From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V2 #267 Reply-To: zorn-list Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Zorn List Digest Sunday, March 22 1998 Volume 02 : Number 267 In this issue: - Re: Kaiser Re: Evan Lurie / Circle Make Re: Kaiser Steve Beresford Masada Re: creative music for newbies Re: Steve Beresford musique concrete juke/19 Re: john zorn/jean derome Yikes! Re: Yikes! Company 91 Braxton House Re: juke/19 Re: musique concrete ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 00:26:17 -0700 From: john shiurba Subject: Re: Kaiser > I know that some of you out there have the (Y)earbooks. Can someone explain > to me what Henry Kaiser is doing on the first track to get those weird and > wonderful sounds? > he appears to be using a pitch transposer (with jumps of a 5th, and octave) with a momentary on/off switch. then near the end of the piece, it seems he's using a long delay so that you hear what he's just played, but transposed. this explanation seems consistent with what i've seen him do in live situations. if you like this piece, you should check out "it's a wonderful life" - -- shiurba@sfo.com http://www.sfo.com/~shiurba - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 16:20:56 -0500 From: Tom Pratt Subject: Re: Evan Lurie / Circle Make > ps : when is that "Circle Maker" due out. Saw it in Montreal recently and > didn't bother as I knew it was going to be available widely... Well I bought mine today (as well as the Toy's Factory LENG TCH'E which I found used for $8) and it's great as expected! -Tom Pratt - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 16:25:30 -0500 From: Tom Pratt Subject: Re: Kaiser john shiurba wrote: > > > I know that some of you out there have the (Y)earbooks. Can someone explain > > to me what Henry Kaiser is doing on the first track to get those weird and > > wonderful sounds? > > > he appears to be using a pitch transposer (with jumps of a 5th, and octave) with a > momentary on/off switch. then near the end of the piece, it seems he's using a long > delay so that you hear what he's just played, but transposed. this explanation seems > consistent with what i've seen him do in live situations. if you like this piece, you > should check out "it's a wonderful life" Kaiser has an instructional video called 'Eclectic Electric' in which he dedicates a large portion demonstraing a lot of the various effects/techniques he uses. It's not really an "instructional" video per se but is more of an "inspirational" video. It has some great Kaiser performances on it as well. -Tom Pratt - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 17:10:39 -0500 (EST) From: ia zha nah er vesen Subject: Steve Beresford I just noticed that an album by this guy, 'Signals for Tea', has Masada as a backing band. What's it like? For that matter: what is Steve Beresford's music like, in general? I've never heard it. - -jascha - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 17:11:46 -0500 (EST) From: ia zha nah er vesen Subject: Masada Does Circle Maker include the band's version of 'kol nidre'(sp)? - -jascha - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 17:31:47 -0500 (EST) From: ia zha nah er vesen Subject: Re: creative music for newbies Have you ever heard Skinny Puppy? They could bridge the gap between conventional loud, angry, (quite possibly stupid?) music to the far more interesting lands of electronic/electroacoustic experimentalism. They did for me, at any rate, back in early high-school, when the album 'Too Dark Park' convinced me that heavy metal was a lost cause. - -jascha , who still listens to Skinny Puppy, and has long since sold off his heavy metal tapes. - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 11:43:57 +1100 From: "Julian" Subject: Re: Steve Beresford > I just noticed that an album by this guy, 'Signals for Tea', has Masada as > a backing band. What's it like? I don't really like it. The instrumental tracks (I think there are three, from memory) are the best, but really it's pretty much straight jazz, no hint of the rich jams that Masada has. I've got it hidden away somewhere and haven't listened to it since the end of last year when I got it, so maybe I should give it a second chance. - - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 23:00:41 -0500 From: cdeupree@interagp.com (Caleb Deupree) Subject: musique concrete All the discussion this week about Oswald, Mimaroglu, Parmegiani, et al., has kept me thinking. I consider myself a big fan of this type of music, yet the number of individual items in my collection as compared to everything else is relatively small. I do have Mimaroglu's Wings of the Delerious Demon on vinyl, as well as Parmegiani's Creation du Monde on CD, but I ended up thinking more about the some other issues relating to this music. One problem is that it's nearly impossible to find. Anomalous Records has the best supply I've seen lately, but I'd love to be able to walk into a store and impulse buy some musique concrete. The best Towers only have a few