Beirut stands shaken, devastated, stripped, and alone today. Besides facing a collapsing economy and a deadly pandemic, Beirut has been hit by an apocalyptic explosion that has left the city bathed in glass, ruins, and blood. Many are stripped of their homes, safe spaces and livelihoods, as everyone is trying to figure out how best to help a city so rich in music, culture and energy albeit it’s sad history. Text VIA
Individuals and organizations in the country’s music industry, or who have worked with Lebanese artists, have compiled a list of musicians, labels and festivals in the country that listeners can support directly through purchasing their music.
Here you have our weekly selection of 7 (recent and not so recent) Bandcamp releases that have been orbiting around our heads lately:
Kaloli is the debut full-length LP from Kampala’s darkest electro-percussion group Nihiloxica. The album marries the propulsive Ugandan percussion of the Nilotika Cultural Ensemble with technoid analog synth lines and hybrid kit playing from the UK’s pq and Spooky-J. The result is something otherworldly. Kaloli journeys through the uncharted space between two cultures of dance music, where the expression of traditional elements mutates into something more sinister and nihilistic.
Oblique Russian sound strategist Natalia Salmina’s latest forking path portfolio as Atariame, Voiceless, arose in the wake of a dissociative relocation to Moscow, where she found herself adrift amidst a manic metropolis, alone in a skyscraper staring out at trees: “It made me lose faith in my ability to communicate, in my ideas about life.” Days without speaking turned to weeks. Even in private she felt estranged from her voice, and soon ceased singing.
Barker makes solo debut on Ostgut Ton with new experimental dancefloor EP. Sam Barker has had a long ongoing relationship with Berghain and Ostgut Ton, having released two LPs and various EPs as one half of Barker & Baumecker and hosting regular nights at the club since September 2008 as co-founder of the label Leisure System. 2017 marked the beginning of his solo residency, 2018 sees his first solo release with Ostgut Ton.
Michael Morley is an experimental musician and visual artist from New Zealand. Morley sings and plays guitar and laptop as a member of The Dead C, but also records on his own as Gate. Earlier, in the 1980s, Morley was a member of Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos.
Michael Manring is a bassist and composer known for his innovative approach. He studied with Jaco Pastorius, has appeared onhundreds of recordings and toured throughout the world. He has received Grammy and Bammie nominations, the Berklee School of Music Distinguished Alumni Award, two Gold Records, two Just Plain Folks awards and the Bassist of the Year award from Bass Player Magazine.
“…The album is a sparse slice of American Primitive folk – cut from the cloth of Fahey and Basho, but tied tight with the discarded threads of Loren Connors, Tashi Dorji, Bill Orcutt, and Scott Tuma. There’s not the same type of fluidity that would befit a Fahey acolyte, but there’s more movement here than Connors usually lets take hold. Hay falls somewhere between the ripple-pickers and the 4AM dirge hunters…” – Raven Sings the Blues
“Guy Buttery is something of a National treasure”, says South Africa’s leading newspaper The Mercury. Guy’s distinctunification of South African guitar music is the musical advocate for everything positive and beautiful about the place he calls home. An ambassador of South African music, Guy inspires people across the world with his homegrown style at the very heart of his talent and tenacity.
Here you have our weekly selection of 7 (recent and not so recent) Bandcamp releases that have been orbiting around our heads lately:
A companion piece to 2018’s Listening To Pictures, this second volume in the pentimento series presents eight new tracks by the music visionary, continuing his lifelong exploration of the possibilities of recombination and musical gene-splicing. Pentimento is defined as the “reappearance in a painting of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over” and this is evident in the innovative production style that ‘paints with sound’ using overlapping nuances to create an undefinable and intoxicating new palette.
toiret status is Isamu Yorichika from Yamaguchi, Japan. His new work Otohime is his first vinyl record and his second album on Orange Milk following ◎omaru◎ in 2016. Otohime includes collaborations with Co La, and Yoshitaka Hikawa. He has also released music on the labels Noumenal Loom, Plus 100 Records, Pedicure Records, Wasabi Tapes, and Slagwerk.
DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for the off-grid, Scottish Hebridean island label Lost Map, and now the latest arrival into Chicago-based International Anthem’s growing family of progressive musical explorationists. Whilst much of his music contains vocals – often whispered imperatives – this is a collection of instrumentals, drenched in feeling and recorded over four albums and eight earth years in cities across the UK.
