When I finally took the plunge to get an iPod in April 2007 — knowing I’d need it for 12 hours of traveling time from Austin to Honolulu — I went for small and cheap. I didn’t like the Shuffle’s lack of an interface, so I went with a 2GB iPod Nano instead. 2GB is chump change in the portable music player world, but I like the space limitation. I’m often paralyzed by too much choice, so the cramped confines of 2,147,483,648 bytes forces me to focus. (No, I don’t know that figure off the top of my head — I used a calculator.)
I just loaded new music in the iPod for the daily workout, so I’ll comment on those the next time. Here’s what was on the player before.
Until I downloaded this album from eMusic, the only Anton Webern piece I’d heard was the Six Bagatelles, which Kronos Quartet recorded on its second recital album Winter Was Hard.
I’ve always liked the Six Bagatelles for its brevity and sparseness. Even in the span of half a minute, which each bagatelle averages, Webern manages to coax extremes out of the music — long, quiet chromatic melodies burst into a clash of tremolo. Exploring the works of Webern became one of those personal checklist items that get bumped in favor of more immediate gratification. (Thank deity for eMusic.)
Webern’s entire catalog of work can fit on six CDs, as composer/conductor Pierre Boulez demonstrated in 2000. Webern’s life was cut short when he was accidentally shot by an American soldier in 1945 — the glow from his cigar spooked the soldier. The Complete Works for String Quartet and String Trio contains 7 works spread over 20 tracks and clocks in at 64 minutes.
TOKIE is no stranger to the marriage of indie rock and jazz improvisation. She played bass with LOSALIOS, the instrumental outfit led by former Blankey Jet City drummer Nakamura Tetsuya. It’s easy to assume there would be overlap between TOKIE’s own band, unkie, and her other gig with LOSALIOS.
Perhaps.
Both bands share the ability to play hard, fast, loud and free, but where LOSALIOS can get expansive — saxophone is a regular component — unkie focuses strictly on its core. The latter’s first album, the Price of Fame, showcases the white hot electricity this trio can produce.
Guitarist Aoki Yutaka keeps surprising with his versatility. As an original member of downy, he crafted thick, hypnotic textures with a tortured sound. downy broke up, and he was drafted into VOLA & THE ORIENTAL MACHINE, where he turned into New Wave guitarist with a lot more distortion and overdrive. With unkie, he turns into a surf twanger channeling the ghosts of Jimi Hendrix and his jazz band bosses.
I used to tell people I didn’t need an iPod because I didn’t live a life that requires portability. I don’t travel a lot, I don’t mind the CD player in my car and until recently, I didn’t work out. I eventually bought an iPod Nano because I went to visit family in Hawaiʻi, and I needed that portability for 12 hours of travel, one-way.
Since late August, I’ve started working out daily on the treadmill, so I’ve been using my iPod significantly more. I actually look forward to those workouts because I get to do nothing but (walk and) listen to music for half an hour or more. Of course, I’m limited to only heart-pumping kind of music — no Explosions in the Sky or Jean Sibelius, unfortunately — but it has allowed me to unearth stuff I haven’t listened to in a while.
Now I have a new angle by which to evaluate my listening choices — by appropriateness to a workout regimen.
Ivri Lider is the biggest pop star in Israel, and when he came out of the closet in 2002, his popularity grew. His albums haven’t been released on CD in the US, but they are available as digital downloads on iTunes, eMusic and Amazon. Out magazine profiled Lider a while back, and I was intrigued by the idea of gay man being the top pop singer in a country smack dab in the middle of all that religious and political unrest.
But pop music overseas doesn’t have an immediate parallel with American pop music. Lider is not Israel’s answer to Kanye West. He’s not a funk soul brother trapped in a Jewish body. (That’s Ari Gold’s job, and he does that well enough for everyone.) Lider’s smooth but slightly burnished croon is usually set atop what radio executives might call "adult alternative rock". It’s rooted as much in the club music of Europe as it is in the alt-rock lite of America.
And yeah — he’s teh hawt.
So I spent a good portion of my eMusic quota over the span of four months to acquire his four albums. I’ve listened to them, and while he doesn’t really knock Utada Hikaru and Shiina Ringo off of the regular rotation, he’s not so nondescript as to be mediocre. That’s not to say his discography is unassailable either.
Just the notion of an album of George Crumb orchestral works drew me to this recording. Crumb’s pieces seem so exclusively suited for small ensembles, it’s difficult to imagine the heavy mass of an orchestra occupying the sparse nooks and crannies of his scores. I can just picture the concert hall swallowing up his pieces’ signature textures.
It’s not surprising to discover Crumb has so far only written five pieces for orchestra, two of which were recorded by the Louisville Orchestra. Although Crumb employs the entire orchestra for the Varizioni, his economic orchestration still makes the piece feel largely like chamber music.
He makes few odd demands on the orchestra, and the piece, with its 12-tone theme, feels relatively conventional. That’s not to say the discordant bursts of strings and brass are at all tonal — this score is thoroughly modern. Compared to Black Angels or Ancient Voices for Children, Varizioni sounds like, well, music. (For readers unfamiliar with Crumb’s work, the background music for the TV show Lost is essentially Crumb made palatable for prime time.)
Still, Crumb manages to give the orchestra a workout, and the piece can be as thrilling as it is intense.
Yet another round-up of albums I won’t review. No real excuse, save for lack of enthusiasm. It’s really easy to write enthusiastically about something you really, really like or something you really, really can’t stand. It’s hard to write about things that don’t actually illicit a reaction, even worse, reactions that could go either way.
Last month, I had 43 downloads remaining in my eMusic quota which I forgot to use. I’ve already complained about having too much choice, and part of the reason those 43 downloads went to waste was because I wanted to catch up on what I have before I get any more. But that’s just not how eMusic rolls.
I didn’t purchase much music in September, but this past week, I went on a binge. I haven’t had time to listen to everything, but I wanted to note them now to figure out later what I want to write about in greater detail.
With Billy Corgan, I really have to separate the persona from the art. That’s the diplomatic way of saying the guy annoys me.
That is, the way he comes across in public annoys me. Dude takes out a full page ad in a newspaper asking his band back together. Not announcing — asking. Your average former rock stars would just pick up a phone (or have their managers do it for them.)
As the undisputed creative force behind Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan let his deification in the early ’90s get to his head, and the fans of the music have had to put up with it since.
All that to say I went into Zeitgeist with an excessive dose of skepticism — perhaps even hostility — and I was summarily humbled. This album is one of the best I’ve heard all year.
The members of Quruli really overextended themselves in 2005. 2004 saw the release of Antenna, one of the group’s strongest works, and a lengthy tour which took them all over Japan and portions of North America. After all that activity, it would make sense to recharge a bit, right?
Nope. Guitarist/singer Kishida Shigeru and bassist Satou Masashi went headlong into helping Cocco stage a comeback with Singer Songer, then later Quruli released its fifth album, Nikki. Neither project possessed the focus of the band’s recent work at the time. Kishida and co. were spreading themselves too thin.
So it’s with cautious optimism that I approached Quruli’s sixth album, Tanz Walzer. Opting instead to release a greatest hits collection in 2006, Quruli took the break they should have in 2005. Was it enough time for the band to recharge? That depends on your expectations.