SHORTER, FASTER, LOUDER

tenement - NAPALM DREAM

2011-08-08T12:13:00.002-04:00

this is a band i played in for about a year before i went to college. they recently finished an album that is totally awesome. check it out:

NAPALM DREAM by TENEMENT

still gettin it

2011-06-30T13:28:00.001-04:00

2011-06-21T20:34:00.000-04:00

2011-06-21T09:55:00.001-04:00

CUBICLE DENIZEN ep

2011-06-18T10:16:00.001-04:00

CUBICLE DENIZEN ep by maxsuechting

CUBICLE DENIZEN by Max Suechting

CUBICLE DENIZEN press release

2011-06-14T19:53:00.005-04:00

DRUMMER AND COMPUTER MUSICIAN MAX SUECHTING TO RELEASE "CUBICLE DENIZEN EP" DIGITALLY JUNE 18TH

June 18th

Contact: Max Suechting

920.277.9428 --- msuechting@gmail.com

http://shorterfasterlouder.blogspot.com

AMHERST, Mass. – Multimedia artist and performer Max Suechting will release an short album entitled "CUBICLE DENIZEN" on Saturday, June 18th. The record will be available free online at http://soundcloud.com/maxsuechting and http://maxsuechting.bandcamp.com.

"CUBICLE DENIZEN" is a short - only twenty minutes long - internet-only EP drawing on the work of beat-oriented electronic musicians such as Aphex Twin, Flying Lotus, and Gold Panda, as well as the lush textures of electro-acoustic artists Radiohead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor

, and Pink Floyd. Sampling artists as diverse as the Olympia, WA post-hardcore act Unwound, Michigan folk artist Paul Baribeau, and the Norwegian improvising ensemble Supersilent (not to mention vocal interludes from various movies and television programs), CUBICLE DENIZEN is nevertheless an original work, exploring familiar territory without committing to any one aesthetic. The album artwork was done by Amherst, MA visual artist Matt Cosby (, and the liner notes features photographs by Laila Milevski.

Much of Suechting's work, including his spring 2011 album "MOST MODERN" and selections from his senior thesis ("MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE") are available for free at http://soundcloud.com/maxsuechting.

moment of silence

2011-06-14T13:56:00.001-04:00

2011-06-04T13:39:00.001-04:00

Travis Millard - Ghosted from Eighty Four Films on Vimeo.

"no, i just got the name wrong"

2011-06-01T10:10:00.001-04:00

Flim (Aphex Twin cover) by maxsuechting

and now i'm older

2011-05-23T00:59:00.001-04:00

multistable perception

2011-04-28T14:36:00.002-04:00

Photographs of craters, from either the moon or other planets including our own, can exhibit this phenomenon. Craters, in stereo imaging, such as our eyes, should appear to be pit-like structures. However in mono-vision, such as that of photographs, the elimination of our depth perception causes multistable perception to take over, and this can cause the craters to inverse their depth values and instead look like plateaus rather than pits. Sometimes rotating the image so that the photographic direction of the source of light matches a light source in the room can cause the correct perception to suddenly switch.

A pop culture example can be found in Crow T. Robot, a puppet character on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The premise of the show involves three characters (including Crow) making fun of bad movies, and as such they appear superimposed in silhouette at the bottom of the screen. Due to the design of Crow's head, it can appear that he is looking at the audience rather than at the screen.

i get tempted

2011-04-23T20:45:00.001-04:00

we're not valid

2011-04-05T00:24:00.000-04:00

Most Modern by Max Suechting

please tell me you need me

2011-03-29T22:27:00.001-04:00

to call it home

2011-03-04T17:59:00.001-05:00

Taylor McFerrin feat. Ryat - Place in My Heart from Simon Benjamin on Vimeo.

POOL

2011-02-28T11:01:00.002-05:00

"...delicate beauty, an ugly hand caged in pretty metal..."

2011-02-21T22:00:00.000-05:00

take em to the bridge

2011-02-18T10:37:00.001-05:00

2011-02-17T20:25:00.000-05:00

"I suspect this was the tape that dropped Harrison."

2011-02-17T20:22:00.003-05:00

A familiar sound that I had heard it for years barely audible... loud and clear now a muttering hypnotic cadence. He shut the machine off.
"'The sound track illuminates the image... 'Genial's' image in this case... almost tactile... Well there it is... biologists talk about creating life in a test tube... all they need is a few tape recorders: 'Genail 23' at your service sir... a virus of course... The sound track is the only existence it has no one hears him he is not there except as a potential like the spheres and crystals that show up under an electron microscop: Cold Sore... Rabies... Yellow Fever... St. Louis Encephalitis... just spheres and crystals until they find another host... just an arrangement of iron molecules on a tape until "Genial 23' takes another queen... of course parasitic life is the easiest form to create... I wonder if...'

William S. Burroughs, The Ticket that Exploded

like a flayed carcass off a butcher hook

2011-02-12T23:39:00.001-05:00

I let my head fall back in this angry season. There, tensions I had hoped would resolve, merely shift with the body’s machinery. The act is clumsy, halting, and without grace or reason. What can I read in the smell of her, what message in the code of her breath? This mountain opens passages of all light. The lines on squeezed lids cage the bursting balls. All efforts, dying here, coalesce in the blockage of ear and throat, to an a-corporal lucence, a patterning released from pleasure the retained shadow of pure idea.

2011-02-12T00:46:00.003-05:00

the planet is my mixing board

2011-01-26T11:16:00.005-05:00

she change her name

2010-12-30T02:01:00.000-05:00

alacrity & effulgence

2010-12-26T01:40:00.000-05:00

Repetition is Ironic! Repetition is Ironic! (French Kiss Your Mother For Me) by maxsuechting

OBSOLETE

2010-12-21T09:28:00.001-05:00

dressed-down

2010-12-19T02:03:00.001-05:00

… At the level of consumption, this new spirit is that of so-called “cultural capitalism”: we primarily buy commodities neither on account of their utility nor as status symbols; we buy them to get the experience provided by them, we consume them in order to render our lives pleasurable and meaningful. … This is how capitalism, at the level of consumption, integrated the legacy of ’68, the critique of alienated consumption: authentic experience matters. … In keeping with the new spirit of capitalism, an entire ideologio-historical narrative is constructed… The lesson of ’68 is then “Goodbye Mr. Socialism,” and the true revolution that of digital capitalism – itself the logical consequence, indeed the “truth,” of the ’68 revolt. More radically even, the events of ’68 are inscribed into the fashionable topic of the “paradigm shift.” ... The anti-capitalist protests of the ‘60s supplemented the standard critique of socio-economic exploitation with the new topics of cultural critique: the alienation of everyday life, the commodification of consumption, the inauthenticity of a mass society in which we are forced to “wear marks” and subjected to sexual and other oppressions, etc. The new spirit of capitalism triumphantly recuperated the egalitarian and anti-hierarchical rhetoric of 1968, presenting itself as a successful libertarian revolt against the oppressive social organizations of both corporate capitalism and Really Existing Socialism – a new libertarian spirit epitomized by dressed-down “cool” capitalists such as Bill Gates and the founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

from First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

Slavoj Zizek

2010-12-18T00:53:00.000-05:00

I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it, and it's a... it's a term that's based on contempt, it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten but I'm sure... I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius - myself. And that music is so powerful that it's quite beyond my control and, ah, ... when I'm in the grips of it I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn't feel anything, and you didn't want to either. You know?

finals week

2010-12-17T23:48:00.000-05:00

a little therapeutic beauty for the long days ahead.

and now we rise / and we are everywhere

2010-12-11T21:42:00.001-05:00

i have come to to wound the autumnal city

2010-11-27T18:58:00.006-05:00

"What is this part of me that lingers to overhear my own conversation? I lie rigid in the rigid circle. It regards me to form diametric points, without sex, and wise. We lie in a rigid city, anticipating winds. It circles me, intimating only by position that it knows more than I want to... Still, I am convinced that at the proper shock, it would turn and call me, using those hermetic syllables I have abandoned on the crags of a broken conscience, on the planes of charred consciousness, at the entrance to the ganglial city. And I would raise my head."

Dhalgren
Samuel Delany

blame game

2010-11-27T18:08:00.001-05:00

"to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine..."

2010-11-21T11:12:00.000-05:00

flashing. lights.

2010-11-18T18:28:00.000-05:00

an insufficiently meaningful world

2010-11-17T11:33:00.000-05:00

Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.

Herbert Marcuse

kill your co-workers

2010-11-05T17:02:00.001-04:00

Flying Lotus - Kill Your Co-Workers from Warp Records on Vimeo.

choppy sees

2010-11-03T20:56:00.001-04:00

- - - -

2010-11-02T01:20:00.003-04:00

QUEST
Franz Wright

The bell which
when struck emits
silence--

I don't want to sleep with you
I want to wake up with you,

when I was sick in bed.

one decade

2010-10-28T11:01:00.000-04:00

to undertake my corners open

2010-10-27T22:34:00.002-04:00

PROPOSALS FOR RATIONALLY IMPROVING THE CITY OF PARIS

2010-10-23T12:36:00.002-04:00

The Lettrists present at the September 26 meeting jointly proposed the following solutions to the various urbanistic problems that came up in discussion. They stress that no constructive action was considered, since they all agreed that the most urgent task is to clear the ground.
The subways should be opened at night after the trains have stopped running. The corridors and platforms should be poorly lit, with dim lights flickering on and off intermittently.

The rooftops of Paris should be opened to pedestrian traffic by modifying fire-escape ladders and by constructing bridges where necessary. Public gardens should remain open at night, unlit. (In a few cases, a steady dim illumination might be justified on psychogeographical grounds.)