tired selections, and even the classics are out of print. This means my collection is more sporadic and less focused, as my music purchasing resources get drained off into one of the many other areas of interest. And even though I have a couple dozen musique concrete CDs, they are either compilations or singletons (meaning I have only one album by the composer). When I mail order new ones, I tend to order pieces by new composers rather than more CDs by artists I already have. Does anyone out there have more than one or two Francois Bayle CDs, for example (INA-GRM is releasing his complete works, now up to volume 10, but I've only got one)? As a result, I have little idea whether composers have stylistic characteristics that are evident from one work to the next. One of the pleasures of listening to John Zorn's output over the last 20 years is the evolution of his music, from the early game pieces to the recent minimalist works to the film music, and yet much of his music is instantly recognizable as being his (more true for his sax work than the minimal compositions, but you get my drift). I'm not sure I can say this for musique concrete. Even with a composer with whom I'm relatively familiar at different periods, Stockhausen, I wouldn't necessarily know that Kontakte, Hymnen, and Telemusik were all by him, nor can I discern stylistic traits running through them (although I can through his work as a whole). All you who have the complete Bayle set, are there recognizable traits and discernable growth running through all the works, especially when compared to other concretists? Maybe I'm a minority of one, and many of you have collections of musique concrete to parallel the complete Masadas. What would you consider essential musique concrete? What recent purchases are interesting (or not) and why? For essentials, I'd have to put Stockhausen's Telemusik at the top of the list, one of my all time favorite pieces. I wish it were on CD at an affordable price. The combination of wispy radio noises and smatterings of music from different cultures (and long before samples too), combined with a fairly clear structure delimited by Japanese wood blocks, has always moved me. My favorite Xenakis piece is La legende d'Eer (Montaigne), a stunning, dense cloud of sound which builds from very tiny noises to a huge roar and then back to the tiny sounds. I've heard good things about the recent EMF compilation of his earlier works, but I've only heard the Nonesuch vinyl release, which is too scratched up to enjoy. The Canadian label Empreintes Digitales and their relatives has some very impressive pieces. I am in awe of Paul Dolden's Threshold of Deafening Silence, another huge cloud of sound, but it's almost too intense to listen to very often. I play Robert Normandeau's Tangram album much more often. He combines found sounds with the electronics, including such elements as children's voices, to great effect. However, I continue to be disappointed by the highly regarded disk by Hildegard Westerkamp, which includes a poetry reading and a sonic documentary, complete with narration, which IMHO just gets in the way of the music. My most recent concrete purchase is Francois Dhomont's Frankenstein Symphony (Asphodel), a cacophonous trawl through other recent concrete works the way Oswald's plunderphonics treats pop music. Mind you, I don't get the references in Frankenstein the way I do with Plexure, but it's an enjoyable ride nonetheless. - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 09:43:36 -0000 From: ScottRussell Subject: juke/19 - --MimeMultipartBoundary Content-Type: text/plain OK here's a poser for all fans of Japanese mayhem. Yesterday I picked up a 5 cd box by a band called Juke/19 on the Time Bomb label. It's a retrospective of their work from the late 70's and early 80's. I know nothing about them at all. They sound kind of like Musica Transonic if they had been influenced by Ubu, Beefheart and UK punk rather than Blue Cheer and Hendrix! There are copious notes but they are all in Japanese. I have noticed the odd reference to the Boredoms and Yamatsuka. The music is quite intriguing in a lo-fi way. Very experimental, sometimes short songs, some lengthy soundscapes and a mixture of punk/thrash and krautrock-like ensemble styles. Anybody know anything else? I'd love to know more. Scott Russell - --MimeMultipartBoundary-- - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 10:57:15 -0500 From: philz Subject: Re: john zorn/jean derome uncle meat writes: > i don't know if any of you are familiar with Jean Derome, but here >in Quebec he's sort of at the forefront of the avant-guard music scene >(here we call it musique actuelle). You could say that Jean Derome and >John Zorn have some points in common : they both are avant-guard >composers and improvisers, they play sax and they're both great at what >they do. I just bought Derome's latest "3 Musique pour UBU" (3 musics >for UBU). Now, when i got to the 11th track "lueurs" on the first cd , >i was astonished that the last minute and a half of this piece sounds >pretty much like Zorn's Redbird. I don't know if any of you had the >chance to hear both tracks, but if so i'd like to know what you think of >this. > > By the way, Jean Derome composed this piece in 1990, and Redbird was >released in 1995, but maybe it was composed earlier. > > There's no such thing as a bad coincidence!