Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Jesus, the Armenian

Our liason with the Beckett estate recently wrote in to share this passage from Gary Wills latest book, What Jesus Meant:
"For two years, Jesus slipped through the traps set for him. He moved like a fish in the sea of his lower-class fellows. He kept on the move, in the countryside. If I think of music to be heard in the background of his restless mission, it is the scurrying agitato that opens the Khachaturian violin concerto."
Decide for yourselves if he's right.

Aram Khatchaturian - Violin Concerto (Scottish National Orchestra; N. Järvi, Lydia Mordkovitch)
- I. Allegro con fermezza
- II. Andante sostenuto
- III. Allegro vivace

Incidentally, her latest book has just been released:

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Monday, May 29, 2006

The Coup - "I Love Boosters!"

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Lotta Lulu

What better way to celebrate Decoration Day than with some Lulu pumping out your sound system?
"To Sir With Love (Almighty Remix)"

"My Boy Lollipop"

"Shout"

"We've Got Tonight" (with Ronan Keating)

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Your Bone's Got a Secret Machine

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Peter Sellers, International Man of Mystery


The opening bars of "Soul Bossa Nova" were an instant signifier that the Go-Go cool of Peter Sellers' classic work was the touchstone for Austin Powers (That, and the glasses). It's a broad frame of reference, encompassing sight gags, awful puns, brilliant parody, and an abounding silliness. Though the films stand brilliantly on their own two feet, they do often pay direct hommage to Sellers, and before we get into all that, we feel compelled to point out the utter weirdness of seeing such a cool (and utterly serious) preview for Casino Royale.

Anywho, the scene at Alotta Fagina's penthouse is based on a sketch Peter did with Sophia Loren, "I Fell in Love With an Englishman". At every occassion, in response to Alotta's silky seductiveness, Austin is unrelettingly awkward, cracking bad jokes, fumbling with his cravat, farting in the hot tub. But he still shags her.



In Goldmember, there's a direct lift of a gag from 1966's After the Fox, where Nathan Lane lip sync's for Beyonce.



Most of the references to Sellers are more oblique, such as the next scene, where Myers speaks "English English" with Michael Caine, calling to mind Sellers' "A Right Bird".



Or the prelude to "Scotty Don't", where Dr. Evil and the Frau toss "yeah's" at each other in the style of Sellers' classic "She Loves You" renderings.

But our favorite hommage to Peter Sellers from all three films is Dr. Evil's speech to a group therapy session lead by Princess Leia. The deadpan zaniness is one of Sellers' comedic calling cards, and while there's plenty of examples to share, the one that always comes to mind is "Setting Fire to the Policeman".

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Saturday, May 27, 2006

The Rise and Fall of Rawles' Balls

The Real Seeger Sessions

Early in the Morning...

Before You Eat Your Breakfast, You Got To Get Down


And this is how we got down this morning:

Dr. Octagon - "A Gorilla Driving a Pickup Truck"


Rob Sonic Road Rage Remix


Don't miss the other remixes posted by World's Fair.

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St. Louis Brass Quintet

We don't usually get into brass geek terrain here, mainly because we never were. But occassionally, we do slip into that mode, and the tuba riff at the end of this Vivaldi Allegro from my old teacher's group, The St. Louis Brass Quintet, just blew me away. That's Daniel Perantoni tonguing the shit out of those sixteenths, y'all:

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Friday, May 26, 2006

Live Lynyrd

All Shall Be Well

On An Overgrown Path have a nice little post about the restored home of Julian of Norwich, of whom I'm quite fond, partly because she's responsible for one of the all-time keepers in the English language:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well

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Lucas with the lid off:



Good song, great video by Michel Gondry

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ANA.Bod functions

My thoughts on Lachenmann's NUN differ slightly from julio's suggestion that it is music "closer, more faithful to the instruments".

NUN utilizes actual harmonic/melodic materials, much closer to a sense of Western traditional music, where as in Gran Torso, one hears more from the instrument themselves; tailpieces, scrolls, backboard. You can't get closer to the instrument than that, can you .... (?)

I hadn't actually heard NUN until you pointed me to it. Great music.

Cheers.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Towel Day

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Rawles, He's Got Big Balls

Rawles has been bringing you the best in vintage cool for a while now in this space. After too long a hiatus, he's back with a killer set of tunes, including the best single we've ever heard by The Rubettes.

