- Just thinking: for moms who like comic books, this is a pretty cool weekend. #
- .@dpnem @vuzhmusic Been looking at HTML5 players that support "standard browsers" & iOS. Like http://html5audio.me/ per @mbytz #
- In regard to web hurting local record stores, I feel less guilty buying music on Kickstarter cause those albums don't exist yet #
- Corresponded with publicist who quickly accepted "No thank you" as reply: "thanks for listening! best I can ask for." Please clone her. #
- This morning's backdrop: vinyl surface noise and harmonium. #
What Distinguishes the Drone Is What Distinguishes the Drone
What distinguishes the drone is what distinguishes the drone. In the broader sense, what distinguishes the drone is its still generally unfamiliar approach, its lack of interest in dispensing immediate satisfaction or in lingering in a mind courtesy of a shard that gets planted and becomes difficult to excise. Though of course it does both those things, in that the drone can effect a peaceful room tone almost instantly, if the room and the drone and the moment are right for each other, and it can linger in the mind even if those shards are of resiliently ambiguous shape and size.
In the narrower sense, what distinguishes the drone is just that: all drones are not created equal, and the subtle shadings are part of their compositional nature. What makes drones especially rich, and extends their generally non-confrontational affect, is that new drones illuminate old ones. Drones don’t participate in a war of attrition. New drones don’t update and outdo old drones. New drones shed light on the workings of earlier drones. Drones may all sound vaguely the same when heard separately, but close proximity makes it clear just how distinct they all are from each other.
What distinguishes the drones of South Korea”“based musician Fescal, at least as heard on Into the Atmosphere, the recent release on the Portugal-based netlabel test tube, is an emphasis on texture, an active engagement with texture. There’s nothing here that hints back at the MIDI and synth era of rhapsodic ambient lounge music. Feedback breaks in on “Yesterday’s News” the way a light glints on a camera lens, and that’s after an extended passage that is downright gritty — not film-noir stage-set gritty, but urban wasteland gritty, live-field-recording gritty (MP3). On “The Way the Cookie Crumbles,” a haunting, sublimated vocal chorus — haunting not just because of how buried it is in the mix, but also because of its static, inhuman quality — provides the sort of complex overtones that perhaps only vocals can bring (MP3). These are trenchant drones. On “Lucky Man,” the texture goes meta, as if we’re not so much listening to the drone, but to some recording of the drone that has then, wholly, been put through a post-production ringer (MP3).
[audio:http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases/tube232/tube232-05-fescal_-_yesterdays_news.mp3|titles=”Yesterday’s News”|artists=Fescal]
[audio:http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases/tube232/tube232-04-fescal_-_the_way_the_cookie_crumbles.mp3|titles=”The Way the Cookie Crumbles”|artists=Fescal]
[audio:http://www.monocromatica.com/netlabel/releases/tube232/tube232-03-fescal_-_lucky_man.mp3|titles=”Lucky Man”|artists=Fescal]
Full release at the test tube netlabel: monocromatica.com/netlabel. More on Fescal: vimeo.com and last.fm.
#flute #classical #netlabel
In case proof was needed that the recently posted “netlabel checklist” isn’t a required purity test for inclusion on this site, check out the netlabel lpnl.altervista.org, which doesn’t follow numerous of the rules: it doesn’t stream its releases, it provides no information on its artists, it isn’t iPad-friendly (the internal scrolling is broken in Safari in iOS), it has no RSS feed, and on and on. Technically, it does provide streaming, but that’s over at soundcloud.com/lpnl, with no consistent, self-evident link between the sites. However, one thing the lpnl netlabel does do is focus on excellent work, notably this self-titled track by fvsf:
The track is a real treat. It has, in essence, two elements: a slow rhythmic pulse and a flute sample. Both at various times and to varying degrees, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes in strict contract, undergo effects that alter the sound. That rhythm, barely a metronomic prick at the start, swells until the beats are so engorged that they overlap with each other and form one solid band of undulating bass. The flute is snipped and truncated, echoed in a manner that brings a metallic aridity to it, like it’s being reflected in shards of a broken mirror. The combination is something to behold. Though not even four minutes in length, it lends itself to repeat listens (I’ve played it for hours at a time in the background).