Street lamps should all be equipped with switches so that people can adjust the lighting as they wish.
...Gil J Wolman proposed that churches be left standing but stripped of all religious content. They should be treated as ordinary buildings, and children should be allowed to play in them. ... Jacques Fillon favored the idea of transforming churches into houses of horror (maintaining their current ambience while accentuating their terrifying effects).
... Train stations should be left as they are. ... Gil J Wolman proposed removing or scrambling all information regarding departures (destinations, timetables, etc.) in order to facilitate dérives. After a lively debate, those opposing this motion retracted their objections and it was wholeheartedly approved. It was also agreed that background noise in the stations should be intensified by broadcasting recordings from many other stations, as well as from certain harbors.
Museums should be abolished and their masterpieces distributed to bars (Philippe de Champaigne’s works in the Arab cafés of rue Xavier-Privas; David’s Sacre in the Tonneau on Rue Montagne-Geneviève).

Everyone should have free access to the prisons. They should be available as tourist destinations, with no distinction between visitors and inmates. (To spice things up, monthly lotteries might be held to see which visitor would win a real prison sentence. This would cater to those imbeciles who feel an imperative need to undergo uninteresting risks: spelunkers, for example, and everyone else whose craving for play is satisfied by such paltry pseudogames.)
... In order to put an end to the cretinizing influence of current street names, names of city councilors, heroes of the Resistance, all the Émiles and Édouards (55 Paris streets), all the Bugeauds and Gallifets,⁽²⁾ and in general all obscene names (Rue de l’Évangile) should be obliterated. ...

published in POTLATCH #23 by the LETTRIST INTERNATIONAL
Paris, 13 October 1955. Full text.

the shape i'm in

2010-10-16T14:55:00.000-04:00

joshua clover - the autumn alphabets

2010-10-16T10:47:00.004-04:00

click to enlarge

to keep you quiet

2010-10-15T00:42:00.002-04:00

monkish

2010-10-14T16:30:00.005-04:00

click to enlarge.

sounds rebel and hiss

2010-10-11T23:19:00.001-04:00

why should i stay here

2010-10-08T20:31:00.001-04:00

a plague journal

2010-09-30T20:18:00.002-04:00

To find out who I am I've had to give up my name and who knows what part of my life. It wasn't a choice. But treating it like one seems the only way to keep my mind... I am frightened because, in this City, I don't know where I am, I don't know where I can go.

from Dhalgren
by Samuel Delany

document #1

2010-09-26T13:29:00.000-04:00

Document #1 by maxsuechting

through a glass

2010-09-26T13:27:00.002-04:00

At rest.

2010-09-22T00:32:00.003-04:00

recent acquisitions

2010-09-21T22:53:00.004-04:00

Stephan Crump - Rosetta
DJ Krush - The Message At The Depth
Jason Moran Bandwagon - Ten
George Russell - Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature
Goldie - Timeless
Goldie - Rings of Saturn
4Hero - Two Pages
Herbie Hancock - Crossings
Miles Davis - Pangaea
DJ Krush - Strictly Turntablized
Miles Davis - Dark Magus
Steve Coleman - Harvesting Semblances and Affinities
D'Angelo - Voodoo
4Hero - Play With the Changes
Herbie Hancock - Sextant
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five -
Adventures on the Wheels of Steel

think of one

2010-09-19T15:28:00.003-04:00

All those far-away, extraordinary events had given place to a quiet life of complete seclusion, a life full of those drowsy yet harmonious dreams you indulge in sitting on a rustic balcony over-looking the garden, when a lovely rain comes streaming down with a glorious sound, pattering on the leaves and flowing in bubbling rivulets, inducing a numbness in all your limbs, and meanwhile a rainbow comes stealing from behind the trees in the shape of a half-ruined arch, shedding its band of seven soft colours across the sky. Or when you are lulled to sleep in a carriage, driving between green bushes while the quail of the steppes call loudly and the fragrant grass, mingled withe ears of corn and wild flowers, thrusts itself in at the carriage door, flicking you delightfully across the hands and face.

Nikolai Gogol
The Old-World Landowners

Place of religion, religion of place.

2010-09-18T09:56:00.004-04:00

Later I'm back in New York sitting around with Irwin and Simon and Raphael and Lazarus, and now we're famous writers more or less, but they wonder why I'm so sunk now, so unexcited as we sit among all our published books and poems, tho at least, since I live with Memére in a house of her own miles from the city, it's a peaceful sorrow. A peaceful sorrow at home is the best I'll ever be able to offer the world, in the end, and so I told my Desolation Angels goodbye. A new life for me.

Jack Kerouac
Desolation Angels

2010-09-12T17:03:00.005-04:00

Leave the Manifesto Alone: A Manifesto

The manifesto is dead. Manifestos are a flashing up of the spirit in a moment of desperate jubilation when the victory of the bourgeoisie is not yet a settled thing. Manifestos are the way the bourgeoisie fights the bourgeoisie in spastic fits, armed with bludgeon, scalpel, and luck. We will not celebrate the end of that era with you. It was not a poetic era, it was a political era. It is this history you wish to seal over with pseudo-celebrations.

Is not Poetry already a manifesto? The well-considered and the well-mannered, the lovely and the liberal, craft and progress: are these not already the manifesto of the bourgeoisie, smeared across every page, every minute of every day? It’s an aesthetic thing, Poetry answers as we fall asleep, choosing its poems as if you could choose who was worthy to shit on your grave. And in our dreams we see Poetry dance on the manifesto’s grave, in the vocabulary of open-mindedness and eclecticism, that bourgeois humanism which is nothing other than the pure hatred of revolution.

The manifesto is obligated to be political at every instant.

To use the forms and worldviews on offer only for bitter mockery.

To be not an alternative to destruction but a complement.

To speak of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, the former as the enemy, the latter defined as the social class which does not want to be named.

To stop wringing its hands over poetry’s lost popularity, that autocritique more stirring than any Maoist’s.

The manifesto is obligated to say There are other countries where poetry still matters! Where the war against the marketplace of capital, against the confirmation of the bourgeoisie as the end of history, endures.

When we say the manifesto we mean poetry and Poetry and poets and our own pathetic selves.

And so like you, oh Poetry, we propose to reanimate the manifesto. We will first require the following things: a century of revolutions. Delight and terror. Shit on the curatorial. Shit on bankers and trusts. Shit on ourselves. We believe in art for art’s sake the same as we believe in destruction as our Beatrice; Mallarmé said them both. Poetry must be as violent and loving as the disease called history with which we infect each other, red and black condoms with the reservoirs cut off. Those who make a manifesto by halves dig their own graves.

-- Joshua Clover & Juliana Spahr on behalf of Hate Socialist Collective.

I only played chess once in my life, and I lost.

2010-09-06T19:54:00.005-04:00

... All of Western faith was engaged in this wager on representation: that a sign could refer to the depth of meaning, that a sign could exchange for meaning and that that something could guarantee this exchange - God, of course. But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say, reduced to the signs which attest his existence? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum - not unreal, but never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.

Jean Baudrillard

=========

An action in the distant past, in a faraway place, by actors now absent, can still be present on condition that it be shifted, translated, delegated, or displaced to other types of actants, those I have been calling nonhumans.

Bruno Latour

Home is where your cellphone is.

2010-08-24T14:32:00.002-04:00

Traveling

2010-08-08T14:03:00.003-04:00

HEAVED FROM THE EARTH
Besmilr Brigham

after the tornado, a dead moccasin
nailed to the pole
boards scattered across a pasture

lying fierce crosses
jagged in mud

had flung itself
nail and wood
the square-head animal
hurled also in air

or as it raced in weeds
)water flowing, water fallling
impaled
both the snake and timber
went flying through the wind

coiled, made a coil (they do
immediately from danger or when hurt
and died in a coil

bit itself
in pain of its own defense the poison

birds
hurled into yard
fences
one with feet tangled gripping
the open wire, a big Jay

struggling from the water
throwing its fanged head
high at the lightning, silent
in all that thunder

to die by its own mouth
pushing the fire thorns in

Madonna anno domini

2010-07-29T01:12:00.008-04:00

Obsessively re-reading C.D. Wright's incredible poem Tours (from her book Steal Away [1982]):

TOURS

A girl on the stairs listens to her father
Beat up her mother.
Doors bang.
She comes down in her nightgown.

The piano stands there in the dark
Like a boy with an orchid.

She plays what she can
Then she turns the lamp on.

Her mother's music is spread out
On the floor like brochures.

She hears her father
Running through the leaves.

The last black key
She presses stays down, makes no sound
Someone putting their tongue where their tooth had been.




Embarking upon a cross-country drive starting Sunday 8/1 with my
friend Scott. Follow our trip.

THE SHAPE OF PUNK TO COME (mixed by sandor krasna)

2010-07-24T15:37:00.007-04:00

Been working on a remix of Refused's 1999 album The Shape of Punk To Come. It's my favorite album of all time - perfectly written, ear-splittingly-heavy, and flawlessly produced. If you're not familiar with it, the allmusic review and wikipedia page are good starting points; you might also check out the album's "single", New Noise:

My remix, made in Ableton Live 8 with samples from TSOPTC and a couple other Refused tracks, is here:

Update

2010-07-17T15:13:00.002-04:00

The ear favors no particular "point of view." We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us. We say, "Music shall fill the air." We never say, "Music shall fill a particular segment of the air."

We hear sounds from everywhere, without ever having to focus. Sounds come from "above," from "below," from in "front" of us, from "behind" us, from our "right", from our "left." We can't shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organized continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships.

Marshall McLuhan, The Medium Is The Massage

========

A quick note: I'm hoping that the posts here will be more frequent, if smaller, for the next few months. I'm using it as a host for observations relating to my senior performance thesis at Amherst this fall, taken from books, movies, and music I'm using in my research. Expect brief updates several times a week.

