Guit-tronic MP3 from Tokyo’s Chihei Hatakeyama

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Room40 label recently released Saunter by Tokyo-based Chihei Hatakeyama, and provided a free download, “A Stone Inside a Box” (MP3). The piece is a layered work of guitar and electronics, a gentle stroll of a song, true to the album’s title. The melody is relatively present and strong, but in time — both during a listening, and especially after multiple listens — the soft audio bed comes into the foreground. To extend the travel metaphor, it’s as if the destination recedes and experiences along the way come to the forefront. Toward the end of “A Stone Inside a Box,” a bit of feedback flares up, like a fuse being lit. It’s at that precise moment that foreground and background meet, when the guitar line and the song-less textures join.

[audio:http://www.room40.org/mp3/chiheihatakeyama_saunter_4.mp3|titles=”A Stone Inside a Box”|artists=Chihei Hatakeyama]

More on the release at room40.org, and on Hatakeyama at chihei.org.

Chinese Noise Improv MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Chinese netlabel post-concrete.com posted, back in March, four live performances by the duo Herba Abri, featuring Ronez (aka 周沛) on “amplified qin qin/scissors/pedals/design” and Mini Mok on “theremin mini/pedals.” The pieces are each rigorous excursions through feedback, whirligig tomfoolery, erratic effects-mongering, and riffs that venture toward toward rock’n’roll, but never fully congeal into songs. The sound quality and stereo separation are excellent, and you’ll feel like you’re right there in the studio with Mok and Ronez. Not available for streaming, but as Zip archives of either MP3 or FLAC files at post-concrete.com. More on Ronez at myspace.com/ronezzz.

DJ /rupture B&W-Inspired MP3 (from Esopus)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each issue of the arts journal Esopus, edited by Tod Lippy and based out of New York City, includes a curated collection of songs on CD. The most recent issue — the magazine’s 12th, which takes as its subtitle as well as its theme “Black & White” — is no exception. The enclosed CD uses as its organizing principle an observation by Rudolf Arnheim from his book Film as Art back in 1957. Arnheim was a Berlin-born scholar, with an emphasis on the psychology of art and perception, who lived in the United States until his death two years ago at the age of 102. The quote is as follows:

    The composition of the film image is striking chiefly because only black, white and grey masses, black lines on a white ground, or white lines on a black ground, provide the raw material. A comparison can be made with music, in which articulate statements are possible only because definite pitches of sounds have been arranged in scales, and only these sounds are used in a composition.

Esopus invited 11 musicians to make music based on a black and white film. Among them was increasingly prolific writer/musician/artist DJ /rupture (aka Jace Clayton), who selected the black comedy El Verdugo (1963), by director Luis García Berlanga and writer Rafael Azcona. Screen capture (from youtube.com excerpt) here:

A sample of the resulting track is up at the Esopus website, esopusmag.com — it’s a miniature suite, opening with loops of billowy strings, before percussive interruption unveils a puncture, followed by pizzicato scintillate and manic industrial noise (MP3). True to Clayton/rupture’s mode, the piece never loses appeal as something with a song-like, almost pop, quality, even if its eminently listenable individual sounds are cut up to the point of abstraction. The employment of jump cuts and overlays makes an immediate opportunity for comparison to film technique, even if there’s nothing inherently comical in the end result.

[audio:http://www.esopusmag.com/player/issue12/12_07djrupture.mp3|titles=”El Verdugo”|artists=DJ /rupture]

The other participants on the CD are Sand Pebbles (Hud), Caledonia Mission (Hell’s Hinges), Me Succeeds (Nosferatu), Two Dark Birds (The Saddest Music in the World), Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (It’s a Wonderful Life), Sam Amidon (The Furies), Lisa Cerbone (To Kill a Mockingbird), Ruby sins (Metropolis), Nat Baldwin (Raging Bull), and Nina Nastasia (Repulsion). (Thanks to Michael at bartalos.com for having introduced me to the publication.)

Tangents: Hawtin’s Twitter, Paik’s Stuff, Doctorow’s Geek …

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:

● Twittering from the DJ Booth (beatportal.com): Trainspotting DJ sets just got easier, thanks to DJ Richie Hawtin, whose laptop sends to his Twitter account (twitter.com/rhawtin) the name of the track he's spinning live at a given moment. Was Hawtin doing this when I saw him in December in Tokyo (disquiet.com)? "The Twitter app is so advanced,” reports Beatport, “that it inspired Native Instruments to add the functionality themselves to version 1.2 of Traktor Pro which will be released as a free update." So, howzabout a way for his Twitter to trigger Last.fm, to play an approximation of his set anywhere — live, or after the fact? There's something comforting and surreal about watching the set list appear in real time. As of this writing, Hawtin appears to have closed his May 2 set with an Alva Noto track off his new Xerrox Vol.2 album. (Via bytesizemusic.net, and numerous other places.) Brings to mind a mention at murketing.com about conductors tweeting from the stand, to which I added a comment (murketing.com).

● Nam June Paik Archive Goes to the Smithsonian (nytimes.com): The collected papers and objects (including "black-and-white television sets and 1960s record players; early video projectors and decades-old Polaroid cameras — things that were long ago relegated to the electronic graveyard") of multimedia artist Nam June Paik will land at the Smithsonian Institution, "'This will give scholars and a new generation of artists the tangible sense of the artist’s hand in transforming video and television into an artist’s medium,' said John G. Hanhardt, consulting senior curator for film and media arts at the museum." (Did the Washington Post not cover this? A search on the website of the Smithsonian’s hometown newspaper seems to come up null.)

● Cory Doctorow Defines "Geeky" (locusmag.com): One of the best descriptions of "geeky": "geeky inasmuch as it probably costs me as much effort as it saves me, inasmuch as it delights me, and inasmuch as it points the way to civilian applications that someone else might want to develop into products that the less geekified may enjoy." That's from the May 9 column ("Extreme Geek") for the magazine Locus by writer, copyleft proponent, and BoingBoing co-founder Cory Doctorow.

● The Sheet Music for ‘In C’ by Terry Riley (imslp.org): Just one example of the sheet-music files available at this excellent resource, the IMSLP / Petrucci Music Library. From Terry Riley's instructions, as reproduced in the PDF: "Instruments can be amplified if desired. Electronic keyboards are welcome also."

More online resources at disquiet.com/elsewhere.

Image of the Week: La Monte Young, Forever

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

That’s La Monte Young front and center in this May 4 photo from the American Music Center’s Annual Membership Meeting and Awards Ceremony. Young, along with Gunther Schuller (to his immediate left), as well as Albany Records and the New World Symphony, was honored for his work.

More at newmusicbox.org. (From left, the photo shows AMC CEO Joanne Hubbard Cossa, AMC Chairman Steven Stucky, Peter Kermani from Albany Records, Young, Schuller, Susan Bush from Albany Records, and AMC President Ed Yim. The photo is credited to Matthew Bologna.)