2009, miscellaneous, music, personal, philosophy, thoughts, writing

Object Permanence Pt. 2: Crowd Control

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How much control does an artist have then is another question. The painter can fill up the canvas and decide how the work is going to be framed. How much control does an artist have over how the work is displayed? Would there be a problem with hanging a certain painting in proximity to the work of another artist? How much can we expect the audience to cast off as “not the work of the artist”.

There was a sculpture of sorts on display in one room of the new Modern building at the Art Institute of Chicago. The sculpture involved a pile of white rocks piled up on a conical figuration with tiny rocks on the outskirts and larger rocks towards the center and peak. Intersecting the rocks were mirrors in the shape of an asterisk. As I looked at this exhibit I wondered aloud to my brother, “do you think the artist comes to the museum that this work is displayed in to set it up or do you think that it is shipped with very specific instructions as to how it needs to be exactly?” We left it up in the air.

This is to say, how much of a degree of aleatory is there in all the arts? I know that Cage was convinced (and has convinced many others, including myself) that there is a certain degree of aleatory in all music. The variables being performers, performance space, conductor, instruments, tempo, audience…the list is infinite.

While in Chicago we also visited the Museum of Contemporary Art. There was a simple sculpture made of found items that were hung from a wire frame and meant to form a smiling face. Though it was enclosed in a plastic box and therefore unable to be touched, the string from which most of the sculpture was hanging had twisted somehow and it made the eyes, nose and mouth of the face appear perpendicular to the outer wire frame forming some sort of cubist idea of a face. This, I can say with almost complete certainty, was not the original intention of the artist. Should I, however, take it as I saw it? Or should I correct what I feel is “wrong” and remember the sculpture as being that of a right and true “face”? How far can one take this idea? I don’t think that many artists would appreciate the idea of their audience “perfecting” their art.

With a piece of music, how much is the audience expected to “correct”? There are going to be slight mistakes made, there are going to be choices made by the conductor that make some parts seem more important than others, and there are going to be cues missed and measures accidentally excluded perhaps by a particularly nervous percussionist that hasn’t played for 42 bars and lost count or was not cued. How much of the music, then, actually is what the composer wrote? I realize that this does overlap with thoughts about degrees of aleatory in music, but I would like to examine it one step further from an audience perspective. Is an audience experiencing music and taking it for granted that the performance was perfect? This begs the question about artist control. Exactly how much control does the composer have once the score leaves their hands?

2009, miscellaneous, philosophy, thoughts, writing

Object Permanence

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This past week I was in Chicago, a giant cultural leap forward from the small town that I currently occupy. This trip not only afforded me the opportunity to spend time with my brother and sister in law, but also to wander through the brand new Modern building of the Chicago Institute of Art.
I could go on for pages about how wonderful this new space is and what a beautiful building Chicago now has, and how great it is to see that art is flourishing, which stands in direct opposition to my myopic views on art as directly influenced by living in a one-horse town. Perhaps sometimes I am a bit too negative. This is not the point that I want to be exploring right now. When I have the chance to look at great art it makes me think. I have a few thoughts that are constants, and usually a new idea or two will crop up.
It is taking me far too long to get to the point here, I apologize. The point is this: should I, or anyone for that matter, take pictures of what they see at art galleries, to take with them? Should the experience of seeing a great work of art be something that is brought with a person wherever they go (via storage on a laptop or online gallery)?
There are so many connotations here that I can hardly stop to gather my thoughts. Let’s begin with the idea that art is to be taken with you when you go.

One takes a picture of a painting, or a sculpture or anything. First of all what is one expecting from this work of art? Is this sort of like portable “inspiration”? Does art have the ability to stir up thoughts when it is taken out of its “natural habitat” (being an art gallery)? What is an artworks “natural habitat”? If the painting is currently on display in Chicago, in that new building in that city in the summer and then travels the next week or better yet the next season to a museum in Seattle in the winter in a building that is of a completely different style of architecture…..will they both garner similar thoughts in the same person if they travel with the painting? How much does the location (which takes into account everything inherent in that word i.e. geographical location, climate, even the history of that area with regards to their general feelings of how arts and artists should be treated) affect how the viewer sees that work of art?

My point being how permanent is the experience of viewing art? Or better yet, how permanent should it be? This is, of course, ultimately up to the individual. This puts the “plastic” arts in quite a contrasting light than music. Or does it?

Perhaps bringing up more questions than answers is a really annoying way of going about things. The reason I am doing so is because I don’t even really know how I feel. I do believe that the object of art is to express what can not be expressed in words. That is the goal of the artist, no matter what medium they are working in I believe that this is the goal. We as artists are attempting to get to the root of the human experience. We are trying to create a universal language that can be perceived through any of the senses. As a musician should I expect my audience to be swept up in the moment while listening to one of my works and suddenly be driven to do great things, or feel one way or another? I suppose this would be the ultimate compliment, but am I thinking about it as I write? Absolutely not.

