How music is found. The Knife, Fever Ray and Oni Ayhun

I was late to this but better than never.

Listening to Deborah Harry on Desert Island Discs, one of her tracks was When I grow up by Fever Ray. The 30 seconds they played intrigued me, so I went to the website to see who it was. 

And found Fever Ray, bought the album, the live album and mix eps and was obviously hooked - the voice, the music, the tone.

So I went back and found The Knife albums - Silent Shout is a nice dance electronics, but with my eclectic preferences liked the 'opera' Tomorrow, in a year even more.

The recent release of a preview track from the new album mentioned that the male half had released some EPs as Oni Ayhun. These are available from various download sites (if you go to his website you will be directed to a shop where they are sold in Euros for less than the Australian iTunes site - not sure about other areas http://oniayhun.com/OAR001.html). They are quite weird but wonderful minimal techno and well worth the asking price.

The new album Shaking the habitual is said to be a change in direction, and the advance track Full of fire combines the minimal madness of Oni with some full beats, more distorted edgy vocals and amusing changes that keep you onboard for the 10 minutes. I have preordered the album.

Which arrived today - comments will follow

Well - it probably fits in with comments across here about the length possible in downloads - it is a massive 96 minutes long (over the double album length). Except for a couple of short pieces 4:30 is the shortest and 8/13 clock in at over 6 and there is a 19 minute instrumental which could be Oni Ayhun. Could it have been editied down, probably - but there is something rather quixotic about the whole thing - you can hear the various strands of their careers coming together, with less focus on the melodic and more on the jarring and confronting - but with sweet spots. It is an album which will take time to absorb and may never like - rather like recent Scott Walker albums.

Music apps

OK, I said that discussions with Dave Stafford got me going again. I found him through Eno's/Childer's iPad music creator Scape - an amazing app which dave as a musician is playing/working/publishing with. He wrote some fabulous pages describing his early experience with the instrument, and sort of reflected in this one
http://pureambient.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/generative-music-applications-mixtikl-and-scape/
It is a good read, but search for the earlier ones too.

Anyway, I find Scape fun and a way to create Enoesque transitory new works: unlike dave I see mine as ephemeral explorations.
I have also tried Mixtikl which he mentions (a spawn of the people behind Koan - who of you remembers that) and it is more complex but also interesting.

There are many others, a few of which I have toyed with & sometimes make myself some noise with, but these are the stayers for the amateur music maker

Top 10 gateway albums (well 9 and a label)

A top 10: not the best by these artists (necessarily) nor my favourite (ditto) but albums that led me elsewhere. In no order other than the first.

Bowie: Low
This is the ultimate album for me. It exploded my appreciation of Bowie into another level, introduced me to Eno (properly - I had No Pussyfooting but didn't understand it) and effectively reinvigorated my interest in Fripp (really via Heroes, but also through his solos on Eno albums). Bowie thus cemented his place as one of my musical triumvirate, who I see as the key to my musical life.

• (Interesting addendum: I remembered John Schaefer of WNYC soundcheck doing a program on Music that changed My Life, & Low was the one identified in his blog - I emailed him about the similarity of our response: found it again

http://soundcheck.wnyc.org/blogs/soundcheck-blog/2009/feb/05/the-album-that-changed-my-life-and-eventually-led-me-here/

King Crimson: Larks Tongues in Aspic
The complexity and excitement of this album grabbed me, and this era Crimson is my favourite, though it took me back to earlier albums (I had a lacunae between this and In The Court...). Delivered an ongoing love of Fripp's work tht continues to now with the soundscapes available through DGM live.

Brian Eno: Another Green World
Opened my eyes to ambience and to all things Eno. Following his work has been a musical revelation and he will pop up a couple more times. Plus the album has a cover by Tom Phillips who became my favourite visual artist through various gateways, including Starless and Bible Black (King Crimson)
Other Eno doors

• Discreet music: I would like to include all 10 Obscure albums, but this isn't about labels. Long form ambience on this album, but all the 'modern' classical available on the label (see also Irma)
• Thursday Afternoon: my first cd purchase, before I had a player.

Easy Rider Soundtrack
The first album I bought with the first paycheck from my first job. The start of the addiction

Steve Roden:splint (the soul of wood)
That music can come from obscure sources, that ambience can be minimal and engrossing, that one person can encompass music, painting, installations and sculpture. My regret is that I haven't seen the real thing yet. An entree to his music and the 'lowercase' world

Alan Lamb: Primal Image
I want to mention Darrin Verhagen and Dorobo anyway - he introduced me to so much great music - a true pusher! But this album opened the world of found soundsources, field recording, label aesthetics and more. An effective route to people like Aube.

Phillip Glass: Einstein on the Beach
I bought and played this album and discovered the wonders of minimalism and its divisiveness - described by one listener as the most boring thing they had heard. A PG concert was the most exciting one I have been to, I think

Miles Davis: Jack Johnson sessions
While finding mispriced items in the early days of downloads (for example, for a day the John Lennon box set was $15) I found the Miles sets. When they first came out I saw them and loved the packaging but wondered why people would pay so much for them. When the sets popped up for the price of a single album, I thought why not. And could see the attraction (sort of): they contain tons of interesting music. I wouldn't pay big bucks, but I have enjoyed them all and allowed me to explore and delve further into the amazing world of probably the cross over artist.

