Ocean of Sound

"Imagine the most likely use for the wired city of the future not in cyberpunk or megatripolising world music frameworks then but as a hi-tech campfire, people plugging in to remind themselves of life as it was when they were plugged out, twisting their isolation into something resembling community."
David Toop Ocean of Sound

In Patagonia

"Now I play Chopin. Yes?" and he replaced the bust of Beethoven with one of Chopin. "Do you wish waltzes or mazurkas?"
"Mazurkas."
"I shall play my best favorite. It is the last music Chopin is writing."
And he played the mazurka that Chopin dictated on his deathbed. The wind whistled in the street and the music ghosted from the piano as leaves over a headstone and you could imagine you were in the presence of a genius.

Bruce Chatwin: In Patagonia

bukka beta

I wrote a succinct set of liner notes for the first-ever CD reissue of this Bukka White recording on John Fahey's Takoma imprint, out now. This was recorded by Fahey one afternoon upon tracking Bukka down to his room in Memphis and finding that --after not recording for 30 years-- he could still play those relentless, iron-horse blues as he did in the early 1930s. There's a tactile joy in the man's growl on this one.

Shangaata

Aside from having my lobes re-arranged by the vuvu drones during World Cup matches in Johannesburg, I've also been spending an exorbitant amount of time with this new compilation from Honest Jon's, Shangaan Electro. "Bananas" doesn't quite encapsulate this ludicrous music, but as exhausting/ exhilarating as the comp is, the videos of folks twitching to it is beyond words. A few favorites below:

washington, bc.

While we will no doubt be veering towards the Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery instead, D.C. is also hosting Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell From the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Revisionist American mythmakers to rival that of Rockwell, a fine article by Blake Gopnik in the Washington Post deftly unpacks this pre-packaging of "America" to Americans. He writes: "Even after all these years, high realist pictures never fail to play the magic trick of making us think that because they look so real, they must show things as they are."

That uncanny mindset of our country might be best summed up by this disconcerting quote from Speilberg, also in the piece: "I look back at these paintings as America the way it could have been, the way it someday may again be." So...something that was already delusional we might once again return to? Doesn't that just mean we already are in a state of delusion? While appropo for someone like Lucas, for a man who has seemingly been intent on re-addressing such mythologies with Schindler's List and The Pacific, it sounds off coming from Speilberg.

Rockwell has so whitewashed our psyche that even for my generation, it's hard to imagine a past that doesn't look like those damned pictures. It's become the mindset of political rhetoric as well, a return to a place that never was, even when Rockwell was painting them. Gopnik again:

In the hands of America's Favorite Artist, it stood as a willed repudiation of the new... Rockwell panders, in his very substance of his pictures' making, to his public's fear of change. Rockwell's greatest sin as an artist is simple: His is an art of unending cliché. The reason we so easily "recognize ourselves" in his paintings is because they reflect the standard image we already know. His stories resonate so strongly because they are the stories we've told ourselves a thousand times."

VAta

Visiting down in the mid-Atlantic region, our holiday has already been soundtracked by nu-Patriot classics like "The Lady in Red," "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Born in the USA," added to the endless parading of Sousa marches. Almost all got repeated ad nauseum during the festivities on the Great Lawn in the capital. Darius Rucker and more brass bands made the eyes roll so far back in the head, the fireworks couldn't even be glimpsed.

What was fascinating though was when headliner Reba McEntire strutted out and performed Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy," deftly inserting it into the Americana lexicon. The family frowned as I sung all the words to this obscure country song, fortifying those Texas stereotypes. Greil Marcus rightly sussed Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" as a devastating snapshot of our country in The Old, Weird America yet the less well-known "Fancy" resonates at this moment of our consumer culture:

We didn't have money for food or rent
to say the least we was hard-pressed
when Momma spent every last penny we had
to buy me a dancin' dress. 

Stuck in my head now, so I'll be humming it while wiping hot dog mustard off my mouth with an American flag napkin.