(lost highway) As another Derome fan I can't recommend his music enough. The aforementioned Ubu piece is amazing, a show I wish I had been fortunate enough to see, though the music on the Ubu cd speaks for itself. Derome is an extremely well rounded musician/composer and his playing and sense of dynamics amazes me. As well as his excellent sense of humour, which appears to be pretty twisted- check the Derome/Lussier records. He works with a lot of tonality and mood settings, borrowing liberally from all sorts of musical genres and putting them together in very unique ways. Derome and his wife Joanne Hetu (Wondeur Brass/Justine/solo) are the core of Ambience Magnetique, a label from Canada that I've been following for the last couple of years. They also carry releases from Rene Lussier, Diane Labrosse, and Robert Lepage, amongst a large catalog of others. A good starting point is probably the Derome/Lussier collaboration records, though I have yet to hear any Derome solo record that I don't like (and, incidentally, the Lussier solo records are pretty much uniformly interesting and excellent). BTW, I find these releases difficult to find in the US, but all of the Ambience Magnetique releases are available from Verge records http://www.ptbo.igs.net/~verge/index.htm with a nice discount from a favourable US exchange rate. philz - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 08:21:29 PST From: "Silent Watcher" Subject: Yikes! Hey all, I found this at Koch's website. Hope it's of interest to some of you... YIKES is a new label formed by Peter Wetherbee, former A&R / Label Manager of Axiom/Island Records, and former GM of the Miami-based Coconut Grove label. During his four-year stint at Axiom, Wetherbee oversaw the creative execution and marketing of some 50 albums with Bill Laswell, with an additional 22 Axiom releases through Polygram Label Group Distribution. Between tenures at Axiom and CGRC, Wetherbee also set up the initial releases and helped found the Tzadik label with John Zorn, distributed by KOCH International. YIKES Records debuts with two World Music projects: Tribu Kemistri, an asian fusion of ethnic music with pop and rock songs, led by Mike Hanopol, one of SE Asia¹s greatest rock guitar legends since the early 1970¹s. The second project is by one of the world¹s great master drummers from Ghana, Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng. The debut recording is called Awakening. This recording is a percussion-only album of deep trance, dance, funk and healing music on which Kwaku performs an assortment of ancient and modern drums, bells, rattles, and even a trap kit. These two releases are slated for February 20th, 1998. Other mainstream pop and ambient projects will be released in March of 1998 and will include artists such as Steve Rossiter, and Cypher 7 (Alex Haas and Jeff Bova). Alex and Jeff have both been awarded Grammys and Platinum albums for past work in the industry. Bova received a Record Of The Year Grammy for producing Celine Dion; Haas engineered and mixed Eric Clapton¹s Tears In Heaven. Later on in the year we will see releases from Bill Laswell¹s Praxis; the band Tift, a silky folk and soul group; and the Tetrakyts, who will be laying down some organic ambient funk. Compass Records was founded in 1995 by banjoist Alison Brown and bassist / producer Garry West. Over the past three years Compass has built an impressive catalog of twenty two titles and, unlike many artist-run labels, its founders continue to be involved in the day-to-day operations of the label while maintaining active performing careers. Brown and West launched the Compass label with the premiere recording ³Songs from the Levee,² a debut recording by Southern singer / songwriter Kate Campbell. That album quickly established the fledgling Compass as a label to watch. In 1996, Compass scored an indie hit with ³A Show of Hands,² the debut solo recording by Victor Wooten, (bassist for Bela Fleck and the Flecktones), and received two nominations from the National Association of Independent Record Distributors (NAIRD). Releases from folk poet Pierce Pettis, bluegrasser Judith Edelman and Brit rocker Clive Gregson rounded out the label¹s already eclectic catalog. In their third year Compass Records was voted Best Independent Label of the Year by the readers of The Nashville Scene. New Releases in 1997 included a second release titled ³Moonpie Dreams² from Kate Campbell, ³In the Country of Country,² a collection of great country songs by various artists which is the companion CD to the book of the same title published by Pantheon Press, and finally ³What Did He Say?,² by Victor Wooten, the critically acclaimed bassist. The first