Recent Entries

June 2005 Archive

Wednesday, June 29

Bam Bam - Spend the Night

MP3 Bam Bam - Spend the Night
Desire Records, 1988






9:49 PM | Comments ( 0 )

Tuesday, June 28

Google Earth. Verdict: Useful/Creepy

Google today announced the release of the free version of their Google Earth software, which allows all manner of mapping capabilities—from finding restaurants and landmarks, to annotating directions, to tilting topography and extruding buildings, to… well, flying in from space to stalk your favorite New York City bloggers and arts personalities! Observe!

Click to view larger version [193 KB]:




Let's pray that Version 2.0 lets you look into apartment windows in real-time. Imagine what you'd see if you could:
  • Alex Ross at The Rest Is Noise: engaged in domestic cat abuse. "Get your stinky poo-and-litter paws away from my Mahler score!
  • AsFour: As SiLVER, As TULLE, As SPiRALS, AS PiTBULL, As iF.
  • Andre at Bumrocks: moutains of records you've never heard of, must of decaying cardboard sleeves, miles of Miyake pleats.
  • Nico Muhly: piano, boxer-briefs (or not!), a quill.
  • Parterre: filth, dementia.
  • Sasha Frere-Jones: books from the Oprah Book Club, brilliant child, ______________ [insert non-sequitur].

Excited? Download Google Earth.


Note: Yes, darlings. I know where you live! Mailbomb, anybody? ;)

3:08 PM | Comments ( 0 )

Tuesday, June 28

Dictaphone Jams

Over the years, we've gotten tiny tastes of what Björk is like when she's in working mode. Snippets of documentaries show her in the recording studio, improvising screams, turning knobs, working out lyrics that were later discarded in the studio release. There've even been "working versions" of a few songs put out as b-sides; indeed several portions of her Post album are culled from recording sessions in a Carribean island grotto. But while those releases have generally been cleaned up and then layered over with other instrumentation or noise, it wasn't until Medúlla that we really began to see the full in-progress spectrum of her songs, "Who Is It?" being the most demonstrable example. Here we have Björk almost stumbling onto her song "Submarine" in its earliest stages. The fuzzy texture of the recording is due to her use of a Dictaphone, which Richard D. James had tipped her off about some years earlier; now she takes it everywhere so that she can record superimposed layers of her own vocals on the spot, without any delicate or time-consuming click-copy-paste business. The careful touching of the piano keys along with the hesitant otherworldliness of the nascent harmonies speak to the ancient "ink" that Björk has mentioned in several interview. It's as if none of the music is her own and that she need only be still and sober long enough to allow it to rise up out of her—music that was always swirling about long before civilization and agriculture and war.

MP3 Björk - Submarine [Piano & Dictaphone Demo]

While Björk employs the Dictaphone strictly as a means of capturing ideas as they break and later re-records the music in the studio, Maja Ratkje uses Dictaphone recordings of her voice as raw input for the final composition. Like Björk's Medúlla, though, Ratkje's album Voice does explore the power and possibilities of the human vocal apparatus. The work is dense and rapturous, replete with mumbling, chattering, hissing, clicking, shouting, panting, singing, laughing—every primal possibility of which the voice is capable. Ratkje extends the capabilities with digital processing, but the resultant display remains wholly organic and is never manicured into cold or precious affect.

MP3 Maja Ratkje - Dictaphone Jam

… … … .

In other news, please be sure to check out a few links I've added to the sidebar. My favorite mp3 blogs. No, it's not an exhaustive list, but that's not my job, lists (visit Tofu Hut for that. The point is that they're the best mp3 blogs with the best music. Also, under the "Friends" category, I've added Gentleman Reg, a Canadian folk-pop singer/songwriter whose new video for "The Boyfriend Song" features nightvision, flashlights, a rowdy but gorgeous tune, and a big pile of cute folks making out. Enjoy!

9:26 AM | Comments ( 0 )

Sunday, June 26

David Fanshawe - African Sanctus

I was sixteen years old when I was presented with the score for David Fanshawe's African Sanctus. It was hand-written and somewhat indecipherable, mainly because of the close choral part writing and the inclusion of several other instrumental lines the likes of which I'd never seen before. I was a teenager, afterall, and I hadn't yet delved into twentieth century modern music. The idea of cueing in prerecorded music from a tape was beyond me (and sort of beyond my teacher), but this was to be accomplished if I was to gain a place in the Texas Music Educators Association All-State Choir. I wasn't able to grasp the impact of the work until I was finally onstage with a large chorus of my peers and several ethnic percussion instruments.

The basis for the larger work from which the mp3 below is extracted was a cross-shaped pilgrimage taken by Fanshawe over the course of four years. With a stereo recorder in tow, he journeyed from the Mediterranean to Lake Victoria and from the mountains of West Sudan to the Red Sea, recording the heart music of over fifty African tribes. The resulting composition was first performed by the Saltarello Choir in July 1972 at St. John's Smith Square, London, and later broadcast on BBC Radio on United Nations Day. Performances of the African Sanctus are massive undertakings, and Fanshawe has provided extensive documentation and diagrams of the proper execution.

