Movies We've Just Watched discussion
LISTS, LISTS, AND MORE LISTS
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Stuff We've Just Listened To
Not "recently", per se, but I finally "got" audiobooks when I sat down and listened to Catherynne Valente's delicious Palimpsest last year.Been digging on Joe Frank's older radio dramas (the Work in Progress stuff from the late eighties-early nineties). Listened to The Dictator for about the hundredth time over the course of this week on the commute. Amazing stuff.
Most played album released in 2012 so far: Author and Punisher's Ursus Americanus. Insane. Followed closely by Alcest's Voyages de l'Ame and Wet Engines, the recent vinyl reissue/revision/extension of an older Skin Graft cassette.
Not sure if anyone here is into this sort of thing, but I just got the new Japandroids album and it rules.
Oh man, radio dramas/programs/generally every thing radio related is one of those things that I have absolutely zero knowledge about. I'm gonna have to start taking notes here.Lately I've been jamming to The 5.6.7.8's a ton (they were the guys in Kill Bill who did that Woo-hoo song). Catchy, silly, fun, and loud. And really, who needs anything more than that? So great.
Also, I gave Teatro Assente by Taku Unami and Takahiro Kawaguchi a spin yesterday. Potentially Good Morning Good Night levels of onkyo awesomeness, which is saying a lot considering I worship Good Morning Good Night like it's the second coming.
Ea wrote: "Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich."That's an old favorite, it still works, doesn't it?
Ea wrote: "Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich."classic.
here comes a mix of things that i've played in the car this week:thelonious monk - criss cross
henry purcell - fantasias for viol
warne marsh quartet - music for prancing
nurse with wound - surveillance lounge
josquin de prez - motets
marvin gaye - got to give it up
giacinto scelsi - natura renovatur
derek bailey & joelle leandre - no waiting
delia derbyshire - synchrondipity machine
Also been on a big Jesus & Mary Chain kick. Those two guys never get old, ever.
Steve wrote: "Not sure if anyone here is into this sort of thing, but I just got the new Japandroids album and it rules."is that CELEBRATION ROCK?
Phillip wrote: nurse with wound - surveillance lounge"ooh, I don't have that one yet. Which Stapleton showed up for this dance, the powerelectronics kid, the ambient electric wizard, or the dubstep guy? Or is this something totally new and different?
Phillip wrote: "Steve wrote: "Not sure if anyone here is into this sort of thing, but I just got the new Japandroids album and it rules."is that CELEBRATION ROCK?"
Exactly. Loved their first one, POST-NOTHING, but this is an improvement. Saw them live a few years ago, good show. They sold out quickly this time around in Chicago.
Phillip wrote: "Ea wrote: "Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich."classic."
I saw Steve Reich and Musicians perform it live about ten years ago. A wonderful experience. A lot of Reich's more recent work has been disappointing, he seems to have hit a bit of a dead end.
It's much too long for what it is. I think it's a rip-off. Sufjan Steven's 'Out of Egypt' is a far better substitute.
i like reich's OCTET and most of TEHIHILEM (sp?) .. parts of CLAPPING, and PHASE LOOP for solo violin, although that one drives most people crazy. the live performance of that work that i saw was really great - much more satisfying than the recordings i've heard. i haven't heard anything he's composed over the past 15 years.
Robert wrote: "Phillip wrote: nurse with wound - surveillance lounge"ooh, I don't have that one yet. Which Stapleton showed up for this dance, the powerelectronics kid, the ambient electric wizard, or the dubst..."
the ambient noise with occasional pulse and assorted bizarre guest vocals stapleton ... it's one of their better records, i think.
i picked up their "lounge" record (HUFFIN' RAG BLUES) recently, but was kind of disappointed with it. two or three tracks are fantastic - the others are ok, not as imaginative as their best work. they're still one of my favorite bands, even on their bad days. never heard anything i hated.
nurse with dubstep wound? really? which one is that? was it an actual nurse with wound record, or one of his many side projects?
I've always been more Robert Rich than Steve Reich, but I did like Different Trains.
Steve wrote: " (PG) is that CELEBRATION ROCK?"Exactly. Loved their first one..."
i like the direction of their music (the guitar work in particular), but i'm not crazy about the singer's voice ...