How much, as artists, can we expect our audience to take our works with them wherever they go? I know that I will never forget how I feel looking at the works of Pollack or Picasso. I can constantly turn over in my mind what those works conjure inside of me, and perhaps time and again I need to be reminded by looking at the painting again. Looking at it on my computer would certainly be a good way to spark those thoughts once again, but I can easily admit that the experience of viewing that work in that way will not even come close to the experience of viewing it for the first time in that clean, bright white room. The silence, the austere atmosphere of the gallery; all of these things add to the experience of the art.

2009, live, music, personal

Coming up this weekend….

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It is that time of year again!

Time to bake in the Chicago sun for the annual Pitchfork Music Festival! I have been attending the festival since 2006. During that time I have seen several amazing bands, met many people and always had a great time. It was during this festival in 2006 that I realized that seeing live music was very important to me and it is a great experience to discover new music in a live setting. When I first went to the festival it was a scant 2 days long, now it has expanded with the help of All Tomorrow’s Parties to 3 days (though the first day is about a quarter as long as the other 2).

It was during this festival in the past few years that I came to love the music of The Futureheads, Spoon, Liars, Yo La Tengo, Dirty Projectors, and of Montreal. I also will never forget amazing performances by Girl Talk, Spiritualized, Sonic Youth, Os Mutantes, Silver Jews, Caribou, Dan Deacon, Stephen Malkmus and countless others.

It is so much more than just a music festival too. There is the flatstock poster convention too, which features gig posters by many different artists that are there to talk to and purchase posters from. I make it a habit of getting Jay Ryan’s Pitchfork poster every year. I really love his work. It is highly recognizable and he is also based out of Chicago, so he is more or less a hometown hero as well. I’m still upset that I didn’t begin this tradition until 2007, and I can’t find a 2006 poster anywhere, but such is life. Perhaps someday it will show up on ebay.

I will be twittering (www.twitter.com/quartertonality) throughout the weekend, that is certain. In addition to this I will be trying to see as many bands as humanly possible. I would estimate that I will catch somewhere between 20 to 25 sets over the weekend.  My only hope is that the weather is great. Rain would really put a serious damper on the fun. Other things I’m looking forward to:

-after-shows at Schubas or the Empty Bottle or something (I was actually so tired last year, or was it the year before?, that I fell asleep at a Twilight Sad concert at Schubas)

-record shopping at permanent records, which is located conveniently around the corner from my brother’s place, where I am staying

-meeting my brother’s new cat Dr. Pirate.

-vinyl shopping at the festival (all the labels have booths set up and it was a completely random purchase at the Sub-Pop booth in 2006 that introduced me to the awesomeness that is the Constantines….I really need to buy more of their stuff come to think of it)

So much more. I will be posting pictures and videos here as well as to my youtube and flickr pages. If I have time and am not too exhausted I will post them immediately, but I may wait until the weekend is over. Sorry, I am not a slave to the immediacy of the internet. Please stay tuned.

2009, albums, music, reviews

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

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I know what you are thinking, “This album has been out for almost 2 weeks, we already know how good it is”. This is all true, but I’m trying to catch up with all the things that I want to write about and I have been addicted to the new Dirty Projectors album. Maybe this is because I only started regularly updating my blog within the past week and I have had the new Phoenix album for over a month. Perhaps the excitement about it is gone. Actually, come to think of it, that is exactly what is so right about this album. After listening to it regularly for over a month the magic is not gone.

This happened with my first introduction to Phoenix not too long after “It’s Never Been Like That” came out. I believe that was during the summer too. Maybe it wasn’t a summer, but Phoenix has carved a nice little niche for themselves in writing really upbeat, summer-sounding tunes that benefit from fantastic production that is not heard too often on albums. There is something warm and convivial about their songwriting style. It’s easy going. It’s carefree but extraordinarily articulate and perfectly crafted. It’s, in a word, French.

Thankfully the days of “Funky Squaredance” are gone. The albums just keep getting better and more finely tuned, no more needlessly long and unforgiving songs that wander here, there and everywhere. I think that is the criticism that I have of the album “United” as a whole. It wanders. One song is a dancy jam, the next is an over-produced ballad that sounds like it is straight out of the year 1987. Maybe the sound recording technology in Paris is slightly behind ours, but I doubt it. These guys have money, they can do what they want. Though maybe they didn’t have that much money back then, but they should now. But I digress. The point is that they have found their voice on this album.

Finally, as I have said before, 2009 is going to be a great year for music. It is already shaping up to be one. Albums like this don’t exactly come around every year.

Phoenix is not afraid to make music that is recognizable, because it is reminiscent of another era. They have captured our attention because of their ability to make songs that sound like they are from our childhood, or sound like they could be. When listening to “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” there is an overwhelming feeling of “oooh where have I heard this before?” or, if not, for me at least, the songs are already connected to memories.

