Daily Listen by Brian Brock

Iva Bittová and the Bang On a Can All-Stars - Elida

This is a pretty cool album which sits comfortably between Eastern European folk music and the music of Wim Mertens, or a George Crumb vocal piece like Ancient Voices of Children.  Bittová seems to take about as much from Roma music as Ástor Piazzolla does from Tango - so, she is always referring to folk elements but never quite gets all the way there, but for a moment.  Her voice is like Diamanda Galás’s, but as if Galás was a cheery kindergarten teacher, rather than a vicious hellhound; they each sing sideways across genres, as if flipping through a Rolodex of genres crossreferenced with emotions, matching vocal technique as they go.

The Can-Bangers have always impressed me.  They have fantastic versions of tunes by Louis Andriessen, Brian Eno, and Terry Riley, and their own compositions are sometimes just as successful.  Here, leaving that comfort zone of precise structures and witty concepts, they at times have to actually tackle performance music, where technique is less valuable than spirit.  They are no Turkish cafe band, but they manage to keep from embarrassing themselves long enough to get back to something more fingery/thinky, less possessedy.

I get stuck, because I want to ask why these straddly folk/avant-classical musics never quite make it, while I recognize that plenty of rock/avant things succeed.  I think it’s a question of structure - in a music where the essential act is kick-snare on one chord for two minutes, kickety-snarety on another for a half-minute, and back to the beginning for the fade out, someone can pretty much record the sound of wringing cats and slide it into the interstices with out changing anything (see Derek Bailey’s Guitar Drums and Bass for an extreme example).  On the other hand, the folk and classical worlds thrive on large-form structure, having radically different ideas about how to achieve it, and every sqwauk and groan added to it must be relentlessly justified within those structural aims.  I don’t know.

I’d love to hear this woman do an album with Tom Ze.

Loose Fur - Loose Fur

I think Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy fits about like Bob Dylan when it comes to writing songs, but bear in mind that I think Dylan is overrated, especially when it comes to the content and not just the form of his songs; and Jim O’Rourke deserves his notoriety as one of the few producers able to swim in the mainstream while walking off the banks.  This album should by all rights have been a classic, but somehow it doesn’t come together.  It feels as though it was just thrown together from scraps of a sit-down.  Still, it could easily be someone’s favorite work of either Tweedy or O’Rourke, if the songs hit just right, or the noodling guitar skronk seems fresh.  I might even love it some day, and it deserves to be heard again.

Bjork - Voltaic

I much prefer this to Volta - I admit that I simply never want to listen to “The Dull Flame of Desire” again, and hence have rarely returned to the album.  That song, and most of the others, are missing from this live album, which pulls evenly from as far back as Post.

Bjork’s tendency to overthink is here restrained by live performance’s tendency to reduce everything to what can happen synchronously.

Here’s a bjorkish thread I was reading on the internet:

Does the music you like reveal anything about your intelligence? (via Carrie Brownstein)

Obviously there are smart people who listen to any given piece of music. To begin with, the authors of a piece of music must have some degree of intelligence in order to write, play instruments, and record themselves, and they listen to the music they create. However, some of them may be thinking about something other than music, so that the music itself fails to arrest the mind - for example, they may be dancers, or cultural theorists. As a listener, the confusing of domains - ie believing oneself to be enjoying music while in fact enjoying a picture, or a word - is a mistake, and as such is evidence of imperfection. Nonetheless, an intelligent person can find value in any piece of music, as music (or at least as sound), but may not care to bother with it.

But while this means that there is no music which only appeals to the stupid, it is still interesting to wonder whether there is some piece of music which only appeals to the intelligent. For example, what about something complex like The Rite of Spring? Or something that sounds like broken eletronics, like Oval or Tetsu Inoue might make? Or something which _forces_ the listener to think in extramusical terms, like John Cage or Gastr Del Sol?

In the end, though just as an unintelligent person can mistakenly believe that they are enjoying musical qualities when in fact they are attending to image or popular culture movements, one can of course mistakenly enjoy any “smarties-only” piece of music on similar grounds, or because Mom and Dad played it way back before the factory upriver started poisoning the well (leading to lowered intelligence in the community).

