Occasionally, I mention a few nifty gadgets/tools that make themselves available from time to time. From time to time, I pretend that I somehow discovered them and from time to time I give credit where it is due. Granted, I think originality in this connected world is not as an omnipotent a trait as it once was (you don’t have to be original to avoid being obvious), but I will definitely unleash praise on my fellow classmates and instructors at the wonderful University of Edinburgh MSc in eLearning team. They are really a spirited bunch of folks passionate about what they do and that rubs off on all us students.

Anyways, we were reflecting on sanctuary and solitude online and applications that support that contemplative pursuit and came up with the following tools. Quite frankly, they are rad. Yes, as in Rad. Even BMX Bandits rad.

The first is from Brian Eno, fittingly enough, and it doubles as both a web-based application and an iPhone app. It is called Bloom and can be found here. Just start tapping away at the screen to make your own Music for Airports. I suppose that is fitting as I have it on my iPod now and will be heading to the airport in a few hours to head to Ann Arbor.

Brian Eno's Bloom

I took a screenshot above, but that most certainly doesn’t do it justice as it a real audio/visual mix. You can here a sample below, if you are interested. I apologize for the quality of the recording, but that is literally me with my MacBook using Garage Band to record it on my sofa with the dryer tumbling away in the background. Talk about ambient. I will call myself DJ Sofa Snooze. You can all say you knew me when.

MP3: DJ Sofa Snooze on Bloom

The second application is Audiotool, which is quite a nifty web-based recording audio application. It is well worth a look if you like this sort of thing as it seems relatively versatile and quite fun, to be honest. I think it would be more fun if I had any discernible musical ability, aside from my legendarily charismatic performances at 노래방s throughout Korea. I have another recording of my own, once again from my sofa.

MP3-DJ Sofa Snooze: Redux

If you would like a more lightweight version of the above, great for killing time in coffee shops, airports, and on lunch breaks, check out aM laboratory.

Great fun. Before heading out into the world of music, please consider carefully what your DJ name will be. You can even learn How to Find a DJ Name. Instead of DJ Sofa Snooze I might go with my initials, MSG. Or maybe combined. DJ Sofa Snooze Featuring MSG. There it is.

Next time we do bites, the Rick Moody/Electric Literature Twitter Fiction project shall begin.

• Sam Lipsyte and LCD Soundsystem on the road together in 2010?  Over at Drowned in Sound, James Murphy considers it.

Reading the new Sam Lipsyte novel “the ask” now, which comes out around the time the LCD record does, so maybe we could have the most absurdly awkward co-headlining tour together… Brixton and bookstores??

• New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year.

• Even though the airline industry is in trouble, it can still save print.

• How the C.I.A. does what they do.

• Even though the review starts off with the quote “I have no biography”, we fast find out that John Cheever was wrong.

• Dangerous Minds has an interesting essay on experimental filmmaker, mystic, bohemian, and “colorful guy”, Harry Smith.

• NPR tells about the life and times of A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack writer Vince Guaraldi.

• If Brian Eno says uncool is dead, then it’s dead.  Okay?

• President Obama’s sweet ass first year.

Continuăm Retrospectiva anilor 2000.

Astăzi începem seria de articole In Memoriam Teo Peter.

Albume 2003. Alfabetic

…

Beck. Sea Change

Belle and Sebastian. Dear Catastrophe Waitress

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Take Them On On Your Own

Cat Power. You Are Free

Elvis Costello. North

Dandy Warhols. Welcome to the Monkey House

Death Cab For Cutie. Transatlanticism

Brian Eno. Bell Studies for The Clock of The Long Now

Killing Joke. Killing Joke

Lamb. Between Darkness and Wonder

Mogwai. Happy Songs For Happy People

Radiohead. Hail To The Thief

White Stripes. Elephant

Xiu Xiu. A Promise

Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Fever To Tell

…

Autor: Eddie Better

playlist:

1. Big Star “Holocaust” (Demo) (Keep an Eye on the Sky, Rhino, 2009 [1974], EUA)
2. Animal Collective “What Would I Want? Sky” (Fall Be Kind EP, Domino, 2009, EUA)
3. King Midas Sound “Outer Space” (Waiting For You, Hyperdub, 2009, Reino Unido)
4. Four Tet “Love Cry” (Love Cry 12”, Domino, 2009, Reino Unido)
5. Harmonia & Eno ‘76 “Vamos Companeros” (Tracks & Traces, Grönland, 2009 [1976/1997], Reino Unido [Alemanha])
6. Radiohead “Optimistic” (Kid A, Parlophone, 2000, Reino Unido)
7. William Parker & Giorgio Dini “Temporary Four – Lento” (Temporary, Tzadik, 2009, EUA)
8. John Zorn “Femina – Part 2″ (Femina, Tzadik, 2009, EUA)
9. Rogério Skylab & Orquestra Zé Felipe “Tem Cigarro Aí?” (Rogério Skylab & Orquestra Zé Felipe, s/g, 2009, Brasil)
10. Mika Vainio “Teutons” (Vandal EP, Raster Noton, 2009, Alemanha [Finlândia])
11. Marcos Valle & Celso Fonseca “No Balanço do Meu Samba” (Página Central, Biscoito Fino, 2009, Brasil)

“As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.”

