The Disquiet.com links page — aka Elsewhere — just racked up its 101st netlabel. Netlabels are websites that distribute original recordings for free download, with the full consent of the musicians. The 101 netlabels currently listed (with more to come, no doubt) specialize in ambient, electronic and related music. The 101st is, fittingly, one named Enough Records (enoughrecords.scene.org) — as in, “You already have enough physical records so now try something from a netlabel.” The netlabels with asterisks after their names on the Elsewhere page come particularly highly recommended.
I-Hop Battle MP3s
The Crate Kings website (cratekings.com) has been holding hip-hop Beat Battles online. If you’ve been following the often whimsical Iron Chef of Music competition series held over at kracfive.com, this is similar, but the Beat Battles participants have a more firmly shared understanding of the parameters for the end product. And where the Iron Chef series might provide ice rattling or an old TV theme song as fodder, the Beat Battles series digs deep in a crate of soul and fusion LPs.
In a given Beat Battle, the moderator of the website’s forums (under the name Semantik) posts a full-length track. Forum regulars are encouraged to devise their own instrumental hip-hop, or i-hop, track from the source material. The most recently completed battle was based on “Broken Home” by Eddie Palmieri & Harlem River Drive (MP3). Some 27 entries were posted. Here are a few examples:
Robotoh‘s “Right to Fight Schemes” (MP3) makes much of the original’s watery keyboards. Juzown‘s aptly named “Broken” (MP3) loops the original and lays a downbeat where the sample’s seam appears. Even though the source material was provided as an MP3, Beat Maker Tip manages to work in proper scratching (MP3). And Yabba‘s “Where Do We Go?” plays up the vocal and sax line (MP3). Those are just a handful of the entries. It’s absolutely fascinating to listen to the original, and to then listen to over two dozen variations, each of which takes a fragment and blows it up to the length of a proper song. For the full list, including audio of each, go to cratekings.com.
There’s a new battle raging right now, based on Billy Cobham’s “Red Baron.” The rules are simple: “(1) The only sounds you may use are from the sample, with the exception of drums and bass; (2) The beat must be in the 80 – 110 bpm range.” Entries are due by this coming Thursday, September 20. Voting ends the following Thursday.
Tangents (Lucier, Sims, boots)
News, Quick Links, Good Reads: (1) An illustrator has taken the concept behind Alvin Lucier‘s “I Am Sitting in a Room” and applied it to his daily self-portraits (snooks.livejournal.com). … (2) The Wild Beast is the name of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) new music pavilion. It was designed by the Los Angeles-based architectural firm Hodgetts + Fung. Its name comes from this Morton Feldman quote: “I am interested in how this wild beast lives in the jungle — not in the zoo.” An October 1 celebration is planned (calarts.edu). …
(3) Rob Walker has posted an illuminating interview with composer Ezra Sims, as part of his blog nonotes.wordpress.com. The website began as a project related to Walker’s book Letters from New Orleans but has, over time, come to focus largely on a single song, “St. James Infirmary,” which Sims long ago used as the basis for some of his experimental arrangements. As Sims explains:
In the “Sextet,”there is a moment where there’s a little trio — the clarinet, horn, and sax in the slow movement where the horn is playing a version of “St. James”and the sax is playing a version of “Ain’t No more Cane on the Brazos.”And they lay over each other meshing, matching and not matching, you know.
More on Sims, born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1928, and whose work in electronic music dates back to a stint at NHK Tokyo during the Kennedy administration, at ezrasims.com. …
(4) The “Listening Post” exhibit by Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen was the subject of a segment on the radio program California Report on Friday, September 14. Download the full, multi-segment episode (MP3) or stream just the “Listening Post” section at californiareport.org. … (5) According to Wired‘s article on the video game Halo 3, “The new sound engine can deliver up to 100 separate tracks at a time” (wired.com). Let’s see an Xbox 360 port of Electroplankton. … (6) Another music-maker for the Nintendo DS, Jam Sessions (kk.org/cooltools). … (7) Among the technological art and innovations at Wired‘s recent NextFest was Sound Flakes, developed at Tokyo Denki Univertisy and described as a real-world Electroplankton (wired.com, news.digitaltrends.com). …
(8) “Throughout the whole of September, all Warp MP3 albums are available at the reduced price of £4.99 at Bleep” (bleep.com). That’s just under seven bucks. … (9) Google Trends has a music-specific tracker. There’s even an “electronic music”-specific subset: google.com/trends. What’s Google Music Trends? “Music Trends is a snapshot of the music that’s popular right now among Google Talk listeners. Every Talk user who has opted in to Music Trends will cast their vote automatically, each time they listen to music on their computer,” says its FAQ. … (10) Tim Gane (of Stereolab) and Sean O’Hagan (of High Llamas) wrote the music for La Vie d’Artiste, a French comedy directed by Marc Fittousi. Video at youtube.com. … (11) Which reminds me: Terry Treachout published a reader’s question back in May, as to whether there’s been a film comedy with a great score (artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight). The most compelling reply came from Lisa Hirsch (irontongue.blogspot.com), who named Carl Stalling for his work in animation. … (12) The Washington Post is ahead of schedule in reporting on the 30th anniversary of Brian Eno‘s Music for Airports (washingtonpost.com). (Thanks, Mike.) … (13) The Batsheva Dance Company‘s Brooklyn Academy of Music performances this coming November will feature work set to music by three studio-as-sanctuary notables: Brian Eno, the Beach Boys and Glenn Gould (nytimes.com, bam.org). …