MP3 David Fanshawe - African Sanctus

The first movement, "African Sanctus," opens with the beating of the large bass drum. With no preparation, the chorus announces with a wall of sound the holiness of the Lord God in the traditional Latin Sanctus text, backed now by guitar and doubled by piano. After a slight pause, Fanshawe's field recording of the North Ugandan Acholi Bwala dance begins, soon joined by the rockin' beat of a trap set. The chorus joins again with essentially the same passage with which they opened the piece, but now all the forces join and work to a great frenzy. Fanshawe's aim here (and I think he's done it with a little voodoo, it's so good) is to explore the relationship of, of course, the sacred and the profane (especially poignant now, considering the conflict in Uganda), but also to rejoin musical traditions split by geography and history. The thick, precise harmonies of the West are pitted against the open and wild incantations and rhythmic modes of a Sub-Saharan people. Surprisingly, they do not act antagonistically; there is no claim by either for validity or superiority, musically speaking. Rather, both traditions (in this movement at least) serve to uphold one another in an interlocking ecstasy.

This work is often staged with dancers and choreography, and I am thrilled to see in Fanshawe's performance instructions a note to include multi-racial performers. Anything else would be pandering, I think. And there's so much going on in the music—so many rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic threads—that I can't imagine everyone of every color and creed not wanting to dance or take part somehow.

In fact, I've been threatening to throw this track into a DJ mix some night. I can't wait to see the feet and arms and heads flailing. Hosanna!

8:38 PM | Comments ( 0 )

Wednesday, June 22

Nina Hagen - African Reggae

MP3: Nina Hagen - African Reggae

Es riecht so gut
Pass auf, daß du nicht geschnappt wirst!
Sie sind nämlich hinter dir her,
Du alter Kiffer
Dabei geht Ihre Geschellschaft am Alkoholismus zugrunde,
Aber dich jagen sie - DICH!

Haschisch
Feinstes Kaschmir
Edelster türke afganisches Gras
Ein Plätzchen für mein Schätzchen
Cannabis in Holland
Bob Marley auf der Venus

I wanna go to Africa to the black jah rastaman
To the black culture (Heaven I, I and I, what you mean?)
I will do things like my black friends do it
Do delaomgi… holaotrihi… .cucou
Greetings from Germany

Haschisch
Feinstes Kaschmir
Edelster türke afganisches Gras
Ein Plätzchen für mein Schätzchen
Cannabis im Schwarzwald
Bob Marley auf der Venus

Was soll ich denn aber in Africa als Frau, als Frau
Wenn der schwarze Mann die schwarze Frau kastriert
AU AU Castraction

Get up, stand up for the black revolution
For the revolution of the revolution
Get up, stand up!

11:45 AM | Comments ( 0 )

Saturday, June 18

Trrillcasting

Look everyone. Trrill gots a podcast. According to so-and-so, "they're all the rage. It's so post-blog." Now I don't even have to use my brain to entertain (sloganeering?)! I just upload an mp3 of some song that comes up in daily conversations with my circle of crazies-for-friends (as one calls them: "whiz kids.") You can look forward to bits from transsexual synth pioneers, noise ("the new black," according to the aforementioned so-and-so), psychedelic troping, unforgivable 90's R&B "hits," and as usual, the best and worst of opera and experimental vocal.

Shiver. Pee. Zip. Bye!


P.S. Now that it's working, I'm laying claim to my Odeo channel.

12:28 AM | Comments ( 0 )

Saturday, June 18

Bonnie Prince Billy - Death to Everyone

MP3: Bonnie Prince Billy - Death to Everyone

I am here, right here
Where god puts none asunder
And you, in black dress and black shoe
You do invite me under
Go on, go there
You can see me aging
Stars turn, balls burn
Coming kids are raging

Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun
Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun
La la la …

Every terrible thing is a relief
Even months on end buried in grief
Are easy light times which have to end
With the coming of your death friend

Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun
Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun
La la la…

So strap me on and raise me high
Cause buddy I'm not afraid to die
But life is long and it's tremendous
And we're glad that you're here with us
And since we know an end will come
It makes our living fun

Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun
Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun

Death to me and death to you
Tell me what else can we do die do
Death to all and death to each
Our own god-bottle s'within reach

Death to everyone is gonna come
And it makes hosing much more fun

12:04 AM | Comments ( 0 )

Wednesday, June 15

Links for 06/15/2005

  • Sunny lifestyles may halve prostate cancer risk.
    ?Up until now the only things we knew about prostate cancer were things you can?t change: being old, being black and living in northern latitudes.?
  • Quotes from the American Taliban.
    L(OL)ife, l(ol)iberty, and the pursuit of fr(otflmao)eedom.
  • Israel using a sound weapon on settlers?
    Protesters covered their ears and grabbed their heads, overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about 10 seconds. An Associated Press photographer at the scene said that even after he covered his ears, he continued to hear the sound ringing in his head.
  • Expatica.
    News and information for living in, moving to, working in Europe.

10:15 AM | Comments ( 1 )