Given that Fridays are now dedicated only to photo books, I think I’ll stop posting music clips (or maybe just show something here and there). This one I really want to share, though, because of the amazing piano solo in the middle.
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Everybody knows the first (and final) part of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, but what about the rest? Well, here we go. This is Jean-Pierre Ponnelle 1975 film version, which, depending on your point of view, is either überkitsch, total trash, or art house (or maybe all at the same time). If you want to hear what this piece was supposed to sound like you can find a great recording here (overseen by the composer himself, and very percussion heavy).
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I was looking for something entirely different, but then I came across this…
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I know nothing about this music… (Updated below)
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I came across this combination of a music and video mixing session by chance - unless you’re interested in electronic music and/or in video art, you probably want to skip the rest of this post.
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The Monks live on German TV, back in 1965. One more:
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Pre-1995, Stereolab were just amazing. After that… Not so much any longer…
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The very first record I ever bought was actually a tape (!), and my dad had to take me to the record store, since I was only 11 and somewhat clueless about how that all worked (my dad didn’t know, either, which didn’t help). At the record store, they told me they couldn’t find what I was looking for (an album by Tubeway Army that had “Are Friends Electric?” on it), but they noted that Gary Numan was pretty much the same thing. So they ordered (!) Gary Numan’s “The Pleasure Principle” for me, and about two weeks later (did I mention I grew up in the middle of nowhere?) the tape arrived. When I heard “Metal” I thought it was about the coolest thing I had ever heard (which, of course, doesn’t mean all that much when you’re only 11). I should note that Gary Numan’s amount of personal awkwardness evident from that promo video pretty much matched mine at age 11.
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I’m seriously tired after this week’s series of posts, so for today it’ll only be underground/avantgarde hip hop act Dälek. One more:
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A bit of comedy, courtesy of Reeves & Mortimer. My favourite bit is their interpretation of somebody else’s song, using slightly unusual musical instruments. Another one:
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Maybe the right stuff, after the VP debate - this only works if you play it really loud. Mogwai. And a classic:
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Henryk Gorecki: Symphony No. 3, 2nd movement (“Lento e Largo”)
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My favourite Talking Heads song (and I love the… well… “dance” moves). Another real classic, an early version (I usually like their earlier, sparser stuff better):
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I have been sick for a few days now, so it’s time for something light and groovy.
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Is it Friday again already? - I can’t help it, it’s time for a bit of German electronica here. This one’s To Rococo Rot (I love the visuals).
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It’s a holiday weekend in the US, so here’s one of the most well-known classical music pieces, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1966. Karajan was able to interpret Beethoven like maybe no other conductor, and it’s well worth watching this for the camera work as well as for Karajan’s conducting (oh, and of course it sounds great).
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It was 1991, and I went to see a whole bunch of bands at a little open air show in Cologne, incl. Dinosaur jr. and Sonic Youth, and it was probably the best concert I’ve ever been to. Nirvana were supposed to play, but they didn’t show up (or whatever - I didn’t care).
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(I almost want to make a photography-lyrics version of this…)
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Instead of a Friday movie recommendation, today it’s Tom Waits In Concert (2008), full length. It doesn’t get any better than that.
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I’m a big fan of Tom Waits’ music, and I wasn’t looking forward to Scarlett Johansson’s interpretation of some of his music (dreadly anticipating something along the lines of Paris Hilton’s “music”). I have to say that the actual results surprised me - even though it’s one of those surprises that is neither good, nor bad, but just plainly weird: The whole thing sounds as if you somehow crossed Nico with Shinead O’Connor after sucking all the talent out of the room. For those who don’t believe me have a look at the video of the song Falling Down.
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I found this video a few days ago - so simple, so good (in every possible way)!
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I couldn’t make up my mind which one of the three clips I had in mind to post, so here are the other two…
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I was wearing a Johnny-Cash t-shirt yesterday, and two of the grad students here, one Chinese, the other one Korean, asked me about it. After talking about it between themselves, they decided Johnny Cash must have been a movie star. So here’s a clip to set the record straight.
