Roden iTunes

Idly typed Roden into the iTunes search box the other week, and was surprised to find that some items came up: for some reason I hadn't put the two together in my mind. (Maybe he'll start ping!ing soon :))

A coupleof full albums:

Airforms: a 56 minute drifting piece with layers of ringing tones, soft crackles and vinylish jumps, humming that drift in and around the soundspace. Designed for an installation, it is like the accompaniment for a satellite as it slides off into space, for Major Tom after the song ends, playing into the eternity of darkness between the stars. This is one of the recordings where Roden asks us to listen at a low volume level to underscore that these were works designed to accompany an environment, and that your current environment would do just fine (I have just listened again on a walk with my dog through some of our country roads); and that the lack of narrative structure is part of the aesthetic aims of the piece. Play it loud, soft; dip in, out - understated beauty. (This is out of print so good to see here).

With Kahn, Roden took up one of the Brombron residences at Extrapool to create a collaborative disk (shimmer/flicker/waver/quiver). A recycled review - This is an album of contrasts: the first track has a hissy drone, bubbling, washes over which high sines and soft echoes ply, gradually increasing density before dropping to modulating white noise and tones with deep sounds within. Then the second has an intense rising/falling ringing sweeping from ear to ear, percussive bass taps and morse signals & ringling in, but it is the tone which dominates before dropping out for some percussion in the last minute. Track three reminded me of Harold Budd's broody desert pieces, low rumbling, clicks, hollow bells, soft whispering dust extended over some time. Then followed by another more intrusive piece, hissing and resonant gongs, chopped, phased and echoed, bleeps and scapes in, burring. Next, very minimal white vent noise, pulsing, squeaky tones in, developing a beat, swirling. Then finally a soft burring ring, high tone -a forest at night - distant tones, static. A collaboration that explores new and interesting (intense) ground.

And the Mem1 compilation from a few blogs ago, and then some other bits and pieces:

Cosmic Debris Vol2 is part of a series of split disks between My Cat Is An Alien and whoever. Roden offers 2 tracks: E-bows and Rainbows pairs skittery swirling radio signals with e-bow drone tones that pulse and grow, with a vibrato that develops over time. The guitar is also plucked, and the slow sequence of notes is like a frozen melody. Thirteen minutes of evolving Roden. My dog is a yufo reveals another new side - a gentle, picked melodic guitar over a sample of 'It's working' in a scratchy distant voice. The voice disintegrates away to a new solo, combining strums and picking, with white noise hisses of a sample. The guitar simplifies and the sample returns. The track ends, then returns with hissy quiet tune which could be thumb piano or guitar.

Sleppet is a fairly expensive compilation of soundworks which is best described in Mrac Behrens album of the same name Sleppet originated from a sound art project in 2007, when six renowned artists — Natasha Barrett, Bjarne Kvinnsland, Steve Roden, Chris Watson, Jana Winderen and Marc Behrens — recorded sounds on a 10-day trip through the Norwegian Westlandet region and used the nature experience for a couple of sound installations and music pieces. 9 of the tracks are available individually, so I bought Three Landscapes, Pt. II (A Waterfall for Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson), a nine minute work. The natural origin is foregrounded with a distant buzzing (the waterfall?), clattering and scrapes, some quite watery. Into this an organ drone/tone intrudes, filling the middle section, then fading in the last minute leaving the nature samples. Some of the most upfront natural sounds in one of his works.

From what I can tell, Mika Sasaki creates short melodies using a mobile phone's 'musical' possibilities and Memories of Sasaki San contains some of these and remixes by a range of names. My Sea / Mice See is Roden's offering - a 3 minute gem. White noise cycles from ear to ear, chimes ring over it (the phone tones), a deep throb vibrates through, then halfway though his voice in chopped up phonemes singing and whispering (mice might be in there). A strange menacing air here.

These tracks see Roden stretching out, trying new developments and are fascinating addition to the oeuvre.

jeffrey roden: bridge to the other place

I have reviewed some of Jeffrey Roden's previous works - here on the blog. He plays bass guitar, solo.

In the backlog pile is (was, now) his Bridge to the other place, a set of 25 tracks averaging just over 2 minutes each. In the liner text he says he wanted to reduce (his) own work to the elemental and essential text. The result is a simply beautiful work - with both meanings of simple. The work is meditative, ambient inducing a contemplative mood in the auditor, suggested by track titles such as vigil, steps in deliberation, the voice that carries, oh god, acquiesence and more.

