Pretty Goes with Pretty

Deep Listening

Of all the albums I acquired a few weeks ago—nearly 20!—I'm a little surprised to find that the one that has endeared itself to me the most, so far, is Pauline Oliveros/Stuart Dempster/Panaiotis's Deep Listening, from 1989. I had no idea what to expect when I picked this up. The album was filed in the "Techno" section, though I had some feeling that would prove to be misleading. It is. Deep Listening is four lengthy improvisational pieces, mostly comprised of Oliveros on accordion, Dempster on trombone or didgeridoo, and Panaiotis's voice. Yet even that description is misleading. Each track is a long, drawn out, meditative drone. (I've certainly never heard an accordion played like this!) The album was recorded at the bottom of a large cistern somewhere in Washington state—the liner notes describe how they lowered themselves, their instruments, and the mics and cables into the cistern while producer Foster Reed used his van as a makeshift recording booth. The environment in which they recorded thus becomes another instrument, adding natural reverb and, according to the artists, a 45-second delay on every note they played.

The result is a glacial yet gorgeous sound. The tones of each instrument are warm and pure and full. There were a few instances where I had to turn the album off before I could finish listening and it actually hurt me to cut off something unfolding so delicately.

Oliveros apparently coined the phrase "deep listening" in opposition to "ambient." The latter was described by Brian Eno as music that could fold into the noise of the everyday—it intentionally evades focused attention. The Deep Listening Band (as they called themselves on subsequent releases), on the other hand, makes music that is minimal, that drones, that stretches into vastness—yet still commands you to hear it. 

• Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis: Suiren

1930s Playlist (Good Morning)

Yesterday morning was lovely. One of those Sunday mornings where you wake up and the sun is out and the light in the house is perfect and there's nothing else going on. The Sunday paper was waiting on the driveway, coffee brewed, and the baby was happy. We sat an enjoyed the morning for many hours, listening to a playlist I'd made that was solely comprised of music from the 1930s and 40s, which only added to how pleasant everything felt. Here's a taste of it--ten songs from the 1930s. In my house music from the 30s means mostly country music but also a little Django and some old French chansons (and one avant-garde piece for good measure). Enjoy.

• Jimme Rodgers: Blue Yodel No. 9 (Standin' on the Corner)
• Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers: When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)
• Jean Sablon: J'attendrai
• Bill Monroe: What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul
• Olivier Messiaen: Oraison
• Frehel: Du gris
• The Carter Family: Blackjack David
• Django Reinhardt: The Sunshine of Your Smile
• Patsy Montana: I Wanna Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart
• Coon Creek Girls: Sowing on the Mountain

Where Did It Go From There?

1. Simultaneous to how it all started, in fact simultaneous to everything I've been listening to for the last year or two, was my ongoing if slow consumption of all things krautrock—a genre I thought I was "into" many years ago but upon further reflection all I really was "into" was Tago Mago and, like, Tortoise. So after grabbing the Neu! and La Düsseldorf discographies and beginning to do the same with Faust and Amon Düül II, I started itching for new catalogs to sink into. 

I don't know what made me search Cluster on eMusic for the fifth time since joining a year ago, but I did and was happily surprised to find that they'd added a bunch of their records. I'd snatch up a Cluster immediately no matter when I saw it, but this instance happened to dovetail with when I bought the Mountains album, so my ratio of instrumental spacey shit was increasing at a quick clip. I went for the earliest one on offer, Soweisoso. Since picking it up I've been going back to it over and over again as it continues to reveal itself to me. Cluster belongs on the "pioneering electronica" side of the krautrock coin, as opposed to the "pioneering prog/psychedelic" side, and from what I've heard they seem to do it better than the various Klaus Dinger-related projects. They're not as funny, nor as repetitive—Neu!'s two most definitive qualities—and they're more compelling for it.

• Cluster: Sowiesoso

2. Simultaneous to my purchase of Soweisoso and the Mountains record, my brilliant wife and I were having a conversation about music and our impending baby, due any day now. (In fact, I've been posting a song a day for Baby Tennent on my Tumblr, in case you don't follow me there.) This got my brilliant wife to repeat her desire for Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby. Scott, if you're not familiar with him, was a pioneer of electronic music back in the 60s (as well as a jazz player who composed soundtracks for cartoons). He made three Soothing Sounds albums at the time—abstract sound works meant to lull your baby to sleep (each of the three albums was meant to be played at different points in the baby's development, with the sounds and patterns getting more and more complicated as the baby gets older). Again I went to eMusic and again I was surprised to find that they were available, despite my certainty that I'd looked once before and came up empty. I downloaded volume 1 and was pleasantly surprised to find that it... kinda sounded like Cluster! (Though the Soothing Sounds are about ten years older than Soweisoso.) Honestly, I had them on shuffle—yes, I even put my ambient music on shuffle sometimes—and I wasn't always sure who was who. That's a good thing, and I don't really give a shit if this soothes Baby Tennent or not. It soothes me!

• Raymond Scott: Sleepy Time

3. Simultaneous to these purchases—this is roughly that week between Christmas and New Years—I received the first Silver Apples album as a gift. I'd put it on an Amazon wishlist about three years ago and never revisited the wishlist again. My Sister-in-Law has just been winnowing down the wishlist every year and has finally gotten to the point where everything on the list is totally obscure and mysterious to her, so she took a shot with this one—thank God! Silver Apples gets a little repetitive after a while--at least two songs seem to use the exact same bassline—but all such negatives are erased by the constant reminder that these guys were making this record in freakin' 1967. This got me thinking about the similarly pioneering United States of America along with the Raymond Scott and Cluster records, and I got this notion that not only do I need to return to electronic music—a genre I'd once been pretty into, some time back!--but I needed specifically to immerse myself in the genre's origin point. What a great and inspiring world to explore, don't you think? Then I was directed to this blog which is uploading 62 discs worth of 60s-70s electronica and I was overcome by fear of what that would do to my hard drive. I mean, that's an amazing resource but I think I need to take baby steps. I'm going to act like I didn't see it.

• Silver Apples: Program

4. Simultaneous to that, I keep checking in on my friends' blog the Cargo Culte, which consistently has excellent mixes (not counting, okay, when they do powerviolence clusterfucks, but that's just me). I don't know how many random songs I picked up from them over the course of that week, but it was a bunch and they too fit this mold of instrumental, ambient, drone, space, electronic.

• The Bug: Freak Freak
• Oneohtrix Point Never: Hyperdawn

5. Simultaneous to that, I was reading that Coke Machine Glow blurb for Mountains' Choral, which noted that 2009 was a really excellent year for ambient records, so I scribbled all their recommendations down and generally kept an eye out specifically for other sites' mentions of the genre's 09 peaks. Most often championed seemed to be Emeralds, so I gobbled up What Happened; and I also started hearing of White Rainbow, so I tracked down New Clouds. The latter speaks to me more; there's something cold and unwelcoming about the Emeralds disc, though it is good, whereas White Rainbow's four twentysomething-minute tracks manage to be hazy and dense and spacious and varied and immersive all at once.

