“This week I finished making a radio documentary about the 50-year reign of Welles’s masterpiece – and heard how it might all soon be over, thanks to a change in constituency boundaries. The last time the survey was conducted, 145 mainly anglophone critics were polled. This time an 1,800-strong body of writers, curators and directors have been asked, a group representing the film cultures of most countries in the world. An electorate as broad as that might not feel the critical anxiety of influence that has kept Kane on its pedestal. Tellingly, the longlist, at 2,000 titles, is already much longer than its predecessors.”
I thought it was absolutely awesome to hear that two of Michael Haneke’s films were close to making the list: Cache and The White Ribbon. I have not seen Cache, but have wanted to for some time. It’s hard to find, and I don’t much enjoy watching movies on my computer screen. If you’ve never seen any of his movies, Haneke makes some truly disturbing images and themes come to life. Not that he does horror (Cache is the closest thing to horror; or maybe Funny Games in that it goes out of its way to essentially torture the audience), he just knows how to pick out the little details. The terrible, terrible little details. The guy is a true artist.
- Akai posted this on their Facebook today with the caption, “Save this. Trust us. You’re going to need it someday.”:
I know they’re probably starting to get outdated — especially the 2000XL series — but I’ve gotten a ton of mileage out of my Akai MPC thus far. And I’ve only had it for a couple years. It’s a great piece of hardware. I’ve got the blue one they released around 2001, I think:
According to one of our sources, “the word ‘contempt’ was bandied about by Apple’s lawyer.” So Quinn’s personal frustration may be at least somewhat understandable.
It seems like the main thrust of the declaration is that everything from the release was “previously in the public record.” He explains that everything was “specifically addressed in open court with the media in attendance.”
Quinn also directly addressed accusations that Samsung’s legal team was trying to intentionally mislead jurors. He made the (fairly obvious, in my humble opinion) observation that jurors had already been instructed not to read any form of media relating to the case.
Some new releases that have caught my eye, in the midst of finishing up my own music:
Baroness – Yellow & Green
As a fan of this band’s previous work, I had a feeling where Yellow & Green was headed. Even parts of Blue, the band’s last album (2009), speak in a more ambient or reflective light than with a tear-your-face-off approach. That is both amplified and extended throughout this album. In many instances it is downright beautiful: waves of sound that tap into a kinds of genres, mixed beautifully, presented to your ears with care and grace. That isn’t to say that Yellow & Green gets heavy at times, it does. The downtunes are still there — however open-tunings are perhaps more prevalent — to rattle your speakers and ear drums. Impressively so, this is done without loads and loads of overdrive or a subtraction of mids… or any other of the tricks metal bands/producers use to forge a heavier sound. In fact, the producer John Congleton should get a decent amount of credit here. For keeping his presence only shaded in the background, yet still flexing his production muscles enough to channel such an expansive, genre-less sound. This is album that deserves trying, no matter who you are.
A Place To Bury Strangers – Worship
Worship is, by comparison, a much darker and desperate sounding album. And, unlike Yellow & Green, the band is narrowing down their sound rather than expanding it. In A Place To Bury Strangers case this works. Very well. Previously they had been known as a wall-of-sound, throw everything you got into the pot three-piece, who’s brand of noise was cathartic if not a little bit overwhelming. It is a breath of fresh air to hear them strip down their sound. I could be exaggerating a bit however, because of the band’s history: the noises and feedback and ultra-stereo ticks did make their way onto this record. It’s just that now they’re being used as instruments themselves, rather than layers behind the “real” instruments. And they cut in and out, they aren’t a constant. The result is the band’s best sound studio work in their short career, a new path in the direction they were already heading. Refined and subtle (if that word exists in Noise-Rock), with the power and hunger of their previous records.
Ravi Coltrane – Spirit Fiction
This is Ravi Coltrane’s first record to be released on the famous “Blue Note” label. It happens to be one of those cases where the history, the elegance, of the record company seemed to inform the work itself. In a good way. Spirit Fiction is — as AllMusic put it — Ravi’s most cerebral and avant-garde record of his career. In the Jazz world, typically those two things counteract one another… let me explain. The thought that seemed to be poured into every song is immense. This is smart, sophisticated Jazz that strikes with precision. Carefully planned and always thinking five steps ahead. Now, sometimes that sort of thing can lead to an emotion-less, stale type of academic music without soul. Somehow this doesn’t happen on this album. The experimentation, the improvisation, the raw emotion through notation, it remains. Even with all it’s brains, it remains. Also, kudos to the recording technique. Ravi recorded each track with two separate backing bands and they mixed them together. Brilliant.