RIP Rammellzee

RIP Rammellzee.

A few years ago, I queried at Pitchfork about the man's totemic 12" "Beat Bop": "If "Rapper's Delight" is the Odyssey of hip-hop, is "Beat Bop" its Ulysses?" To which the answer is an unequivocal yes. If you haven't picked up my friend Dave Tompkins's head-swimming How to Wreck a Nice Beach book, do yourself a solid, if only to get observations like this on Rammellzee:

Rapper, diver, sinister masked man, dentist, jeweler, letter defender, quantum engineer, painter. Toy encoder, toy assassin...His childhood distrust of the Catholic Church tops a list of aversions that includes mayonnaise and the word whatever. "He's a genius," says director Jim Jarmusch. "The kind of guy you could talk to for twenty minutes and your whole life could change, if you could only understand him."

kid betillions

While the living artistic example of Oneida's Kid Millions has always been a revelation/ inspiration to me, I'm still taken aback by the sheer power of his new solo drum album, Man Forever. The Times piece on the project is an enlightening read (as well as a much deserved profile of one of Brooklyn's most profound musicians), with this section being my favorite two-sentence approximation of the man/drum dervish:

But behind the drums his baby face transforms into a kabuki demon, and he becomes a blur of pounding limbs. “He has a very special way of playing drums, as if he were guzzling something very tasty,” Yoshimi, a drummer in the Boredoms, wrote.

joão gilbetã

With each annual Jazz Fest, I lacerate myself for not spending the exorbitant sum for tickets to see bossa nova maestro João Gilberto perform, his artistic stature undiminished. And when JVC pulled out of sponsorship and shuttered the festival last year, I was certain that my fate was sealed. Now I would never see the man perform. But with the festival's revival this year, I realized that pr string pulling is an art made specifically for such an occasion and was all set for tonight's show at Carnegie Hall. Until this email came through:

NEW YORK, NY, June 21, 2010 – Due to international travel regulations beyond the producer’s and artist’s control, the Joao Gilberto concert scheduled for the CareFusion Jazz Festival New York at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday, June 22, at 8:00 pm has been canceled.

Foiled again.

From the excellent Sam Anderson profile on musician/ comedian/ enigmatic beardo that is Reggie Watts in New York Mag from a few weeks ago:

He talks about the process of improv in quasi-mystical terms, as a kind of spiritual jazz—a way to honor the world through mindfulness. All his ideas come, he says, from being alert to his environment and opening his mind to something he refers to as “the Source.”

“Improvising music has helped me a lot,” he said. “Music is very similar to comedy: It’s all about texture, timing, context, vocabulary, performance. When someone’s onstage doing a solo, essentially it’s the same thing as what a comedian does. They’re in the moment. They’re listening. The environment is giving you stuff constantly: a woman yelling something, an animal making a weird sound in the forest, a window being rolled up, static on a radio. Someone turns to you and says something in the same key as the radio. If you pay attention to the world, it’s an amazing place. If you don’t, it’s whatever you think it is.”

pantha du prince

Last week, I got to do a very brief interview with Hendrik Weber, a/k/a Pantha du Prince. We chatted about the dark, efficient works of Georges Simenon (which we both wound up reading on our respective vacations), The Glass Bead Game (to which I recommended James Blackshaw's album of the same name), and a few other things.

bethailand

A few winters ago, I traveled to China for a piece and from there decided to traipse through Southeast Asia for a few months more. My head filled with the type of astounding music being unearthed in that part of the world by the Sublime Frequencies imprint, I was on the lookout for such musical encounters when I arrived in Thailand. We walked the night markets, in search of records, totally unaware of what might be great and what would be treacle, and came away with nothing. But one night, we could hear the thud of bass, the chirp of singing, and pushed deeper into the market, past the blankets laid over the parking lots, towards a hastily-erected stage in the middle of the concrete lot.