–Brian Eno

Interessant liten kommentar av Brian Eno i Prospect Magazine.

Ikke nødvendigvis enig i ‘the death of uncool’, enkelte ting er fortsatt teit uavhengig av kontekst, men enig i at kulturen viser vei for politikk, økonomi, sosiale institusjoner, etc. Kultur definerer hvem vi er, hvem vi vil være, hvor vi kommer fra og hvor vi vil hen.

/Kenneth Tangnes

Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (born 15 May 1948), commonly known as simply Brian Eno, is famous for his own understanding of the world and its recreation in the artist’s world. One work from the beginning of his carer is the album “Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)”.
The album was inspired by a series of postcards of a Chinese revolutionary opera, titled Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. The original Chinese prime example piece of the Cultural Revolution itself is very different. Taking such serious topics as a background for composing, shows that Eno was aware of social and political conditions in the world even in his early years.

He got recently in the art focus because of his fascinating light-projection on the Sydney Opera House, which started in May 2009 and lasted for several weeks. With a different kind of light settings he renewed the character and highlightend different characteristics of the buling as well, and thus created a new kind of big-size painting. Called 77 Million Paintings, the installation is the work of artist and music producer Brian Eno and features 300 of his drawings.

IRC Exclusive: Legendary Producers Martin Bisi & Bill Laswell Team Up with Fiery Furnances and Dresden Dolls

Martin Bisi is a famed producer who built a recording studio with Brian Eno three decades ago, producing albums for some of the best bands of the 1980’s and early 90s underground rock movement, including Sonic Youth, The Swans, Dresden Dolls and The Boredoms, to name just a few. Bisi, who is also a musician, songwriter and engineer, recently jumped into the sound tank himself to record tracks with folks like Fiery Furnances’ dummer Bob D’Amico, prolific producer and bassist Bill Laswell (The Ramones, Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger and many others), and members of The Dresden Dolls and Balkan Beat Box. Laswell was also instrumental in creating the studio with Bisi and Eno.

In fact, Bisi and Laswell collaborated with Herbie Hancock to record the 1983 Grammy Award-winning song, “RockIt” – the first hit song to feature turntable scratching. Jumping forward to this year, all of this talent in one room is a combination sure to result in something interesting, which is exactly what these next songs, “Mile High – Apple of My Eye” and “Drink Your Wine,” prove to be. The songs are from the recently released five-track digital only EP Son of a Gun, and were sent to IRC by Bisi himself. The first song featured below is a perfect track for Halloween, or even The Twilight Saga: New Moon soundtrack, while “Drink Your Wine” is more of an uptempo rocker that is fun and infectious at the same time (watch the video above).

“Mile High – Apple of My Eye” - Martin Bisi & Bill Laswell from Son of a Gun (2009)

“Drink Your Wine” – Martin Bisi & Company from Sun of a Gun (2009)

Get Son of a Gun from iTunes.

Of the recording of the EP, Bisi said: “With Laswell, I did the ‘modern’ approach of sending him files, letting him do whatever, and then adjusting. He really surprised me. I was expecting his usual very groove or dub oriented bass, and he gave me something very ambient, laden with effects and trippy. That pretty much sums up the M.O. on this EP…With “Mile High- Apple Of My Eye,” I asked Butterface (the keyboardist on the EP) to give me some programmed rhythms and sounds with a trip-hop vibe, specifically for Laswell to play on, and he turned it around in 30 minutes.”

As we approach the new year, lists of the best music of the decade are spilling out from all angles. Many of these lists attempt to include albums that aren’t just ‘good’, but that are ’significant’ and ‘important‘. But ’significant’ and ‘important‘ to what exactly? As NPR explains:

These are the game-changers: records that

signaled some sort of shift in the way music

is made or sounds, or ones that were especially

influential or historically significant.

This is an arbitrary qualifier, because how can we really know if a record created a change or shift in music without placing it among the music around it? This got me thinking: Is it necessary to contextualize music? Surely, how music develops is important, but when the average listener sits down, aren’t they just looking to hear something pleasing to the ear? Thus, when a song or album is contextualized, it becomes less about the music itself.

