Terry Riley celebrates
the 45th anniversary of his groundbreaking composition,
In C. A major work in the history of
minimalist music, In C has an incredibly flexible
score and performance guidelines, which have inspired many musicians to make their own versions, including a
French guitar quintet, a
traditional Chinese orchestra, a
keyboard ensemble, an
all-synthesizer group,
CalArts Music students,
French-Canadian hippies, a
Danish vocal and percussion ensemble, another
percussion ensemble,
Japanese acidheads, a
"laptop orchestra", the
Bang on a Can Orchestra, and a
rock "orchestration" by the Styrenes. No two versions can sound exactly the same, but it's still an open question how they will compare to the performance of In C at its
Carnegie Hall debut next month. No recording of the original 1964 performance has ever been publicly released, but some eyewitness accounts can be found
here.
posted by jonp72
on Mar 4, 2009 -
40 comments
Punkcast is a long running series of videos of live underground music in NYC shot by
Joly MacFie. Each video is usually one song. The Internet Archive hosts
its videos and offers downloads in a variety of formats. MacFie also has a
YouTube channel with
480 videos and a video podcast
[iTunes link, feedburner link]. Here are a few bands that caught my fancy:
The Icicles and The Besties, The Slits (
1,
2 ),
Andrew W. K., Oneida (
1,
2),
The Long Blondes,
The Gossip,
Acid Mothers Temple & Cosmic Inferno,
Art Brut,
Be Your Own Pet,
Cansei de Ser Sexy,
Lesbians on Ecstasy,
The Fall,
Fred Frith,
Rose Melberg and Jennifer O'Connor,
The Horrors,
The Homosexuals,
Bat for Lashes,
Radio 4 and Teddybears,
Kimya Dawson and Tiny Masters of Today,
Yeah Yeah Yeahs and
Nikki Sudden.
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 25, 2008 -
12 comments
Muslimgauze was the sound of an angry Middle East, a prolific source of music
dark,
spacious and
smothering. Tension was a constant theme not only in the music but in the packaging. (For example,
Betrayal shows the hands of Yassir Arafat and Yitzak Rabin, and guns, knives, and news photos of an Arab world at war were a common motif in titles and sleeve art.) However, the music wasn't the usual agitprop fare: Music meant to rile a public to a cause isn't normally pigeonholed as
ambient,
electronica or
musique concrete. But the band, hidden from public view, was rumored to donate proceeds to Palestinian terrorists, and that they were eventually silenced by Mossad.
Despite the prodigious output -- issuing almost a hundred EPs and albums between 1983 and 1998, over a hundred more since -- limited distribution and perpetual obscurity ensured the rumors were easier to find than the music. While the facts about Muslimgauze have little in common with the fictions, they are, if anything, stranger...
[more inside]
posted by ardgedee
on Dec 22, 2008 -
48 comments
The Most Serene Republic, quite possibly the most underrated of all the acts on the
Arts & Crafts label, create music in a similar vein to fellow Canadian indie rockers
Arcade Fire,
Stars, and
Broken Social Scene. Experience their explosive, big-band, polyphonic, experimental flair by listening to their 3 releases in full:
Underwater Cinematographer (2005),
Phages EP (2006), and
Population (2007). A few video music videos as well:
The Men Who Live Upstairs,
Oh God,
Content Always Was My Favourite
posted by Christ, what an asshole
on Sep 30, 2008 -
21 comments
Connecticut's
Have a Nice Life is responsible for one of the year's most
acclaimed, highly conceptual albums this year, Deathconsciousness.
The two discs (entitled The Plow That Broke The Plains and The Future, respectively) feature music spanning over five years of collaboration between the two artists, and are accompanied by a 75-page booklet on medieval Italian heretics in lieu of liner notes. Combining elements of
shoegaze,
new wave,
ambient drone,
post-rock,
experimental industrial,
avant-garde dark metal, and
electronic music, and citing references such as
My Bloody Valentine and
Joy Division to their credit, the original and only pressings sold out
within hours. Full stream of all 85 minutes available
here. Direct mp3 samples
here and
here.
