Shuffled Quartet, Aurograph and Cornelius Cardew

On Thursday or Friday last, I got an invite on facebook to an event that sounded really promising. The invite was from Shawn Hansen, whom I've seen play a few times before. He was also the one who organized the Mind Over Mirrors show that I (half-)wrote about sometime ago. So I knew it would be something good. Then I noticed Helen Gillet was one of the members of the New Orleans based Shuffled Quartet, who along with KC's Aurograph were going to interpret these "graphic scores". I had seen Helen play a most excellent improv set along with a couple of European musicians back in 2012. My interest was piqued even more now.

I still had no idea who Cornelius Cardew was, or what a graphic score was either, for that matter. Now this all happened when I was stuck at home sick, so I naturally went on a wiki/youtube binge. Read up all about this amazing avant-garde musician turned communist and his graphical scores. Watched scores of videos of his masterwork Treatise, all of which were unique and a lot of which were quite awesome. By the time I was done, I knew I was going to this show, cold and flu be damned!

I went, I saw, and I was conquered.

Rather than me going on about what I saw, why don't I shut up for once and let the music do the talking. Enjoy!

The first set of original works by Shuffled Quartet



Part of Shuffled Quartet and Aurograph's interpretation of Treatise (only part of because I ran out of space on my memory card, which I really should've thought to empty out before the show)



For the curious, the number of fingers they hold up after switching slides indicates the number of minutes that particular slide will be played for. I have a number of questions still about whether they decided this time per slide beforehand (I'm guessing not), if they had set rules among themselves on how the different graphical elements of the score would be interpreted (my guess is yes), if they rehearsed part or all of it before, and I could go on. Maybe someday I'll muster up the courage to actually go talk to musicians after a show and ask. Or maybe it's best to let the magic be.

Thank you to both bands, and the Artspace, and everyone who made this happen. And special thanks again to Shawn for the invite.

A very belated show report

I've been to some really great live shows these past 4 weeks or so. And I keep meaning to write about them but haven't been able to get around to it. I shall remedy this somewhat now. I scribbled part of the following on the back of a grocery store receipt while waiting for A Minor Forest to take the stage at one of the aforementioned awesome shows. I meant to copy it over and finish writing it that night (week before last?) but never got around to it.

Mind Over Mirrors, Shawn E. Hansen and ISAM

I found out about this show a couple of days before it was set to happen. It was at the same place as that Midday Veil/Expo '70 show I stumbled upon sometime ago. This place as I later found out happens to be where Justin Wright of Expo '70 lives, which explains how they're able to set up shows there at such short notice. It also explains why these shows are invariably really really good.

So anyway, once again I got there too early, even though I had taken the precaution this time of double-checking beforehand about when exactly the show would start. I was told in response to my enquiry on facebook that the music would start shortly after 8:30pm, and so I rushed over straight from work without even stopping to get dinner. I still only made it around 8:40, but fortunately, they hadn't started playing. I sat myself down in a corner of the room and waited. And waited, getting crankier by the minute.

Finally, just after I had broken down and posted a snarky tweet (which I later deleted), the first person (ISAM) began playing. This was an evening of 3 solo acts, you see. I quite enjoyed the first set once I got off the bench, whose shaking with every move of my neighbour was distracting me a tad too much, and sat myself down on the floor.

Next up was Mind Over Mirrors. From the first drone of his harmonium, I was hooked. This harmonium was nothing like the ones I was used to seeing my music teachers playing back in the day during my short stint at learning Carnatic music. Instead of having the bellows in front of the keys, this guy had a set up where the bellows were by his foot like pedals in a piano. See pics below..

                               To be continued... 

Atonement

As a peace offering for whoever had the misfortune to read the rant I posted earlier, here's some amazing music I just came across (Twitter ftw yet again - thank you, Brett Naucke!)



Looks like the whole album is up on youtube. It is so so very unfortunate that this man is no more. I'm going to try and listen to everything he ever created.

