February 2012
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Playlist
Swans - We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head (Young God)
The Knights - A Second of Silence (Ancalagon; due Feb. 28 digital, Apr. 3 physical)
Xiphiidae - Sewn Within a Circle (Housecraft)
Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras and the Congos - FRKWYS, Vol. 9 (RVNG Intl.; due Apr. 10)
Je Suis le Petit Chevalier - Discovering Mathematics 2 (no kings) (No Kings, via Bandcamp)
Suzanne Ciani -...
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RA: Label of the month: Digitalis Recordings+... →
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WatchKoppklys Records, a newish tape label based in Oslo, Norway, has just released its second batch of tapes: three titles this time, one apiece from Sundrips (sample embedded above), Basic House and Phylum Child. I don’t know the latter two acts, but based on the quality of the first four titles from the label – brought to you by the same fine folks who run the tape blog Uaxuctum – I’ll...
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Eric Owens: The Big, Bad Bass Baritone -... →
My interview with bass-baritone Eric Owens, whose portrayal of Alberich was a highlight – perhaps the highlight – of the current “Ring” cycle at the Metropolitan Opera. Owens will present a recital of German and French songs at Zankel Hall on Tuesday, February 21.
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Philadelphia Orchestra at Carnegie Hall - Review -... →
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WatchThe new Public Image Ltd. single, “One Drop,” is so much better than anyone might have expected: a respectable gloss on the death-disco-dub sound originally birthed on the band’s legendary Metal Box. Listen for yourself, courtesy of East Village Radio. The track is part of an EP due on April 21 for Record Store Day, and presumably will also be included on the band’s...
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American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall -... →
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Playlist
Kevin Greenspon - Rose Window (Bridgetown, via Bandcamp)
Suzanne Ciani - Seven Waves (Seventh Wave, via MOG)
Punch Brothers - Who’s Feeling Young Now? (Nonesuch; due Feb. 14)
Nurse With Wound - Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella (United Jnana, via MOG)
Christina Vantzou - No. 1 (Kranky, via MOG)
Georges Bizet - Djamileh - Lucia Popp, Franco...
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WatchNew from Hooker Vision, a bit of balm for a way-too-cold, way-too-busy Sunday… samples from a forthcoming February batch of tapes, including a new release from label owners Quiet Evenings: that is, Grant Evans (Nova Scotian Arms) and Rachel Evans (Motion Sickness of Time Travel).
Given the track title, I’m guessing the tape from Grant and Rachel might be some version of Patience Folding...
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“… an increasing number of his fellow noise musicians are also taking a keen...”
– [Resident Advisor: Technoise] (via totalvibration)
WatchJust favorited “Heat death showcase winter 2011-spring 2012” by heat death records on Mixcloud.com
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Playlist
Long Distance Poison - Gamma Graves (Ecstatic Peace!)
Royallen - Motivational Tape (Vanishing Hour Revival)
Lussuria - Ghost Entanglement (Hospital Productions)
Grateful Dead - Dick’s Picks, Vol. 36: The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA 9.21.72 (Grateful Dead, via MOG)
Bola - Volume 7 (Awesome Tapes from Africa; due Apr. 7)
Grateful Dead - Dave’s Picks, Vol. 1: The Mosque, Richmond, VA...
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Music of Now Marathon at Symphony Space -... →
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Mp3 premiere: Ryan Power - "I Don't Care"
Ryan Power, a Burlington singer dubbed the “hippy D’Angelo” in an enjoyably skeptical Impose essay, was mesmerizing in an unofficial CMJ showcase I caught at 285 Kent Ave late last year, and his new single lives up to what I recall so vividly from that show. Eager to hear the whole LP, due soon on the increasingly mandatory NNA Tapes label.
vinylweekend:
The New...
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WatchFree Form Freakout, a weekly program on KMSU-FM in Makato, MN, has just posted a mesmerizing podcast in which Seattle musician Norm Chambers — better known under his nom de synth, Panabrite — discusses his passion for library music, the seemingly bottomless pool of electronic mood music created almost anonymously for film, television and advertisements…for instance, work by the BBC Radiophonic...
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nyphil:
Just Released
The next release from...
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WatchHaving made an impressive first splash with its initial four-tape batch last August, the Oslo-based label Koppklys Records returns this month with three more tapes:
#005 SUNDRIPS - Dream Studies C40 #006 BASIC HOUSE - Ambrosias Vol. 1 C76 #007 PHYLUM CHILD - In the Sawdust Lobby C32
Anything by Sundrips, the blissful Montréal duo of Ryan Connolly and Nick Maturo heard in the embedded video,...
