New track I've been working on tentatively called "man/fantom". This is a first draft...
man/fantom
man/fantom
Nice to see Little Joy's bar in Echo Park getting rep'd on Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti's new band of the same name's first record (self titled). He's out there with his equally attractive gf, LA native and waifish Nico copycat Binki Shapiro (Binki? Really, LA, really?) and guitarist Rodrigo Amarante of Los Hermanos (as if we should have heard of them by now). It's as confectionery as Strokes records were but in a lot of the right ways. Much of the Strokes signature is there, Fab's vocals are laced with the same filters Julian Casablancas used, as if crunched up and fed through a old radio. The drums are a basic as it gets, melodies come as easy as a day on the beach or last call on a slow night with lyrics that ape Buddy Holly earnestness. But unlike the Strokes here there's a bit more than a little south american/caribbean influence, nothing easily placable, bit of bossa nova, bit of Tootsish reggae. I suppose I'm also supposed to mention that the guy who produced Devendra's last record produced this, so maybe that accounts for the elusive globe pandering. Don't expect anything more than posturing (one of their songs is called "How to Hang a Warhol"), but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone better at it than Strokes alums. Confession: I actually really hope I run into them at Little Joy's sometime, cause I'd, like, smoke cigarettes near them.
Jib Kidder is a mashup artist from SF who released his first record at the end of September on Portland based States Rights. It's an accumulation of a widely divergent map of interests for this guy; gamelan, mannie fresh beats, found sounds, herbie hancock, mainstream hits of many decades (much like the conspicuous consumption of greg gillis) folk, club rap, who knows what else. But unlike girl talk he makes everything feel more roomy, more off the cuff, funnier, quirkier, more personal. And without losing the sense of cultural commentary, for my money this shit is way deeper in the pocket as a hip-hop/dance record. Notwithstanding this, and though I've never seen what his shows are like (if they exist yet), it would be hard for me to imagine this turning into the sweaty freakfest that girl talk shows get their cred from. It's no where near as hyped and maybe a bit too interesting. But for what it's worth it's still nice to have another original voice in the mashup scene not just trying to make club bangers, or the next mia vs. the muppets band vs. tiny tim vs. martha stewart record. 'cause i've heard too many of those already.
*Windowdipper is of particular note for being the fattest record ever to sample the functional noises of the Windows platform.
Nice poems in the NYTimes today about the election here's my favorite one. It's by August Kleinzahler. It's called 'When the Fog'
When the fog burnt off this morning
Outsize JumboTron screens were hanging off the clouds,
Scores of them, huge, acres and acres of screen,
Images trembling,
Pixels the size of wagon wheels, damaged, flickering
Off and on, red, blue and green;
Faces, flags, county fairs — like pointillist cartoons,
Melting away, reconstituting,
A continuously mutating liquid crystal montage:
The old warrior’s frozen grin,
The popped, saffron Star Trek collar,
Critter lipstick,
Kawasaki 704 eyeglasses,
Disembodied, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile,
And there, the golden one, the adored, in silhouette,
Drinking it in behind bulletproof glass;
Crowds, crowds in hats, t-shirts, delirious,
With drumsticks and banners —
Galvanically us,
Us whom we’ve been waiting for,
All of it smearing into vibrating puddles of color,
Then dissolving, like jet exhaust, into the air.
While outside the streets were empty.
Who is to say where everyone has gone?
Only the occasional sound truck, its barked entreaties
Too garbled to make out.
Then quiet.
Two scrub jays making a racket in the honey locust.
Sky darkening as weather gathers off the coast.
Quiet as an abandoned summer playhouse.
Outsize JumboTron screens were hanging off the clouds,
Scores of them, huge, acres and acres of screen,
Images trembling,
Pixels the size of wagon wheels, damaged, flickering
Off and on, red, blue and green;
Faces, flags, county fairs — like pointillist cartoons,
Melting away, reconstituting,
A continuously mutating liquid crystal montage:
The old warrior’s frozen grin,
The popped, saffron Star Trek collar,
Critter lipstick,
Kawasaki 704 eyeglasses,
Disembodied, like the Cheshire Cat’s smile,
And there, the golden one, the adored, in silhouette,
Drinking it in behind bulletproof glass;
Crowds, crowds in hats, t-shirts, delirious,
With drumsticks and banners —
Galvanically us,
Us whom we’ve been waiting for,
All of it smearing into vibrating puddles of color,
Then dissolving, like jet exhaust, into the air.
While outside the streets were empty.
Who is to say where everyone has gone?
Only the occasional sound truck, its barked entreaties
Too garbled to make out.
Then quiet.
Two scrub jays making a racket in the honey locust.
Sky darkening as weather gathers off the coast.
Quiet as an abandoned summer playhouse.