At first glance, it seemed like the real deal, a concert of Thai music. As we got closer, it instead looked like the world's mightiest karaoke soundsystem, complete with film flashing behind the singers. Only as my friends and I drew towards the crowd though did the onslaught of red flags, banners, and shirts denote something much different: a rally in support of exiled prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. So as news about the violent rioting in Bangkok and rising death toll rolls out, I am struck by how such a small, inconsequential thing grew since my departure, to the point of death, fire and destruction. I still worry about my friends and the peaceful strangers I encountered at every turn there, yet communicating with fellow travelers who are still there, few could say much about the turmoil.

Talking with a budding Buddhist the other day and her vision of travel there, I realized that the country remains this slate for westerners to impart their own vision upon. Even a Times piece unpacks the notion of democracy in part of that world, how Thailand has to be an example of such governance. Our insistence on it being such a beacon pressurizes the strife. There were many places I stayed where it seemed the town had been overrun by expats simply seeking a space without an identity that they could practice their spirituality or dietary concerns in, rarely venturing into the Thai society around them. So even as such atrocities rage on, a piece about how tourists in Phuket remain oblivious to the violence isn't all that shocking either. And yet I still think of returning there, of finishing myriad short stories begun there about the search for spirituality within that country's folds, and how outsiders continue to think that peace and serenity resides there (or the young women to make into passive wives). Who there can hear the gunshots?

My interview with Black Dice's Bjorn Copeland appears in this month's edition of Theme Magazine, which was curated by Hisham Bharoocha.

Sunday Beta

Damn. Not even a week after my feature on the Sunday Best party, which kicked off along the Gowanus Canal over the Memorial Day weekend (peep the "Where's Beta?" party pic from their site), it was announced that the landowner was no longer honoring the lease and shuttered the party one week into their third season. Truly devastating news, as that three-block jaunt from my house to dancefloor bliss had become one of my favorite summertime activities.

los tigres

Easily the best piece of music writing I've come across in the New Yorker in many moons (sigh, where do I begin with the travesty that was Sasha-Frere Jones's woeful and uninsightful-with-full-access LCD profile?), Alec Wilkinson's piece of norteño superstars, Los Tigres del Norte will be on my ballot come Best Music Writing time. There are so many favorite bits here, from the scene at Randy's Ballroom in my hometown (known mostly to white folks for being a stop on both the Sex Pistols' legendary traipse through the south and for the Beastie Boys on the License to Ill tour) to Ry Cooder's recollection on seeing their fans down in Monterrey act out every line of every song to the last 'graph, where the band is brusquely searched by two cops, one treating them like illegals while the other asks for an autograph. But my favorite bit about Los Tigres comes from their press agent:

Most acts have to be taken through the kitchen when they return to their hotels, to avoid the fans in the lobby. Los Tigres have to go through the front door. "You take them through the kitchen, and you shut down the hotel," he said. "There is no room service, no more maid service, and the housekeeping closes down."

Sunday Beta

This week, in a rare double-double for The Village Voice, I wrote about the mighty fun and fine Sunday Best party, as well as a bit about the half-baked new Jamie Lidell album.

The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Samples of All Time

Listicles, despite their objective presentation, are always line-in-the-sand subjective ones. I had fun spending the day with Kon + Amir's 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Samples of All Time, but by not representing it as their "favorites," but a conclusive sort of thing, one can find fault with the numerous David Axelrod inclusions and over-examination of the source material of A Tribe Called Quest tracks (and leaving off "Apache" and "Funky Drummer" in the process feels oddly a-historical). The pleasures are parallel though, digging both the originals and then how small fragments re-appear decades later to power what gets considered "the golden age" of hip-hop. Where it resonates for me the most though is not as an old-school hip-hop lesson (though it is that as well) but as a revisiting of personal history. Back when hip-hop soundtracked my high school ride and shitty kitchen boomboxes, the deep digging that producers like Paul C., Large Professor, Eric B., Dre, Prince Paul, and DJ Premier did was wholly lost on me back then.

betropolis

Despite modern hip-hop/ R&B's obsession with dehumanized vocalizings, did anyone really think that circa 2010, aesthetic trending would be German Expressionism via Fritz Lang's Metropolis? Are record executives now lining up for Film Forum's restored 153 minute version? And why is it that only the women singers are embracing that cold steel? And please tell me that rappers will start copping Nosferatu now.