The slow travel of the notes recorded live, are like musical steps taken by a pilgrim, which occasionally break into a short dance, or move in unexpected directions, not detracting from the objective but rather adding depth and light to the journey. The album is recorded to allow the resonance of the notes and guitar to glow, and suggests that the decay was one aspect feeding into the composition.

You can sample a couple of tracks at Big Tree Music, and purchase the album. I recommend having a listen because this is a gorgeous album: and like the trend in slow food and living, we should find time for slow music that grows and develops carefully and thought(provoking)ful(ly).

Preslav Literary School - 4 releases

A couple of years ago I looked at 3 of Preslav Literary School's (Adam Thomas) releases (here) and now 4 more. A mix of downloads and a vinyl release.

Aura (amp046): Originally recorded for a dance performance it includes "a piano piece..., the words of Carlos Fuentes, odd environmental recordings, elements taken from decaying magnetic tape, and various other forgotten and untitled audio materials". The results is a delightful 3 act piece with an epilogue. The first (and third) partfeature the piano piece, possibly slowed and manipulated, loops from Fuentes (who has a high, almost feminine voice) and bursts of crackles which could be applause. The central section has metallic drones and minimal drones, with a developing percussive loop. The voice part returns with the piano before the scraping and twangclatter, tone fade out. Slightly melancholic, but more gentle relaxed, a lovely composition.

Beautiful was the time: is a layering of fragments from over 100 cassette tapes. John the Exarch starts with a noisy crackle then settles down to backward instruments and voices, a soft talking in the background, and seems to slowly wind down, becoming a drifting pulse. Crackling again, and a fast pulse, opens Ohrid must die - building with birds whistles, voices and breakfast crackling, shifting to pulsing layers of varying speeds, a dog barks, music loops within and clattering pans and voices intrude towards the end. Funereal music opens Cyrillic, singing voices and other music drifts around, and a more gentle mood, reminiscent of Aura, envelops. Voices chattering at the end dispel the mood and close the album, with a satisfying reflection of the sampled origin. These pieces contain a strong narrative and subtle use of the original material, rather than being simple cutandpastes.

In Fractals: is a more straightforward composition. There are three minimalist drone pieces: as the name suggests, there are subtle changes throughout which you don't notice until you realise the balance or beat has changed - plus there are some strategic changes. The title track has a drone, a pulsing white noise and a subtle minimal melody; Sierpinski Triangle starts with a distantsounding hurdygurdy tone (or orchestral sample or ...), phasing in and out, but becoming clearer, a tuvan-drone, all rising as a martial beat seems to develop, but sounding like an underwater masterpiece. And finally Last One Standing is a mellow ceremonial layering of drones and pulses that weave in and out, some backwards shimmery and ringing parts, and like the others slowly build/changes/develops. Classical minimal drone works.

Echolalia: this is the concert result of a tapeloop workshop held late last year on how to make and play cassette tape loops. 11 people were involved and the result reflects this diverse 'band' - each side consists of a series of moments where different loops take a solo, supported by background work, running for about 3 minutes before segueing into the next piece. The tapes range from snatches/slices of voices, songs, instruments, percussions, tones, backwards versions of all the previous; and while there may be 11 players, there seem to be about 4 or 5 layers maximum. A surprising and satisfying aspect is that it was mixed and mastered as it was played live, with no extra overdubs, by the cult Berlin dubstep producer Lord Cry Cry (Blunt Force Trauma): the two sides work so well, flowing seamlessly while maintaining a mood, which is very impressive - you might have expected a mess! And there is a difference between the two sides - Side B seems to have more vocal and musical elements to me - and they each end on a single sample: A on some ethnic-inflected rock and B on a worrying how-to-hunt-elk tape.

This is a fascinating body of work - the thought of tapeloops can sometimes be daunting, but PLS whether solo or with his collaborators on Echolalia, manage the layering editing and selection to produce sounds which are intriguing, seductive and musical. In addition, you don't have to buy before you try - all can be previewed/streamed as linked or on soundcloud, and all but Echolalia are available as free/paywhatyouthink downloads. A very generous gesture - I must admit to having reviewers soft-versions, but the real life releases look like they would be well worth getting.