Ian Hunter - Once Bitten Twice Shy



Slade - "Cum on Feel the Noize"; "Mama Weer All Crazy Now"; "Gudbuy T' Jane"



Chris Spedding - "Motorbinkin'"



Bryan Ferry - "Let's Stick Together"



Brian Eno - "Seven Deadly Finns"



Geordie - "All Because of You"



The Rubettes - "Sugar Baby Love"

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ANA.Bod - echo's two cents

I'm chiming in regarding Helmut Lachenmann. Guero via Beck (for piano, 1970) and Gran Torso (string quartet, 1971) have to make this list. These pieces marked the period of Lachenmann's work which reflected his interest in a truly "instrumental" and physical music.

disclaimer: my own reading
- ignore or not


Gran Torso uses the instrument bodies themselves as material; (more) scraping, rubbing, scratching, knocking.

Guero employs the performance technique of the guero, a rhythm instrument of Cuban origin, scraping and sliding along the corrugated surface. Guero-like surfaces on the piano: black keys, tuning pegs, strings.


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Wednesday, May 24, 2006


As promised earlier, here is the Disney Hall Stage lay out
for the CalArts performance of Terry Riley's In C (March 20, 2006)







Word.

Kyle Gann's gone postal over at his blog.

Sad thing is that he's absolutely right when he talks about bias in electronic music circles. One highlight:
"I thought it [Max/MSP] must be some incredibly powerful program, from what I kept hearing about it - it turns out, the technonerds love it because it’s incredibly impotent in most people’s hands, until you’ve learned to stack dozens of pages of complicated designs.
His comparison to serialism falls short, given the lowly status of electronic music on the academic totem pole, but the point is well taken. Such a marginalized genre only shoots itself in the foot by clinging to such obsolete standards.

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Annotating The List

It's gonna take a while, of course. Easy stuff first:

Arvo Pärt - Cantus in Memory of Benjaming Britten

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Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Dodgers Clash with (Hartford) Indians

Mauricio Kagel - Transicion for Piano, Percussion & Tapes

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i just woke up from a very unpleasant dream of tuning my violin strings and have the bridge snap in half as well as numerous cracks along the body of the instrument - the violin pretty mch fucked.

At least the neighbourhood ice cone man was passing by. Rescued by strawberry ice cone !!

ANAGeeks

We make some pretty eggheaded posts; so, it's only fair that we should get some of our own back in the comments section.

For those of you who wouldn't normally see a comment on echo's incredible Johnny Cash post:
Thank you very much for this, but I don't think it's from 1968. Why? During the Carter Family Appearence, Anita Carter sings the song "Loving him was easier" which she first recorded in 1971 for a single. Afterwards she sang the song in the J.C. shows, like for example on Danish TV in 1971. So my guess is that this concert also was recorded in 1971 or 1972. But still it's GREAT to have it. -- Anonymous
In all fairness, echo did get in a 'circa'.

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The Unbreakable Heart EP

What's the newest CD no one can get enough of in NYC? Trouble Club's debut EP. Songs like "Girls Gone Wild" just stick in your ear, and the buzz on their debut show at Arlene's last week is that these killer songs are even better live.

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Noblesse Oblige



Tee Templeton's new band, with Tim from Babe the Blue Ox, just put up a few tunes on myspace, and they are really beautiful. Hopefully, we'll have some more to post in the coming weeks.

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Friday, May 19, 2006

Sputnik Wishes You Better Things!!

Here's an alternate version of our cover of the Kinks classic, "Better Things".

Remember, Sputnik will be playing at the Living Room (154 Ludlow Street, NYC) at 11 p.m. tomorrow!

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Programming Amazon-Style

Patent abuse is widespread nowadays, and some guy in New Zealand with enough time on his hands to do something about it is suing Amazon over their 1-Click patent.

The idea that someone could hold a patent over an idiotically simple e-commerce model is patently ridiculous. But it doesn't stop there. How about patenting the human genome? (It's in the works)

So, we're going to start filing patent claims on all of our ANALOG arts ensemble innovations. For instance, to our knowledge, no one else has ever put popular music on a classical program before. If they have, tough shit. Cuz' pretty soon, we'll own the patent on that idea and you'll have to pay through the nose to use it.

Uh, let's see, what else have we invented? Oh yeah, we thought of starting an mp3 blog before anyone else, too. Consider it patented!

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More significant Works from the last two decades....

The discussion is winding down, but not without more significant mentions; so, we've updated the list, including its first annotation.

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64 32 12 6 3



from the commodore 64 games vault - Andrew Craigie: Android (1987) Apparently back in the mid-80's there was a huge fascination with androids - i was 8 years old back in Taiwan, so i had no idea... But i finally discovered Bladerunner, so everything is fine. And now i have this digital+analogue sound in my life. woo...

you need it too.

commodore 64 SID player
SID music collection

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Rawles Balls Show TONIGHT!!