Flying Lotus interview

Back in February, I rented a car and wound up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park, to interview Stephen Ellison a/k/a Flying Lotus for Spin Magazine. To get to his pad, it required ascending steep hills and making abrupt turns onto hairpin roads. Reaching Fly Lo's home studio, tucked between dense verdure of vines and spiny palms, such a landscape befitted his music, which straddles the line between Gordian-knot complexity and ineffable gorgeousness. We rapped about his forthcoming album, lucid dreaming, and of course, his great-aunt Alice Coltrane, who remains one of my favorite musicians. I think my true admiration of her music got Ellison to go a bit deeper with me, but he truly is an open individual and the hang was a profound one.

What Warp stuff were you into back then?

I'd always loved the Broadcast stuff and obviously Aphex Twin, Squarepusher. I liked a bunch of that stuff, Chris Cunningham. I wasn't in the know. I liked those people but didn't make the connection that it was all the same label.

Aphex was one of the first guys that everyone realized you could listen to that wasn't a band. Did being on the label freak you out at all?

I never thought they'd be interested in what I was doing. I didn't think that was their avenue. They were in the UK. I was surprised. They were getting into a lot of rock and indie shit.

What is it like to have that platform?

I think it's so incredible. I think it's crazy. I'm into psychedelics and astral traveling and yet people are getting into it, a lot of people are getting that message. That's pretty wild. I just hope people dig this record.

Did you play music as a kid? Were you in a musical household?

Musical stuff was always happening. My grandmother used to write songs for Motown back in the day. There was always music happening around me. I was always messing around with instruments, playing with them like toys. I got to see my aunt a lot in the studio, see my grandmother work with people. A lot of my cousins make music, my cousin Ravi (Coltrane), my cousin Oran. Oran got me into making music in the first place. He was making music on an old Apple, the IIci, some software-based program, making tunes like that. Just the fact that you could make music like that, all by yourself with all these toys, tripped me out. He's Ravi's brother, but Ravi lives in New York, Oran lives in LA. He still does music. He's doing his thing. He's the one who gave me stuff first, toys and stuff. He's like a big brother to me.
I was born 1983, so when I was a kid, he'd have me around. I looked up to him. And he'd play video games with me and hear music together. Eventually, I started messing with toys and he got me my own piece, an MC-505. I was playing saxophone too at school, but I didn't take to it. I was on a beat thing. When I was 16, I started making beats on this machine. It was a hobby, I never had any other mentor other than my cousin. It was weird. Things have changed so much. You can go on YouTube and learn how to make beats. Back then, it was just a toy, not a tool.

If Oran is acting as your older brother, did he also act as a gateway for other music too, like Bad Brains or Public Enemy?

He turned me onto classical music, which I definitely give him credit for. He played me Stravinsky stuff. It just blew my mind, Stravinsky and then Tchaikovsky and then it was on. I learned about Prince and Björk from him. I was into west coast rap, Dr. Dre. Dre was my hero when I was 14. I was so into that g-funk shit.

When did the messing around start evolving towards what you were hearing?

When I was a kid, I just wanted to be Dre. That was it. That kind of shit. I didn't know anything about it. I made stuff and I thought it sounded cool. I wished I had a lot of that old stuff, back when I was super-innocent. I wish I had all that shit. It was just my thing. My mom knew it. I went to study film later on in life, in college. And my mom went “You're going to do something with music. I just know it.” and I was all “Really? I'm just tinkering around.”

Did you do stuff with rappers?

