Awesome Stockhausen video; keep pace or die.
Those that dug that, should check out this documentary on artificial intelligence, the idea of cyborgs is a very similar concept to what Stockhausen is getting at here.
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Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Monday, September 7, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Gamelan + Claude Vivier + Gerard Grisey + 23 Skidoo
This is a cool Gamelan video I found. Very groovy, not as angular as other Gamelan I have heard. Gamelan is the indigenous music of the Bali and Java islands. It is very idiosyncratic percussion music, using many gongs and cymbals, as well as the use of some flute. It has had quite the influence on western classical music dating back to Debussy, whom first heard it back in 1889 at the World's Fair in Paris. In Canada as well, many of the french Canadian Composers became obsessed with the genre, including one great composer, Claude Vivier.
Claude Vivier is regarded as spectralist composer. Spectral music, in a nutshell, is the study and use very remote harmonics in writing music. The chords and sounds used are typically very glistening and bright, one might imagine a prism, and the light being refracted from it. You could use this analogy, basic notes, and the many strands of sound that they omit. Many composers study harmonics and use them in very different ways. La Monte Young for instance uses the study of remote harmonics and pure tones, in his tunings for the Well Tuned Piano. Kyle Gann has an excellent analysis of this work for those who are curious. Also artists like Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, and Sunn O))), approach the study of harmonics through volume and resonate frequencies. The louder the music the more the harmonics are massaged out and the walls begin to shake. Gamelan as well, has a signature sound due to the tones produced by the gongs. They are very strange and harmonically very rich.
Anyways, back to Claude Vivier, I have decided to upload a few of my favorite compositions by him. Just by listening you can hear the influence of the Gamelan. One particular piece, Pulau Dewata, written for any combination of instruments, is Vivier's take on Gamelan music. When played by a percussion ensemble, the reference is very obvious, but it also works miraculously well with a string quartet given the very idiosyncratic stop-start rhythms and dynamics of Gamelan music. The other pieces I have included by Vivier is Zipangu (the name given to Japan by Marco Polo), a piece for string orchestra, and Lonely Child. Lonely Child, a piece for orchestra, can be seen as a very autobiographical work, sung in Vivier's own invented language. In 1983 Vivier was murdered in Paris under bizarre circumstances, he was a homosexual and killed by a prostitute.
http://rapidshare.com/files/274441299/Vivier.zip
Also another amazing gamelan influenced work, by industrial post-punk group 23 Skidoo, is Urban Gamelan, recorded in 1984. The rhythms and sounds are very respectful to the gamelan tradition but through the gaze of punk, a very good record indeed!
http://rapidshare.com/files/274454446/23_skidoo_-_urban.zip
I've have also included for a download Gerard Grisey's magnus opus, Espaces Acoustiques. Grisey is spectralisms most well known composer, and fans of Sunn O))) (particularly fans of Monoliths and Dimensions) will love this record. The drones and tones heard are thick and BAD as hell! Do listen!
http://rapidshare.com/files/274449102/Gerard_Grisey.zip
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Claude Vivier is regarded as spectralist composer. Spectral music, in a nutshell, is the study and use very remote harmonics in writing music. The chords and sounds used are typically very glistening and bright, one might imagine a prism, and the light being refracted from it. You could use this analogy, basic notes, and the many strands of sound that they omit. Many composers study harmonics and use them in very different ways. La Monte Young for instance uses the study of remote harmonics and pure tones, in his tunings for the Well Tuned Piano. Kyle Gann has an excellent analysis of this work for those who are curious. Also artists like Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, and Sunn O))), approach the study of harmonics through volume and resonate frequencies. The louder the music the more the harmonics are massaged out and the walls begin to shake. Gamelan as well, has a signature sound due to the tones produced by the gongs. They are very strange and harmonically very rich.