Earth and Expo '70

Saw this awesome double bill tonight. I've seen both bands before multiple times so I knew what to expect. And neither of them disappointed.

I missed a bit of Expo '70 since the movie I was at earlier in the evening (the widely acclaimed Queen which I will write about tomorrow) ran a little later than I expected. I think the song I missed half of was the promised new one too. But no sweat, I'll be setting them again twice later in the month.

Earth was just what I need to soothe my ruffled feathers. Ruffled because I got stood up. Sort of. This dude I'm friends with on last.fm said he'd look out for me and say hi. We go to a lot of the same shows but have never actually met up. His taste in music is so close to my own that I actually use his upcoming shows list to pick the ones I want to go to. Would've been nice to actually have a friend irl with similar interests. Oh well.

But going back to the show itself, Earth, as I said, was the perfect music to make peace with the world. They alternates between tracks from their upcoming album and older material. The new stuff held up great, so I'm liking forward to that album which comes out in July apparently.

I get a day of tomorrow (not from work sadly) and then it's back to plenty of live music again on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at a music fest. I should get some rest now. Early and busy day awaits tomorrow. Think I'll play my favorite Earth album to sleep to. Here's a song from said album:

Some conversations

can be so draining. You know you're not really getting through to the other person but you try anyway. In the end, you walk away frustrated and they aren't feeling any better either. Wish I could avoid these situations. Usually I'm in too deep before I know what's up and then it's too late to back out. Ugh.

In other news, I spent a ton of money on music today. Have a sweet bunch of records headed my way soon. I should start doing the Vinyl Weekend thing again. I haven't been listening to my records as much as I should ever since I moved. Need to set up my gear properly. Soon.

Here's a list of what I bought today. All good stuff that is well worth checking out, mainly of an electronic/noise/drone/ambient music persuasion.

Dino Spiluttini & Nils Quak - Modular Anxiety

Safiyya - Shareek Hayaat

Fennesz Daniell Buck - Knoxville

Robert A.A. Lowe & Rose Lazar - Eclipses

3 Derek Rogers albums on bandcamp


Also, gave the new self-titled St. Vincent album a listen and quite liked it. I think I'll try and go see her show tomorrow after all.

Update: I took a photo of all that stuff I bought. Here it is.

March is for Music

This month has been a wild ride. I haven't discovered this much new music in this short a time frame since sometime back in 2006 or 2007 when a certain bunch of people threw a lot of great music my way changing my life in a very fundamental way. That may sound like an exaggeration but it really isn't. It was pretty much the big bang of my musical universe. Or rather the inflation shortly after the bang (if I understand inflation theory correctly). So I'd like to say a big thank you to all those people whom I'm sadly not really in touch with anymore (internet, heh).

But coming back to the present, today's major discoveries were Good Willsmith and Nils Frahm. Never heard of either of them before today but one listen was all it took to compel me to buy their recent records. I haven't listened to Nils Frahm's Spaces in full yet, so I'll talk about that album another day. Good Willsmith's The Honeymoon Workbook, on the other hand, I listened to not once but twice. I listened the first time, LOVED IT, immediately bought the LP online (something I very rarely do, usually preferring to buy direct from artists on tour or at local record store), then listened again all the way through. I'm listening again as I write this, so make that three times.

Despite all these listens, I don't know if I can actually describe this album. A very vague description would be noisy ambient drone experimental electronic field recording and otherworldly sounding vocals filled yet rhythm oriented crazy dark yet compelling ride. It really is something you have to listen to and experience in its entirety, which you can do courtesy of tiny mix tapes here (scroll down to the soundcloud stream). The album is one cohesive piece with the tracks flowing right into each other. In fact, I found the little hiccup in the stream during track transitions a little off-putting tbh, so I'm all the more eager to get my LP with the download code. Here is the second track from the album, which is a good taste of it, and what drew my attention to it in the first place. But really, do listen to the whole thing if you like this. And buy it (they're even throwing in a free limited edition cassette of live recordings with the LP!)




