GP's no. 1; thanks! I've gotten most number ones off lists posted by people here this year, pretty much without thought, and so far I've enjoyed them all.
Tom Recchion - Sweetly Doing Nothing - "With a 30 year practice in sonic explorations including, record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments - Tom Recchion is one of the worlds most established and finest experimental artist and musician. Based in Los Angeles, Tom Recchion has co-founded the legendary music entity LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society), collaborated with David Toop, Christian Marclay, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, Max Eastley, ROVA, John Duncan, Smegma (just to name a few). Tom Recchion plays in Extended Organ with Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Mike Kelley and occasionally writes for the British music magazine THE WIRE.
Sweetly Doing Nothing is Toms first solo release after the critically acclaimed I Love My Organ (Birdman, 2004) and will further serve to enhance the artists cult status with an unmistakably unique mixture of underwater exotica-tinged minimalism, futuristic jazz, subtlety constructed dronescapes and a vivid orchestral pop sensibility. . . . ." - More @ Schoolmap Records
"Why Tangram? Why this title? I shall let the author explain. I myself find nothing angular nothing even remotely geometrical in this eponymous piece which relies not on the combination of forms, or of figures (everyone knows the Chinese puzzle), but rather on fusion, on a quasi-mystic surcharge of materialism: rich rugged sonorities like a switch of horse hair; from this the sound is curried so that we might delight in its lustrous sheen, immersing us in its panic plenitude (dionysian, first and foremost), its mysterious bubblings and brewings
(The incredibly dense material, at times ripped by the roar of a train on the track, by trumpeting or spurts, white rocketing noises: this dynamic is essential, these true stories are necessary to pierce these hypnoses of matter, at times magnified, abstract because of their very concreteness.)
Another principle which structures, coalesces the work: an assuring mechanical roundness encircles this (metaphysical) disorder, like a non-stop antidote, counteracting the natural entropy with a repetitious serenity (which takes on a particular flavor in Normandeaus work): the elemental is revised, tamed by the rumble of the clockwork of the loops and by studio manipulations. So well that this music of Elements (frog croaks, night birds, a storm) is at the same time the music of rotating machines and of motors; the sounds of nature, rolled into a ball, are squeezed together with industrial force: the two poetics are mixed, indissoluble, in the dances.
Each in their own way, the other pieces on the disc reflect this personal manner, (and in the variations appears the pertinence of the generic title Tangram): In Tropes the art of transition-escape is polished to perfection we are cramped, crushed under the strata, the excrescence when just the moment before we found ourselves in a limpidity so complete (as to recall Mozart ). Bédé, more astringent (despite several vertiginous distortions of convex mirrors calling to mind Alice ) ushers in Éclats de voix, the most elaborate piece, the most nimble, the richest because, despite the prevalence of fusion, it unites the two principles (specious plasticity thousands of pieces ground and glued), it is interrupted by a fantastic machinery, the widest variety in its semantics, and the rare rough spots so charming living, vocal bones of childhood "
"Composed for seven bassoons, Rushes takes its place alongside Michael Gordons Timber for expanding the boundaries of a single instruments repertoire into unknown (and at times, otherworldly) spaces. Like Timber, which maps new percussive territory for the simantraa simple two-by-four slab of wood, amplified and played in a group of six to yield trance-like sonic texturesRushes brings out tonal and timbral aspects of the bassoon that are meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer." Cantaloupe
Comments
GP's no. 1; thanks! I've gotten most number ones off lists posted by people here this year, pretty much without thought, and so far I've enjoyed them all.
Loving this!
Craig
Also fantastic.
Has anyone ever mentioned that the folks on this board have great music taste?
Craig
More fantastic stuff:
I just bought jonahpwll's #1 and am liking it.
NP:
($2.94 at emusic)
Hmmmmm....yes, this is also excellent!
Craig
Free at interned archive.
Tom Recchion - Sweetly Doing Nothing
- "With a 30 year practice in sonic explorations including, record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments - Tom Recchion is one of the worlds most established and finest experimental artist and musician. Based in Los Angeles, Tom Recchion has co-founded the legendary music entity LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society), collaborated with David Toop, Christian Marclay, Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, Max Eastley, ROVA, John Duncan, Smegma (just to name a few). Tom Recchion plays in Extended Organ with Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts, Fredrik Nilsen and Mike Kelley and occasionally writes for the British music magazine THE WIRE.
Sweetly Doing Nothing is Toms first solo release after the critically acclaimed I Love My Organ (Birdman, 2004) and will further serve to enhance the artists cult status with an unmistakably unique mixture of underwater exotica-tinged minimalism, futuristic jazz, subtlety constructed dronescapes and a vivid orchestral pop sensibility. . . . ."
- More @ Schoolmap Records
Thanks, Nereffid
Watter - This World
Post rock that verges on ambient. I think this would be pretty popular around here.
Craig
Ian William Craig - A Turn of Breath
Craig
Craig
As recommended by jonahpwll.
Rushes Ensemble: Dana Jessen, Saxton Rose, Rachael Elliott, Jeffrey Lyman, Lynn Hileman, Maya Stone, Michael Harley
"Composed for seven bassoons, Rushes takes its place alongside Michael Gordons Timber for expanding the boundaries of a single instruments repertoire into unknown (and at times, otherworldly) spaces. Like Timber, which maps new percussive territory for the simantraa simple two-by-four slab of wood, amplified and played in a group of six to yield trance-like sonic texturesRushes brings out tonal and timbral aspects of the bassoon that are meant to induce a quasi-meditative, almost ecstatic state, in the listener as well as the performer."
Cantaloupe
Not sure who rec'ed this, but thank you! Excellent version of one of my favorite pieces.
Boyz II Men - II
A Christmas gift. This is pretty great.
Just learned this is (or was) one of amclark2's favorite albums, from the resurrected jazz thread.