Finally posting again

After a month of not posting, here I am, back on the air. I've been doing shows all September, but haven't really bothered to put them up online. Mostly, I've been running on a theme: In C and Robert Ashley's Private Lives. I have many many versions of In C, so why not play one per week? This all came because of the minimalism conference which happened earlier this month in Kansas City. I've been reading various things about the conference and playing music by those artists as well. Charlemagne Palestine, John Luther Adams, a recording of Dennis Johnson's November (as recreated by Kyle Gann), and so on.

So, today I've got SMCQ's version of In C playing, and I have a plan to play "The Bar (Differences)" from Robert Ashley's Private Lives, and otherwise, I haven't decided what I really want to be doing with my time. I'll post this for now, and add updates as the music flows around me.

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An hour later, and damn, I'm having a great time with the music. "What can an old fart like you do with all this money?" Robert Ashley is goddamn hilarious, and the rhythm of his language is just great (in his post 1980 phase of composing, I guess - I don't really like the earlier stuff all that much...). How many great ways are there to say "AND!" as a multi-syllabic word? He covers a lot of the bases in "The Bar (Differences)." Great piece.

The last hour had the long version of In C, followed by the Karlheinz Miklin Trio doing "Echoes of Illyria." One of the "Illyria" themes sounds an awful like one of the 53 motifs of Riley's In C, so it seemed like a natural fit to me. I don't know if I'm right or not (I really should study music more, and learn to train my ear, rather than winging it and going with what intuitively feels right), but it was a nice transition. From there, I moved on to Betsy Bobenhouse and Christy Banks doing a flute and clarinet piece, "Elaphe." The shift from "Illyria's" bass clarinet to the clarinet in "Elaphe" was pretty slick. Then a John Luther Adams piece, a remix of some of his tape loops from the 70s. I do like my weird tape loop pieces.

But still, right now, I'm caught up in the wacky piano playing by Blue Gene behind Robert Ashley's rant-mumbles (seriously, that's what it feels like). Awesome stuff. I think I have some Kyle Gann to play later on, and I don't have anything picked for the last half hour of the show. But I'm having a blast.

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Okay, I moved from the Robert Ashley through a Kyle Gann piece that really didn't grab me and was faded out into a long drone piece. God, I love a good drone. This is Ancient Bridge Part 2, by Tange. This takes the FM3 Buddha Box and samples it into something totally amazingly different and beautiful. What a gorgeous piece. And it was a free download , woo hoo! Gotta love free downloads.

WMEB radio show, 20090512

Here are the songs I plan to play today - at the moment out of order. Who knows if I will put them in order during the show. Commentary may or may not arrive. Times may or may not be listed. We'll see if I pay attention to the blog while immersing my head in the music.

• Serenade for Six German Sirens Op. 43 --- Hallgrímur Valjálmsson --- Serenade for Six German Sirens Op. 43
  12.04
  Only played the first 9 minutes, the "first movement." It's a set of sirens (duh) at different frequencies and tempos, and they play against each other like the best and most classic of minimalist phase music. Very very cool.
  
• Das Mecklenburger Pferd --- Hans-Karsten Raecke --- Sound Sculptures
  12.16
  Play a sculpture, go ahead. Add a badly played saxophone. Go ahead, enjoy it. It's pretty fun. Then the skronking starts. Is this postclassical music, free jazz, both? Who cares. It's fun.
  
• Procession / Peregrinacion --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  Dude, this is weird.
  
• Greetings / Saludos --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
  12.39
  And this is hysterical. A wiggly accordion plays crazily, the bass end honks away, the treble/keyboard end noodles away, and hysterical Spanish and English voices say stupid greetings to each other. I'm giggling.
  
• Ghosting / Relaciones --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
• Fragments / Fragmentos --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
  
• In The Houses Of My Families / En Las Casas De Mis Familias --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  12.49
  these three flow into each other, washes and waves of sound reverberating louder and louder. Beautiful.
  
• Reverberations / Reverberaciones --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  12.50
  From a drone to percussion, now there are gongs and triangles and bells making this awesome racket. This is not an easy piece, but it is totally captivating.
  
• Duet / Dueto --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
• Body Stories / Historias Del Cuerpo --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  By now, this has gotten kind of disturbing. Still utterly captivating, as well.
  
• Monkey / Chango --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  13.00
  And here, suddenly, the disturbing shifts into something more pleasant. Yes, the uncomfortable vocal continues, but the accordion hits a much nicer chord, and the looping is not as frantic, and more beautiful.
  