In other unrelated news, Kronos Quartet started following me on Twitter this morning! I still half-think they must've accidentally clicked follow when looking at the multitude of tweets where I mentioned them yesterday. Which is partly why I didn't even give a shout out thanking them for the follow; I don't want them to realise their mistake and unfollow me right away. So instead, I'll say wtfwhee here instead. :)

Happy Birthday, Kronos Quartet!

I've gone on about them elsewhere but they deserve a post all to themselves, especially on their 40th birthday. Despite being someone who is not particularly knowledgeable or even uniformly appreciative of (western) classical music, I'm still strangely fond of Kronos Quartet. I think this has a lot to do with their very varied repertoire and collaborations with musicians from every imaginable genre and country pretty much.

I originally wrote a couple of paragraphs listing all the different works they've performed and tried to link one of each kind, but that's a hopelessly colossal task. So I'm going to content myself with writing about their live performance today to celebrate their fortieth - Kronos at 40 at the Greenespace in NY. As it happens, their set was well chosen to showcase their versatility, so it will serve my original aim perfectly.

The first piece they performed was written by Nicole Lizée specifically for Kronos Quartet. Death to Kosmische was actually more like a celebration of Kosmische Musik. Or maybe it was named thus in the sense that people say "they killed it". Yeah, that must be it, because Kronos did just that. The facility with which they switched back and forth between their regular string instruments and some really fantastic looking instruments was a joy to behold. But the greater joy was in listening to the brilliant sounds they created with all of these. I really really need to look up the composer to whom an equal share of praise is definitely due. When the piece ended, I couldn't help breaking out into rapturous applause even though I was sitting at home watching the video stream and knew they couldn't hear me. Sometimes (or is it most times?) applause isn't about showing appreciation so much as an involuntary response to a moving experience. Much like tears - which almost fell by the end of today's performance. But more on that in due course.

After that impossible to top opening piece, they played an arrangement of an old blues song by Geeshie Wiley called Last Kind Words. While this was really good, it didn't quite measure up Death to Kosmische for me. Admittedly, part of the reason for this is that Krautrock/Kosmische Musik is a top favourite genre of mine. But I think more critically this piece suffered from the lack of vocals. What's a blues song without the singing, eh? I can imagine how good this song would be with the right vocals and lyrics (the host recited a few of the latter and they were quite promising), and I mean to look up the original soon.

The third piece was also one that wasn't written specifically for Kronos, but they nailed this one. It was a special arrangement of a Cuban song - Margarita Lecuona's Tabú. I loved it. Hank Dutt was bang on in his introduction when he called it a very sexy, seductive song that it would be hard not to move to.

The final work was specially commissioned by Kronos Quartet as part of their Under 30 Project. In her introduction, the composer Mary Kouyoumdjian said that her piece was influenced by Steve Reich's Different Trains - one of my very favourite compositions ever. Unfortunately, I missed the first minute or so of Bombs of Beirut thanks to a bit of a snag in the live stream and/or my wireless network. When the video came back, my brain immediately recognized the Reich influence, but it took me some time to truly get into the piece and feel it. By the time the part where Kronos's playing and the voices narrating faded away to be replaced by the sound of the bombings (actual field recordings from the Lebanese civil war) came on though, everything except the music and the atmosphere it created had faded away as well. The last movement/section was extremely moving and I simply had to close my eyes and listen with all my being. When the piece ended, it left me in a completely different place from when I began listening to it. This time there was no bursting into applause. Just a sense of awe and also of emptiness.

After giving myself some time to recover, my first impulse was to seek out another song which was brought to my mind by this one. Very different in style, but very similar in theme - Vidai Kodu Engal Naade from Kannathil Muthamittaal. It was hard not to feel a deep sense of frustration and almost hopelessness after listening to this song right after the other one. Hard to keep back the thoughts about how stupid and pointless war is and why on earth stupid humans keep fighting each other time after time, all over the goddamned world. But no, I won't go there again. I'll leave you instead with these videos from today's performance (skip to 11:30 in the first video if you want to get right to the show):





My heartfelt thanks once again to Kronos Quartet, The Greene Space, Q2 music, and every single other person behind this amazing show and its live webcast!

