Track -- Artist -- Album -- Composer if listed
- Salzburg Bells Multiple — Michael Wittmann — Herrnau Kirche Aufnahmen
12:00. This is a recording from when we lived in Salzburg last year, and is a nice found sound multimetric piece as the different bells ring at different rates, creating that typical church sound chaos. It was recorded on our last weekend in Salzburg, when we'd gotten so used to this sound during the day, and realized we wouldn't hear it anymore. I have a few other recordings, hence the "album" title... - Assassin Reverie — The ARTE Quartett — Terry Riley: Assassin Reverie — Terry Riley
Wow, what a chaotic piece, starting off with a nearly trite sax quartet section, then getting really noisy during the middle with sounds and samples, and ending with a sad little coda that continues to use found sounds and samples but is somehow somber, morose, kind of melancholic. Look at all the chaos. The assassin's work done, sitting around, lamenting what just happened. - Cendres — Kaija Saariaho — Chamber Music
12:20. A pretty "normal" piece of chamber music, in comparison to what I usually play. Flute, piano, and a string quartet seems to be the orchestration. A bit twee at times, a bit much on the heavy bowing and dark thick rich texture at other times, a bit playful in between. There's some spoken moments, reminiscent of Kronos doing Black Angels and so on. I'm not sure I like the pieces as a whole, but it's got some nice parts to it. - Nikko Wolverine - The Presence Of One — Chas Smith — Nikko Wolverine — Chas Smith
12:33. I love the sustain notes on Chas Smith's pedal steel, the way certain sounds slice across the spectrum, and the way a long, meditative build up is interrupted when these sound slices come along. Yes, I know, I'm not expert in listening to music, I just describe it. But it's lovely to pay attention as the texture of this piece builds up (a theme for songs later in the show, as well). I love attending to the increase in textures, the overtones and sustains coming off individual moments. Reminds me of looking at conceptual art, where your eyes slowly adjust to the artist-created environment. - You Can’t See the Forest…Music — Daniel Lentz — Cold Blue — Daniel Lentz
- Stumpf 2-3-4 2006-05-01 — Onophon
12.41. These two (Daniel Lentz and Onophon) are pieces in which different speakers talk in syllables and eventually figure out how to make a single sentence. Both work on the principle that the speeches are out of synch, and it takes all piece to get them to be one. The Daniel Lentz ends up saying "you can't see the forest for the trees. you can see a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. don't put the cart before the horse. better late than never. birds of a feather flock together." Onophon, on the other hand, starts with the full phrase, then lets it fall to pieces, and finally catches up to itself again at the end. It's verbal phasing, which is pretty cool. The Lentz seems to be more like Larry Polansky's four voice canons, in that you end up in a place of coherence, but perhaps I'm hearing it wrong. - It’s Not The Bullet That Kills You - It’s The Hole (for Chris Burden) — Laurie Anderson — Airwaves — Laurie Anderson
12.52. What a dorky hoedown song, with silly lyrics. I love it. It's a nice alternative to the previous few songs. Throw people off guard or something. It makes me laugh. - In This Light — John Kuhlman — Cold Blue — John Kuhlman
Start off with menacing bass, some singing deeply buried in the mix, and it seems like any moment now, Thurston or Lee should be popping with some angular chord work in an early Sonic Youth song. But now. This is on the Cold Blue label, and it's like some shamanistic ritual of a death metal band that left the drums at home and only had the bass track. Ha ha. Everything is low end, except for the overtones on the bass strings, and only slowly do other noises almost like seagulls come in (wtf?). No, wait, that's a guitar. And is that a...? chorus? Maybe not. Okay, then. I could go toward Glass's Koyaanisqatsi after this, but I think I'll stick with the Sonic Youth instead... - Having Never Written a Note for Percussion — Sonic Youth — SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century 2 — James Tenney
1:00. Did I ever think I'd like this album as much as I do? No, I did not. I love this album. This piece is typical: a single note, to crescendo and decrescendo, that's all. But it takes them 9 minutes to do it, and they do it well, and everything that I love about texture and layers of sound comes together, so that the drums show up right at the right time, and then fade out again later on, and so on. I love this whole album, with its Oliveros and Cage and Nam June Paik and even a hysterical little Yoko Ono moment. Totally worth it, and it helps make sense of what came later on the NYC Ghosts&Flowers album, which I also liked and others didn't. Oh, well. - The Happiest Day of Our Fucking Lives — Royal Trans — In An Expression of Form, Vol. II