• Emeralds: Up in the Air
• White Rainbow: Major Spillage

Scott Walker at the End of the World

I watched two documentaries over the weekend: Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, about the wonders of Antarctica and the people who choose to go there, and the Scott Walker documentary 30 Century Man. In a weird way they were perfect complements to each other. Throughout his film, Herzog is most interested in what kind of people wind up at the bottom of the world; none of his subjects could really answer him with any clarity, but more than one noted that arriving to Antarctia, they finally met an entire group of people who were "like them." These were all people who seemed destined to make their home in the most extreme place on Earth.

Over the ninety minutes of interviews and clips taking you across Walker's nearly fifty-year career, you sort of get that same feeling from him. It's impossible to get him to explain how he arrived at the music he makes now--a far cry from his days as a pop star in 1965 England. It truly seems as mysterious to him as to anyone else who might hear his music. Yet the trajectory from his early days with the Walker Brothers to his more avant-garde output of the last ten or fifteen years seems positively natural when laid out as the filmmakers did. I wasn't really familiar with Walker's material past Scott 4, so to watch this film illuminate his work in the 70s (though it does glide right past a number of albums from that decade which Walker stubbornly keeps out of print), 80s (yikes), and 90s-00s (out there), is absolutely fascinating. I can't say I'm running out the door to pick up his more recent material--it strikes me as being terribly interesting but not exactly pleasant to listen to--but seeing him get from point A to Z is engrossing. I recommend the documentary if it screens in your town or comes out on DVD. In the meantime, here's a sort of cliff's notes.

• The Walker Brothers: Make It Easy On Yourself (from Take It Easy with the Walker Brothers, 1965)

The Walker Brothers: The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More (1966)

 

Scott Walker: Mathilde (from Scott, 1967)

 

Scott Walker: Jackie (from Scott 2, 1968)

• Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (from Scott 3, 1969)

• Scott Walker: On Your Own Again (from Scott 4, 1969)

The Walker Brothers: Nite Flights (from Nite Flights, 1978)

 

Scott Walker: Track 3 (from Climate of the Hunter, 1984)

 

Scott Walker: The Cockfighter (from Tilt, 1995)

 

Scott Walker: A Lover Loves (from The Drift, 2006)

RIYL MPP

Random bits and pieces of Merriweather Post Pavilion have me thinking of a few kindred sounds. None of these are direct soundalikes to what Animal Collective are doing, but I hear elements of each mixed into their stew.

• Faust: Krautrock (from Faust IV, 1973)
  This one might be a more accurate reference for Strawberry Jam than MPP; nevertheless I think Faust IV a safe recommendation to anyone who likes the last couple Animal Collective albums. The two bands feel like kindred spirits, separated by an ocean and almost four decades. Both are unpredictable, experimental, dramatic, and funny.

• Raymond Scott: Cindy Electronium (1959)

• Philip Glass: Floe (from Glassworks, 1982)
  Listen to the opening of "My Girls"—it reminds me of Glass's circular patterns (though I'm probably giving Animal Collective too much credit; "Floe" is infinitely more complex).

• Bjork, Oceania (from Medúlla, 2004)
  Between the beats and the backing vocals—Wooo!—I hear a direct connection between this song and MPP.

• Tough Alliance: 1981 (from A New Chance, 2007)
  The first time my brilliant wife heard "My Girls" she texted me: "WTF - new Animal Collective is totally Tough Alliance." There are clear surface similarities, though the Tough Alliance are obviously way more interested in teh 80s synth-pop aesthetics.

• Oskar Sala: Concertando Rubato from Elektronische Tanzsuite (1959)
  Something about the intro to "Daily Routine"—maybe it's just those first tentative, random hits of the keyboard, not to mention the tonal similarity. 

For your comparison:

• Animal Collective: Daily Routine

And the video for "My Girls":

My Listening Hours: The Best of July–September

Fleet Foxes, s/t
I'll stick with what I said in my original review—namely that this is the only 2008 release I've heard so far that took my breath away from note one. One of my qualifiers for a great album is noting how many songs become "my favorite" the more I listen. Thus far I think I've declared four or five different tracks here as my favorite. Most recently, "He Doesn't Know Why."

I look forward to Fleet Foxes' next album, whenever it may come, for two reasons. Now that they've got J. Tillman in the band, I'm curious to see whether his songwriting has any influence. More importantly, I saw Fleet Foxes live a week or so back and they were phenomenal, in a way that clearly shows that they have become better than what is currently on record.

• Fleet Foxes,  He Doesn't Know Why

Brian Eno: Another Green World
Carrie Brownstein at Monitor Mix had a post a while back about playing a classic album for virgin ears, wondering whether it could hold up on its own merits, cannonization aside. her example was Patti Smith's Horses, but she could just have easily used Another Green World as her example. Eno is someone I'm shamefully unschooled in, considering my soft spot for the quietly abstract. He's surely a primary influence for plenty of artists in my collection, yet I've never heard any of his albums, other than an early Roxy Music album which I can't stomach. I always understood his solo material to be the starting point for ambient, so I was (pleasantly) surprised to hear how pop-oriented much of Another Green World is. It didn't start well, though: I was taken aback by "Sky Saw," which is almost comically dated, with its flanged-out guitars and fretless bass noodling. The fretless bass continues into the second track, too, so on first listen I was beginning to think all the uber-music nerds were playing a joke on me. Happily from there things get on track. All of the pop-oriented tracks—those with vocals, choruses, pop structures, like "St. Elmo's Fire" or "I'll Come Running"—are catchy yet complex. Then there are the instrumental tracks, which, aside from the first two, achieve a kind of timelessness. "The Big Ship" could have been produced last year. This is one of my favorite acquisitions of the year by a few yards.

• Brian Eno, The Big Ship

Okkervil River, The Stand Ins
2008 could arguably be described as my year of Okkervil River. The Stage Names, Black Sheep Boy, and now The Stand Ins (in that order) were all new to me this year. Taken together, Will Sheff and co. have occupied a substantial chunk of my listening hours (rivaled only by Andrew Bird, I'd guess). The Stage Names remains my favorite, but its companion holds its own pretty well. I'm especially pleased to see OR continue to bring the rock. The band's bouncy and propulsive rhythms complement Sheff's cascade of vivid lyrics better than the more morose, plodding ballads (compare highlights "Lost Coastline," "Singer Songwriter," and "Pop Lie" to the good-but-tiring "Blue Tulip" for evidence). Anyone can moan out a dramatic turn of phrase in a ballad, but it takes real skill to paint a nuanced lyrical portrait in a rocker, where so often simple chants about sex or nonsense suffice for all the rump shakers. Taking Sheff's many references to film as my cue: anyone can over-emote in their Oscar Monologue, but the true talent lies in sharp satire.