I tried to work with a lot of the MCs but I wasn't in a part of LA where a lot of creative shit was happening. A bunch of guys who think they're rappers. I mean, forget about producers, I didn't meet anyone making beats at all. That's why I was feeling like an alien; it didn't seem real to me at all. I let it go for awhile and made film.

What was the tipping point?

When I went to college I met this kid that I still work with. He goes by Dr. Strangeloop now. He put me onto using a laptop to make music. It had been MIDI and all that confusing stuff. But this stuff was straight out of the box making music. And I went, sign me up! And I stopped going to film school. I graduated from one school, but then dropped out. I was doing really experimental, retro-futuristic sci-fi stuff. I shot a lot of shit on 35mm. Shooting on film is my thing; I love that. I have an idea for the end of the year, a visual album. A 45-minute thing. But the music's been hitting like “bam-bam-bam-bam.” Now I can focus on the visuals for a minute. That's why I moved the studio stuff upstairs. I'm going to be doing a live AV set for tour. I also run a little label, vibing on that stuff.

Can I check out some visual stuff?
(We screen a video of him synching the music to visuals)

I was reading this interview about you and you said you were doing a documentary about Alice Coltrane, but you also stated it was too intense and you needed to step back from it. Are you still working on it?
I actually feel like I'm in a good place to start working on it again. I kept thinking I had to do an hour long thing. But it feels better now to do shorter vignettes. At the time I was making it, there was no YouTube. The idea of it being more viral, less a feature-length thing would be better. The time I spent with her, doing this thing, it was soooo amazing and so intense. I don't want to make too many edits to it. I just want people to see her in her element, people talking about her. Just see her do her thing.

What was her element?

We were in India. People would come out to see her. She was just traveling to ashrams and temples. That was five years ago. She did a show in Paris. A lot of behind the scene stuff. I have footage from her ashram in Agorra, California. That's part of the story too, what's going to happen to that ashram.

At what point, growing up, does her influence on who she was and what she accomplished fully register with you?

It's weird. I've always admired and respected her. And as I would learn more, I would go wow. You learn more about music...wow. You learn more about life...wow. I go through waves of feeling this admiration and respect for my aunt and her life and her work. I remember being young and going “Why do people make such a fuss about Auntie?” people would come over and kiss her feet. And I kept thinking, “But this is Auntie!” I understand it now. I understand why people would treat her as they did. She was incredible. She's still here.

So much of her music is still beyond peoples' grasp. The jazz critics still don't get her.

Everyone would want to talk to her about John. She was always in that shadow. In my eyes, I didn't even know she was getting down like that. It was always, John Coltrane, John Coltrane.


I feel that Cosmogramma you really grappled with what she was up to. An acknowledgment.

Thanks, man. I'm glad you noticed that (laughs). I was so moved by her music and the making of this record, I really feel like I understood why she did what she did. Particularly, Lords of Lords.

That one never quite gets its due. There's this serenity to it, but it's so turbulent. I remember listening to it in Thailand, and seeing these gold temples tucked into this wild jungle and feeling it in that context. It had this grandeur but it was still dangerous.

Ah, man! She's just genuine, man. I think I understand this record a little bit. This is what drove me crazy.

What do you understand about the album? Because it still seems to be out at the outermost edge of music to me.

For me, this record is the story of John Coltrane's ascension. It's her understanding and coping with his death. I feel that. This song in particular, “Going Home,” that's a family song. When someone passes, that's the song we play at the funeral. When my auntie passed, we played that one. My mom died last year in October, and in making this record, hearing this sound, I went “that's it.” That's the whole journey, the whole thing, of understanding, and going deeper within. For me at least. It made sense. This is that journey through that astral life, the next place. On all levels. You die and there's still so much to go through. It's not a quick thing. You have to work and understand that you die and what it's like to die and see yourself in the world without you and a whole bunch of things.

How do you go about putting that realization onto these machines? How do you approximate that language?

I can't say where it comes from. It's all about feel though, the intent when you set down to work. I can tell where I was at making particular things. I have Thundercat, these people, they are always working with me on that record. It's collaborative. I made most of the stuff but people help me.