No, I can't read the title on the air. This song continues the mood of the last one, a sustained drone, without the (de)crescendo, though. If you listen close, you can tell that it's on an 12 beat rhythm, at least for a while. (Dang, just realized that one speaker had been dead for a while - ugh, bad audio bugs the shit out of me. - Merle (Die Elektrik) — Einstürzende Neubauten — Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. — Bargeld/Einheit/Unruh/Chung/Borsig/Caffery
13.14h This gets much more noisy and oh so painfully evil in its text. "Do you know a Merle? Are you related to her? That's good. Too good." There's more in terms of threatening questions. "But only know her by name!" "Shame, because she won't last long." - Wa yay yay Saadiya — Hassan Hakmoun — The Fire Within: Gnawa Music of Morocco
A great antidote to the previous song, and where the noises of metal against metal were threatening in the previous piece, they get turned into great gnawa cymbal percussion (what are those cymbals called? I could google, but I'm lazy about links today...). This song is just entirely different from the previous piece, this one joyful where the last was threatening. Hassan Hakmoun played this past summer at the American Folk Festival here in Bangor, and he kicked fucking ass. I saw a few sets, and they were simply stunning, so that you lost all sense of time and just drowned in the rhythm. He even did a few rock star moments, leaning over the monitor to surround himself in sound, things like that. It was funny. - Snowing — Cylob — Mood Bells — Cylob
13.22h Bells and cymbals, continuing on that theme, but returning to the drones of earlier in the show with some of the background music. This is more rhythmic than most things I play, I guess. I like it. The whole album does a great job with bells - duh, that's its title, ain't it? - Endless Summer — Christian Fennesz — Endless Summer — Christian Fennesz
13.24h. Processed guitar sounds from the Viennese musician. I like this, with the occasional open, lovely, beautiful chord rising out of the noisy chaos. Things are processed all wrong, you feel like someone is singing but it got screwed up through the guitar vocoder (think Frampton, but with bad pedals). And yet, it's a happy little chord under it all, a smile in the music, even when noises try to take over all the damn time. Oh, and the record skipping sounds in a song called "endless summer" are funny, implying the run-out groove on some old vinyl. - monolakemotionblur — Monolake — unreleased — Robert Henke
This is part of Monolake's monthly free downloads, and some of them are really great pieces. This one is more club oriented than really makes sense in a "postclassical" show, but I don't care. I felt like some light beats, you know? - It Was up in the Mountains — Laurie Anderson — You’re the Guy I Want to Share My Money With
13.43h This album title has always appealed to me, making me smile. Most Laurie Anderson makes me smile, because even now it's so damned inventive. This song continues a thread of this show, which is the weird, nearly threatening lyrics. I mean, tigers?! Otherwise, it sounds like some native american story being told, just from accent, but tigers? huh? - When I See Scissors, I Cannot Help But Think Of You — The Dead Texan — The Dead Texan
What's with this title? The music is a thick texture, not as broken as Christian Fennesz, and the piano is a bit, I don't know, pathetic in its movie soundtrack quality. I liked this better last night when I decided to put it on my show. Sigh. It's got some nice points to it, but it's kind of boring. - Small Mr Man Pants — Odd Nosdam — Burner
Weird lyrics. "I gotta say, a bird in the hand is nice to have, ha ha ha ha." Again, not really postclassical music, but I'm enjoying the thick noisiness of it, the way the lyrics get lost in the mix. I think I was on a shoegazer kick when I was listening to this last night. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. - ciao — Lee Maddeford — Chamber music
13.53h Every show needs some accordion. - 12305te Nacht — Einstürzende Neubauten — Strategies Against Architecture III
This is my 12,305th night - the first few thousand I forgot... I love this song. The lyrics are too hard to translate, and the music is just on the cusp to when they got horribly boring (to my ears). I saw them live in Vienna in the spring of 1993, an outdoor show on a flatbed truck on the Ring.
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