Many comments I recently viewed in the discussion section of NPR’s “The Decade in Music: ’00’s” revolved around why Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising (2002) wasn’t included. This, however, has more to do with why an album that focused on 9/11 wasn’t included because surely 9/11 was the most or one of the most important events of the decade. But music with lyrics have the advantage of conveying a period of time or event with much greater ease than instrumental music does. So why should The Rising be important just because it talks about 9/11 right after 9/11 happened? If I released an album next year chronicling the Panic of 1819, I doubt it would be deemed culturally significant. And if Bruce Springsteen had released The Rising tomorrow, I am sure it would be considered less significant. So does its place in time make the music more important?

Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-95 (1992) is universally considered ‘important‘ because of the bridge it built between Ambient and Techno music, but today it sounds rather timid. So is it still worth listening to? Perhaps only if we consider its place in musical history. Ambient isn’t exactly supposed to be ‘exciting’ music, but I find much of Brian Eno’s work to be equally significant and to have aged and weathered much better than Aphex Twin’s work.

Someone attempting to check out Billie Holiday for the first time might unknowingly pick up Lady In Satin (1958), which features the singer a year before her death when her voice was significantly withered and she had lost much of her pitch. This album is almost guaranteed to disappoint someone who is not aware Holiday’s physical state at the time of recording, or of her attempt to reminisce about and communicate her extremely troubled past more through emotion than pitch. Only after the story behind this recording is understood does the its beauty emerge.

So considering all this, is it necessary to contextualize music? I’m still not quite sure. I certainly think Lady In Satin is a good album, and at the same time I am kind of frustrated that people think The Rising should be considered musically important just because of the issues it covers. And how about this for contextualization: The Rising ended an almost two-decade long dry spell for Springsteen and led to him becoming one of the most commercially successful artists of the 2000’s, which essentially means he profited from 9/11. And Selected Ambient Works 85-95 is actually technically a compilation of songs, and as soon as it brought Aphex Twin into the spotlight he completely changed the type of music he made (“Flim” is not ambient).

But maybe I am just biased.

Some of the albums that were commonly mentioned on “Best of the 2000’s” lists weren’t necessarily important so much as they were just good, somewhat different, and executed with serious, artistic intentions. In reality, none of us can know how important many of these albums really are because they haven’t had enough time to significantly effect the development of music. Yet we try to form these lists with this disclaimer anyhow, so maybe ‘important‘ music isn’t ‘important‘ anyway…

O álbum em questão é um reedição ampliada de uma clássica sessão batizada como Tracks and Traces e executada pelo grupo Harmonia ‘76. Formado em 1976 pelo duo integrante dos grupos Harmonia e Cluster, Hans-Joachim Roedelius e Dieter Moebius, pelo guitarrista do Neu!, Michael Rother, e pelo produtor inglês Brian Eno, o grupo se encontrou no estúdio do Harmonia, em Forst na Alemanha, mas o material foi lançado somente em 1997 por iniciativa de Roedelius. Consta que Rother encontrou um fita com as faixas inéditas e as lançadas em 1997 e remasterizou todo o material. Esta nova edição conta com três faixas a mais em relação a edição de 1997. (BO)

* # *

Quem se depara hoje com a pluralidade de manifestações musicais “eletrônicas” pode imaginar ingenuamente que elas configuram um espírito, um painel, algo que se relaciona com uma comunhão de propósitos ou mesmo com um rótulo. Mas o fato é que apesar da aparente generalização da música eletrônica, ela é filha da paciência individual, do experimentalismo contumaz e aventureiro. De Luigi Russolo a Shackleton, passando por Pierre Schaeffer, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Eliane Radigue e Luc Ferrari, todos trabalharam em oficinas solitárias ou em comunas muito restritas. Isto até eclodir a onda eletrônica da década de 90, quando a eletrônica orientada para a pista se consolidou e passou a angariar multidões de admiradores, produtores e djs. E mesmo a famigerada Jamaica, com o dub e suas invenções preciosas, se limita a atuação de Coxsone Dodd, Lee Perry e mais meia dúzia, haja visto o limbo no qual entrou o gênero naquele lugar – isso contando que o dub é um gênero, o que não é exatamente verdadeiro…

E eis aqui um grande exemplo do caráter de iniciativa que define a experimentação eletrônica: a reedição de Tracks and Traces, contendo as sessões realizadas por um quarteto estelar, demonstra que em matéria de música eletrônica não cabem as classificações, cronologias e pesquisas semânticas como forma de explicação. Isto é, nenhum esforço que tenda a definir o contexto criativo próprio do gênero como tentaram fazer sem sucesso com o jazz e o rock. Resisto aqui, portanto, a tentação de analisar o álbum privilegiando seu caráter precursor, como pode nos induzir tanto a mera audição como a informação de que Shackleton e Appleblim tiveram acesso irrestrito e remixaram boa parte do material para o EP ‘76 Remixes. Realmente há muito para se surpreender em Tracks and Traces, pelas sonoridades que de alguma forma lembram grandes ícones da eletrônica contemporânea. Mas Tracks and Traces possui um brilho próprio e seu interesse não se resume a mera arqueologia do dubstep. Para tanto é preciso contextualizá-lo.