Phillip wrote: "i picked up their "lounge" record (HUFFIN' RAG BLUES) recently, but was kind of disappointed with it. two or three tracks are fantastic - the others are ok, not as imaginative as their best work"Yeah, that about sums it up for me--I'm crazy, no pun intended, about "Juice Head Crazy Lady" and "Black Teeth" and can take or leave most of the rest of it.
I tend to use "dubstep" these days as a catch-all term for all that four-on-the-floor ultra-repetitive stuff that grew out of house/techno... when I wrote that I was thinking about the early-mid nineties stuff (Rock and Roll Station/Second Pirate Session and that sort of thing), all the material that was really influenced by his collabs with Stereolab around that time.
It's seemed to me that for the last decade-ish he's been saving all his best work for Beta-Lactam Ring records. Space Music, the Angry Electric Finger collabs, the new RnRS reworking, She and Me Fall Together in Free Death, etc.....
I like Reich's DESERT MUSIC very much, and assorted other pieces like THE FOUR SECTIONS and VARIATIONS FOR WIND AND STRING INSTRUMENTS I think it is called, and SIX PIANOS is always good for a listen. But he kept, shall we say, repeating himself -- the same damn pieces over and over. They finally tossed him a Pulitzer Prize for that DOUBLE SEXTET thing that I refuse to believe took him more than ten minutes to toss off.
Robert wrote: "Phillip wrote: "i picked up their "lounge" record (HUFFIN' RAG BLUES) recently, but was kind of disappointed with it. two or three tracks are fantastic - the others are ok, not as imaginative as th..."JUICE HEAD CRAZY LADY (!!!!!!) ... yes, i said yes.
ah, i hear what you're saying. ROCK N' ROLL STATION was one of the NWW records i sold back to amoeba. it was ok for one or two listenings but then i was over it.
Tom wrote: "I like Reich's DESERT MUSIC very much, and assorted other pieces like THE FOUR SECTIONS and VARIATIONS FOR WIND AND STRING INSTRUMENTS I think it is called, and SIX PIANOS is always good for a list..."totally forgot about DESERT MUSIC - yeah, i like that one as well. don't know the other works you mentioned. i'll look for SIX PIANOS, that sounds like something i'd want to hear ... i'm interested in how composers bring out subtle timbral differences in works that present multiple players on the same instrument.
what version of CARMEN are you listening to? (there are so many)
So I'm finally listening to some Les Rallizes Dénudés after avoiding them for a solid three years. Why do I always avoid awesome things? Night of the Assassins is goddang unstoppable. And Heaver Than a Death in the Family is the best album title ever. Just have to throw that out there.
I looked them up and saw "Mizutani" and got all excited... until I realized it wasn't Kiyoshi...
Baxter wrote: "So I'm finally listening to some Les Rallizes Dénudés after avoiding them for a solid three years. Why do I always avoid awesome things? Night of the Assassins is goddang unstoppable. And Heaver T..."
don't even know them ... i'll look into this.
MOONRISE KINGDOM (the new wes anderson film) is brimming with great music - lots of benjamin britten in particular - and if you see it, stay until the end of the credits, because they do something really nice with closing soundtrack.speaking of benjamin britten, does anyone out there love his cello suites half as much as i do??? op 72 is pure magic, methinks.
nice ... you can count on mr abbado to take care of business.
Phillip wrote: "speaking of benjamin britten, does anyone out there love his cello suites half as much as i do??? op 72 is pure magic, methinks. "I've just started listening to him (he shows up on both my Arvo Part and Vaughn Williams stations on Pandora), and I'm digging it...
cool ... see if you can find those cello suites ... man, that's some great writing. i also like his serenade for tenor, horn and strings ... outstanding.
Anybody know of this Glenn Branca person? I heard a section of his Symphony #3 on Pandora and liked it a lot.
Tom wrote: "Anybody know of this Glenn Branca person? I heard a section of his Symphony #3 on Pandora and liked it a lot."One of the original No Wave artists (though no one seems to remember any No Wavers except Swans, Suicide, and the bands who made it onto No New York these days)--he founded Theoretical Girls in... '76? Then had something to do with Sonic Youth, but my memory of that is pretty spotty (and I was never a Sonic Youth fan in the first place).
Since then, he's been doing the microtonal thing.
yeah, he's an interesting guy - apparently a real curmudgeon ... i know his symphony for 100 electric guitars ... some of my friends are on one of the well known recordings of it. i seem to remember it was performed fairly recently in new york. i need to hear more of his stuff. i only know the big guitar piece and one other small work for keyboards. unfortunately, he's one of those guys who you hear more about his person than his music.
