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Once again I’m off to vacation, this time to a somewhat lonesome but beautiful beach called Manzanillo that’s 5 hours from our city. We’re all half-broke and we’ll try to survive the week with 60 dollars each one. Considering that half of our money will end up wasted on beers, tequila or gin, we might have to get used to survive on a straight diet of maruchans and tuna cans. Wish us luck.

I’ll try to sneak some surf guitar and tender electronica in our stereo every now and then because I’ve found reggaeton gives me the strongest headaches, and it also scares the elderly people from the pool.

Blue Hawaiians - martini 5-0
Gabor Szabo - summertime
Ape - the endless summer
Jimmy Luttrell - egyptian surf queen
Electronicat - wop do wop
Lost Acapulco - aqua vulva
Blue Hawaiians - quiet surf

Quick announcements:

Just before I leave I’d like you to check on feedmegoodtunes in a few days as I did a guest post in there about Lindstrom & Prins Thomas that might get published at the end of the week, as you may noticed I’ve been having an unhealthy obsession over them in the past weeks. I haven’t mailed makrugaik yet but maybe we’ll get to make an interview with Lindstrom in a few weeks, we’ll keep you informed about this. Ah, and for those expecting a Mike Patton interview, I’m sorry… apparently he’s not very supportive of the file sharing thingy and refused to participate. I’ll keep harrasing him, don’t worry.

I’d also like you to visit 1friend’s mp3 blog, cult2vader, it’s a pretty interesting and weird site, if I had the time and the code knowledge I’d love to have something like this, only weirder. Hear that Doug? I envy your site.

Also via one of gabba’s users I found about this one man project called Old Erie which left me honestly impressed, the vocals sound like a more apathetic version of Xiu Xiu and the music could be that of a a rural version of fennesz… probably just the lo-fi recording, nevertheless it’s very beautiful and delicate release called “King Crow” and it’s completely free to download. I’m posting a song for your listening pleasure. If you like what you’re hearing go and download the album as it’s one of the best net releases I’ve heard so far this year. Remember, if you have the method of doing so, please leave a donation. Au revoir.

Old Erie - tape is from germany

Photograph: Taylor Mckimens.

natasha barnes_abstract 4

01 cepia_arount
02 johnny cash_god’s gonna cut you down
03 lusine and david wingo_locks
04 kim hiorthoy_you know the score
05 our brother the native_apodiformes
06 gate_the hero tree
07 oval_store check
08 alva noto and ryuichi sakamoto_mur
09 slowdive_erik’s song
10 i am robot and proud_neil lake

Escuchar música francesa de este estilo me hace sentir pequeña, con la ilusión que eso conlleva :)

Michel Delpech - Pour un flirt avec toi

Safety Scissors - L’amour d’cuisine

Gillian Hills - tut tut tut tut

Kelly Joyce - Vivre La Vie

Virginie Ledoyen - Mon Amour Mon Ami

Brigitte Bardot - Fille de paille

Image from Seonna Hong

The albums that I’m proposing for this ranking allows us to get close to some of the most relevant composers of contemporary music. Released between April 2005 and May 2006, the recordings on the list were positioned according to diverse opinions and reviews published on specialized media. The following guide intends to provide the listener a decent collection of some the most interesting albums in the genre but also generate an appreciation for the sonorous diversity of our epoch. O1. Brian Ferneyhough - flurries/string trio/in nomine a 3/streichtrio/incipits Stradivarius
mp3: Streichtrio mp3: In nomine a 3

English composer Brian Ferneyhough (b. 1943) is often branded as a member of the “New Complexity” school, and his music can be described as easily with phrases like “clouds of notes,” “streams of gestures” and “masses of sound” as with more traditional terms such as “melodic line” and “harmony.” One can listen to just a few seconds of any of his works on disc and hear the Ferneyhough signature: agile, quicksilver figures, sometimes whispering in the distance and sometimes shouting and scraping in the very immediate present. Without a doubt, this music can be harsh, edgy and challenging to listen to; it most definitely doesn’t reveal itself on the first listening. The album presents three substantial instrumental works from the 1990s by Brian Ferneyhough interspersed with a couple of miniatures, the In Nomine a 3 and the Streichtrio. All the music is typically dense and impacted, yet equally typically there’s always a latent romantic impulse detectable under the highly wrought surfaces and the equally intense verbal explanations. [Jason Royal]