Just found out about this LA based artist named Steve Roden whose does painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance. His work itself is pretty interesting (particularly for its relation to and use of music notation and graphic scoring, but for me it's fresh to be able to check out all the images that he's looking at before he works, or lets sit in the backdrop of his studio. He posts them regularly on his blog which is listed on my links as airform archives. But even better is his flickr page which has just an awesome accumulation of strange photography, diagrams, paintings etc.
The bottom image is a sort of score derived from diagrams of constellations and the actual star names themselves. For some of these scores you place them under the strings of a zither (an eastern european string instrument that looks like a dulcimer or an autoharp) and use the speaker/star forms as guide to pluck each string. For others he arranged audio clips of harmonica notes in a sequencer according to the speaker/star forms so the sound becomes somehow a reflection of the form of the constellation...well whatever...it's a metaphor ok?
Two tracks off the new Arthur Russell record called Love is Overtaking Me out on Audika yesterday. Arthur Russell did a lot of dreamy americana tinged minimalism with philip glass and others in the downtown scene in the 80's. On the side (and awesomely) he made a bunch of really idiosyncratic stoned disco records that feature melodies not unlike the stuff on Love is Overtaking Me just with extended, softened, spacey dance beats. He's also an amazing cellist and plays it in the most unaffected way I've ever heard. Also there's a documentary out about him which you can check out at arthurrussellmovie.com. Here he's rendering obsolete the entire output of Belle and Sebastian in 'habit of you' and still manages to channel Fleetwood Mac with the pedal steel work. In 'I couldn't say it to your face', he sounds kinda like jackson browne, or some CSNY incarnate, but it's just a gorgeous song and rings far truer than any of those types. Somebody tell me how to make music this authentic.
This is the first of a long long (too long) project where I remix every one of the Goldberg variations by Bach.
BWV 988 Variation 1 (Remix)
BWV 988 Variation 1 (Remix)
It's fall again, which means decisions and plans are made with enthusiasm and vigor until it gets cold and we give up on them. Therefore I'm starting up this old engine, this media monster, and we'll see how it goes.
Music is both literate and illiterate. Some say it must be heard to exist, and if hearing is prime, then signification at the level of language or literature is obviously absent. When analyses of music strive for a level of systematic signification such that each musical aspect is subsumed into a system they have brought forth the death of music as an aural/acoustical event. What's to hear when all is explained? If we continue to believe music must be heard to exist, then we should not either make the mistake of thinking that because music can be notated that it therefore exists as a text. However, what if music did exist without the phenomenon of sound? Then it could be said that anything is music only if it's named so. In that regard, if a given text was deemed musical it would be literature. But we also tend to say that music changes the language such that it ceases to function fully as language and becomes merely, mostly, or at least partly just sound, rather than sound that has been codified. Where to draw that line is the thing. But then we're back calling music sound. As language is infused with musical attributes, it is destroyed as a system of signs and chaos ensues. Or so the fantasy goes. Why is it that of all the arts, and of all the phenomena in the world, music is the most universally misunderstood? People think music is magic, they don't know what it's made of, how it moves, what its shape is etc. Why is it so hard to conceive of music as an object? It is comprised of matter that moves. Music is both as material and as immaterial as anything else. The problem with calling music sound, as so many "radical" sound artists and composers and fake free jazz players do, is that it's too nice, too trim, too worldy. If music is only sound, then who cares? It's like saying buildings are just dirt. In one sense, they are, but how is that a point that gets us anywhere in defining what a building is? It is the laziest manuever in a ghostly game that died when everyone decided that music was either literate or illiterate, high class or low, good or bad, art not art etc.
Music is both literate and illiterate. Some say it must be heard to exist, and if hearing is prime, then signification at the level of language or literature is obviously absent. When analyses of music strive for a level of systematic signification such that each musical aspect is subsumed into a system they have brought forth the death of music as an aural/acoustical event. What's to hear when all is explained? If we continue to believe music must be heard to exist, then we should not either make the mistake of thinking that because music can be notated that it therefore exists as a text. However, what if music did exist without the phenomenon of sound? Then it could be said that anything is music only if it's named so. In that regard, if a given text was deemed musical it would be literature. But we also tend to say that music changes the language such that it ceases to function fully as language and becomes merely, mostly, or at least partly just sound, rather than sound that has been codified. Where to draw that line is the thing. But then we're back calling music sound. As language is infused with musical attributes, it is destroyed as a system of signs and chaos ensues. Or so the fantasy goes. Why is it that of all the arts, and of all the phenomena in the world, music is the most universally misunderstood? People think music is magic, they don't know what it's made of, how it moves, what its shape is etc. Why is it so hard to conceive of music as an object? It is comprised of matter that moves. Music is both as material and as immaterial as anything else. The problem with calling music sound, as so many "radical" sound artists and composers and fake free jazz players do, is that it's too nice, too trim, too worldy. If music is only sound, then who cares? It's like saying buildings are just dirt. In one sense, they are, but how is that a point that gets us anywhere in defining what a building is? It is the laziest manuever in a ghostly game that died when everyone decided that music was either literate or illiterate, high class or low, good or bad, art not art etc.
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