Michael Jackson - HIStory - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE - Book I

Here’s a really good remembrance of Michael Jackson from a guy who was involved in creating this album: Michael Jackson at the Hit Factory.  Random quotes:

One morning MJ came in with a new song he had written overnight. We called in a guitar player, and Michael sang every note of every chord to him. “here’s the first chord first note, second note, third note. Here’s the second chord first note, second note, third note”, etc., etc. We then witnessed him giving the most heartfelt and profound vocal performance, live in the control room through an SM57.

He would sing us an entire string arrangement, every part. Steve Porcaro once told me he witnessed MJ doing that with the string section in the room. Had it all in his head, harmony and everything. Not just little eight bar loop ideas. he would actually sing the entire arrangement into a micro-cassette recorder complete with stops and fills.

At one point Michael was angry at one of the producers on the project because he was treating everyone terribly. Rather than create a scene or fire the guy, Michael called him to his office/lounge and one of the security guys threw a pie in his face. No further action was needed … . .

If you can enjoy the style of music, taken outside of the context of the intensely artificial newsscape built around him, it’s an incredible work of mankind, a product of a huge number of people focused on one goal, working intently without rest to achieve it, like Star Wars or the Statue of Liberty.

If you can’t enjoy the music, or can’t ignore the context, then it’s just “wacky Jackson” or whatever.

NPR Music - Guest DJ Bjork

s’Groovy.  I like her defense of Northern singing against the bosses of the world.  I’m pretty happy with her new live album, too.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106054569

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Sonic Youth throws another one on the pile.

Scenario: a band can consistently create really good albums in the vein of this one, Murray Street or A Thousand Leaves, or for that matter, EVOL, Sister, and Washing Machine.

Question: do they have a duty (to themselves, to God, to me) to do anything else?  Should they risk it all on a colossal mistake?

Consider The Whitey Album, from “Ciccone Youth,” the stunted Madonna-wallowing alternative path they took in 85 or so.  It is huge fun to listen to.  Thurston Moore’s folk-rocky solo album Trees Outside the Academy, featuring Steve Shelley, was a great follow up to Rather Ripped, which itself was a revelation that SY could successfully drop the distorted tone-clusters, edited freakout jams, and sucker-punch vocals in favor of beauty, structure, and really excellent singing from the usually murky Kim Gordon.

Is it dictated by the popular music market?  Look at Beck, whose innate appeal to frat boys and hippies (to the extent there’s a difference anymore) means his core audience is much larger.  He took pretty much the opposite approach, creating a unique sound-world for each of his albums, at least up until Guero.  Even if this was an artistically worthy choice, with Odelay and “Loser” looming in his discography, every move he made was considered not on its own but in terms of what that crazy Beck was going to do next.  Since Guero, he has relied more or less on his old formula.

Why can’t Sonic Youth do something like Trees Outside the Academy? More to the point, why don’t they make something that will really clean clocks and take out the trash?  They may be unable as a group to cooperate in any other endeavor.  Perhaps it’s a business choice, to create a consistent brand.  Maybe they are imitating modern artists who make an endless string of “Untitled #” paintings, all the same sampling of colors and shapes.

Tied with Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle for best sounding record of 2009.

Norah Jones - Austin City Limits (2007)

This concert strikes me as really odd sounding.  It’s like listening to a really good band playing a bunch of songs they’ve never heard before.  Jones’s voice is by far the most interesting thing happening, but the songs are so light and, really, almost unsophisticated that it’s not really enough to just have a singer.  Of course, a voice is not a singer, and maybe Nina Simone could have found more in these songs.  Perhaps Jones is just distracted by the odd fit between band and song.

Then there’s this:

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III

Meat and potatoes.  Delicious.

Common - Universal Mind Control

I’m not sure I can make it through this album all the way.  It sounds like spiders are eating into the back of my brain.  I need to hear some Missy Elliott or something else similar that I like, to make sure I’m not coming down with mind-shingles.

The problem is that the mixing/mastering of this music is designed to force us to hear it.  It’s distorted, and as loud as is physically possible.  Just as Mencius asks if there is anything you value more than your life, and just as businesses should recognize that profit is only a desirable second effect of accomplishing a good purpose, musicians should ask if attracting attention at all costs is wise.