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Prism Quartet and Music from China - Review -... →
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Music by Ezequiel Viñao - Review - NYTimes.com →
Scroll to the bottom for a brief snapshot of Sonetos de Amor, a Neruda cycle presented in its premiere last Thursday night at Lincoln Center’s Rubenstein Atrium.
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“If everything is coming your way / You’re facing the wrong lane.”
– Van Halen, “Bullethead,” A Different Kind of Truth, due Feb. 7 on Interscope, and growing on me much more readily than I’d anticipated.
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WatchAfter I included Gamma Graves, a new tape by synth trio Long Distance Poison, in my most recent playlist, band member Nathan Cearley kindly got in touch to share word of The Shores of Titan, a recent one-track mini-LP. Originally posted last weekend on the horror-film blog My Castle of Quiet, the track is available for streaming and download, free of charge.
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Playlist
Birds of Passage - Winter Lady (Bathetic)
Caroline Park - Adrift (Bathetic)
Sparkling Wide Pressure - No Need for a Meaning (Fadeaway Tapes)
Cenote Glow - Anza-Borrego (Fadeaway Tapes)
Aphid Palisades - ii (Fadeaway Tapes)
Venn Rain - Diamond Dust (Fadeaway Tapes)
William Basinski - 92982 (2062, via MOG)
Shingles / Spectrum Tickets - split (Tranquility Tapes)
The Aloha Spirit - Under Wild...
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Buy a new Swans live 2CD set to fund the next... →
Purchase a limited-edition copy of the amazing new Swans double-live set, We Rose from Your Bed with the Sun in Our Head, to help fund the band’s next studio album, The Seer, and opt for a variety of added-incentive bonuses, from a signed copy of the studio CD upon completion to a customized, one-of-a-kind song by Michael Gira that mentions you by name. Think of this as...
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David Lang's Music at Zankel Hall - Review -... →
The Little Match Girl Passion, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composition by Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang, returned to Zankel Hall last Friday evening in a pairing with Death Speaks, a new song cycle Lang composed for Shara Worden, Owen Pallett, Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly.
The cited but unnamed musician who coined the covetable phrase “Schubertgaze” to describe the latter piece, by...
January 2012
47 posts
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“Alan [Lomax] was doubly utopian, in that he was imagining something like the...”
– John Szwed [The New York Times: Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital] (via totalvibration)
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WatchA new track by Birds of Passage, which is New Zealand singer and sound artist Alicia Merz, and I’m Lost, which is unsurprisingly Google-proof. Starts somewhere tranquil, ends somewhere else…a journey well worth your time. The album from which this track comes, I Was All You Are, is due next month on the comfortingly named Heat Death Records.
Why We Waltz: Book Review: QUICKSAND, by Robert... →
whywewaltz:
Robert Ashley’s primary gig is as an opera composer. Not operas like you would see at the Met, like Turandot or Don Giovanni. Ashley’s operas consist mainly of rambling monologues, mostly intoned by Ashley himself with his dry Michigan accent, over atmospheric music. It might sound…
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WatchNoise, exciting and new! Mike Shiflet, whose 2010 LP Llanos is one of the more gorgeous things I caught up with last year, has compiled a brilliantly muzzy, crunchy mix of tracks from the legendary Massachusetts noise label RRR — and you know how much I detest flagrant use of the term legendary, so… — for Type Records’ Typecast series. Stream it here, and look over here to find out exactly...
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WatchBest advertisement for an electroacoustic ensemble’s long-delayed, newly released cassette tape release, ever? Watch this new clip from Hexbreaker Quintet, and you be the judge.
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Into the Music: Michael Tippett's 'A Child of Our... →
As a confirmed anglophile, an admirer of Michael Tippett and a passionate devotee of A Child of Our Time, I have to think that this essay was a long time coming. In addition to those writers, living or passed, who are cited in the text, I’m infinitely grateful to Byron Adams for providing his notes for a lecture I was unable to attend, and for continual inspiration, above and beyond.
My...
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New York Philharmonic, Featuring Frank Peter... →
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WatchPriceless video of Varispeed performing “The Supermarket,” from Perfect Lives by Robert Ashley, at Essex Street Market — part of an all-day performance of the opera that Varispeed mounted all over the Village and SoHo on November 6, 2011. (Try to forgive my evidently zonked cameo, which starts at around 2:37.)
You can read my New York Times review of the event over here.