tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-275448952024-03-19T03:48:11.099-07:00beta blog"If you think everything is all right, you're just standing on the surface of shit." Theo ParrishUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger409125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-10169816741177374892017-02-20T06:13:00.004-08:002017-02-20T06:13:52.810-08:00Kehinde Wiley<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/kehinde-wileys-global-vision-on-view-1424380961">“Everyone talks about my work as though it is just hip-hop meets classic painting and it is so frustrating,” Mr. Wiley said. “People reduce it to, ‘You paint rappers.’ ”</a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-83407388714838257012016-07-07T08:47:00.000-07:002016-07-07T08:47:00.624-07:00RIP Abbas Kiarostami<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>RIP Abbas Kiarostami. Realizing that this DVD review --written for Paste Magazine back in 2010-- didn't make it to their website (though <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/03/the-fifty-best-living-directors.html?p=4">my blurb about Kiarostami on their Greatest Living Directors list did</a>), so putting it here.</i></div>
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In one of <i>Close-Up</i>'s courtroom scene, you can hear
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami (#18 on Paste's Greatest Living Directors
poll) direct his subject just off-screen: "This camera is here so that you can
explain things which people might find hard to understand." If only. In this
uncanny, conundrum of a film from 1990, the camera casts doubt on all it
observes. A reporter follows a story about a man who has just been arrested for
impersonating famed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Is he a criminal or
just a cinephile? Or does he stand in for something greater? Shot without
artifice (or is it?) Kiarostami's camera meditates on the creative act and
cinema, and the lie inherent in each. "I wanted to make them forget the idea
that a film director is different from other people," the accused states at one
point in his defense. But come the final act, when we observe the imposter's
meet-up with the original through a cracked windshield with a glitching audio
mic, a clutch of pink flowers obscuring their profiles, the façade of
Kiarostami's profound poesy becomes evident. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-12985693912411587722014-01-12T14:46:00.000-08:002014-01-12T14:46:43.263-08:00The Dub Club<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/mb130717dub_club_with_tom_ch/mb130717Dub_Club_with_Tom_Ch480x172.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/mb130717dub_club_with_tom_ch/mb130717Dub_Club_with_Tom_Ch480x172.jpg" height="141" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<i><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dub-in-this-club-jamaican-dancehall-rises-again-20130816">"Reggae is the original remix culture: hip-hop has direct roots in reggae and Skrillex and dubstep come straight from Jamaican bass culture."</a> Rolling Stone</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-48140325652901916272014-01-12T14:40:00.000-08:002014-01-12T14:47:25.777-08:00Brooklyn Gets Serious About Comedy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Hannibal_Buress.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Hannibal_Buress.JPG" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15.600000381469727px; line-height: 21px;"><i><span style="color: white;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704150104576122953890709140">"Comedians are like cockroaches," he said, "they'll just sneak in and set up a show where ever there's some light and a sound system."</a> Wall St. Journal</span></i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-63502904226176343782014-01-12T14:00:00.002-08:002014-01-12T14:47:49.492-08:00The Story Collider <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-AY726_collid_G_20110520192633.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NY-AY726_collid_G_20110520192633.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<i><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704904604576334073826659908">"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15.600000381469727px; line-height: 21px;">When we talk about science, we think of it as this thing that mysterious people who are nothing like us do in white lab coats," said Mr. Lillie. "I've been looking for ways to convey the idea that it's something everyone of us experiences."</span></a> Wall St. Journal</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-15472276961395445202014-01-12T14:00:00.001-08:002014-01-12T14:48:01.543-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16176/homepage_large.29e8b3a1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn3.pitchfork.com/tracks/16176/homepage_large.29e8b3a1.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><i><a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/16176-love-is-lost-hello-steve-reich-mix-by-james-murphy/?utm_campaign=search&utm_medium=site&utm_source=search-ac">"I<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">t bursts like applause at the end of a Fellini film or a live album, celebrating the artifice of performance, the drama of a farewell.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"> "</span></a> Pitchfork Media</i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-18249665164176140932014-01-12T13:57:00.001-08:002014-01-12T14:48:16.929-08:00"Get Lucky"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.highsnobiety.com/files/2013/12/daft-punk-to-perform-at-The-Grammys-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.highsnobiety.com/files/2013/12/daft-punk-to-perform-at-The-Grammys-1.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<i><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/15320-daft-punk-get-lucky-ft-pharrell/"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">"Get Lucky"'s real elegance lies in the hands of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">Nile Rodgers</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">, which is no doubt the Robots’ intent.</span></a> Pitchfork Media</span></i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-77230419134879038572014-01-12T13:49:00.000-08:002014-01-12T14:48:30.490-08:00The Wedding Singer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style820_546/public/131021-omar-souleyman-01_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style820_546/public/131021-omar-souleyman-01_0.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 26px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 26px;"><i><span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.spin.com/articles/omar-souleyman-wenu-wenu-feature/">Souleyman's voice is gruff and coarse, exuding a stoic strength. Yet for those who understand Arabic, his songs are plaintive, dealing mostly with love and its loss. Coming from Syria, a land where deep sectarian conflict will resonate for generations, if not centuries, Souleyman sounds at once like the most self-possessed and most heartbroken man in the world.</a> SPIN</span></i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-27284603750906898552014-01-12T13:48:00.000-08:002014-01-12T14:48:40.546-08:00Masters of Puppets<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style820_546/public/field/image/rock-afire-explosion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style820_546/public/field/image/rock-afire-explosion.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 26px;"><i><span style="color: white;"><a href="http://www.spin.com/articles/masters-puppets-rock-afire-explosion-story/">Propelled by pneumatic valves and nascent robotic technology, and programmed by early Apple computers, the band -- bassist Billy Bob Brockali, singers Looney Bird and Mitzi Mozzarella, keyboardist Fatz Geronimo, guitarist Beach Bear, and drummer Dook LaRue, as well as Rolfe deWolfe and Earl Schmerle -- entranced, and even scared, kids.</a> SPIN</span></i></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-79616737139437144572011-09-16T13:00:00.000-07:002011-09-16T13:20:14.359-07:00Kid Creole interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFjU039_hETv22tKObGS_ykAMVlbZsjTMJ4Spa8Piq1t7SufKT5iD4vdCmdZX5L35Scs-hsJGl_sWNwSPnWXHE2UHoVmVJ1yQXJ6BIKHeg2D9mEKAaB3IGnS-ARkj9Hjp1Sca/s1600/kc2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMFjU039_hETv22tKObGS_ykAMVlbZsjTMJ4Spa8Piq1t7SufKT5iD4vdCmdZX5L35Scs-hsJGl_sWNwSPnWXHE2UHoVmVJ1yQXJ6BIKHeg2D9mEKAaB3IGnS-ARkj9Hjp1Sca/s640/kc2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>Back in the heat of the New York summer (remember when it was hot out? Me neither), I spoke via Skype with August Darnell, a/k/a Kid Creole. I worried that the distance of thousands of miles might create a real distance in the dialogue as well, but the moment Darnell opened his mouth, I was put at ease. This might've been the easiest interview ever. Darnell is a raconteur without parallel. My prompts were few and I just let the man rap.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>When were you last in New York City?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s at least ten years since I lived there, but I was just
there two months ago. Got grandchildren there. I can’t tell you how many I
have. You can’t print that. I still love the city. The best part of it is that
I can get out of it in a week. I live in Sweden now, far from the maddening
crowds. I’m loving it. The album was cut here in my home studio. I’m in south
Sweden now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>How do you deal with the Scandinavian darkness?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You don’t deal with it. You hibernate or get out of town. We
tour and don’t get stuck in the snowstorms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Why’d you leave in the first place?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got fed up with NYC! I was fed up with traffic. I cracked
one day when I had to go to my dentist ten blocks away and it took two hours to
get crosstown. And I said, I don’t need this. I’m getting out of here. I lived
in England, Denmark, Stockholm and now I’m here in southern Sweden.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>You have the same inspirations there?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hell no. Without New York, there’d never have been Savannah
Band or Kid Creole. NYC was <i>everything</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
I love the city for what it gave me but when you reach a certain part of your
life and you find you want life to be easier, rather than an everyday struggle.
