Brian Eno spoke at length on the KQED radio interview show Forum on November 13. The conversation is archived here. (Due to the organizational structure of the KQED website, kqed.org, it appears to be necessary to page backwards from the most recent broadcast.)
Bushwacked MP3s (+ More)
What happens when you apply the talents of the digital-media wizards at the London-based record label Warp, home to Aphex Twin and Autechre, to the speeches of the president of the United States? “Bushwacked” is an MP3 of George W. Bush speeches, seamlessly edited to comic effect — comic in a Dr. Strangelove kinda way (here). “Bushwacked 2” is a video, plied with a similar agenda, and it’s also available as an MP3 file, and a remix (here).
Coastal MP3
On October 8, about a week before the launch of Disquiet.com’s Downstream department, this site published a package of downloadable and streaming music and music-video files courtesy of the Ninja Tune record label. That package (“N Is for Ninja”), and similar sets of Ninja files in the past, served as a kind of inspiration for the Disquiet Downstream, which now provides an array of recommended free music from around the web each weekday. In any case, a month-plus on, the “N Is for Ninja” file that stands out most strongly is Super Numeri‘s “The Coastal Bird Scene Pt. 1” (MP3, Real Audio stream, Windows Media stream), a 12″-only track, laden with harps, cymbals, lilting guitar and other symbols of lazy days; almost five minutes in length, it takes its time getting underway, content to linger like a British folk revival band’s interpretation of Miles Davis’ electric period. The Numeri file is not electronica, in the most banal sense of the word, but it’s both enjoyable and informative to hear specific elements of Davis’ electric work — the light drum figures, which have a centering purpose akin to a film’s voiceover narrative; the ephemeral string parts, which evaporate like cotton candy — echoed by a largely acoustic ensemble. At the time of “N Is for Ninja,” of the five tracks made available for download, the Numeri was at the bottom of the list. A month on, it’s become constant listening.
TV Theme Stream
The network Radio-Canada asked the musician who goes by the name Pheek to remix the musical themes to some of its most popular TV series, dating back at least to the 1950s. The result of that archival effort is currently available as a stream from Pheek’s webpage, pheek.com (look for the link toward the site’s upper left-hand corner). Among the TV shows whose themes are included in the mix are Le temps d’une paix (“It was about a French Quebec family of the 1900s,” said Pheek), Septième Nord (“I’d say it was our equivalent of General Hospital, but less of a soap opera”), Rue des pignons, and Les belles histoires des pays d’en haut. Listeners unfamiliar with the original broadcasts will still take pleasure in the familiar period and genre musical elements (the lush orchestrations, most notably), and with the way that Pheek has sewn them into an extended, dreamy whole.
Avant Guitar MP3s
On the cover Neil Jendon‘s new album, Live at Buddy in Chicago, Jendon stands on a stage, the image slightly blurred, as if he’s in constant motion, as if he’s contorted by rock’n’roll, as if he’s more interested in bending his guitar than playing it. From a listen to the album, only the third of those conjectures holds any water. The music is expressly still. Aside from the centrality of the guitar, Jendon’s music here has less in common with rock’n’roll than with the sort of ambience more generally associated with synthesizers and tape loops, found sounds and computer equipment. Many musicians experiment with the guitar as an ambient tool, from Greg Davis to Fennesz to Steve Roach to Robert Fripp, but few let the sonic trappings of the instrument — the sound of a strummed chord, a picked string, a discernable riff — take a backseat to resonance. Live at Buddy is over half an hour of rigorously experimental guitar music that will appeal to fans of Glenn Branca’s robust “guitar symphonies,” but also of Japanese noise, and of laptop composers’ elegant, fragile glitch.
The album’s three tracks, each over 10 minutes, are wholly distinct from one another. “Part One” traces a path less whisper-to-scream than silence-to-hum, building from quiet (so quiet that it probably makes more sense on headphones than in a live venue) to a psychedelic hymn. “Part Two” summons bracing, invigorating, piercing sounds that, over time, become comfortable, less like static and more like a fuzzy wool blanket. “Part Three” is by far the liveliest of the set, getting downright symphonic at times, in terms of depth of sound; it’s also the most varied, with segments of bell tones, pastoral hum, industrial noise, oscillating catharsis, and fuzztone drone. The album was released November 10 on the Stasisfield label’s Aux-In sublabel (mission statement: “live music, straight from the soundboard to your digital turntable”), and was recorded live on January 29 of this year. Download all three tracks for free from the album’s webpage (here). For more information on Stasisfield and Aux-In, visit stasisfield.com.