MIXILLOGICAL

2010-07-15T22:51:00.003-04:00

The mayday signal of Black Atlantic Futurism is unrecognizability, as either Black or Music. Sonic Futurism doesn't locate you in tradition; instead it dislocates you from origins. It uproutes you by inducing a gulf crisis, a perceptual daze rendering today's sonic discontinuum immediately audible...

You are not censors but sensors, not aesthetes but kinaesthetes. You are sensationalists. You are the newest mutants incubated in womb-speakers. Your mother, your first sound. The bedroom the party, the dancefloor, the rave: these are the labs where the 21st C nervous systems assemble themselves, the matrices of the Futurhthmachinic Discontinuum. The future is a much better guide to the present than the past. Be prepared, be ready to trade everything you know about the history of music for a single glimpse of its future.

from the introduction to More Brilliant Than the Sun by Kodwo Eshun

Who speaks through you?

2010-07-06T01:04:00.003-04:00

"... mix culture, with its emphasis on exchange and nomadism, serves as a precedent for the hypertextual conceits that later arrived from the realms of the academy. The mix absorbs almost anything it can engage - and much it can't. In the context of jazz and blues, emotion and catharsis become cyberneticly coded structure. Identification and cathexis: examine the etymology of the word 'phonograph' for a similar logic. Phono/graph means sound/writing, and in an era of rhythm science both serve as a recursive aspects of information collage where everything from person identiy to the codes used to create art or music are available for the mix. It's that simple and it's that complex."

Paul D. Miller (aka Dj Spooky That Subliminal Kid)
Rhythm Science

recap: UNDEAD JAZZ FESTIVAL

2010-06-17T02:23:00.008-04:00

First, it should be said that the first annual Undead Jazz Festival was a resounding success on all fronts: good music, well run, great programming, good venues, low ticket-price, and a warm atmosphere. Major thanks to Adam and James (of Search and Restore) and Bryce Rosenbloom (of boomboomPresents) for all their hard work in putting this together. On behalf of East Coast jazzheads everywhere, we thank you, sirs.

========

A few of my personal highlights*:

URI CAINE ENSEMBLE - U.C., Fender Rhodes; Chris Speed, reeds; Jim Black, drums; Drew Gress, bass; Ralph Alessi, tpt. Forty minutes of loosely-interpreted Mozart and Mahler, arranged for quintet. Simultaneously intense and full of humor; not much room for improvisation, but still a deeply grooving set, driven spastically along by Black and Gress.

MILES OKAZAKI (guitar) / DAN WEISS (drums)

Although their set started slowly, with a less-than convincing bossa-nova, Okazaki and Weiss picked up the pace considerably after they warmed up. (Mr. Weiss had just finished a set in Ralph Alessi’s This Against That, and seemed a bit uncertain at first.) By the time they began one of the guitarist’s swerving, math-y originals, they were hitting full-steam ahead, and continued to chug through one or two more originals, as well as one of Weiss’s half-sung, half-played tabla-to-drumset transcriptions.

ARI HOENIG (drums) / JEAN-MICHEL PILC (Fender Rhodes) / TIM LEFEBVRE (electric bass) / MILES OKAZAKI (guitar)

You know it’s going to be a good set when the drummer warms up by pulling on a rubberized skull mask and screaming menacingly. Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t dare expect less from Ari Hoenig (and his frequent partner, Jean-Michel Pilc) – while the music varies from furiously modern originals to (equally furious) piano-trio standards, it’s always incredibly focused and playful. Hoenig and Co. were in fine shape Saturday night, tearing through a roughly forty-five minute set of improvised electric funk, full of off-beat modulations, incongruity, meter changes, and stop-on-a-dime twists. Pilc was especially playful, flourishing with both hands at the end of each phrase, while LeFebvre brought solid, electronically-augmented low ends. (Okazaki, a surprise addition to the announced trio line-up, alternated between distorted textures and off-kilter ostenatos, adding another layer of rhythmic complexity to Mr. Weiss’s polymetric drumming.)

TIM BERNE (alto sax) / CRAIG TABORN (Fender Rhodes) / DAVID KING (drums)

I’ve been a Dave King fan since catching the Bad Plus’s version of Tom Sawyer on a friend’s radio show a year or two ago; his playing on Taborn’s 2004 release Junk Magic (Thirsty Ear) tastefully balances quirk and backbeat, fitting well in Taborn’s cyber-jazz. The two were joined by King’s Buffalo Collision bandmate Tim Berne on alto. Beginning their set from nothing – hot air from Berne’s saxophone, King’s fingers rubbing drumheads, and the occasional flourish of the Rhodes – the trio progressed quickly upwards, the drums working a simple quarter-note groove against dense keyboard textures and abstract saxophone melodies, soon arriving at an ecstatic, shifting nplateau, only to collapse suddenly into an unaccompanied drum coda. The second piece was more gradual, trending generally towards greater excitement but taking detours: diving into the thicket of Taborn’s looping electronics, for example, or an almost-swinging pseudochorus from Berne. Altogether, this was the most organic set I saw during the festival, as well as the most spontaneous – the group interaction was natural and supportive, and the audience (quite large, given the comparatively dark brand of jazz at hand) responded in kind.

BEN WENDEL GROUP - B.W., saxophones and bassoon; Gerald Cleaver, piano/Fender Rhodes; Nir Felder, guitar; Ben Street, bass; Nate Wood – drums.

Of all the acts at Kenny’s, I was the most surprised by Ben Wendel’s band: I was unfamiliar with the name, and as they were billed as the first set of the entire festival (6:40pm Saturday), I assumed they would be something of a warm-up for the audience. How wrong I was! Wendel’s compositions, very modern and heavily reliant on timbre and unconventional rhythms, are reminiscent of the groups of both John Hollenbeck and Steve Lehman; Felder and Wendel (mostly on saxophone, sometimes with electronics; one short tune featured him on bassoon, a great texture to add to the ensemble) worked the timbral elements seamlessly, while Street and Wood drove the rhythms home.

FIGHT THE BIG BULL

This band wins the “most fun” award: eight-ish guys blowing their hearts out on stage to nail the gutsy, weatherworn, New-Orleans-inflected tunes to the wall. (Sing-a-longs at a jazz festival?!) Memorable (and paint-peeling) solos by Bryan Hooten and Reggie Pace (both tb) and Bob Miller (tpt), over tunes by the guitarist Matt White. Here’s hoping they make it to Western MA soon!

JOSH SINTON’S IDEAL BREAD – Josh Sinton, bari sax; Kirk Knuffke, trumpet; Reuben Radding, bass; Tomas Fujiwara, drums.

Much has been written lately about this band of baritone-saxophonist (and DJA’s Secret-Society-member) John Sinton. Although I found them a bit slow to get started – the second half of their set far outpaced the first – I am coming more and more to enjoy the freedom that the no-chordal-instrument format affords a band; Sinton’s group plays to that freedom, and does it so convincingly that you begin to wonder why exactly anyone plays piano, anyway.

========

BONUS: Have you seen Jason Marsalis's new take on jazz-nerdery? I just want to give him a hug. More (serious) thoughts coming soon.

========

*I was working the camcorder at Kenny’s Castaways both nights, so this list is drawn from those performers. While this regrettably didn’t include people like Steve Coleman & Five Elements or the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, it did expose me to some lesser-known acts I would probably have skipped, like the Black/Noriega/Speed/Gress group Endangered Blood, or Hollenbeck's group the New Mellow Edwards.

This ain't the show, I'm just EQing it.

2010-05-18T16:19:00.004-04:00

Things here have been on hiatus for the semester. Many things have happened, much music has been made, many things have been written.

Right now I'm in the interim between the end of all schoolwork and taking a trip home for a few days. Not much doing, but that's what it is. Trying to let that be.

This summer I'd like to keep this fairly updated. I'm spending a lot of empty time here at school working on my thesis for next year, and with luck that'll get me to put in the time to brew something up every week or so.

For now, though, just a roundup of some things happening around me these days.

========

R.I.P. Hank Jones. I don't know his work well, but I've always liked his playing on the Milt Jackson / John Coltrane Bags and Trane. A Blog Supreme has more.

========

A plethora of new musical projects happening in my world these days. Among those is a new band with my friend Devin (a.k.a. UUords) in his project Death and the Senator. Demo to come soon.

========

Digging heavy on Robert Glasper's recent album Double Booked, particularly the drummer Chris "Daddy" Dave. Catch Dave's trio (w/ Foley and guest Zhenya Strigalev) playing their song "Criss Cross"; note that Foley's playing James Brown's "Licking Stick" while Chris and Zhenya play something that seems totally unrelated (killing!). After a lot of watching, I think the tempo relation is 5/2.

program notes - TRAVEL BY RADIO

2010-02-19T11:36:00.003-05:00

What follows are the program notes from a concert my trio, Travel by Wire, gave in December, in which we played arrangements of six Radiohead recordings. You can download the concert here.

-------

There’s footage online somewhere of Radiohead performing “The National Anthem” on an October 2000 episode of Saturday Night Live. If you consider what the band was known for at this point (namely, writing smart, polite, well-crafted, and extremely catchy rock songs), watching Jonny Greenwood bend over a somewhat-apocryphal Ondes Martenot feels surprisingly like plunging your head into a musical ice bath. Gone are the angst-y lyrics of The Bends and the delicate guitar-work of OK Computer. In are vocoders, racks of complicated home-made electronics, spastic dancing, odd meters, and lots of ambient noise.

Plenty of people argued that the band, fueled by OK Computer-era critical slobbering, grew an ego – that, needing further ego stroking, they were “braining out” to a) get recognition and b) position themselves as high (yet accessible) musiculture. On the other hand, at least as many people were of the opinion that Radiohead had ascended from alt-rock wiseacres to hyper-intellectual Rock Gods the day OK Computer was released, and that, as the last remaining bastion of worthwhile popular music on the planet, critics should kiss whatever musical ground they choose to walk on.
I have a hard time thinking that either of these positions is particularly defensible. (And actually, almost ten years after Kid A’s release, I would bet that most people probably agree with me.) In fact, I think that the more recent (post-Computer) records are more interesting: the melodies are less formulaic, the forms are more complex, the variety is greater, and overall, they are much more, well… interesting now than they were on their early records.

