I'll be liveblogging during the show as new songs get played...
- Rothko Chapel 05 -- Morton Feldman -- Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns?
12.00h. One of my favorite endings to any piece - the overall performance is too quiet, sadly, which is a shame. The best description of the whole Rothko Chapel piece is here, accurately describing the sense of WTF and wonder wrapped in one. - music is math -- Boards of Canada -- geogaddi
"The past inside the present." I think that is the only lyric in this beat driven Boards of Canada tune, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the Rothko Chapel piece that preceded it, though it has something to do with the actual Rothko Chapel in Houston, TX. Not that I can explain what, but to me, there's a connection, and I'll leave it at that. - Electric Counterpoint-Fast(4) -- Pat Metheny -- Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint
12.11h. This should be familiar to the dub folks as the guitar which sat underneath The Orb's "Little Fluffy Clouds" (which is a fabulous song, isn't it?), but it's also Pat Metheny reaching into Steve Reich's composition and doing something fabulous and meditative with it. The transition from BoC to this track is exactly what I strive for in the show - on the boundary between minimalism, noise, abstract, electronic, mashup, whatever. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. - It Would Have Happened Anyway -- Mogwai -- Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
I love this album. The transition was a bit slow, I began the Mogwai too late for the volume to flow smoothly from one to the other piece. Oops. The song itself is a long drone, lots of noises buried in the thick sludge, perhaps feet running, perhaps hints of crowds. I like, I like. - Only -- Joan La Barbara -- Only
A single voice. I'm swinging back and forth like mad, I feel, which is shaking up the show. It's not one zone, it's a variety of styles and sounds. It's where I am today. Oh, well. Also, the text of this piece (a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke) is really beautiful. La Barbara has sung with Steve Reich and Robert Ashley, done poems by WFMU's Kenny G, and is all around an amazing performer. And Feldman's piece, well, it's unlike anything else he did that I know of. Short, melodic, Feldman? Those don't go into the same sentence. - Konstant -- Kammerflimmer Kollektief -- Maeander
Another wild shift in style, this time from a capella voice to drum driven, beat driven electronic free jazz. The drums and percussion drive along, and on top comes this solo instrument wailing away. Free jazz sax in electronica, right after an early Feldman piece? Why not! Oh, and toward the end, the sludgy noises return as everything gets mixed heavier and heavier. The drum keeps going, but the piano comes in more and more. It's a different kind of minimalism, I guess. - Fratres -- Kronos Quartet -- Winter Was hard
Back to something quieter. But the lyrics are really funny here (winter was so hard, we could only celebrate Saturday every other Saturday... something like that). The sound transition from the one piece to the other was good, but suddenly we move from free jazz sax and drums as processed sludge to a choir singing over a string quartet. This song ended at 12.30h, for those keeping track of time. - The Sea Organ of Zadar, Croatia -- City of Zadar field recording
I found this online, and enjoy it immensely. I know the area in Croatia, though not Zadar itself. It's fabulous to think that they created this sea organ, pumping sounds onto the boardwalk for pedestrians on their evening stroll. - I -- Terry Riley -- Poppy Nogood And The Phantom Band "All Night Flight" Vol. 1
It's got the same droning quality and looping set of sounds as the Zadar sea organ, but this is composed, the other was coincidence. I enjoy those kinds of connections. This is one of Riley's great saxophone driven drones, and I don't really know what else to say about it right now, because I'm listening and want to pay more attention to the swirling sounds. - windchimes -- cantaloup -- tonight it shows
12.41h. This song has a snippet from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is a beautiful movie. The song drifts between noisy melancholy and hopeful beauty, with the chords doing one thing and the chiming guitar and the bells doing another. Reminds me of Cocteau Twins, but slowed down. When the tripping drum beat enters, it makes for a lovely little repeated mantra. Mantras and minimalisms, that's what today's show is evolving toward, I guess. - mykologics -- Mouse on Mars -- The only blip hop record you will evver need vol. 1
