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Chris Watson - Ol-Olool-O
Music to my ears
Chris Watson is probably best known for his contribution to music as a member of electro pioneers Cabaret Voltaire. Whilst the Cabs rate highly in my musical collection today's track 'Ol-Olool-O' by Chris isn't music as most would expect it. It's a collage of sounds made by him from recording made during his work as a sound recordist on natural history programs. The depth in the sounds he uses is amazing. The sounds of thunder and rain beautiful and emotive. It makes you listen to the world around you in a different way
This track is taken from his album Weather Report on Touch Records. Also worth checkin out is Outside The Circle of Fire which contains a selection of his isolated wildlife recordings. Listening to Tiger's purring, or Owl's marking their boundaries, is a wonderful experience. Especially wandering around London with your iPod on.
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Brian Eno & Davide Byrne - America Is Waiting
'America Is Waiting' is taking from the seminal album 'My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts' which was produced in 1979/1980 by composer Brian Eno and David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame). To me this record always sounds fresh and interesting - despite some dated sounding synthisizers on it. It's testament to the compositional skills of the two players, and the skills of the musicians the employed to work on it.
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Brion Gysin - I Am That I Am
Thus began Thee Process
Brion Gysin can be grandly titled the man who introduced 'cut-up' to William Burroughs, and subsequently influenced a huge range of experimentation and styles in music, art and literature.
'I Am That I Am' is from a recording of sound works that Gysin was asked to produce for the BBC in 1960, and is take from Recordings 1960-81 a collection of works and conversations with him.
It's sad that so little of Gysins audio work is available considering his influence. That said there have been a couple of books published on him in the last few years; Tuning into the Multimedia Age and Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted. These contain a number of images of his artwork and details of his influence. I'd love to see an exhibition of his paintings - I believe there was one in NYC earlier in the yea
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Nurse With Wound - Swamp Rat
'Swamp Rat' is taken from the Nurse With Wound album 'Drunk with the Old Man of the Mountains' on United Dairies
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Chris Corsano
Free-Jazz Drumming.
Some video clips of Chris Corsano playing with Barr at the Luminaire in Kilburn last night. Corsano's drumming was hypnotic, first time I'd seen him live, but he must be seen again. Preferably without Barr, who rather spoiled it for me - Corsano seemed a bit trapped with the click-track and song format, though still managed to excel in that space.
Notable mentions to Temperatures and Birds Of Delay for great support slots. Magik Markers didn't really do it for me either. Thanks to Upset The Rhythm! for another excellent line-up.
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Vampire Can't?
Some video clips of Chris Corsano Solo, Chris Corsana with Jessica Rylan (As Vampire Can't?) and the Jonathan Kane Band, taken at The Spitz on the 22nd of October.
topics: chris corsano, drums, experimental, free-jazz, improvisation, jazz, jessica rylan, jonathan kane, music -
Susanna And The Magical Orchestra.
Susanna was the highlight of last nights Rune Grammofon showcase at Cargo, having the audience totally wrapped around her finger, the room filled with anticipation from the audience with her every utterance. The video clips below don't do her justice.
She was followed by In The Country who were disappointing. Whilst there was the chance of them really working, especially given Morten Qvenild's performance with Susanna (he's the Magical Orchestra) they simply failed to gel and really 'do it'. The music seemed a bit too tired and predictable, save for odd moments where it came together.
Last up were Supersilent who I had great hopes for, and did at points really live up to them. There performance rose into some really amazing crescendos, some real tightness and the improvisation going on was strong, but at times it felt flat in between.
Overall an excellent night, only faulted by the incredible noise the bar staff managed to make over the intimate performance of susanna. Cargo really isn't a venue I rated highly, and each time it seems a little bit worse.
And (a small Plug) you can buy all these artists releases via PostEverything's Rune Grammofon page
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The Avant Garde Project.
The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today.
topics: experimental, music -
Damion Romero.
Trouser shaking feedback and synthesizer experimentation.