• Wolf / Loba --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
• Private Journies / Viajes Privados --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
• River Of Folk Dance / Rios Folkloricos --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
• The Last Time / Ultima Vez --- Pauline Oliveros --- Ghost Dance
  
• 03 Phonetische Etüde --- Wolfgang Roscher --- Sound Sculptures
  
• Igor Ballereau : Noctis Labyrinthus --- Kenneth Kirschner/Aaron Siegel/Igor Ballereau/Giuliano D'Angiolini --- Shsk'h Vol.03 - Kenneth Kirschner/Aaron Siegel/Igor Ballereau/ Giuliano D'Angiolini
  
• I Am Sitting In A Room --- Alvin Lucier --- I am sitting in a room
  Like I thought, i stopped typing. Whoops. I did like the last few songs. And now, with Alvin Lucier, I'm closing out on a classic piece of conceptual art. More on Lucier can be found in this Nate Aldrich interview. Enjoy!
  

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.)
  
  

Radio show 2009 March 31

Less commentary today, for whatever reason. As ever, liveblogging the show, as best possible. I'll be late with some posts, and have an entire opera planned, so there will be little commentary at times.

• Maritime Rites: World Music - Wadada Leo Smith -- Wadada Leo Smith -- Alvin Curran: Maritime Rites
  Splatted trumpet on top of the foghorns that characterize and form the basis (anchor? bad pun) of Alvin Curran's fabulous and phenomenal album. I just love the way the trumpet comes in to complete foghorn chords, which are more chord-like in this track than on any other of the tracks on the album. I played a bunch of this last week - Read up on that show if you want to hear about other Alvin Curran collaborations.
  
• The Cave - Act 1 (Part I) -- Steve Reich -- Steve Reich: Works: 1965-1995
  
• The Cave - Act 1 (Part II)
  
• The Cave - Act 2 (Part II)
  
• The Cave - Act 3 (Part I)
  Four parts of Steve Reich's "The Cave," all on the topic of "Who is Abraham?" The interesting point for this western ear is the emphasis of the Islamic story on Abraham being Muslim. Well, of course, I can see that, and I can see how conflicts can arise out of that... and that's what makes it interesting. Right? I'm not sure if I like the way the music matches the speaking of the various people. I find it a bit of a gimmick, in the long run, though there are funny examples of it (someone gave Sarah Palin the treatment during the election, from her Katie Couric interview inanities). In this case, it's consistent with other works Reich has done (Different Trains has a lot of this, too), but it still isn't my favorite method of conveying voice. Now, when he starts sampling it a bit, building chords out of it, bridging chords from one speech to the next, it does get more interesting...
  
• Bye Bye Butterfly - Pauline Oliveros -- Pauline Oliveros -- New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media: Women In Electr
  What the fuck?! This is both hideous sine wave generated electronic screeching noise sitting right where it's uncomfortable and some opera playing in the background being distorted and overplayed, so that the high tones are feeding back and it's almost grating on the ears. Totally bizarre. I have typically liked Oliveros on accordion and less on electronics. This is getting close to being too much.
  
• Drumming (Part IV) -- Steve Reich -- Steve Reich: Works: 1965-1995
  This is blissful joy, rhythms pumping along, metametric material at its best. A great ending to a great piece.
  
• New York Social Life -- Laurie Anderson -- New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media: Women In Electronic Music
  What the?! This is a totally weird, early Laurie Anderson piece. It's a stupid story, banal, with her using a little vocoder material to fake other people calling her on the phone. It's all about loneliness and not listening to each other and the distance between people. Being conceptual music, it has a section about people not talking, not listening, the distance between people. The subject of the piece is, circularly, the subject of the piece.
  
• Instruments: III. Whole Steps - Rik Albani -- Rik Albani, Arthur Russell, Bill Ruyle, Peter Zummo -- Peter Zummo: Zummo With An X
  Boy, this is almost annoying, and I like it a lot. (Written much later, after the piece is over... not much detail left.)
  
• Elodie Lauten -- The Death of Don Juan
  I'm playing the whole opera. Read more about it here and there and at Pitchfork (!! but it's a great review). Arthur Russel (who was on the Peter Zummo earlier) sings and plays cello, and Kyle Gann wrote liner notes and has been praising it for decades. Elodie Lauten's own website has more information.