Radio show 2009 March 24

Keeping to the usual format, I'm listing songs -- artist -- album and giving commentary on my show as it happens.

• Maritime Rites: Coastline - Steve Lacy -- Steve Lacy -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites
  12.00h. The opening piece on Alvin Curran's great album. It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between Lacy's playing and the various sea horns that come in, as well. The solo playing is pretty impressive. And when it's not solo playing, who is playing? I honestly can't tell how many people it is. The spoken word segments make no sense whatsoever within the piece, either. The sum makes for a piece that I want to keep listening to, even as I can't build a framework within which to put the sounds. Chamber music jazz with found sounds? Who cares, it sounds good. Link on eMusic.
  
• Variation I -- William Basinski -- Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive
  12.11h What a GREAT shift! From the sounds of horns and fog lights from light houses (as well as phrases like "if I were out there in the fog, I'd be relieved to hear it" in a nice southern accent) we move into sounds as if from a sonar under murky water. (Makes me want to play some of the Bryars "Sinking of the Titanic," though it takes too long to get to that point). After a few sonar pings, we get a piano playing through mud, thick echo as if inside a submarine. Okay, I'm taking the under water metaphor too far, but now something like feedback is coming in, a humming right on the edge of high pitched noise, nearly uncomfortable, nearly pure noise. The piano is still looping away. It IS William Basinski, after all. Loops and all that. Link on eMusic.
  
• Sym. No. 1, Movement 2 -- Glenn Branca -- Symphony No. 1 (Tonal Plexus)
  12.25h. A slow start to the song, and it's too long for me to do it justice here on the show. The sound is a lot like in early Sonic Youth, their debut album and all, with these chiming guitar patterns holding one chord for a really really really really (really) long time until finally some change happens and a single note is changed to create some other chord. This fits nicely into one realm of music common to the show: music where seemingly nothing happens. Except, rather than some John Luther Adams, this is some guitar orchestra, a drum set with cymbal crashes deep back in the mix, with perhaps a bass to be found (still can't tell as I write this). The repetitive noise builds and builds - but first you get odd chord arpeggios and overtones from the guitars. The instrumentation may be different, but how exactly is this not minimalism? Pretty cool stuff, straddling No Wave and minimalism and all that. That Sonic Youth (whose Thurston and Lee played with Branca, back in the day) would later record Goodbye 20th Century (Oliveros, Cage, Paik, Ono, etc.) seems totally natural. Link on eMusic.
  
• Maritime Rites: Rattlesnake Mountain - Pauline Oliveros -- Pauline Oliveros -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites
  12.41h This much calmer piece goes back to Alvin Curran's Maritime Rites, using more of the sound of buoys than Lacy's piece which used the foghorns. Oh, sure, there are still foghorns, but mostly you get these pseudo-melodies playing out in the buoys. On top and below and behind that (wrapped all around, depending on how they are mixed) are the accordion sounds played by Oliveros. Yeah, accordion. Every radio show needs accordion. The interviewed voices are talking about fog signals, about how you get information on the sea. Trust. And the music is this complicated set of bells, horns, and accordion sustains (or runs), along with an occasional bird song, as if what you're longing for while on the sea is a return to land where songbirds live. Link on eMusic.
  
• The Cave - Act 1 (Part VIII) -- Steve Reich -- Steve Reich: Works: 1965-1995
  
• The Cave - Act 1 (Part IX) -- Steve Reich -- Steve Reich: Works: 1965-1995
  Though the genre is entirely different - a call to prayer perhaps? - the sound is somehow very similar in style to the sound of the buoys in Oliveros's collaboration with Curran. Why not? Rites and prayers. Reich's Cave is a complicated piece, which I can't do justice to in my description here. You can find more here. The piece itself is the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael, as well as the religions of the middle east (Islam and Judaism). and someday I'll play the whole thing rather than just parts. More at Wikipedia, though all you really get is the track titles.
  
• Variation VIII -- William Basinski -- Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive
  13.01h. Another drone loop piece from William Basinski, similar to the last one but utterly different in its emotion. Sure, it's got the same piano looping, the same echoed sound as if you're listening underwater and tons of reverb. It just feels totally different. This is where words fail on a blog about music. I'm not a musician, I don't know what he's doing, and I can only describe it so much. Dancing about architecture might be more effective, in the long run. Link on eMusic.
  
• Maritime Rites: Soft Shoulder - Jon Gibson -- Jon Gibson -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites
  Jon Gibson is the multi-instrumentalist composer who also happens to have been part of the Philip Glass Ensemble through the years. Pretty cool, that. It also explains why his particular tone of sax playing seems so familiar, after all the PGE that I've listened to. This Maritime Rites recording brings a new sound to the mix - Oliveros had buoys, Lacy started with foghorns. Well, Gibson loses the buoys and gets water lapping up against the side of a boat, instead. I have no idea. It's just what's there - you can't say anything else. Again, it's a mesmerizing flow of sounds winding about themselves, just like with Oliveros's accordions earlier. Link on eMusic.
  
• Do While -- Oval -- 94 Diskont -- 24:05
  
  Some glitch music, repeating patterns with tones constantly breaking flat. It just keeps rolling and flowing, the patterns not quite in synch with each other all the time, the tinkly noises and the deeper sounds constantly jittering around each other. Every now and then, something larger seems to change, but somehow you always end up where you started. For all that it contains flat tones, repeated noise, and seemingly nothing changes, it's actually quite pretty. But you get used to the intonation, get used to tones going flat over and over (someone is really fucking with the pitch shifter, you know?), slowly everything seems normal, and then you get into the rhythm of it. Some tones aren't shifted, some are, and over the top of it all comes the glitchy sound that fills the space of a high hat in jazz and rock.
  
• Nagoya Marimbas -- Steve Reich -- Steve Reich: Works: 1965-1995 -- 4:36
  13.33h. Additive patterns define this one - a set of marimbas always doing the same thing, but adding little pieces to their lines until whole new patterns arise in fascinating interweaving patterns. Every now and then new melodies pop in, then they drop out again - what a playful fun piece! Very different from the previous tone quality, different chord from before, and it's just a calm way to shake things up.
  
• Maritime Rites: Mine: The One That Enters The Stories - Clar -- Clark Coolidge -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites -- 11:18
  13.40h This is mostly speaking, not composing. Some of the voices are from Maine, some are ... huh? It's as if the sentences aren't connected to each other. It's like someone mixed and matched paragraphs from different stories. Then suddenly a new voice comes in "Gear!" in one channel and "Stuff!" in the other. What was that?! The buoys are gone, the water is missing, and the foghorns are still there. What exactly is going on here? I have no clue whatsoever. Link on eMusic.
  
• The Cave - Act 2 (Part I) -- Steve Reich -- Steve Reich: Works: 1965-1995 -- 4:41
  This one is titled "Surah 3 (chanted in Arabic from the Koran by Sheikh Dahoud Atalah, Muqri of Al-Aksa Mosque)," and the title pretty much says everything that needs to be said.