One of the many (42 and counting) performances I've seen in the last week-and-a-bit was Damion Romero's performance supporting Wolf Eyes and Aaron Dilloway.
Romero's performance was particularly impressive to me; beautiful resonating sounds, played with the calm of a scientist conducting an experiment - in this case on the audience, and a great deal of nonchalance, a quiet confidence in what he was doing was going to be very loud and very impressive.
topics: experimental, music -
More Corsano.
Fear of Jazz? More like fear of becoming a stalker....
Last night I saw Chris Corsano perform once again, at The Pool bar in Shoreditch, at the 'Fear Of Jazz' night. Once again he was amazing. Each time I see him he seems to have developed a little bit more in his style and what he's playing. His ability to generate a rhythm and then make it flow and develop in ever more complex ways, bouncing off the drums and modifying them to make the subtlest changes in sound, evolving it and driving it on. See for yourself in the clips below.
He's not always on top form, and if you were unfortunate enough to attend the previous nights performance when he played with Noah Howard, Evan Parker and John Edwards can attest to. I held such high hopes for this, having seen Corsano and Edwards do a blinding performance at the LMC Festival in December, it was horrible to see the restraint from Corsano as every time he and Edwards broke out they were interrupted by Howard bringing it back to New Orleans. I'd really liked to have seen if Parker, Howard and Corsano were left to their own devices that night.
I might start to get perceived as a Corsano stalker at this rate, as I've now seen him perform 9 or 10 times in the last year. Next time is The Flower-Corsano Duo next month. But hey, when you get the chance to see an amazing performer do loads of events in your neighbourhood (well, London) you have to, in the words of Noah Howard: 'support your local geniuses!'
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is killing music.
A random walk through my (digital) music collection.
Is killing music is currently on holidayAfter a long time I've finally got the equipment set up to run an internet radio station from home. It's a simple premise: 230Gb of digital audio, iTunes, NiceCast, and Darwin Streaming Server.
You can see what's been being played by visiting 'Is Killing Music' on last.fm. Below is what's just been played according to last.fm (it can be a bit flakey...)
At the moment it's mostly random, though I do put on what I want to listen to whilst working. I may plug my record decks in and mix some stuff up occasionally. You'll find all sorts of stuff being played. I take requests.
You can see what else I've been listening to at my last.fm page. More likely this will show tracks played from my iPod when I'm not at home.
The name is a reference to the 'Home Taping Is Killing Music' campaign of the 80s... an idea from record labels that copying music and letting other people hear it stops them from buying music. A hypothesis I don't hold to. A lost of the music played on 'is killing music' you won't hear in the mass media and so doesn't get any attention drawn to it for new listeners. That domination by those with the money to pay for presence, is really what's killing music - killing it's creativity and development. 'Is killing music' is a look at the alternative (and sometimes not so alternative)
You can access it below via either an m3u file that should load into most desktop mp3 players, like iTunes, or via a QuickTime stream. You can download and save either of these by right clicking (ctrl+click on a single button Mac) and choosing 'save target' or 'download file' or whatever version your browser of choice chooses to use.
Given there are so many internet radio stations out there, why bother It means I can more easily listen to my music when I'm not at home. I've not found many stations which cover this range of music (though I'm sure many people thinks that - maybe it's just an ego trip?). It is also a a refresher for Creative Egremont that Karen asked me to do. I've done this for SHOWstudio a few times but wanted to test it was all set-up and working before they stream Egremont's community radio through it. Oh, and also, because I can.
Enjoy.
topics: classical, dance, electronica, experimental, hip-hop, indie, industrial, is killing music, jazz, music, noise, radio, random, rock -
Atonality
And today could well be it's 100th Birthday: http://www.therestisnoise.com/2007/12/100-years-of--1.html.
Let's hear it for atonality, let's hear it for Schoenberg
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angie
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ayurveda
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cut-up
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Dorian
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drums
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experimental
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family
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jazz
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OS X
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pop
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tudor
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web
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WWII