Wolgang Amadeus Phoenix, the new album by Phoenix is out now.
Wolgang Amadeus Phoenix, the new album by Phoenix is out now.

A little less guitar-driven than “It’s Never Been Like That” it is not accurate to say that this album is synth-driven, but there is definitely more of a balance. Phoenix sounds more lush, bigger, more forceful. The production is tastefully done and everything is really clean sounding and pitch perfect. The world would be a much better place if everyone took as much care in creating their albums in post as Phoenix.

As would be expected this album is full of catchy hooks, and the obligatory instrumental track, though this time “Love Like a Sunset” is a song with an instrumental building up to it. I think this works a little bit better than previous attempts like “North”. It must be important to them that they show that they aren’t just some ultra efficient pop-song writing machine, and they want to show that they are fantastic instrumentalists as well. They can definitely craft a longer composition, and rarely does it come off overblown or long-winded. Seeing them perform on Saturday Night Live a while back (it seems like forever ago now) made me feel the same as when Spoon played last season. It feels like this is the little band that could, even though they have been around for a while with a steadily growing audience. The performance there was great, so great in fact there were rumblings that they were playing along to a pre-recorded track (they absolutely were not).

I have heard the music of Phoenix described as sounding like a sunrise. I think that metaphor is quite apt, especially for this album.

Below is the track 1901:

2009, albums, music, news, reviews

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

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Dirty Projectors probably have the most easily identifiable and unique sound in Indie Rock today. Dave Longstreth is the man behind the band, which now includes Angel Deradoorian, Amber Coffman and Brian McComber as principal members. Stylistically they are glitchy, jittery, cut-up and put back together rhythmically with very intricately ornamented vocal lines (as well as guitar lines, I suppose). The vocal harmonies are very tight, and I would imagine quite challenging to sing. Often it seems as though notes are picked out of nowhere. That glitchy, jittery rhythm also seems as though it is speeding up and slowing down with so much use of borrowed meter and complex tuplet structures, which is a trait rarely used at all by other bands (I actually can’t think of any that have ever done anything similar) but Dirty Projectors put to use in each of their recordings. It is almost as if Longstreth is stopping and starting time at will. There are very complex and lengthy patterns at work in his songs.

When I was in college I was part of a group for new music called Ethos. As president of the group I was responsible for scheduling guest composers and lectures to come to campus. In 2008 we had as a guest a fantastic composer named Missy Mazzoli. While driving her down to our campus in the middle of nowhere we got to talking about music. She asked me if I had ever heard of Dirty Projectors, to which I responded with something like “I have heard of them, but I don’t know any of their stuff”. This was true, and is also my stock answer when I don’t want to admit that I am completely ignorant of something. She mentioned that she is friends with the lead singer/songwriter, that they had met while studying at Yale. She said that I may like them but warned me that they were “really strange, but beautiful”. She didn’t have to say anything more. I already knew that I wanted to get to know them and be a fan.

I had the opportunity to catch them a few months later at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago (July 2008) and I was so impressed by their performance that I ran to the record tent to see what I could find and immediately bought “Rise Above” which is a “re-imagining” of the Black Flag album “Damaged” but given the Dirty Projectors treatment and apparently done from memory (Longstreth hadn’t heard the album in a long time, but managed to remember almost all the lyrics. The album is fantastic). I made a note to remember them and try to check out all of their stuff. They were the highlight of the Festial last year for me.

NPR began streaming their latest album “Bitte Orca” this week and I immediately sat down to check it out. All of the characteristic sounds of the band are in place, the jittery rhythms, frantic guitar playing and close harmonies. There is, also, the extra added bonus of catchy hooks (which I have been a fan of lately). I think the use of catchy hooks works even more for bands as unique as Dirty Projectors because it is something that is almost unexpected and they are made all the more beautiful by the unconventional structures that happen around them.

Dirty Projectors
Dirty Projectors

Starting off the album “Cannibal Resource” with its ethereal sounding guitar and bass interruptions the energy slowly kicks in throughout the first verse but we aren’t really off the ground until the chorus kicks in. The vocal arrangement of the opening guitar riff is a great touch and the clean guitar that comes in between the verses evokes the spectre of Frank Zappa. There is a transcendent emotion conveyed throughout this album, more so than on their previous efforts. The opening guitar line that comes back throughout is quite effective in moving the listening along. This characteristic is not just of the first track, it continues throughout the album. I think that this is what sets it apart from their earlier work. This album seems more cohesive in its construction of songs and song forms. Each track builds upon the previous. “Temecula Sunrise” will get stuck in your head and it will stay there.  The wandering, overlapping guitar lines with the wavering backbeat that all comes together at exactly the right time. It’s absolutely perfect. This is as close to pop perfection as Dirty Projectors will ever be. They are still at quite a safe distance, remaining distinctive but familiar. There are even guitar “solos” on a few tracks.