For me, though, the ultimate trump card is the total economy of sound evident in their music. In every arena - melody, harmony, electronics, instrumentation, sound sources, etc. – what is present is all of and only what ought to be present; changing one piece would completely change the song. In a word, their music coheres; it makes sense within each song, within each record, and within their career. If nothing else, Radiohead is tasteful.

So it’s with this in mind that we’ve prepared these songs. These are not necessarily my all-time favorites of Radiohead’s oeuvre, but I have, at one time or another, listened repeatedly and obsessively to each of these. Strangely, though, the only conclusion I’ve been able to draw is to note the similarity to one of Brian Eno’s liner notes in Music for Airports: “Ambient music is meant to give the listener a place to think.” This seems to be the case for these songs as well: I have found that, no matter how many times I listen to them, there is always something fresh, something surprising, something new to be heard.

In our arrangements, a few of these songs have remained truer to their origins than others. Regardless, though, I hope you recognize and enjoy them; I could not have chosen two more competent Amherst musicians with which to perform them.

Max Suechting
Amherst College
December 2009

best of's

2009-12-18T22:53:00.007-05:00

In case you've missed the recent-jazz-internet boat, top-n album lists are the hippest right now. It tends to get a little silly, if you ask me (after a while you realize everyone is listening to the same twenty jazz records released in the last year), but hey - it's a good thermometer. Who am I to judge? Some good ones (not all best-of-09, either), before I get to mine:

JazzTimes top 50
Nate Chinen and Ben Ratliff at the New York Times
Ethan Iverson on canonical AACM
Greenleaf Music (by Jim Tuerk)
... and Steve Lehman guest-posts on Destination: OUT.

I'm not posting a best-of-2009, and certainly not a best-of-2000-2009. Being but a lowly newcomer jazzhead, I think that my list will instead be:

ALBUMS I'VE DISCOVERED IN THE LAST YEAR

1. Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch
I knew Dolphy only as the impressive-yet-enigmatic second reedist on Coltrane's live records. This album is beautiful - too out to be in, yet too in to be out - really shows of Tony Williams' metrical capabilities, as well as killing vibes work by Bobby Hutcherson.

2. Dosh - Wolves and Wishes
Little-known anticon. artist who works mainly with looping electric and acoustic instruments. Kind of like a punkier, funkier Debussy.

3. John Zorn's Masada Quartet - Alef
The first time I've heard Joey Baron play extensively in one context; he kills it, over and over. I am endlessly impressed by his technique, taste, and execution. Zorn is interesting on these tunes as well, and Greg Cohen holds it down well, but aside from Baron, it's Dave Douglas's tasteful harmonies, deliberately constructed solos, and excellent intonation I'm listening for.

4. Vijay Iyer - Tragicomic
Everyone is talking about Iyer's most recent album, Historicity. Don't get me wrong - it's great, and it's been on heavy rotation recently - but I have a sort of stubborn attachment to Rudresh Mahanthappa's playing on Tragicomic, especially given the trio's flawless execution.

5. Squarepusher - Go Plastic
This was the year that I discovered electronica - 'pusher and Aphex Twin, along with Richard Davis on the ambient end, and Technical Itch & Dieselboy on the breakbeat end, have been the soundtrack to many a late work night. Go Plastic somehow manages to combine brilliant melodies ("I Wish You Could Talk") with killer glitch/cut-up breaks & great basswork underneath.

6. Cecil Otter - Rebel Yellow
Walking, talking, well-flanneled proof that hiphop can be poetic, smart, and funny, while still cranking out beats that are simultaneously danceable and interesting. I met Cecil in San Francisco this summer when I interviewed the Doomtree crew; he asked me where he could get coffee. Ah, a man after my own heart.

7. Heernt - Locked in a Basement
Mark Giuliana is one of my favorite drummers on the scene at the moment. This record is like the best of James Brown, sped up to about 160 BPM, and then run head-on into a math class. Bingo.

(edit 02.15.10)

8. Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Since December I've gone into a very pronounced mellow-music phase. Drake's been covered by a whole bevy of jazz musicians (notably Mehldau & co.), and it's a shame that he died before this album - a beautifully-composed and undeniable masterpiece - could really gain any fame.

9. Algernon Cadwallader - Some Kind of Cadwallader
Rocking, but also wonderfully mathy. Punk, but with great harmonies. Lyrics that are goofy, angsty, and (maybe) cliche, but also totally sincere. What else could you want?

10. WHY? - Almost Live from Eli's Room
WHY?, the band fronted by inveterate Oaklander Yoni Wolf (of cLOUDDEAD fame), released a new album this year - Eskimo Snow - which is pretty great (although it's no Alopecia. But on this live-ish release, you get to hear them without all the studio magic that's evident on their other albums.

this week in books and music

2009-11-22T13:59:00.003-05:00

listening:
Anthony Braxton & Leo Smith - Saturn, Conjunct The Grand Canyon In A Sweet Embrace
Bad Brains - Black Dots
The Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Grave
Jason Lindner's Now vs. Now - Jason Lindner Give You Now vs. Now
Christian Scott - Anthem
Thom Yorke - The Eraser
Fred Hersch Trio - Dancing in the Dark

reading:
John Cage - Silence
Graham Lock - Blutopia and Forces in Motion
Richard Kostelanetz - John Cage (ex)Plain(ed)
George Lewis - A Power Stronger Than Itself: A History of the AACM
John Ashbery - A Worldly Country
David Foster Wallace - A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

**

I've been itching to get my hands on the most recent Vijay Iyer album (w/ Stephan Crump & Marcus Gilmore), Historicity, which has gotten absolutely rave reviews from a variety of critics. Expect a review hopefully mid-December, as well as updates to the blogroll and a couple of other features. For now, you can keep up with me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/struckbythewild. With luck there will be a meditation on this as well.

"Annie Hall" vs. Jawbreaker

2009-11-08T11:43:00.001-05:00

"I tell you this because, as an artist, I think you'll understand.

"Sometimes, when I'm driving, on the road, at night, I see two headlights coming toward me, fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel, quickly, into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion, the sound of shattering glass... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."

Ari Hoenig's GIANT STEPS

2009-09-19T15:20:00.000-04:00

re-post: Ethan Iverson/Dave King on RUSH

2009-09-11T09:42:00.004-04:00

(originally posted @ Do The Math...)

Ethan Iverson: Dave, tonight we played Massey Hall. What is "YYZ?"

David King: It is the airport code of Toronto and the "Giant Steps" of rock and roll.

EI: What band played "YYZ"?

DK: Rush.

EI: What were they famous for?

DK: They are a prog-rock power trio that uses iconoclastic playing to create a sound much bigger than three guys. They also made wizard hats sexy.

EI: Who was the drummer of Rush?

DK: Neil Peart was the second and most famous drummer, but on the first record it was John Rutsey.

EI: But Peart is who we mean when we talk about odd-meter mayhem, right?

DK: He was a loud Joe Morello with gongs.

EI: Does Peart have good technique at the drums?

DK: Does the new Pope drink umbilical-cord blood from a satanic chalice?

EI: Yes. Can anyone play faster in seven than Peart?

DK: Probably some obscure Doumbek player, but not many in rock. The thing about Neil Peart that appealed to me (and probably a lot of drummers of my generation) is that he was an active force in creating the sound of the band he was in. He wasn't just a timekeeper. Rush represented a certain freedom of ideas for the drum as a lead instrument in rock and roll.

EI: What are the quintessential Peart performances?

DK: This could be controversial, but my favorite period of Rush and Peart is from 1979's Permanent Waves through 1984's Grace Under Pressure. This was a period of Peart's most progressive playing. From the merging of electronic and acoustic drums to the dark themes of the music, this period represented the most complete realization of Peart's concepts. (This is just my opinion, of course. I don't know much of their music after this period.) There is a fill in the song "Natural Science" that is truly some avant-garde shit. It makes no rational sense in the composition. It reminds me of an interpretation of Chinese box drumming or something.

EI: Why do some people hate Rush?

DK: Because they stole their girlfriends. Seriously, though, I think that any music that doesn't belong to any scene and follows its own path without being concerned with what's cool will naturally turn off a great hunk of the masses. I suppose some people think it's kind of geeky and kind of masturbatory, but I believe it's pretty ballsy to do your own shit without apology.

EI: The Bad Plus is now playing "Tom Sawyer," and you play the Peart drum fill just like on the record.

DK: I play the four-piece kit version. Peart had a 37-piece kit with nine bass-drums when he recorded it, so my version is a little small in comparison. But the intention is strong. I felt you had to pay homage to one of the most recognizable drum solos in recorded history. It's almost like a song in itself. It's like if you covered "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins and didn't do "the fill that brings in the big chorus." You'd get your ass kicked on the street if word got out that you were the doof that thought you could do better. Phil Collins fans are fucking vicious and they will shank you without thinking twice.

brodeo tour journal, part deux: The Adventures of Alice in Waffle House

2009-08-25T16:01:00.006-04:00

8.20 cont'd - After fetching a burrito and drinking a small pot of coffee, I pass out on Sam's couch near 2am-ish.

8.21 - We slowly arise near ten am. Oscar is sleeping on the floor next to me and attempts to cuddle before I eject him from the couch - later, we discover this is because he is still vaguely drunk last night. (Thankfully he lost most of the alcohol he consumed on the lawn in back of the apartment around 4am.) We empty the trunk-sized ashtray in back of the house and wolf down some eggs at a diner near Sam's apartment before getting on the road for Lexington, KY. Indiana proves to be the most boring state in the union, and I nearly lose my mind to a combination of nausea and boredom halfway through the state. Other than this the ride is uneventful and we make it to Lexington with little to do except fall asleep in the motel around midnight. Jedd, Jon, Alex and Ben snag some delightful food at Tally Ho's.

