issue01

EMUSIC-L Digest                                      Volume 55, Issue 01

This issue's topics:
	
	Current listening (5 messages)
	Frequent Spins
	What's on these days ....

Your EMUSIC-L Digest moderator is Joe McMahon .
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Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 11:29:09 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Current listening

Stuff I've been listening to a lot lately, in no particular order:

Team Metlay - Bandwidth
        I like this album a lot - I think I'd like it just as well even if
        I didn't know the people involved. Initially I was only so-so on
        some of the tracks, but I quite like all of them now.

Terry Riley - The Harp of New Albion
        Highly recommended for those who find alternate tunings too academic.
        This is a collection of piano pieces played on a piano (yes, a REAL
        piano) tuned to a scale devised specifically for the pieces. I like to
        put it on and just let it run. It evokes images of the Outer Banks,
        isolation, and the sea in the winter.

Angelo Baladamenti - Soundtrack from "Twin Peaks"
        Baladamenti's music keeps me reminded that keeping one's musical
        materials clean and to the point makes it easier to come up with
        a coherent musical vision.

Pat Metheny - As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
            - The First Circle
        A supreme melodist, excellently backed up by Lyle Mays, who is damn
        good no matter what he says. "As Falls..." is an absolutely tremendous
        example of classical development techniques used in a manner that
        doesn't stand up and scream "Hey, I'm using a classical technique!"
        "The First Circle" uses a meter which I still haven't managed to
        count out properly because I always get too caught up in the music.

Tears for Fears - Tears Roll Down
        Okay, so they're pop artists. Sue me, okay? Lots of good techniques
        and tools there, and just fun to listen to. So there.

Steely Dan - Aja
        Outstanding playing on this album. Complex tonalities, killer
        arrangements. Full of Good Stuff.

Weather Report - Heavy Weather
        Nice Prophet and Arp 2600 work from Zawinul, and a great example of
        tight ensemble playing.

Dave Brubeck - Two Generations of Brubeck
             - "Brother, the Great Spirit Made Us All"
        Dave Brubeck with 3 out of 4 of his sons, a killer harmonica player,
        electric violin...yow! Not out on CD yet, though I keep hoping. "Forty
        Days" features dynamite Rhodes playing, "Blue Rondo a la Turk" *rocks*,
        and "Thank You" the the best damn piano solo I've ever heard, period.

Yuji Takahashi - John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
        A fine job on some very interesting music. I find it very calming and
        abstract. Even Metlay, who has a fairly low tolerance for academic
        exercises, likes it.

 --- Joe M.

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Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 13:24:48 EDT
From:         The Radio Gnome 
Subject:      Re: Current listening

On Wed, 11 Aug 1993 11:29:09 -0400 Joe McMahon said:
>Terry Riley - The Harp of New Albion
>        Highly recommended for those who find alternate tunings too academic.

     If you want alternative tunings that *rock* check out Rhys Chathams
"Die Donnergotter" or stuff by Glenn Branca.

               Andy Wing

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Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 14:08:23 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Current listening

>
> On Wed, 11 Aug 1993 11:29:09 -0400 Joe McMahon said:
> >Terry Riley - The Harp of New Albion
> >        Highly recommended for those who find alternate tunings too academic.
>
>      If you want alternative tunings that *rock* check out Rhys Chathams
> "Die Donnergotter" or stuff by Glenn Branca.
>
>                Andy Wing
>

The thing about Branca though, is that his recordings don't capture that
massive wall of guitar orchestra sound.  I've heard a couple of live
recordings off of the radio that blew away any record I've heard from him...

And now, it seems like he's into the minimalist trippppppppppppp............

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

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Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 14:29:02 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: Current listening

>And now, it seems like he's into the minimalist trippppppppppppp............

"Knock, knock."    "Who's there?"
"Knock, knock."    "Who's there?"
"Knock, knock."    "Who's there?"
"Knock, knock."    "Who's there?"
"Knock, knock."    "Who's there?"
"Philip Glass."

 -- Joe M.

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Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 09:50:47 PDT
From:         metlay 
Subject:      Re: Current listening

Joe McMahon recommends:

>Yuji Takahashi - John Cage: Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano
>        A fine job on some very interesting music. I find it very calming and
>        abstract. Even Metlay, who has a fairly low tolerance for academic
>        exercises, likes it.

Rowr.

My own current recommendation for music from a "famous academic" that is
actually worth owning and listening to is David Borden's new release on
Linden Music, "Cayuga Night Music." I put it on last night and listened
to it all the way through, and was totally stunned by its beauty. Forget
The Endless History of Hocketing Parts 1 through 647, this is one SWEET
album by a man who has a set of tools he knows how to use and a vision
he knows how to express in his music. Metlay sez check it out, yowza.

On another note, Linden's previously-most-recent release, Jim Aikin's
"Light's Broken Speech Revived," is (insert all frantic disclaimers
and politically correct warnings here to avoid misrepresentation of
opinions as value judgements etc etc etc) a major stinkeroo. I found
it almost as unlistenable as Terenzi's "Music of the Galaxies", but it
was too annoying to bore me. Metlay sez save yer bux, it's hurl bait.

--
mike metlay * atomic city * box 81175 pgh pa 15217-0675 * metlay@netcom.com
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"Wow, now my hand's all sticky! Yum."                       (metlay's wife)

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Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 11:55:59 -0500
From:         Arne Claassen ISE 
Subject:      Frequent Spins

Hm...