“The Bride” definitely reminds me of Led Zeppelin’s “III” with the octave portamento (which really drives the song home) on what I believe sounds like a guitar in some tuning with a lot of open 5ths in it. From there the album moves right along to “Stillness is the Move” which is quite the shift in gears. The tune has the most straightforward beat and guitar parts (which sound as though they may be looped) placed behind R & B type vocal acrobatics courtesy of the female singers, with a laid back bridge that divides the song right in two. Layering comes in later in the song. Strings enter over top to sort of smear the painting as it were. Also note the bassline in this one. Punchy, pointed and downright funky.

The remainder of the album plays out much in the same way that it began. Great acoustic guitar work, string arrangements, memorable lines, a ballad? (“Two Doves”), and the constant juxtaposition of strange and expected. “Useful Chamber” fits well as a counterpart to “Stillness is the Move” with it’s looped drums (probably a drum machine) and synth sounds. At over 6 minutes though the song has many places that it can go, and before it ends we are hit with the crush of distortion and frenetics upon Longstreth’s repeated utterings of the album title.

Without belaboring it for too much longer I will conclude by saying that this album has a great shape to it. The album is put together very well as a whole, and each of the songs are interesting little pieces of the puzzle. Closing track “Fluorescent Half-Dome” is an absolutely beautiful track, and a perfect album closer.

Dirty Projectors have made a great contribution here to what is turning out to be a solid year for new music.

(Check their Myspace for more, and don’t forget about NPR streaming it for free this week)

Bitte Orca is set for official release on June 9, 2009.

2009, live, music, reviews, Uncategorized

The Burning Hell at Lee's Palace, Toronto (May 28, 2009)

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The Burning Hell are Canadian Indie Rock’s best kept secret. Mathias Kom and his clan of musicians (over 10 at last count) from Peterborough, Ontario have been creating quirky, dark and self-depricating pop tunes for a few years now. I was first introduced to them in February 2008 through their album “Happy Birthday” which has several memorable tunes on it, including “Grave Situation, Pt. 1” about a woman that comes back from the dead to take revenge on her cheating lover.

The band, on that album features Kom on very low vocals and ukulele with the assistance of cello, drums, glockenspiel, trumpet, omnichord, keyboards, guitar and bass and a perfectly placed lap steel among other things that I may be forgetting. I listened to that album so much that I think I have memorized just about every line on every instrument and all the lyrics. I almost don’t need the recording anymore, as I can just recall it in my memory. That being said I was quite thrilled when I was in Toronto this past March and found their new release “Baby” without even looking for it. Apparently it had been put on the shelf a day or so before it was to be officially released. Most likely I was one of the first people to hear the new album, which is probably odd being that not too many Canadians have heard them and I’m an American. That is beside the point. I think that everyone should hear this band.

“Baby” is a bit of a departure from the very dark sounding “Happy Birthday”, but I welcome the change. The songs are brighter and more upbeat with more ensemble work (and more chords!). Mathias writes and sings in a style that is vibrant, with lyrics that take unexpected, and often funny, or at the very least ironic, turns. “The Berlin Conference” is about exactly that, while “Grave Situation, Pt. 3” and “The Things that People Make, Pt. 2” pick up where the other songs left off. It seems that Mathias likes to develop upon previous ideas. This doesn’t mean that the songs remain sounding like their counterparts from years past, rather the new style permeates and the songs receive an updated treatment.

I was, obviously, very familiar with their work by the time I saw them at Lee’s Palace. Lee’s is a great room, with the potential for a rather large audience. The stage is large and up very high, separating the band from the audience by hoisting them up above our heads. There isa large space in front of the stage, and probably not a bad spot in the house. I have had the opportunity to see only one other show at Lee’s (The Bicycles “Oh No, It’s Love” CD release) and that was amazing and memorable, so coming back was great. This show was kind of strange in that The Burning Hell were, to me anyway, the headliners. That wasn’t really the case though. The show was actually a CD release for Polaris Prize nominated band Dog Day, and there were 2 opening bands that went on before them. The Burning Hell took the stage at midnight, AFTER Dog Day had finished their set.

The Burning Hell at CMW 2008
I did buy Dog Day’s first album on the Itunes store and I have listened to it a few times, but I didn’t feel as though it was really that memorable. I prefer the work the singer did with Burdocks, and I listen to them more regularly. Dog Day’s set was not very exciting at all, and could not hold our interest (I was there with my girlfriend), so we decided to go outside for a walk for a bit after about 3 songs. When we went outside we ran into Mathias who was nervously standing outside waiting to load in. We had a brief introduction and said that we were looking forward to their set.

When they began Lee’s was rather….not full. I was disappointed. How could a band that writes such amazing and smart tunes not be filling places like this on a regular basis? After starting their set with a few new tunes, including “Baby” opening “Old World” they returned to more familiar territory, to me, with songs from “Happy Birthday” including “Everything You Believe is a Lie” and “Grave Situation, Pt. 1”. The set was full of energy, with a very excitable keyboard/glock player on stage right, a trumpet player that looks like he came off the set of “Braveheart” and a great guitarist and bassist in the back. There were a lot of people packed onto that stage.

