Electric Body Music MP3 EP

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Dub Jay‘s new release on the Kikapu netlabel, at kikapu.com, has a colorful backstory. But before spelling it out for you (that is, before exploring the somewhat hidden provenance of Perfectly Ordinary Recorded Noise, as the EP is titled), it’s worth taking a moment to just listen to its four tracks, especially the first two. As the musician’s name suggests, Dub Jay’s work is informed by dub, which in this case means that it takes extended reverb as a given, much the way someone raised in New Orleans would take humidity as a given, or someone raised in Manhattan would take street noise as a given. Long echoes are inherent in Dub Jay’s music, so everything he does he expects to occur again, at repeated intervals, until it fades away. On Perfectly Ordinary Recorded Noise, that results in slowly accruing, vocal-less pop songs built from rival currents of gadgety sound, not the clicks and whirs of microsonics, but the more substantial beats of trip-hop, as well as emotive skronks that suggest a tentative saxophone, and little bits of vocals that, while only occasionally intelligible, are ever-present.

Now, about those vocals … as it turns out, if you abbreviate Dub Jay’s album title, you get P.O.R.N., and that’s exactly what it’s really built from. The Kikapu site refers to Dub Jay’s raw goods as “obscure,” but click on through to his own site, at dubjay.samenna.com, and there’s a more detailed depiction of his recording process: “Every sound on this EP (which has a convenient abbreviation) is sampled from Internet pornography. Obviously there has been a considerable amount of effecting and manipulation to obscure the original source and make the results musically useful. … Hi-hats may come from breathing noises, pads from female noises elongated and stretched out, and so on.”

Now, of course, such literal electric body music automatically enters P.O.R.N. into a relatively small library of like-sourced recordings, including Matmos’ phenomenal A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure and Jessica Vale’s The Sex Album, a far less rigorous, and far less interesting, attempt to build music from the sounds of the human body. As for Dub Jay, he’s got his priorities straight: “No sounds were sourced from music contained in pornography — that would be cheating.”

Three Remix-Contest MP3 Sets

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Three new remix contests are, if not a study in contrasts, worth looking at for their distinguishing features. What follows is a brief, and far from complete, overview. Feel free to bypass the observations, and just download the source material (and, as they’re posted, the entrants’ remixes). All three provide free MP3 downloads of the raw goods: the first, a single track; the second, its 10 constituent parts; the third, relatively brief excerpts of various extended wholes. The first contest hinges on a work of ambient spaciousness, with echoes of Erik Satie’s elemental piano lines. The second and third ask participants to transform something into electronic music: the second subject is, in its initial state, a fairly generic pop song, but several of its individual layered tracks, laid bare courtesy of the contest, have a delicate quality all their own; the third is entirely spoken word, but of course that’s just the beginning.

And the contests are as follows: (1) The first is sponsored by 12K, Taylor Deupree‘s record label, to celebrate the CD release of his recent collaboration with composer Kenneth Kirschner, post_piano 2 (12k.com/term/postpiano2). (2) The second focuses on a track, “Ever (Foreign Flag),” off a new album by the pop group Team Sleep, whose name may be familiar from a song they had on the soundtrack to The Matrix: Reloaded, and whose lead singer, Chino Moreno, may be familiar from his other band, the Deftones (teamsleepremix.com). (3) The third is sponsored by Penguin, the publisher, which has posted online some 26 samples from its audiobooks; among the reader/writer combos made available are Brian Cox and HG Wells (Time Machine), David Carradine and Jack Kerouac (On the Road) and Richard E. Grant and Bram Stoker (Dracula), sure to be a favorite (penguinremixed.co.uk).

As for prizes, 12k dangles the opportunity to appear as part of a free compilation download; Team Sleep’s promotional partners will provide DJ equipment, sporting goods, a cellphone, and more; and Penguin will collect the top 10 tracks into a commercial (download-only, presumably) compilation, and give the winners 70 of its paperback classics, among other goodies. Readers, start your samplers…

New Kettel MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest freebie from the Kracfive gang is “Blind Alley Cat,” credited to Kettel. It weaves a slowly developing snake-charm melody over the sort of meticulously percussive momentum that makes Volkswagen TV-commercial directors salivate, until, after nearly three minutes, it stutters to a sudden close, like someone forgot to check the gas gauge. Grab “Blind Alley Cat” from the MP3 Rotor section at kracfive.com. It’s up for the month of May, after which another Kracfive song will take its place. More info on Kettel, born Reimer Eising, at kracfive.com/kettel.

Michael Nyman MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

With the possible of exception of John Adams, composer Michael Nyman may be the most melodic of the major minimalists. Yeah, say that five times fast to a tune by Gilbert and Sullivan, and then head over to the Other Minds catalog at the Internet Archive (aka archive.org), which has in its coffers not one but four entries of Nyman’s music recorded live during OM’s 2005 concert series. These include two sets performed by the Del Sol String Quartet (String Quartet No. 3 and “The Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi,” the latter featuring soprano Cheryl Keller and visuals by Mary Kelly, though the MP3s, of course, include none of Kelly’s images) and two by Nyman himself (his soundtrack for Manhatta, a short silent film by filmmaker Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand, and excerpts from his most widely heard work, the score for The Piano). Make that Nyman himselves, because the Manhatta piece, the most highly recommended download of the group, features him performing on piano along with two prerecorded piano lines. The result is a rambunctious mesh of staccato lines and complementary patterns, with Jazz Age echoes of Gerswhin in particular and futurism in general (it would make a good programming choice alongside Wynton Marsalis’ Citi Movement). As with Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint composition, it appears that Manhatta is intended to be realized by a combination of live soloist plus tape, not as an ensemble performance. The Sheeler/Strand film dates from the 1920s, but unfortunately it is not, as one commentator notes in the Internet Archive entry for Nyman’s Manhatta, in the vast public-domain repository at archive.org. (This link should go to a list of the Nyman entries; otherwise search the archive.) More on Nyman at michaelnyman.com and the Del Sol at delsolquartet.com.

