What are you listening to: Non-Jazz (2012)

[slowshoes]

http://youtu.be/8uQJ2uFhurM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGeQh...806764569306DA

[slowshoes]

Bruce Cockburn: World of Wonders

http://youtu.be/D28bRKv218I

[Vaughan]

[walkin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDo_Gu1R-I8

[Vaughan]

Continuing on with Eno. This was the first album in his Ambient phase - which is still going on today (the new one, Lux is a long ambient piece).

Music for Airports is pretty special. Pure Satie. The opening 15 minute track has Gymnopedies as its brethren, which an achingly beautiful melody played on a piano. Other tracks introduce synthetic voice of a choir that has never been.

The ambient albums are quite extraordinary in that they play differently depending on the volume of playback. Played loudly you can hear every single nuance, and pick up on the atonal overtones of some of the background sounds. But perhaps it is even more magical is you adjust the volume so you can just hear the highs, with everything else playing out in silence. You'll sometimes forget it's there, until it suddenly registers and draws you back in, before you lose it again.

Moving away from categories, this is also sublime minimalism, with all the traits of Glass (sweeping vistas of tones rolling like waves) and Reich (repeated patterns).

This CD also includes 30 second breaks between the tracks, which allows you to fully leave the previous experience before entering the next.

Just magical really.

[slowshoes]

Mary Chapin Carpenter: The Age of Miracles

http://youtu.be/13l3w50a65o

I can definitely relate to parts of this song.

[slowshoes]

Chris Schlarb: Twilight & Ghost Stories

[walkin]

[slowshoes]

Willy Porter: Falling Forward

http://youtu.be/ZRgU5kNDanw

http://youtu.be/GR_ebn88EN0

Great singer and guitarist.

[Vaughan]

The history of music is tied inexorably with technological developments. From the development of resonant bodies for traditional instruments – which themselves were designed to play back specific notes, chords, and tones as was the custom at the time – to the electronic music of today. In fact the term “electronic music” no longer holds any special meaning, as all music we experience today employs electricity in some form or other in order to reach us, be it amplification, recordings, or generation of source material.

Yet there was a time when electronic music was not only new, but it was far from certain that it would ever enter the public’s consciousness, let alone prosper. Things we take for granted today were, at one time, highly sophisticated and expensive tools which were not available to the everyman. To enjoy the material mentioned here you’ll need the ability to transport yourself back to times when the sounds being heard appeared, as if from nowhere, and for the first time. As such, at the time these recordings were realised, there were no rules, conventions, or expectations. There was only sound, the expression of the composers, and the desire to experiment, to reach out into unknown territory.

My own collection includes works from Pierre Henry, Lou Ferrari, James Tenney, David Tudor, Stockhausen, Otto Luening, Pauline Oliveros among others. By today’s standards the works they created seem simplistic, and crude. However, if we remember that at the time they were created such sound and materials had simply never existed, and they were working in an area that few thought would amount to anything significant, we can begin to imagine the wonder they felt as they tried to expand their imaginations with everything new technology could offer.

To explain more specifically, it is worth noting that the first equipment used in the recordings of Valdimir Ussachevsky in 1951 at the University of Columbia in their music department consisted of two tape recorders, a microphone, and a set of headphones. This was the sum total of all the equipment the university owned at the time. Yet these humble beginnings were enough to foster experiments and extensions of music horizons for countless musicians and scientists alike (not all early electronic music was made by musicians, divisions between musician and technologists had yet to be formed).

The basic component of all the early works is sound. These pioneers took single tones, notes, or even complete symphonies, and broke them down to their constituent parts. They would then alter than, in a painstakingly manual process, to create something new. Basic techniques include speeding up the tapes, or slowing them down, along with cutting and splicing. Crude filters were created by playing sounds back through sine wave generators, and reverb was added by recording the resonance of the sounds through metallic objects. What can today be achieved through the push of a button (or click of the mouse), took insight and imagination, a drive to push these new tools as far as they could go.

The opening five tracks on this CD offer examples of these early experiments. Of particular note is Wireless Fantasy, which shows Ussachevsky recreating the hobbies of early radio enthusiasts by including morse code, white noise, distant wavering musical broadcasts, and blasts of electricity.

Later works, Three Scenes from the Creation and Missa Brevis illustrate how far, and fast, things moved on from these early compositions. Both include choral recordings, and can be heard as more traditional pieces. The first employs some electronic manipulation, while the latter covers a period when the composer worked outside of the electronic realm.

So what does this all sound like, or why bother with owning it? Answering the first isn’t as simple as it would first appear. Given the limited palette of the tones and techniques used, you’d think the works were quite one-dimensional and would soon be exhausted. In fact this isn’t the case, especially when they include borrowed material (an early take on sampling so common today). Consider James Tenney dismantling Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes in Collage #1, for example. By taking on source material from the entire field of our existence – street sounds, speech, choral works, classical and rock recordings, the sound of the very machines being used to create the material – the range of these pieces can be wide.