Envolvido por uma história cheia de episódios e eventos aparentemente pouco importantes, mas que reforçam o caráter “artesanal” da empreitada, Tracks and Traces marca a visita de Brian Eno ao estúdio de Hans-Joachim Roedelius e Dieter Moebius, onde encontrou também o guitarrista do Neu!, Michael Rother. Marca também um virada na carreira do produtor: é indubitável que, após esse encontro, mudanças radicais ocorreram na obra de Eno, bem como na de artistas que apostaram em seu projeto de sintetizar o glamour do pop e do rock com experiências musicais de ponta, como Roxy Music e, mais tarde, David Bowie. Ora, isso se comprova quando tomamos o conhecimento de que antes mesmo dos anos 70, o Kluster, trio formado por Moebius, Roedelius e pelo músico experimental Conrad Schnitzler, já aterrorizava o público alemão semeando inflexões musicais que auxiliariam na fundação do industrial. Após a dissolução do trio, vieram os trabalhos do Cluster, responsáveis por operar nada mais nada menos que uma verdadeira revolução com apetrechos eletrônicos. Seguem-se daí os álbuns do Harmonia, que lhes renderam um epíteto dado pelo próprio Eno, “a mais importante banda dos anos 70″. O fato é que tanto nos dois “clusters” (com C e com K) como no Harmonia, as sonoridades se constituíam ora de forma mais abstrata e atmosférica, valorizando a pesquisa de timbres, ora de forma a indicar um diálogo com o rock ou com o jazz (caminho que geralmente foi confundido com o rock progressivo inglês, o que considero uma lástima!). Para Eno, que acabava de gravar Another Green World, álbum basicamente composto por canções, o encontro representou uma porta de experimentação absolutamente nova. É claro que muito de Harmonia Deluxe, por exemplo, teve o próprio Eno como influência, mas o que importa aqui é o modo absolutamente novo, a distância e a altivez com que os alemães trabalharam a sonoridade dos sintetizadores. Não é exagero nenhum identificar o dub e o kraut como os germes de um pensamento musical urbano e experimental que sobrevive através do dubstep.

Mas, repito, Tracks and Traces é mais do que isso, espécie de elo perdido entre um Brian Eno ainda ligado às plumas e paetês eletrificadas do Glam e outro, mais maduro e dotado de uma postura de cientista maluco que encantaria David Bowie. Mas é também o testemunho de uma formalização mais radical do legado de Moebius e Roedelius, seja com a exploração de estruturas repetitivas que privilegiam e ressaltam pequenos detalhes parcimoniosamente distribuídos ao longo das faixas, como em “Atmosphere” (uma das três faixas novas), “By the Riverside” e na intrigante e abrasiva “Vamos Compañeros”; seja na exploração incisiva do tempo como suporte para a manipulação de “rastros”, loops, barulhos e outras preciosidades sonoras, como na obra-prima do álbum, “Sometimes In Autumn”; ou em sua única canção, a hipnótica “Luneburg Heath”. Há ainda aquelas faixas cuja audição, dependendo do mal humor, compromete defintivamente a trilogia de Berlim gravada por Bowie na companhia de Eno, como a horripilante “Weird Dream” (que lembra muito a estrutura de “Warszawa”, do álbum Low de 1977) ou a cândida “Almost”. Os fãs de Brian Eno encontrarão ecos de seus álbuns posteriores em faixas lúdicas como “Les Demoiselles” e “When Shade Was Born”.

Mas todo esse trabalho pode simplesmente ir por água abaixo se o considerarmos como preliminar para o que Eno fez depois ou como apêndice da empreitada de vanguarda capitaneada pelos alemães. Proponho que Tracks and Traces seja visto de fato com um dos álbuns mais importantes dos anos setenta, clássico absoluto tanto no ambiente do Kraut como na produção de vanguarda da época. A ousadia e o desprendimento visionário dos alemães ocasionaram uma situação propícia para os propósitos de Eno, mas o elemento original, se é que posso falar assim, reside na beleza eremítica dos sons que emanam de cada faixa deste álbum. De certa forma, discordamos de Eno: não é o Harmonia a banda mais importante dos anos 70, mas o Harmonia ‘76. Tracks and Traces é sua obra-prima, lapidar e, como convém, solitária, fecunda colaboração entre duas linhagens essenciais da música desta e da nossa época. (Bernardo Oliveira)

