I played this on loop for an hour while reading at night. The performer is Keinseier, a film composer based in Hamburg:
▰ Nothing makes me happy as a listener quite the way jazz musicians teaming up with electronic musicians do, and a key example is the trio of Jason Moran (piano), BlankFor.ms (aka Tyler Gilmore, electonics), and Marcus Gilmore (drums), together for their second full-length outing, titled Shards — ambient and atmospheric, then gently abrasive, always considered and thoughtful:
▰ A relative oldie (five years) but a head-trip goodie, this is an hour-long live performance (click on the link, because the embed isn’t working) by Lesley Flanigan for voice and a couple of literally industrial-strength sine wave generators. This was taped very early in the pandemic when arts organizations (NYC’s Roulette here) were doing live streams to keep the culture moving and stay on mission. I was reminded of this when a friend sent me a link to a new article about people using archaic test equipment to make music.