Love All Day is proud to present the debut release from Deep Space Duo, a recent collaboration between Chicago underground music stalwarts, Whitney Johnson & Matt Jencik. While both were enrolled as members of the Circuit Des Yeux live band they bonded over their shared love of the Acetone Top 5 Organ; a small, portable vintage organ whose tones will be familiar to followers of early American Minimalist music.
For an artist whose career is almost entirely improvisational, TALsounds has refined a stunning style of music that sounds as meticulous as it does surprising. Since picking the moniker nine years ago, Natalie Chami has been flitting between experimental electronica, mood-driven minimalism, and classically trained choral singing as a solo artist in Chicago. On her fifth album, Acquiesce, she dives inward without constraints and invites the listener to do the same, to lose track of time, and to let emotion dictate what happens next.
“His sound is a perfect amalgam of elements from the hardcore continuum – at times a dark and malevolent brainstorm of grubby drums dragged through crusty samplers, future-weary textural scrapes, moody splashes of pads and of course bucketloads of crushing subs, lows and low mids all designed to rock you from the waist down. You’ll hear spectres of culture past lurking in the shadows – a trip hop skit from a gaunt figure here, a riotous brawl of grime MCs there – and feel the decades of soundsystem absorption seeping off the platters. It’s like the LEA reached capacity and these productions were what happened when the sponge got squeezed.”
Piotr Kurek’s A Sacrifice Shall Be Made / All The Wicked Scenes is comprised of pieces composed specifically to accompany theatre performances directed by Tian Gebing (500m and The Decalogue) and Grzegorz Jarzyna (Two Swords). Kurek attended performance rehearsals in Beijing and Shanghai, with additional preparations and recording sessions taking place back in Warsaw.
Here you have our weekly selection of 7 (recent and not so recent) Bandcamp releases that have been orbiting around our heads lately:
Retep Folo – aka Peter Olof Fransson is a musician and artist from Sweden, he has been involved in the Gothenburg underground music scene since the late 1990s, firstly in experimental electronic duo Exhadley, then the more theatrical project Ester Elster, and is currently in 60’s psychedelia inspired ‘The Owl Report’.
Cosmic Chicago modal organ grinder Jimmy Lacy developed the dexterous dialect of SiP some years back while helming a happy hour residency at a Logan Square cocktail lounge that required he vamp rambling three-hour sets nightly.
On this seven track album we hear MinaeMinae (alias Bastian Epple) playfully scurry through his dense soundscapes on a tightrope. The sounds lying somewhere on the crossroads of psychedelic trance, exotica, ambient and melodic dance music – veering further off orbit with nontypical rhythms and dystopian percussive patterns.
Project by Keith Mason. Melbourne, Australia.
Warui Musuko is the project of Tsuyoshi Fujimori (1958-2000), a former Gagaku musician who lived the last years of his life in isolation and without leaving his apartment in the busy ward of Shibuya, Tokyo.
“Echos+ brings together three of Ferreyra’s most engaging compositions. Each of the works are deeply personal, but transcend that position, effortlessly welcoming us inside them. They collectively chart out a broad framework that not only defines her philosophical interests as a composer, but also marks out critical moments in her creative and technical approaches; shifting from her roots in tape music to more digital approaches.”
Tau Ea Matsekha (‘Lion Of Matsekha’) is one of the great Sotho accordion groups and compilation Mohlape Oa Litau is made up of tracks from three of the band’s early albums – all long since out of print and whose masters have either been destroyed or lost.
Disclaimer: The content you are about to see contains graphic images of pianos being destroyed in different ways. Some viewers may find the following videos offensive. If so, you are not advised to watch the following.
*As one might imagine, there have been thousands of undocumented piano destructions all over the world. This list is a just a brief compilation of pianos being destroyed under different contexts/circumstances (artistic or not) and it does not represent an actual chronology of piano destruction.
“Participatory Performance. Background Sound Thunder and Lighting. The Piano is a powerful instrument of sound to convey the message of Sacrifice I wish to convey to the Universe. The Sounds of its Destruction gives full voice to Sacrifice: To the Destruction Creation in it cycle of Creation is giving us time to understand the preciousness of Mortal Life that it never be given up to or for Sacrifice of any kind… If we must have WAR send our PIANOS to WAR. If we must have VIOLENCE send our PIANOS to VIOLENCE, I dare YOU to HATE your PIANO to fill it with your HATE and BIGOTRY and Let Creation Know your PIANO’S Life does not compare to the Miracle of Life WE MORTALS are and that OUR PIANO is the SACRIFICE TO THAT FACT…As for the Egg and the Feathers they are the subtle aspect the preparation for the SPIRITUL BONDING with the PIANO: The Egg when it is held gently in one’s cupped hands and You imagine the worst aspects of Your Character and then crush the Egg on the PIANO you have committed Yourself to the surrender of those worst aspects to the Sacrifice the PIANO is… The Feathers placed on top of the crushed Egg are the signal to the Angels to carry the Sacrifice to a place of Spiritual Redemption.”