8.22 - We wake up in Lexington and wander around for a while before the show - Ian mails his speeding ticket while we print some flyers to distribute for the show that night at Chaosome. Anthony, the promoter, comes out to say hi to us when we show up a few hours early at the space, and gives us some advice about where to flyer and what to do in town. Some of us hang out a cool coffee shop while the rest of us go to the dreaded Lexington Mall to flyer at Hot Topic. My fear of malls, initially allayed by my excitement to play a show after a couple days of rest, is back in spades; Anthony explains that there isn't much of a scene here outside of the MySpace/HotTopic-sponsored shows (held, for example, at the YMCA and the Christian youth center downtown). The mall fucking sucks so bad it makes my ears ring, and I begin to suspect that there is something to the sentiment that "punk is dead". (More on this later.) We eventually tool back to the coffee shop, run the set acoustically for practice, and then set-up at Chaosome. Zombies rip it (best set thus far, in my opinion) and we do okay as well. Michael and I talk to Anthony about politics, anarchism, property damage, sex work, and the scene - he is an awesome and interesting guy that I would recommend to anyone. The band we played with ("Beyond the Shore") were possibly the biggest group of idiots we have ever come across, for myriad reasons. (Suffice it to say, for the moment, that their music was awful, uncreative, generic, talentless, boring, scene-y rip-offs of As I Lay Dying principally gleaned from whatever crap HotTopic was selling; despite their "positive" message, they were totally disinterested, rude, pushy, ignorant, distasteful jerks. Case in point: after they completely ignore our set, break two strings and call both out bands dicks on mic, Jedd digs out strings from the bottom of the van. They do not thank us. Jon wishes them good luck; they snort and tell him they don't need it. Also, they have terrible haircuts, pink shirts, and Line 6 amps. Fuck em.) After we pack up, I find a Jimmy John's, and we drive to Louisville to crash with a helpful friend of Jedd's and Ben's.

8.23 - Up at 9 am and on the road to Birmingham; stopped at the first Waffle House of the tour, much to my satisfaction. I enjoy a double waffle and we breeze south through the interesting forests of Tennessee and Kentucky (in that order, I think) before entering fairly peaceable Alabama. Alex is driving at this point and the ride has been long enough so I pass out in the back seat for a couple hours before we pull off the highway into Birmingham. Apparently we're in the outskirts because there's no one around - literally, all the streets are completely deserted - but even as we get closer to the center of town we still don't see anyone. We park the car and wander around a little bit until we get accosted by a man yelling about money and race relations in the south; after this, we go back to the car and search for either a) people b) the venue or c) the rest of the band. We find none of these of the first half-hour, at which point we call the owner Greencup Books and eventually park in front of his store. The space turns out to be a sort of mix between a warehouse and a bookstore - huge ceilings, cinderblock walls, industrial shelves, lots and lots of old paperback - and we hang out for a few minutes with the bitter-and-lonely-yet-still-fairly-amiable owner before going in search of coffee. Birmingham continues to be completely unpopulated, but eventually we find the rest of the gang and go hang at the bookstore for a while. I go on a walk and get harassed by a parking ramp supervisor; they go to the liquor store; and then we set up to play in the Foo-Fighters-music-video-esque warehouse space upstairs. Seriously, this is the best place you could imagine having a show. With that in mind, absolutely no one is there - not a soul except us - so we decide to film the show instead. Zombies play, do a nice job and seem to be enjoying themselves (I hit Jedd with a pair of my shorts near their last song); after a little set change, we start to play but are fucking up left and right. This is a major bummer. Then, mid-"Arms", two strange men show up in the back of the room; in the space of about three minutes, one of them vomits his brains out in a trash can, the other lights a joint, and they begin to take crates of musical equipment down the stairs. We decide this is sketchy (ghost town + bitter owner + vomiting + open drug use = ...?) quickly load the van, and get on the road. Eventually we stop for food (Me, Ben and Ian at the ridiculously poorly-staffed Waffle House; everyone else at Taco Bell) and pile into a motel. I fall asleep nearly instantaneously and Oscar is decides to sleep on the ground rather than move me over.

8.24 - Up at ten, checked out at 11 and back to Waffle House. Alex, Oscar and I buy some peaches at a farm stand next door, and we start driving to Gainesville. Michael and I argue about punk music while Ian drives; eventually I (in a huff) give up and fall asleep for a few hours. Apparently southern Alabama is pretty beautiful; I don't remember much of it. I wake up as we pull off the road in Gainesville to say hi to Michael's friend Davis and Keith at their house; after a brief visit we're back on the road to Orlando, this time with me driving. At this point I realize that I have ridden in the Jetta the entire way. We get to Orlando, meet Michael's parents who feed us delicious pasta and bread and soda, go swimming for an hour or so, and then fall into a delicious sleep in a real bed in a real home. This rules.

8.25 - We wake up near noon the next morning. I feel good. Breakfast is coffee and cereal and bagels and awesome; spend the "morning" swimming, reading, hanging, before a minor squabble which is probably not important interesting enough to detail here. We discover our Black Box show is canceled, which sucks, but we move our Stardust show to that night to make up for it. Stardust is a medium-sized and weird place about half an hour from Michael's house that offers us all free drinks; Oscar and I suck down about three Virgil's root beers apiece, while the over-21 gang enjoys some classy microbrews. Jedd somehow manages to open a tab. Zombies play to minor enthusiasm from a group of Michael's parents, friends, and friends' parents; we play to slightly more enthusiasm and jock-ish (yet well-meaning) cries of "YEAH, MICHAEL", "YEAH, BOYS" and "WOOOO!!!". Very fun show. Jedd, Oscar, Ian and I observe a couple of drunk forty-somethings getting down in the (running, lights on) car we're sitting behind for thirty minutes or so. They finish; we give them the slow clap; I feel embarassed for them. Back to Michael's - I eat something, swim a bit, Jedd gets obnoxious, and I go to bed. (Can you spot the emerging theme of this trip yet?) Another good sleep.

8-26 - Up and on the road pretty quick; driving to Columbia, SC to hang out with a couple of Ben's friends, Brendan and Bryce, and their housemates. In a rainstorm on the highway, the antenna (complete with RAGE flag) snaps off of the UHaul. I eat 24 inches of Subway sandwich and a couple donuts. All gas stations in Columbia close at 10pm, and none of them accept British IDs apparently. Everyone goes to a bar except me, Oscar, Michael, and Jon; we decide to watch "Showgirls", which apparently has won awards for being the worst movie of all time. This is entirely justified. I read some Bukowski and wait until everyone else goes to sleep - Ben steals my spot on the futon, the bitch - to pass out on the two-person love seat. In the middle of the night, I try to get to the bathroom and nearly fail, as my legs are entirely asleep.

8-27 - Easy morning lounging around Columbia. Unfortunately I parked the Jetta on top of a huge ant colony, which swiftly invaded the engine and interior, and Ian and Alex have to take it to a car-wash and spray it down with Raid to get rid of them. That problem solved, we get on the road to Greenville, SC, about an hour or two away. I'm driving; at a gas station, Ian refuses the "BEST FRIENDS FOREVER" necklace I bought him. (Bitch.) We make it to The REAL Gypsy and meet up with John, the drummer for Orchard (of the Living), who we're playing with that night. He directs us back to his house, where we meet his partner, Raekan, and eat a huge meal of black beans & rice, tomato salad, and french bread; head back to the venue, load in, and play to a mostly empty bar. Oscar, Cole, Michael and I play a lot of pool and generally chill. We go back to Jon and Raekan's, and half of us fall asleep in their guest room almost immediately, interrupted only by the occasional snout-thrust of one of their dogs.

8-28 - Slow morning again; French toast and coffee with Raekan and John. We go to a Jimmy John's immediately afterwards and I ingest a huge sandwich on top of the 8 pieces of French toast; after this, we go to a coffee shop where we suck down a huge French press of coffee. We visit a toy store and Oscar buys some jeans at a vintage clothing store. Ian speaks with Bad Boi Bobby on the phone for a while about something or other. And eventually, after much waiting around and another Jimmy John's sandwich (AWESOME), we drive over to the Hangar, which turns out to be fucking awesome. It's an old airplane hangar converted into a squat with a loft, a bike workshop, screen printer and heatpress, kitchen, and miniature bookstore. Ryan meets us and helps us load in; at some point between load in and when we go on a TON of kids show up. We're very excited - biggest show of tour yet! So we start to play, and everyone (as far as I can tell) goes crazy: riding bikes into each other, running around with big cardboard garbage cans on their head, beating each other with pillows, and - yes, a dream come true - A MOTHERFUCKIN TRAMPOLINE. We play horribly, but no one seems to notice - though I'm beginning to get a bit fatigued in the arms from playing so much. Zombies play, to much applause; a cool reggae band plays and does a cover of "Pints of Guinness Make You Strong" which everyone fucking loves; and then a high-school-Green-Day-esque punk band plays. Fun times for all. Sadly, we decide to get on the road right away in an effort to split up the 9-hour drive to Baltimore, and I drive for a while before getting sleepy and trading with Oscar. I fall asleep for a while and wake up apparently at the top of a very windy mountain road heading into Roanoke, VA; around 5am we show up at Jedd's friend Jesse's house, and, after some brief introductions, pass the fuck out in her basement.

