My friend Tyler is starting a new radio show and you should all listen to it, as his blurb makes absolutely clear:
This show features a combination of field recordings and experimental sound art (Glenn Gould, John Cage, Janet Cardiff, Max Neuhaus), home-recorded folk and pop songs (Charlie Mcalister, Simon Joyner, Wio), as well as [...]
In The Rest is Noise, Ross mentions (p. 182) the following “placard-like notice” appearing in the preface to the Ragtime movement of Paul Hindemith’s Suite ‘1922’:
Mode d’emploi – Direction for Use!!
Pay no attention to what you have learned in your piano lessons.
Do not consider for long whether you should play D# with the [...]
I am currently reading Alex Ross’s excellent history of twentieth century classical music, The Rest is Noise. In Chapter 5, “Apparition from the Woods: The Loneliness of Jean Sibelius” (an edited version of which is available online), Ross describes Sibelius’s descent into alcoholism by referring to a painting:
A widely discussed painting by the [...]
(By Erik Satie, via UbuWeb)
An artist must regulate his life.
Here is a time-table of my daily acts. I rise at 7.18; am inspired from 10.23 to 11.47. I lunch at 12.11 and leave the table at 12.14. A healthy ride on horse-back round my domain follows from 1.19 pm to 2.53 pm. Another bout of [...]
I wonder to what extent the history of western musics is an outline of people’s deteriorating ability to listen.
Jeph Jerman, Sound Diary, 8 January 2000.
Last night I was very fortunate to see a performance of work by Ha-Yang Kim at Roulette.
The first piece, Metasmatter, was performed by a mixed sextet comprised of piano, flute, violin, cello, bass clarinet and percussion. This is a wonderful eclectic piece clearly influenced by jazz and Balinese music, and was performed with [...]
Somehow it slipped through my radar, but the monthly music bible otherwise known as Wire underwent a recent website renovation that included the launch of the weblog Mire. It’s just what you would expect from a magazine with the self-described intent to “wage war on the mundane and the mediocre”—in the first few months [...]
Baden-Baden, 25 March 1964
A psychotherapist wished to give a talk on Schubert from the point of view of his own discipline. It was to take place in a very large hotel. The speaker’s rostrum had a curtain in front of it and resembled a puppet theatre. Suddenly, the large hall seemed to be like the [...]
As is common knowledge among those who have both ears and a brain, WFMU is the greatest station in the history of radio. While the sound quality over the internet is of course far better than over the radiowaves, it brought me untold joy when I arrived in New York to be able to [...]
The scapegoat by means of which the accumulated ills of a whole year are publicly expelled is sometimes an animal. For example, among the Garos of Assam, “besides the sacrifices for individual cases of illness, there are certain ceremonies which are observed once a year by a whole community or village, and are intended to [...]
At one point, Leslie Shatz, the sound designer, described Mailer’s perfectionist quest to capture the sound of a punch in the face. “Norman said, ‘The sounds of punches in movies are all phony,’ ” Shatz recalled. “He wanted me to record his own punches. He was a boxer, of course. So we were in my [...]
On a day off, I am strolling around the vast internetwork, looking and listening. I feel sorrow on finding that the wonderful guitar player Rod Poole was killed in his adopted home of Los Angeles last week. I have been listening to his masterpiece The Death Adder on and off since it was [...]
The following free online releases have been on high rotation in these parts recently. Highly recommended, especially if you have a church to play them in, and loudly.
John Hudak, Sunday, 2007.
Growing up, Sunday was always a day associated with the particular feeling of the end of something. During meals the family was together [...]
There’s a nice studio session from Portland band Grails recorded at VPRO in Amsterdam, available here. (Papertrail originating with the last BoomKat mailout, in which their latest is the album of the week).
Starry Night (excerpt) [MP3]
A minimalistic improvisation by:
Mazen Kerbaj (Trumpet)
The Israeli Air Force (Bombs)
Recorded by Mazen Kerbaj on the balcony of his flat in Beirut, on the night of 15th to 16th of July 2006. Via Microsound, MP3 hosting from Sound Transit. If you read one source while bombs continue to fall, let it be Mazen’s [...]
One
Having seen Sonic Youth perform tonight at the Enmore Theatre, it is now clear to me that they are the greatest band that was, is, and ever will be.
Two
Lovely abstract field-recording-oriented mix just posted at the latest Audiobulb Records Bulbcast.
Three
That and much more found via the sensational (and until recently, far below my radar) microsound [...]
Yoshihiro Hanno: .+ (from 9 modules)
Ryoji Ikeda: +. (from +/-)
Due to Laure on I’m Sorry I Had To Kill That Guy, WFMU, 8 April 2006. (Full playlist).
Some online sound which has kept me company the past few days.
Touch Radio
I particularly like the Christian Fennesz and Max Nagl live recording and the pieces by Philip Jeck.
Term
In my view this is the best series of online releases in existence. The most recent release, the Post_Piano 2 Open Remix Project, contains some of the [...]
The Cad Factory is currently calling for readers for the next recording installment of their Bible Project:
The entire bible being read then cut up into 3 and a half minute segments and placed on top of each other, so the whole time you hear hundreds of voices. There will also be a 3 second version.
The [...]
If I rhymed about home and got descriptive, I’d make 50 Cent look like Limp Bizkit.
Somalian-born MC K’naan, from “What’s Hardcore?” (via Fat Planet).