Tom wrote: "Anybody listen to anything cool lately? Music, audiobooks, whatever?I recently got my hands on some of the Beatles recordings in the original mono and enjoyed listening to them on a brief road t..."
thanks for starting this thread, by the way.
speaking of the beatles, have any of you heard the edition that is called LET IT BE ... NAKED?
it's the same songs, but paul hicks, guy massey, and allan rouse went back and stripped all the strings and excess orchestration from the original george martin mix, so what you hear is just the fab four singing and playing the songs as if they were back in liverpool in the early stages of the band - billy preston's keyboard work is kept in the mix (damn right!) ... but for the most part, it's just raw, four-piece rock n' roll.
i REALLY like this version of their last recording date. i'm going to put it on right now in fact.
went out to hear john adams' NIXON IN CHINA tonight at san francisco opera and enjoyed it a lot. the production featured a good solid cast and the band played great all night; the sets were a bit pedestrian, not the dazzling original sets from the new york met premiere back in the late 80's. this version had a variety of screens and video projection. the big jet that stood on stage in the original production was a projection on a screen ...highlights: that big let's dance number at the end of act one was a blast - pat nixon's solo, the ballet sequence (complete with henry kissinger's big s&m moment), and madame mao's solo from act two - the chairman dances routine and the dreamy atmosphere of act three, with some nice set design stuff that helped to underline the sense that the key players (the nixons, kissinger, mao, his wife and chou en-lai) are all overshadowed and dwarfed by their now-iconic images ... nice.
while all of the the key players were in top form tonight, i gotta say i think hye jung lee stole the show with her big solo as madame mao tse-tung at the end of act two - she was really on fire ... especially nice that it was her sf opera debut.
Phillip -- very cool. NIXON is probably the only opera I know almost by heart. I saw the original production at BAM and the recent revival at the Met (via digital projection at a local theater, but still). I'd love to see a production that isn't bound by Peter Sellars' staging. Can you say more about that "big let's dance number at the end of act one"? And I'm dying to know about Kissinger's S&M moment...
at the end of act 1, the group gets excited about things to come on the journey/tour of china ... and there is this big dance number where (last night, at least) nixon, his wife and others were on tables doing the twist as the curtain came down on act 1 - i've only listened to the opera on recordings, and saw "highlights" conducted by adams around 1990 in LA at the green umbrella, so i was in the dark as to how things were staged. the end of act 1 was a real blast.during the ballet, in act 2, kissinger finds he can't control himself and longs to whip the young woman dancing in red - so he does - and urges five other young male dancers to whip her to death - pat nixon gets infuriated and protests, but the beat goes on. kissinger drags her to the floor at one points and mimics raping her ... it was pretty nasty. pat nixon continues to protest wildly, and tricky dick reassures her "it's only an act" ... but the girl doesn't get up at the end of the scene. later, at the close of act 2, she joins a large pile of dead bodies that madame mao mounts as she sings the close of her big finale in act 2.
again, i had never seen it staged before. my friend that i went with saw the premiere in nyc years ago and said she didn't remember that part (or a few other moments), but she said her memory was foggy and it just might be that she forgot ...
was this not included in the version that you saw?
there were things i liked about the staging - really spare, for the most part. there were times when there were screen "fragments" hanging in the space that you could confuse with picture frames that flashed with changing images - it was effective, and only used at the end of act 2, when things were spiraling into chaos ... but overall, i felt the staging lacked continuity - some scenes were sparse and set in bold colors that were beautiful and heightened the text, but other times there were lasers and screens and it just seemed like it was trying too hard to look modern, which didn't feel particularly congruent with the story or the general tone of the art direction.
Yeah, sounds like some serious departures from the Sellars production! In the original production, the first act ends with everyone toasting each other, there's no dancing at all, a very static image. The flogging (WHIP HER TO DEATH!) is in the libretto and always gets a laugh, as does Pat's response "whip her to death he said, I'd like to give his goddamn whip a crack!" That whole scene was very badly done in the Sellars production, I just never felt he made it work as well as he might, and I love the image of Madam Mao singing her big aria from atop a pile of dead bodies. I have a video of the original production, and the recent revival at the Met with the assorted changes Sellars has made over the years, some for the better, some most decidedly NOT. Thanks for the words!