Mathias’ singing alternated somewhere between preacher and conversation as he rattled off his lyrics of broken meter and too-many words per phrase. He rally takes authority up there on stage. It’s obviously great fun to be on stage and he is not afraid to let it show, even if he is dressed very proper in his sport coat. It’s all about juxtaposition. Here is a man of average build, dressed nicely in a sport coat, playing a ukulele, and singing in a low, serious baritone about things like dinosaurs, love (“It’s like a trailer park….”) and upbeat tunes about the world coming to an end. All of which are full of catchy hooks and wonderfully tight harmonies and rhythm section.

The show was wonderful and the end came with a nice surprise. The Burning Hell will be playing at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on June 18 with King Khan and Barbecue Show. I will definitely be there, and hopefully more of Toronto will be represented in the crowd. There is one thing that I hope doesn’t happen again at the show at the Horseshoe: the very strange guy that skulked around the area in front of the stage and scared everyone. He make several strange gestures at my girlfriend and I, searched around for half-empty beer bottles to drink from and then smashed them on the ground when he discovered they were empty, harassed a girl toward the front of the stage (and then took beer bottles directly off the stage) and lit up a smoke in the middle of the crowd. I needed to retreat to the side of the stage for fear of my girlfriend or myself getting stabbed by him. It was rather disconcerting that nobody at Lee’s saw him and stopped him or was out there to do anything about it. It took away from the great music that was happening on the stage. I won’t say that this ruined the show, by any means, but I was nervous through a lot of it. Good thing I will have the chance to see them again soon.

Here are the videos I took at this concert. “Grave Situation, Pt. 1” featuring the very excitable glock player I mentioned earlier, and the grand finale that starts with Phil Collins’ classic “In the Air Tonight” and concludes with “The Things that People Make, Pt. 1”.  Please enjoy.

2009, albums, music, news, reviews

Sonic Youth – The Eternal

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Sonic Youth has been my favorite band since I first heard Dirty in the summer of 1993. I was immediately attracted to what I thought was a very much “anything goes” mentality. The music was (and remains, to a certain extent) brash, noisy, and full of surprises. From one release to the next they may completely change their sound or they may remain writing in the same manner for several albums in a row.

For several years, after “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star” and “Washing Machine” I lost track of my beloved Sonic Youth. I had purchased “A Thousand Leaves” and never really connected with it. They went on to release “New York City Ghosts and Flowers” and I felt further separated from my beloved Sonic Youth. Thankfully for my birthday one year my brother bought me a copy of “Murray Street” and I got my band back again. Gone were the ultra-hip completely high-brow concepts that I could not grasp at all, and Sonic Youth was back to doing what they do best.

“Murray Street”, “Sonic Nurse” and “Rather Ripped” were truly a return to form. But this was a leaner Sonic Youth. They were stripped down somewhat of some of the long form experiments. It became clear that Thurston, Lee, Kim and Steve wanted to get back to writing quick, punk influenced jams that were still rich in catchy melodies but still contained a balance with noisy, improvisational stretches that many of their early releases were full of. Sonic Youth has reached a balance. After well over a dozen releases they were still evolving and developing into a band that is quite capable of rocking while still holding fast to their core Downtown New York City experimental values.

“The Eternal”, which will be released officially on June 9, is quite a diverse offering. Twelve tracks, across 2 albums (Sonic Youth should always be listened to on vinyl, in my humble opinion. As much as possible anyway). The hooks are a little more jagged here than they were on their last release “Rather Ripped”. The melodies are a little less pretty, but the songs are a bit more straightforward, and edgy. They sound younger on this album, more revolutionary, more punk than arty. There are still a couple of songs on this album that stretch beyond the 6 minute mark (3 to be exact, one of which is over 9 minutes).

They don’t tend towards noise as much as they would on “Evol” or “Sister” (or even parts of “Daydream Nation” like the song “Eric’s Trip”). Instead the longer songs have large sections that are loud, and noisy, but not so much in the realm of getting lost in distortion as they are contemplating sounds through repetition or focusing on a repeated gesture. Dare I say that elements of shoegaze are present at this stage in the game. Songs like “Anti-Orgasm” feature a duet of Thurston and Kim, with a super angry palm-muted crunch. The song then spins out of control into an extended quiet jam that is, like I mentioned before, more contemplative than just noise for the sake of noise. Though, there is never anything wrong with noise for the sake of noise.The Thurston/Kim collaboration continues on tracks “Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)”.