* # *

Two cool hot chicks listening to Harmonia ‘76? Tomo a liberdade de fazer a brincadeirinha com a música do Ciccone Youth para comentar o quanto a música do Cluster e do Harmonia é excêntrica mesmo dentro dos padrões do movimento de música alemã dos anos 70 conhecido como krautrock. Geralmente, quem começa a pesquisar e ouvir coisas do período vai na santa trindade Can-Faust-Neu!, grupos que, a despeito de serem tão ou mais ousados em busca de novas estruturas e pela pesquisa com ambiências, têm um som marcadamente rock. Imagino que o sujeito que se apaixona pelos discos do Neu! e, descobrindo que Michael Rother em seguida juntou-se à dupla Moebius/Roedelius para criar o Harmonia, começa a ouvir os discos do grupo, sente um estranhamento imediato. Primeiro, pela proeminência dos sintetizadores, o que a princípio associa o som do grupo ao Tangerine Dream e ao Kraftwerk, em especial à fase mais “abstrata” de um Radioactivity. Segundo, e talvez de forma mais decisiva, pela construção das faixas, guiadas pela repetição de padrões e a pela criação de ambiências, que propõem ao ouvinte uma experiência imersiva. Mesmo concedendo que a época era propícia à era, dada a enorme voga do rock progressivo no período que de alguma forma prepara o ouvinte para fôlegos que vão além do formato canção, ainda assim o som do Harmonia, como do Cluster, é extremamente excêntrico, já que eles não criam suas faixas propondo grandes progressões ou mudanças nos timbres, nos ritmos e nos motivos da composição. Quando entram outras sonoridades, em geral ataques intermitentes, é muito mais ao estilo do dub que naquele momento era praticado por figuras como King Tubby e Lee “Scratch” Perry na Jamaica do que à maneira tradicional de composição. Hoje, anos mais tarde, já temos décadas de ambient e alguns anos de drone para assimilar nossa sensiblidade à música do Harmonia. Consequentemente, o estranhamento jamais será o mesmo do de um ouvinte pegando um desses discos para ouvir em 1974 ou 1976. A surpresa com a exuberância da música, essa sim, permanece intocada.

Talvez a característica mais marcante da música do Harmonia e do Cluster seja esse efeito de dissipação que o ouvinte sente ao fim de um disco do grupo. Ele ouve timbres impressionantes, se deixa levar pelos motivos melódicos, degusta as dinâmicas criadas pelas diferentes fontes sonoras, mas quando tenta “explicar” ou ao menos descrever a atmosfera geral evocada pela audição, tudo escorre por entre os dedos. Como as faixas do Basic Channel, como o Selected Ambient Works 2 do Aphex Twin, como a obra de Wolfgang Voigt como Gas, existe uma inexpressividade suntuosa e onírica, uma ausência de rosto minuciosamente trabalhada, que remete tudo ao aqui-e-agora da experiência, e nada ou quase aos poderes associativos da diacronia.

Tracks and Traces, único disco do Harmonia em parceria com Brian Eno (depois, como Cluster, Roedelius e Moebius fariam mais alguns discos juntos com Eno) e terceiro disco de estúdio do grupo, não modifica muito o legado do grupo. Adição tardia à discografia do grupo, lançado primeiro em 1997 com nove faixas e agora finalmente em sua integridade, com doze, Tracks and Traces é a consequência lógica do som do Harmonia, não uma mudança na estética mas a sua lapidação. Mutuamente influenciados, Harmonia e Eno aqui se fusionam em um, produzindo petardos protoindustriais como “Vamos Companeros” ou idílicos, como “By the Riverside”. Mas o grande destaque do disco, e talvez a faixa mais singular de toda carreira do combo Cluster/Harmonia, é “Sometimes in August”, que inverte as proporções costumeiras à estética do grupo, deixando as repetições em pano de fundo e levando à frente irrupções sonoras semelhantes às praticadas pelo approach jazzístico ao techno operado pelo trio de Moritz Von Oswald em Vertical Ascent. Quem conhece a música do Harmonia sabe que a audição desse disco é fundamental. Quem conhece Brian Eno também, e sabe que Tracks and Traces é uma espécie de caixa preta do nascimento do ambient. Àqueles que ainda não tiveram o prazer de travar contato com a música praticada por esses artistas, não se pode recomendar mais fortemente que ouçam o quanto antes. Tracks and Traces é um ótimo pretexto. (Ruy Gardnier)

I noticed that on the 14th of October of this year (see entry by finding your way through my archives on the right –>) I was one day away from this blogs one year anniversary.  It’s strange that I celebrated in a way that I didn’t think would have happened if I was presented with the idea.  I released my first Extended Play.  Strange.

