While I was browsing around my music library for the gay pride entry, I scrolled right past the Gay American Composers discs released by CRI in the late ’90s. At the time, classical labels were marketing directly to gay audiences by packaging the music of gay European composers in provocative covers. CRI put a spin on that kind of commercialism by compiling its own such series with the music of American composers.
Gay American Composers, Vol. 1 was released in 1996 and contained mostly works by living composers. Gay American Composers, Vol. 2, released in 1997, focused on dead composers. Lesbian American Composers (1999, I think?) focused on — wait for it — women.
CRI went out of business in 2003, and while its masters are now owned by New World Records, these discs are pretty much out of print. Here, then, are select works from all three volumes of the series.
Ruth Anderson, "SUM (State of the Union Message)"
Henry Cowell, "The Lilt of the Reel"
David Del Tredici, "Fantasy Pieces: Allegro Minacciando… Diabloique"
They’re not the usual mainstream gay pop figures — Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Boy George — but they’re not exactly … undiscovered either. I was hoping to make some new discoveries, but no one in the Hypeful entry was unknown to me.
So I’m going to extend Hypeful’s offerings with a few artists previously mentioned on this site. It’s not as extensive a list as Hypeful’s, and a number of these files were offered before.
Shinsou ~Message from the Depth~ is perhaps DJ Krush’s angriest album. Created in the wake of 9/11 and the beginning of the Iraq War, Shinsou makes its agitation and nervousness known from the start.
But it’s "Alepheuo (Truthspeaking)" that delivers the album’s most explicit criticism of US foreign policy. "Cause we don’t clean up our own shit/And when refused we throw a fit/As we scream I don-wanna-hear-it I don-wanna-hear-it’/Don-wanna-hear-it" sings Angelina Esparza, who makes her debut on the song. She really captures the petulance of the Bush administration with those lines.
"Alepheuo" doesn’t disguise its radio friendliness, and the CD included a video of the song. It’s probably not the most adventurous track on Shinsou, but the lyrics had a message that needed a pop hook to go with them.
On both Dragon Ash’s "Grateful Days" and DJ Krush’s "Tragicomic", ACO plays the same role — deliver the chorus. Once in a while, she’ll contribute a flourish behind the rappers, but for the most part, she stays out of the way till the focus needs to be on her.
And that was a wise decision on both Krush’s and Dragon Ash’s parts.
ACO’s soulful voice would have drawn too much attention away from the rhymes, making them a distraction. Her presence becomes all that more powerful when she does emerge from the background.
On "Tragicomic", Twigy is the interchangeable part — anyone could fill the role of the rapper. But Krush’s dark backdrop and ACO’s eerie interjections — she looks possessed in the video — are immovable. This song was released as a single in Japan and appears on the compilation Japan for Sale.
According to last.fm, my friend Ryan and I have a "Very Low" musical compatibility score. Back when we were editors at the University of Hawaiʻi student newspaper, we would also try to "out-exotic" each other when it came to monopolizing the office stereo.
As divergent as our music tastes are, a few things from his music collection seeped into my own. It took me a few years to come around to Björk’s Post, which he would have on all the time. I wouldn’t have really considered Pizzicato Five’s Made in USA without Ryan’s help. But the one album that really struck me was Dead Can Dance’s Spiritchaser.
I would play that disc quite a bit when we were in the office, and when I moved to Austin, I snatched up a used copy of the album the moment I saw one available. It’s the only Dead Can Dance album I own, and I’m told it’s not even their best one. Perhaps I’ll delve more into their work in the future, but for now, I’m content with what I have.
The only reason I picked up Dawn Upshaw’s 1996 album, White Moon: Songs to Morpheus, is because I had gotten into Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman at the time. Upshaw’s album has nothing to do with Gaiman’s King of Dreams, but I liked the tenuous connection anyway.
While I don’t own much of Upshaw’s own discography, she appears on a number of other albums I own. Her recording of Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 with David Zinman and the London Sinfonietta is essential for any collection. She’s recorded with Kronos Quartet a number of times, and I believe she may have done some backup vocals on Audra McDonald’s How Glory Goes.
The first time I heard of Upshaw back in the late ’80s, she was a rising star in the opera world, but it’s her championing of modern music that set her apart from other singers. In addition to such early music composers as Claudio Monteverdi and John Dowland, White Moon also includes works by George Crumb, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Joseph Schwantner.
Upshaw has a clear, appealing voice, sweet and unmuddied. But don’t take my word for it.
I Break Chairs is the only album by Damien Jurado I own, and I’m unclear exactly what drew me to it. I remember reading an article about how the album was a vast departure for Jurado at the time. I think I was just in a music-buying mood and gave this album a shot because nothing else seemed to appeal to me at the time.
I’ve heard Jurado’s more introspective material since, and I have to say I prefer I Break Chairs. The only parallel I can draw at the moment is Patty Griffin’s Flaming Red. Griffin too is pegged as a "sad folkie" (her words), and she’s actually tried to shake that distinction a few times, much to her ardent fans’ dismay.
As with I Break Chairs, I like Griffin when she’s balls-out rocking, even though she does sound incredibly good with soft-spoken material.
David Bazan, a.k.a. Pedro the Lion, produced I Break Chairs, and around the same time, Bazan released Control, which is not surprisingly the only album of Pedro the Lion’s I own. There’s a pattern in here somewhere, but my allergies are kicking my butt too much to make sense of it.
Dagashi-Kashi is a band that shouldn’t really work on paper. A screechy vocalist fronting sinister garage rock, plus a wardrobe out of a cheap kabuki knock-off — the word that comes to mind is "novelty".
I saw Dagashi-Kashi perform at SXSW a number of years ago, and I was impressed with their showmanship. I also like a band that claims that listening to them will make you die! (Their emphasis.) Kind of like The Ring, I guess.
"Jingai Kagami no Heya" is the title track from the band’s second album, the only one I own since I bought it at the merchandise table after the band’s showcase. It’s not really my proverbial cup of tea, but I like to keep the album around. It’s entertaining in its own way.
Because of the costumes, Dagashi-Kashi is often lumped into the visual kei category, but the band’s music has no roots in the butt rock most VK bands emulate. In fact, Dagashi-Kashi is pretty punk.
The last pieces of Cocco ephemera are two a capella b-sides. "Mafuyu no Suika" was the middle track on her "Kemono Michi" single, and "Ai no Uta" was a hidden fifth track on the "Yakenogahara" single.
"Mafuyu no Suika" is a children’s piece along the lines of "Chiisana Ame no Hi no Kuwamui", which opens the Kumuiuta album. It’s short and to the point, concentrating on the natural timbral beauty of Cocco’s voice.
"Ai no Uta", on the other hand, sounds like a parting gift, which at the time it was. With a "We Will Rock" beat tapped and clapped, Cocco delivers a simple message with a simple melody: "Love ya!"
Dr.StrangeLove was pretty much Cocco’s backing band from the start of her career. Negishi Takamune has so far produced every album (not counting Singer Songer, since that was produced by Kishida Shigeru of Quruli.)
So it was a nice tribute to her producer and session musicians when she covered the band’s "Rainbow".
Negishi and Susumu Osada (Dr.StrangeLove’s guitarist) aren’t exactly the best interpreters of their songs, but under Cocco’s hands, the versatility and appeal of the pair’s songwriting comes through. In short, she brought out the best parts.
I thought about providing an A-B comparison with the original song, but essentially, what you hear in Cocco’s version is what you would get (generally speaking) on Twin Suns, the album from whence it came.