Fascinated interrupt

I went crazy on my monthly eMusic download sequence, gathering music by William Basinski, Glenn Branca, and Alvin Curran (working with a bunch of others). Elodie Lauten (finally got her "Death of Don Juan"), blah blah blah.

I'm listening to the Alvin Curran right now, Maritime Rites, a collection of "songs" about the eastern seaboard of the US. Collaborators include Steve Lacy (blowing conchs? perhaps), Pauline Oliveros (who redefines what an accordion should do), Jon Gibson (saxophone, composer), and others. I'm trying to work, I'm trying to read a chapter that one of my students has written for her masters thesis, and I. Keep. Getting. Interrupted.

The music is fascinating. Simply sounds of lighthouses and buoys, and somehow these chords build up. Oliveros has created an accordion piece behind all this, Lacy has created a set of horn sounds over the top, and it's all just totally utterly mesmerizing. I can't but recommend it to people. Alvin Curran's "Maritime Rites." Wow.

Two other musical pieces worth pointing out, since I'm writing about my newest eMusic haul. Boris's album "Absolutego" is just brutal slow grindcore minimal sludge rock, I have no words for it. It kind of does what Zorn's Naked City behemoth, Leng T'che, does. There might be the same screaming agony in the Boris piece, I don't even know. (I was listening last night while working on taxes - how fitting is THAT?!) Rockists refer to this kind of music as "heavy," but that word doesn't do it justice. Slow, agonizingly slow riffage, just walls and walls of distorted sound. Fucking incredible noise.

In a similar vein, Glenn Branca's Symphony No. 1 is like a baseline of what Sonic Youth would grow out of. I just watched the documentary "Kill Yr Idols" (got it from Pitchfork.tv, and for those who don't know, it's a Sonic Youth song name from the early 80s during their No Wave phase). Branca is in there, talking about his No Wave moment. (What's no wave? If you don't know, don't worry about it. If you do, then I'm talking about the DNA, Lydia Lunch, early SY phase of No Wave. Raw punk deconstructing three chords toward something almost unmusical.) When I realized Branca was on eMusic, I had to grab it. The chords, the sounds, the production have so much in common with various phases of Sonic Youth (one of my favorite groups) that it's hard to listen to it without thinking of them ripping off the music. Then again, they played with Branca (as did members of the Swans, a band that kind of connects Branca to the Boris album I just mentioned). That's how they met. So the "stealing" is actually a natural progression.

What brings together Boris, Brnaca, and songs about the eastern seaboard? That they utterly distract me, and fascinate me. I love new sounds, curious sounds, interesting structures, unexpected moments. I love that the Clark Coolidge piece I'm listening to right now contains all sorts of Maine voices talking about the ocean, along with unrelated spoken words, honking lighthouse horns, and wave sounds. It makes no sense - it fascinates me - it makes me pay attention. That's it: I pay attention.

I'll be playing a lot of these on my show on Tuesday, I think. And I haven't even gotten to all the music I got from the Masada song book, Zorn's project from the 90s. Or the new Luciano Berio. Or The Alice Coltrane and Don Cherry and Fela Kuti. So much good music! Woo hoo!