I love receiving swag, and I’ve been listening to so much capital-A Arty Stuff lately, so I was happy to get hold of a copy of Robert Poss’ new CD, “Settings”. My knowledge of Poss’ music didn’t go much beyond him being that bloke from the Band of Susans who I’ve heard play Phill Niblock’s music, so the neat photo of pedal porn on the front cover was encouraging.
This album’s subtitled “Music For Dance, Film, Fashion and Industry”, but it’s more than just a grab-bag of background music for completists. The fourteen tracks build up into a varied and substantial body of music with some unexpected twists and turns.
You might get that Brian Eno Music for Films vibe over the first few tracks: relatively short pieces of sustained guitars and rin gongs made for Alexandra Beller/Dances. If you’re anticipating a collection of more-or-less variegated slabs of guitar drone, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the shifts in tone and style, such as the chiming guitar patterns in “Concordance”, which reappear later as a sinister set of interlocking piano loops in the darker “Border Piano Walk”. Brooding, atmospheric guitar-based tracks like “Inverness” are contrasted by the tumbling reverse samples that make up “Trio (excerpt)” and the undulating flute from which “Stare Decisis” builds.
I could do without the brief intrusions of tablas at a couple of points, and some of the synth patches used grate in one or two places, but that’s probably just me being a snob. The thing is, the more elaborate and ambitious pieces such as “Tourniquet Revisited” confirm what I already had come to believe, that I’m listening to fully-formed music by a serious composer, not just some muso noodling around (or droning on, in this case) to fill out the time.
Occasionally in the past I’ve struggled with the critical distinction so casually made between Proper Composition – which usually means stuff played in concert halls – and music like on Poss’ CD. (The reviews section of The Wire magazine helpfully illustrates this distinction in reverse, sequestering certain discs in a subsection headed “Modern Composition”.) Listening to this album reminded me why I usually conclude that attempts to rationalise this distinction are futile.
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please CIV
Sunday 10 October 2010
Anthony Gnazzo, “First Things First” (1975).
(1’00”, 1.35 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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This sukkah’s coming down
Sunday 10 October 2010
Well it’s about time! I presume they save the wood for next year.
Filed under: London, The Bunker by Ben.H
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Neither The Drift Nor The Sky At Night
Thursday 7 October 2010
How long do these sukkahs stay up for? Wikipedia tells me “a week” but my neighbours on both sides have had theirs in the backyard for nearly a month now. Maybe they’re following some secret, extra-pious rule like the Vatican do by waiting until February to clear away their nativity tat.
Barely cognisant of my own religion, let alone anyone else’s, I was intrigued when the neighbours started constructing what appeared to be a large plywood box on their back lawn. For a few days I imagined that Scott Walker was about to start recording a new album in my street, or that the local kids who play in the yard were about to be saturated with orgones. No-one had ever told me that the Jewish religion obliges its followers to perform annual DIY.
You’ll have noticed the railings above the roof, showing that the local sukkahs have been adapted to suit British conditions: a tarpaulin can easily be drawn over the traditional branches covering the roof, to keep out the rain. This also explained the unusual addition permanently attached to the shed on the other next-door neighbours’ house.
When I first moved in I noticed the translucent roof mounted on pulleys and assumed the residents were keen amateur astronomers, who kept a telescope handy for backyard stargazing. Nope. Another retractable roof to keep the branches dry. Although it does seem a bit like cheating to have a permanent lean-to on your house and just chuck some branches on top when sukkot rolls around each year for Instant Sukkah.
Filed under: London, The Bunker by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please CIII
Friday 1 October 2010
Stefan Wolpe, “Second Piece for Violin Alone” (1966). Curtis Macomber, violin.
(2’58” 4.20 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please
Wednesday 29 September 2010
will return on Friday. Along with more new content.
Filed under: Self-promotion by Ben.H
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Mail Bag: an urgent request
Tuesday 28 September 2010
In my email today:
Subject: Urgently Needed
Good Day,
My name is Kelvin Mcdowells,I would like to make an inquiry based on your products. Do you carry Piano in stock for sales?