[more inside]
posted by Christ, what an asshole
on Jun 28, 2008 -
34 comments
Ruttmann vs. MilantAlexis Milant has composed scores for three experimental animations realised by Walter Ruttmann.
The pleasure in watching and [listening to] this come from the reactivity in the same temporality between sound and picture. [more inside]
posted by carsonb
on Sep 9, 2007 -
8 comments
Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet ...Scroll down and play the audio clip..."The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping."
Sez Wikipedia: Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet is a piece of music composed by Gavin Bryars in 1971. It is based around a recorded loop of an un-named tramp improvising a hymn. The track was rerecorded with Tom Waits in the 80's, and can be bought on
Amazon. Originally heard on CBC's (soon to end)
Northern Lights.
posted by KokuRyu
on Feb 14, 2007 -
27 comments
Harry Everett Smith was a, "
20th-century Renaissance man, working as an abstract film-maker, painter, musicologist, anthropologist, theoretician, self-mythologizer and connoisseur of arcana". His
Anthology of American Folk Music was
hugely influential on
American music, while his
alchemical, synæsthetic films were to have a similar impact on
experimental film and animation. Enjoy his mesmerising and astonishing
"Early Abstractions" on Youtube [part 1 or 4],
hear Harry lecture, or
listen to some tracks from The Anthology.
posted by MetaMonkey
on Dec 8, 2006 -
9 comments
Recombinant Activated Factor VII --
the Food and Drug Administration said that giving it to patients with normal blood could cause strokes and heart attacks... the Army's faith in the $6,000-a-dose drug is based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence and persists despite public warnings and published research suggesting that Factor VII is not as effective or as safe as military officials say. ...
posted by amberglow
on Nov 21, 2006 -
17 comments
Modisti is an online directory with information with regard to experimental music, it's performers and enthusiats, thru lists promotion activities such as concerts, festivals, etc., as well as record releases.
posted by onkelchrispy
on Oct 14, 2006 -
4 comments
Radio Lab! Already listened to everything This American Life offers or maybe looking for something a bit smarter and full of science? Maybe you'll like
Radio Lab. Maybe you'll like the mind-blowing and historically expanding episode on
music. Maybe
older history is your cup of tea -- how about
biblical times and how they sit in shoeboxes in Oxford. A stack of shows available via podcast, MP3 download
(and some .RAM, sorry).
posted by Ogre Lawless
on Oct 13, 2006 -
11 comments
In the late Seventies and Early Eighties, Dial-a-Poem put out recordings of William S. Burroughs, John Giorno, Sonic Youth, Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Diamanda Galas, Anne Walderman, Charles Bukowski, Amiri Baraka, Gregory Corso, Phillip Glass, Patti Smith, and many many more. Apparently, the incredibly awesome
Ubuweb has streaming mp3s of all twelve Dial-A-Poem releases
here. Yay!
posted by elr
on Sep 1, 2006 -
14 comments
This Iranian American Life "This blog is for an experimental documentary that I am working on this year, where I will be shooting video of my experiences in Iran and creating shorts, interactive installations, and/or videoblogs using the footage from my experiences and the experiences of others."
Iranian-American student Paris Marashi has gone back to Tehran with the goal of documenting her own experiences with family, friends, and about town. She's also giving inexpensive cameras to Iranians to help them document their own experiences. There are only a few posts up at the moment, but it should be stay interesting as time goes on.
posted by chasing
on Aug 8, 2006 -
15 comments
Fleischfilm Films by Thorsten Fleisch, experimental filmmaker. Fleisch "
became recognized as one of the world's leading innovators of experimental film with the release of his 16mm film, Blutrausch, a film made entirely from his own blood." "Fleisch feels a compulsive need to attack everyone's eyes and ears... challenging the eyes and mind with wickedly clever films that combine mathematical systems of editing with reflexive commentary." Check out some
interviews or Fleisch's stimulating article,
Animating the 4th Dimension.