How did the thing with Thom Yorke happen?

I had always talked about working with this cat. I love his shit and have been a fan since I was a teenager. Eventually, Mary Anne Hobbes knew I was a fan and she said she'd ask if he was down to work on the record. He heard my remix for “Reckoner” and that was cool. He asked for some tunes and he replied that he was super-busy and that he couldn't do it. But then two days later, he sent me some vocal files for me to work with, so I got to rebuild those vocals. We were born on the same day as well. We're astral brothers! October 7^th, Libras. It's funnier than that. The day I got the email from him about the tour, I had this crazy dream about Thom. He was in the dream. Are you into dreams, lucid dreaming?

Yeah, but I don't know much about it.

I was an accomplice to a murder. Someone I knew had killed somebody in this hotel and I was walking around, freaking out. And I went to Trader Joe's and Thom was there. And he asked me to have a beer later. And then I woke up and checked my email and it was like, “We're going on tour.”

1983...Los Angeles...Cosmogramma. Your titles seem to be expanding, so where do you go from there?

I think so. I'm going to try to. I don't want to do the same thing twice. I didn't want to do LA again. In the end, a lot of kids try to imitate it. And I hear myself try to imitate it. I just want to move on to a different idea. I don't want to be the kind of person to just dwell on the past. How do I go beyond the cosmos? By going the total opposite and go super-quiet, and journey within. That might be the next one, the super-quiet record, intimate sounding. That's the thing, isn't it? That last record, it was this explosion thing. And then you pull back from it. Depends on what's happening with my life.

Do you feel like the piano lessons are affecting your music?

It's only going to get better as I get these things out of my imagination. Even with this thing, I'm getting closer to what I really want to do but I still have a bajillion ideas of where I want the music to go next. It can get there. I can get there, but a couple things have to happen.

Like what?

You have to realize these things through creating. Even though I've talked about working with strings, I have to get to a point where I can make sense of it all. You have to mentally see it and have experiences. I can't just … the thing about Apples sometimes, they have the iPad coming out without the camera on it. They know it needs to have a camera. They know they have to do this first, to get the idea across. And then they can add the camera next time. I can't put all the ideas there yet. It's not right yet. Technology is not there. I don't have the right people around me yet. I haven't met the killing drummer that I really want to work with. I haven't met that crazy guitarist that's going to make these runs sound the way I want them yet. These certain elements have to be in place to get these ideas across

When Mary-Anne Hobbs calls you the “Jimi Hendrix of this music” does that intimidate you?

The things people say about me, I'm grateful that people even care. At the same time, I feel the responsibility to be the best that I can be. And that's not a bad thing at all. I love it. If people really like this record, then we'll have to do some shit that's killer. I'm not going to come out and do some bullshit after that. I feel I'm in a good position right now, people want me to do whatever I want to do. They want me to take them as far out as I can, flex my imagination.

Nice. When you have an aunt like Alice Coltrane, is there normality at all? Does she take you to the mall? Get you an ice cream cone? Buy you Christmas gifts?

She definitely wasn't normal. She would never talk about her music. I'd bring up her records, when I was really getting into her in college, and I'd talk to her about it. And she wouldn't even know. She's not even tripping. She was just so far into her spiritual studies that the past was inaccessible. She would play these shows but she didn't have to practice. She would just be in meditation for days. I wondered what was up with Auntie as a kid. I would go over there and she was wearing orange all the time, deep in meditation. She's incredible. She'd come through sometimes, but she'd never drive. People would help her. She'd show up. She bought me my first car. I'd do odd jobs for her so as to buy myself video games. She thought video games were silly but was really encouraging. She was into my music stuff. She was very supportive. Before she passed, I asked her to play harp on my first album. And she went, “Okay, if you get my harp fixed, I'll do it.” But the only harp repair was out in Long Beach, so it never happened. Too bad I'm such a stoner!