Annea Lockwood’s classic performance music work, Piano Burning (1968) was composed when she found abandoned upright pianos on the banks of the Thames River in London during the 1960s.
Busy Signals for 10 decomposing pianos by Paul Wiancko. Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival, 2015.
Performed by Paul Wiancko, Emilie-Anne Gendron, Ryan McCullough, Elena Urioste, Ayane Kozasa, Charles Noble, Curt Spiel, Kevin Krentz, Meeka Quan DiLorenzo, Brittany Boulding Breeden, and Sonja Myklebust. Commissioned by the Methow Valley Chamber Music Festival and premiered at the grand opening of Howard Johnson’s Piano Garden on Signal Hill in Twisp, WA on July 26, 2015.
“I wanted to do something with a piano in a landscape of some significance and I suppose, as a Scotsman, there’s nothing more significant than the border. I thought it was beautiful to look from one country into another and I liked the idea that Hadrian’s Wall is, under a certain interpretation, a great end of civilization… I was overwhelmed to be in a landscape of such beauty, and with such a huge unfathomable history.” —Douglas Gordon
PIANO DEMOLITION PERFORMANCE byMATTHEW BOURNE , SPATCHCOCK, LONDON, MAY 15, 2010.
“SPATCHCOCK’ nights were legendary: hosted by a community of extraordinarily creative people living in amongst the warehouses in Overbuy Road, London. Raucous, intense, powerful, FUN. As the evenings progressed, one could be guaranteed of becoming quite mashed-up, and continuing well into the following morning… SPATCHCOCK had asked if I would play an old upright piano – one they were looking to dispose of. Not wishing to pay for its removal, they asked that, as part of the performance, would I mind progressively destroying it… Armed with tools from Rupert Lees’s nearby workshop, I set about the task of a ‘demolition performance’. The video ends with an ‘encore’ performed off-camera, on another upright, elsewhere in the warehouse. The debris from the demolition was recycled, and fashioned into functional or decorative items by Rupert Lees; and the strung, iron frame, is still in use today, at Ellis Gardiner’s nearby studio.”
Yosuke YAMASHITA “Burning Piano 2008,” March 8, 2008 at Noto Resort Area Masuhogaura, Shika-machi, Ishikawa, Japan) Related Event of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa Third Anniversary Exhibition, Graphism in the Wilderness: Kiyoshi Awazu Exhibition.
“In the upcoming event, I will encounter an old piano built decades ago, otherwise destined to be discarded. For this old piano, I would like to perform a funeral requiem with the deepest love from my heart. At the same time, I would like my performance to pay homage to the 1973’s performance (this film work “Burning Piano” by Kiyoshi Awazu was presented in 1974,) as well as to Kiyoshi Awazu, the artist of richly experimental spirit who created it, and to all experimental avant-garde art movements of the sixties.” Text Via
Leonhard Lapin, Ülevi Eljand, Ando Keskküla, “Trio for Piano,” 1990, happening in Tallinn Art Hall, 1990. Image courtesy of the Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.
One of the most well-known events organized by SOUP was the happening Trio for Piano, held on International Women’s Day on March 8, 1969, in the main hall of the State Art Institute. This event wasn’t called Trio for Piano initially (the name was given retrospectively by Lapin), nor was it – at least not unambiguously – understood as a “happening” at the time. There are no recordings of this event, only the memories of the participants and the audience, according to which this happening can be, cautiously, described as follows (keeping in mind that memories are rather fluid).
As the Art Institute had recently acquired a new piano, the old piano was donated to students who had requested it. According to Lapin, they had heard that pianos were being destroyed by young and radical artists all over Europe. The students were generally familiar with the phenomena of happenings and they had organized some similar events at the Art Institute and elsewhere. International Women’s Day was celebrated all over the country with performances, lectures, and other events, and the art students made their own contribution to this celebration. In front of an audience of other students, they put the piano at the center of their activities and played on it and with it in every possible way. For example, Künnapu played the piano while reading an architectural drawing as a “score;” others painted smiling lips on the instrument and “made love” to the piano before moving it to one side and breaking it into small pieces, which were thrown to the audience to take away as souvenirs. During the event the artists also considered whether the piano should be thrown out of the window onto the street crossing next to the art school, which was known as a dangerous place where a lot of accidents happened; however in the end, this idea was abandoned. The audience was excited and reacted to all of the activities energetically; the event was remembered many years later as a legendary disturbance, but it had no serious consequences for the organizers. Text Via
Wiener Gruppe – 2nd Literary Cabaret – 15. 4. 1959. Porrhaus, Vienna. Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener.