I've been listening to a lot of Snakadaktal lately, an Australian band who've only been around for 8 or 9 months, but have released an amazing EP and are touring soon. Will be seeing them in August :) Their latest single, Dance Bear, has been on repeat since its release last week.
Im also very much into The Jezabels-saw them live two or three weeks ago, and where stunning.
Julia Stone's new solo album 'By The Horns' has also been on repeat for a while. I adore her cover of Bloodbuzz Ohio.
Tom wrote: "Yeah, sounds like some serious departures from the Sellars production! In the original production, the first act ends with everyone toasting each other, there's no dancing at all, a very static im..."if anything, the whipping scene may have gone on a little too long - although it was interspersed with some gorgeous ballet dancing - she dances, gets whipped, gets up, dances some more, gets whipped some more ... etc. one whipping sequence (not 3 or 4) would have driven the point home adequately, imo. it was strange that the fellow that played kissinger didn't get much response from the audience at the end of the night ... i thought he sang really well.
the madame mao singing atop a mound of dead bodies was one of those things that felt both terrifying and somehow giddy ... the best kind of art, methinks.
★ Jess wrote: "I've been listening to a lot of Snakadaktal lately, an Australian band who've only been around for 8 or 9 months, but have released an amazing EP and are touring soon. Will be seeing them in August..."Yes, the Jezabels--so good! I'm also listening to Of Monsters and Men, The Great Lake Swimmers, Sigur Ros, The Civil Wars, and just bought Leonard Cohen's latest cd.
Just listened to a Snakadaktal song and really liked it--thanks for mentioning them.
Mainly listening to the following;Phosphorescent, Here's to taking it Easy - Kinda like what i would imagine what the Eagles would sound like if they were the new band on the bloc.
Micha P Hinson and the Gospel of Progress - An oldie but a goodie. Took me ages to get a copy of this at a decent price.
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - 'Hawk'. The next instalment of there collaboration mixing angel and gravel voices in a folk/country fusion that is like nothing else available.
I'm loving the new Bon Iver album as much as his previous releases.
And the more I listen to it the more i love 'Helplessness Blues' from the Fleet Foxes. I didn't immediately love it like i did their earlier stuff but it's growing on me in a big way.
And lastly, two new discoveries. Josh T. Pearson 'Last of the Country Gentleman. and 'Unmap' from Volcano Choir. Simply sublime...
i have a performance tonight with orchestra nostalgico, a group that plays film score music - so i've been listening to lots of the material this week - scores by nino rota for 8 1/2, AMARCORD, JULIET OF THE SPIRITS (we are premiering a new arrangement i just wrote for the opening title sequence), LA DOLCE VITA, etc. over the past few years we have started to take on more composers - tonight will also feature my arrangement of bernard hermann's PSYCHO theme, a new arrangement i wrote of charlie chaplin's MODERN TIMES, and sheldon brown's arrangement of the theme from CAPE FEAR and VERTIGO. tom yoder has also penned a nice arrangement of a suite of themes from leone's spaghetti westerns - so nice.
do any of you, who are into this stuff, have favorite recordings of rota's fellini scores? i'm always looking for more recordings of this stuff - some is very good and faithful to the originals but more than a few are kind of schmaltzy arrangements with too many strings, etc.
I went to see Roger Waters stadium tour of THE WALL, and had a great time. A gigantic stage show, involving the building of a wall between the band and the audience, with lots of remarkable digital projections on the wall, and fireworks and big inflatable pigs and a really astonishingly good band bringing it all to life.Yeehaw.
Well, pig, rather than pigs. But inflatable nonetheless.And big. Big inflatable pig.
i saw the ANIMALS tour back in the 70's and they also had enormous pig floating in space. i'm sure i didn't hallucinate it.i mean, i think i didn't hallucinate it.
I recently got my hands on some of the Beatles recordings in the original mono and enjoyed listening to them on a brief road trip. I was surprised to realize that I could spot some very specific differences, always very minor of course, between the mono and stereo mixes. Much fun.
And today, since I forgot to bring my book with me on the subway, I listened to one of the old GOON SHOWS on my ipod. THE GOON SHOW is/was a British radio program starring Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Peter Sellers that became something of an institution in the 1950s. The show features a pretty standard set of characters put into assorted bizarre plots and situations each episode, and there's a lot of mad wordplay and the best kind of mucking with the conventions of storytelling. Great mad fun. I've had to stop listening to it at the gym -- one really shouldn't burst out laughing while bench-pressing.