• Okkervil River, Pop Lie

Dr. Dog, Fate
I wasn't expecting much from Dr. Dog. For one, how much stock can you put in a band dumb enough to call themselves Dr. Dog? Too, my brilliant wife downloaded a sampling of tracks from all their early albums, most of which I found workmanlike at best. But upon the urging of a friend who couldn't stop listening to Fate, I took a chance. Though I still wouldn't take the "workmanlike" tag away from them completely—it's straightforward indie rock no matter how you slice it—I nevertheless grant big points to a band that has a true sense of craft when it comes to pop songs. Just about everything here, especially in the first half, is a total earworm, not to mention played with confidence by all members. The second half gets to feel a little samey—it could probably have lost at least two songs and been a stronger record for it—but then again the more I listen to it the more some of the later tracks reveal their quality. One more thing in Dr. Dog's defense: the Beatles comparisons made in nearly every mention of the band I've come across have got to stop. Yes, you can hear a little late-period Beatles in their songs, but the band is hardly ripping them off wholesale. I hear the Band in there too, not to mention the singer's voice resembles Wayne Coyne's more than anyone from the 60s, never mind Lennon or McCartney. They're contemporary indie more than they are some kind of throwback band.

• Dr. Dog, The Breeze

Holy Fuck, LP
Nearly two-thirds of the way into 2008, it is really dawning on my how great of year 2007 truly was for music. By the close of last year, I already had a top ten list I was pretty confident about. By the spring of this year I'd picked up a few more albums—The Stage Names, Strawberry Jam, and others—that would've placed high on that list as well. Still, I figured my 2007 purchases would taper off by April or so, but they didn't: I added Fiery Furnaces' Widow City to my list some time in May. Now, Holy Fuck. This album gets off to a so-so start—the music can feel a little faceless, so it really needs a strong melody or an unbreakable backbone to rise above Workout Mix caliber. Once "Lovely Allen" kicks in, segueing fluidly into album highlight "The Pulse," the entire rest of the record quite simply kicks ass.

• Holy Fuck, The Pulse

Four Tet, Ringer
After a Fridge reunion and three records with Steve Reid, I was beginning to wonder if Kieren Hebden was ever going to return to his Four Tet moniker. Looks like he has, if only for a quick four-song EP. Don't let the name on the album cover fool you, though: Ringer is a departure from Hebden's previous work. Most of the songs here remind me more of Orbital than Four Tet. That's not a bad thing by any means, unless the incessant 4/4 beat drives you up the wall. At thirty minutes, it doesn't get to me. In fact, it's encouraging to hear Hebden continue to branch out.

• Four Tet, Ribbons

MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
My love for MGMT has waned slightly since the last time I talked about them, mostly due to overexposure and their pitiful live show, which I caught when they opened for Beck and Spoon at Hollywood Bowl. Putting that aside, though, Oracular Spectacular is still a solid album and still great fun.

• MGMT, Weekend Wars
  

Philip Glass, Solo Piano
Steve Reich, Different Trains
This year I've begun to pick up more and more contemporary composers, finally wading a little deeper into a pool which I'd previously only dipped a toe or two. Earlier this year I picked up Glassworks, which I enjoyed immensely (though I know there is a lot out there more ambitious in intent). I like Solo Piano for the same reason: it's relaxing, it's not a single hour-long piece (so I don't feel obligated to concentrate on it from beginning to end when I put it on). I wouldn't go so far as to call it background music, though I do default into a relaxed mood whenever I put it on.

Different Trains is another beast, though. Far from relaxing, I've actually found it to be a great workout album! About thirty minutes long, steady and repetitive rhythm, and a narrative arc to keep you engaged as you go. As for the composition itself, the strings follow melodies dictated by voice samples of people talking about trains—first about travel in the U.S., then morphing into discussions of trains used during the Holocaust. It's affecting, if heavy-handed. I found it quite powerful on first listen, and still feel that power (though slightly less so) with repeated listens. Like a movie with tough subject matter, I can't say I'll reach for it over and over—unless I'm on a treadmill!

• Philip Glass, Metamorphosis One
• Steve Reich, Different Trains I: America - Before the War

Later this week, the rest and the worst of the last three months.

My Listening Hours: The Best of April–June

Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Just looking at Saturday's post you can probably guess that this is my favorite purchase of the season (not to mention favorite of the year). I've written about this album's effect on me already, so I'll just add that, happily, I think it is so good that it will probably rise above any sort of personal connection to this period of my life. I hope so, at least. Meanwhile, I read Bird's posts at Measure for Measure with great anticipation for his new album, whenever it may be finished.

• Andrew Bird, Masterfade

Neil Young, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
Five years ago I had zero Neil Young albums in my collection; now I have five. Harvest is still my favorite—I just love the mood of that album—but this one is a strong contender for the top spot, as Young gets a lot louder and a lot jammier. Epics like "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Down by the River" are mindblowing, while the shorter songs like "Round and Round" and the title track have undeniable hooks. This album is outstanding from start to finish.

• Neil Young, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

The Lovin' Spoonful, Anthology
The Lovin' Spoonful are one of those bands I didn't know I'd been listening to for pretty much my whole life. I never connected the band to their many, many hits ("Do You Believe in Magic," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind," "Summer in the City," and a few others), so it wasn't the obvious songs that finally drew me to them. It was Paul's post at Setting the Woods on Fire on the roots of country-rock, which included "Nashville Cats." I fell in love! A few weeks later I was at the library and saw this greatest hits collection, at which point I realized just how many of their songs I already knew. The collection bounces around between their British Invasion-inspired tunes and their more explicit forays into country. It's the latter songs I respond to the most.

There are a handful of songwriters or bands that fall into a special category for me—i.e., songs my imaginary toddlers will love. I'd say at least half of this collection, if not the whole darned thing, fits in nicely. (Also in this category: Harry Nilsson, a lot of Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkel, a few bossa nova tracks and country songs, and probably a bunch others... perhaps a post for another time.)

• The Lovin' Spoonful, Jug Band Music

Les Paul & Mary Ford: Best of the Capitol Masters
Acquired at the library on the same day as the Lovin' Spoonful, I could say a lot of the same things about this wonderful collection, which also fits into my imaginary toddler playlist. Mary Ford's voice (is she overdubbing her own harmonies? I think so) is just so lovely, and I honestly cannot figure out how Les Paul's fingers can dance across the fretboard; his style is absolutely unique and I've never heard anyone after cop his sound.