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Mauricio Kagel, "Serenade for Three Instrumentalists"

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Now's the time when we throw rocks at a barn



That seems pretty straightforward, right? But when you click the link, here's the event info you get:
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Lorin Maazel, conductor
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, mezzo-soprano
Gerald Finley, baritone
New York Choral Artists, Joseph Flummerfelt, director
Peter Lieberson: The World in Flower (World Premiere: New York Philharmonic Commission)
Okay, so where's the Carter? You have to click through, and apparently, be registered on the NY Phil's site to see that the Lieberson piece isn't done yet. The Carter introduction is actually a video clip on the event page, but he won't be at the event, which is what this dopey little ad would make you believe.

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ANADroid Interviews TK421 from Loop 2.4.3

The founder of Loop 2.4.3 was kind enough to sit down with ANADroid for a phone interview yesterday.


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Rawles Has Something to Say


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Wednesday, May 17, 2006

more


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FESTIVAL :
a day-long guerrila celebration of experimental music




<> ---- >
calarts main gallery < ---------


music by...



(???)



at any time, something may happen. or nothing may happen!
FESTIVAL :
a day-long guerrila celebration of experimental music




<>


music by...



(???)



at any time, something may happen. or nothing may happen!

Who says current composers can't write a tune?


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Programming Google Cube-Style

The Google Cube, a technological yeti, is supposed to be a $200 computer that uses software as a service, rather than charging you up the wazoo to build it into the machine. You don't need it there. And by keeping it off your machine, you're free to do loads of other things (first of which is saving yourself hundreds of dollars).

In the Times Magazine, Kevin Kelley wrote this weekend about another legendary Google project (which is actually happening, as opposed to the Cube): the Google Library, gbooks, or what have you. The idea is to scan everything that's ever been written. Kelley deftly sums up the logistical implications of the idea:
From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world. When fully digitized, the whole lot could be compressed (at current technological rates) onto 50 petabyte hard disks. Today you need a building about the size of a small-town library to house 50 petabytes. With tomorrow's technology, it will all fit onto your iPod. When that happens, the library of all libraries will ride in your purse or wallet — if it doesn't plug directly into your brain with thin white cords. Some people alive today are surely hoping that they die before such things happen, and others, mostly the young, want to know what's taking so long. (Could we get it up and running by next week? They have a history project due.)
As with the Google Cube, highly accurate and extremely swift access to such vast resources is an enormous empowerment. Anyone who's ever done analog research knows how time-consuming it can be. With all that legwork cut out, researchers will have vast amounts of time for analysis, yielding more substantive papers and books, and so on.

This basic access-to-empowerment ratio applies to programming as we see it. We've always approached a basic concert program in the same way Google would approach a search. Type in 'numun' and you'll get results ranging from Sumerian mathematical operators to Northwestern University's model UN (not to mention a pretty kick-ass band). A chord's a chord. A song about elf's is a song about elf's whether it was written by Schubert or Freddie Mercury.

The access we have at this moment to musics of every sort is not a delimiting factor, though it seems to be for classical music in particular. It's a tremendous liberation. We're not stuck with a choice between Beethoven or Black Sabbath. If you're after Sturm und Drang, program them both. You'd be hard-pressed to find an audience today that won't appreciate the combination. It's sort of like building a $200 computer. You can't lose.

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A Giant Sucking Sound

When you walk the streets of NYC tonight, you may notice the ghostly absence of all the cool kids. That's because they'll all be at the Trouble Club show at Arlene's Grocery.



Trouble Club

Wednesday, May 17th--TONIGHT!
8:00pm sharp
Arlene's Grocery
95 Stanton Street, just east of Ludlow
Take the F Train to 2nd Ave.

Show at 8, drinking in the bar next door at 9 til the cows come home!


#1 least important reason to catch Trouble Club? Angus has toured with Trans Siberian Orchestra.

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Band of Horses, "Funeral"

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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

What are the most significant classical works of the last 15-20 years?

That simple question always proves not so simple. The usual garden-variety 'what is classical music' issue sprouted up, but amidst all the distractions, there's quite an impressive list of pieces, several of which are outside the timeframe of the question.