I’ve finished the 331/3 “Another Green World” Brian Eno book.  It was… a little interesting.  Nothing too surprising though.  I’m still reading (very slowly) “Neuromancer” by Bill Gibson.  I have also started (which I really anticipate to move through) the “Pendragon Chronicles”.  It’s listed, I think, as a young adult book…. but not really.  It’s got quite a bit going on with it.  I first read almost all of it when I was about 15.  It was probably the fastest I’ve read a book to date.  It’s not a small book either.  Just well put together.  It’s a collection of short stories about King Arthur and the C Street Band featuring some of the best authors in the genre.  Joy Chant and Andre Norton are the only ones I can think of now.  But I remember that most of the names are mentionable.

I would also like to share this music video/song with you.  It is mind blowing and incredibly good.  Carl Sagan, who would have been … really old on the 9th of this month, was a rare master of combining science with reaching the human spirit and tying them together.  I haven’t seen all of the PBS miniseries he did “Cosmos”, but I plan to soon.  The several hours of video footage I’ve seen of him (and biographies read) is just… incredible.  How I’ve never really known about him until recently is beyond me.  I would put his ability right there with Alan Lightman, my favorite author (who also can combine human with science in a heart touching/mind blowing way).  Enjoy.  

Speaking of birthdays, yesterday was my brother’s birthday.  He’s officially half way to 50.  Happy birthday and enjoy Triple Balls, courtesy of your eldest sibling.

This is Brian Eno’s first ambient work, entitled “Discreet Music”. As opposed to the last song in this post (before the edit), this is not meant to describe the feeling of anxiety and anger when quitting smoking, but meant to instill a sense of peace.

Poor Billy Corgan.

Random Bits of Happy

The sick edition!

* French Onion soup was my savior this past weekend.  The broth, the cheese, the fat crutons so soft from soaking in the soup.  It made my throat feel better and I believe took me from the point of still feeling bad to recovering. 

* Ricola – Echinacea Honey Lemon has been my savior at work.  While I think I am just days away from no longer having the runny nose or the catchy little cough that is itching at the back of my throat, I believe that without the cough drops my co-workers would kill me.  They keep my throat calm and even as we speak I am sucking on one now.  Love love love them.

* My music syncing up with the world around me!  Let me explain, I was having a busy day and didn’t want to keep fiddling with the ipod so I turned it to shuffle and it kept me in the mellow music that was just wonderful and then changed to Brian Eno – Ambient 1 (Music for Airports) and I look up from my work as a jet flies past my window (Yes I have an awesome view for a cube worker!).  I felt compelled to snap a photo!  Everything about the moment just felt right. 

So like I said…the sick edition.  It isn’t so full because I’ve been going home and doing some major vegitating.  Just trying to get my energy levels back to tip top shape.  I think I am almost there.  Almost 2 full weeks of this cold.  At least the 2nd week has been mostly bearable and not feeling like my head was going to fall off.  Hope you are all washing your hands and staying away from all the sickies stumbling around! 

Quick Mentions:

* Finding a Phrenology head at UO for sale because it was misprinted.  I like the misprint (the words are in the right place, just backwards on half of the head!) * This cover of Not Fair by Megan Tonjes (Org. by Lily Allen) plus check out how hot and confident Megan is with her Project Lifesize  *Tea! Specifically Yogi – Cold Season Tea is doing me right. * Kleenex with Vicks infused in it!  Oh how I love thee….my nose love thee, my skin loves thee!  *Orange Juice with extra vitamins! Getting my Vitamin C fix on.  *Spending extra time in bed to get my Vision Board all spiffy.  It looks extra suave right now!  No really, it does!

Tell me about the bright things in your week!

Dal sito francese Digital Music/Don’t Believe The Hype ecco le 10 tappe fondamentali che riassumono la rivoluzione del marketing musicale degli ultimi anni:

1.Myspace

2.CD Baby

3.Arctic Monkeys – Internet buzz

4.OK GO – Youtube

5.Napster

6.Radiohead – In Rainbows

7.Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts

8.Jill Sobule – fanziamento dai fan

9.David Byrne & Brian Eno – Top Spin

10.Amanda Palmer – marketing su Twitter

“Well, we never call them bad ideas. There are only good ideas that don’t work out.”

How´s that for a spirit! För en som vet hur det är att stånga pannan i datorn när idéerna går i stå känns sådana visdomsord som att dra in en frisk havsbris i lungorna efter att ha suttit inlåst en vecka i en otvättad pissoar utan ventilation.

Orden blev sagda av min husgud, producenten och låtskrivaren/sångaren/gitarristen Daniel Lanois i en intervju jag läste härom dagen där han beskrev arbetsklimatet när han jobbar tillsammans med geniet Brian Eno, ett samarbete som resulterat i flera album med U2, bland annat The Joshua Tree.