• Les Paul & Mary Ford, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise

Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Armed Forces
Last year, thanks to Imperial Bedroom, I went from liking Elvis Costello to flat-out loving him. So I've begun filling in the holes in my collection, trying to move chronologically through his ouerve at least until I get to the spotty part of his career. Which brings me to his third album, Armed Forces. I can see the progression between the first two albums, which were buoyed at least in part by a lot of sheer attitude, and Imperial Bedroom, which is wall-to-wall perfectly executed pop songwriting. The songwriting on the first half of Armed Forces is pretty much right up there with Imperial Bedroom: "Accidents Will Happen," "Senior Service," and "Oliver's Army" are all fantastic. Somewhere around the middle things falter a little; I'm not too fond of "Goon Squad," and everything after that falls a little flat for me. Not bad by any means, just not to the highest caliber Costello is capable of. (And for the record, while I like "What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding," it's never been one of my favorites.)

• Elvis Costello: Oliver's Army

Philip Glass, Glassworks
I've been flirting with contemporary composers for years now, in a very shallow way: bought Koyaanisqatsi some time in college, picked up Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians five or six years ago, bought a box set of early electronica forbears (which includes the likes of Cage, Young, Stockhausen, and others), and then a few months ago got Terry Riley's In C for a whole dollar. So I don't profess to have anything more than a passing knowledge of the genre, as evidenced by my just now getting Glassworks, which is probably a (rightly) obvious place to start. It's really a fantastic collection of pieces, mostly for piano. Unlike the other material I already own, which is either hour-long works asking you to immerse yourself and listen or brief, literally experimental exercises, Glassworks is short and easily digestible. That's not the best endorsement, but what I mean is that it really does feel like a kind of gateway drug, moreso than the other discs I've tried (and liked) in the past. So, a question for those of you more schooled than I: where to next? Other works by these composers? Other composers altogether? Who are some of your favorites?

• Philip Glass, Opening

Shearwater, Rook
The lone 2008 release to make it into my favorites this time around. And at first I really didn't think it would. Rook requires some patience, to say the least. In terms of songwriting, performance, and production, it is pretty much flawless. It feels epic, and composed, despite running under forty minutes altogether—which in itself is an accomplishment, in an age new releases that include "bonus tracks" on already overlong albums (off the top of my head: Fiery Furnaces, TV on the Radio).

So why did I hesitate, at first, in liking Rook? The voice. Jonathan Meiburg, who is the singer, songwriter, and overall creative force behind Shearwater, has a very pretty, obviously trained vocal delivery. His timbre, tone, and projection are all very practiced, sometimes a little mannered and often careening into the dramatique. At one point during "Home Life" I halfway expect Meiburg to don a little white mask and sing about the music of the night. It's a little offputting at first, in other words. But! Every other element of Rook is outstanding, so you sort of keep going back to it despite the oily bits that make you cringe a little. And after a few more listens Meiburg's vocals stick out less and less, until finally everything clicks. (It took me probably five listens before I realized that the vast majority of my least favorite vocal parts were all in one song—again, "Home Life.") In the end, Rook really works, and it's becoming one of my favorite releases of the year so far (though, I admit, the playing field is not that crowded at the moment--more on that later this week). It's also worth emphasizing that Rook works best as an album; tweezing a single track out from the pack doesn't exactly get across how fluidly the songs work together. The sum is most certainly greater than its parts. Nevertheless:

• Shearwater, Rooks

The United States of America, s/t
I've long been on the hunt for this album, ever since hearing reference to them in regards to Broadcast many years back. In fact it seems like I only hear about the United States of America when they're being namechecked in a Broadcast review—which is kind of a shame because this record is a lot more varied than those mentions would let on. Only the (excellent) first song, "The American Metaphysical Circus," sounds like a precursor to Broadcast. The rest is a simply outstanding psychedelic album full of cacophonous overlapping sounds, otherworldly production, and not a little sense of humor, as on "I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar." This record is way, way ahead of its time.

• The United States of America, The American Metaphysical Circus
• The United States of America, I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife for You, Sugar

Tomorrow, the rest (and the worst).

My Listening Hours: The Rest of January–March

Wilco, Sky Blue Sky
When this album came out last year I was mildly interested in hearing it but also felt that I was kinda done with Wilco. Then all the reviews I read said it was boring, and the two mp3s I downloaded didn’t put up much argument. Five or six months later it seemed to be on everyone’s best-of-07 lists, so I gave it a shot all over again, this time the whole album. My ultimate reaction is somewhere between “boring” and  “best of the year.” The album starts and ends with some of the band’s strongest songs ("Either Way" sticks in my head for days at a time). But the middle sags, to the point that I rarely feel the urge to put the whole album on. I cherrypick my favorite tracks onto playlists instead. Part of what bothers me is that transparency of the influences on some of these tracks: the chorus of “Hate it Here” screams Beatles, and Jeff Tweedy’s delivery on “What Light” is like karaoke Dylan.

Neu!, Neu! 75
Neu!'s third and last album is just six songs, split down the middle between what Michael Rother wanted to do (synthy pseudo-ambient, a la "Seeland") and what Klaus Dinger wanted to do (guitar-driven punk riffing). Somehow it feels cohesive anyway—probably because both approaches still utilize a kind of tunnel effect—the songs move in one direction, little digression in terms of dynamics or structural shifts. Whether relaxing to the first half or waking up to the second, all six tracks on Neu! 75 envelope you. A little dated, but also a little of what I've wanted/needed lately. Like Animal Collective's "For Reverend Green," I've been drawn to songs that create a kind of sonic effacement. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense; but it will require a longer post to explain.

Vashti Bunyan, Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind
Standing in the record store, my wife and I held this collection in one hand and Bunyan’s debut album in the other. I think we were beguiled by that white coat she’s wearing on the cover, and the fact that there were twice as many songs on this album. There are a lot of great songs here; she's got a fantastic voice and often great lyrics (I find the sentiment in "Leave Me" refreshing for a pop song). But perhaps because this wasn’t a composed album, rather a collection of demos and outtakes from the same era and just after, it becomes a bit overwhelming. Twenty tracks of Bunyan’s morose lo-fi laments gets a little tiresome. One at a time, great, but tough to take as a whole.

Panda Bear, Person Pitch
I like Person Pitch, but I’m at a loss to figure out how it was at the top of so many lists last year. On the list, sure—but the very top? I think there are far fewer ideas happening here than it gets credit for; I don’t really hear what Person Pitch is trying to accomplish in forty-eight minutes that "Bros" doesn’t do in toto in twelve minutes.

The Mae Shi, Hlllyh
My full review of the album (including mp3) can be found here. My brilliant wife, after listening to the album herself, called me out: “you don’t really like it as much as you say you do, right?” The answer is I don’t know, maybe. A great deal of what I like about Hlllyh is tied less to the actual music and more to my memories of going to shows every weekend in a warehouse in downtown Phoenix or a house party in Tempe—just a crowd of smelly dudes watching their friends go apeshit in front of them (no actual stage, of course). Truth be told if I hadn’t gotten this album for free I wouldn’t have bought it. Now that I own it, I skip it as often as I let it play when the songs come up on shuffle.

