Quote of the Week: Offering of Sound

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the closing paragraph of the article “Tune In Tokyo: On Tour in a Land of Noise” by Trent Moorman from the November 28, 2007, edition of The Stranger (thestranger.com):

It’s almost 2:00 a.m. and the crowds have dwindled. We turn onto an empty Shibuya street. Halfway down the block, a DJ in a record shop scratches a Bone Thugs-N-Harmony record. The front door to the store is open and the DJ, alone, doesn’t know we’re there. He makes an offering of sound to the conglomerate hum outside, hooking beats into the white noise of the Tokyo night. It’s the sound of ceremony or war. This vinyl is not scratched without reason.

The essay is Moorman’s recollections of a brief Japanese tour by his band, Head Like a Kite. Earlier in the piece he writes, “Tokyo is plagued by sound. The people import it, they identify by it, dress like it, and they funnel it into their ears.” More on Moorman on his website, trentdrum.com. (Thanks for the recommendation, Eric.)

Tokyo Laptop Orchestra MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There are at least seven “laptop orchestras” around the world, according to the list up at Tom Whitewell’s excellent and obsessive music-tech website, musicthing.blogspot.com. Among them is the Tokyo Laptop Orchestra, which has an international membership and which frequently opts to work with percussionists and singers.

There are eight MP3s of the group’s performances between 2002 and 2006 currently available for free download from its website, laptoporchestra.net, most choice among them perhaps their very first, which is said to feature 20 participants and was recorded in Tokyo on August 18, 2002. Whereas many of their more recent gigs, as represented by those MP3s, take on the chaotic vibrancy of European free improvisation, the August 18 show was an airy affair, far more rarefied than the fact of its 20 contributors might suggest (MP3). Among the musicians are several artists on the Flyrec label, plus American-born musician Robert Duckworth and vocalist Tsujiko Noriko. (The picture above is from the group’s website.)

Though the Tokyo Laptop Orchestra’s last reported performance was almost a year ago, in late November 2006 (at least according to the orchestra’s website), they will be taking part in the February 2008 Japan! culture + hyperculture events at the Kenedy Center in Washington, DC (more info at kennedy-center.org).

Relcad’s Rainy-Day MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The song “G-Mart” by Relcad is tagged on his website, relcad.com, with this enticing note: “It is likely you will hear that rain sample again.” The track indeed begins with a quiet field recording of rain — light rain, not torrential. And the track follows at a pace to match, even as it musters a steady beat, occasional bursts of pneumatic noise, and lo-fi effects that lend the piece a homespun vibe (MP3).

Relcad is the pseudonym of Seattle-based musician Alex Duff. Additional info at myspace.com/relcad.

MP3 Documents of Steve Peters Sound Art Installations

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Sound art is often presented as an installation — that is, as a site-specific event in which the resonances of the space are an inherent part of the work. Still, we can’t all make it to Santa Fe, Chicago and Albuquerque every time an artist such as Steve Peters presents something new. Though video records of such performances-cum-sculptures are becoming all the more popular, the most prevalent record of sound art is the audio.

A new CD, Three Rooms (on the Sirr label), collects recordings of sound art by Peters presented in the three mentioned cities above: “Delicate Abrasions” was taped in an old warehouse in Santa Fe, “Center of Gravity” is processed breaths recorded at the School of Art of Chicago, and “Mountains Hidden in Mountains” is built, according to Peters, from “a single strike of the meditation bell at a zendo in Albuquerque,” a “zendo” being a Buddhist meditation hall.

Two-minute excerpts of two of the pieces are available as free downloads from the Sirr website. “Gravity” is a whorl of airborne experience, never so fully removed from its origin that you don’t picture the human mouth (MP3). “Abrasions” is all microsonic activity, little drops and burrs, with enticing tonal intrusions (MP3).

More info at sirr-ecords.com and at steve-peters.blogspot.com.

tangents / Score Keeper (Burwell, Holmes, Greenwood …)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

News on Quiet, Minimal and Otherwise Atmospheric Music on the Big and Small Screens: (1) As of my first viewing, I can’t say if there’s enough of a proper score in No Country for Old Men to fill a 7″ single, but what there is is evocative, as blissfully mundane and forebodingly arid as the movie’s setting. It was composed by Carter Burwell, regular colleague of the film’s directors, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, and includes guitarist David Torn among its musicians. … (2) It’s way early on The Road, the next film adaptation of a novel by Cormac McCarthy, author of No Country, but the movie is currently associated with director John Hillcoat, whose The Proposition was scored by Nick Cave (who also wrote it) and Warren Ellis (of Dirty Three), which is quite promising. … (3) Control, the bio-pic of Ian Curtis‘s brief life and briefer career with rock band Joy Division, features a score by New Order, which Joy Division became after Curtis’s 1980 suicide. Reportedly, Curtis watched director Werner Herzog‘s Stroszek (1977) that final night, which means some of the last music Curtis heard — in addition to Iggy Pop‘s The Idiot (also 1977), which he’s said also to have played that night — was by country guitarist Chet Atkins and blues harmonica player Sonny Terry, who contributed the score to Stroszek. … (4) Under-recognized ambient musician (and longtime sound designer) Kent Sparling is on The Princess of Nebraska by director Wayne Wang (whose Slam Dance had music by Mitchell Froom) and on Seventh Moon by Eduardo Sánchez (The Blair Witch Project, which was scored by Tony Cora, who’s also on Seventh Moon). … (5) David Holmes (Ocean’s Eleven, Out of Sight) is on director Aisling Walsh‘s The Daisy Chain. … (6) Clint Mansell (Requiem for a Dream) is on The Calling, from director Jan Dunn. … (7) The excellent, score-centric blog theplaylist.blogspot.com discusses Jonny (Radiohead) Greenwood‘s work on the new Paul Thomas Anderson film, There Will Be Blood, which had previously been associated with Jon Brion, who scored Anderson’s Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love; the piece quotes a recent Entertainment Weekly profile of Greenwood and focuses on the composer Krzysztof Penderecki‘s influence. … (8) Is there another credit more bittersweet for the movie-music professional than “Additional Music By”? … (Much of the above film-composer associations via imdb.com.)