releases through KOCH will be the Compass debut of label co-founder Alison Brown and contemporary bluegrass instrumentalist Matt Flinner. As of January 1st, 1998, Compass Records will be distributed by KOCH International. Both DIW Records and YIKES will commence distribution in February of 1998. SW For Sale/Want List and Laswell Discography at http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Underground/7093 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 08:46:28 -0800 From: Jeff Spirer Subject: Re: Yikes! At 08:21 AM 3/22/98 PST, Silent Watcher wrote: >YIKES Records debuts with two World Music projects: Tribu Kemistri, an=20 >asian fusion of ethnic music with pop Interesting description. It's Filipino music. Maybe Koch decided that "Asian" was a more catchy word. >second project is by one of the world=B9s great master drummers from=20 >Ghana, Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng. The debut >recording is called Awakening.=20 Both of these are great recordings, although the first may be a little bit too poppy for many of the people on this list. The Obeng is somewhat minimalist, and probably has more appeal (at least here.) Pete is an excellent producer, and they are extremely well-recorded. Jeff Spirer B&W Photos: http://www.pomegranates.com Color and B&W Photos: http://www.hyperreal.org/~jeffs/gallery.html Axiom/Material: http://www.hyperreal.org/axiom/ - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 12:11:01 -0500 (EST) From: Jason Caulfield Bivins Subject: Company 91 Impressions on this one are varied, but I'd say that volume 1 is generally worth the investment. There are fine contributions from Bailey, Zorn, and especially from Vanessa Mackness. Buckethead plays with staggering technique, as usual, but this isn't always so effective musically. Still an interesting document of "worlds colliding", as it were. Jason Bivins - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 12:14:22 -0500 (EST) From: Jason Caulfield Bivins Subject: Braxton House Hi, I don't remember who asked about Braxton House, but I feel compelled to issue something of a warning. I had to review a pile of these for Cadence last month and I was sorely underwhelmed. As a huge AB fan, I think these are less than essential documents. True, they're continuous with portions of his earlier work and they contain some fine individual playing from Kevin Norton and Roland Dahinden; but I find them musically flat -- unwavering tempi, unsatisfying group interaction, little of compositional interest. Go for the Hat Huts, the Leos, the creative orchestra stuff first. Jason Bivins - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 11:25:52 -0600 (CST) From: Brian & Sharon Beuchaw Subject: Re: juke/19 On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, ScottRussell wrote: > Anybody know anything else? I'd love to know more. > > Scott Russell www.forcedexposure.com has a little description of their stuff. Hope this helps.... cya brian - -------------------------------------------------------- "The most dementing of all modern sins: the inability to distinguish excellence from success." - David Hare - - ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 17:13:47 -0500 (EST) From: ia zha nah er vesen Subject: Re: musique concrete > Maybe I'm a minority of one, and many of you have collections of musique > concrete to parallel the complete Masadas. What would you consider > essential musique concrete? What recent purchases are interesting (or not) > and why? The guy whose alias is DJ Spooky (i don't know his real name) has edited a few complilations of electroacoustic music, the most recent being a 3CD set called 'a swarm of drones'. The previous two are a 2 CD and single CD release, entitled 'a storm of drones' and 'a throne of drones' or some such thing. They're on a label called 'sombient', which is DJ spooky's label, i think. Things brings up the question of whether to make a distinction between prjects like the above, or "bands" such as Zoviet France,the Hafler Trio, Nurse With Wound, and the more 'accademic' electroacoustic composers such as Stockhausen. Some albums by NWW (not all) are very much in this vein, anything the Hafler Trio does certainly is, and Zoviet France could be seen as being the electroacoustic equivalent of punk rock, etc... In the case of all of these "bands", there is a very clear musical progression, as well as very distinctive styles. (The albums are also easier to find, since they're distrubuted more like rock albums than 'new music' albums, which is another whole topic by itself...). As well, some of what gets called 'ambient' these days has a very strong influence from the musicque concrete tradition. Any thoughts on this? - -jascha - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V2 #267 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "zorn-list-digest" in the commands above with "zorn-list". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from ftp.xmission.com, in pub/lists/zorn-list/archive. These are organized by date.