The pianist, always head up, noticed me right away. I recognized her somehow; I swear she used to roll with friends I had from Chicago, or Detroit, or Minneapolis, somewhere up there. The kind of acquaintance you never really knew, but you’d remember that face anywhere. I had no idea she played the keys, and she was damn good at that. The colors were fading slowly, turning to black and white. Midwestern girl was rolling up and down her board, soloing you could say, while the 17 year old phenom and drummer were going bonkers with 32nd and 16th triplets. I was still on the floor, but nearing the stage when I let it out: mirroring the piano rolls backward. She’d roll up, I’d roll down. It shocked a couple people near the front, who I was still behind. Then a circle began forming, and an alley to the stage appeared. I stepped closer, while playing, faces and people blending together, sweating and wiggling to Mable. The stage tilted back and forth, ballooned up and shrunk all at the same time. I let out a sharp, piercing high note before lowering Her and climbing up, it felt like I was going to fall off. Just as I was, a guy front and center pushed me up some more; I felt sickness comin on. I fell forwards towards the Trap, and finally centered myself steady. The band slowed it down: drummer switched to a side-stick and soft ride, bass player, with all his raw talent, dialed it back to steady and smooth 8th’s, and Midwest girl started a progression on upbeats only… twas a pretty little groove, couldn’t help but move with it.
I looked over the bar and the color was back, those brilliant greens. I seen Mr. Thompson waving at me from the back, probably still ranting to anyone who’d listen. The other bands, the headliner (a supergroup I didn’t know existed consisting of Sun Ra*, Pharoah Sanders, Ed Blackwell, and Charlie Mingus; they called themselves Ida’s Pearls, apparently after one of their grandmother’s old necklaces) began congregating on the side of the stage. “Don’t you fuckin’ wear out your welcome, Sonny”, I told myself. So I started wailing over this beautifully to the point slow-groove the band had, it seemed, created on the spot just for me; the best gift I’ve had since starting anew in the city that never dies. I dug through every insecurity and dream that Mable ever had— I laid it all out there — pushing it out over the dark green crowd, it wormed its way back through the entry corridor and around the bar and through the vents upwards to the streets hundreds of feet above our heads. When the song finished I was applauded sure-handedly, I even heard clapping from the backstage area and outside on the river embankment. I shook hands with everyone onstage and thanked them. As they began their next song, I exited stage right to find some water and a cigarette.
*(Who, in the late 1930’s, probably took way too much O and claimed to have been swallowed up by a bright light that encapsulated him while he was in a deep meditation state. Then, on a stage on the surface of the planet Saturn, elemental beings with antennae attached to their ears and eyes told him to follow the pathway of music. Said they had already laid that out for him, his entire life and career in Jazz, and that when he spoke through music the human beings on Earth would listen. This is why he dropped outta studying agriculture at an Alabama university and moved to Birmingham, where a whites-owned piano company [who simply ignored Jim Crow laws] allowed him to play on their instruments whenever he wanted.)
On the old Akai MPCs (that’s “Music Production Center”) when you were sampling something, trimming something, or executing any sort of command beyond a volume adjustment or Pad hit, the device will ask you if you’re sure about what it is you’re doing. Like a “Delete [so-and-so] folder, are you sure?”, on a PC, answers “Cancel” or “OK/Yes”. Except on an MPC that prompt would read: “Cancel” or “DO IT”. Which, I gotta say, as a musician/producer is nice to see. Sometimes I don’t always believe what I’m doing will work out (which might be a good thing in terms of production because it means I’m taking risks, even for me); a lot of those times I’m right. But it’s the moments where you aren’t sure what you’re doing will come out on the other side, those are the ones that give you the wonderful sounds. So — long story short — it’s nice to see that “DO IT” on the lower left-hand side of my MPC readout (it feels like the device itself, I’ve yet to name it, is encouraging me along on my way); the flip side to this is now I write and say “DO IT” all the time.
The new MPC500looks like a nifty little device. It’s made to be extremely portable, measuring in at 10 x 7 inches, with a thickness of less than 3 (soooo, like a small, closed laptop?). You’re sacrificing a few things with the size — 12 Pads rather than 16, smaller read-out, more buttons sharing more functions, fewer ins/outs. The basic function of the machine is still there though, if not more tedious. I’m reading a review right now, this guy is digging the hardware but finds the software to be lacking. I’m shocked that there’s no waveform (essentially a visual aid to a sound or group of sounds; think about what a track looks like on something like Soundcloud) sound editing, so when you edit a sound or sample, you’ve got to do it solely by ear (which, for audiophiles isn’t a problem; however, this machine is supposed to streamline the sampling process, making it the fastest and easiest way possible to do so). He also, predictably, says the Op-System can be a chore because of the lack of buttons; so sometimes you’re hitting 3 or 4 buttons, or scrolling quite a bit with the wheel, to do simple tasks.