Tangents (SF, Corona, PostClassic)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Bay Sounds: In response to the recent trio of Disquiet concert reviews (“Beyond Laptops”), I got a request for info on how to find updates on San Francisco concerts of experimental/electronic music. These are some good resources: (1) the somewhat East Bay-oriented bayimproviser.com calendar, (2) the noise/rock-oriented thisactisnoact, (3) the S.F. e-flyer from flavorpill (sf.flavorpill.net, now featuring daily updates) and (4) local events site sfstation.com. And of course the websites of venues and musicians who promote/perform this sort of music, and the local newspapers and alt-weeklies. … Corona, N.Y.: A brief trip to Manhattan last week left little time for music, aside from some record shopping at and in the vicinity of the Other Music record store (othermusic.com). One exhibit of note, though: artist Chris Marker has a multi-screen video showing at MOMA, in the Yoshiko and Akio Morita Gallery, on the second floor. Titled OWLS AT NOON Prelude: The Hollow Men, it features stark images and reflects on the T.S. Eliot poem from which it takes its name. Playing for its 19-minute running time is Toru Takemitsu‘s Corona, in a performance by pianist Roger Woodward (link). … Z-Trip Unmashed: Turntable juggler DJ Z-Trip has a “celebrity playlist” up at the iTunes Music Store, featuring DJ Zeph, Prefuse 73, Cee-Lo and People Under the Stairs (iTunes link). Each track has a brief comment. Of D’Angelo‘s “Chicken Grease,” he says, “If you can’t feel this, you are probably that person at church who claps off beat.” And of a Miami Boyz entry from 1988, “I can’t believe this is in the iTunes store.”

… Meet the Composers: Some excerpts from the recent announcement of the Meet the Composers Commissioning Music/USA 2005 grants: “Mary Ellen Childs will write a work for pianist Kathleen Supove that incorporates live video of Supove’s physical movements; Pat Muchmore will create a work for solo trombonist Jennifer Baker using interactive electronics; Frederic Rzewski will write a solo for pianist Robert Satterlee. … Anthony Cornicello will compose an electro-acoustic work for ModernWorks. … [F]lute pioneer Robert Dick will compose a piece for wind quintet, with each movement based on a classic work of science fiction; guitarist/composer Fred Frith will write a work for the Bang on a Can All-Stars; Guillermo Galindo will write a piece for San Francisco’s Earplay using computers and abandoned machinery parts, and featuring his cybertotemic instrument MAIZ. … Kui Dong will write a work for string quartet and traditional Chinese instruments inspired by a combination of Vivaldi‘s Four Seasons and the work of John Cage. … Eve Beglarian will write a work for cellist Maya Beiser that incorporates sound design created from recordings of 12 women, each representing different vocal traditions from around the world.” More details at meetthecomposer.org.

… New CD Releases: Records due out on Tuesday, May 10, include Foetus‘ Love CD/DVD (Birdman), which includes “Blessed Evening” (video directed by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs [link], with an assist from Spike Jonze) and guests Jennifer Charles (of Elysian Fields) and theremin player Pamelia Kurstin. … Rhys Fulber (ex-Front Line Assembly and Delerium) debuts as Conjure One, with Conjure One, hosting contributors Tom Holkenburg, Chris Elliott and various singers (on Nettwerk). … According to Steve Reich‘s website, Steve Reich & Musicians Live 1977 (Orange Mountain) includes live, unedited performances of “Six Pianos,” “Pendulum Music,” “Violin Phase,” “Music for Pieces of Wood” and “Drumming-Part IV,” recorded at the Kitchen in Manhattan. (“There is background traffic noise on ‘Violin Phase’ and ‘Music for Pieces of Wood’, and yet there is the real musical energy of intense young performers including the composer.”) … Cheb i Sabbah‘s La Kahena (Six Degrees) features North African vocalists, and was recorded in Marrakech, San Francisco, New York and New Delhi. … In the spirit of Verve’s remix series, Atlantiquity (Rhino) collects newly remixed Atlantic hits, including ones by Slave, Eddie Harris, Average White Band, Donny Hathaway, Chic and the Spinners, remixed by King Britt, Sa-Ra, Charlie Dark and others. … More new-release news at brainwashed.com/releases.

… Keeping Score: Via IMDB.com, Michael Nyman is attached as a composer on three films in progress: Charged: The Life of Nikola Tesla, from director Ken Russell, as well as Where Love Reigns and Therese Raquin. … Fellow minimalist Philip Glass is listed as the composer on Vic Sarin‘s forthcoming Partition.

… Quote of the Week: “I moved to a house whose owner had been absent a couple of years. The trees and bushes are so overgrown with parasitic vines that their growth is being stunted. I’ve pulled down hundreds of feet of vines, releasing the trees underneath to uncurl and grow toward the sky again. New music is similarly overgrown with vines: the school-taught classical assumptions about what constitutes musical sophistication.” That’s composer, critic and teacher Kyle Gann writing about “Strategies For and Against Sophistication” on his blog, PostClassic.