Os Mutantes, s/t
I’ve had an album’s worth of Os Mutantes songs in my iTunes for years now, though it wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that I finally bought a proper release. Where better to start than this, their debut 1968 album? It doesn’t contain my favorite OM song—that would be the Rita Lee-sung version of “Baby,” rather than the version here—but there's plenty else to love, like the jubilant "Senhor F."

LCD Soundsystem, 45:33
To be honest I've only owned this album for a couple weeks, and probably listened to it three times since picking it up. So my opinion is not fully formed. I'll say this though: it's not my ideal workout mix.

Terry Riley, In C
Because you know what is my ideal workout mix? In C. I swear, I plug in my headphones, get on the treadmill, and start jogging my ass off to In C.  Who needs a house beat when you have Riley's patterns and clusters? If only my body had the stamina to run for an hour fifteen. I poop out around, uh, 45:33. I get completely lost in this piece. I've only got a handful of contemporary composers in my collection—Glass, Reich, and a 3CD compilation tracing the origins of electronic music which hits a lot of the well-known twentieth-century avant-garde composers. A few months back I mentioned that this was an area of music I knew was in my future. In C might be the piece I needed to hear to make that future come a little sooner. (You can download all of In C for free from last.fm.)   

Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
I'm actually surprised that I dislike this album as much as I do. I don't hate it, but based on how terrific I found Satanic Panic in the Attic, you'd think I'd be taken by the obvious aesthetic leaps the band is taking. I can respect the growth—there's even songs, like "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger," that I really like—but as often as not I find Hissing Fauna to be terribly grating. The harmonies are almost abrasive on "Suffer for Fashion" or "Faberge Falls for Shuggie," and "The Past is a Grotesque Animal," all twelve minutes of it, just sounds like Kevin Barnes had the studio time so he indulged himself.

Buckingham Nicks, s/t
In another My Listening Hours post from a few months ago, I went on about Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which sparked a lot of comments as to the worth of the group. My feeling on the band was that Lindsey Buckingham’s songs are far and away the best of the bunch, both on Rumours and on Tusk. Stevie Nicks’s voice is of course distinctive and, when her songs aren’t tainted by pop-cultural oversaturation, her songs can be great too. Really it’s just bland Christine McVie that weighs down the albums. So it seemed logical that searching out the out-of-print (but easily gotten) Buckingham Nicks—which the duo recorded prior to joining Fleetwood Mac—might yield great results.

Turns out this is a pretty perfect encapsulation of my post from a couple months back, “Do I Want to Go There,” in which I wondered aloud when, exactly, my jones for music from the 70s would steer me wrong. The vast majority of Buckingham Nicks is bona fide MOR schlock. Some good melodies here and there, but frankly the album cover should rightly scare you away.

George Harrison, Dark Horse
On a similar note, George Harrison’s Dark Horse was also disappointing. A couple good songs—particularly "Simply Shady"—but most of the album showcases Harrison’s weak voice, directionless songwriting, and bad sax, none of which I expected from George.

Tomorrow, I'll take a look at the albums coming out in the next few months that have me most excited.

Score of the Day

Props to We Eat What We Like for pointing this out: Amazon is selling the entirety of Terry Riley's In C for $0.99, while Last.fm is offering it for free. I haven't downloaded either since I'm not on my home computer, so it is unclear, as WEWWL notes, whether the two versions are the identical performance.

Drawing a Line

As an addendum to Tuesday's post, I've had this post, again from the Existence Machine, bookmarked for an obscenely long time, meaning to respond to it. Richard's post is about unexpectedly liking a Stephen Stills album, and he goes into the idea of "drawing the line" as far as what roads he can or will go down in terms of his taste and/or purchasing decisions. He wrote the post partly in response to one of my posts about the Byrds. Here at pgwp he commented “I was perfectly happy not bothering with the Byrds. You can't listen to everything, so you have to make decisions, even unfair ones. The Byrds got dropped from serious consideration years ago."  He elaborated at his own site on both the Byrds and Stills:

I confess that I never expected to have the slightest interest in a Stephen Stills solo album. For one thing, the music he'd been associated with didn't thrill me: the ubiquity of "For What It's Worth" obscured its quality, and I didn't really like Crosby, Stills, & Nash. Another reason is that you have to draw the line somewhere. ... Early encounters consigned [the Byrds] to the effective dustbin in my mind (I hated "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and wasn't fond of their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man"), though later I suspected that if I took the time with them, I'd find a lot there to appreciate. With Stills, I found it easy to completely ignore not just his solo material, but anything related to Crosby, Stills, & Nash (other then Neil Young)...

The idea of "drawing a line" stuck with me. We all draw the line somewhere, choosing not to go down a road however worthwhile it may or may not be. For instance, I flirted with hip hop (underground and mainstream) when I was in college working at a record store, but I've since left that avenue unexplored and have fallen way behind (anyone care to update me one what's gone on in hip hop since, say, Black Star's album? Whatever happened to those guys?). The idea of even trying to get back into hip hop is daunting, both in terms of the number of albums I'd need to pick up to feel caught up and the sheer number of dollars that would require. So, I've drawn the line.

On the other hand, there are other genres I'm equally unfamiliar with beyond the surfacemost knowledge, which in a way I'm saving for later. While I own a few Philip Glass and Steven Reich albums, and a box set with material from Stockhausen,  Cage, Riley, etc., I've never truly immersed myself in contemporary composers.  The entire genre is like a continent I haven't been able to get to yet. But I know it's in my future and I will savor the experience when I get there.

This sort of goes to sroden's comments in my previous post:

single trajectories are the path of the anal... multiple trajectories are for the messy. i think that the deeply personal messy connections that are born where multiple trajectories meet, keeps us human and full of musical loves.

It's a sentiment I agree with. As I said in my response to that, also in the comments: I'm not wholly obsessed with Laurel Canyon. I do listen to other stuff. But I think all of us (right?) have little phases or mini-trajectories within the bigger picture of our personal life-long musical consumption. In the sense that I listen to "everything," I have reggae, latin, punk, rap, soul, doo-wop, folk, contemporary composers, and plenty else in my collection—at my fingertips, thanks to iTunes. But I hardly know all those genres. And for me there's few better feelings than knowing a music.

Other Voices: Stockhausen & Deal

stockhausen never seemed as much a superhero as he did a kind of mega villian... he always seemed poised to take over the world.

Steve Roden has some worthy things to say about the late Karlheinz Stockhausen; it's a nice, personal post made by someone truly influenced by the composer rather than paying lip service to a long career. Roden also recently wrote about Evel Knievel. I am waiting with bated breath to see what he has to say about Dan Fogelberg.

Why is this song actually here? Why is this song taking up two-and-a-half minutes of my life? Is it just because somebody doesn't have tape anymore and so the amount of recording space is unlimited? That's why I'm sitting here listening to this, because nothing stopped you from doing it, but there's not really a reason to do it?