It looks like they’re going for about 5 to 600 dollars new and around 3 used on eBay. Not sure if that’s worth it (well, unless you’re needing something extremely sleek and portable) considering you can find an older 2000-XL model for about the same price. Anyone who’s trying to make beat/sample-oriented music though would do themselves a favor by owning one of these. They are very versatile, can be used in live situations as well as in the studio. And it really, really streamlines the whole process. Of course, this is coming from a guy who used to zoom in real tight on a Cakewalk production program, import snare/kick/hat sounds, and manually put everything into place that way/import an entire digital song file just to use one 4 second clip and throw away everything else. Hahaha. DO IT.
- Does Darren Aronofsky actually understand the concept of the character Wolverine? In an interview with L.A. Times’ Geoff Boucher, Hugh Jackman had this to say:
“I don’t know how much I want to give away about it, but Darren said with the last one, ‘Hey you looked great, but you’re so tall that in those long shots you looked kind of like Clint Eastwood, and that’s not Wolverine.” He said that Wolverine, in the comics, is powerful, stocky, you know, he’s short and thick. So he said, ‘I want you to go there, get bigger.’”
It’s starting to sound like it.
- The BBC is reporting “a solar system including six planets around a star 2,000 light-years away has been spotted by astronomers. The planets range between two and four-and-a-half times the radius of Earth, and between two and 13 times its mass. Five of the planets orbit the star closer than Mercury orbits our Sun.“ The atmospheres of each are likely to be similar to Venus or Mercury in that they’re probably extremely hot, and mostly made of light gases. In other words, not life supporting planets… but still, new solar system discoveries always peak my interest.
- With my tax return money, well part of it, I’m probably gonna finally break down and get an MPC. Used, of course. I’m in the midst of writing… heavily (more later)… and haven’t experimented with any new music beyond jamming with my guitars and turntables (don’t even know the last time I plugged my laptop into my mixer). But I’ll probably start my third record at some point this year, and I’m getting tired to importing 4 minutes of MP3 file-age just to cut out 98% of it. An MPC — for those of you don’t know but do care — allows one to import sounds and samples via a hard-drive type system, which can then be played in real time through drum-machine type pads. Some guys SWEAR by them: Lazerbeak apparently records guitar into his MPC, then plays his guitar through his MPC (from what I’ve heard, he does literally everything through it). Look like, you say? Here’s the cover to Q-Tip‘s last album “The Renaissance”, yep that’s what they look like:
I don’t know if these are even applicable to any musician in any real sense, but they’re a lot of fun. The iNudge and aM-Laboratory are similar in design: matrix based online synthesizers based in point and click and a side scrolling tempo. They’re probably only fun at best, due to their design. Although, the iNudge does feature options like BPM, 8 different “instruments” (they all sound alike), adding/removing measures, and messing with the pan system I mentioned earlier. I prefer a set of keys or an guitar any day of the week… but I’m not necessarily oppose to the use of more experimental instrumentation or noise-makers. A guy on Whitechapelrecently posting a video of his band jamming at one of their houses. From the poster himself:
“Just an odd note, Hunter Vaughan, the eldest of the group and a hippie from way back, used to have a bag of hand made percussive instruments, flutes, and a sax then one day he shows up with these two little computers leaving all us young cats in the dust.“
Again, I’m cool with this (I’d be some hypocrite to post about open-mindedness then follow it with a post about how much experimental instrumentation sucks). Last night I was browsing around on my phone for possible noise makers. Like I say, I’d rather have a six-string strapped to me, but hey… open-mindedness is my friend.
Here’s the YouTube vid (guy on the left is using his phone):
Continuing on the building instruments out of random objects theme, this website over at Blogspot put a Chesire smile on my face. The tagline reads as: “an assortment of hand crafted instruments, made from recycled, reused and really cheap parts”. “Cheap parts” refer to things like Pringle cans, cookie pans, hobby nails, coat hooks, metal serving bowls, and coffee ground tins. He makes harps, three-string guitars, lutes, cellos, even microphones with a 1/4″ output. Massive approval of such sites.