There’s no town that could give me the power that NYC gave me. My favorite line
from my songs was “Going Places”: “When you leave New York, you go nowhere.”
I’m a New Yorker for sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>What's the biggest change you notice now?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The biggest change is Times Square. There’s nothing like
Times Square. My brother and I used to just go down there for the thrill,
because 42<sup>nd</sup> Street was dangerous. On every other corner was a
prostitute, a bordello, a porn cinema, and people on every corner hustling.
It’s so clean they should just rename it. Big business has taken over Times
Square. I thought the greatness of Times Square was it was the Theater District
and its rich patrons pouring out to the street and they’d mingle with the <i>lowest</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> dregs of society known to mankind. I used to get a
thrill out of that. The danger, the edge of it is gone. </span>Prices have gone up, but you still don’t get more for your
money. You still have traffic jams, cabbies trying to kill you, but it’s still
the greatest city in the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>In the summer, I always think of you, because everyone wears fedoras.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I noticed the fedora was making a comeback there. It was amazing.
You don’t have that in London, Paris, and you don’t have it here. It’s great.
Fashion is still great in Manhattan. There’s a pulse in the city. I think Brennan mixing in Brooklyn an
album recorded in a forest in Sweden made a juxtaposition. The juxtaposition
between my forest here in Sweden and Brennan Green’s urban jungle in Brooklyn
is poetry in motion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Why did you make an album after all this time?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was not my idea. Strut had the idea. They wanted to put
me together with Andrew Butler of Hercules and Love Affair. I Googled him and
went okay, he’s definitely influenced by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band
and Kid Creole, so I thought the combination would work. I knew he was popular
in the underground dance clubs, just like we were. I trusted it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The original
plan was to write 50/50, but it didn’t turn out to be as simple as that. Our
schedules conflicted and we were never together in the same part of the world.
We were never together in the same room. I’ve never met the guy! I only saw him
on Skype chats. We were never in the same room, which is uncivilized and
ridiculous and that’s modern society for you. He sent his songs to me, I sent
mine to him. A hundred and ninety-eight emails later, we’d be saying: “Can you
change the bassline on the third bar of the fifteenth section of the fourth
verse and can you mute the triangle on the third verse…” It became ridiculous.
All the things we were doing we could’ve done in one room. That’s when
technology works against you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It took too long to do the album. If we had been
old-fashioned about it, it would’ve been out two and a half years ago! To be
honest with you, I got frustrated with it but I’m sure glad I did. I <i>love</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> the results. I’d never do it this way again though.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Speaking of Andys, did you ever hear Coati Mundi's album?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I listened to it in the car and it was spectacular. Andy
came a long way and I love him and his humor. He was the zaniest character I
know. I miss having a comic foil onstage. Sometimes the shows get
too serious. I’m singing “Mister Softee” and the audience is taking it seriously?!
He was like a Marx Brother. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>You have a song on the new album that unpacks what happened with the Savannah Band.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tommy Mottola said to me: “Savannah Band had the potential to
be one of the largest bands in America back in the 70s.” It was like Rome, we
fell from within. The Savannah Band self-imploded. Our sibling rivalry
destroyed it. My brother and I couldn’t take it to the next level. We were huge
and had a hit record, wrote well together, and we had a great songstress, a
chanteuse Cory Day. We had everything going for us. We destroyed ourselves. I
wrote “Stony and Corey” as tribute to my brother and the songbird, they were
the two most influential people in my life in terms of being a music
personality.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>How does it feel to be sampled like you are?</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Being sampled was a great feeling, man. M.I.A. and Ghostface? And then Cee-Lo covered “Hard
Times," too. I get my royalties and I’m flattered. Artists get annoyed by samples
and downloads. To me though, it’s flattering when a new artist comes along and utilizes your
music so that new listeners can discover the original.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<b>What do you listen to now?<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
I have my old favorites more than explore new things. I have children and they always keep me abreast. What I also miss is that you never have to leave the island of Manhattan, you just travel your block and the islands come to you. The music of every nation can be found there. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I like Rihanna right about now but my favorite is still Beyonce. She’s a
goddess. She’s up there with the likes of Diana Ross, Tina Turner, those larger
than life female vocalists. Beyonce is a goddess. I love her stuff.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-92200548387047249372011-09-14T15:32:00.000-07:002011-09-14T15:33:49.952-07:00Kid Creole<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYOJvfDi-fkXtvH2FiyX5_hmsQp53hV4SmQ-Ey47ifGYs3p5k1yUzuWjnEjf4oBiNRo3MhMxn3KwHn8uD-T-KmlXMmYjvjpJYTS1E_LmpG7IWRwY_rQNlL5fBRuUM4jaS9DB_2/s1600/kc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYOJvfDi-fkXtvH2FiyX5_hmsQp53hV4SmQ-Ey47ifGYs3p5k1yUzuWjnEjf4oBiNRo3MhMxn3KwHn8uD-T-KmlXMmYjvjpJYTS1E_LmpG7IWRwY_rQNlL5fBRuUM4jaS9DB_2/s400/kc.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Today in the Village Voice is my feature on <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-14/music/kid-creole-and-the-coconuts-fresh-fruit/">the return of Kid Creole and the Coconuts</a>. Such a pleasure to chat with the man (my full transcript will appear before long) and revisit his body of work. Watching some of these videos --with these two posted by former sidekick Coati Mundi-- makes me pine to see the group in their prime:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1SOkKMnPgQI" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EuCxNlWWe3g" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-38049484437992070362011-09-11T10:55:00.000-07:002011-09-11T10:57:23.059-07:00“It was a strange year that year and it is a strange year this year. The blue of the sky looks rather black to the eye.”<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlADfn3xkdKEfEATw8OR95ERG9lDUhT1Uynurf69Wj5dCmUoH-_v0QTimgYv7JST9bX31huBQTqkGtcZS4fXdx18ImypTZccfQ6282Ss-Ph19aNacxpYm2A7qAZl43pnwZX0uA/s1600/blue-sky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlADfn3xkdKEfEATw8OR95ERG9lDUhT1Uynurf69Wj5dCmUoH-_v0QTimgYv7JST9bX31huBQTqkGtcZS4fXdx18ImypTZccfQ6282Ss-Ph19aNacxpYm2A7qAZl43pnwZX0uA/s640/blue-sky.jpg" width="512" /></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In a friend's water closet reading stack sits a book by <a href="http://jamesjpn.net/index.php/2010/07/09/behold-a-pale-horse/">William Cooper</a>. I don't believe I have seen that name since 1991, the year that punk
rock broke, when I religiously read<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.flipsidefanzine.com/FlipsideFanzine/Home.html">Flipside
Magazine</a>. That newsprint rag not only told me about folks </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">like Beck, Unwound, Fitz of Depression </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">releasing seven
inches, but --if memory
serves-- it used to run Cooper's missives as well as those of someone named
Jolly Roger.<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/JOLLYROGER/">The latter's monthly
columns</a> went beyond the joys of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The
Anarchist's Cookbook</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">(which was always behind the counter at
the bookstore, next to Madonna's<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Sex</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">) explained how to create new identities
for yourself, how to make your marijuana seeds sprout, as well as how to make
homemade napalm (it involved dissolving styrofoam peanuts in gasoline). I may
have made half-assed attempts at all three in high school.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Cooper's most famous book (or at least, the one that would one day
wind up as toilet reading) is<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Behold-Pale-Horse-William-Cooper/dp/0929385225">Behold
a Pale Horse</a></i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">, a
hodge-podge of UFO sightings, government cover-up memos, and secret society
cabals running the world and installing a New World Order. Thumbing it some two
decades after its publication date, I was struck by a line that went: "The
numbers 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 39 have special meaning to the Illuminati." For a
book published in 1991, it's easy to have a few of those numbers stick now.