Elsewhere, Richard Crary points to this nugget from the mouth of Kim Deal, who sums up my antipathy toward 95% of the bands featured on most mp3 blogs (aside from this month, which is the only time of year I ever trust 'em). 

Writing with a Red Crayola

From our vantage out on the edge, Zappa and the Velvet Underground, and other more conventionally strange bands, were Vichy-puppet right-wingers, ordinary musicians trying to do something different and still function within the rock & roll framework. We said fuck the framework, listen to this, motherfucker. And then busted your eardrum.

Oxford American’s music issue has plenty to offer besides the article I mentioned in last week’s marathon post. Another feature, tying in tangentially with my recent posts on music and books, is a series of reminiscences by writers who led past lives as rockers, to one degree of success or another. Sven Birkerts, Warren Zanes, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, Mike Powell, and James Whorton Jr. all offer a peek into their musical pasts. (Zanes, late of the Del Fuegos, has a particularly entertaining piece, which among other things relates his realization while onstage that he was going bald: “Everyone in the audience was looking toward the stage. They knew…. I was torn between playing the guitar and feeling for damage.”)

The real highlight, though, is the piece by Frederick Barthelme (brother of Donald, who I’ve written about before). Barthelme was the original drummer for the Red Crayola, possibly the longest-running art rock band out there. Anyone at all interested in the band should enjoy the article; it gives a lot of insight into the band’s beginnings.

Because we couldn’t play all that well, we had to do something else, something more interesting, and since we were art-inclined, we went that route, leaning on every possible art idea at every turn. Soon we were making “free music,” playing long improvised pieces heavily invested in feedback, random acts of auditory aggression, utterances of all kinds. We began to have big ideas about ways to listen to music, and what “music” was.

As players, some of us were better than others. Mayo could play a little guitar and already had that odd touch on the instrument that he has today—his playing was wonderful and startling, very spare, full of asides and quotations, and always giving you the impression he was about to screw the pooch, musically speaking. Steve Cunningham could play a bit of bass, and did so, fearlessly. As a drummer, I was like the last guy selected for the dodge-ball team—no time, no coordination, no nothing. So I was spectacular on drums. And all this worked fine because in the larger scheme of things, we didn’t really want to play well. Playing well was what we were against.

Barthelme departed from the Red Crayola after their second or third album, finding his own success as a writer and teacher instead. Since his second novel, Second Marriage, published in 1984, Barthelme’s fiction has been of a more realist bent—everyday people, usually living in the south. But his first book, War and War, was published in 1971 and was written between 1966–69, when he was still a member of the Red Crayola. The book is experimental (and out of print), unlike his more well-known work. If it is spoken of at all, it is usually noted for being similar (and inferior) to brother Donald’s metatextual, language-obsessed style.

It’s one of my favorite books on my shelves—not for its content but for its dated yet wonderful cover. Don’t ask me to explain it; I just like it. The book itself is a stream-of-consciousness pastiche of fiction and (drug-addled? art-school pretentious? merely youthful?) fact. It’s less a novel than a description of the novel Barthelme is writing. It’s a combination of lists, diagrams, photographs, and a constant self-awareness of truth and lies and revision, both of truth and of lies.

It's not a particularly great book, but Crayola fans may want to search it out, both because it's a document from the band's earliest days and because Mayo Thompson appears throughout the novel. For instance (click on the image if you can't read the text):

Elsewhere on pgwp:

• Donald Barthelme is King
• Two posts on experimentalism vs. accessibility in music and writing: part I, part II
• About that other, "more conventional" art rock band, the Velvet Underground, and that other directionless jam band, the Grateful Dead
• "Listen to this, motherfucker. And then busted your eardrum." Oh yeah? Fred, let me tell you about Glenn Branca

Noise Solution

BLDGBLOG points to this article from the Observer, in which researchers are studying what they call “positive soundscapes”—sounds within the urban environment that are pleasing to the ear. According to the researchers’ website,

The team behind this project comes from a very wide range of disciplines—social science, physiological acoustics, sound art, acoustic ecology, psychoacoustics, product perception and room acoustics. They will apply their breadth of experience to investigate soundscapes from many aspects and produce a more nuanced and complete picture of listener response than has so far been achieved.

The aims of the project are:

1) To acknowledge the relevance of positive soundscapes, to move away from a focus on negative noise and to identify a means whereby the concept of positive soundscapes can effectively be incorporated into planning; and

2) The evaluation of the relationship between the acoustic/auditory environment and the responses and behavioural characteristics of people living within it.

Ken Hume, of the Noise Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University, puts it another way in the Observer article:

Visual aesthetics are a major part of the planning system with strong guidelines determining what is acceptable or unacceptable. A corresponding aesthetics of sound is missing.

I’m curious to see where this goes. They seem to be tackling this project from an urban design perspective, but insomuch as public artworks are a part of urban design, I'd love to see more sound art used as a form a public artwork in cities. Sound works are already here and there in different urban areas; in fact there is one right around the corner from my house in West Hollywood: Bruce Odland’s Tonic, which absorbs the sound of passing traffic and converts it to harmonic tones in real time (it’s by the bus stop on the southeast corner of San Vicente and Santa Monica, fyi). Physically, the piece is two cubes on the ground and a metal pipe attached to the nearby wall (click the link for pictures). I step off the bus at that stop every night, and those cubes are utilized as seats more often than understood as artwork. Honestly I’m not sure anyone standing there even realizes that there is a public artwork there.

That’s okay though. In a way, that’s the beauty of sound art as a public work. Positive Soundscapes, apparently, could actually quantify whether Tonic is a successful work—assuming its aim (or that of any other sound piece in an urban area) is to calm in the face of urban noise. According to the Observer, the Positive Soundscape team uses MRI scanners “to measure participants’ brain activity as they are played a variety of urban noises,” to see which sounds spark activity in the areas of the brain “associated with reward” versus those associated with stress.

Geoff Manaugh at BLDGBLOG notes the many sounds that have caused pleasure for participants—distant airplanes or motor traffic; skateboards rolling through parking garages; “the thud of heavy bass heard on the street outside a nightclub”—and wonders if the result could be a customizable soundscape for each urbanite. But I doubt that will be the case, based on this bit from the Observer article:

Early results have shown interesting anomalies in the public’s perceptions of sound. ‘People can completely change their perception of a sound once they have identified it,’ [Dr. Bill Davies, head of the Positive Soundscape project] said. ‘In the laboratory, many listeners prefer distant motorway noise to rushing water, until they are told what the sounds are.’

In other words, the sounds identified as soothing are only soothing if they remain abstract. Their context—urbanity—must be removed in order for them to function as a calming influence in the face of urbanity. That is precisely what Odland’s Tonic attempts to do, and what other sound artists could accomplish if given the opportunity to create permanent public artworks.

Of course, Davies would also like to see “more water features”—despite his comment that participants have preferred abstract sound over that of rushing water. At any rate, I hope the Brits didn’t spend £1 million just to figure out they need more freakin’ fountains.