8-29 - Five hours later, we're on the road again, this time to finish the trip to Baltimore. Mostly uneventful in the Jetta: hummus and cheese lunch break, more Muppets music, one expensive trip to a convenience store for some of us, the beautiful Appalachian Mountains, and then into Maryland. We get to the Charm City Art Space a bit early and hang for a while before loading in; Littlefoot and My Best Friend's Birthday show up and they seem like sweet people. I am in kind of a bad mood for no real reason. Anyway, Tashtego plays to mediocre response, and after we pack up I go to find some food with my friend Matt Lohry who currently lives there - but surprise! we're caught in the remnants of a hurricane and get completely soaked before we can get inside. Moments later I check my phone and see that Ian called to say that the venue flooded mid-Zombies set! We wait out the rain, jump in the car and drive back to the venue to help finish loading the van. Say a brief goodbye to promoter and other bands before heading for New Jersey (3.5 hour drive), where some of our 21+ crew enjoy a little Boone's Farm while I fall fast asleep. Welcome home.

8-30 - Nothing really happens except I go into massive debt trying to pay off tour bills. Life is hard. We play a well-received show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn @ the Charleston; another minor squabble on the way home from said show; and BRODEO2K9 comes to a close.

***

In time I will update the ending of this, but right now I have some other engagements. Good night, sweet prince.

Rashied Ali 1935-2009 // brodeo updates // ... AND MORE BRODEO UPDATES!!

2009-08-19T10:13:00.012-04:00

I haven't had a chance at regular internet access in the past few days so I'm writing this now - if you hadn't heard, jazz legend (and personal hero of mine) Rashied Ali passed away last weekend after suffering a heart attack. His brother Muhammad filled in for him with his band By Any Means at the Newport Jazz Festival last weekend.

Ali was best known as last drummer associated with John Coltrane; he appeared on the last 8 Coltrane recordings, including Meditations, Interstellar Space (my favorite), The Olatunji Concert, and Expression. To my ears, Ali (the successor of the mighty Elvin Jones) is one of the most relentlessly inventive and exploratory drummers in jazz: his playing comes in waves, churning, dissecting, interpreting and reconstructing rhythms and textures pulled from both his own playing and the other members of the group. Patrick Jarenwattananon (at A Blog Supreme) writes this:

Like many, the Coltrane and Ali duet album Interstellar Space was a key to me understanding John Coltrane's much talked-about later work. So much sound, man. What glorious din he produced, seemingly acting as the furnace apparatus behind Coltrane's passionate, gut-level screeching. I still have trouble believing that was just one drummer.

I regret never being able to see Ali live - he's one of the performers I (a bastard-child of both punk and jazz) see as being the most conceptually important to my development as a musician. You can still see his picture at the top of this blog, and it will stay there, I should think, quite a while.

Also see Hank Shteamer (interview), Ethan Iverson, and William Grimes on Ali.

**
As you may have surmised by now, both Tashtego and Zombies Did It are forging our way across country on a mission to bring punk music to the masses. Tour is good. There is much more driving than I had hoped, but I am getting used to it. What follows is a short tour diary.
8.15 - We run the set in Ian's basement and get ready for the first show on our tour - everything sounds okay, looks like we're going to make it out alive. Then Jedd calls - turns out his car is, in a word, totalled. The transmission exploded as they were about to get a trailer hitch installed in Western CT. Thankfully, trusty UHaul mechanic Mike McLaughlin scrounges up a spare van for us for the meager price of $1200. This option, frankly, sucks, but as we think about it we realize that this is basically the only option. Slightly miffed, we pack up all of our stuff and drive over to Cole's parents house in White Plains, NY for a brief pre-show rendezvous with Zombies, then pack up their stuff and drive to somewhere near Yonkers, NY for the gig: a house party for the 25th birthday of one of Cole's friends. In a surprise move, we decide to take only two cars; Alex and I opt to ride in the back of the van with all of our equipment for the ten-minute ride. (In retrospect, this is not a wise decision, considering the volume and weight of our equipment. Actually, it was a horrible decision.) We arrive and see that we're playing in the backyard - strange given the usual volume of our performances (... which is, "loud"). To make a long story short, the police arrive and leave before the end of the first song; after the second, Zombies go on. The birthday boy's Dad runs out during their song and screams at them to stop. Between both bands, there is a total performance time of under ten minutes. Disappointed, we drive home to Ian's house, eat a 2-gallon pot of extremely garlicky chili, and pass out.

8.16 - Tashtego wakes up around 10:30, devours a small mountain of delicious Traditional David Family Challah French Toast Birthday Breakfast (served with champagne) to celebrate Ian's birthday. Ian's dad gives him two cigars. We slowly pile our shit into the car and roll over to Cole's (now in two cars plus a UHaul van). Eventually we leave for Brooklyn (two in the van, seven in Ian's Audi) and show up at Death By Audio approximately two hours early, snag a quick bite at the Williamsburger (...), check out the river, and then load in. Juffage and then Aberrance play - Aberrance is sort of a standard metal band, while Juffage is a loop/effects act. Nice guys all. We begin to set up... I'm nervous as shit, but laughing, and the rest of the guys look a little edgy as well. There's a lot of people here too (notably my highschool friends Matt and Laura, as well as two thirds of the Fertilizers and several of their friends). Thankfully, we shred the gnar. I fuck up a bit on the mathy portion of "Refract" but we pull through okay. Zombies set up, and shred harder than I've seem them do in practice by a factor of about ten... ultra tight, ultra intense, ultra fast, ultra precise. I always watch drummers (bad habit, I know) and Ben is killing it, as is Alex. Jedd is looking hilarious. They finish their set and we are all sweaty and exhausted as fuck. There's a weird picture of all of us outside DBA looking exhausted and sweaty and really stoked. Evan pays us an ungodly amount of money, we whoop and high five, and then we drive to Cole's and crash for the night. Excellent start to the tour.

8.17 - I sleep next to sweet, sweet Jedd after a 3:30 am 7-11 trip. Shockingly, Jedd arises at 9 am and kicks my ass out of bed. Slowly, we all stuff some bagels in our face and then get on the road for Kent, OH. This is probably our longest drive, and we're on the road for roughly seven or eight hours (depending on how you count it and whether or not you made a huge accidental detour to northern New York. After roughly seven and a half hours in the car we arive at the Europe Gyro, a semi-run-down bar in the middle of (the apparently deserted) metropolis of Kent. We're hanging out for two hours before our scheduled load-in, but the promoter never showed up... luckily, one of the barmaids agrees to let us perform anyway. Two other bands (one local band I don't remember and one touring band from Florida called the Winslows) hop on the bill. The local band is terrible, the Winslows are pretty good, Tashtego plays okay, and Zombies shred as usual. I am beginning to get more and more interested in their set every night - so much precision. Cole's bass amp nearly starts on fire just before their set. We roll to Jon's parents house for the night, and I crash hard as hell on the other end of the sofa from Alex.

8.18. - When I get up the day is half over, so for the next nine hours I constantly feel like I'm in a state of limbo. Suffice it to say, little happened except we drove to a shitty KOA campground in South Bend East, IN, and fell asleep for the night. Michael got toasted and talked about the size of his johnson. A good time was had by all.

8. 19 - We wake up in the campground to the sound of trucks and kids on souped-up big wheels. Life is hard. I'm up two hours early due to sharing a sleeping bag with Oscar, so I walk down to the CVS and the gas station for some morning fun and shit-flavored coffee. The lady at the KOA counter tries to charge Alex another $35 for the 7 extra people we have; Alex refuses; we get the fuck out of the campsite and drive to a Perkin's. Michael throws up in the bushes near Perkin's and then lies down near it; this is hilarious. Perkin's sucks, but we pay anyway and get back in the cars on the road for Lake Villa, Illinois. We drive around Chicago (Cole nearly pisses himself with excitement) and drive into Lake Villa, which turns out to be just a huge, huge, huge fucking mall, two or three interstates, and an old hookah bar known as "Swing State." Swing State is a very interesting place: combo hookah bar, re-sale Ramen, semi-pro sound-people, drunk car-fucking-teenagers, strippers-to-be, and dirty backyard. Ian, the proprietor, sticks his head out the window and tells us to come back in four hours, so, to fill the time, we go to Gurnee Mills and attempt to flyer for the show. Hilarity ensues: we find a store where you pay to have fish nibble on your feet; Ben tries on cowboy pants with the help of an old white man named Arvin; Jedd gets his hat embroidered with "Ian David"; I hope to die before we leave the 40-acre "Outdoor World"; the smokers smoke more cigarettes than I thought was reasonable, nay, even possible in that period of time; it begins to rain balls and we all get soaked on the way to the car. Undaunted, we return to the venue, set-up, and rock the shit out of Swing State - it's the best show of our tour thus far. Zombies go on and (in my opinion) play a fine set, though they are not satisfied with it - to their credit they go off to have a very serious conversation about their set. (Jedd gets drunk - surprise!) Oscar buys me dinner at T.G.I. Friday's despite my sweaty, heaving bulk. We return, thank Ian (the venue owner) and Oscar, Jedd and I climb back into the van for the night.

8.20 - I sleep like fucking hell all night. This is possibly because of the corrugated metal bottom of the van. Ben wakes us up, I feel like crap, and we go to IHOP. The dude a few tables down gets ice cream for his birthday; promptly, Jedd tells the waitress it's my birthday and they deliver some ice cream with a song. (Incidentally it's also my golden birthday.) Michael doesn't throw up in the parking lot, which is a pleasant surprise. We all get in the cars and boogie to Chicago to visit one of Cole's friends, Laura, who designs jewelry for a living. We ride in a taxi to downtown Chicago and stuff two huge pizzas into our faces at Giordano's. Jedd is unhappy about this "deep dish" version of pizza. After this we go to Millenium Park and then to the pier before hopping on a train to hang out at Reckless Records - I buy two Keith Jarrett LPs ("Koln Concert" and "Shades") and a Chick Corea LP ("Piano Improvisations") for ten bucks. Then we hike back to Laura's, thank her profusely, and bounce to our friend Sam's for the night (Jedd complaining quite a bit about driving through a less-than-ideal neighborhood).