It’s downloadable as a Zip file (via lpnl.altervista.org), and streaming at soundcloud.com/lpnl/fvsf. The Zip file, in a manner not dissimilar to how the hexawe.net netlabel functions, includes both the MP3 and one of the brief loops that comprise the piece.
Carlos Suárez Plays Both Ends of the Spectrum (MP3s)
Metáforas do tempo by Carlos Suárez ranges from mechanized piano that sounds like mellow Conlon Nancarrow (“Catro danzas macabras para piano”) to rhythmic melanges of found audio (the upbeat title track, the fireside atmospherics of “Memento homo”). The keepers are when Suárez is at either his most or least chaotic. “Sic transit gloria mundi” (MP3) is a heavily orchestrated mix of celebratory drumming, chanting, pneumatic percussion, and industrial grind, but what makes it is the central riff of unidentifiable soundstuff, and the constant flux of tiny samplets that fill in the spaces between the various major elements. Quite the opposite, “AlegorÃa do poder” (MP3) is a haunting expanse of low-end rumbles and eerie dissonance. Eventually it gains steam, but temporarily, and more as a singular mass of sound than the ecstatic hodgepodge of its contrasting track.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/alg042/01_Sic_transit_gloria_mundi_64kb.mp3|titles=”Sic Transit Gloria Mundi”|artists=Carlos Suárez]
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/alg042/02_Alegoria_do_poder_64kb.mp3|titles=”AlegorÃa do Poders”|artists=Carlos Suárez]
Get the full release, 10 tracks, at alg-label.com.
Top 10 Posts & Searches from April 2011
The most popular post of the past month, out of a total 32 posts, was (1) the proposed “netlabel checklist,” a set of recommendations for future (and, some commenters have suggested, current) netabels (“If You’re Thinking of Starting a Netlabel …”). It’s at 51 comments and counting.
Seven of the top 10 most popular posts of the month were from the site’s Downstream department of (legally) free MP3 downloads: (2) a radio interview with Robert Black of the Bang on a Can All-stars discussing their transcription of Brian Eno‘s Music for Airports (with comparison samples of the recordings), and on which Bang on a Can All-stars member Evan Ziporyn submitted a comment about the crew’s approach; (3) C.R. Kasprzyk‘s music, as heard on the Chicago radio show Radius, drawn from everyday electromagnetic fields; (4) a reflection on how Soundcloud.com’s feed of inbound tracks serves as a kind of “chance DJ,” as exemplified by work by Marcus Fischer and Matt Dean that arrived in immediate succession; (5) a second entry in the Radius series, featuring the French duo the Art of Failure (Nicolas Maigret and Nicolas Montgermont), whose name is an appropriate summary of their aesthetic approach; (6) a piece by Iceland-based Jóhann Friðgeir Jóhannsson (aka 7oi) that resembles a CAD rendering of a beautiful afternoon; (7) Arturas BumÅ¡teinas‘ exploration of the range of sounds inherent in a Polish cathedral’s organ; (8) and the dreamy folk of Plusplus.
And, because statistics are peculiar and web search results all the more so, rounding out the top 10 were (9) the top 10 of the previous month, and (10) one of the automated Saturday summaries of the preceding week’s twitter.com/disquiet tweets.
Top search requests of the month (excluding, as always, those that yield null returns): “autechre,” “trip hop,” “alan morse davies,” “au clair de la lune,” “best albums,” “exhibition,” “Kalte,” “nanaqui,” “no sun in september,” “oki doki,” “ted james,” “unsilent,” “2010,” “7oi.”