A Winged Victory for …

A live Arvo Pärt cover by A Winged Victory for the Sullen

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A Winged Victory for the Sullen is the name employed by Adam Wiltzie (of Stars of the Lid) and composer Dustin O’Halloran when working in tandem. They have, together, committed wonderfully drone-informed explorations of what might be called contemporary classical, except to the extent that so many of its participants welcome the word “classical” with the same enthusiasm that might meet an invitation to a high-school reunion. In this live recording, performed with the ACME Contemporary Music Ensemble (here listed as ACME String Ensemble) live in Seattle (date and place left unspecified), they present the most subdued portion of “Fratres,” a famed and oft-revisited work by Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer known for his bracing mix of spiritual and minimalist intensity.

Minus the piece’s frenzied violin solo, it is a swell of sound that comes and goes like a playground swing kept aloft by the wind. The haphazard live-recording acoustics just add to its dusty figurations. O’Halloran and Wiltzie in effect proclaimed their modus operandi with the title of the first track of their self-titled album from 2011; the track: “We Played Some Open Chords.” A later track on the same album might also suffice: “Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears.” Along with the likes of Nils Frahm and Rachel’s, anong others, A Winged Victory for the Sullen are openly nostalgic and emotive in a way that brings to mind the heart-on-the-sleeve emotional awareness of much indie-rock. Pärt’s “Frartes” makes a natural choice for its role as retroactively adopted precedent to what A Winged Victory for the Sullen is currently up to. The association is as natural as Billy Bragg covering Pete Seeger or Alexandre Desplat giving the nod to John Williams.

Here’s the complete A Winged Victory for the Sullen, released by Kranky in 2011:

The Arvo Pärt track was originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/alliedee](https://soundcloud.com/alliedee/sounds-from-thursday-evening-5). More from the duo at [awvfts.com](www.awvfts.com). More from O’Halloran at [dustinohalloran.com](http://www.dustinohalloran.com/). More from Wiltzie’s Stars of the Lid at [brainwashed.com/sotl](http://www.brainwashed.com/sotl/).

Disquiet: 15, 10 & 5 Years Ago This Week (2014.07)

My first Diego Bernal, Max Neuhaus RIP, #NP

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This would be roughly the week of February 10 through February 16.

20140216-maxn

***5 Years Ago (2009):*** I feel like I’ve been listening to Diego Bernal’s tremendous atmospheric old-school hip-hop instrumentals for much longer than five years, and perhaps I have, but according to my searches, [I first wrote about them five years ago this week](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/16/diego-bernals-old-school-hip-hop-mp3s/); these days Bernal, who is a Texas-based civil rights attorney, is on the San Antonio city council, representing his district. He has less room in his life for music-making these days, but he collaborated this past September with Ernest Gonzales (aka Mexicans with Guns) on the album [*Atonement*](https://exponential.bandcamp.com/album/atonement). … Also in the Downstream this week: [raw materials from Peter Gabriel’s “Games without Frontiers”](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/13/raw-games-without-frontiers-multitrack-mp3s/), great Red Bull Music Academy interviews ([Wolfgang Voigt; Mario Caldato, Jr.](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/12/voigt-caldato-i-f-talk-to-rbma-mp3/)), some [Floridian field recordings from Michael Raphael](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/10/floridian-field-recording-mp3/). … I went back to the New Langton Arts exhibit I mentioned [last week](https://disquiet.com/2014/02/09/disquiet-15-10-5-years-ago-this-week-2014-06/) about [graphically notated scores](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/13/3-more-ways-of-drawing-music-san-francisco/). … I quoted from [Max Neuhaus’s obituary](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/14/quote-of-the-week-neuhauss-mean-streets/) by Bruce Weber from the New York Times (he passed away five years ago on February 9):

>The sound creates a space for itself with definite boundaries. You can only hear it within a few feet. But the main audible effect is not so much hearing it as hearing what it does to everything around it. It kind of slices up the sounds of that fountain splashing over there, for instance.

That’s Neuhaus pictured above at his Times Square sound installation. … And I noted an appearance by [Otomo Yoshihide](https://disquiet.com/2009/02/15/image-of-the-week-otomos-feedback/) at an event in New York.