Wondering just what such a figure might make of this "post-9/11"
world we now inhabit, I instead learned that Cooper was shot dead by sheriffs
in November of 2001. Squirting some homemade napalm on the fire, Cooper
purportedly hinted<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://youtu.be/HzkXh8Cm3GE">in a radio show from June 2001</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>that an attack on the US would be
blamed on some disgraced Saudi prince.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;">I wonder why it feels relevant to even mention this here. Perhaps its that underground thoughts go hand in hand with underground music. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Perhaps paranoia and punk were always entwined for me, like<i> The Anarchist's Cookbook</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">and Madonna on that same shelf</span></span>. Perhaps
it's because I'm with this book hundreds of miles from Ground Zero (along with <i>New York</i>'s 9/11 double issue) and for the
first time in ten years, I won't be in New York City on this day. And I won't call it by those two numerals. It's always September to me.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">And so I am
trying to re-remember what it was like, newly arrived to New York, to wake up in the city on that September day, to
climb up on my roof and watch the two towers burning, smoke billowing into that
immaculate blue sky. Trying to remember who I was then, when I woke up extremely hungover, when my roommate knocked on my bedroom door and told me to wake up "to witness history," it was hard to fathom the events of that day. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;">I remember that September 10th was an extremely late night for me and my friends, one where we stayed out until the wee hours of morning, inhaling and imbibing the substances necessary to remain up until that darkest hour of morning. Sleep that night was tumultuous and fraught. I was restless in a way I had never been in my life. I thrashed through the sheets and just barely fell to sleep before that knock came.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">A few things remain in my mind upon waking up: First was a news item from the week previous was about an ultralight plane had been flown towards the Statue of Liberty. So when I thought of a plane striking the Tower, a harmless little fly of a craft is what came to mind. The other is that just a few weeks prior, the city had detonated the two water towers that loomed over the Williamsburg skyline, erasing them from the sky in a matter of seconds. So I stood on my rooftop and saw those two buildings, their concrete pluming into the sky up above.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;">Technically, I never went inside the World Trade Center in my first months of living in New York City. But I did go into its basement. A temp agency scheduled an interview for me
at WTC 1 and so I went downtown one July morning, where I was soon ushered into the
basement of that building. I had been without work for three months and my funds were depleted. I needed a job desperately. I was fucking broke. And yet...</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;">Before I left Texas, I worked in a government building, one which also housed federal judges. They constantly received credible death threats. One had to go through metal detectors to even enter the building. The windows were so darkly tinted that I never knew the sun was shining until I left at the end of the workday. Being in Austin, but a few hundred miles from where the Oklahoma City bombings had taken place, that pall remained over the place. How could it not? I wasn't just working a job out of college (so as to save up for a move to NYC), I was working at a place that was a target. And I swore to myself when I moved that I would never work in a target again.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">So sitting in the basement of the World Trade Center, hungry and broke, I threw the interview. Walking down the hallway after, my guide not only pointed out where the
bathroom was but also where the bombs had detonated back in 1993, pointing out
both in a casual way that was nauseating. How could you carry on with your work knowing that someone had tried to destroy the place? I left as quick as I could and never returned their phone calls. I remained willfully unemployed. My family and my roommates thought I was crazy
to not take that job.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;">It would be another month before I had a real job and years before
my present occupation, writing about music. In reading some of the remembrances
of that day, like<span class="apple-converted-space"> those by </span><a href="http://faculty.vassar.edu/huhsu/Site/wire911.pdf">Hua</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/8667-disintegration-loops-and-simplesongs/">Mark</a>,
I wonder what I might have listened to on that day. Such sounds escape me now. Instead, I recall carrying out mundane
tasks like doing my laundry and buying an extra can of Goya beans and two gallons of
drinking water, all under two strips of black smoke. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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</div>
<div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Somewhere on the web, I recently found a list of<span class="apple-converted-space"> <a href="http://steak.place.org/poll/2001/36.html">my top albums of 2001</a>.</span> I wonder at who that person was who listed and listened to such albums. Of greatest relevance for that time was of course the unreleased Wilco album, with its lyrics about tall buildings shaking and voices escaping, not to mention the paranoia-inducing samples from the "number" stations. I wonder what Bill Cooper would have had to say about <a href="http://www.irdial.com/conet.htm">The Conet Project</a>. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But the only sound I still remember came
at night. It was not music. We all convened, friends and strangers and neighbors, on the Williamsburg waterfront to commiserate and hug one another, to down
whisky straight from the bottle and stare at the sirens silent and shining across the black
water of the East River. Ambulances were in a line like an unclasped ruby necklace, flaring their incandescent red lights and snaking up and down the FDR in a long procession, both north and south. I don't recall their wails reaching me. Instead, I remember the heartbeat of hand drums all around
me, somehow giving meter to the black night.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;">Ten years later, a quote I affixed to that record list remains the most resonant, more than any of those albums. It came from a Gertrude Stein book I was reading at the time and it worked as well at that moment in time as it does now, ten years and a lifetime ago: </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: 13.5pt;"><i>"It was a strange year that year and it is a strange year this year. The blue of the sky looks rather black to the eye."</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f3f3f3; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-79623812646869023372011-09-07T11:30:00.000-07:002011-09-07T11:30:53.812-07:00school's back<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/237.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="432" src="http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/237.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Nothing says welcome back to school like <a href="http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/09/iggy-and-the-stooges-farmington-high-school-mi-december-5th-1970/">this series of photos</a> from an Iggy and the Stooges gig at a high school, circa 1970.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-59348973490470550042011-08-30T15:31:00.000-07:002011-08-30T15:31:28.635-07:00Yoga Records interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xPKtE_Qkh6V5r0O2ZsVpq6guC59FTDaoATse5iPFqmfbmtGP-EWSqvLkLI0hwRoVK8FzKMrXt9ew5zREmTDVv-sDqmJ40642ItJNQBgvc0_Nh80tg3csOhrF0nHOl1zZVwpV/s1600/yoga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xPKtE_Qkh6V5r0O2ZsVpq6guC59FTDaoATse5iPFqmfbmtGP-EWSqvLkLI0hwRoVK8FzKMrXt9ew5zREmTDVv-sDqmJ40642ItJNQBgvc0_Nh80tg3csOhrF0nHOl1zZVwpV/s400/yoga.jpg" width="332" /></a></div><br />