Having said that, one can’t deny that to modern ears much of the material sounds crude and rather basic. In order to get to the heart of things you have to remember when these works were created, and the madness of their creation. There are several examples of obsessive personalities working in the realms of early electronic music, and it is this that drove the expansion of horizons through meticulous invention. Take Elaine Radigue’s example; Elaine creates music that is generally referred to as “drone”. These drone pieces move at a glacial pace, taking twenty to thirty minutes to complete their journeys. The changes, even over that time, are both few and myriad. Casual listening gives the impression that nothing is happening, that any changes are so small as to be negligible. Deep listening however allows us to experience the pieces differently. Acute attention – a contradiction to some who experience this music – exposes overtones coming and going, changes in pace and beats that are more easily missed than heart, like our own heartbeats that are there the whole time, but we never hear within ourselves. Radigue has spent three years or more creating a single drone piece, yet they can seem so simplistic. Instead they are painstaking works that expand her spiritual and earthbound belief systems (Radigue converted to Buddhism years after starting her drone works).

Still, you really have to remember that these were early days, when there were no rules, no normalcies. These artists and experimenters weren’t trying to break the rules, or rebel against convention (though this thinking became prevalent in the 1960’s, particularly in the avant garde). The reality was, there were no rules yet in place, no conventions, no right ways of doing things or wrong. We did not yet know what the affordable tape recorder could do for us, or what the electronic circuitry that was coming to prominence could be used for.

Before we can get to cliché and customs, someone blazes a trail. Valdimir Ussachevsky was one of those who not only had a curious mind, but also had access to the nascent technology of the time. Along with others he explored what could be achieved when the imagination was set free with yards of expensive tape, a razor blade, and some sticky tape. Like watching silent cinema today, with all it superimposition and exaggerated gestures, or even the distant recordings of Robert Johnson who sings through apparent eons to us through digital restorations, this electronic music is also an important addition to the history of music. What was sophisticated has now been reduced to the simple, what was new is expected, but for a time these original pioneers took a risk of their time and reputations in order to find out what was on the other wide. As such, they’re essential listening.

[slowshoes]

Blue Cactus Choir: Once in a Bluegrass Moon

I'm a long time Marty Atkinson fan - his new band and album is stellar stuff.

http://youtu.be/Or7wDmJsHno

http://youtu.be/y07KVDwStiE

http://youtu.be/_o5p4XnfaXY

[slowshoes]

One of my favorites of hers.

[Vaughan]

Well, nostalgia more than anything. And yet, if you want to cleanse the palette with some simple stripped down nonsense and the depth of a puddle, this works quite well. Of course, the best cuts from this we recorded for the Alive! album - and all sounded better there. But this is still a fun bit of fluff.

Kiss sure were strange. None of their first three albums sound anything like each other. The Producers all made their own version of the sound. This one is rocking, but thin. The follow up Hotter Than Hell is muddy, and the drums sound as though they're down the end of the hall (or more likely the producer thought he was gettiing the Led Zep sound... deluded fool). The third Dressed to Kill sounds like they forgot to plug the guitars in.

It wasn't until Bob Ezrin got involved that some meat was put on the bones.

I've no excuses for liking these. I just do.

[jkelman]

Originally Posted by Vaughan

Continuing on with Eno. This was the first album in his Ambient phase - which is still going on today (the new one, Lux is a long ambient piece).

Agree with you on all counts but one: while this is the first of his four Ambient Music series, 1975's Discrete Music was really Eno's first ambient recording, with the lengthy, side-long title track a precursor of many things to come.

But nitpicking aside, Vaughan, how do you like the new Eno? I've not taken the leap and am wondering if it's worth it?

Thanks!
John

[Vaughan]

Originally Posted by jkelman

Agree with you on all counts but one: while this is the first of his four Ambient Music series, 1975's Discrete Music was really Eno's first ambient recording, with the lengthy, side-long title track a precursor of many things to come.

But nitpicking aside, Vaughan, how do you like the new Eno? I've not taken the leap and am wondering if it's worth it?

Thanks!
John

I think the new Eno is........ wonderful. But there's no melody as such, it's all about tones, washes. It was written as an installation, so I guess specific visuals were in mind (there is no booklet, and precious little information on the packaging). If you like Eno's ambient pieces that wander and take you through a process, rather than bordering on the edges of vaporous melodies, then it's for you. Think The Drop, but the washes arn't as pronounced.

But my most bestest favoritest Eno at the moment (?!?!?!?) is this one:



Eno was interviewed on the BBC about his exhaustive research into bells back in the day (more than five years ago), and I managed to hear it. It was very interesting. I hoped a CD would come out, but somehow managed to miss it when it obviously did.

So what you have on this one is synthesized bell sounds - from copies of actual bells on some tracks to imaginary bells (made of glass, monster sized bells etc.). This is such a special disc, and I'm glad I found it. Or rather, I'm glad it popped up in an Amazon search and I finally forked out for it.