Anyways, back to Claude Vivier, I have decided to upload a few of my favorite compositions by him. Just by listening you can hear the influence of the Gamelan. One particular piece, Pulau Dewata, written for any combination of instruments, is Vivier's take on Gamelan music. When played by a percussion ensemble, the reference is very obvious, but it also works miraculously well with a string quartet given the very idiosyncratic stop-start rhythms and dynamics of Gamelan music. The other pieces I have included by Vivier is Zipangu (the name given to Japan by Marco Polo), a piece for string orchestra, and Lonely Child. Lonely Child, a piece for orchestra, can be seen as a very autobiographical work, sung in Vivier's own invented language. In 1983 Vivier was murdered in Paris under bizarre circumstances, he was a homosexual and killed by a prostitute.
http://rapidshare.com/files/274441299/Vivier.zip
Also another amazing gamelan influenced work, by industrial post-punk group 23 Skidoo, is Urban Gamelan, recorded in 1984. The rhythms and sounds are very respectful to the gamelan tradition but through the gaze of punk, a very good record indeed!
http://rapidshare.com/files/274454446/23_skidoo_-_urban.zip
I've have also included for a download Gerard Grisey's magnus opus, Espaces Acoustiques. Grisey is spectralisms most well known composer, and fans of Sunn O))) (particularly fans of Monoliths and Dimensions) will love this record. The drones and tones heard are thick and BAD as hell! Do listen!
http://rapidshare.com/files/274449102/Gerard_Grisey.zip
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Monday, August 31, 2009
Welcome to the Blog and Nick Kuepfer
Hello and welcome to the blog. This page will serve as a scrap book of music, recordings, pop culture, musings, essays, videos, reviews, shows, bands, etc. of any thing that I choose to post. I hope to gather contributions from my friends. I plan on running a small store from here where I'll sell merchandise related to my artistic projects. So stay posted!
My first blog entry is on a fine fellow I met on my trip to New York City about 3 weeks ago. I had just moved from Halifax to Montreal and had to rush off to NYC (via train, so a slow rush). I was choosing to perform in Rhys Chatham's Crimson Grail, a piece written for an orchestra of 200 electric guitars, 16 electric basses, and a high hat. The concert took place at the Lincoln Center, was supposed to happen a year ago, but lucky for me (unfortunate for every else last year) the concert got postponed until this year. So I got in touch with Rhys and applied and there I was! The concert was a blast, there was over 10000 people there, and so many photographers, I got my picture in the Village Voice blog. I met a ton of amazing people, including members of Akron/Family, and one fine fellow (the second person I met I might add) name Nick Kuepfer. It was quite the story of circumstance, he happened to be in my section, sitting right behind me, he was friendly and very approachable and when asked where he was from he said Montreal! What a coincidence! Anyways we ended up driving back to Montreal and he saved me the horrible job of having to cart around an amp from Williamsburgh to Penn Station at 7:30 on a Monday morning.
Nick is a very talented guy, he is an amazing screen printer and musician. Check out his myspace tracks, it is a really remarkable sound collage. There is plenty of interesting uses of field recordings, what sound like prepared guitars, minimalist loops, musique concrete techniques, extended techniques of a tea kettle, and lots of use of instruments from around the world. Nick will be debuting his solo work at Casa del Popolo on September 1oth. He has also kindly offered his talents to a new project of mine with Chris D'eon entitled, "Hassan-i Sabbāh X," which promises to be a heavy mix of heady extended modal jams, we are calling it raga rock. So be sure to check it out. We will be making out debut performance a week before at Lab Synthese on the 4th of September for our friends, "The Pop Winds," EP release show and then playing with Nick at Casa the week after.
I wanted to show some pictures of Nicks fine poster art, if you have spent anytime walking around Montreal, for sure, you will recognize his work, in fact I knew his posters before I knew him! His prints are a of maximalist approach, busy with prints of antiquity transposed in a psychedelic swirl of color. Your eyes will feast, perfect for any visual glutton.
Check his websites for more goodness!
http://www.gigposters.com/designer/29645_Nick_Kuepfer.html
http://www.myspace.com/nickkuepfer
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