<i>The last of my New Age interviews (finally) and one of the most insightful. Douglas Mcgowan is the force behind Yoga Records and a spate of reissues that have appeared through Drag City and Important Records, to name but a few. You shouldn't miss albums he's brought back into the world, such as <a href="http://www.midheaven.com/item/travelers-advisory-by-young-matthew-lp">Matthew Young's Traveler's Advisory</a>, the self-titled <a href="http://www.yogarecords.com/artists/tedlucas/">Ted Lucas</a> album, or the supremely twisted <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79yPTbH3lE&feature=related">soundworld</a> of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hunkd6fknY">Dwarr</a>. Yoga also just reissued the stellar third <a href="http://www.yogarecords.com/artists/bobbtrimble/">Bobb Trimble</a> album and I've recently learned that the first Dwarr album is due soon as well. But Douglas's forte remains New Age music and beyond just appreciating the music, Douglas grasps its wider socioeconomic implications as well, tying its rise to the re-election of Reagan in 1984 and understanding its current renaissance as part of cassette culture.</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">I was trading records and one collector broke out a record by Jon Bernoff and Marcus Allen called <i><a href="http://media.photobucket.com/image/bernoff%20breathe/mkostek/Proggers/bernoffjbreatheexm-.jpg">Breathe</a></i>. It has the cheesiest cover I’ve ever seen and I thought they were putting me on. The idea of putting a frame around this music and saying it had validity as a genre was as weird to me as it is for just about any person on the street. Seeing someone else excited about it, who I respected, put it in a different light. It brought my attention to the fact that there’s all this sort of music that is psychedelic if only you are willing to look past the label.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>For myself, New Age comes with some much baggage on it.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">New Age is a thoroughly discredited term. Part of why I like the term is because of how much it bothers people. It’s reclaiming it. for me, calling it ambient or downtempo or all these other things that you hear people try to call it is sort of disingenuous. It’s repackaging something. I like it in its original state. It was at its zenith when it was called New Age and there wasn’t anything else that anyone called it in the years between 1975 and 1985.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Is the fact that this stuff was for the most part outside of major labels and doing private pressings of their music part of what appealed to you?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Absolutely. It’s one of the very first completely amateur-driven genres. It’s one of the first modern private pressing phenomenas in music. It was almost entirely a private-press phenomenon. That makes it really interesting from a sociological perspective and from looking at the history of the business of it. It was a genre founded by entrepreneurs and guys who were looking at Stephen Halpern’s success and trying to emulate it. It was never a creation of major labels. The major labels came in and ruined it. It’s not as simple as that, but by the time the majors arrived on the scene the best work had already been done.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKEtGXn9S3v6DaRRZJSedmj7xYhjPfnH5KPhY3qzMpJvgwOYjD8ZALB44UB8XHUCh4DDeEFXjQvycvZpLMSRpeugzq2G1iz_pkY3bU7X2WEOKvO2COaNotylZDcYSboVll8swr/s1600/advisory-cover-300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKEtGXn9S3v6DaRRZJSedmj7xYhjPfnH5KPhY3qzMpJvgwOYjD8ZALB44UB8XHUCh4DDeEFXjQvycvZpLMSRpeugzq2G1iz_pkY3bU7X2WEOKvO2COaNotylZDcYSboVll8swr/s1600/advisory-cover-300.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>What was the tipping point of it?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think Steven Halpern founded the business of New Age music and Windham Hill perfected it. it basically became commercialized and digitized around the same time and it flowed perfectly into Reagan’s remaking of America, where something that started as a counter-cultural hippie movement was completely co-opted. Why it all happened at the same time, you can’t point to one particular thing. But people were looking at the massive sales that Windham Hill was doing and how easy it was to do and wanting to have a piece of that action. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s not dissimilar to people calling themselves “screenwriters.” It’s people chasing after an easy and massive payday. It’s a thing for amateurs that amateurs convince themselves that they can do. Sometimes they’re right. It also just attracts an element of people going: “I’d like to make music and I’d like to make money doing it. I can put a fishing weight on a synthesizer and modulate the pitch for twenty minutes and I’ve got Side A.” That was incredibly attractive to a lot of guys who were coming at this with less than pure musical motives. It was a genre that attracted amateurs.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Which is its best and worst quality.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was definitely a double-edged sword. The amateur element is what makes all the best releases so charming because they are often handmade and have the beginner’s touch in a good way. Then you have subsequent waves of imitators. Each wave was less concentrated and powerful. The earliest people like Paul Horn and Steven Halpern were true originals and it’s easy to forget that because when you look back at it now, it seems like such simple music. they did invent the ideas of what they were doing. JD Emmanuel is a good example of a second wave of people refining it. after that, it’s just diminishing returns.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqV1kBOWg59ZSWJR_qestjiqP9vdwkIQDZBZ-9mffpdZH2YawTD4934YuWCJe1JcCZnmy6gxRgy4R8prWlVOyzZWPondfWaf8ZrZse6r5F7D8ar0AG6QZTQaiPRWhyTw_uF35/s1600/jd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcqV1kBOWg59ZSWJR_qestjiqP9vdwkIQDZBZ-9mffpdZH2YawTD4934YuWCJe1JcCZnmy6gxRgy4R8prWlVOyzZWPondfWaf8ZrZse6r5F7D8ar0AG6QZTQaiPRWhyTw_uF35/s320/jd.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>What was the impetus behind Yoga Records?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I chose the name Yoga because I wanted something simple to the point of absurdity, like Apple Computers. You wouldn’t be able to forget it. I wanted it to have a meaningless quality. A lot of people hear that word and feel a sense of revulsion. Just this year is the year where it’s reaching critical mass and convince myself that there is a market and that it won’t be out of context like the way the Dwarr project would be. It was met with indifference. It was too far out of context. I’ve been waiting five years for people to get more into it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>What do you think is responsible for this shift back to respectability?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think the reason it’s booming in popularity is because it’s good (laughs). The good stuff is good. All things being equal, I think it’s more fun to enjoy something that is frowned upon. There’s a rebelliousness to embracing something that has been discarded and deemed worthless by the culture at large. You could see the same thing happening in the mid-90s with lounge music. everybody knew lounge music was stupid save for well, Martin Denny and Esquivel, these guys were great artists, they were timeless. The act of sifting through that stuff and figuring out what’s valuable about it helps the people who are really engaged as listeners become a part of the story of the music. They get to say: “We were early adopters” and that’s always fun. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The other part of it is we are in such deep need of chilling out these days. Popular culture doesn’t leave you with any room for meditation or space. There’s nothing slow about popular culture. There’s nothing reflective or even humble about popular culture. There’s no pause in anything. Especially for people who are 16 years old, who literally have never known the world before cell phones or internet, it’s something entirely new. That revolutionary thought that something so simple that runs counter to the speed and intensity of popular culture can have value and utility in their lives. It’s something that actually helps you come down and ground yourself. It’s like an antidote. Sitting and quietly listening to a New Age record is the opposite of checking your Facebook every two minutes. It’s as far from that kind of mentality as you can get. People are excited by that.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FrGyxriyswiEPPiAUl1HLUROBvZaPoA9IdSlzBGAhQZ10aB5rOw9N6Qw-U90jtKc0OgRbyKNE33Wvq4X3L_CptDI3xfW5SSBPihfowq4IDuYAV4yLYKRkSzB3bzloYEm47uc/s1600/elg-cover-300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5FrGyxriyswiEPPiAUl1HLUROBvZaPoA9IdSlzBGAhQZ10aB5rOw9N6Qw-U90jtKc0OgRbyKNE33Wvq4X3L_CptDI3xfW5SSBPihfowq4IDuYAV4yLYKRkSzB3bzloYEm47uc/s1600/elg-cover-300.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>It has a mental effect like that for me.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s not really any room for irony to operate within New Age music. I think it appeals to people who have very evolved sense of irony for whom something where irony can’t exist is a good thing. I think also there’s the matter of the imagery, styling, and packaging and all of the handmade elements of it are super attractive to people. In a weird way, it’s a precursor to the way indie music is packaged now. The creativity of record covers today echoes the creativity of the visionary art of old New Age packages. When people see the cover of <i>Breathe</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, it’s like…yeah, these are all of my favorite pastel colors!