Tthe evening (of 15th april, 1959) began as promisingly as the first one. As soon as the first spectator entered the auditorium we started to play the tape recording of an oil—extraction plant transmitted by loudspeaker, which we kept going for about three-quarters of an hour till the beginning of the performance proper. This created a technical atmosphere and made for nervousness in the crowded audience (there were about 700 people). Continue HERE
‘What can we learn of dangerous places by listening to their sounds?’
‘Sonic Journalism’ is the aural equivalent of photojournalism. It describes the practice where field recordings play a major role in the discussion and documentation of places, issues and events and where listening to sounds of all kinds strongly informs the approach to research and following narratives whilst on location.
Peter Cusack: Recent travels have brought me into contact with some difficult and potentially dangerous places. Most are areas of major environmental/ecological damage, but others are nuclear sites or the edges of military zones. The danger is not necessarily to a short-term visitor, but to the people of the area who have no option to leave or through the location’s role in geopolitical power structures. Dangerous places can be both sonically and visually compelling, even beautiful and atmospheric. There is, often, an extreme dichotomy between an aesthetic response and knowledge of the ‘danger’, whether it is pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical.
Places visited include:
Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine;
Caspian oil fields, Azerbaijan;
Tigris and Euphrates rivers valleys in South Eastern Turkey threatened by massive dam building projects;
North Wales, UK, where Chernobyl fallout still affects sheep farming practice; nuclear, military and greenhouse gas sites in the UK, including Sellafield, Dungeness, Bradwell, Sizewell, Thetford Forest, Rainham and Uttlesford
Considering that our previous musical mixes have an abundance of male artists, Femina Potens (Latin: Powerful Woman) will be a new series of sonic assemblages celebrating music made only by women. This series will include mainstream artists as well as less popular sonic explorers from different locations and time periods.
We already have a long waiting list, but please give us recommendations or pull our ears.
00:00:00′ = Wandercast Intro (Delia Derbyshire / AIR (BBC version)/ Enter the Void)
00:01:36′ = Asia Argento / My Stomach Is The Most Violent Of All Of Italy (With The Legendary Tigerman) / Total Entropy
00:05:08′ = Selda / Yaylalar / Selda
00:08:45′ = Julia Holter / Horns Surrounding Me / Loud City Song
00:13:30′ = THEESatisfaction / Queen County (4 Women) (feat. Gift Uh Gab & JusMoni) / And That’s Your Time
00:17:58′ = Suphala / Eight and a Half Birds / Alien Ancestry
00:23:57′ = Tammy / Perro Que Ladra (No Muerde) / Girls In The Garage Vol.11
00:26:11′ = Jill House on trills and non pulmonic airstream (excerpt)1995.
00:26:24′ = Solex / Low Kick And Hard Bop / Low Kick And Hard Bop
00:29:23′ = Tirzah & Micachu / I’m Not Dancing / We Make Colourful Music Because We Dance In The Dark
00:31:12′ = Suzanne Ciani / Princess with Orange Feet / Lixiviation
00:34:28′ = Kyoka / Lined Up / Is (Is Superpowered)
00:38:52′ = Lurdez Da Luz / Ping Pong / Rolê – New Sounds of Brazil
00:42:54′ = Leslie Winer / Flove / &c.