Glenn Kotche - Adventureland

I mentioned this album in my last post and how I was interrupted mid-listen. Well, I finally listened to the whole thing today, and it is really really good. Definitely picking this one up when it releases. What drew me to this album was the fact that it featured Kronos Quartet, who can do no wrong in my eyes. I love just about everything that they've been involved in that I have heard. Even got to see them live once and it was amazing. Side note here - Q2 music is hosting a 24 hour Kronos Quartet marathon on Monday in honour of their 40th anniversary, including a live video stream of their anniversary performance (squee!)

But, I digress. Given that I was listening for Kronos Quartet, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked some of the movements of the second piece, The Haunted, that they haven't performed on. The rhythmic interplay between the piano and percussion work really well in them and are quite delightful.

The album itself starts off with Anomaly, movement 1 (the piece written for Kronos Quartet), which is glitchy minimal goodness, but the album really gets going with the second track, the aptly named The Haunted, movement 5 - Dance. The momentum keeps up after that with Anomaly, movement 2, whose percussive elements really speak to me. There are also a couple of pieces not belonging to either The Haunted or Anomaly, which are also really good. The first of these, The Travelling Turtle, is a simple happy tinkle-y piece. The other, Triple Fantasy, is quite a bit more complex and will require at least a second listen before I can digest it.

I am always drawn to percussion, to the beats, the rhythm more than anything else in music. And with Glenn Kotche being a drummer, there is no dearth of that here. I really should check out more of his work. Maybe even give his band Wilco a listen. Always assumed they were your typical indie rock band and never bothered checking them out. But, given how good this album is, a band this man is associated is surely worth my while to at least give a chance to.

You can listen to the entire album (and read a much more coherent write up of it) here. If you don't want to commit to listening to the whole thing without a small taste first, try this first

A very musical day

It's been an overwhelming day. So much new music. It all started with listening to a mixtape by a Bang on a Can All-Stars member on Q2 music. I missed the Terry Riley piece, which is what drew me to start listening in the first place, but all the rest were very good and by unknown artists (to me) to boot. The only other name I recognized aside from Riley was Ryuichi Sakamoto. Mainly because of his association with Fennesz. I also vaguely remembered coming across Alva Noto sometime or the other. So I was eagerly waiting for that bonus track Moon. As it happened, it was never played.

Today also happened to be a busy day at work, which is where all this listening has been taking place. But I was so captivated by the music that was on this mixtape stream that I didn't want to leave my desk to go talk to a co-worker about some work related stuff. Kept waiting for a boring part that I could use as a break. It never came. Then I saw that the track currently playing was the last one before the bonus track. So I told myself I would go after that one and Moon had finished playing. Just 15 more minutes tops. Well, instead of Moon, they went right into a John Adams track. It was interesting enough to make me want to keep listening, even though it didn't make me want to look him or his work up right away. What I heard after the John Adams made me sit right up. I switch tabs to see whose work was playing, and it is John fucking Cage. Of course. I really need to listen to more of his discography. I loved this particular piece - Mysterious Adventure.

Meanwhile, I had seen a link to a new album featuring Kronos Quartet by some person I hadn't heard of called Glenn Kotche. Turns out he is the drummer for Wilco, a band I've heard of but never actually listened to (that I can remember anyway). Anyway, I started listening to this and really liked the two-ish tracks of it I heard before having to step away. Should listen to the rest of it sometime.