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Does the cassette culture play into this as well?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Definitely. New Age is a cassette medium. The length of the tapes, the ability to do short runs yourself, the fact that tape doesn’t pick up noise over time, which has a big effect on quiet music. I’m completely for cassette culture. I wish we could have the enthusiasm we have for records about cassettes. Cassettes are much more readily recyclable and to be honest, it’s heresy to say, but cassettes sound better than vinyl when everything is being done right. JD Emmanuel very forcefully told me that. Cassettes were good for the counter-culture. Cassettes kept it alive and they’re the democratic sound medium. You could say the same thing about CDRs, but they’re ugly. Tapes can be re-used.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In these New Age articles that come around of late, I always think of those bullshit ‘comics aren’t just for kids’ stories that accompany graphic novel magazine features. I’d love to see the discussion move past that. New Age isn’t just crap. I’d like to see it move past that really quickly. I’d like to see more new artists get into it. It’s really exciting that people aren’t just looking with nostalgia but that they’re innovating within the form.</div><!--EndFragment--><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-85621081130817527242011-07-26T10:43:00.000-07:002011-07-26T10:43:33.560-07:00Animal Collective New Age interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkhcwjlu-Tcek0QXGfVmyVbCH5b0l9DDkThwGR2KCyH0t9qcLRHq2UEAZ8ked3pWlkFmGcvZXbOXK-TpjjH2rp-vCImmJLV6HEqSpmog2rUikKqsD09bu4tIdogE8Bqkp2OQ9a/s1600/ac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkhcwjlu-Tcek0QXGfVmyVbCH5b0l9DDkThwGR2KCyH0t9qcLRHq2UEAZ8ked3pWlkFmGcvZXbOXK-TpjjH2rp-vCImmJLV6HEqSpmog2rUikKqsD09bu4tIdogE8Bqkp2OQ9a/s400/ac.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<i>The peg for the New Age story stems from a Zamfir sample that Animal Collective used for their Fall Be Kind EP from 2009. Yet their love and appreciation for such New Age fare extends beyond that. The Geologist hepped me to Claire Hammill's ephemeral all-vocal album Voices a few years back and even amid their pop noise scramble, there remains a focus on tone and sustained sound that hints at much deeper listening practices. It was crucial to have their input for the piece and both Brian and Dave Portner obliged:</i><br />
<br />
<b>Brian "The Geologist" Weitz</b><br />
<br />
I came to new age music through drone and ambient records that would be considered more experimental or minimalist than new age. I did a radio show on WKCR in New York that went from 1-5 AM and some nights I would just choose 4 long pieces to play. Things like Alvin Lucier and Charlemagne Palestine were big for me. This was in college and during those years I spent a semester living in the desert in Arizona which had a big effect on my music listening habits.<br />
<br />
My pace of life slowed down a lot from when I lived in New York and it was easier to notice the subtle changes in the natural day, which required a certain amount of patience and willingness to concentrate on small details that unfold over longer periods of time. I wanted the same kind of feeling from records I was listening to. I'm not sure I'd describe the effect this has as relaxing. I suppose it is, but it's more the hypnotic quality of it that I find appealing.<br />
<br />
Eventually, I came to hear some private press new age records that weren't all that different from something like Terry Riley and the boundaries started to disappear for me. I think the reason there is a stigma attached to a lot of new age music is because of the personalities associated with it. I don't have a problem with it, but I think there is sort of a naive optimism to the aesthetic. It's the same thing that turns a lot of people away from hippie psych records. I like those too though.<br />
<br />
I think the recent popularity is similar to the popularity of a lot of hippie psych folk stuff from a few years ago, but I'm not sure I know why it's happening. Maybe it's a distance thing. Those personalty types typically associated with those music styles aren't as prevalent and people who have a more punk attitude don't have to interact with them and feel the need to push back. In fact these days the people making experimental music that sounds a lot like new age stuff have a more underground punk aesthetic, which maybe makes it easier to swallow.<br />
<br />
<b>Dave "Avey Tare" Portner</b><br />
<br />
<i>Where did that Zamfir sample come from?</i><br />
<br />
I came across it because I was getting more into Eastern European music, Bulgarian, Hungarian, etc. that melody on the record stuck out. The flute stuff is really crazy. It was tough to work into a song.<br />
It didn’t dawn on me that people would have the reaction that it was a New Age flute thing. It seemed normal and something that would work. <br />
<br />
<i>I know Zamfir’s music because of those infomercials in the 80s.</i><br />
<br />
I didn’t even associate it with that; I just stumbled upon that record.<br />
<br />
<i>I think Gang Gang Dance goes for that kind of stuff as well, the cheesier the tone the better.</i><br />
<br />
There’s a side of me that really loves this ambient space-out music. A few of us trade these ambient records every now and then. Like Iasos, just music like that. That record I suggested to you, Syrinx, I think those guys even played with Zamfir. To me, the world treads the line between…you look in the New Age section, the experimental section, similar records fall into either one.<br />
<br />
<i>They’re both into suspension and drones.</i><br />
<br />
My love of New Age music comes from me liking drone and minimalist music, things with microtones. But there’s also this side of me that comes from my mom, who listened to a lot of New Age music when I was growing up. We used to go to Miami a lot, and there was this New Age store that had all these tapes. I remember looking at the covers with dolphins on them. I remember my mom bought<i> Deep Breakfast</i> by Ray Lynch. I love that record. That’s the side that’s super cheesy to me, adult contemporary. Yoga videos my mom used to watch with people sitting in front of waterfalls doing yoga poses. I associate it a lot with certain childhood things.<br />
<br />
I guess people are getting into it. A lot of it is ‘out there,' if you get into that kind of thing. Ambient music has gotten more popular. People are into the peacefulness and it’s good music for being calm. I listen to that kind of stuff around the house and on tour. I have things on my iPod. Being on tour and listening and playing loud music, I want to listen to something that’s going to calm me down.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-87774773437752383612011-07-15T08:46:00.001-07:002011-07-15T08:48:24.572-07:00Greg Davis interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhQbJVPFD5lfidGwQRHlpa9_6bTm1TqTsHRo3MtwaefHvNL4Oj38TOsiZVxjEJYpyBN58KEM5ErBgzRpJCsDWU9O1MLt4QSHk3PrDRBmsbYWHp369Wkd9P-J4M2GZRRicvi3oJ/s1600/cv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhQbJVPFD5lfidGwQRHlpa9_6bTm1TqTsHRo3MtwaefHvNL4Oj38TOsiZVxjEJYpyBN58KEM5ErBgzRpJCsDWU9O1MLt4QSHk3PrDRBmsbYWHp369Wkd9P-J4M2GZRRicvi3oJ/s400/cv.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Researching New Age music and its reincarnation, it became imperative to chat with Greg Davis. (As introduction, I had to come clean on writing <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2189-curling-pond-woods/">this review of his work</a>.) While gaining renown as a musician/ composer, Davis has also curated the incredible <a href="http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/">Crystal Vibrations blog</a>. There's too much good stuff tucked away in there, but you'd be remiss in not aligning your skull with albums like Laraaji's <a href="http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/2007/10/laraaji-essence-universe-audion.html"><i>Essence/ Universe</i></a>, Steve Roach's <i><a href="http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/2007/11/steve-roach-structures-from-silence.html">Structures From Silence</a></i>, and more.<br />
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<b>Greg Davis</b><br />
<br />