This is one of my favorite albums of the past few years, Luaka Bop once again inventing a name for a musical genre (blip hop, just like Afrolusian music about a decade ago). The song is a little bouncy thing, bleeping and bopping along. Little glitches, a horn section as if we're in some weird electronic funk realm, and a light little groove sitting on top of ... what? Sitting on top of nothing, all high end sounds as the anchor, even as the bass and beat roll along. I totally love this song. "You really got me running," whatever that means. - Ghost And Grey -- Jatun -- Jatun
12.52h. So today isn't really a classical music show, is it? I guess not. That's what happens sometimes. I hope it's got enough drones and sludge and repetition for the average listener. This song is much more a shoegaze piece than anything else. Processed synth drums over a feedback laden guitar and synth sound, something requiring really loud volume (to quote the Cure on Disintegration, "this music has been mixed to be played loud, so turn it up"). The lyrics are buried in sludge (my favorite word for this show, it seems), and if I weren't saving my ears (for what, marriage?!) I'd have headphones on and would blow them out. The lyrics have something about meet you and greet you, reach you and complete you and see through. Can't quite figure it out. Not important, really, not to me, at least. - Lazy Calm -- Cocteau Twins -- Victorialand
12.59h. I had to do it, Cocteau Twins is much calmer than the previous song, but it still fits in with the mood I'm in. Also, it does a nice job of oscillating, from energetic sludge noise to calm beauty. The first time I heard these folks, someone had recorded one of their 45 RPM 12" records at 33 RPM. It was slow, heavy, with a bass voice singing. I LOVED that tape, even after I figured out that they were actually nothing like it. What a gas, hearing Elizabeth Frasier as a bass voice, singing dreary songs. (This was the Love's Easy Tears EP, and the year was 1987.) Victorialand and Lazy Calm have a long history in my ears. I love the moment when the bass drops in and the voice follows and everything starts shimmering. - Ghost And Grey 2 -- Jatun -- Jatun
13.05h Okay, so it's not fair to go to version 2 of Ghost and Grey after playing the first one, but this one fits into the thread of music here, and it's louder and sludgier and better and heavier and noisier and I like it, so that's why I'm playing it. - Los Hongos de Marosa -- Juana Molina -- Un Día
A request! Thanks for calling in. This song is one of the faster ones on the album, starts off with a repeated guitar part that kind of fits into what the show has had so far, and later on gets to some dissonance and such. Just trying to get the songs played to match up to the styles that have been here before, that's all. Juana Molina is really great - I'd play a lot more of her, if my show weren't "fixed" in the genre that I usually fix it to (not today, of course). - Implodiert -- Kammerflimmer Kollektief -- Maeander
Whoops! Forgot to comment on this. A repetitive drone that gets heavier and heavier until everything collapses.... long pause... then the drum beat starts up again, and we end where we began. More on that in a little... - to moauf -- Tarwater -- The only blip hop record you will evver need vol. 1
13.27h Another blip hop track, all jitters and splitters, splinters of sound until you get the long, lush synth coming in - then the drum beat returns with a minor key in the low tones, and we've gone darker for a moment. - Forty-Two for Henry Flynt -- Peter Winkler -- Third Annual Festival of the Avant Garde in San Francisco, 1965
Yes, that's right, 42 beats on a gong. I have no idea why, I know nearly nothing about the story behind this piece. But, I do hear all the other noises (think 4'33" for inspiration), and I do hear the tape hiss from a recording, and I do hear all the other elements that exist in this live recording, giving it more than just the meditative mantra of 42 hits on a gong in honor of Henry Flynt. Perhaps someone from San Francisco, that time, that era, that place, can inform me about the details. I could google, of course, but why, when I'm listening to the music, instead? I mean, just LISTEN to those resonance overtones slowly growing out of the gong, whole new patterns and rhythms existing inside the single massive beat. Awesome, and better the more you listen to it. - The Harp of New Albion: IV. Cadence on the Wind -- Terry Riley -- The Harp of New Albion
13.47h. Just intonation in a piano, and oddly enough, it works as a bridge from the gongs. The overtones, the beats in dissonant vibrations, it's all there. - eiweiß -- schneider tm -- The only blip hop record you will evver need vol. 1
Whoops - forgot to write commentary about this... - Synchrony No. 2 -- Kronos Quartet -- Early Music
And here ends the show. The piece is by Moondog, and I totally love the interplay of the various instruments. The light touch, back and forth, the interweaving story lines, the softness... just lovely. Nice way to end the show, I guess. And next up is the Kashmir Hour, all Indian music, woo hoo!
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