***10 Years Ago (2004):*** I wrote at some length about the year’s [Activating the Medium](https://disquiet.com/2004/02/14/lets-active/) festival in San Francisco. … Downstream entries included a four-minute stretch of [French desloation](https://disquiet.com/2004/02/10/creepshow-mp3/) by Planetaldol, a video for Warp artist [Req](https://disquiet.com/2004/02/11/warp-hip-hop-video/), video by [Keith Fullerton Whitman](https://disquiet.com/2004/02/12/kfw-videostreamdownload/), [more video](https://disquiet.com/2004/02/13/another-kfw-streadownload/) from Whitman, and an interview with [Scanner](https://disquiet.com/2004/02/16/scanner-interview-stream/).

***15 Years Ago (1999):*** I wrote about the “[NP](https://disquiet.com/1999/02/15/emoticon-of-the-week/)” (“now playing”) bit people were adding to their email signatures. I mis-identified it as an emoticon, but heck it was 1999.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Aphex Twin @ 33 1/3 (5/5): Aphex Twin Before + After SAW2 (2/2)

The fifth and final of five posts for the 33 1/3 website

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The publisher of my Aphex Twin book, 33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury, invited me to write blog posts this week to note the book’s official publication on Thursday, February 13, which is to say yesterday. The fifth and final of these five posts is up today: [“Video Vault Part II: Aphex Twin Before + After SAW2.”](http://333sound.com/2014/02/14/aphex-twin-week-video-vault-part-ii-aphex-twin-before-after-saw2/)

This is the opening of the piece, about half the post’s total length:

>Richard D. James has more pseudonyms than Jason Bourne and Fernando Pessoa combined. So, it isn’t quite right to say he didn’t release anything after Selected Ambient Works Volume II for a full year. Quite the contrary, there was a steady flow of material, much from the close-proximate moniker AFX. However, the next official Aphex Twin album came almost exactly a year later: an EP of remixes of a track titled “Ventolin.”
>
>The EP announced itself immediately as being as intentionally far from Selected Ambient Works Volume II as one might get. The opening whine of the first track is an intense, painful, irritating sound — deliciously irritating — and it doesn’t let up for the length of the song, or for the length of the release, which is a series of reworkings of the same material. Alongside that whine is a powerful rhythmic crunch.
>
>In the video, the machine whine is initiated by the simple push of a button, an elevator button. It’s pushed by a businesswoman. Her plight — she’s stuck in the elevator for the length of the video — initially alternates with shots of the asthma inhaler from which the track takes its name. It is seen emerging from a box, the steady ascent reminiscent of space-rocket launches, a correlation strengthened by the slow-motion docking of the inhaler and mouthpiece later in the video.
>
>…

Read the full piece, and see the associated video, at [333sound.com](http://333sound.com/2014/02/14/aphex-twin-week-video-vault-part-ii-aphex-twin-before-after-saw2/).

Aphex Twin @ 33 1/3 (4/5): Aphex Twin Before + After SAW2 (1/2)

The fourth of five posts for the 33 1/3 website

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The publisher of my Aphex Twin book, 33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury, has invited me to write blog posts this week to note the book’s official publication on Thursday, February 13. The fourth of these five posts is up today: [“Video Vault Part I: Aphex Twin Before + After SAW2.”](http://333sound.com/2014/02/13/aphex-twin-week-video-vault-part-i-aphex-twin-before-after-saw2/)

This is the opening of the piece, a little less than half post’s total length:

>Selected Ambient Works Volume II”˜s release on the label Warp in 1994 was framed by the pair of singles that directly preceded and succeeded it, both of which were EPs that had accompanying videos. The two EPs are intense in their own ways, and work to further emphasize the unusually vaporous qualities of the album.
>
>Just before the record came “On,”a frenetic track whose surreal video — stop motion by the sea shore — was directed by Jarvis Cocker, best known as a member of the band Pulp. A native of Sheffield, England, like the founders of Warp, Cocker had, along with his directing partner Martin Wallace, previously made videos for such Warp-label roster members as Nightmares on Wax and Sweet Exorcist.

Read the piece in full, and see the corresponding video, at [333sound.com](http://333sound.com/2014/02/13/aphex-twin-week-video-vault-part-i-aphex-twin-before-after-saw2/).