I’ve been a big record collector for years and years (probably since I was about 14-15 years old). And in the past 6-7 years I started to buy and try to find good New Age records. They are often the cheap records at the store and so I've bought alot over the years and just slowly weeded through them to find the gems and the good music. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A lot of the best New Age albums, to me, are the ones that are an outgrowth of the hippie / psychedelic scene of the 60s - 70s. People had been living in communes for years and digging into alternative spiritualities and lifestyles and getting blissed out and started making some amazing music. It seems that New Age music really got its start in the late 70s (although there are a couple of isolated earlier examples). Some of those first Stephen Halpern records or the first Iasos records are often cited as the original New Age records. Halpern's 'Spectrum Suite' especially has all of the trappings of New Age: The New Age speak on the back cover, chakra zones, sound healing, sonic incense, all that good stuff. And it was released by Halpern himself on his own label. Halpern, Iasos, Joel Andrews and others were part of a California scene that probably started in 1973 at the festival to honor the Comet Kohoutek, it kinda started there and blossomed and that coincides with the following...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s really hard to say what the first New Age record is. There was stuff coming out of the German music scene like Ashra, Deuter, Cluster, Peter Michael Hamel and others that might be considered New Age. Paul Horn goes back to the late 60s with 'Inside', but I see him coming more out a jazz background then into hippie / eastern mystic vibes. 'Inside' was a very successful record and he mined that for all it was worth. Along with Horn, people like Vangelis, Paul Winter, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, etc and others helped lay the foundation and groundwork for New Age.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It really was an outsider music, made on private press labels and distributed to local gem shops and New Age bookstores and things like that but like any genre or style of music, it eventually becomes commercialized --especially given the climate of the 80s-- and New Agers started to see $$$$$ in their eyes. And I think by the mid 80s, the soul and the original inspiration for New Age music died out and left and now it’s become this big huge business (even for many of the original artists). So my main window for good New Age music has been from about 1975-1985.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It wasn’t too hard for me to work past the baggage of the New Age genre. I'm always interested in giving any kind of music or sound a chance even if it’s totally maligned. Plus I seem to resonate with core New Age ideas and beliefs in some ways so it doesn’t always turn me off. And being a big fan of drone, ambient, cosmic and psychedelic musics, all of this can be found in the New Age world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I started the Crystal Vibrations blog in 2007 because I wanted to share GOOD New Age music and try to give it a better name again and show some people that there are some really great records out there that are considered New Age. To me, good music is good music, I really don’t care what the label / genre / style is. Also, when I decided to start a music sharing blog, I wanted to have something unique. I didn’t want to just make another jazz blog or African music blog or psych blog or something like that, there are hundreds of those out there and they do it well already. So I felt this could serve a little niche and turn some people on to some weird old record and cast them in a new light.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think people are gravitating towards it because of what has happened in the cassette underground in the USA. There was a very prominent noise cassette / show culture bubbling up again that was becoming the hot new thing for awhile, but then bands like Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never started to come out of this scene playing a different kind of music using synths and pointing back to kraut rock / kosmiche / Berlin school / New Age styles. And then eventually many folks in the noise scene started shifting from making harsh noise music to making placid ambient spacy droney musics over the course of a few years. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It was a remarkable transition to watch (I've also been loosely a part of it with my own music). And I think this movement into a softer, more spacious music has fueled an interest in some older New Age musics that share some similarities. All of the lines get blurry as you know...(I won’t take the time to talk about new bands / musicians that have co-opted New Age fashion and ideas just to be cool or different, I'm more interested in how New Age music has influenced the music of today)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think New Age music can serve as a remedy for ADD music listening habits or help people cool and calm their minds a little bit. And especially with longer pieces, it gives you time to get immersed in a space and chill out. I think the ubiquity of drone music (New Age or not) was also a response to the internet / information / cell phone / Ipod age.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I've been able to move my threshold for liking pretty cheesy New Age music pretty high at this point. But I feel like I still have a perspective on what’s good and what isn’t. I think the cringe worthy stuff is the New Age music that is all talk and no play if you know what I mean. There is a bunch of New Age rhetoric / jargon and then the music is lousy or tossed off. Mostly the music where the artists just seem to be in it for the money is the ones that turn me off. I wholeheartedly love the spirit of New Age music (when its right) and I really gravitate towards the synth side of things (I tend not to dig strictly instrumental New Age, although there are some fine exceptions).<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I do get a bit of feedback from the blog. It has quite a few followers if that means anything. And people really dig the fact that I'm curating and unearthing these musical treasures. Its not an easy job but someone's gotta do it. I've noticed since I started my blog that some other share blogs have started posted some of their favorite New Age records too. My best story about the blog is one guy got in touch with me who I think used to own a New Age bookstore or something and he said he had a box of like 200 New Age cassettes, so he donated them to the blog, I just had to pay shipping on them. So the majority of the posts in the near future will be from that collection. There is a lot of great stuff in there (and a lot of bad stuff!).</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-41401564772694601052011-07-11T09:09:00.000-07:002011-07-12T08:04:59.258-07:00Blues Control/ Laraaji interviewThis fall, the <a href="http://www.igetrvng.com/">RVNG Intl. </a>label will release another entry in their highly ambitious <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Excepter-FRKWYS-Vol-2-Remixes-By-Carter-Tutti-And-JG-Thirlwell/release/1987439">FRKWYS</a> series, this one documenting a studio meeting between experimental noise duo Blues Control and one of the godfathers of ambient/ New Age music, Laraaji Nadabrahmananda. Once known as<a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=7560"> Edward Larry Gordon</a>, Laraaji released the seminal <i>Ambient 3: Day of Radiance</i> on Eno's label and continues to create some of the most transcendent music around. So it made sense to talk about this collaboration for the New Age story, so I reached out to both parties:<br />
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<b>LARAAJI</b><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>Were you surprised that a new band like Blues Control they reached out to you?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: LEA AND RUSS'S INVITE STIMULATED MY CREATIVE PERFORMANCE IMAGINATION. I FELT HONORED THAT THEY WANTED TO REACH FOR AMBIENT EXPERIMENTATION WITH ME. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Were you familiar with their music at all?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: NOT AT ALL BUT INTUITION SAID THIS WOULD BE A FUN AND MEANINGFUL<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">EXPLORATION. I TRUSTED THAT WE ALL WOULD CONTACT MAGIC IN THE STUDIO.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>How did you feel about the music you enacted together?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: THE MUSIC RESULTS NEEDED SOME REMIXING TO LOCATE THE BLEND THAT FELT BALANCED TO US ALL.. I WELCOMED THE CHANCE TO JAM THROUGH SPONTANEOUS INSPIRATION AND THEN EDIT DOWN TO VERY NEW ENERGY MOVING MUSIC. I ENJOYED THE FUN SPIRIT WE ALL HELD AND WHICH CAN BE HEARD IN THE MIX DOWN.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Do you ever worry that younger listeners might not take the time to be more contemplative and receptive in this culture?</i><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: I HAVE FOUND YOUNGER LISTENERS ACROSS THE PLANET WHO DO DIVE DEEP INTO CONTEMPLATIVE LISTENING. AND I FEEL THERE ARE DEVOTED MUSICIANS CULTIVATING THEIR ROLES AS BRINGERS OF DEEP LISTENING INSPIRATION. I ACCEPT MY ROLE IN HELPING LISTENERS YOUNG AND ELDERLY TO LOCATE THEIR DEEPER STILLNESS THROUGH CREATIVE AMBIENT MUSIC LISTENING.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Or has there always been such a struggle for higher consciousness through each age?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: THERE SEEMS TO BE A PRESENCE OF RIGHT ARTISTS GUIDANCE IN EACH AGE PROVIDING INSPIRATION FOR HIGHER EMOTIONAL SELF CONNECTION. THE STRUGGLE TO IDENTIFY THE ESSENTIAL SELF IN EACH AGE APPEARS REAL, BUT THE WAY SHOWERS AND THE TOOLS ARE HERE.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><br />
