Wednesday, May 24, 2006

MP3 Blog of the Day

Over at the brand new Classical Connection, knowby takes the same liberties with the term "classical" that your average Tower Records employee might, but he's posting some good stuff by 20th century composers just the same. Some shortish ("Gesang Der Junglinge") but also some enormous stuff, including all of Young's The Well-Tuned Piano and Feldman's String Quartet #2. (I just found this site a few minutes ago thanks to an ILX tip, and will be checking out the Elliot Carter posting toot sweet.)

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Meek digitalised

hey hey,

A new Matmos ode to Joe Meek; a glitchy, riff-tastic and orchestral one that is :)
(from The Rose has Teeth in the Mouth, Matador 2006)
Matmos - Solo Buttons for Joe Meek

Also I have been lured into the dense sticky web of Pascal Comelade, the Catalonian-French composer who mashes classical compositions with odd jazz and improv sounds. He's like an avant-garde Yann Tiersen, but more subtle and less drama. He did some stuff in the past with Robert Wyatt, Pierre Bastien and Jaki Liebezeit which you should really check out.
Here a track of Scénes de Musique Ralentie, released in 1984 as a cassette! I fucking adore this grainy compositon! more please.
Pascal Comelade - Scenes de Musique Ralentie, track 2

quick update: actually, the track is called 'Instant au Bord de la Mer' and was also featured on the Détail Monochrome album.
here's the *cleaner* version, choose which one you like more
Pascal Comelade - Instant au bord de la mer

Marco, funny you must mention that 20 Jazz*** blog as I stumbled upon this very same blog a couple o' monhs ago. Good diverse stuff there indeed! hmm, perhaps I'll submit a list of blogs-to-keep-tabs-on. I really should write more on a weekly basis, since my zines are always full of time lapses and blackholes. At some stage I will also do a small Soundtransit.nl writeup here that some Apaite asked in ancient times begone. communication out.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Live Circle

Not much, but a glimmer for all you believers, courtesy 20 Jazz Funk Greats (yeah, back at the end of April, but hey, who can read these things daily any more?).

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Help Me Somebody

Nothing has really tempted me to reinstall Garage Band and try my hand at remixing a track until now.

Monday, May 01, 2006

Imperfect Sound Forever

An interesting article (if a little lengthy for the point being made) over at Stylus magazine, addressing the issue of excessive compression in recording, which is something I have noticed without any understanding of the reasons for it. I suppose one reason it's less evident to me is that the music I listen to where it's most apparent is music like the Psychic Paramount or Boris where it's a deliberate aesthetic choice, where the aim is to make the music sound overwhelmingly loud and distorted at low volumes. By contrast, Sunn 0))) albums must be recorded with much less compression - ordinarily I only have the volume on the amplifier turned that high when I'm listening to early Nightmares On Wax or LFO and really want to hear the sub-bass.

Of course I was sucked in from paragraph one when he mentions listening to Spirit Of Eden (Talk Talk) on the very same headphones that I own....