The Search Engine is the first album from Strictly Kev, Ninja Tune regular (and the label’s art director), in over a decade. Recording as DJ Food, Kev welcomed guests Matt Johnson (The The) and J.G. Thirwell (Foetus), among others, to the project. In an extensive podcast interview, hosted by the label, he talked about the intersection of sampling and songwriting. “The phrase ‘keep it real’ in hip-hop just makes me despair,” he said, expressing no interest in sonic reality and everything in a studio-production basis for the manipulation of sound and for the construction of tunes (the file is available not as an MP3 but as a sizable M4A). He also discusses the complexity of working under the name DJ Food, since it has been used by various people over the course of the history of Ninja Tune Records. And there’s plenty of music from the record. More on his Search Engine album at ninjatune.net. And while on the subject, here’s an interview with DJ Food from back in 1997, when that name was employed not by Kev but by Ninja’s Patrick Carpenter: “Anatomy of a Remix.”
Crosstown Traffic (MP3)
Free MP3s: A cellist serenades the AM airwaves
A traffic report intrudes on Joe Merolla‘s solo cello performance. The intrusion is expected. Merolla’s piece bears the title “Sinfonia di Violoncello e AM Radio,” which of course in Italian means that it’s a work for cello and AM Radio. The fact that the title is in Italian lends it a certain futurist je ne say quoi, appropriate to the work’s embrace of everyday noise and its grounding in classical music. The discordance of the cello part seems play various roles here. It is, at its core, an aesthetic decision, a form of playing that distinguishes the material from the traditional repertoire through an embrace of noise, noise being the calling card of futurism. (The word “traditional” is employed here with some trepidation. At this point, there’s enough of an avant-garde history that it serves as its own tradition.) It’s also a reflection of the noise of the radio. And the cello appears to move amid the radio, responding to unexpected surfacings. In any case, the traffic announcement is an especially welcome element here, because it serves as a kind of chance play-by-play for the work itself, which is focused on intersections and crisscrosses.
Tracks posted at freemusicarchive.org.
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
- 9 "expanded glass harp" tracks now in http://t.co/anQFre9l. Latest are Chicago's @otologist San Jose's @CompMusicBlog Brisbane's Greg Hooper #
- Jan 21 = Instagr/am/bient Track 21 = @orangecookie's "Near Cedar," based on an @instagram by @c_bissonnette: http://t.co/Dx2996Sq #
- Nicely put. RT @stringbot: @disquiet I like the challenge of trying to keep it from getting boring. #
- I'd say fade in/out's kosher. RT @stringbot: Recorded 40 minutes of improv but since I'm not allowed to edit I have to cull the best bits. #
- Crazy rainy night in San Francisco, watching my 16-month-old. Listening to "expanded glass harp" music in the Junto; thanks to all involved! #
- Looking forward to it RT @ben_carey: uploading my first @disquiet #junto track: glass harmonica processed live using my derivations software #
- I can't fully recommend Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but I can recommend seeing it on a rainy day. #
- To use FileZilla for FTP on a Mac is to be reminded that OS X is just as littered with human-unreadable gibberish files as is Windows. #
- When I miss my old laptop, I just use my Macbook Air in the kitchen while the dishwasher is running. #
Dustmotes’ Inaugural Podcast (MP3)
Free MP3: Beats that veer toward ambient
The Soundcloud.com platform has many strengths. Key among them is how the fluid nature of postings on the service leads to a specific situation that few if any other music-hosting services have approached. It’s one in which a truly fluid sensibility is easily associated with the postings. In other words: a musical sketch — a rough draft or a work-in-progress — makes sense on Soundcloud in a way it does less so, say, on cdbaby.com or in iTunes. Those latter two systems emulate the tradition of the recording as document, as self-enclosed entity. Soundcloud allows for such a thing, with its “sets” feature, but the default mode on Soundcloud is a reverse chronological list. It’s just a thread of whatever the musician uploaded most recently (the majority of Soundcloud accounts appear to be associated with individuals, though bands and organizations house there efforts there, too). Which is why it makes all the more sense that Dustmotes, the ace turntable-textured beatmaker, has launched a new podcast series hosted on Soundcloud. The six-minute inaugural entry is a suite, a medley, of found and homemade bits, filtered through Dustmotes’ trademark old-school-yet-of-the-moment, veering-toward-ambient approach to what could be broadly described as instrumental hip-hop. Which is to say, it’s downtempo, and it’s promising. Looking forward to the sophomore effort.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/dustmotes. More on Dustmotes, aka Paul Croker, at dustmotes.net.
Video + 2 Free MP3s from Michal Jacaszek’s ‘Glimmer’
When it comes to best-of lists, the end of the year is also the beginning of the year. (My list is here.) We list our favorites not just to reflect on them, but also to spur interest among potential listeners. And so it’s nice to see when record labels play along. Though 2011 is in the past, the Ghostly label continues to build on the popularity of deserved Glimmer, an enchanting full-length recording by musician Michal Jacaszek, who records under his family name and originates from Poland. Ghostly just sent out an email announcing this spectral wonder, a video for a Glimmer track, “Dare-gale,” that matches the song’s mix of glitchy harpsichord renderings with layers of manipulated Super 8 footage. True to what might be termed the Ghostly aesthetic, the whole thing moves along like a slow montage of Instagram photos: artfully hazy, willfully nostalgic, admirably insouciant:
And though in the past it was generally the case that a video existed to sell a song that existed to sell an album, in this case “Dare-Gale” is one of two tracks off Glimmer that Ghostly has made available for free download. The other is “Seiden Stille,” which is more rangy in form, with orchestral washes, deep dips and asides, and eerily dramatic pauses.
The visible “Seiden Stille” player only has a “buy” link, but there’s a download link on the track’s soundcloud.com/ghostly page.
More on the album, including two additional videos, at ghostly.com. More on Jacaszek at jacaszek.com.