02. Osvaldo Golijov - Ayre
Deutsche Grammophon
mp3: Tancas serradas a muru

This music jumps out of the speakers in a way that classical records seldom do. Dawn Upshaw, the soprano, delivers an electrifying performance in which she assumes a half-dozen vocal guises. If a modern classical work could ever crack the Top 40, this is it: Golijov has created a new beast, of bastard parentage and glorious plumage. [Alex Ross]

03. Morton Feldman - string quartet
Naxos
mp3: (I’m sorry, the sole piece of this work clocks at 79 minutes (the original 1980 premiere even clocks at 100 min!) and I wont upload it because i’d practically be giving away the whole album. Although long lenghted, it’s a beautiful, flowing piece of work, so if you get the chance, I’d strongly suggest you to pick either the first release from 1994 or this Naxos reissue.)

Pulse, when it is felt, is intermittent and prone to vary. At first the music seems emotionless, but as one comes to accept that the String Quartet may in fact be “life, but not as we know it,” drama reveals itself in the music’s dogged moments of insistence, awkward conversations, temporary alliances, and unusual timbres. Petulance, whining, nagging, stoicism, acceptance, beauty, and peace all are present in this work, for those who care to find them. [Raymond Tuttle]

04. Pascal Dusapin - Perelá: Uomo di fumo (The man of smoke)
Naïve
mp3: The black womb - scene 2

Perelà, Uomo di fumo is the fourth and most ambitious of Pascal Dusapin’s operatic works to date. Aldo Palazzeschi’s enigmatic novel Man of Smoke (1911), faithfully adapted by Dusapin, recounts the appearance and ‘Passion’ of a Man of Smoke, who becomes an incredulous and involuntary observer of an archetypally corrupt and decadent society. Even more than a demonstration of his mastery of every aspect of operatic art, he offers us here a complex, generous fable of spiritual and political intolerance - and assuredly the masterpiece of his career so far. [Frank Cadenhead]

05. Luciano Berio -Sinfonia/Ekphrasis
Deutsche Grammophon
mp3: Sinfonia - II O King

Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia (1968) is one of the most celebrated works of the avant-garde, and it will be remembered much longer than many other large-scale experiments of its time. The collision of its materials — philosophical, literary, political, musical — reflected the welter of ideas clamoring for attention in the 1960s, and Berio’s gigantic collage for the Swingle Singers and the New York Philharmonic seems a near-perfect embodiment of the period’s Zeitgeist. However, much of Sinfonia’s fame also has to do with its recording history; thanks to two landmark recordings by Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez, it became established as a classic. This 2005 Deutsche Grammophon release with the London Voices and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Peter Eötvös, presents the work with intensity and vivid color, and many details hard to hear on the Columbia and Erato recordings are delightfully clear here. [Blair Sanderson]

06. The Balanescu Quartet - Maria T
Mute
Mp3: Wine’s so good

This album re-connects Alexander Balanescu with his Romanian roots, as it pays tribute to one of his earliest musical influences, the iconic folk singer and actress Maria Tanase. For the release, he took the works of Tanase and then re-imagined them through his own eclectic musical perspectives, and the result is easily some of the most stunning work ever from the group. Maria T is a release that shows off the power of a group of musicians who refuse to be bound in by simple genre definitions. Much like the Kronos Quartet, the Balanescu Quartet have often shrugged-off many expectations one may have of a string quartet, and with this release will hopefully finally garner even more of the attention they deserve. [Aaron Coleman - almostcool.org]