Skinny Puppy    -Last Rights
                -Rabies
        The classic synth-industrial noise. Very rich analog sounds. Either
you love it or you hate it.

Utah Saints     -Utah Saints
        In my opinion the most musical of the techo-dance genre. Especially
the tracks that have not made it onto charts.

Dave Brubeck    -Time out
        The original Dave Brubeck quartet. Just to remind me that electronic
music isn't everything and that i'd be doing Jazz if i could play better than
program.

Einstuerzende Neubauten -Tabula Rasa
        Ever hooked up drum triggers to some rocks, or played on sheetmetal.
These guys make music with what they find, not with samples they can steal.
Date:         Thu, 14 Oct 1993 09:48:36 -0400
From: BITNET list server at AUVM (1.7f) 
Subject:      File: "EMUSIC-L LOG9308B"
To: Joe McMahon 

True industrial for the ones that this appeals to.

Nine Inch Nails -Pretty Hate Machine
        I know, this guys teenage angst has been overpublicized and is almost
classified pop, but i still consider it the best dance industrial and it's
one of those things i need a fix of once a day.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Arne F. Claassen                            |
|                                                     |
| "It is by my will alone I set my mind in motion"                       |
|                                             finger for PGP public key  |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
.

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Date:         Thu, 12 Aug 1993 09:15:06 CDT
From:         Gregory Taylor 
Subject:      What's on these days ....

YMO - the Technodon remixes/Technodon. Since I'm going to be heading
off to Tokyo [for the ICMC. Cashed in a bunch of frequent flyers.]
and then travelling for a week, it seemed only proper to start pitching
more Japanese stuff on the plate. A friend returned from Japan with the
new "remixes" EP just this weekend; three so-so minor retreads from
Tei Towa [Dee-Light] and a really interesting Goh Hotoda ambient 15-min
version of "Nostalgia" from Td, which is now the opening theme for my
radio program. The other Japanese representation is currently Susumu
Hirasawa/P-Model. The new P-Model ["Big Body"] isn't, I think, quite up
to the g*dlike status of their last whizzy analog retrofest that I've
already spent too much time raving about. I comfort myself with listening
to Japan's own Midge Ure [Hirasawa], doing his solo turn in this odd kind
of lush Japanese synthesized stuff crossbred with this wierd kind of
Celtic/folkie turn.

Plunderphonics - Plexure. When done in random shuffle, this drives
large numbers of my co-workers to near distraction. Oswald's powdering
of the signifiers of pop music and their reconstitution into a blistering
rush of noise works on the ears like the pickled ginger one eats between
pieces of sashimi - it cleanses the palate. My wife, who's not the one
for identifying little snippets of Metallica and Weather Report and
g*d knows who milliseconds at a time, initially pronounced it to be
a big bath of undifferentiated noise. Now, she occasionally seems to
almost enjoying its ah...eccentric rhythms. It always seems silly to
me that the world's adolescents assume that any concensual hallucination
like "cyberspace" would just naturally sound like their favorite Front
242 release [or Tangerine Dream, for that matter]. *This* disc is the
real soundtrack to a high-speed cruise of the global data village.

Kaaija Saariaho - a la Fumee/du cristal. KS is and remains one of my
very favorite electroacoustic composers. This disc gives us a Kronos
performance of her string quartet/computer piece "Nymphea"
that blows away the performance of it that I heard, and lets us hear
a little of her strictly orchestral writing. Yum - my favorite kind
of difficult listening.

(traditional) - Chamber Music from Java. This disc's precise title
escapes me. It's a recent World Music Library release of Gadhon - a
kind of central Javanese "chamber" ensemble composed entirely of the
soft-playing instruments. Back in the days that I was trying to hammer
out some serious gender at Cornell and more recently at UW as a suling
player, I've always wanted to try this kind of stuff. This is a wonderful
recording of it - and really the first one you can find without buying
Indonesian cassettes.

Thomas Ko:ner - Permafrost. Very long, slow electronic piece which, if
phase vocoded out the kazoo [quite likely how they're made, actually]
may well turn out to be Brahms string quartets stretched to excruciating
length. The artifacts of whatever process it is have a nice kind of
grit. While TK may be going for ambient industrial menage [certainly
I think that his last "Teimo" went for the gong version of it bigtime],
this one has a kind of calm to it that I find really appealing. It works
really well at the threshold of audibility/interest.

The "extended infinite repeat" cycle this week has seen "Neroli" nudged
aside after 3 or 4 weeks by the new Point recording of Gavin Bryars'
"Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet." In short, the opening section is
pretty much a rerecording of the Obscure Music version, with Michael
Reismann's conducting all but erasing the interesting stopping and
starting based on the tramp's uneven voice on the tape loop. There's
a new re-harmonised second section that's very beautiful, a huge
middle section that adds the usual Bryars orchestral palette of his
larger works [gongs, choirs, etc.], and a final section which has
Tom Waits singing along. While it works okay, I find that the inclusion
of Waits on this recording does a nasty job of undercutting what I
hear as the "sincerety" of the piece. Your mileage may very. But at
74 minutes of endless repititions and ebb and flow, I'm not really
complaining.

Hmm. Not much synthesizer stuff. That'll change, since Alan Crawford is
going to be doing a collaborating on an upcoming RTQE "synthpop" show,
and I'll have to get hard at it to match *his* skills.

Gregory

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End of the EMUSIC-L Digest
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