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<b>BLUES CONTROL</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>How did you become aware of Laraaji's music? What did you think about it? Were you into other "New Age" artists as well or did that type of music not appeal to you? <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We first became aware of Laraaji's music when we bought <i>Ambient 3: Day of Radiance</i>. That release seems to be the usual gateway to his music. We loved it so much that we started including it in gifts to family and friends for a while. We had already been listening to other new age artists by that time; Laraaji wasn't our first trip into the genre. This was in the early 2000s when our interest in noise music was waning, and consequently we started exploring different types of psychedelic music more avidly, including new age, krautrock, synth and electronic music. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We started our own new age band Watersports in 2003, and we were looking for new age-related lps/cds/tapes wherever we could find them - from dollar/thrift stores and used lp stores, to big chains like Target and Virgin Megastore cutout bins. Thankfully always cheap! There was a Barnes&Noble near Russ' dad's house in the suburbs that had an awesome new age CD section in the early 2000s. Every time we visited, we'd pick up anything that looked interesting or old. They eventually downsized the store, but for a while the new age section was extensive. We always joked that we were dying to meet the new age buyer and find out who this person was.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When we started Watersports in 2003, we didn't know anyone at all who was playing new age music, and we only knew one person who listened to it (our former roommate Joel St. Germain). I remember playing new age records at our house for friends around this time and getting fully laughed at. People would shake their heads, and just say "I don't know, man." We bought an Envirascape fountain at the Fulton Mall, and we included it in our early shows, mic'ing the water and nature sounds, and using it as a visual focal point. People ridiculed us for that too, hah. Our influences when we started out were Deuter, Golden Voyage, Environments LPs / Nature sounds CDs, Paul Winter, Klaus Wiese, Henry Wolff/Nancy Hennings, Wendy Carlos - Sonic Seasonings, Shadowfax, Georgia Kelly, Steve Hillage, Vangelis, Eberhard Schoener, Jade Warrior, Synergy, Messaien organ works, Charles Lloyd, and many more. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As Watersports evolved, we explored a lot more new age/kraut/synth/electronic music and also got deep into our classic rock/blues/hard rock interests, and that's how the idea for Blues Control started. The influences for BC are diverse, but we still include a lot of new age in what we do. I remember a review of an early BC show compared us to Kitaro, which was meant to be a diss at the time. Musically, I took it as a compliment.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Who's idea was it to collaborate, RVNG's or yours? What made you think that Blues Control would be a good fit with him? What was it like improvising with him in the moment? Did you do his deep listening meditations as well?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When Matt invited us to do a FRKWYS collab record, it didn't take long for us to suggest Laraaji, and Matt was all for it. Aside from loving Laraaji's music, we had already communicated with Laraaji in the past and always got a good vibe from him. The first time we went to see him play live was in 2004 at an in-store benefit for Tribal Soundz in Manhattan. His set that night was amazing, and I had a pleasant conversation with him afterward when I bought a CD. Then in 2010, I emailed him to see if he would play with Blues Control at an ESP Records in-store. He declined due to previous travel plans, but my communication with him via email was great - he was and still is a really open, joyful, down-to-earth person.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I had no idea if he would be interested in the collab idea, but his response turned out to be very positive. We scheduled a phone call to discuss details, and it all came together quickly after that. The only things he wanted to work out beforehand were instrumentation and key, so as to encourage a spontaneous and inspired improvisation. We met at Black Dirt Studio in upstate NY in December 2010. The first serendipitous sign was when everyone started setting up gear in the studio, and I realized for the first time that our setups were incredibly similar. Laraaji brought along a musical friend, Arji Cakouros, who joined in occasionally, and we all improvised for 4 hours on a single day. The jams frequently went as long as 45 minutes, and Laraaji deftly moved between very different soundworlds with ease. Everyone, including the engineer, was marveling at Laraaji's coordination, timing, and musicality.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Improvising with Laraaji was an emotional, spiritual, positive, healing experience. I really can't convey the immensity in words... It's rare that I cry from sheer joy, gratitude, and awe of beauty, but I was holding back tears at one point during the session. The experience affirmed my initial love and understanding of music and the inscrutable/infinitely beautiful/meaningful universe, and made inconsequential a lot of negativity I had come to associate with modern life and modern music.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-27565933495866360042011-07-07T06:27:00.000-07:002011-07-07T06:27:32.940-07:00Oneohtrix Point Never interview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3kCJLRNW1vl6Gr-KbgBbw9zcuWqLVexB2nN9zL0R2unpeU6fPgTGB-xg4YeP9LrwEHb2rG8_UzLhr6iF-x6v2ZO1ll-nkmXPfUxA8g_yHih7ib56064dwMnIv6sFtSDCw5zHc/s1600/opn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3kCJLRNW1vl6Gr-KbgBbw9zcuWqLVexB2nN9zL0R2unpeU6fPgTGB-xg4YeP9LrwEHb2rG8_UzLhr6iF-x6v2ZO1ll-nkmXPfUxA8g_yHih7ib56064dwMnIv6sFtSDCw5zHc/s400/opn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
As Oneohtrix Point Never, Daniel Lopatin has staked out a previously uninhabited/ inhospitable ground between bracing electronic noise and the warm washes of New Age. With albums like <i>Rifts</i> and <i>Returnal</i>, OPN was one of the acts that drew what it needed from the New Age aesthetic while leaving the rest behind, and sure enough, Dan waxed eloquently on the subject (though he later apologized for being too intellectual).<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><i>Can you tell me how you first got into New Age music or what got you to see beyond the stigma of such sounds?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A lot of new age is slightly more watered down kosmische musik made with very specific purposes in mind, like I remember certain Michael Hedges records came with instructions. Although I doubt they'd ever admit it, some of it was made by otherwise legitimized kosmische musik legends like Tangerine Dream and Vangelis. The only difference is there's no discreet new age rhetoric, although Vangelis was very much into glorifying epic terrestrial landscapes and that is very new age in its own way.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I always enjoyed the idea that somehow certain striated musical textures (kosmische, krautrock) are considered high brow and how smoothened (new age) textures signal something more pop. For a while I was into seeing how you could take something smooth and make it more striated via synthesizers and samplers and loopers. Because I mostly listen for texture, new age was is a huge resource for all kinds of non rhythmic texture that can act as a sort of jumping off point.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Does such music have a mental effect for you when you listen to it?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It does but it's not very relaxing. It often stresses me out in the sense that I think about how strange it is that an artist would feel that relinquishing their role as composer and letting music just freely float and just be would ever be a good thing. There's a superficial dissolution of the ego in both new age music and western mysticism that I find amusing. It's also very creepy in a sexual sense. Deuter, Andreas Vollenweider and even 80s Vangelis to a certain extent make perverted sounding new age music. They introduce this smooth jazz sexiness that is like some weird form of headphone molestation. It's uncomfortable. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It's contested whether or not my favorite new age records are actually more pure "ambient" records but often I can't really tell the difference other than the wrapping. But I love Steve Roa<i>ch - Structures From Silence</i>. For me it's on par with Aphex Twin's <i>Selected Ambient Works Vol. II</i> in terms of emotionality. A more obvious and actual new age record that I love and don't find sexually creepy is Iasos - <i>Elixir</i>, whose title says it all.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Do any of the other aspects of New Age music (be it vegetarian lifestyle, yoga, crystals, etc.) resonate for you at all?<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not at all -- I'm pretty pedestrian in terms of my lifestyle choices. I think people love the sounds because they heighten or color reality in an interesting way that music on FM radio or MTV2 or whatever doesn't really do. At least not at the moment.</div><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-57116784412110501842011-07-05T07:16:00.000-07:002011-07-05T07:16:10.996-07:00The New Age of New Age<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJHNmdxJXoO0HJfzZiP8vy8OCTL48UzXipp450VdquU0jfyteWqF1o9ITm1_SIVVS58BUpMZv3wr007uus4K1Iy3R6qYytHqmjeRjF_MHWTYIbiHbhL8xnAkVAElecMbhcN1jP/s1600/newage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="564" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJHNmdxJXoO0HJfzZiP8vy8OCTL48UzXipp450VdquU0jfyteWqF1o9ITm1_SIVVS58BUpMZv3wr007uus4K1Iy3R6qYytHqmjeRjF_MHWTYIbiHbhL8xnAkVAElecMbhcN1jP/s640/newage.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
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This past Sunday, I wrote a large piece for the LA Times about what I dubbed <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-ca-new-age-20110703,0,2953740.story">"The New Age of New Age,"</a> the wave of new artists and producers drawing on the soothing, chakra-massaging sounds of New Age music for their own purposes. For the story, I talked to artists like Animal Collective, Blues Control, Oneohtrix Point Never, Laraaji, and Greg Davis, as well as Douglas Mcgowan of Yoga Records. lots of interesting insight was offered, so over the next few weeks, I'll be posting their interviews in full here.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-71755455380675667902011-07-04T08:56:00.000-07:002011-07-04T08:56:23.450-07:00America!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KJHYrWo3oTY" width="560"></iframe><br />
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So good that I have to re-post and re-crank this song for the 4th of July.<br />
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And some 7 1/2 minutes into this is the official video for it:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9zra6xj37AA" width="560"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-48895875737634336952011-06-24T21:22:00.000-07:002011-06-24T21:22:33.147-07:00RIP Peter Falk<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lvhFsCpfrWw" width="425"></iframe><br />
"I'm a helluva guy. I think yer a lovely lady."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-77745216152155895022011-06-23T16:11:00.000-07:002011-06-23T16:11:34.406-07:00Macca<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTKK_6f7RUuQX4EMpP8cbHYG0sPqgRPe_L83IXGEp6NmCbw4LHVZcbKGOOpmtFFKrlrKFVbjawvGsiGJ777rKMBmHfGcQTUv1no1_vVDBPV_sX65yhzofq9tUFQShvb3xi4-v0/s1600/II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTKK_6f7RUuQX4EMpP8cbHYG0sPqgRPe_L83IXGEp6NmCbw4LHVZcbKGOOpmtFFKrlrKFVbjawvGsiGJ777rKMBmHfGcQTUv1no1_vVDBPV_sX65yhzofq9tUFQShvb3xi4-v0/s640/II.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />
I just reviewed the recent reissue of <a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=9286">Paul McCartney's half-baked (take that in many ways) solo album, McCartney II</a>, for Resident Advisor. What's funny though is the adverse reaction from the RA readership, deeply offended that "rock" was held up for inspection over there. At first, I thought their xenophobia was strong. But then I realized that when I wrote reviews of albums by <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/6124-in-fine-style-original-rockers-7-and-12-selection-1973-1979/">Augustus Pablo</a>, <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3967-flesh-of-my-skin-blood-of-my-blood/">Keith Hudson</a>, <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/434-virgin-ubiquity-unreleased-recordings-1976-1981/">Roy Ayers</a>, and <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/1254-fire-on-ice-and-turn-you-to-love/">Terry Callier</a> back in the early aughties for Pitchfork, they were greeted with similar disdain by the readership. Though in hindsight, that was just racism, right?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-13857390125557693312011-06-20T07:03:00.000-07:002011-06-20T07:03:03.858-07:00betadad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj44NdNeeF8PQ8kb5AXP13_KuIXV1BtPKtzVbY49YguA9_WrZiNS6USTw6w9HSP9cqMrTJ4z_T4Ib8V833Csa2Xr7xsWI4OPv1alupkgCRVoMMVlUYGO6t5eU0khfCBONgObt58/s1600/dad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj44NdNeeF8PQ8kb5AXP13_KuIXV1BtPKtzVbY49YguA9_WrZiNS6USTw6w9HSP9cqMrTJ4z_T4Ib8V833Csa2Xr7xsWI4OPv1alupkgCRVoMMVlUYGO6t5eU0khfCBONgObt58/s400/dad.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
This is yet another Father's Day that I did not celebrate. And when Emusic pitched its writers on songs about fathers, I bristled at the idea, trying to push it far from my mind. And yet, I wound up writing about two for <a href="http://www.emusic.com/features/hub/topofthepops/index.html">their Father's Day feature</a>. One is on Ras Michael's "Don't Sell Daddy Any More Whiskey" as "The Drunken Dreadlocked Dad" and Riley's bittersweet rocker "Daddy's Come Home" as "The Parolee Dad."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-9499705525020211112011-06-15T11:32:00.000-07:002011-06-15T11:32:41.972-07:00The Shaggs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uhgkWYCnoY0/S83wv2sZKSI/AAAAAAAAAJM/M_VPu8Okuco/s400/Girls+Stand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_uhgkWYCnoY0/S83wv2sZKSI/AAAAAAAAAJM/M_VPu8Okuco/s400/Girls+Stand.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
Today <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303714704576385751383680830.html?mod=WSJ_NY_Culture_LEFTTopStories">I have a story on the off-Broadway musical based on The Shaggs.</a> My tone might be slightly acerbic, but in no uncertain terms, I have --if not loved-- then admired the music that the Wiggin sisters made under duress.<br />
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Fifteen years ago, I was in a Half-Price Books in Houston, Texas, trying to find the bathroom. Instead, I happened upon a backroom filled with merchandise that wasn't on the floor just yet. Staring back at me was a copy of The Shaggs' lone 1969 album, <i>Philosophy of the World</i>. No, it was not the original, but the 1980 Red Rooster reissue. Still, it was $3 well-spent.<br />
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I only wish that in the piece today I could have included composer Gunnar Madsen's explanation on how the Shaggs put their music together:<br />
<blockquote>Dot wrote the songs and she wrote the melody to go with the lyrics and didn’t really know much about 4/4 time and tried to fit the lyrics into regular phrasing. What she ended up creating were mixed meters: 3/8, then a 2/2 bar, and then a 5/8 and then a 4/4. Meanwhile, it sounded like her sister Helen got drum lessons because she knows how to do basic 4/4 beats like “The Twist” but she can’t follow the shifting meters that Dot does. So in each song, you’ll hear Helen try to stay with her sisters but then just go into 4/4. So she’s going off in one direction while Dot and Betty are singing their melodies in mixed meters. </blockquote><blockquote>I was also puzzled by the recording of “Philosophy of the World.” The vocals are one bar behind the guitar but they’re in unison. And I realized they must have overdubbed the vocals because it’s one beat off. The sound pulls your mind in two different directions! </blockquote><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span><!--EndFragment-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27544895.post-69631521693394328822011-06-10T13:48:00.000-07:002011-06-10T13:48:32.944-07:00Ford & Lopatin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://peterberkleylikes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ford_lopatin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://peterberkleylikes.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/ford_lopatin.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
From the band formerly known as "Nails on a Chalkboard" (as well as Games), I did a brief chat with Ford & Lopatin's Joel Ford about jazz fusion and the like for The Voice blog. <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/06/ford_and_lopatin_channel_pressure_interview.php#more">Check it here.</a><br />
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And while I'm at it, I will be posting another interview with Dan Lopatin about his love of New Age music here before too long...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com