The Slush Pile: Janet, Sting and a band I like
It’s albums such as these that make me consider some crazy New Year’s resolutions.
NaSoAlMo source material
I participated in National Solo Album Month this year, and I recorded a piano solo album. (Well, I programmed it, really, because I’m not good enough to tackle anything live.)
To get in a frame of mind to work on such a project, I’ve been listening to a lot of piano music. Some of it related directly to what I was writing, and some of it didn’t.
Listen: Värttinä – Katariina
I had a Celtic music phase when I was in college.
I would listen to Clannad, Altan, Talitha MacKenzie, Mouth Music — I liked the sound of Irish and Gaelic being sung.
I signed up to be on the mailing list of Green Linnet, a label specializing in the genre. For a little while, the label expanded into world music and signed the likes of the Klezmatics and Värttinä. My introduction to both bands was on a Green Linnet sampler, and I ended buying the former’s Jews with Horns and the latter’s Aitara from Green Linnet’s mail order catalog.
Both albums occupy permanent spots in my collection.
A strange idea for a New Year’s Resolution
I wrote only seven entries for the entire month of November.
I blame my lack of productivity on NaSoAlMo, but at the same time, I feel kind of daunted by the backlog of listening I’ve accrued. It’s the same kind of backlog that made me redesign this site a little more than a year ago to be less of a burden. Now that burden rears its head again.
New, new, new, new, new — it seems most music writing focuses on what’s new and what’s next. I’ve been trying to focus more on what I like (note how I don’t say what’s good) than on what’s new. But the "new" trap is an easy one in which to fall.
So I’m toying with a strange New Year’s resolution for this site: to spend an entire year writing about nothing but what’s already in my CD collection.
One-sentence reviews: On the playlist
Yes, the sound you hear are crickets chirping in the winter cold. I’m posting a quick entry just to prove there’s still life in this wheezing, dying corner of the Internets. I’ve been doing other projects that’s taken me away from all my web sites, so Musicwhore.org isn’t singled out in that regard.
While I’m doing these other things, I am still listening to some music, if my Last.fm user profile is any indication. Seems like my playlist has more of a classical slant lately. Here, then, are some of things occupying my earspace:
… And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Emo’s, Nov. 22, 2006, Austin, TX
I’ve told people the last time I saw … Trail of Dead was in 2002, shortly after the release of Source Code & Tags. I forgot I saw them earlier this year at SXSW. That show was not only truncated but relatively subdued.
I didn’t know whether last night’s show at Emo’s would be a repeat of SXSW. I should not have been such a doubting Thomas.
Let me just note right away there was no destruction of the stage at the end of the show. I must be getting older because I was not disappointed when that didn’t happen. Regardless, the … Trail of Dead guys still tore through their set.
Listen: Elliott Carter – Holiday Overture
It’s been nearly a month since I posted a "Listen" column. What the heck have I been doing? (That’s a rhetorical question. I got busy at work, and it hasn’t let up.)
Better late than dead, as some endeavors on which I embark end up being, so here’s a selection from another out-of-print CD from the defunct Composers Recordings, Inc. label.
There was a time in Elliott Carter’s life when he did the nationalistic thing and wrote some fairly tonal works. He got over it and went back to writing dischordant pieces. The majority of Music of Elliot Carter, part of CRI’s "American Masters" series, focuses on that nationalistic period.
Favorite edition 2006 final
I don’t really see anything else coming down the pipe, so I may as well call it now.
I usually draft my end-of-year list in November anyway, and if I encounter something in December, it goes toward the following year.
There isn’t much deviation from last quarter’s forecast of the year-end favorites, and honestly, this list only really goes up to nine in terms of 2006 releases. That doesn’t mean I didn’t encounter a lot of great music in the past year.
Supercar: 16/50
I intentionally ignored Supercar’s albums before Futurama.
Futurama was such a watershed listening experience, I didn’t want to tempt fate by exploring the work that led up to it. Besides, it would be a mighty expensive endeavor to do so.
It wasn’t until the band broke up in 2005 that I felt safe to start exploring the music that came before Futurama. I could live with the expense of a back catalog so long as there were no future catalog to compound it.
Man, have I been missing out.
Mindy Smith: Long Island Shores
I decided within the first week of listening to Mindy Smith’s Long Island Shores I was going to give it a lukewarm review.
But real life kept interfering with my writing time, and I kept putting it off. By the time I was ready to set word to pixel, something strange happened — Long Island Shores took root in my subconscious.
I would wake up some mornings with the songs from the album playing in my head.
What happened between that first week of listening till now?