00:48:10′ = Arctic winds (Field recordings – Unknown source)
00:48:52′ = Tagaq / Surge / Sinaa
00:51:40′ = Kuupuu / Kissamuori Krapulassa (excerpt) / Spinning On Air session
00:57:40′ = An excerpt from Judith Butler speaking about turning rage and grief into theory and reflection. (2014) + Colleen / The Cello Song / Mort Aux Vaches
00:00:00′ = Wandercast Intro
00:00:18′ = Roedelius Schneider / Hohner Omen / Tiden
00:02:36′ = Jon Brooks / Neap Tide / Shapwick
00:05:10′ = Seaworthy and Taylor Deupree / February 22, 2013 / Wood, Winter, Hollow
00:06:32′ = Sawako / Nemumel / nu.it
00:08:08′ = Sustainer / Diámetro / Escala No Uniforme
00:13:52′ = The The / Between Moons / Tee Sessions EP
00:15:34′ = Hans Appelqvist / Sperma / Sjunga slutet nu
00:17:56′ = Masayoshi Fujita / Snow Storm / Stories
00:24:08′ = Rod Hamilton / Agnes / Teal
00:26:54′ = Ben Lukas Boysen / You’ll Miss Us One Day / Gravity
00:29:30′ = Fax / Gravity / The New Rage
00:33:52′ = Eden Ahbez / Myna Bird / Eden’s Island
00:36:08′ = Scissors And Sellotape / For The Tired And Ill At Ease 07 / For The Tired And Ill At Ease
00:39:36′ = Tiago Benzinho / Portrait of an American High School / Roses of Time I
00:42:52′ = Modiac / Bimbase / Internes Gespräch
00:48:56′ = Mouse On Mars / Mood Leck Backlash / Glam
00:52:33′ = Mammane Sani et son Orgue / Lidda / La Musique Electronique du Niger
00:57:56′ = Kuupuu / Susipoika Siniset / Lumen Tädhen
00:62:04′ = Deep Magic / Alone In Her Cave / Reflections Of Most Forgotten Love
00:66:48′ = Gold Panda / S950 / Half Of Where You Live
00:68:32′ = Tba / Trepa N / Clicks & Cuts 4
00:70:28′ = Julien Mier / Little Footsteps / Have Courage Funny Thing
00:74:38′ = P.lewis / wine and roses waltz / Music of the Victorian & Edwardian Era Vol. 2
00:77:37′ = Derek Gripper / Kaounding Cissoko / One Night on Earth: Music from the Strings of Mali
00:81:52′ = Harold Budd / Jane 6 / Jane 1-11
00:86:08′ = Uncle Skeleton / Place Pigalle / All Too Human
00:88:08′ = Molly Roth / Plant Talk / Plant Talk Productions
00:88:26′ = Mary Lattimore / Poor Daniel / Withdrawing Room
00:90:53′ = Extro Wanderlust
00:00:00′ = Wandercast Intro: Infinite Third / (sky) / (eardrops)
00:00:48′ = Gregor Schwellenbach / Ulf Lohmann’s Because (feat. Dorothee Oberlinger) / Gregor Schwellenbach spielt 20 Jahre Kompakt
00:04:00′ = Hauschka / Thames Town / Abandoned City
00:07:40′ = Damon Albarn / Everyday Robots / Everyday Robots
00:11:37′ = Helado Negro / Mitad De Tu Mundo / Island Universe Story Three
00:14:44′ = Calibro 35 / Erotismo / Said – Colonna sonora originale
00:17:40′ = Jungle By Night / Cherokee / The Hunt
00:20:56′ = Ennio Morricone’s Group / The Feed-Back / The Feed-Back
00:27:44′ = Kaleïdoson / Le Passage Du Cowboy Entre Deux Morceaux / Primavera
00:28:30′ = Carlinhos Brown / Afrobossa Abaum / Marabô
00:30:23′ = Galimatias / Marshmallow Grove / soundcloud.com/galimatias
00:34:00′ = Uncle Skeleton / Retrofuture / All too human
00:34:29′ = Colleen / Going Forth By Day / The Weighing Of The Heart
00:38:46′ = Psymun / myintroheyguys / heartsick
00:39:43′ = JJ DOOM / Retarded Fren (Thom Yorke & Jonny Greenwood Verison) / Bookhead EP
00:42:52′ = Cosmic Analog Ensemble / Station V / Subway to the Minaret
00:45:20′ = Fabio Viscogliosi / Catch A Wave / Spazio
00:47:48′ = Dawn Of Midi / Sinope / Dysnomia
00:56:38′ = Weedy of 40 Winks / Warmuils / Retrospect Suite
00:59:35′ = Ketone / Alpina / Nightfly Vol. 3
The following interview with Arvo Pärt was conducted at the composer’s home at Mustamäe, November 28, 1978. Filmed by Andres Sööt, the dialogue (at times, Arvo’s wife Eleonora seconds his husband behind the screen) and the rehearsal of the soon-to-be-premiered ‘Italian Concerto’ at the concert hall “Estonia” became the basis for the film-portrait entitled, suitably, “Arvo Pärt in November 1978”. The conversation, which lasted more than an hour (for the transcription of which we thank Jaak Elling), has been edited in order to make it more readable. Text from the actual film is in italics.
