One is tempted to call Larkian‘s “Droxma_1” a drone, but it’s so much more than that, more specific, more earthly, more tangible. There’s too much detail in “Droxma_1” to relegate it to mere, to even superior, drone-ness. It begins in these shifting waves of tone, with particulate percussion flitting in and out. Drone purists might consider the noises to be flies in the ointment, but in this case the extra material makes the whole thing all the more interesting, more eventful, more palatable. At nearly half an hour, “Droxma_1” begins in one place (this nascent realm of sounds competing, lazily, for prominence) and drives eventually to elsewhere, to a peak of rollicking maximalism, like a Glenn Branca symphony, like one of Michael Gordon’s post-rock chamber works, like the famous “tuning up” moment in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” but distended, like some tumultuous communal experience replayed on the evening newscast in slow motion. “Droxma_1” is the third and most recent release from the adozen.org netlabel. It’s available in two file sizes: 256 kbps (MP3) and 128 kbps (MP3). In general, the latter should be sufficient for casual listening, but this piece deserves the density of the higher bit rate.
Percussive Minimal Techno MP3
Detroit-based musician Ryan Crosson‘s The Plane Ride EP, on the Archipel netlabel, opens with its strongest material: “Bow String,” six and a half minutes of cross-step minimal techno built almost entirely from percussive elements, just a scattering of ping pong balls, heart monitors, thumbed drums and more. The remainder of the set is more standard. “RyePickle and Cheese” may up the ante in terms of how antic it gets, but it’s also a bit too eager to please. Ditto “Blue to Green,” which eventually adopts what amounts to a riff, and spoils the sedate background it had built up to that point, and the title cut, which, albeit bubbly, follows a familiar template. “Bow String” (MP3) is the keeper. Dated July 18, the EP is Archipel’s eighth and most recent release thus far. Check it out at archipel.cc.
Leo Ornstein Interview MP3s
Sometime yesterday, the counter in the Other Minds catalog at the Internet Archive, aka archive.org, clicked up one notch, to 206 from 205. Yet, due to the phased processes of database tools, especially those employed by a system as massive as that of the Internet Archive, no new free download was immediately evident; the top of the stack still showed an entry from the recent Other Minds festival, held in San Francisco back in March of this year. By noon today, though, the latest files finally made themselves apparent: two hour-length radio segments of an interview with composer Leo Ornstein, held to celebrate his 100th birthday, back in 1992. Ornstein phoned in from Wisconsin, while his interviewer, Charles Amirkhanian, talked about his music with Ornstein’s son, Severo, played segments of Ornstein’s compositions and, late in the profile, discussed Ornstein’s significance and accomplishments with Nicholas Slonimsky. Though the composer’s association with electronic and ambient music is secondary at best, as an early proponent of Debussy, Ravel and Schoenberg, he is worth listening to for his first-hand account and reflections, especially when he discusses his approximation of the sound of an airplane in his “Suicide in an Airplane,” composed in 1913 (he aspired to represent the “realism of the mechanism”) and his “Hebraic Fantasy,” which was composed for Albert Einstein. This link should lead to the Ornstein entry, and this link should lead to the FTP repository of the interview recordings (in various formats). Otherwise, just head to the Archive’s home page, archive.org, and search for “ornstein” and “1992,” the year the program was first broadcast. Ornstein passed away a decade later, in 2002.
Swamp Musk MP3
The beautiful thing about artificially produced harmonies, like the picturesque swamp musk of David Last‘s three-minute “Landscape” (MP3), is the indefinite division between a singular complex sound and a set of individual sounds. The piece plays out like a Southern Gothic organ solo, slow as molasses, and about as thick, too. It comes and goes at its own pace, but it isn’t clear what is a matter of carefully placed simultaneous notes, and what is an accident of overtones; what is a matter of matched sonic elements, and what is a trace or refraction of the main sound source. The shape of the harmony, at times wide, at others relatively compact, always fairly dense, moves like a blob across the Platonic staves of the mind’s sheet music. “Landscape” should be heard alongside last week’s “Ghost of the Gulag (Reprise)” by Raz Mesinai (entry), because both are quasi-classical forays by young musicians more closely associated with the Third World studio machinations of dub. On Last’s website, davidlast.net, “Landscape” is described as “Mellow Orchestral Sculpty Beatless,” which just about sums it up. A side note explains “This is an unreleased track that will be part of a sooper-mellow type of release later this year.” Here’s looking forward to it.