(now, I have to get preslav sprout out of my mind)

Paul Kelly A-Z and more apps

OK - a short geeky iPhone post while the music matures - there's a few reviews on the boil - promise.

Some years ago &etc readers were alerted to the fact that Paul Kelly, Australian singer/songwriter, was giving away an alphabet of live songs monthly (ie the first month's songs all had titles beginning with A, then B etc) from a stripped-down concert series. Not a fan, but I collected them to get to know the music - slightly older than him, his music has been around the airwaves (jj to jjj) and on Countdown etc. Well now the set has been released as a box of CDs The A to Z recordings (somewhat different to the downloads, there are variations between the 2 sets, and the management company tell me that songs are different versions or remastered). Also there is a book How To Make Gravy - for each song a short piece, which might be about the song, could be a memoir or just about music, or all of the above. And there is also an App: you get the text of the book, which is as expected, but also the program can survey your iTunes library and select versions of the song you are reading about and you can play them at the same time (there are also some chapters available as readings by Kelly, and you get the first six songs free). A nice integration of the formats. The music is great, the writing is engrossing and the flexibility is nice (the iPhone is a hell of a lot easier to carry round than the book!) As I said, I wasn't a Kelly fan, but the downloads have brought me to the book & I'll be adding some full group albums to my collection too as he is a fabulous wordsmith as well as being a great Aussie singer/musician.

Other Apps I use regularly

Music

The three from Brian Eno's Opal group: Bloom, Air and Trope - great as either ambient background or 'instruments' to play with, and they have a pleasant generative vision as well. Each has a different sound palette.

FutureAcoustic: I am not sure about the noise-cancelling impact of these, but FutureSound and SoundCurtain are more nice ambient aleatoric pieces. The first uses soundworks created by various artists (including Scanner) to create soundworlds, the second is more related to natural ambient sounds. (Scanner's Whisper is available as a free 'single')

Noises

I don't make music but sometimes amuse myself by making noises or playing musical instruments

Balls and Soundrop- two programs that use gravity to knock balls against walls to make sounds, Balls is more complex

Bebot - a touch pad synth that takes up to four fingers and has some great presets - theremin, powerPWM, looper, the eponymous Bebot (sounds like a robot) and more and programable

Ellatron - there are cut down versions of this but go for the full one. Has mellotron samples so you can do King Crimson and more

Beatwave - one of many versions of the sweeping-across-a-field-of-dots synths, this one has four layers plus a randomiser so can become another aleatoric ambient maker

Words

MyFry - Stephen Fry's latest memoir, bought for the iPhone mainly because of the cool interface (plus I wanted to read it anyway)

Instapaper - fantastic for getting those interesting on-line articles which you don't have time to read onto a format where yo can read them at your leisure. Have a website with suggested articles, and also try longform.org for more (you don't need the app to use the sites to find articles of course)

McSweeney's - a diversion. Everyday you get a selection of short pieces of humourous writing, but also some more serious columns (this is free). And then each week a longer piece such as an interview, short story, novel extract, longer piece. These can have related images (such as the article on Kristina in Copenhagen) or be songs, short films or spoken text. You could say aleatoric downloads.

I won't bore you with my few games or news apps (though I suggest getting the Guardian before they go subscription)

2 by shelf life

Shelf Life, reviewed at various times by ampersand, is a protean improv group with Bryan Day and Joseph Jaros as something of a core (on one of the discs here) but expanding to 4: Luke Polipnick and Anderson Reinkordt (on t'other): Bryan is the constant who has been providing the material to me. Both discs were recorded in Lincoln, Nebraska: presumably live, though at times the density suggests production. Instruments are not named but feature guitars and percussion, and from the photos on Ember's blog it is obvious that Bryan is constructing instruments (like Boe's laptops) of things to strike, pluck and tap.

Courtesy is released by psychedelic oscillator - and there are three tracks: morning, afternoon and evening parlance. The first scrapes and clatters, an occasional plucked note and some feedback; a bit of drums, patters and squirls, becoming more dense before the end. The afternoon track has more space and is more spacey - with echoing processed guitar, voices in there, clattering and percussive, electronic swirls and tones: guitary guitar, throbs and a more gentle release. These two tracks are over 20 minutes each, while the final one is about 8 minutes. It skitters and clatters with woody percussion, quite a percussive track as it bangs and clatters, gongs and drums, cycling through before a gong announces the end.

