Radio show 2009 April 28

Today's show is full of lovely skittery music, snippets of sound. Totally gorgeous. Wow.

In one song, that violin sound high up the bridge comes out, fucking gorgeous and perfect. Gidon Kremer introduced me to that, Kronos Quartet does it really well, and I just downloaded an album from the Shsk'h netlabel where they NAIL the sound. Perfect.

So I'm losing myself in sounds for the next little bit... and not writing many comments. Meaning, none. But here is the most important link in this show:

Shsk'h. The downloads are free (I donated!), and absolutely worth it. More about the netlabel can be found at Disquiet.

Here are songs I plan to play during the show:

Variation VII -- William Basinski -- Variations: A Movement In Chrome Primitive

Frottola -- Igor Ballereau -- Shsk'h Vol.01 - Igor Ballereau

Maritime Rites: From Center of Rainbow, Sounding - Malcolm G -- Malcolm Goldstein -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites

Sequenza III -- Luciano Berio -- Differences/Sequenza III/Sequenza VII/Due pezzi/Chamber Music

Omoigawa -- Etsuko Chida -- Shsk'h Vol.02 - Koto Kumiuta : Etsuko Chida

Più vicino ai morti -- Igor Ballereau -- Shsk'h Vol.01 - Igor Ballereau

Death hath deprived me -- Igor Ballereau -- Shsk'h Vol.01 - Igor Ballereau

Kenneth Kirschner : January 21, 2009 -- Kenneth Kirschner/Aaron Siegel/Igor Ballereau/Giuliano D'Angiolini -- Shsk'h Vol.03 - Kenneth Kirschner/Aaron Siegel/Igor Ballereau/ Giuliano D'Angiolini

Limbus Puerorum -- Akashic Crow's Nest -- Hawk of an Uncanny Nest [Webbed Hand wh078]

venice-beach -- Robert Henke --

Chamber Music -- Luciano Berio -- Differences/Sequenza III/Sequenza VII/Due pezzi/Chamber Music

Inscapes - I. They are -- Igor Ballereau -- Shsk'h Vol.01 - Igor Ballereau

Inscapes - II. Distance -- Igor Ballereau -- Shsk'h Vol.01 - Igor Ballereau

Inscapes - III. A noise of falls -- Igor Ballereau -- Shsk'h Vol.01 - Igor Ballereau

Whittling -- Daniel Goode -- Clarinet Songs

2009 April 7 radio show liveblog

Found sounds and layers of music at odds with each other.

The usual: song title - band - album, and my comments.

• Lion In A Coma -- Animal Collective -- Merriweather Post Pavilion
  12.01h This song really isn't postclassical or minimalist or anything like that, but it IS in a 19 beat pattern, as far as I can tell. When I count it out, it's in a 4-5-4-6 pattern. I haven't even bothered to listen to the lyrics, until now, but they're kind of funny. Point of information: trying to bike in tempo to this song is wacky, because the downbeat shifts from left leg to right leg in weird ways. Nineteen beats is a long beat sequence.
  
• Kepler -- Nobukazu Takemura -- Scope
  12.06h A lovely swirl of sound. There's a sense of it being phase music in the Steve Reich meaning of the word, but really, it seems to be only lovely overlapping arpeggios and chimes. Oh, and the patterns start breaking apart with a bit of glitch noise. It's really pretty to my ears, perhaps because of (rather than in spite of) the noises skittering behind the chime arpeggio. You can read more about the album here and here , if you wish.
  
• 14-ruido_blanco -- Bosques de mi Mente -- Ruido Blanco
  It starts off with straight up drone electronic noise and a repeated piano pattern - kind of light, trite fare - but then drops into a street recording of some street musicians, and a feedback drone building up slowly in the middle of it. The tonal quality is a big shift from the previous section, almost like the two aren't related at all. The street recording maxes out the audio line, the drone noise starts to cover it up. Then, in the "third movement," the drone drops out, and we move from a street music scene to some Spanish language radio/TV recording, with a sad piano line buried behind the radio/TV feed. There's something incredibly isolating and sad about this performance. Like you're not connected to anything, like you're isolated more and more from the society in which you walk, invisible to the world.
  
• For English Horn, 2 Clarinets, Bass Clarinet and Timpani -- The Barton Workshop -- The Fives (X)
  Fabulous transition into John Cage, one of his number pieces. This grouping matches nicely to the previous piece - where that was isolation from the world, these instruments leave all sorts of open space, so that the isolation starts to exist from instrument to instrument. Even as they play together, they do things that make no sense, that don't fit together. But they do, anyway, we can't help but hear them that way. It's my favorite recording on this album.
  
• Witchita Vortex Sutra -- ?University Group? -- Witchita Vortex Sutra
  12.32h
  A student group is performing this - the audio isn't as professional (hell, it's a live recording taken from a YouTube file) and the voice isn't Allen Ginsburg like in the full recording. The piano playing is fine, not terribly perfect, who cares. This is my chance to do a live performance of a concert, right? So it sounds like a group of really good non-professionals. Why not?
  
• Absolutego -- Boris -- Absolutego - Special Low Frequency Version
  What does one say about this track?! Seriously, it's like metal slowed down to ... well, riffs are gone, this is just whomping hard noise. There's a hint of singing, somewhere. Not really. The one thing it does remind me of is Leng T'che, the Naked City scream fest. I suppose you could call this minimal in the metal way.
  
• Apple Electronics -- The Modernist -- Köln Kompakt 1
  What the?! I'm playing this song, with its ridiculously dull beat (what did George Clinton say about disco? look it up), and yet it appeals to me. It's utterly precise, machine-like. Motorik. Again, it's minimal in a specific kind of way. Not the genre of minimalism, but the framework of it, expressed in other musical areas. Part of me wishes, though, that I'd spent more time on the Boris. God, what a sludge fest.
  
• 13-la_calle_solitaria -- Bosques de mi Mente -- Ruido Blanco
  Earlier, I played this group, and it was sad and isolated. This is a piano lament, but processed sounds so that it doesn't sound trite. Something is wrong, is what the production conveys. The melody line is overprocessed, the input is maxed so that there's a distortion and feedback, a sustain that makes it unpleasant, this sadness. Fabulous production, in other words, an instrument to itself, where the music alone isn't sufficient to convey what's going on in the composer's head.
  
• Maritime Rites-- Alvin Curran -- Maritime Rites
  13.01h This is the long song to end the album - I think, by now, I've played nearly the whole album on my show. The music consists of the buoys and foghorns, and I'm sure later on more things will come in. The text is from previous pieces, in part, but also contains weird spoken snippets. I can't possibly put into words how this piece of music tells its story. It's grand, though, just utterly grand.
  
• Beneath the Forest Floor -- Hildegard Westerkamp -- Transformations
  This is a great processed field recording, really interesting to listen to - long, meditative, neither abrasive nor particularly beautiful, but interesting throughout.
  
• Maritime Rites: Improvisation - George Lewis -- George Lewis -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites
  Yet another Maritime Rites album - the mix of foghorns, spoken word interviews describing the role of buoys, and the music in the background is a "what the hell?!" kind of noise, squelches and farts, for all practical purposes. Really really odd vocal noise. (You know, this again reminds me of Naked City, like the Boris track did - except this time, I'm thinking of Yamatsuka Eye's vocal acrobatics.)