Tangents (Bumbershoot, Houston, space)
Quick Links: (1) This year’s Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, September 2 – 5, will feature a sound art exhibit, “In Resonance,” with curators Fionn Meade and Rob Millis (link). … (2) Details on the 3rd Annual Festival of New Trumpet Music (link), to be held throughout August in New York City. … (3) A MIDI-controlled sofa (link), via engadget.com. … (4) A neat inexpensive speech synthesizer (link), via gizmodo.com.
… Good Reads: (1) Interview with Prefuse 73, aka Scott Herren, in the debut issue of Robotspeak magazine, by Donald Bell, aka Chachi Jones (link). He talks about his fave musical era, an adolescence steeped in hip-hop, and the techniques that keep him ahead of “[a]ny little trust fund kid whose mommy can buy them an MPC or a computer.” … (2) Boston Globe piece on Bang on a Can‘s covers of Brian Eno‘s Music for Airports (link). “Eno’s music was carefully crafted, but his intention was to create something that would remain in the background,” says composer Michael Gordon. “In that respect, he failed — the music is more interesting than that.”
… Select New Releases: (1) Erasure‘s Here I Go Impossible Again/All This Time Still Falling Out of Love (Mute) single consists of two CDs plus a DVD, including live footage, remixes by Meloboy, Shanghai Surprize and Triggertrax, and software (Digimpro) that facilitates remixing of “Here I Go Impossible Again.” Yes, there’s a contest. Winners get iPods packed with 19 live double-CD Erasure albums. More info here. … (2) Recording together under the name Groundtruther, Charlie Hunter (guitar) and Bobby Previte (drums) invite a guest on each of their ongoing Longitude series of CDs (Thirst Ear). Last time it was saxophonist Greg Osby. This time it’s turntablist DJ Logic. … (3) Minimal techno act Pub‘s Liltmor (Ampoule). … More new release info at brainwashed.com/releases.
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Daniel Lanois‘ new album, Belladonna, will attract fans of his ambient work with Brian Eno and fans of his French Canadian-inflected roots recordings. The best tracks on Belladonna strike a happy medium, and a particular favorite right now is “Telco,” which does just that, treating rudimentary piano and guitar elements like sound effects, and setting them above a rich industrial whir. … (2) Mike Jones, one of Houston’s many sudden rap stars, may sound like a latter day Tone-Loc, his thick nasal delivery scraping the low registers like a busted muffler hitting pavement. But what distinguishes Who Is Mike Jones?, his current full-length, is the intimacy of his man-machine interface. Throughout the album, he and his guests rap in a way that’s one with the music, moving with the biomechanical feel of a good turntable manipulator. His phrasing, especially on songs like “Got It Sewed Up” and “Still Trippin,” is honed to mesh with the continuous scratching and fluctuations in production. Which isn’t to suggest that his instrumentals can’t hold their own. The vocal-free dub of “Still Trippin” is a cinematic swath of rhythmically adroit beats and a rising violin line with noir-ish overtones. … (3) Of the Disquiet Downstream entry from this past week, the one getting the most frequent listens is Raz Mesinai‘s “Ghost of the Gulag (Reprise)” (entry, MP3), a bit of chamber maximalism from a musician more generally associated with modern dub.
… Score Keeper: Multi-instrumentalist and studio whiz Jon Brion (who chips in on rapper-producer Kanye West‘s forthcoming Late Registration) is said to be yet again collaborating with director Paul Thomas Anderson, this time on Oil!, based on an Upton Sinclair novel and due out next year (according to IMDB.com).
… Quote of the Week: “‘I love to listen to music in space,’ he said. ‘It’s a very peaceful thing for me.'” That’s Space Shuttle veteran Dr. Stephen K. Robinson, who’s on the crew of the current mission (link).