Sonic Youths The Eternal will be released on Matador Records on June 9
Sonic Youth's "The Eternal" will be released on Matador Records on June 9

“Antenna” begins with a very straight ahead verse but builds up to a very ethereal, and damn catch chorus. Well, it is not so much a chorus as it is just a hook with Thurston singing “Far away” in his falsetto with an echoed guitar doubling him while the rest of the band seems to disappear into the background. It’s one of those magical moments that can only they seem to be able to achieve. Maybe it is because there is only one chord that is hammered on for about a minute before anything else in the song changes, and when that change finally comes it feels like you are being simultaneously lifted off of the ground while a 10 ton weight is being lifted from your shoulders.

Throughout the album there is a higher degree of continuity between songs. The style of each of the 3 songwriters (Lee, Kim and Thurston) seem to have congealed significantly more over the past few years than on previous releases. All around this is a solid effort, and it continues along in the way the band conducts their business as producing “poppy-er” albums (as much as Sonic Youth can produce anything even remotely “poppy”) for the label they work for (currently Matador, formerly DGC) and leaving their most experimental indulgences for release on their own SYR label. I think that they have managed to find an outlet for all of the things that they want to say, do and explore through each of these avenues. This, of course, does not even mention all of the collaborations they each go off and do, as well as other art that they each produce, Kim as a clothing designer, Thurston has written books, and worked with several other artists around the world including Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and Yoko Ono.

I truly hope that Sonic Youth continues to create well into the next 10 or 20 years. They have already influenced countless others, and are one of the only bands that I can think of that actually have something intelligent and different to say. There is no other group quite like Sonic Youth. This album is another one for the collection. Reviewing Sonic Youth albums just seems like an exercise in futility. There are pretty much just maniacal fans, like me, that are going to buy the album anyway and love it. Perhaps we will love it more than another of their albums, perhaps less, but we are still going to buy it. I don’t think that Sonic Youth is going to get a rush of new fans running out to get this album, but maybe I will be proven wrong. They already have at least one legendary album to their credit, and although I don’t think this will be another one of them, if they keep up with this trajectory, another one is not far off.

2009, live, music, reviews

Longwave – Mohawk Place (May 8, 2009)

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I haven’t had the chance to see Longwave at all in the past 5 years or so. I used to look forward to seeing them at least one time per semester. Those were the good old days, when they were signed to RCA and they toured a lot, and I think they had some money, but RCA never promoted them so they played smallish shows, similar to the ones that they do today, at least around these parts.

Times have certainly changed for these guys. They are no longer on RCA, and the lineup has been consistently changing since the drummer and bass player left before recording started on their 3rd full-length release (the 2nd for RCA) “There’s a Fire”. “There’s a Fire” was a departure for Longwave, who had worked with Dave Fridmann on their first major label release “The Strangest Things” which was decidedly epic, and grand, garnering them compliments from the music press around the world. It is always good to keep changing from album to album, but I feel as though “There’s a Fire” was quite a leap of faith on Longwave’s part. They were still searching for their fan base, leeching off of fans of The Strokes and other like minded NYC indie bands. “There’s a Fire” did away with the soaring echoplex effects and the Radiohead type grandiosity in favor of a very clean sound that was, in a way, stripped down. There was also the use of a recurring motive throughout (I believe lead singer/guitarist/songwriter Steve Schiltz referred to it as the “sea monster”) that apparently not too many picked up on.

More lineup changes followed after the tour for “There’s a Fire” came to an end and it was a while before work on their new album would begin, though it was hinted at on their Youtube page for about a year before the actual release. When the release date came you’d better believe that I preordered it and waited by my mailbox until it came.

The latest release “Secrets are Sinister” puts Longwave back on top, doing what they do best: catchy melodies, sweeping guitars that overtake everything in their path, interesting new guitar sounds and great rhythmic intensity stemming from drum parts that are slightly less conventional than your average 4-on-the-floor rock beats. Add to this a harder edge than before. It seems as though Steve and Company are trying harder than ever before to put themselves out there, by pure force. This album is louder than any of their other efforts, yet quieter and more contemplative in spots. Everything is amplified and stretched from one extreme to the other. Also Steve’s voice seems a little bit strained, but out front and open for everyone to notice. There is a new found honesty in his singing that was missing or covered up by extraneous effects on previous albums. It’s a great effort, regardless of what Pitchfork says (and I wouldn’t listen to a thing they say because they still can’t spell Steve’s last name correctly).

Left to Right: Jason Molina, Shannon Ferguson, Steve Schiltz, Morgan King
Left to Right: Jason Molina, Shannon Ferguson, Steve Schiltz, Morgan King

This show at the Mohawk Place, in Buffalo, New York was a make-up show for one that they had to cancel in December. I don’t blame them for canceling in December, as they were on their way to a show on their hometurf of New York City, which is much more important for them, or anyone, than Buffalo. It was great to see them in May though. The weather was beautiful and it happened to be on the last day of classes for me, which means that I could proudly say to Steve when I saw him that I had just earned my Masters degree (2 of them). He was so proud of this that after the show he introduced me to people that were asking for his autograph by stating, “This is Adam, I gave him his first guitar lessons and he just finished his Masters degree in Guitar Performance.” Needless to say, Steve and I have known each other for several years, and yes, he did give me some of my first guitar lessons back in 1998.