Turntable Art: Part IV Sean Duffy vs b3

Artist Sean Duffy (who I’ve written about before) has an installation up at the Arizona State University Art Museum right now. Called The Grove, the installation is a collection of eighteen turntables connected to 400 speakers dangling from the ceiling. The piece is interactive: next to each turntable are crates of records—pop music, classical, audio books, whatever—for you to pick out and play. The more turntables in use, the more chaotic the sound in the room becomes.

The piece, in other words, is intended to be cacophonous. It will be interesting, therefore, to see the DJ collective b3 take on the piece on Tuesday night. The six DJs will use Duffy’s old turntables (no mixers or other special equipment), but—I assume/hope—they’ll bring some of their own records. How much structure and/or controlled chaos will these DJs bring to The Grove? Unfortunately I’ll be here in Los Angeles, so hopefully someone in Arizona can report back—ideally with a youtube clip! Meanwhile, here’s a clip of the piece in action, with audio supplied from an NPR profile.

"b3 in The Grove: A Reaction to the Installation by Sean Duffy" happens at the ASU Art Museum on Tuesday, September 25 at 7:30 pm. Admission is free. More info here.

[related: Turntable Art part I; part II;  part III.]

Turntable Art: Part III Simon Elvins

When I saw this at Idolator yesterday I knew I had to file it away along with my other turntables: the artist Simon Elvins has made a turntable entirely out of paper. You have to turn the crank manually to make the record move, and the paper cone serves as both needle and speaker.

Len Lye

City of Sound has a great post up on the work of Len Lye, an experimental film artist working from the 1930s through the 1980s. Rather then doing traditional animation using stop photo techniques, Lye drew, stenciled, or etched directly onto his film.

According to the wikipedia entry on Lye,

His 1935 film A Colour Box.... was made by painting vibrant abstract patterns on the film itself, synchronizing them to a popular dance tune by Don Baretto and His Cuban Orchestra. A panel of animation experts convened in 2005 by the Annecy film festival put this film among the top ten most significant works in the history of animation (his later film Free Radicals was also in the top 50).

In Free Radicals [1958, revised 1978] he used black film stock and scratched designs into the emulsion. The result was a dancing pattern of flashing lines and marks, as dramatic as lightning in the night sky.

Here they are together, thanks to youtube:

CoS has one more, Rainbow Dance. Meanwhile here's a third, Swinging the Lambeth Walk (1940):

Turntable Art: Part IISean Duffy vs. Janek Schaefer: The Revenge

Aside from Mingering Mike, the other bit of turntable-related posting I’ve been meaning to do concerns Sean Duffy. Back in November I did a post about one of Duffy’s pieces (above left), which as you can see is a turntable with three tone-arms. In that post I mentioned Janek Schaeffer, who has also been using tri-tone arm turntables for ten years now. Here’s the relevant bits:

…I hope Duffy [is] familiar with Janek Schaefer, a sound artist/DJ who has been using a Tri-Phonic Turntable (above right) since 1997. Two of the tone arms on Schaefer's turntable face one direction and the third plays in reverse; he can also reverse the direction of the turntable itself and therefore invert the 2:1. What's more, he can stack records on top of each other, playing three records simultaneously on one turntable.… I'm not familiar with Duffy's work, and a cursory google seems to point to many other projects (turntable-related and not), but this one, at least, has been done (and better). Duffy's looks better, but on a purely functional level Schaefer's is far more interesting.

Well, two months after that post, Duffy came across it and he emailed me. With his permission—myself two months late!—here is his response:

Yes, I know who Janek Schaefer is. I discovered his work a year or so after I made my first turntable in 1999. Although I've never see it in person, it looks interesting.  And I agree his work is definitely more functional and mine looks better.

I don't know who else knows about Schaefer but it seems like every time I show one of my turntables someone brings up a different person whose done something along these lines. Maybe it'll become a movement all it's own. 

Well, I’ve now made three posts about turntable art—so you may be right! I hadn’t realized that Duffy had been making his turntable pieces for such a long time. And we both agree the purpose of Duffy’s work is very different from that of Schaefer. Duffy also pointed out an error in my post: just because one of Schaefer’s tone arms is reversed does not mean that the sound comes out reversed. My mistake. And that wasn't all! He continued to school me.

The multi-tone-armed turntable goes back to the 1940s when people would put extra tone-arms on their turntables for different cartridges (78, mono and later stereo). Most radio stations had them and some companies manufactured them. Actually most audiophile turntable made today are set up to use more than one tone-arm. I first played with one of these machines in the 1980s.

Here are a couple of photographs of these turntables.

Duffy pointed also pointed me to this website. Thanks Sean for the response. Those of you in Arizona can see Duffy's installation, The Grove, on view at the ASU Nelson Fine Arts Center beginning June 2.

Speaking of Steve Roden

Speaking of Steve Roden, he’ll be presenting a new sound work at the MOCA Gallery at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood this weekend, January 20 and 21. The piece will only run for the weekend, and accompany the Rothko show currently on display there (also closing this weekend, so all the more reason to go down and check it out). Roden and Rothko seems like a natural fit, to me. If you’ve not experienced Roden’s work before, you can head over to the brilliant Ubuweb to hear a five-hour piece he improvised at the 2005 Soundwalk in Long Beach.

There is a reception at the PDC MOCA on Saturday, January 20, from 6–8 pm, including a talk with architect Michael Maltzen. Whatever day you decide to go, admission is free.

Sean Duffy vs. Janek Schaefer

Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes has a chat with Stephanie Hanor, a curator from the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, about artists on the museum's wishlist. Among others, she mentions Sean Duffy, who did this "turntable piece" (above left). That's all well and good, but I hope Hanor, Green, and Duffy are familiar with Janek Schaefer, a sound artist/DJ who has been using a Tri-Phonic Turntable (above right) since 1997. Two of the tone arms on Schaefer's turntable face one direction and the third plays in reverse; he can also reverse the direction of the turntable itself and therefore invert the 2:1. What's more, he can stack records on top of each other, playing three records simultaneously on one turntable. More about Schaefer's turntable here. I'm not familiar with Duffy's work, and a cursory google seems to point to many other projects (turntable-related and not), but this one, at least, has been done (and better). Duffy's looks better, but on a purely functional level Schaefer's is far more interesting.