Han berättar i intervjun att de har satt upp ett antal regler för sig själva i syfte att hålla det kreativa flödet igång. En av dessa regler går ut på att de aldrig får säga emot varandra. Anledningen är att de prioriterar att hålla skaparbollen i rullning framför ifrågasättandet. Skulle det vara så att den ene inte gillar den andres idé så håller de tyst om det. Att hålla med är, enligt Lanois, bättre än att hamna i en diskussion om vem som har rätt eller fel.

Intervjuaren följde upp resonemanget med frågan: “So you’re saying that if it really was a bad idea, everybody will pretty much realize it at the end of the day?”

Varpå Lanois svarade, och här kommer det igen: “Well, we never call them bad ideas. There are only good ideas that don’t work out. And even if they don’t work out, that doesn’t make for a bad feel, because we gave it a try.”

Jag har svårt att tänka mig ett bättre kreativt klimat än ett där alla idéer bejakas. Där alla idéer betraktas som bra! Där man vet att vad man än kommer på så är det värt att testas. Inga nej-stoppklossar, ingen geggig skepticism, inget ofärdigt och unket idéslagg liggandes i vrårna.

Man borde tänka så istället för att slänga uppslag efter uppslag i papperskorgen. Allt, precis allt, är värt att testas.

Slutordet går till de båda herrarna själva i en fin samtalsscen ur Daniel Lanois sevärda dokumentär Here Is What Is.

Brian Eno, 1972, by Karl Stoecker

Here’s my 2nd show, which was also Part 2 of my look at the life and work of Brian Eno

The show is called “From the Other Side of the Mirror” and will be broadcast every Monday at 3pm. You can find KOOP radio at 91.7 Fm in the Austin area, or stream it online at www.koop.org

The idea behind the show is pretty simple. Each week the show will focus on a song, producer, label, musician(s), venue, etc. that has a major influence on music, their fingerprints are everywhere, but are forgotten or under most people’s radar. I will help listeners connect the musical dots. Like a documentary for your ears if you will. I will tell their story and showcase the various music they have created or been involved with.

Subject was again the inimitable Brian Eno. Playlist is below;

1. Sloppy – Devo
2. i-Zimbra – Talking Heads
3. Cross-Eyed & Painless” – Talking Heads
4. America is Waiting – David Byrne & Brian Eno
5. The Puppet Motel – Laurie Anderson
6. Miss Sarajevo – Passengers
7. Life is Long – David Byrne & Brian Eno

Echoes Picks the Four Best Wendy Carlos CDs

I know I said I’d pick 5 essential Wendy Carlos CDs but when I came down to it, four of her recordings stand out as pinnacles of her art.

Beauty in the Beast
From the roar of Tibetan horns and the clangor of metal percussion that opens Beauty in the Beast, Wendy Carlos signaled a new direction in 1986.  Carlos is both profound and poignant, dissonant and disarming on Beauty as she fuses a global orchestra from her synthesizers.  “Poem for Bali” is the centerpiece of the album, an episodic, seventeen minute excursion as Carlos orchestrates the sounds and rhythms of a digital gamelan orchestra.  In addition to replicating the metallophones, gongs and flutes of the traditional gamelan, she creates her own hybrid sound designs, giving this work a surreal and sometimes harrowing tone, like a dream bent through funhouse mirrors.  But then there are pieces like “A Woman’s Song,” based on a Balkan melody.  The title track merges nightmare landscapes and a crazed carnival calliope with a haunting theme that sounds like a lament for the end of the world.  Beauty in the Beast, is an essential recording both of modern composition and synthesis and Wendy Carlos should plug into this circuit again.

Sonic Seasonings
Before there was Ambient music, in a time before the New Age, there was Wendy Carlos’s Sonic Seasonings, a double LP released in 1972.  Taking the form of Antonio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” Carlos orchestrated four side-long soundscapes designed according to producer Rachel Elkind, to be “part of the decor.” Using only her Moog synthesizer and environmental sounds, Carlos’s music is prototypical ambient music, pre-dating Brian Eno’s similar work by a few years.  She weaves gentle, often reedy synthesizer melodies through chirping birds on “Spring,” phase-shifted church organ drones across crystalline bells and wind on “Winter,” and she seems to simulate an alien space landing on “Summer,” mimicking nature with her synthesizer.  An added treat to this special double CD addition is a 40 minute, unreleased, two part suite from 1986 called “Land of the Midnight Sun.” Using her Synergy synthesizers, Carlos orchestrates slow motion melodies and over-lapping minimalist layers that recall Steve Roach’s Structures from Silence.