The venue is total shit. It’s a crappy biker-ish type of maybe blues bar in not-quite downtown Buffalo. Downtown Buffalo is not an exciting city. There isn’t much of a music scene. Anyone that tells you there is, quite frankly, is full of shit. All that exists in Buffalo are the usual mixture of uninspired bar-bands and hard-core/metal bands that will never amount to anything outside of Buffalo. This particular evening was quite lousy. There was hardly any crowd. The people at the bar were complaining about the noise before Longwave took the stage (there was some instrumental post-rock band that never mentioned what their name was on prior to Longwave).

When they did finally take the stage there was a total of about 50 people in the place, maybe a few more. I have been there to see Longwave on several ocassions. I remember the place being quite a bit more packed, but unfortunately they have been away from Buffalo for quite a long time. This doesn’t depress me as I know for a fact when they play Chicago and NYC they play in much larger venues to much more appreciative audiences. The set was tight. It featured mostly songs off of “Secrets are Sinister” and “The Strangest Things” with a few brand new ones tossed in there. I was able to make a few requests before they started, and they played all of them for me except for “Fall on Every Whim” because guitarist Shannon was not at the show because he was back at home with his newborn baby. Keith was filling Shannons shoes for the evening and he did an admirable job, and even gained some fans in the audience that began to chant his name at one point after Steve introduced him.

The new rhythm section is great and I truly hope that it doesn’t change anymore after this tour. The bassist has his own style and sound that works really well with the guitars and adds another layer of contrapuntal complexity to the songs that comes across very well in a live setting.

I will always enjoy seeing Longwave play. I have never seen them play a bad show and I have been seeing them as regularly as I can since about 1999 after their self-produced LunaSea records release “Endsongs” came out. It has been great to watch them grow and change and make music that I truly like regardless of whether or not I have been friends with them for several years. Longwave is the best band that you haven’t heard.

Here are my videos from this show. Please enjoy.

2009, music, philosophy, thoughts

John Cage's 4'33"

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John Cage’s 4’33” Is probably the single most talked about work of the 20th century. For those of you not “in the know” John Cage was a composer in the middle of the last century that was most interested in Eastern Philosophies, thinking about the question “what is music?” and using the Tao Te Ching as a guide to his compositions. There is much more to this multi-faceted composer (and mycologist…a combination that doesn’t exactly come up all the time.). He utilized chance as a means to composition and developed interesting ways of notating his intentions through the use of graphically representational scores.

Cage was concerned with aleatory in his music, and argued that it appeared in all music whether it was intended by the

John Cage
John Cage

composer or not. Differences in tempo, slight gaffes, changes in articulation, accidentally missing a cue, coming in too late, coming in too early, these are the obvious and very slight (arguably) changes that any piece is subject to in a live performance. Nobody is perfect right? The score, as written by a composer, must be accepted as how the piece should sound if everything goes as planned, “In a perfect world”. Honestly though, how often is that even possible? Is it possible at all? What about sounds made by the audience? Cell phones ring, people cough intermittently, programs are dropped on the floor, the conductor may smack the baton on the stand accidentally and so on. Should these things be accepted as part of the piece? Are we smart enough, as listeners to know what to separate out from the actual music?

Along with his constant curiosity about “What is music?” he wondered, perhaps more importantly, “what is silence?”. Does true silence even exist? Throughout Cage’s life he was concerned with the issue of silence. He even titled his first collection of writings and lectures Silence. His work, 4’33” stands as a testament, through arguments that still go on to this day, of the important philosophical implications of a work, and what a work of music is, among many other things.

The work is written for any instrument or combination of instruments to remain tacet for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, divided into 3 movements. What does the performer do during this time? What is the performer thinking about? What about the audience, what role are they playing? I think that this work is at once the most ridiculous piece of “music” and at the same time the most amazing and, undoubtedly, the most thought provoking. Here is a piece that didn’t really require any writing, doesn’t really require any practice, it doesn’t even require an instrument. Does this imply that any silence that we hear, anywhere, is part of Cage’s work? Did he effectively “copyright” silence? Another important thing to think about is, why was this simple piece never thought of before?

While composers were concerned with other means of manipulating notes, organizing them, disorganzing them, searching out new timbres, using electronics and other machines to create new sounds (which Cage was also an important part of, through several sound experiments with David Tudor).  Here was a man that went in completely the opposite direction that everyone else seemed to be going. Cage was almost alone in his crusade or thinking about music. He was thought of, by some, as a joke of a composer. I personally believe that Cage was the most important musician/philosopher of the 20th century. There is nobody that has created a more thought provoking collection of works than him.  4’33” is at once a piece that is extreme in its simplicity and complexity. The audience is left questioning not only the music, but themselves, and what they just “heard”. What is hearing? Are we all hearing the same things during a performance?