In February 1980, Arvo Pärt moved abroad with his family. His music stayed in his homeland as did two films by Andres Sööt about him: “Arvo Pärt in November 1978” (Eesti Telefilm, 1978) and “Fantasy C-dur” (Eesti Telefilm, 1979), which haven’t been aired since the name and the compositions of Arvo were banned in Estonia.
Ivalo Randalu: I remember when you came [to the conservatory] in 1954 you had lots of blank sheets with you and you began to write a violin concerto. Then you had a very beautiful prelude a la Rachmaninov cis-moll, which you threw away after a year. You always changed, new qualities emerged. It led to your first symphony in your second year at the conservatory. And all those collages at that time. And then you had to turn again. What was it that made you change so much and move on?
Arvo Pärt: I think maybe the ideals that escort and accompany a human being in his life. Or let’s say – teachers, if we can say so. One has several teachers. One teacher can be the present and the people surrounding him – let’s say some school teachers belong there. At some period of time, a human is like inside these conditions and tuned to them. And then suddenly you discover another teacher for yourself – say, the past; great men of the past; all the cultural treasures of the past. It can happen that he becomes blind to all other things and fixes his view on the past only. And this certainly influences a man, gives a new tinge to his actions. Plus, there maybe exists the greatest teacher of all, I mean, the future – or let’s say, conscience. View yourself – what you’d really like to be. What you aren’t, but how you’d like to see yourself. We can say, it’s like a future we want to arrive at. Is that clear enough? Like an animal or, say, a little child chooses food.
ORIGINS OF THE MOONWALK
Dancers (in alphabetical order):
Fred Astaire, Bill Bailey, Buck and Bubbles, Cab Calloway, Clark Brothers, Sammy Davis Jr., Daniel L. Haynes, Rubberneck Holmes, Patterson and Jackson, Eleanor Powell, Bill Robinson, Three Chefs (only the feet), Tip Tap and Toe (feat. Ray Winfield), Earl Snakehips Tucker
Video edited by CFJ
The decline in student interest is recent, and particularly affects elite institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, says Bass professor of English Louis Menand. (His 2008 lectures at the University of Virginia, collected in The Marketplace of Ideas, trace the long-term national decline in the humanities since the early 1970s.) The current crisis is “continuous with that [national] story” of polarizing and contentious philosophical debates about the legitimacy of various subjects and approaches, but those conflicts, he says, “were never accompanied by a huge flight of students.” Now, “the numbers are a little alarming. From 2006 to 2012 we had a 35 percent drop in concentrators in English. I think history has also had a fairly dramatic drop. And when sophomores signed up for concentrations last fall, almost every department in the arts and humanities was down—some by a lot.” In five departments, there were fewer than half as many concentrators as among the previous class.
The reasons for waning student interest are not entirely clear. The Teaching of the Arts and Humanities at Harvard College: Mapping the Future, a report of the Humanities Project published in the spring of 2013 that included a quantitative study of the problem, revealed a 50 percent attrition rate among Harvard students who as pre-freshmen had expressed an intention to concentrate in the humanities. Most of those students defect to social sciences such as economics, government, and psychology. Menand believes that this trend is partly attributable to “what has become a kind of general conventional wisdom: that the humanities don’t offer people much that is practical in way of a career. And that is a little scary.” But because this has all happened since the recession, he says, “The hope is that these choices are tied to the economy,” and that with rising prosperity, interest will rebound.
Inspired by the project “ten songs that saved your life” and encouraged by my good friend Angel Rafael Vázquez-Concepción (artist/curator/provocateur/head of Cranium Devices (Facebook)), I chose a selection of 10 songs that “saved my life.” These musical pieces are some of the most significative songs of my life to this day. Each one of these following tracks was responsible for changing my mindset in some way, rescuing from (or comforting me during) dark moments, inspiring creative change, provoking goosebumps, changing my perception of the world, or how I move through it (dancing). In one way or another, I always find myself returning to them.
(…in the order they were heard)
01. Silvio Rodríguez – Testamento
02. Fela Kuti – Alu Jon Jonki Jon
03. Sergio Mendes – Tiro Cruzado
04. Pink Floyd – Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict
05. Michel Camilo – Suite Sandrine I
06. Steve Reich – Drumming (Parts I-IV)
07. Björk – Possibly Maybe (Lucy Mix)
08. Yma Sumac – Chuncho
09. Stereolab – Come and Play in the Milky Night
10. To Rococo Rot – A Little Asphalt Here and There
There are much more, but the deal was 10.
There.
S.
