- Afternoon stream: an entire Underworld concert recorded recently in Oakland http://bit.ly/15ZPBV RT@ario #
- Afternoon stream: Brent Arnold — @brent_arnold — solo looped cello improvisation, recorded April 2009 http://is.gd/2fKD6 #
- RIP, guitar and guitar tech legend Les Paul, whom I got to interview years ago for epulse and for @fbjournal predecessor Ukulele Occasional. #
- Whenever the @oblique_chirps Twitter pops up "Cluster analysis" I think it is a direction to think about the band Cluster. #
- RIP drum legend Rashied Ali (Colrane, Sanders, Ulmer Haino, Laswell) http://bit.ly/2hW0dn — RT @daveseidel @stasisfield #
- Checking out the new #audiogame #soundtoy Sonorox for the Android OS. #
- From Richard Stark's 10th Parker novel, The Green Eagle Score: "Parker shut his eyes and listened to the night whine by under the tires." #
- Afternoon stream: Solo piano by Terry Riley, recorded live in concert in 1963 http://is.gd/2dWdb From the Other Minds catalog at archive.org #
- Fog horns out of control this morning. Must be mating season. #
- Experiment: Playlist of all songs locatable in fizy.com from Aug 8 DJ set twittered in Poland by @rhawtin http://is.gd/2clT3 #
- Bit.ly messed up the youtube.com link somehow in my previous post. Here it is, the myserious Pynchon-book video promo: http://is.gd/2c9rt #
- Cross between Lebowski/Burroughs, voice in promo video for Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice rumored to be Pynchon's. #remixthis RT @greatdismal #
- Day's best sound: electronic-bird tweet of 3M Dynatel Locator used by phone company to mark "do not drill" spots in alley http://is.gd/2aRCh #
- Afternoon stream: Diego Bernal's "Cumbiatches Brew" delivers new exotica breed built on vinyl remains of its predecessors http://is.gd/2aRlY #
- Saw Park Chan-wook's vampire flick, Thirst. Darn good. Lots of tormented blood-suckers. And cool sound design: vamps have great hearing. #
- Throbbing Gristle/FM3 create loop device Gristleism. Site: http://is.gd/29Svo Photo tease: http://bit.ly/1o07pF FM3 post: http://is.gd/29SsF #
- RIP, Mike Seeger (b. 1933), legendary field-recordist (of the Alan Lomax variety) and folk figure: http://is.gd/29k49 #
- Sunday morning foghorn action, deep tones in familiar AAB motif. I'd be a horrible ship captain; I'd get entranced by the sounds, and crash. #
- Spent an hour at Amoeba (on Haight), listening to the in-house stereo through the arhythmic clatter of clam-shelled CDs being rifled through #
Photostream: Console, Parenthesis
There’s a new Disquiet.com photostream at flickr.com/photos/disquietpxl. I’m still sorting out the best way to integrate WordPress and Flickr (advice appreciated), but in the meanwhile, two recent images:
This old console stereo is the centerpiece of the Jews on Vinyl exhibit from the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. More on the exhibit at thecjm.org:
Just gotta love that the folks at the Independent, the club in San Francisco where Sunn O))) played in August 2009, lacked marquee parenthesis, and thus had to render the band’s name with backwards C’s, making it look like they’re Russian or something:
Song About David Byrne’s Playing the Building (MP3)
This dates from last year, but given the flurry of coverage being given David Byrne‘s current Playing the Building installation at the Roundhouse in London (pictured above, courtesy of building.co.uk), it’s especially worth checking out. Byrne’s project is to make buildings playable — he hooks up an organ via a spaghetti box worth of cables to all manner of noisemaking percussive and otherwise motorized tools that are distributed throughout the building. Last year, when the piece was installed at the Battery Maritime Building in lower Manhattan, musician Robert Gomez took samples of the audio and created “Hunting Song,” a lush bit of background pop created from those samples — so, there is the circus organ, with its Willy Wonka eeriness, intoning ever so threateningly above a whirling marvel of mechanical momentum, courtesy of Byrne’s invention (MP3).
[audio:http://www.davidbyrne.com/art/art_projects/playing_the_building/media/Hunting_Song_Byrne_Remix.mp3|titles=”Hunting Song (Playing the Building Remix)”|artists=Robert Gomez and David Byrne]
More on the project at davidbyrne.com. More on Gomez at robertgomezmusic.com. More on the Roundhouse installation, which runs through August 31, at roundhouse.org.uk.