Malachi Ritscher's Self-Immolation

Pitchfork has a fascinating and deeply depressing article up today about Malachi Ritscher, a Chicago free jazz musician who set himself on fire on November 3rd in protest of the Iraq war. Nitsuh Abebe's article is part obituary, part analysis of just what it all means. I'm familiar with some of the people on the jazz scene in Chicago, mostly in the way they relate to the universe of Tortoise; too, I do have a couple of friends from college that are/were also part of that scene, but I'm not familiar with Ritscher's music specifically. Nevertheless it is shocking to hear that someone would do this, and Abebe is right to try and look deeper than whether it will really have any political effect or whether it was simply a mentally ill person's suicide method of choice. An event like this should make you reach out to your community—whether musical or otherwise—and keep your peers grounded, informed, and appreciated. It also rightly stirs up feelings about this war all over again. My first thought upon hearing about this was how awkwardly timed it was: just a few days before the Democrats took over both houses of government and Donald Rumsfeld was dumped. But of course the situation in Iraq has not changed in a small number of days, and as many people have pointed out, the Democrats that rolled into Congress and the Senate are not necessarily lefties. Ritscher's protest should, at the very least, remind those of us that are against this war and against this administration to remain vigilant and tenacious.

Mentioned but not linked in the Pitchfork article are this blog entry at the Chicago Reader, which was the first place to break the news and which as of now contains nearly 200 comments, including posts by Ritcher's son (and links to the pertinent pages of Ritscher's own website); and Richard Roeper's column in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Glenn Branca: This One Goes to Eleven

When I was thirteen years old, I was just beginning to learn the guitar. I was also a recent devotee to Metallica. I remember getting the tabs for “Master of Puppets” from Guitar magazine, and carefully placing my fingers on the proper frets and strings, as instructed: leave the low E open; first finger on the second string, seventh fret; third and fourth fingers on the ninth fret, fourth and fifth strings; let your palm mute the remaining strings. The result, I hadn’t yet understood, was a four-note chord, three of which are octaves of E.

I had my amp cranked, distortion on. I hit that chord for the very first time and it sent a shockwave through me. Power! I’d played a regular old E chord before, but it was nothing like this. Discovering the might of this octave-heavy power chord was akin to learning just what happens when you masturbate for the first time—sure, you’ve played the thing before, but it’s never done this. This is truly a moment that I think every guitar player can relate to: learning this particular chord for the first time. I think it’s positively Jungian. Hell, it’s even been captured on film—what chord do you think Michael J. Fox is playing at the beginning of Back to the Future? [okay, I just watched the clip, and in fact he doesn't play this chord, but in fact a totally weak A. Note to Bob Zemeckis: this scene could have been better.]

As I got older and my tastes grew away from metal and toward indie rock, I still found that octave chord, attacked at maxed-out volume, to be the epitome of power. It was embodied by the most brilliant band on the planet, Drive Like Jehu, who seemed to play nothing but octave chords. There’s something primal, unfuckwithable, about octaves. Especially loud ones.

Little did I know that Metallica, Marty McFly, and Jehu are mere monks compared to the Pope of the Ear-Shattering Octave, Glenn Branca. Last night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, as part of the Minimalist Jukebox series, Branca presented his Symphony no. 13, “Hallucination City,” for one hundred electric guitars. A hundred guitars. A guitar orchestra. A guitorchestra. It was brilliant. Breaking things down, actually there were eighty guitars and twenty basses, all tuned at octaves. Each guitar is strung with two pairs of three strings an octave apart, and the 100 guitars are further divided into either E, B, or G. Maybe I’m getting a little too nitty gritty here, but the point is that the octave is king—no, the octave is queen. The king is volume.

“Hallucination City” shifted between two levels: loud and impossibly louder. It was never—never—quiet. The first movement began with a steady, marching beat, as the harangue of guitar players furiously strummed at their instruments in polyrhythmic sound clusters, creating a massive swirl of noise. I’ve heard of a wall of sound, but the music here was so loud and so dense yet always moving, it was like an instrumental gas giant. The density of the layers created something that sounded almost like a vortex. As clusters of guitarists shifted their speed and volume, the sound seemed to move left to right, front to back across the stage, like an animal or spirit.

The second movement was fraught with tension. From the first few seconds the sound conjured a balloon expanding beyond its abilities, and as the volume and density increased the sound took on the form of a jetliner perpetually preparing to rise off the runway. Somehow, despite the fact that the piece started loud, the tension continued to rise and rise and rise. It was the defining element of the symphony—a parody-free embodiment of Nigel Tufnel’s claim in Spinal Tap: “most amps go to ten, but this one goes to eleven.”

By the fourth and final movement, I was overwhelmed and nearly exhausted. But hearing all one hundred guitars begin that last piece on the same note was like a second wind. Exhaustion became exhilaration. Octave is power! It was really the first time that the instruments sounded "musical," in the pedestrian sense of the word. Until now, a word like "melody" had no meaning, and even now it was only moments before the sound mass returned. Throughout "Hallucination City," the music erupting from the stage resembled anything but a song, or even the sound of a guitar; I heard airplanes, I heard shattering glass, I heard hurricanes whipping blaring fire engines into erupting volcanoes. As the fourth movement progressed, the note grew into a cacophony, then into an über-cacophony! Yet for all the volume, it was never so simple as noise. People in the concert hall were rising out of their seats. The din was both deafening and mesmerizing, traumatic and cathartic.

And then, it got still louder. Some of the guitarists literally couldn’t contain their inner Pete Townshends as they held their guitars aloft or stabbed down at their amplifiers. And like a magician pulling the cloth from a Thanksgiving table, the conductor made an abrupt signal and suddenly everything was hush. Everyone in the audience—and a couple of the guitarists on stage—bolted upright in applause. It was absolutely fantastic. Branca received a standing ovation. As we spilled out of the auditorium, you could see a certain thrill in everyone's step. "Hallucination City" was pure exhilaration.

The Sound of Silence

This weekend I toured a number of galleries around Los Angeles. Over at the Mary Goldman Gallery were photos by Miranda Lichtenstien. All of the photos were somehow about meditation—a woman in a bathtub, a man with his eyes closed at a desk, and so on. Fine photographs, sure, but the one that grabbed me the most was the above, Anechoic Chamber. It’s a great photo, but I think that’s due in large part to the space itself. I’ve never heard of an anechoic chamber before, so home to google I went.

Anechoic means “without echo.” These chambers exist all over the country, many used as chambers in which to test antennae or electronic systems, as they have no ambient sound whatsoever. Hence they make powerful meditation rooms as well, as the only thing you can hear is the sound of your own body—and absolutely nothing else. According to wikipdia, one of these chambers inspired John Cage's 4'33", after he spent some time in one and listened to his own blood flowing through his body. More chambers below, though to Lichtenstein’s credit, none as beautiful as hers.

SoundTransit

Yesterday I booked a trip from Buenos Aires to Sarajevo, with stopovers in Montreal, Antwerp, and Vientiane along the way. A little circuitous, sure, but it was free and it only took about eight minutes! I booked it via SoundTransit, and there are plenty more options. Pick your departure and destination points and how many stopovers you’d like in between. SoundTransit will give you your itinerary and present you with field recordings strung together from each location.

The field recordings are supplied by locals; if you’d like to supply a recording of your own city, you can contribute to the site and they’ll add your location to future itineraries.