There are two tracks on Protection (released by the counter submarine: thecountersubmarine@gmail.com) Pink A and B which are divided into sections. You can hear subtle changes at the index points. This is an ambient noise work: when you turn it back on after a break you realise the volume and density. It is in a constant flux between chaos and control, noise and focussed sound. Tones and thrums appear throughout, clattering and percussion, bells and hissing, guitars plucked and scraped. In Pink A there is a hint of a suggestion of voices that comes and goes - is it the brain picking out voices from uncertainty? It is deep in the mix and appears fading up and down. With Pink B it is more obvious that the samples or radio playing are part of the work as they are much closer to the surface and more consistent (there is some Conet in there too). Both parts move nicely between the densest attack into periods of quieter delivery, becoming ambient at times (both quieter ambient but also the dense ringing shimmering tonality that approaches that state from the other end).

Ok, both albums are undescribable in their details, but are intense working within the structure of the two group forms. I like the more open space of Courtesy, but then the dense attack of Protection is exciting. And then, to confirm my listening, i played them again today and it was the other way round and the electronics of Protection grabbed me!

Probably both are too intense to necessarily sit and listen all though, but they are well worth listening to, or as a busy ambience. I have formed the construction not(un)es to characterise them, for what it's worth!

We can be heroes - from the sublime to the ridiculous

Releases from three of my musical heroes bring to my comments on the commodification of music.

For someone born in 1955 in the UK, the Beatles were a formative musical force. I preferred them to the Stones, my first single was Love me do/ps I love you; early albums were christmas presents. I remember other music from the time (yeah yeah) but they were indeed the titans. I didn't have a favourite but John was just there in the seventies and I can remember where I was when I heard he was dead. I didn't have all the albums - a tape of sometime in NYC was as much of that as I wanted! Ono's strategy of birthday remasters/rereleases seem somewhat mercenary to me, but meet the fans needs I suppose (though the citroen episode was out of order to my mind). Anyway, I was trolling bigpond music and found the box set of 11 disks for $16. Snapped it up: a week later it was properly priced at $180. I love the music (even NYC) but would never pay that much. Power to the people!

Then I heard that Brian Eno has a new album coming out (previews all over the web, such as here). A true musical hero, who together with Fripp and Bowie re/shaped my adult musical landscape. And tempting me is a $100 box which has the album (plus 4 additional tracks) on cd and vinyl plus a print in a lovely box (there is a 250 super-collectors edition). And what surprises and disturbs me is that I am thinking about it.

It's not that I am against music-objects: on my wall are the prints that came with Before and After Science (free with the LP) and some posters for Fripp-soundscapes signed. Among my prized possesions are a Talking Heads Speaking in Tongues original edition (once again, many thanks Terry). But I think even more special are the truly limited editions - my collection of Taming Power cassettes and vinyl; Steve Roden limited edition cds sent to me by him; disks that people have burned for me (IDX1274 for example); everything from Dorobo because I knew Darrin; my copies of The Humument (OK, books - include my complete set of Scripsi here too, or some art catalogues); and yes, those Eno prints. Then there are the albums that have personal connections - where i got them, who gave them to me (including free through reviewing such as eM, Soundician, Kucharz, Accretions etc), others 'cause I like the look of them (box sets, or special releases). And then, heavens to betsy, ones where I like the music!

And when it comes down to the line, the music is the thing.

So it is where I have some personal investment that the value is there - rather than buying something which has been produced primarily to create an objet which is a draw for investors. I'd get the print framed, but would never play the vinyl, and OK 4 extra tracks - no I don't think so. I understand the $$ imperative as the download culture grows, but it disturbs me. And if I did have money, actual objet d'art would be my desire: I would love to own a Roden or a page of the Humument or something by an artist I love.

I think this has been my way of talking myself out of thinking of buying it! Confused and confusing - my mind processes, writing out loud.

To end, Bowie has released the anniversary Station to Station - remastered and with a double live album from the time that has apparently been widely bootlegged. Only a small price premium, but an addition which is good for the music lover and collector.

(UPDATE: found out the price is about twice normal, plus there is a deluxe version with vinyl, surround sound mix, badges etc etc for $166..ah well

update 2: from the Pitchfork review my first thought was whether the relentless fetishization of the physical product does the content within any favors. )

(ps - if there is anyone from Warp reading this, I can send you my address for a review copy....