Dec 16, 2008 playlist

Next week, I'll be doing a show of crazy German and US new wave music, the ultimate in synth-dressed punk DIY music (man, some of that stuff is crap, but GOOD crap). This week, I'm doing really long songs. I don't even know how many I'll play. I'd planned to do the whole Philip Glass opera, Einstein on the Beach, but realized that my mood wasn't in it. Plus, who wants to study to that material? (It's finals week at UMaine, for those not at UMaine.) I have my serious emotional attachment to the piece, and it flips my brains around every time I immerse in it as fully as during a radio show in which nothing else gets played. The piece is 3+ hours, and I have a 2 hour show. So, perhaps another reason I'm not playing it is that I showed up at the station too late.

So what I'm playing instead is:

Constant Mix mp3 from C. Reider

The link takes you to the place where I first found out about this piece (this morning!), and links from there take you further to the download at archive.org. (Irony moment: I am late to this show because of futzing about trying and failing to submit a paper to arxiv.org, pronounced the same way.) Read up on the music at both locations, because it's interesting. The music is a collection of drones, with the drones removed, in essence. What's left at that point? Fascinating sound, accidental blips and blops, arhythmic material, and an incredibly dense, interesting listen.

Music for 18 Musicians - Steve Reich

This is the 1996 recording, a bit longer than the 1978 ECM recording, a bit smoother and more richly textured. I don't know which I like better. Much like with the 1970s recordings of Music in 12 Parts and Einstein on the Beach compared to the 90s recordings, there's a certain amount of sound harshness to the original recordings. I think it's an artifact of the recording style from the 70s but also I have a sense that they wanted to sound more lush in the 90s. Most of the time, I like the harsher DIY sounds of the 70s, from back in the day before these were hugely supported artists.

Anyway, the music is just plain beautiful. It is one of my favorite pieces ever, and has been for the past 6 years or so. It's just amazing to listen to. So many elements of it are memorized and familiar to me, and yet each time I listen to it I get this thrill as something happens that I hadn't heard before. It's a piece that makes me LISTEN. It's a thorough pleasure, every time.

There's a ton on Reich online. I'm curious when Kyle Gann will have more to say about the piece. His response to Galen H. Brown in this thread was interesting - I'm not a composer, though, so a lot of it is way beyond my understanding. Sigh. Anyway, the whole article is a great read even for an ignoramus like me.

Not that it matters, but my favorite interview with Reich happens to be at the indie rock online mag, Pitchfork .

Music in 12 Parts - Philip Glass

I like many of these 12 pieces immensely and can't stand others just as strongly. Go figure. I'll be playing parts 1, 9, and 6, I think. (There's a numerical reason for that, but I'm still playing with it.)

If you're interested in the guy, check out this long article on Philip Glass. There is a ton more on the web about him, and you can listen to nearly his entire catalog up to 2001 with the IBM Glass-engine, here. Pretty slick, that.