posted by MetaMonkey
on Feb 3, 2006 -
5 comments
MAN - Mothers Against Noise. "Noise is music that uses unpleasant or painful or extremely loud or discordant sound. Noise is also a very dangerous musical trend that is hell bent on destroying civilized culture, this anti-cultural movement is quickly sweeping the globe, and is very dangerous to our youth."
via MonkeyFilter and our own panoptican.
posted by loquacious
on Dec 26, 2005 -
70 comments
dontclick.it
: what would you do if somebody stole your mouse button?
Yes, it’s flash, and it’s annoying, but that’s the point.
posted by signal
on Jul 8, 2005 -
32 comments
Thinner/Autoplate is the real deal: a netlabel that doesn't suck. Ambient/dub/minimal house/drone/experimental sounds that'll turn your home into the chillout room of a Finnish club at 5 am. Or at least pleasantly buzz in the background while you read. Sixty-five releases, high-quality bit rates, zipped files, creative commons licence -- the site itself is very nicely done. But more importantly, the music is just freakin' good, for fans of this sort of thing of course.
For a taster, try the excellent
ambient dub mix (125MB) or the more beat-oriented
house standard mix (95MB).
The label chief explains the rationale behind giving the music away in an interview
here.
posted by dydecker
on Nov 25, 2004 -
20 comments
The Pig Wings Project: "Rhetoric surrounding the development of new biological technologies make us wonder if pigs could fly one day. If pigs could fly, what shape their wings will take? The Pig Wings Project presents the first use of living pig tissue to construct and grow winged shape Semi-Living Objects."
posted by taz
on Sep 28, 2004 -
2 comments
I've been having a good time with "You and We", a project from
Born Magazine that invites you to "contribute your words and images to this continuously evolving, collective experiment." Users upload art, text and photos to be collaged together in a fast-moving montage that actually turns out to be pretty nice. So far there have been over a thousand contributors. [Flash, Sound (toggles), and possibly NSFW.]
posted by taz
on Aug 27, 2004 -
1 comment
Soundtoys - cool things you can click on, prod, poke, play with, drag, chew on & diddle...a gallery of interactive audio-visual projects from a variety of web designers, musicians and programmers. Absolutely no uranium involved!
posted by madamjujujive
on Jul 12, 2003 -
7 comments
Red Dog Army: "Red Dogs line up along the edges of the art-world. They have many objectives...
Their purpose is to put art into the hands of anyone who sees them and takes them home...
They are distributed by a person or persons unknown, tracing movement in cities across the world. They inhabit their new environment sometimes for just a few minutes before being destroyed or taken in by a new art collector. Or they may remain for months, changing shape and being forced into compromising positions. Above all, they are always seen by someone. Their presence is noticed, noted and very red."
Take note, Antipodeans, and keep your eyes open; the red dog comes for you.
posted by taz
on May 3, 2003 -
6 comments
"Twexus does contain 15800 images today". Twexus is an enigmatic, engaging little database-driven photoart site that rewards you with new site features as your page views increase. I can't seem to tear free from the hypnotic effect of the "
symmetry" page that concerns itself with my opinion on each proffered image.
sorry, gotta go... must... return... to... twexus...
posted by taz
on Nov 21, 2002 -
15 comments
O Superman I went to the Laurie Anderson show last night in Toronto. I seriously didn't want to
and was praying for a cancelled show. I ended up enjoying it fully. Art really can heal. She began the
show by dedicating the music to "everyone who died Tuesday, freedom and sanity."
Strangely, many of her songs make reference to airplanes and fire. Spookiest moment of the night: during her signature song "O Superman," the lines "Here come the planes. They're American planes, made by Americans." Read the lyrics - the song is loaded with eerie references.
posted by davebush
on Sep 14, 2001 -
10 comments