Excellent Wired article detailing the highest energy levels ever conducted by a large-hadron-collider. Levels peaked yesterday at three times the previous record (7 TeV). “Finally,” Wired says, “the flood of data particle physicists have been anticipating for years for has begun”. The director of CERN was obviously very pleased with the result, as the collider’s future had been up in the air since 2008. [Insert Angels & Demons rib, punch, reference, joke, or shit-talking]
And I thought this was worth posting. Via SuperPunch, an “Interdimensional Mayan Star Map”. Umm… yeah:
After the craziness of the last month — yesterday was a month to the day — I got back to some sense of normalcy by seeing some live music this weekend. The highlight (they wouldn’t even be a light; they’d probably be an old oil lantern dusty with a bit of that Jameson stick) for me was seeing The TossersFriday. Those fuckers can hold a room, man; oh my. And actually it was very surprising (Saint Patrick day lover leftovers reheated notwithstanding) because the first and only other time I saw them was in their hometown, Chicago, and the crowd was into it then but not this into it.
Like I said, without a doubt some Patty’s Day spill-over. I learned the hard way one year down in Kansas City (at a great venue called “The Riot Room”; I dunno, Mac Lethalfrequents there… it seems to be the place to play in KC; shoulda asked Rob last night) when The GiraffesandLocal Hrocked my face off right down to the tendons, muscles, and fat. Even taking that spill-over into account: lots of singing along and an amazing response from a capacity crowd that seemed to know the band inside and out. “Capacity” being the word curve-ball there. Anyone who knows — who’s done the shoulder to shoulder stumble through a very dark space, taking sometimes 5 minutes to get 50 feet — knows that a capacity crowd at The Entry, especially w/ copious amounts of drinking like Friday, might feel like it’s going on 3 or 4, but it can’t be much more than 250 people or so. Okay, just looked it up; capacity in that space is 250. I wouldn’t be surprised though if there were pushing 3 bills at this show. Read the rest of this entry »
Personal tidbits ain’t interesting; I get it. Nevertheless: finally, FINALLY I’ll be jammin’ with my old drummer tomorrow sub-level under barely changing leaves and half gray skies. I don’t mean jazz either. Course, Roll & Roll wasn’t even born by the time my mind spun into blackness, a blurred Tony screamin’ for help. It’s funny, I know what my fingers and lips should be doing, I can picture it in my head, just can’t seem to make them do it. With a trumpet, I mean. This version of me don’t even have a trumpet anymore. Saw one last summer – the third summer? – at some giant church, the personal relationship with Jesus kind, sponsored flea market. A big white tent blanketed small piano’s, picture frames, lamps, chairs, “Polaroid” photo machines (one example, along with 8-tracks and video tapes and a million others, of an invention born post my death and obsolete pre my rebirth; try makin’ sense a that…), dolls, buttons, toys, pillows, etc. It was silver, not golden brass; a silver that would have represented a new beginning to ex-Sonny the trumpeteer. Probably a brand new sound too. Muffled, crisp but soulless. And I’d regret ever pickin’ it up to try again. No, this is Rock & Roll, wielded into noise through electricity and the new sax or trumpet, the jolted six string. If Robbie only knew. He don’t even need to sell his soul this time. For the devil, or what the devil might sound like rolled into crunchy, ear-piercing crescendo, resides in these tones. It strikes me as powerfully as brass once did. Perhaps more so. The raw power of it. The bloodied, crusted hands… Mmmnn. If only I could’a died by electrocution of the six string. Now that’d be a way to go…
I’ve been saying this for a millennia now! Gregory Burns, a nueroscientist from the States, believes that everyone should learn how to play music. The Director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University in Atlanta, USA, had this to say in an interview recently with the BBC:
When I say make music, that means sing, play an instrument, or simply bang out a rhythm by whatever means that are available to you.
I do not mean computer games like Guitar Hero.
It doesn’t matter whether you have talent or if you think you’re tone deaf – the simple act of producing a rhythmic or harmonious statement, teaches us skills that so often fall by the wayside in modern life.
I think it’s a shame that we take music for granted now, perhaps it is because music is so ubiquitous. But I see music as something to celebrate humanity.
I see it as something every man, woman and child should do on a daily basis.
Apart from developing communication skills, making music helps us to listen to each other.
It is impossible to make music with other people without listening to your fellow musicians.
Making music also develops motor skills. It develops parts of the brain that would otherwise not be used – and most importantly – it feels good.
I’ve been trying to tell people for years, although the games are dying off now, that if they spent as many hours everyday playing a real instrument as they do trying to master Dragonforce on Guitar Hero, they could actually become quite capable at almost any of them. Specifically guitar, bass, or drums which require a whole lot less, if any, formal training. But hey, what do I know… I’m no Director of Neuroscience am I? LINK: MAKING MUSIC.
