Like many electronic musicians, John Kameel Farah posts MP3s of his work on his website, johnfarah.com. Unlike most, he also lists in detail the classical piano repertoire that he’s mastered, from such cornerstones as Bach’s toccatas and Beethoven sonatas, to modern works by Satie, Webern, Messiaen and Cage. Few of the Farah MP3s evidence his expertise on the piano, though “Spiral Flower” (MP3) layers keyboard lines in a manner that must be studio-aided. Many of his original compositions do share an intrinsic melodiousness in keeping with someone steeped in Debussy, Mozart and Haydn. Two key recommendations are “Bas Relief” (MP3), a mix of treated piano figures and rough-hewn field recordings that achieves an admirable measure of density and heft, and “Cells” (MP3), a lengthy drone that feels nearly sub-audial even as it consumes your peripheral hearing.
Stephen Vitiello MP3
Excerpted edits are rarely Disquiet Downstream fare, but when the fragment is almost four minutes in length, owing to its having been culled from a nearly hour-long CD, then so be it — especially when it’s the likes of Stephen Vitiello‘s exceptional BuffaloBassDelay. The releasing label, Hallwalls, explains where the delicate mix of found sounds originated: “The CD consists of one 54 minute track developed from field recordings Vitiello made while exploring abandoned grain elevators along the Buffalo River in 2003.” The result (MP3) may carry the weight of ambiguous real-world audio recordings, but it’s more than mere atmosphere; they’re mixed into a flush of beady little rhythmic delights. Vitiello recorded the piece while on a Hallwalls Artists in Residence Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. More info at stephenvitiello.com and hallwalls.org.
Jack DeJohnette MP3s
Jack DeJohnette, born in 1942, is one of the great living jazz drummers, beloved in electronic circles for, among many things, his role in trumpeter Miles Davis’ transition from bebop to fusion. DeJohnette has a new outfit, Ripple Effect, which teams him with Ben Surman. The duo perpetrates a fairly rarified realm of fusion, and it’s represented by two tracks at music.download.com that represent if not dual ends of that spectrum, then at least two potential directions, one welcome, one less so. “Ancient Techno (Remix)” (MP3) has a tinny quality at its core that keeps it from ever getting remotely close to the hubristic indulgences of the worst fusion, but it isn’t comfortable enough to leave melody behind in favor of open-ended music-for-music’s-sakeness; it has some nice touches of MIDI percussion, but much of the tuned percussion draws too much attention to itself, too eager to please. However “Ocean Wave (Remix)” (MP3) gets a lot closer to a state of pure motion, sounding like a thorough reduction of juju music: the dappled lines, the kinetic rhythms, the elated counterpoint. On “Ocean Wave,” even the solos are in service to the groove. (If the links don’t work, then search for Ripple Effect or DeJohnette at music.download.com.) More info at jackdejohnette.com.
The Ripple release, which came out on October 4, is well-timed to coincide with an archival Miles Davis box set, The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, released the week prior, featuring Johnette, along with John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Airto Moreira, Gary Bartz and Michael Henderson.
Update: Apparently the Cellar Door album has been delayed. Thanks to Jeff LeVine (jefflevine.blogspot.com) for the news.
e/i Reviews
Issue number five of the print magazine e/i is out, and my reviews of the following albums appear in it: Koji Asano‘s Sanctuary on Reclaimed Land (Solstice), Bird Show‘s Green Inferno (Kranky), Brian Eno‘s Another Day on Earth (Hannibal), Growing‘s The Soul of the Rainbow & the Harmony of Light (Kranky), Damon Holzborn‘s Adams & Bancroft (Accretions), Giuseppe Ielasi‘s Gesine (Hapna), Lichens‘ The Psychic Nature of Being (Kranky), Ilya Monosov‘s Architectures on Air and Other Works (Elevator Bath), Ikue Mori‘s Myrninerest (Tzadik), Adam Pacione‘s Heat (Primary) and Colin Andrew Sheffield‘s First Thus (Elevator Bath). More info at ei-mag.com.
Long Now MP3s
We interrupt the fairly steady flow of free music downloads for the occasional spoken-word entry. Several lectures in the Long Now Foundation series held in San Francisco have been mentioned on this site, most recently one by Ray Kurzweil, the keyboard inventor and futurist. Most of those lectures, held since November 2003, are now up online for free download at seminars.longnow.org, including the inaugural one, by Long Now cofounder Brian Eno. Note that the dates listed for the lectures show the years as five digits (02003, 02004), in light of the foundation’s interest in having people think long term, some 10,000 years into the future. Other lecturers available for download include science-fiction author Bruce Sterling and technologist Danny Hillis. Hillis contributed an algorithm used on Eno’s 2003 album January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now, and he wrote lyrics for Eno’s most recent album, Another Day on Earth. One treat in the Kurzweil lecture: you get to experience his awkward, 20-second silence — mentioned here on September 25 (link) — that follows a question from Long Now cofounder Stewart Brand. The audience starts laughing, good-naturedly, about eight seconds in.