Tashtego - BRODEO 2k9 //

2009-07-31T02:37:00.002-04:00

TASHTEGO tour dates (w/ ZOMBIES DID IT!)

Aug 16 2009

9:00P

DEATH BY AUDIO w/ Juffage, Tashtego

Brooklyn, New York

Aug 17 2009

8:00P

EuroGyro Kent w/ Tashtego

Kent, Ohio

Aug 18 2009

8:00P

THE CREEPHOLE w/ Juvenescent Beat, To Fear the Wolf, J. Quentin, Tashtego

Michigan City, Indiana

Aug 19 2009

8:00P

SWING STATE w/ Tashtego and friends

Lake Villa, Illinois

Aug 22 2009

8:00P

TBA

Lexington, Kentucky

Aug 23 2009

8:00P

GREEN CUP BOOKS w/ Tashtego

Birmingham, Alabama

Aug 24 2009

8:00P

TURNING POINT YOUTH COLLECTIVE w/ Tashtego

Daytona Beach, Florida

Aug 25 2009

8:00P

TRANSITIONS ART GALLERY w/ Tashtego

Tampa, Florida

Aug 27 2009

8:00P

THE REAL GYPSY w/ Orchard of the Living, Tashtego

Greenville, South Carolina

Aug 28 2009

8:00P

TBA

Richmond, Virginia

Aug 29 2009

8:00P

CHARM CITY ART SPACE w/ The Snallygasters, Tashtego, and friends

Baltimore, Maryland

Aug 30 2009

8:00P

THE CHARLESTON w/ Tashtego

Brooklyn, New York

Tashtego demo available here.

**

Review on the way of the most recent Eyedea & Abilities record, By the Throat. In the meantime you can cop it at the Fifth Element Online. In addition, New Jersey/Massachusetts/Midwest/West-Coast supergroup the Fertilizers just dropped the Insemination EP, including several minor vocal appearances from wunderkind D. M. Paul. Look for a new track before the end of the summer.

R.I.P. Merce Cunningham

2009-07-28T03:41:00.009-04:00

Merce Cunningham dies at age 90.

**
Also of (less morbid) interest recently - Ted Panken talks with Jack DeJohnette as well as Brian Blade.

**
a borrowed practice:
1. John Cage - Imaginary Landscapes No. 1
2. Aesop Rock - Getaway Car
3. Alvin Curran - pt. 1 of Crystal Psalms
4. Ornette Coleman - Eventually

excerpts from Nyman's "Experimental Music" // Fluxus manifesto

2009-07-20T01:48:00.008-04:00

from the forward, written by Brian Eno:
"...if this was 'experimental music', what was the experiment? Perhaps it was the continual re-asking of the question 'what also could music be?', the attempt to discover what makes us able to experience something as music. And from it, we conclued that music didn't have to have rhythms, melodies, harmonies, structures, even notes, that it didn't have to involve instruments, musicians and special venues. It was accepted that music was not something intrinsic to certain arrangements of things - to certain ways of organizing sounds - but was actually a process of appreheneding that we, as listeners, could choose to conduct. It moved the sity of music from 'out there' to 'in here'. If there is a lasting message from experiemental music, it's this: music is something your mind does."

on Cage's 4'33":
"...when Tudor does not need to make sounds to give a musical performance; when Cage declares 'Let the notations refer to what is to be done, not to what is heard, or to be heard'; when Ashley refers to time, not sounds, as the ruling metaphor of music; and when the slow-motion procedure of Kosugi's Anima 7* could be applied to any action - then we realize that in experimental music sounds no longer have a pre-emptive priority over not-sounds. Seeing and hearing no longer need to be considered separately, or be combined into 'music theatre' as an art-form separate from, say, instrumental music...4'33" is not a negation of music but an affirmation of its omnipresence. Henceforward sonds ('for music, like silence, does not exist') would get closer to introducing us to Life, rather than Art, which is something separate from Life."
*The instructions for Anima 7 read, "Perform any action as slow as possible."

on Cage and indeterminacy:
"...this put into practice Cage's ideas about non-harmonious ness which helped to bring about two conditions he desired - unimpededness and interpenetration. These are oriental concepts hich D. T. Suzuki saw as distinguising European thinking where 'things are seen as causing one another and having effects', from oriental thinking where 'this seeing of cause and efect is not emphasized but instead one makes an identification with what is here and now'. Cage further described unimpededness as 'seeing that in all of space each thing and each human being is at the centre and furthermore that each one being at the centre is the most honored one of all,' and adds: 'Interpenetration means that each one of these most honored ones of all is moving out in all directions penetrating and being penetrated by every other one no matter what the time or what the space,' so that 'there are an incalculable infinity of causes and effects, that in fact each and every thing in all of time and space is related to each and every other thing in all of time and space.'"

the following are scores for several pieces by Takehisa Kosugi:
THEATRE MUSIC
Keep walking intently.

MUSIC FOR A REVOLUTION
Scoop out one of your eyes 5 years from now and do the same with the other eye 5 years later.

ANIMA 2
Enter into a chamber which has windows.
Close all the windows and doors.
Put out different parts of the body through each window.
Go out from the chamber.
The chamber may be made of a large cloth bag with door and windows made of zippers.

on Cage's 0'00", an electronic version of 4'33":
"The best known realization of this piece was described as follows by Calvin Tomkins: 'The high point of the evening came when Cage gravely put a throat microphone around his neck, turned up the amplifier all the way, and drank a glass of water. Each swallow reverberatoed through the hall like the pounding of giant surf.'"

***

Music of the week // Michael Nyman - Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond // the Bad Plus - Semi-Simple Variations (Babbitt)

2009-07-16T14:27:00.004-04:00

On rotation this week, in two sentences or less:

James Brown - Revolution of the Mind: Live at the Apollo Vol. 3
The incredible organization, theatrics, and orchestration of James Brown's live shows is paralleled only by the un-fuckin-shakeable dynamics and follow-through of his band. If I had to pick one man to be the Keeper of the Eternal Groove, Brown is it.

The Gang Font feat. Interloper - S/T
Members of Husker Du, the Bad Plus, Happy Apple, and the "ubiquitous" Craig Taborn. Psychotic mathjazz; total mindfuck.

Themselves - theFREEhoudini
So many featured MCs - Slug, Buck65, and Aesop Rock, just to name a few. Jel and Dose bring the funky noisy jams, and, as always, are complimented by Dose et al's witty lyrics and flawless flow.

Vijay Iyer - Tragicomic
Just wrapped up an interview with Vijay (for CNMAT purposes) the other day, actually - brilliantly intelligent guy, very pleasant to talk to. Great playing on this record by Marcus Gilmore in particular (drummer, yeah, whatever) - the oscillation between rhythmic indelicacy and precision is an excellent companion to Iyer's (and saxman Rudresh Mahanthappa's) angular, Monk-ish melodies.

The Beatles - (the White Album)
Uh. Some things never, ever get old.

Marty Ehrlich/Myra Melford - Spark!
I've seen Marty play once (in duo w/ Amherst Professor of Music Jason Robinson), but listening to this album really opened my ears to him and pianist Melford (another CNMAT associate). I commented to Jason today that I often hear strains of folk music in Marty's (extremely melodic) playing - that comes out here as well, but the duo setting brings forth a really rhythmic, percussive interaction.

***

In other news - my infatuation with contemporary classical music continues. I've been reading Michael Nyman's excellent book, "Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond." It's interesting to see him systematically dissect something that (to me, at least) seems to anti-system (i.e., anti-conclusion) and pro-question. Ach, but I'm philosophizing again. Forgive me.

***

Kerouac & Burroughs, on writing

2009-07-11T02:11:00.003-04:00

From Wikipedia:

He [Kerouac] would go on for hours, often drunk, to friends and strangers about his method. Allen Ginsberg, initially unimpressed, would later be one of its great proponents, and indeed, he was apparently influenced by Kerouac's free flowing prose method of writing in the composition of his masterpiece "Howl". It was at about the time that Kerouac wrote The Subterraneans that he was approached by Ginsberg and others to formally explicate exactly how he wrote it; how he did Spontaneous Prose. Among the writings he set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty "essentials":

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
Submissive to everything, open, listening
Try never get drunk outside your own house
Be in love with your life
Something that you feel will find its own form
Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
Blow as deep as you want to blow
Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
The unspeakable visions of the individual
No time for poetry but exactly what is
Visionary tics shivering in the chest
In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
Like Proust be an old teahead of time
Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
Accept loss forever
Believe in the holy contour of life
Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
You're a Genius all the time
Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

***

From Burroughs' Naked Lunch:

There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing ... I am a recording instrument ... I do not presume to impose "story" "plot" "continuity" ...Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function ... I am not an entertainer.

A little further on:

The title was suggested by Jack Kerouac. I did not understand what the title meant until my recent recovery. The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch - a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.

***

Michael Jackson // Cage - "Depart From Me" // Jack DeJohnette (w/ Danilo Perez and John Pattitucci) - "Music We Are"

2009-06-27T17:46:00.008-04:00

Michael Jackson, 1958-2009.

A couple of my roommates and I were discussing the unfortunate (and, by all accounts, strange) demise of Jacko. Nate Chinen began to draw an interesting comparison between the death of Jackson and the death of Charlie Parker, though who knows how this will play out; similarly, Ethan Iversen provided a forum for a varieties of obits for the pop superstar.

As for me - I don't have much to say about Jackson himself, except that I never really cared for his music. Of course, the truth behind this is that I was never exposed to much of his music as more than a curiousity - in an where "pop music" is synonymous with "commercial music," the title carries little weight with me (and probably most people of my generation, as well). So it's unfortunate that I, jaded by hundreds of Jackson's musical descendents, have never really understood or appreciated an artist so widely hailed.

