- Long day, but a productive one, in between tsunami-gazing. Time for a walk to the ocean. #
- Looking at screenshots of screenshot-capture applications. #
- A "radiophonic exploration and impressionistic interpretation" of "superior canal dehiscence syndrome" http://j.mp/fXypO3 via @theunobserved #
- Disaster-preparedness comics drawn by David Lasky: http://j.mp/dQiG2L #japan #tsunami #72hours #
- Today's probably not a good day to go to the Apple store to ask the Genius-bartenders for advice about my iPod Touch's charging issues. #
- Just Blaze show tonite in SF at 103 Harriet: 100% proceeds (tix + bar) -> Japanese tsunami relief http://justblaze103harriet.eventbrite.com #
- Plan: Get ton of work done. Then read scathing reviews of Battle: Los Angeles to sufficiently lower expectations, so as to ensure enjoyment. #
- Watching Today on NBC for news of Tsunami; instead see report of murder, with recreations and eerie music. The news shouldn't have a score. #
- All thoughts with Japan. #
Lost at Sea (MP3)
Even if the track by Radere weren’t titled “Lost at Sea, I’m Never Coming Back,” you’d need some serious, veteran avant-drone sea legs to make it through without getting the sense of being out on open water. It rocks back and forth like a ship in a storm, and it has a rough texture like the noise a microphone inadvertently records when it does battle with the wind (MP3). And then there’s the sense of moisture, not only the rain storm of white noise that floods the track, but the extent to which the track feels at times like it is dissolving.
And then the storm abates, and the overall impression moves from downpour to cloud break — though, to be clear, land is never in sight.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/bsc_007/01_-_radere_-_lost_at_sea.mp3|titles=”Lost at Sea I’m Never Coming Back”|artists=Radere]
Track originally posted at the basicsounds.ca netlabel.
More on Radere, aka Philadelphia-based Carl Ritger, at falsereactions.tumblr.com and twitter.com/falsereactions.
A Drone Is Like a Sausage Wrapper (MP3)
At close to eight minutes in length, “Tenuto” by Benjamin Dauer both seems to change and stay the same during its somewhat extended droning. The piece drones, but it isn’t a drone, at least to the extent that most drones aren’t drones, which is to say the extent to which, after just a small bit of observation, it becomes evident that there is an enormous amount of activity happening inside the drone.
The term “drone” is like a sausage wrapper, lending a sense of uniformity to what is, in fact, often a chaotic mix of constituent parts. Here that chaos includes a seeming orchestra, high notes like a flute solo, fluttering activity like a string section, a deep probing noise like nothing so much as an organ.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/benjamindauer. More on Dauer, who is based in Washington, DC, at benjamindauer.net.
Downcast Chords (MP3)
Chords hover, downcast and remote, the space between them of equal weight with the notes, a creaky silence, a silence that bears the slightest fading whiff of a previous key, one that lingers in the air, a waveform protesting its own mortality. They have the clustering hunched introspection of a Morton Feldman piece, and the spectral aura of, more recently, a Kenneth Kirschner. They are the nearly three dozen miniatures that comprise Erich Steiger‘s Avant Forte, recently released for free download by the pandafuzz.com netlabel. They are improvised, but, as with many a great recorded improvisation, they bear the hallmarks of composition, of a considered structure, when listened to a second and third time. Take, for example, number 9 (they are named simply by number), one of the least percussive in the batch. It’s chaotic at times, but it’s a chaos as seen from a distance, not close up, all form, the turmoil below the surface.
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/pf027/ErichSteiger_AVANTFORTE_09.mp3|titles=”Avant Forte (9)”|artists=Erich Steiger]
More details at pandafuzz.com and archive.org.
When the Light Drops, When Light Drops (MP3)
What does the title of Outra-G‘s Light Drops refer to? Is the “drops” a verb, and the title intended to suggest a just-pre-evening mode? Does the phrase have poetic aspirations, implying a kind of visual precipitation? Even money should be placed on “drops” coming from its lounge/hip-hop meaning: the audio loop as mood-inducer; the “light” thus qualifies it by actively pushing that mood to the background. There’s much to recommend this collection, the slow-pulse beat of “Rayleigh Scattering,” the plucked-wire accents on the rhythm-box-driven “Diving Bells.”
The keeper is arguably a track titled “Frames,” which mixes what appear to be field recordings of rain with lush digital effects in a manner that lets each mirror the other. And amidst it all, a piano finds itself nearly buried in cavernous echo (MP3). The processing of the piano is especially accomplished, how even as those Satie-esque notes push toward something melodic, the ear is attracted not to the notes but to their reverb-burnished tone.
[audio:http://download.softphase.org/sfp17/outra-g-03-frames.mp3|titles=”Frames”|artists=Outra-G]
Get the full set of eight tracks at softphase.org. More on Outra-G, aka Albert Guirao, who’s based in Barcelona, Spain, at myspace.com/outrag and outragerecords.com.