Muslimgauze: not sure which one
Can't remember which it was, but have so many now. Something of a deadend really, a highway to nowhere else - but through Terry Bennet and the Muslimgauze site I have found some other musc. But Muslimgauze is so big, a drug of its own.

John Kannenberg: Stasisfield
OK, it's a label. But it was probably the first web label I came across at &etc; John sent me a cd of their first year. The label showed me many people and also led me to a (troubling - I overdid it a bit at work) almost infinite world of freely available music on the web.

eM (Michael bentley) and Larry Kucharz
More of another thank you - they were people who gave me support when I went solo reviewing

I'm back

Hi
Yes - I'm here again.
why?
Well, my emails to my sister get really long when I talk about music, & reading dave Stafford's blog has stimulated me to comment on his and email him, & I realised that I like writing about music.

I have often contemplated a series about things in my room & so there will be a regular blog called TIMR: which may even have a picture which talks about music related important to me things in my room.

And I also had the idea for the first post - again stimulated by my email to Dave, so that will be up next.

Daves blog is at http://pureambient.wordpress.com/ and I'll make a few references that way soon

Mike Olson: Incidental

Another release from Henceforth, further undermining my characterisation of them as a jazz label: let's call it modern eclectic.

For this album by Mike Olson, I want to do something unusual in a music review - put in a spoiler alert. When I finally got round to listening to this, I hadn't read the liner notes or PR material. It struck me as a complex ensemble work - horns, woodwind, drums, guitars, vocals, keyboards, strings - which slithered and moved around. Then I read how it had been made, and it revealed a whole new perspective - what had already impressed now amazed. Because the whole work (45 minutes) is an assemblage. Each musician was recorded separately, playing a score (verbal and graphic gestures), and Olson cut, selected, manipulated, layered and combined these pieces to form the 6 Incidental tracks. The method reminded me of John Wall, but the outcome is quite different. rather than the minimal pieces Wall works with, Olson has taken full units and combined them. It is a seamless construction and the knowledge was a little like the reformatting of the your understanding the whole that comes at the end of a movie like Sixth Sense or The Others.

And while sometimes method trumps outcome, in this case the outcome is well ahead. Olson called the music as Incidental as it reminds him of that form - 'written to reinforce visual activity ... the music sounds like action to me'. You could also say it is composed from incidents which have been brought together.

The feel is of experimental freeform jazz - there are fluttering woodwinds and some squonking brass. But there are also lovely strings - creating a foreceful opening, or orchestrated beautifully in Incidental 3 - driving drum percussion, guitar. And voices - soft, processed, laughing. Some periods remind me of Zappa, others are tonal ambience, while the fragmented origin is also heard in some passages of super-human playing. The shift between active and at times aggressive playing (4 has some NINish elements) and ambient passages is handled dexterously, and the narrative of each track reinforces the filmic element that Notes in the liner (6, for example, starts quietly, builds a rocky fusion middle before easing into an ambient final section). And like a good filmscore separated from its visual home, this is music that makes you take notice and listen - to the skill of both players and composer.

An exciting release.

Little Fyodor - Peace is boring

The resurrected &etc has, for the last few months, eschewed images. This has mainly been laziness, compendium reviews where there would be too many images, and a desire for a cleaner line. Little Fyodor demands a picture - he is a persona of Dave Lichtenberg, who has been making music for a while (thanks wikipedia), and the look is indicative of the music. This is the cover of Peace is Boring - on the website there are also many photos, and the the impression is of someone doing their best to look wacky/zany/nerdish. Anyway, this album from Public Eyesore (PE111) fits with their history of being a broad church which offers an outlet for 'outsider' art (not sure if Fyodor is, or is role playing, the outsider status)

Anyway, the music's the thing...

The album opens with a rewriting of Both sides now - Death sides now which is taken into dark places with subtle orchestration. The voice is strange - a strangled, twisted things that jumps around: perhaps Weird Al taken to another level? From here the voice is matched by the music, a hooky driving punkish rock drive, over which Fyodor's singing runs amok. The titles of songs suggests the lyrical direction: All my clothes are uncomfortable, Everybody's sick (which lists all the people/things that are sick), Cruising (bummer scene) (again with a darker tone to the music, but without obvious lyrical relationship to the title), Death wish (antiwar).

On a number of songs he is joined by Babushka (who also plays keyboards) - a cover of Open up your heart (and let the sunshine in), The god gripe song (which segues from Wonderful world to a list of things god's got wrong, such as why did you make the mosquito) and the canonical Boots. First time I listened I thought that the strangled female vocals was another Fyodor personality - but there are pictures of the Babushka on the web site and on the inner cover: but it still sounds like him to me.

The musicianship on the album is excellent - there are touches of synth and processing (in the closing sing-a-long, for example), and the band rocks out some very nice pop/rock. The songs have great hooks and it is quite a catchy album - all you have to do is accept the extreme melodramatic, strained vocals. Which can be worth it as it is really a fun album.