It is interesting that 4 and a half minutes of silence can generate so many thoughts about anything and everything. It is also interesting that so many words need to be used to describe silence, yet they never even come close to truly describing it.

2009, miscellaneous, music, personal, philosophy, thoughts

Taking action from far away

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Facebook can be just about the most annoying website/application in existence, or so it seems. Every time I log in I am inundated with a myriad of stories of the time wasted by my friends and acquaintances, which magically turns into time wasted for me as I sit for 20 or 30 minutes reading about all the stupid, pointless quizzes, tests and pokes and other mindless garbage that goes on.

Every single day I consider abandoning facebook, just like I did with Myspace. The über-connectivity of the internet gets to be a bit much sometimes, especially for someone like me that finds great enjoyment during weekends spent alone, completely alone, cut off from the world and locked in my room listening to music, reading a book or watching Alton Brown and learning about the history of pasteurization, replete with an actor playing Louis Pasteur.

Then, once in a very great while the hyper-connectivity of it all actually finds a use, and I realize that there is a point to being able to reach out to people for some cause, other than begging you to join their cause (“We want to be teh larg3st groop on teh fac3b00k!!”).

I was looking through my facebook newsfeed and saw that a friend of mine had “attended” an event “An email to help save Gates-Chili’s music” or something to that effect. Seeing as how I grew up in the Gates, NY school district (Gates and Chili are right next to each other, so they share schools), I clicked on the event and read.

The story was nothing new. School district is facing hard times (and aren’t we all these days) and looking for places to cut some money out of the budget. Of course the first thing they look to cut is music. Without going into a crude value-based judgement on what should stay and what should go in this situation I decided that I would immediately write an email, as the group requested, to the address at the top of the page. My letter, that I wrote without much thought, but simply a passionate plea from one music lover/student/active American citizen (a rare breed, indeed) appears below for you:

My name is Adam Shanley. I grew up in Gates. I attended Kindergarten through 4th grade at Neil Armstrong and I still hold fond memories of that institution as shaping me to the person that I am today.

Currently I am finishing up two Masters degrees in Music at SUNY Fredonia, one in Classical Guitar Performance, and one in Music Theory/Composition. I completed my bachelors degree in Music Composition in 2006.

After being in college, and coming into contact with so many people with an astounding array of different backgrounds I have only become stronger in my opinion that music education from an early age has benefits to all involved. I feel so incredibly strongly about this that I have made it my life goal to insist that music education be held in equally high regard with the  sciences and math. Music education and art appreciation go hand in hand, not only forming a more well-rounded person, but it also helps a student to think abstractly.

Mathematics and music have incredible amounts in common. This is so much the case that several universities offer a “Math in Music” course that studies the ratios that are so important to music, tuning systems, the imperfections that arise with each of these tuning systems and all the details that come with it. If mathematics is important for solidifying a skill for abstract thinking because math occurs in everyday life I would have to argue that the same is true for music. Music is not simply “all around us”, but the fact that math exists naturally in the world and humans have been striving to discover all of its intricacies, and music and math share so much in common, wouldn’t it be completely unwise to cutoff this avenue of exploration?

Denying a young adult access to proper music education, especially music theory, would be the equivalent of not teaching algebra in math, or not teaching the periodic table of elements in science. There are so many more reasons to continue teaching music than there are to cease and desist.

Music Technology would be just as big a mistake to get rid of altogether. Allowing students to have access to the programs and tools that are used today in the creation of music, after they have studied the science behind how music is structurally put together (through music theory, history and a general music education) it is of the utmost importance that students are able to create something from that knowledge that they have learned.

Music education should never be thought of as something like a “niche market” that is only valuable to a student that is going to grow up to be a musician. Music education will ultimately strengthen our culture, which is already failing drastically in the world as far as cultural significance goes. Music education would benefit anyone not just as a musician, but as one who appreciates music. A person that learns to appreciate music, and the arts in general will most certainly foster a love for mathematics, the English language, the sciences, art and just being a creative person. Wouldn’t it be absolutely wonderful to have an entire generation of people that are curious about the world?

Imagine a country where people didn’t simply sit down on the couch every day and watch 6 hours of television a night but instead became interested in music or math or science or anything and went out to research anything that they were curious about. Imagine a world where people were driven to life long education because of an instilled interest in the arts and music. Imagine a world where everyone got involved and stood up to make a difference and cared about something deeply and made their voices heard.

It is a fact that music education has all of these benefits and more. Cutting music theory and music technology classes, or any music classes for that matter would ultimately hurt the society that your school should be striving to help flourish.

Adam Shanley

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I was informed the next day that this very email, which was not alone – in fact there are emails written by current Eastman School of music faculty and other concerned Gates-Chili alumnus- will be read at a school board meeting in which the fate of the music program will be discussed.

Through the din of useless chatter in the ultra-connected world there is hope that a difference could possibly be made.

Better than Pitchfork.