Switched-On Brandenburgs
Switched-On Bach would be an obvious choice, and the Switched-On Bach Box set would be the easy choice, but if we’re talking best and quintessential, I go with The Switched-On Brandenburgs.  It includes her Brandenburgs 3, 4 and 5 from  earlier albums and fills out the complete set of Bach’s six masterpieces.  Carlos’s renditions remain the platinum standard of classical synthesis,  not because she replicated the sound of a baroque orchestra, but because her own orchestra was so unique.  Her “instruments” huffed, wheezed, and clanked like an intergalactic music box. Yet, with Carlos’s performances, they illuminate the contrapuntal magic of Bach as if his intricate mazes were formed in mid-air.

A Clockwork Orange
The first synthesized score for a major film and still one of the best.  That descending glissando of doom into the electronic timpani on “Title Music from A Clockwork Orange” alone is one of the signature moments of modern music.  And then she takes her own theme and turns it into a baroque work on “Theme from A Clockwork Orange.” But there’s more, including Carlo’s underated composition, “Timesteps” and her reimaginings of Beethoven for a future dystopia.

John Diliberto ((( echoes )))

Deva: La Luna (2009)

Oftentimes, I find the best haiku possess something that Brian Eno aspires to in his ambient music: “I want to make things that put me in the position of innocence, that recreate the feeling of innocence in you.”  Both Eno and John Cage often deliberately de-contextualise (or re-contextualise) sound in order to highlight the newness and strangeness of sounds.  Haiku does this too, in its own way.

We too easily fall into human routines where the most beautiful and magical moments in this mysterious universe are ignored or taken for granted.  And it may not always be the obvious awe-inspiring sunset filling the sky, but the tiny, ordinary things close to us that we simply fail to notice: a dandelion, a mosquito, a dewdrop.  Haiku is about noticing the ordinary world of nature around you.  The reader, by extension, realises him or herself also as part of nature too:

a peasant child

stops hulling rice

gazes at the moon

In Bashō’s lovely poem, the normal routine of work is interrupted.  The child doesn’t even need to know exactly what it is that is happening in this moment.  It is simply a quiet moment of communion with the universe.   In this moment, the world and all the things in it cease to be a means to an end (see also this poem by Buson).  The world is seen in its is-ness.

Haiku simply puts a spotlight on scenes of ordinariness and reawaken the innocence of seeing the world anew.  Abstraction isn’t capable of doing this, and in fact leads one even further from the immediacy of the moment.  In haiku, there is no need for transcendence of the world itself—only our limited and limiting conceptual view of the world.  The world is not “fallen” as in the idea of “original sin” but rather it is seen in its pure state of what I like to call original innocence, or what the Dao De Jing calls “the uncarved block”:

The ten thousand things stir about;
I only watch for their going back.

Things grow and grow,
But each goes back to its root.
Going back to the root is stillness.
This means returning to what is.
Returning to what is
Means going back to the ordinary.

If we can talk about “meaning” at all, it ultimately has its source in what is unsayable.  And even though haiku use words, those words are used in such a way that the words are passed beyond, placing the reader squarely in the “haiku moment.”  Only the moment remains.  This is why the devices we normally associate with poetry are usually avoided within haiku, such as metaphor, simile, personification—this is just more abstraction.  In a certain sense, haiku is “artless.”

What I have noticed over the time I have spent studying haiku is that I tend to notice those “haiku moments” around me more easily.  This hardly means I am satisfied with every haiku I write, and sometimes I am content to not write a haiku at all, but instead I simply enjoy the moment (seeing every moment as nothing but an opportunity to write a haiku would be missing the point I think!).

More and more, I am understanding haiku not merely as a poetic form.  Haiku are always happening around us, wherever one looks.  I am finding that reading haiku helps me to “exercise” that more contemplative side of myself.  And writing haiku is something like a thanksgiving, giving back to the universe what I was given.  At least, this is what it seems to mean to me.

So here is a question to ask yourself: When was the last time you gazed at the moon?

~ ~ ~

Matsuo Bashō, Jane Reichhold (translator), Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2008, pg. 97.

Lao Tzu, Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (translators), Tao Te Ching, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993, chapter 16.

]]> http://4yourpleasure.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/by-this-river-cover/ Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:51:13 +0000 Wolfram Resch http://4yourpleasure.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/by-this-river-cover/

Das Cover ist von dem Album “Before and after Science”.

Before and after Science

Here we are stuck by this river
You and I underneath a sky
That’s ever falling down down down
Ever falling down

Through the day as if on an ocean
Waiting here always failing to remember
Why we came came came
I wonder why we came

You talk to me as if from a distance
And I reply with impressions chosen
From another time time time
From another time.

Der Song “By this River” stammt von dem Album “Before and after Science” aus dem Jahr 1977. Ein Juwel.