Hang on, I’ll just check under the bed…. Nope. I used to have one, but I couldn’t sneak it out past my landlady when I moved.
If you do, can you kindly get back at me as soon as possible and let me know the price ranges availability for the Piano.Also please advise the type of Piano that you do have when you don’t have what i am requesting What type of credit cards do you accept for all orders Looking forward to hear back from you as soon as possible.
Best Regards,
Kelvin
I’ll get back at you,you nugatory nincompoop.Also please see below some of the many wonderful pianos I have when I don’t have any pianos Please send bacon.
Otherwise, try getting in touch with this guy.
Filed under: Music, Stupidity by Ben.H
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These are not the minimalists you’re looking for.
Saturday 25 September 2010
So I was listening to music last night and this question popped into my head, how come all the minimalists pussied out? Of course I immediately realised this was the wrong question, but it was wrong for more than one reason.
The most obvious reason, natch, is that there are minimalists and there are minimalists. I don’t want to get into an argument about who’s a True Scotsman, but minimalism is an unusual musical influence in as much as the label can be applied fairly accurately to more than three people and the most famous examples aren’t necessarily the most representative. This leads to the other reason: when I gratuitously accused all these many fine composers of the nebulous crime of pussying out, I was thinking of the Big Famous Minimalists. You know, the ones with movie soundtracks and orchestra commissions and tasteful album covers*.
Okay, so maybe these Big Famous Minimalists are really just sloppy old-fashioned romantics with more taste than imagination when it comes to matters of harmony and rhythm. In which case, the question becomes how the hell did these boring old farts manage to write some amazingly cool music for a few years back in the 70s? Those old Glass and Reich pieces sound at least as extraordinary today as when they first appeared, not least because they were produced by the same tedious fusspots who churn out pricey aural wallpaper today.
What I’m really trying to say here is that I’m surprised at how my perception of Terry Riley has changed over the years. When I was young and arrogant I thought less of his music ‘cos he seemed a bit woolly-minded (his website doesn’t help) and too interested in aimlessly noodling around. Now I’m old and dismissive I notice that while his sometime peers got respectable and boring, he’s still noodling away – with a better sense of adventure, formal rigour and musicianship than the Movie Music guys.
I guess the old hippie ethos of being true to yourself can pay off if you stick to it, and there’s something to be said for repetition.
* Unless you’re Philip Glass.
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
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“I want to believe the beautiful lies the past spreads out like a feast.”
Thursday 23 September 2010
Filed under: Stupidity, Writing by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please CII
Monday 20 September 2010
The Fall, “Hostile” (1996).
(3’59”, 7.41 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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this is not stupidity. but this is future… of google
Monday 20 September 2010
Filed under: Art, London by Ben.H
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Music for Bionic Ears
Thursday 16 September 2010
One thing I’ve been meaning to tell everyone is that I’m currently working on a project conducted by the Bionic Ear Institute and composer/laserdude Robin Fox. Although cochlear implants (or, to use the technical term, “bionic ears”) are pretty damn miraculous at restoring hearing, they reconstitute sound in ways that make it extremely difficult for users to properly perceive, let alone enjoy, music. It takes patience and training to learn, or even relearn, how to appreciate the musical attributes of sounds.
The BEI is working on several projects to improve music perception. One of these involves asking several composers to write pieces specifically intended for reception by a cochlear implant. For the last little while I’ve been reading up on the design and function of the implants, and how users perceive different aspects of sound through them. So far I’ve produced a number of sets of data on how to best re-think sound, and from this made a few short musical studies and sketched out plans for the final piece. Hopefully I’ll keep posting regular updates on how the work is going, and discussing the various tricky issues that arise from it.
Further news about this and related projects can be found on the Hearing Organised Sound blog.