07. Arild Andersen Group - Electra
ECM
Mp3: Electra song

Arild Andersen’s Electra was composed for the Spring Theater in Athens for their production. These “18 Scenes,” as they are subtitled, represent various cues and serial music for the production of Sophocles’ deeply moving classic. It’s not “jazz” but then, it isn’t anything else either, because it holds so much more inside than mere classification. This is simply a wondrous piece, darkly haunting, yet utterly beautiful for what it leaves out as much what is here. [Thom Jurek]

08. Elliott Carter - the music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 7
Bridge
mp3: Dialogues (mp3 sample)

This highly anticipated recording, a Bridge co-production with the BBC, presents first recordings of four major Elliott Carter compositions, all composed within the past six years. Conducted by the distinguished British conductor, Oliver Knussen, these recordings tell the amazing tale of an American composer, well into his nineties, composing at the peak of his powers. Malcolm McDonald writes that “Carter is not far short of his own centenary, and continuing to produce highly complex, sophisticated scores with an energy that would hardly be conceivable even in a much younger man.” The composer traveled to London and Amsterdam to oversee the performance and recording of these four works.

09. Unsuk Chin - Akrostichon-Wortspiel/fantaise meanique/Xi
Deutsche Grammophon
mp3: Das Beliebigkeitsspiel

The music of Korean-born Berlin composer Unsuk Chin has had some local exposure, thanks to the Berkeley Symphony, which hosted last year’s U.S. premiere of her remarkable Violin Concerto. The four large pieces on this disc, in vivid performances by the Ensemble Intercontemporain, give further evidence of Chin’s fierce virtuosity and vivid imagination. The most far-out offering is the title work (”Acrostic Wortspiel”), an exciting, overheated jumble for soprano and orchestra consisting of syllables, solfege, alphabets and more (the sources are children’s books). Just as beguiling are the “Fantaisie mécanique,” with its industrial brass and percussion textures, and a phantasmagorical, rhythmically urgent Double Concerto for piano and percussion. Only “Xi,” an extended study for electronics and ensemble, is on the dull side. [Joshua Kosman]

10. Steve Reich - You Are. Variations
Nonesuch
mp3: Act 1: You are-wherever your thoughts are

You Are is prime Reich, using choral and orchestral elements similarly to older pieces like Tehillim and The Desert Music, but seeming as rhythmically driven as anything he’s done in years. Harmonically, he sticks to majors and relative minors (that is, a minor key that utilizes the same notes as a major one, but starts from a different point in the scale)– a common Reich device– thereby blurring the line between different tonalities. He uses a choir to impart text translated from Hasidic mystical verse: “You are wherever your thoughts are”, “Explanations come to an end somewhere,” and the idea of saying “little and do much”. Words are repeated and spread out over great lengths, so the end effect is not one of narrative but of words as purely musical ingredients. [Dominique Leone]

11. Arvo Pärt - lamentate
ECM
mp3: Minacciando

This is a major recording of a top-drawer composition by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Those who only vaguely know of Pärt, or who know his name but none of his music (a not uncommon phenomenon), will think: ah yes, more holy minimalism. Emphatically not so with LamenTate, a large-scale, 40-minute edifice of musical splendour for piano solo and orchestra, inspired by Pärt’s first encounter with Anish Kapoor’s massive sculpture, Marsyas, at Tate Modern. [Michael Tumelty]

12. Brian Eno - Another Day on Earth
Rykodisc
mp3: And then so clear
There are grand, sweeping choruses here that insinuate themselves deep into the memory, but also moments of whispering intimacy that seem to have been recorded in extreme close-up. This is a wistful, haunting record that runs warm with understated emotion - perhaps what one might expect of a man in his late fifties who surveys the beauty and the terrors of the world around him and wonders how it’s all possible. [Matthew Collin]

List of some of the reviewers with links (when possible) considered to the ranking: Alex Ross, Jason Royal, Raymond Tuttle, Frank Cadenhead, Michael Tumelty, Dominique Leone, Blair Sanderson, Almostcool, Thom Jurek.