(14) The Kitchen in Manhattan has an exhibit titled “Between Thought and Sound: Graphic Notation in Contemporary Music,” featuring examples of notation by, among others, Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Cathy Berberian, Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, Tony Conrad, Morton Feldman, Jon Gibson, Alison Knowles, Joan La Barbara, Annea Lockwood, Alvin Lucier, Meredith Monk, Gordon Mumma, Steve Roden, Marina Rosenfeld, Michael J. Schumacher, Elliott Sharp, Yasunao Tone, David Tudor, Stephen Vitiello and Christian Wolff. The exhibit was curated by Alex Waterman, Debra Singer and Matthew Lyons (nysun.com, thekitchen.org). There’s also a related concert series. The exhibit runs through October 20. (Thanks, Paul.) … (15) Mark Coniglio is the composer involved in dance company Troika Ranch’s piece Loop Diver, which appears to apply the rigors of loop-based composition to choreography: “If they’re not done perfectly, the piece loses its meaning” (nytimes.com, troikaranch.org). … (16) Dr. Chris Cree Brown creates sound art from Antarctica: “the tranquility in Antarctica can be unfamiliar and, as a consequence, marginally disturbing, ‘especially when exacerbated by the absence of ambient sound'” (scoop.co.nz). … (17) Just opened today at the Bronx Museum is a survey of Quisqueya HenrÃquez‘s art, including “light/sound works.” It runs through January 27, 2008 (bronxmuseum.org). …
(18) Muslimgauze is name-checked in the first issue of Warren Ellis‘ new comic series Doktor Sleepless, which opens with the death of a DJ. … (19) From Sony, a non-directional speaker (engadget.com) and (20) rolling music player (engadget.com). … (21) Video of Tyler Freeman‘s MIDI-controlling pants (engadget.com). …
(22) My car stereo died after four years of continuous use. I replaced it with one that has an auxiliary jack allowing for input from an MP3 player. Such a jack was rare four years ago. Now it’s standard, even on entry-level machines. The jack is much more useful than the iPod connection that also came with the deck. The first song I played on it was the instrumental of Timbaland‘s Snoop Dogg song, “What’s My Name?” — which I will, unfortunately, forever associate with spending six hours at Best Buy on a Sunday. … (23) On Saturday I toured a dozen homes developed by Joseph Eichler north of San Francisco. The open house was a fundraiser for a local hospice. In the home most exquisitely devoid of filigree, with nearly all-white interior, Arvo Pärt‘s Alina was playing on a iPod boombox. … (24) A pair of thoughts about time: (a) It’s easy to keep track of the hours, because every 15 minutes my cellphone makes my iPod or whatever else I’m listening to distort; (b) Digital time is my norm — I couldn’t survive with an analog watch and the sound of “tick tock” brings to mind car hazard lights, not a clock.
R.I.P.: (1) Lee Hazelwood (born 1929), songwriter, singer and Duane Eddy collaborator: “as Mr. Eddy’s co-writer and producer, Mr. Hazlewood helped invent twang-rock by sticking a microphone and an amp in a grain elevator, creating a ghostly reverb effect” (nytimes.com). Hazelwood, best known for having written “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’,” passed away August 4. … (2) Joe Zawinul (born 1932), Miles Davis veteran (In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew), Weather Report cofounder (nytimes, guardian.co.uk). Zawinul passed away September 11.
Heavy Rotation: (1) Various instrumentals off Kanye West‘s new Graduation; he samples krautrock band Can (Ege Bamyasi‘s “Sing Swan Song” on “Drunk and Hot Girls”). … (2) Karlheinz Stockhausen‘s haunting, fractured 1968 work Stimmung (Harmonia Mundi), newly performed by Paul Hillier‘s Theatre of Voices. … (3) The Disquiet Downstream entry of last week was C. Reider‘s take on Alvin Lucier‘s “I Am Sitting in a Room” (disquiet.com).
Quote of the Week: Elliot Goldenthal’s Silence
Film composer Elliot Goldenthal has been an underscorer worth keeping an eye on at least since 1989, when his Drugstore Cowboy and Pet Semetary both saw release. Of course, he’s not afraid of bombast, as his Titus with his partner, director Julie Taymor, showed. Now they’re back with Across the Universe, which sounds a bit like the Beatles channeled by Dennis Potter (nytimes.com):
Alone on a beach, Jude turns his pensive face to the camera and sings, “Is there anybody going to listen to my story?”with only faint wisps of melody sighing in the background. “It’s composed silence,”says Mr. Goldenthal, who arranged about 20 of the songs. (The rest were arranged by Teese Gohl and T Bone Burnett.) He achieved it with the glass harmonica, the ethereal-sounding instrument invented by Ben Franklin, and four cellos playing harmonics.
Electro Remix MP3
End the week on something both upbeat and frazzled, say “We Push Up On Frenchies” (MP3), a remix by Fujasaki of the electro act Lovely Chords. The original, which is streaming at the Lovely Chords’ myspace page (myspace.com/wepushuponfrenchies), sounded pretty pre-mixed to begin with — a self-lacerated, largely instrumental pop tune that isn’t so much frayed around the edges as riddled with tiny holes, like a zillion little razor-sharp pixels. Fujasaki took all that built-in decay as a mandate to mess ever further, so the result jitters like the sonic equivalent of the red, green and blue signals on your TV suddenly having minds each their own. The track is available courtesy of the Swedish netlabel sudd.org. More on Fujasaki at sudd.org/fujasaki.