Here's the complete list of pieces & composers mentioned so far:

Adams, John - Naive and Sentimental Music; Harmonielehre; Violin Concerto; Chamber Concerto; Shaker Loops (1983)
Andriessen, Louis – Writing to Vermeer
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
Baird, Tadeusz - Voices from Afar
Barrett, Richard - Vanity ('90-'94)
Beauvais, William - Incoming Light (for prepared classical guitar; gets the sound of a gamelan out of the instrument)
Bell, Shawn - Currents II (a lovely classical guitar piece; post-minimal with lots of energy and pretty use of very dissonant harmonies; a lot of harmonics)
Benjamin, George - Antara
Berio, Luciano – Notturno; Sinfonia (1969)
Birtwistle, Harrison - Pulse Shadows; Gawain; Earth Dances (1986)
Boulez, Pierre – Répons (1984)
Budd, Harold
Cage, John - Apartment House 1776 (1976)
Carter, Elliott - Symphonia: Sum fluxae pretium spei
Cooper, Lindsay - Face In the Crowd (sax quartet, played by Rova)
Czernowin, Chaya - Dam Sheon Hachol
Davies, Peter Maxwell - Eight Songs for a Mad King; Symphony No.5
Dench, Chris - Sulle scala della fenice ('86-'89)
Dillon, James - Windows and Canopies ('85)
Dumitrescu, Iancu - Galaxy (1993); Pierres Sacrees (1991)
Dutilleux, Henri - L'arbre Des Songes
Eastman, Julius - Unjust Malaise (CD)
Emsley, Richard - Flow Form ('87)
Eötvös, Péter - Atlantis (1995)
Feldman, Morton - For Samuel Beckett (1987); Rothko Chapel (1971)
Ferko, Frank – Hildegard Organ Cycle
Ferneyhough, Brian - Mnemosyne ('86); Cassandra's Dream Song (1970); Etudes transcendentales (1985)
Finnissy, Michael - The History of Photography in Sound (2001); Recent Britain ('98); Folklore II (1994)
Fox, Christopher - A Canonic Break ('02-'03)
Frith, Fred – Upbeat; Ayaya Moses
Galas, Diamanda - Vena Cava
Golijov, Osvaldo – Ayre; La Pasion Segun San Marcos
Goebbels, Heiner - Surrogate Cities
Gorecki, Henryk - Symphony no.2 (1972)
Grisey, Gérard - Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998)
Gubaidulina, Sofia - Johannes-Passion
Harvey, Jonathan - Inquest of Love
Holt, Simon - Sunrise’ yellow noise
Howells, Herbert - Take him, earth, for cherishing (1963)
Ikeda, Ryoji - Op
Kilar, Wojciech - Krzesany (1974)
Kline, Phil - Three Rumsfeld Songs
Kurtág, György – Kafka-Fragmente; Messages of the Late R.V. Troussova (1980); Ligatura: Message to Frances-Marie (The Answered Unanswered Question) (1989)
Lachenmann, Helmut - Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (2002)
Ligeti, György - Violin Concerto; Atmosphères (1961)
Lindberg, Magnus – Kraft; Clarinet Concerto
Lutoslawski, Witold - Chain 3;Chantefleurs et Chantefables; Livre pour orchestre (1968)
Messiaen, Olivier - Éclairs sur l'Au-delà; Sept haïkï (1962)
Monk, Meredith - Atlas (1992)
Nishimura, Akira - Into The Lights of the Eternal Chaos for symphony orchestra, 1990
Nono, Luigi - La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura
Normandeau, Robert - Clair de Terre
Otte, Hans - Das Buch der Klange (1982)
Pallett, Owen
Part, Arvo – Litany (1996); Festina Lente; Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977)
Partch, Harry - And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma (1966)
Penderecki, Krzysztof - Threnody - To the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)
Pritchard, Alwynne - Craw (1997)
Reich, Steve - Different Trains; It's Gonna Rain (1965); Six Pianos (1973)
Rihm, Wolfgang - Jagden und Formen
Riley, Terry - In C (1964)
Rzewski, Frederic – The Road; The People United Will Never be Defeated (1975)
Saariaho, Kaija - L'amour de loin; Amers; Grammaire des rêves (1988)
Saunders, Rebecca - Albescere ('02); Cinnabar (1999)
Schnittke, Alfred - String Quartet No. 4
Sharp, Elliot - Abstract Repressionism
Stockhausen, Karlheinz – Hymnen (1967); LICHT
Takemitsu, Toru - I Hear the Water Dreaming; riverrun; From Me Flows What You Call Time
Tavener, John - The Apocalypse (1993)
Tenney, James - Critical Band (1988)
Walshe, Jennifer - "as mo cheanne" ('00)
Wilson, Ian - ... wander, darkling (2000)
Ziporyn, Evan - Tire Fire
Zorn, John – Spillane (1987)

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Favorite Musical Legends

Quite nearly our favorite musical legend is the old chestnut about Palestrina dashing off his Missa Papae Marcelli to stave off a clerical ban on polyphony. Like all good bullshit, it's based in fact. At that point, the Church was hemorrhaging membership to the more approachable Reformation style of worship. The use of the vernacular was a big uptick for those seeking to actually understand a church service. Another impediment to cognition was polyphony.