The study of the senses has become a rich topic in recent years. Senses of Vibration explores a wide range of sensory experience and makes a decisive new contribution to this growing field by focussing not simply on the senses as such, but on the material experience – vibration – that underpins them.
This is the first book to take the theme of vibration as central, offering an interdisciplinary history of the phenomenon and its reverberations in the cultural imaginary. It tracks vibration through the work of a wide range of writers, including physiologists (who thought vibrations in the nerves delivered sensations to the brain), physicists (who claimed that light, heat, electricity and other forms of energy were vibratory), spiritualists (who figured that spiritual energies also existed in vibratory form), and poets and novelists from Coleridge to Dickens and Wells. Senses of Vibration is a work of scholarship that cuts through a range of disciplines and will reverberate for many years to come.
Senses of Vibration
A History of the Pleasure and Pain of Sound
By: Shelley Trower
In an excerpt from his new book, David Byrne explains why sometimes, he prefers hearing nothing:
“I listen to music only at very specific times. When I go out to hear it live, most obviously. When I’m cooking or doing the dishes I put on music, and sometimes other people are present. When I’m jogging or cycling to and from work down New York’s West Side Highway bike path, or if I’m in a rented car on the rare occasions I have to drive somewhere, I listen alone. And when I’m writing and recording music, I listen to what I’m working on. But that’s it.
I find music somewhat intrusive in restaurants or bars. Maybe due to my involvement with it, I feel I have to either listen intently or tune it out. Mostly I tune it out; I often don’t even notice if a Talking Heads song is playing in most public places. Sadly, most music then becomes (for me) an annoying sonic layer that just adds to the background noise.
As music becomes less of a thing—a cylinder, a cassette, a disc—and more ephemeral, perhaps we will start to assign an increasing value to live performances again. After years of hoarding LPs and CDs, I have to admit I’m now getting rid of them. I occasionally pop a CD into a player, but I’ve pretty much completely converted to listening to MP3s either on my computer or, gulp, my phone! For me, music is becoming dematerialized, a state that is more truthful to its nature, I suspect. Technology has brought us full circle.”
Text and Image via the Smithsonian. Continue THERE
Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington have teamed up previously under the moniker Darkside, and now they paired up to dissect and recreate RAM under the name Daftside, turning the record into something much more robotic.
Filmed in ten countries, “The Reach Of Resonance” is a meditation on the meaning of music, which juxtaposes the creative paths of four musicians who use music to cultivate a deeper understanding of the world around them. Among them are Miya Masaoka using music to interact with insects and plants; Jon Rose, utilizing a violin bow to turn fences into musical instruments in conflict zones ranging from the Australian outback to Palestine; John Luther Adams translating the geophysical phenomena of Alaska into music; and Bob Ostertag, who explores global socio-political issues through processes as diverse as transcribing a riot into a string quartet, and creating live cinema with garbage.
By contrasting the creative paths of these artists, and an unexpected connection between them by the world renowned Kronos Quartet, the film explores music not as a form of entertainment, career, or even self-expression, but as a tool to develop more deeply meaningful relationships with people and the complexities of the world they live in. Text via http://www.reachofresonance.com/
A 90-second daily show highlighting the songs of British birds has started on BBC Radio 4 this week. But birdsong isn’t just beautiful to listen to, it is increasingly being used in surprising ways.
Can a nightingale’s song help you pass an exam or a blackbird’s twittering encourage you to open a bank account? Sound experts are using it to do both.
They argue the positive results speak for themselves even though researchers say there is little hard scientific evidence to show people respond positively to birds singing. Most support for the theory is anecdotal.
Daniel Sierra’s animation done at School of Visual Arts, class of 2013, Computer Art MFA.. Music download link: soundcloud.com/dee-san
Software used: Houdini (animation), Reason (music), Nuke (comp), After Effects (final render), Processing (pre-viz)
A full description of the piece along with some still frames can be found at: dbsierra.com
Book-ish Territory: A Manual of Alternative Library Tactics by architect NIkki O’Loughlin is an exciting and interesting way of conceptualizing the idea of libraries as a public space not just for the public but by the public. Read it HERE
Almost as if you were hearing one of those paranormal registers by discarnate entities (spirits, nature energies, beings from other dimensions, or extraterrestrials) released by EVP enthusiasts, you will hear the crackling elder voice of Alexander Graham Bell. This, however, is Bell’s actual voice made available by Smithsonian researchers using optical technology to rescue it from unplayable records.