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
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Please Mister Please CI
Sunday 12 September 2010
Richard Felciano, “Lamentations for Jani Christou” (1971). San Francisco Conservatory New Music Ensemble /Richard Felciano.
(8’45” 14.22 MB, mp3)
Filed under: Please Mister Please by Ben.H
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It’s Cage Day: NSTNT HPSCHD PCKT RMX2
Sunday 5 September 2010
It’s not the best quality because it’s on Last.fm but it’ll do for now. What with it being John Cage’s birthday today I’ve uploaded NSTNT HPSCHD PCKT RMX2, a remix of a piece for 14 differently-tuned harpsichords.
The original NSTNT HPSCHD PCKT MX was composed in 2002 on the 10th anniversary of Cage’s death. This new mix never has more than seven of the harpsichords playing at any one time, and each may be mixed in at any of 3 different volume levels. Entrances, exits, loudness and tunings were all, of course, determined by chance operations.
Filed under: Music by Ben.H
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The Allure of Badness
Saturday 4 September 2010
Short, shameful confession: despite being interested in music, and interested in Ezra Pound, I’ve never heard so much as a single note of Ezra Pound’s music. I’ve read about it, sure, but never heard it. From time to time this troubles me as a significant gap in my knowledge, but then I forget about it.
The latest event to suddenly prick my conscience was a discussion originating on Alex Ross’ blog over what might be the worst recording ever made, a-and up came… Ezra Pound. Not that the performances are bad (sez Marc Geelhoed), it’s Pound’s terrible, terrible music.
Now I’m not expecting Pound’s minor career as a composer to have produced hidden masterpieces, but: worst ever? Worse than Nietzsche? Descriptions I’ve read of Pound’s music typically comment on its rudimentary nature (even the stuff assisted by Agnes Bedford) and unusual rhythms, and then broadly implying that it should be considered as an adjunct to his poetry. Pound himself said that his inital attempts to set Villon to music were spurred by his inability to adequately translate him into English. Yet, even though reading Pound’s poetry often requires you to wilfully misunderstand everything else in the universe, I’ve never seen even his most ardent detractor insist that his music sucks. Even Humphrey Carpenter, a biographer who displays little interest in making sense of Pound’s life or work, singles out the music for surprisingly lavish praise. Mind you, Carpenter’s attempts at interpreting Pound’s poetry are pitifully wrong-headed, so much so that his approving comments were my first suspicion that something might be amiss.
So, I’ve always meant to get around to listening to Pound’s music; but now that Marc Geelhoed has damned it as the definitive worst, I’ve really, really got to hear it bad.
Coincidentally, I’ve also just read another of Alex Ross’ blogposts, looking at depictions of imaginary music by imaginary composers in literature. He concludes with Mann’s Doctor Faustus, and the strange effect Leverkuhn’s fictional music has had on real composers:
The composer’s life may be one long descent into madness, but his music represents a quest to escape the horror, or, failing that, to capture it with all the resources at a composer’s command. I first read Doctor Faustus at the age of eighteen, and I remember feeling both appalled and thrilled by the all-devouring, chaotically conflicted concept of musical expression that it embodied, so different from the prim community of “classical music” that had been presented to me. … More than a few composers of the postwar era responded with perverse enthusiasm to Mann and Adorno’s descriptions, attempting to bring them to life. György Ligeti, in Hungary, first learned about twelve-tone writing through Mann’s eccentric account of it. Hans Werner Henze, Henri Pousseur, Peter Maxwell Davies, Poul Ruders, Bengt Hambraeus, and Alfred Schnittke, among others, alluded to Leverkühn in their music.
It’s a tendency that goes back to Ovid: video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. There’s something irresistable about art that violates the accepted rules of propriety, that is chaotic and conflicted, even if it doesn’t succeed. The chaos becomes a source of renewal. It’s part of why I was attracted to Pound’s poetry in the first place, and why, after hearing someone say it’s terrible, I suddenly believe I could learn something very interesting from hearing his music.