In all this, I hadn't forgotten about that bonus track that never got played. I had actually googled it as soon as I saw they weren't playing it, found a youtube video, which I left open in another tab so I could come back to it. I finally did just that and wow. So beautiful. At first, I was only listening to it in the background while doing other stuff, but it drew me back to it. The beginning actually reminds me of a Björk song I can't put my finger on right at this moment. The video was very interesting also. Turns out that it is actually an unrelated performance of a dancer called Yang Liping also titled Moon. It fits this track so well, however. I think I've listened to this song over a dozen times today. This despite discovering yet more new music thanks to a closeout sale at mimaroglu (brain was too fried by this time to take in any more new music, although I've made note of the stuff I want to revisit there). Anyway, I'll leave you with the video/song that really caught my fancy on a day filled with so much amazing music. Enjoy!



Just realized that this is my 50th blog post. How fitting that it should be about music - my raison d'être.

Bang On A Can's 2014 People's Commissioning Fund Concert

I caught the live stream of Bang on a Can's People's Commissioning Fund concert yesterday (you can find the full audio here) and it made me so so happy. Bang on a Can is a contemporary classic music outfit based in NY. Every year they do this concert funded by, well, the people where they commission works from upcoming and established composers to be performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars ensemble. They also do other festivals and events throughout the year - one of which, the marathon concert, is one I've long longed to go to but it always either happens when I'm least able to fly to NY or I find out about it just after it's over.

Yesterday's PCF concert started out with an avant-garde piece called Lick which was apparently composed by one of the co-founders of Bang on a Can, Julia Wolfe, 20 years ago! I missed the intro and had no idea that the piece was that old. It was quite radical and rad. A joyfully cacophonous way to start the concert, I must say.

After that energetic start, they premiered the three pieces commissioned for this year, the first of which completely blew me away. It was Alvin Lucier's Firewood. Now I had never heard of this man before. The write up called him an electronic music pioneer. He spoke about the piece before the played it and he sounded very old. That's about the sum total of what I caught since my mind was wandering. The one thing he said that caught my attention was how he didn't use electronics unless he had to (none was used for Firewood). The incongruity of that struck me since he was billed as an electronic pioneer.

I paid more attention when I listened to his introduction speech again just now (I'm relistening to the whole show as I write this), and only some of it made sense to my musically ignorant brain. The gist of it is that the piece was inspired by the tracks left by insects as they crawled on firewood. He split the All-Stars into two trios that play his score in such a way that one trio follows the pattern of the tracks and the other plays tones that cause interferences that produce beats.

All this I know now. All I knew yesterday was this was a piece of music that really moved me. It was completely mesmerising. One of those rare moments that make you really glad to be alive. My only regret is not getting to experience it live in that hall. It starts just after the 16 minute mark in the audio stream. Start a few minutes earlier if you want to hear the intro. Headphones are essential for the full effect. I don't have my headphone here with me now and it really takes away from the experience when ambient noises interfere with the music.

The second piece they premiered was The Brief and Neverending Blur by Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry. I didn't really know Parry or his work, in or out of Arcade Fire, aside from the score of Her (although I think it was another band member who co-composed that). I found this piece quite underwhelming, but I think it suffered because it followed Lucier's piece. When I listened to it again today, with an adequate break in between the two pieces, I liked it more. Still it seemed to fall just short of being great.

The final premiere was Daniel Wohl's Holographic. This piece brought back the magic, the joy. A very fun and delightful electroacoustic work. It is hard not to smile when listening to it. I'm definitely looking up more of this guy's work. Quite the find.

And speaking of finds, Alvin Lucier is obviously the biggest discovery for me from this show. The best musical/artistic find in quite some time. I've looked him up since then and I'm quite keen on listening to every single piece he's ever created. I did listen to his most famous work, I am sitting in a room, earlier today. It is quite something indeed. The concept is brilliant, but what's amazing is how well it stands as an engaging piece of music in its own right. I really want to try it out in different rooms to see what I can come up with.

I know this post is already overlong and I should probably end here, but I really want to share this brilliant review of I am sitting in a room by Brian Olewnick. It says everything I can't. Read, and then listen.