“Bell conducted his sound experiments between 1880 and 1886, collaborating with his cousin Chichester Bell and technician Charles Sumner Tainter. They worked at Bell’s Volta Laboratory, at 1221 Connecticut Avenue in Washington, originally established inside what had been a stable. In 1877, his great rival, Thomas Edison, had recorded sound on embossed foil; Bell was eager to improve the process. Some of Bell’s research on light and sound during this period anticipated fiber-optic communications.
Inside the lab, Bell and his associates bent over their pioneering audio apparatus, testing the potential of a variety of materials, including metal, wax, glass, paper, plaster, foil and cardboard, for recording sound, and then listening to what they had embedded on discs or cylinders. However, the precise methods they employed in early efforts to play back their recordings are lost to history.
Today, however, a dramatic application of digital technology has allowed researchers to recover Bell’s voice from a recording held by the Smithsonian—a breakthrough announced here for the first time. From the 1880s on, until his death in 1922, Bell gave an extensive collection of laboratory materials to the Smithsonian Institution, where he was a member of the Board of Regents. The donation included more than 400 discs and cylinders Bell used as he tried his hand at recording sound. The holdings also documented Bell’s research, should patent disputes arise similar to the protracted legal wrangling that attended the invention of the telephone.”
(This text is an excerpt of an article written by Charlotte Gray at the Smithsonian magazine. Read this great article in full HERE) All images via the Smithsonian.
This wax-and-cardboard disc from 1885 contains a recording of Bell’s voice. (Richard Strauss / NMAH, SI)
A few days ago, the European Space Agency issued a series of photographs taken in one of the agency’s anechoic chambers, in the “zone of silence” as the title of the press release says. So what is an anechoic chamber? It is an echo-free room where the walls coated with special materials absorb all reflections of sound or electromagnetic waves and insulate any noise coming from outside, thus it simulates a quiet open-space of infinite dimension, which is quite useful in the aerospace industry. Text and Images via io9. See more HERE
FLAT EARTH SOCIETY proposes a transposition of the earth elevation at the scale of a microgroove record. This engraving of elevation’s data on the surface of the disk generates in consequence a subtle image of the earth. When played on a turntable, the chain of elevation data crossed by the needle can be heard.
“Can we hear the Earth? Not the sounds occurring upon it but the Earth on a geophysical scale? […]
The hill-and-dale technique was used in Edison’s phonograph, recording sound with a stylus that vertically cut a minute landscape into the grooves of the cylinder. […] Flat earth society takes readings from the stylus of topographic radar, cuts them into vinyl and then plays them back with a stylus. Phonographic hills-and-dales grow into the Alps, Andes, Himalayas, Grand Canyon, Great Steppe, Great Rift Valley, Great Outback and the Lesser Antilles. Where Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba once sang one hears the Baja Peninsula, Antarctic Peninsula, and the bathymetric pauses of the Red Sea and Baffin Bay. […] Peaks and valleys, spikes and wells, spires and troughs, aspirations and depressions, all have their gradations in mythical and actual landscapes.” – Douglas Kahn
Cube with Magic Ribbons is a computer visual and synthesised sound composition for live performance. The piece takes its title from a drawing of M.C.Escher which is rich with contradictory perspectives but it is also inspired by the wrapped spaces found in the two dimensional graphics of early computer games such as Asteroids and Pac-Man. It was created using a custom visual sequencer SoundCircuit, which rather than employing a conventional DAW layout, allows multiple virtual tape-heads to travel through a two-dimensional wrapped space along tracks that can be freely inter-connected. As the tape-heads travel through the resultant network, the topological layout of the tracks comes to directly influence the macro form of the music. Furthermore, as the piece unfolds the nature of this already confusing space reveals itself to be increasingly elastic and complex, yet inexorably intertwined with the musical form.
Der Golem is Vitali Harmash’s deep drone electroacoustic reinterpretation of a silent magical story of Golem. These soft crackles and clouds of time-dust sound as though the music is broadcasted straight through the centuries. Seems like Harmash has some kabbalistic drone generator in his studio.
Album was created after Paul`s Wegener “The Golem: How He Came into the World” silent horror film scoring. Performance was hold in the oldest Minsk cinema “Raketa” at Dec12 2012 where opened a week of silent German cinema.
Leonhard Lapin, Ülevi Eljand, Ando Keskküla, “Trio for Piano,” 1990, happening in Tallinn Art Hall, 1990. Image courtesy of the Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn.
Wiener Gruppe – 2nd Literary Cabaret – 15. 4. 1959. Porrhaus, Vienna. Friedrich Achleitner, Konrad Bayer, Gerhard Rühm and Oswald Wiener.
WANDERLUST 