Pastoral-Industrial MP3 by Lars Tängmark
From the initial, slowed-down recording, through the industrial-pastoral aural-void that immediately follows, Lars Tängmark‘s Son of a Bitch Everything’s Real proves to be a half-hour tour of small sounds and tight spaces and brief song-like motives, a casual mapping of gestural audio. As such, it has the feel of a combination score and soundtrack — that is, the true meaning of the word “soundtrack” — to some wordless movie. Those opening sounds, in which voices and other audio elements are evidently slowed down to half, maybe a quarter, of their original speed, seems to prepare the ear for a new approach to listening. From there, it’s all slow build, first field noise, then rough motion, then a simple tapping that eventually yields, perhaps a third of the way through the track, a rhythm — something that might be generally considered “musical.”
When an actual song-like motive appears, around the half-way point, it sounds like yet another field recording, like an old turntable playing through an open window. Eventually, the sonorous, musical activity is subsumed inside a gurgling whorl. There’s one more musical segment, a coda of organ-like held chords, but by then the impression of the overall journey has long since overshadowed any of the specific stopping points.
Balancing sounds that are commonly understood as musical alongside those that sound more real-world, such as unprocessed field recordings, let alone snatches of modified industrial noise, is a tall order, and Tängmark uses a narrative pace to his advantage as he strings these elements into a considerable whole.
[audio:http://ia331430.us.archive.org/1/items/LarsTngmark-SonOfABitchEverythingsReal/LarsTngmark-SonOfABitchEverythingsReal_64kb.mp3|titles=”Son of a Bitch Everything”|artists=Lars Tängmark]
Various formats at archive.org. Release details at odensjorecordings.wordpress.com. More on Tängmark at myspace.com/larstangmark.
Tangents: Prefuse 73 on Classical, Rhys Chatham on 200 Guitars, RjDj on Tour …
Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:
● Guillermo Scott Herren (aka Prefuse 73) on Electronica’s Classical Under-girding (newmusicbox.org): Lengthy interview with Guillermo Scott Herren, aka Prefuse 73, on, among other things, the influence of abstract contemporary classical music on his electronica: "It's just me being really nerdy and listening to these tape records, these weird throwback Nonesuch records. I'm the first to go to the old experimental music section and just buy all the dollar records that nobody buys. And everybody's like, 'Pfft, what are you buying? Oh, I got that, it's so boring.' But you listen to it, and you're like: What is going on? Because those records are like, one minute will be this beautiful kind of composed piece, and all of a sudden swoosh. And it's so random. And it all came together." Interview by Trevor Hunter. Video available, too.
● Rhys Chatham & 200 Guitars (nytimes.com): Rhys Chatham's 200-guitar piece "A Crimson Grail (Outdoor Version)" performed a week ago Saturday at Lincoln Center in Manhattan (a year after its initially scheduled run was scuttled by inclement weather), reviewed in New York Times by Steve Smith: "Chatham’s piece dealt in massed sonorities and mingling overtones rather than manual calisthenics." Also available, HD performance video of the “end of first part” (vimeo.com) and of the “finale” (vimeo.com). Video found via twitter.com/rlainhart, which also listed two additional reviews: There’s timeoutny.com‘s Sophie Harris: “The sound of two hundred tremoloed guitars ricocheted around the space, even setting off a car alarm in the street (miraculously in tune!).” And artforum.com‘s Andrew Hultkrans: “The third section opened with the guitarists playing repeated fifths, with the basses dropping one sustained bomb at the end of each measure, reminding me of the intro to the Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ stuck on auto-repeat.”
● Moon Score Composer Clint Mansell Q&A (mojo4music.com): Pop Will Eat Itself‘s Clint Mansell talks (a bit) about working on the score to the recent chamber-sci-fi film Moon, as well as about working with Darren Aronofsky, musicians whom he admires (Philip Glass, the Buzzcocks), and performing his soundtrack music live. Also: "I mean, if somebody called me to do the music for Pirates of the Caribbean 4 you know what that score needs to be, and whilst I may be able to make a passable attempt at it I don't think that would be my strong suit." Interview by Andrew Male.
● Up, Bustle and Out Has New Album in the Works (upbustleandout.co.uk): Been a few years since (former Ninja Tune mixmasters) Up, Bustle and Out's album Istanbul's Secrets (latest in an ongoing series of audio travel guides), but the group has a new album, titled Soliloquy, that it's "pitching to reputable labels."
● RjDj (Interactive Music App for iPhone/Touch) Starts World Tour September 10 in Tokyo (rjdj.me):
● Cellphone Speaker Interference Can Be Diminished with Electrostatic Bag (lifehacker.com):
More online resources at disquiet.com/elsewhere.