***

Cage - Depart From Me (7/7/09)

I like Cage. I like Cage a lot. I like El-P a lot as well. I like Aesop Rock; I like Yak-Ballz; I like Camu Tao (R.I.P.). I like the whole Weathermen outfit. They're tight, they're funny, they're exactly the group of guys I wish I had fallen in with during high school.

But this new record - a copy of which I, after trekking through the swamps of New York's finest inter-webx0rz threads, have tracked down - is a lot different from the Cage I know and loved - first on the excellent Hell's Winter, and then on his earlier singles, including "Radiohead" and "Agent Orange."

On Hell's, he's bitter, sarcastic, tragic, funny, and clever; on the earlier tracks, he's a banger, a shock-rapper, way more edgy. Allow me to illustrate my point:

Ya see? These are great. He's in your face, the production (though it couldn't be different from era to era) is right on track with him. Bam.

On the other hand, this is the first single of his new record (video directed by Shia LaBeouf):

Let it be known that I like this song. I like the video well enough. And I like the new album enough to listen to it a few times. But there's something amiss here: why the fuck is he sneering like that? And what's with the pearl-fly, bro? Where's the cigar and Yankees hat? And who the fuck hired ex-Hatebreed guitarist Sean Martin?

I don't really know what else to say. Cage still hits the emotional nail on the head, covering all sorts of fucked-up stories from his days as Stony Lodge Hospital, his fucked-up mom, his sincerely fucked-up dad, and so forth. And the songs that on any other record would have been horrifically cutesy ("Kick Rocks" and moments on "Teenage Hands") are here actually pretty damn funny. His delivery on tracks like "Dr. Strong" and "I Found My Mind in Connecticut" is somehow both hilarious and really, really depressing. And the only truly disappointing parts are "Beat Kids" and "Depart From Me".

But there's no cohesion. The album lacks major handholds or anything real solid to take away from it. It's like a Cage appetizer. End of review.

(And God, fire Sean Martin.)

***

Jack DeJohnette - Music We Are

It's hard to listen to Jack DeJohnette without wanting to go practice drums. (For me at least. Go figure.) Danilo is similarly exciting - inventive, melodic, tasteful. To me, both of these players have always seemed to be absolutely the definition of organic: flowing; emotive; and intelligent. (Forgive me: John Pattitucci I have never dug as hard. This is my fault, not his - I simply haven't listened to many of his records.)

In the DVD that accompanies this CD, DeJohnette emphasizes just this - the naturalness of their work together. Reminds me a bit of Keith Jarrett and his whole standards thing, actually (go figure, right) - being liberated by a structure instead of tied down by it. This kind of model seems to draw a lot on Coltrane's middle-late period stuff (Crescent, A Love Supreme, etc.) for its formal inspiration: loose guidelines. More a drawing than a diagram.

This organization must feel great to play, but I fear it transfers less well to tape. There isn't a bad idea on the whole record - not one - but rather, there are too many good ideas, too many cooks in the kitchen. There isn't ever a misstep...but there are way too many steps.

Perhaps I am being opaque. What I mean to say is: there is simply too much going on here, at least for my ears. Jack plays so many great rhythmic ideas that it seems a shame for them to drift off undeveloped as they seem to do so frequently. It's as if they can't decide between James-Brown-groove and Ali/Coltrane-free-improv.

I am, of course, painting with absurdly wide strokes. (It's almost midnight. Gimme a break.) There are some great moments: the quietly ponderous "Earth Prayer" is a wonderfully colorful meditation, featuring some great textures by DeJohnette and Perez (and perhaps a touch too much arco from Pattitucci); "Panama Viejo" is similarly well-drawn and surprisingly spare. This is the trio I want to hear more of - for this, I would happily sacrifice some of the overpoweringly rhythmic Pattitucci/DeJohnette grooves of "Cobilla" and "Seventh D" (1 and 2).

It's not a bad listen, but...frankly I've heard better ensemble playing from all these players.

***

Reviews coming up:
Eyedea & Abilities - By The Throat
Vijay Iyer - Tragicomic

***

It's hot in Berkeley. I keep seeing the same homeless guy everywhere. Sir, if you read this, please stop following me, it's giving me nerves.

***

2009-06-21T23:57:00.002-04:00

One of the most blessed things about moving away for the summer has been the lack of distractions for me. Something about the emptiness of the day drives me away from wasting time: you can only check your email so many times a day before your eyes begin to bleed, I guess, and for the first time I feel completely enveloped in the things that I am doing here.

Which, I will agree, are not the most strenuous of pastimes. Today, for example, I spent eight hours sawing out parts of an old metal cart and hammering nails into the cover of a rusty wok. Then I read a good chunk out of Ekkehard Jost's Free Jazz (nearly done now). Maybe what I mean to say is, in facing a vacuum I have become much, much more productive than I was expecting.

So that's good.

***

After high school, my taste for quality "songwriting" has really waned. Of course I listen to a lot of non-improvised music - some of my favorite music of all time is "pop" music - but...something about composed popular music turns me off. I always find it a little kitschy, a little cartoonish, a little cliche.

With that in mind, there's two great indie rock bands out and around right now that I highly recommend: AlasNoAxis, featuring great jazz drummer Jim Black, and Champagne Downtown, with a roster of punk, jazz and indie greats from present and past.

The AlasNoAxis record that's been spinning here is "Dogs of Great Indifference." Saxophonist Chris Speed opens the record with a long, gentle sax solo on the slow Oddfelt; Black, on brushes, Hilmar Jennson (guitar), and bassist Skuli Sverissen slowly join him for a drawn out (but decidedly engaging) meditation. Subtle group counterpoint continues throughout the album: the track Tars and Varnish is one of my favorites, as well as the long jam Everybody Says the Same.

Halloween, Alaska is James Diers (voice, keys, guitar), Matthew Friesen (electric bass), Jacob Hanson (guitar, keys, voice) and David King (acoustic + electronic drums). (King is a veteran of many a Minneapolis band, including, notably, the Bad Plus, Happy Apple and the Gang Font.) Their album Champagne Downtown is much more traditionally rooted than the ANA record, but somehow more compelling than your typical faux-poetic indie fare. I dunno, maybe it's just my Dave King fetish, but this has been on a lot.

***

A guide to the SFL blogroll.

2009-06-20T03:56:00.003-04:00

The blogs on the right side of this window are all pretty great; admittedly I read some of them more than others, but this is mostly due to my lack of serious credentials rather than any deficiency in the material. Short reviews:

About Last Night is a good blog partly run by music critic Terry Teachout. I am just beginning to read this.

Alex Ross is the author of a wonderful book on 20th century music called The Rest Is Noise and a blog of the same name.

Thom Yorke and the rest of Radiohead blog at dead air space.

destination: OUT has good contemporary/experimental jazz criticism as well as long lists of resources (radio stations, musicians/ensembles, record labels, and so forth) for the aspiring jazzhead.

DO THE MATH is the blog of the Bad Plus (usually in the person of Ethan Iverson). An excellent critic and generally a really funny fellow.

Er, Hey Wakka Wakka! is the less-updated portion of my friend Allen Hsieh's online presence.

Highway 41 Revisited is never edited by myself or the other two contributors. Fuck em.

Two of my favorite jazz mp3 blogs are inconstant sol and pharaoh's dance.

I should hope Jazz.com is self-evident.

Steve Coleman's M-Base Blog, while updated less than I would like, is a good inlet to the thoughts behind experimental jazz.

MUTANT SOUNDS is a blog of weird old mp3s.

A Blog Supreme is one of several NPR jazz blogs.

Jazz critic Nate Chinen edits @ THE GIG, an excellent source of new material for me. (Excellent article on Jim Black recently, 6.20.09.)

High school friend Josh Wismans used to write @ this is a movie blog.

We Walked on to look for America is home to the travel journal of friends Scott Smith and Sara Draper-Vizetz.

And, finally, You Are What You Hear is, well, a music blog.

***

2009-01-01T21:37:00.003-05:00

I'm back from the New Year's party at my grandparent's house... very pleasant. Nice to hang out with a few of my brother's friends that I don't see much. They're good kids, I like 'em. And maybe they keep Zack a little bit on his toes.

I was reading this book by Juliana Spahr, Response (PDF here), and found myself really enjoying it despite the obvious post-modern/avant-garde-y-ness of it. Her writing mirrors what Joshua Clover said somewhere about poetry - just like music or visual art, poetry/language deserves to be freed from the constrains of its history. (Or something like that.) In any case, her poems are very long - twenty-plus pages - and very conceptually thick, but still really captivating, particularly the first one in the book, Responding.

That approach is something that I find myself more and more drawn to these days. I'm less and less drawn to write poems or play music strictly within a tradition, at least for any period of time. I'm more interested in art where everything is permitted (oh Ivan Karamazov!), where what I doesn't have any limits, can encompass anything. A piece in which life and death are called into question, where the artist/audience thrusts the audience/artist out of the reverie of daily life. I'm tired of art about emotions, or art about beauty. Why bother?

That's why noise, as a genre, is interesting to me, or free jazz...it's that tie to Dada, the realization of every possibility and every choice one makes, the fulfillment of the freedom of the artist. Idiom-heavy artwork doesn't seem very interesting to me anymore.

And it's struck me more and more that really what I want out of artwork is not answers. I don't want an opinion, I don't want a point-of-view - what I want is questions and artwork that puts pressure on the discussion of those questions. I want to prod the shit out of people, I want an audience to REACT more than I want them to like what I do. My music, my poetry - they should get inside the heads of people, they should shift their consciousness, even if only a little bit.

Anyway. I'm listening to Nirvana right now - Nevermind - and along with the trip to my grandparents' house I feel like I'm in middle school again. This morning I was thinking about how weird it is to be walking up the path to our neighbor's house again...I used to always be hanging out in their kitchen but now I'm almost never there.

I feel weird about this post. Huh.