Last night I stayed up late while working on a graphic project that needs to get done by the end of the week. It’s going pretty well so far… on the other side, I haven’t been very careful with my relationships or my physical health lately. Am I becoming an alcoholic? For the past three nights I’ve been drawing, painting and drinking red wine. I also recall that last night around 3 am I started bitting my fingernails. My dreams run like machines. I got up, half naked, so I could get close to the glasses, the ashtrays, the broken music and the nefarious remains of a party I still don’t remember.

I then saw the ascending of the waters.

Moondog - pastoral
(pastoral suite, 1953)
Music A.M. - NY 75
(Unwound from the woods, 2006)
Milosh - Instrumental
(Meme, 2006)
Caribou - medium sized working dog (steady steady)
(tour ep, 2005)
Hu Vibrational - friends & gardens (corker conboy mix)
(microsolutions #1, 2005)
Arthur Russel - instrumentals vol 1-1
(first thought best thoughts, 2006)
Maxence Cyrin - unfinished sympathy
(urban serenades, 2005)

I’d like to wave friend makrugaik from where I’m standing with the Maxence Cyrin piano renditon of massive attack’s “unfinished sympathy” as I know it’s one of his favorite songs from all time.

Gute Nacht.

Image: Alex Noriega via Undomondo.

This is second part of ‘Finite Modulation’ list.

6:30 a.m list. A salute to WFMU morning broadcast style, this list is created to underline the reality of popular music listening. That a list exists within the context of daily activities and its rythm and texture are intimately intertwined. This list also nudge Infinite Mixtape post by Pitchfork to remeasure style breadth, the need of listening context awareness, and how songs relate within playlist. Part of a large series of playlist, next one will be a midday list

“Morning Modulation”

17. Nina Nastasia - Superstar
18. Matmos - Roses & Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein (rp)
19. Dave Brubeck - Unsquare Dance (rp)
20. Petra Haden - God Only Knows (p4k)
21. Barbara Morgenstern - Alles Was Lebt Bewegt Sich
22. Daedelus - Crazy Dancing
23. Life Force Treo - Starship
24. Cansei de Ser Sexy - This month day 10 (rp)
25. The 1900s - Bring The Good Boys Home (rp)

note: A lot of repost. ezarchive is still down.
see also: F.M. No. A-01 , Infinite Mixtape
image credit: -Ant-

Hello everyone. There’s been a quiet carnival surrounding me lately, and I’m still feeling dizzy so I don’t know where to start. First thing I’m doing right now is leaving the mess in my room for some minutes and I’m sharing with you a random list of easy-like-me songs that appeared on my player while unpacking everything from my trip through the nordic countries.

Thom Yorke - Analyse (removed by request)
(the eraser, 2006)
The whitest boy alive - burning
(Dreams, 2006)
Hot chip - the warning
(the warning, 2006)
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - run
(Lindstrom & Prins Thomas, 2006)
The gentlemen losers - laureline*
(the gentlemen losers, 2006)

About the trip, I’d love to tell you about it but I’ll need a few days for a complete digestion and a quick glance through the photographs. At the moment I only have vivid memories of Russia… I was also lucky enough to visit Berlin for a day and Paris for 3 days. Maybe you could see me there on national tv building a gold statue for zizou and dancing to the fireworks half drunk on La Bastille after the french won against portugal. Speaking of Paris, I’m aware of the clicheé but I’ve proved and tasted (but most of all, smelled) how every corner of Paris demands for your sexual involvement, it’s amazing. It probably doesn’t get any sweeter than Paris (although the most colorful, romantic and bohemian places I’ve ever been to so far are all inside Mexico.)
Unfortunately right now I’m very busy and mind-crowded to let you know the details of the trip but I’ll have plenty of time and music for you following through the week.

While vanishing, I do have a little dirty secret for you: I feel happy.

Image: Nicholas Deakin.
*ezarchive is bitching so this song has been uploaded to yousendit, I’ll try to upload it to the archive later.