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I came across this video today, which is either performance art, some sort of comedy, or an unknown outtake from George Lucas’ abandoned project “Return of the Jawas”. From the description: “Highlight is that MALEFIC enters the Stage in a wheelchair, in excellent quality”, and indeed, that you don’t want to miss, it’s about three minutes into the clip. In case you’re wondering, this kind of stuff is called Drone Metal, or actually Drone Doom, and it’s “a subgenre of doom metal”: “Melody, and sometimes any sense of rhythm, are absent from the songs, and vocals, if present, are usually screamed.” I would have called it “Droll Metal”, but then that’s just me.
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“Formed at the Documenta’97 exhibition, Rechenzentrum search for new processes of music/moving image production, while refining forms of presentation which create on-stage dialogue between audio and video.”
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Sounds like it (via Alex Ross)
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Found this by chance today. Extremely odd ending, which I don’t even want to know about.
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“Giuseppe Verdi, one might think, is hard to mess up. But a theater in the eastern German city of Erfurt seems to be doing its best. In a re-interpretation of the opera ‘A Masked Ball,’ which opens on Saturday, director Johann Kresnik has hit upon a dramatic novelty: His staging has naked pensioners wearing Mickey Mouse masks, wandering around the ruins of New York’s World Trade Center.” (story) Notes the Daily Torygraph: “Rehearsals suggest that Mr Kresnik’s anti-capitalist staging is unlikely to be celebrated for its subtlety.”
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I don’t know what it is with the Germans and their desire to make music out of banging on things that originally were not designed as musical instruments. When I discovered AutoAuto!, of course, I had to think of everybody’s favourite unpronouncable Einstürzende Neubauten (which one of the AutoAuto! people claims to have played with in the past). No offense to the AutoAuto! crowd, but I think I personally prefer the real thing (here even with 100 members of the audience contributing), even though the bass player (who also bangs on the big blue can on the ground) reminds me of another one of my favourite pop culture characters (no, it’s not Buddy Rich).
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I know no other movie that uses music to such a devastating effect as Apocalypse Now, to unmask war as what it really is (if you haven’t seen the movie, watch the “Redux” version, which is longer and even better), and the helicopter attack on the Vietnamese village to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, perfectly edited, is a masterpiece of cinema. It’s quite interesting to see how the movie scene compares with the scene from the corresponding opera (it’s Die Walküre, at the beginning of the third act), here the Bayreuth 1976 version. The one thing that I always wondered about Apocalypse Now is why Coppola did not use the operatic version, where the singing adds an intense layer of outright creepiness over the music, which on its own is quite kitschy actually. Watch the whole thing with the singers just standing there (in a regular concert; actually it seems they really want to act it out, if you see how they move when they’re singing) - somehow, the whole piece works quite differently, doesn’t it?
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Found this little gem by chance. The digital artifacts actually even enhance the experience.
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If you feel like almost going back to the days when you’d record your own set of music to create a “mix tape”, Muxtape is where you want to be. Check out Noah K.’s or Raul G.’s or mine.
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I typically don’t embed Youtube clips, but for this one, I’ll make an exception. This is by far the best interpretation of the second movement of Shostakovich’s 10th symphony I have ever heard (I have about seven or eight on CD). I’m almost surprised at the end, the roof didn’t come off. I had read about the Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela before, but I had no idea they were this excellent. It’s almost a bit unfair to do this, but simply compare it with this other interpretation, which pales in comparison. Needless to say, one could argue about interpretation here, but given that Shostakovich used to play his own compositions at break-neck speed, and given that the movement is intended to be a portrait of Stalin (who had just died when the symphony was premiered), Dudamel’s interpretation appears to be what the composer might have wished to hear. Unbelievable.
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“Karlheinz Stockhausen, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century, has died at the age of 79, it was announced today.” - story, obituary
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My new job entails a commute of about an hour, a little more than half of which is spent on a bus. Well, my choice of residence - Northampton instead of Amherst (where I work) - is responsible for this; and I don’t mind the commute at all, since I like to read. I am currently reading Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which I couldn’t recommend more - provided you have an interest in either the (cultural) history of the 20th Century and/or “classical” music. If you want to get an idea of the style and contents of the book, check out Alex Ross’ article about Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, which also appears in the book.
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I always wanted to write a very stereotypical music review, so here we go.
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“How often do we meet people who are otherwise cultured and educated, who have no awareness whatever of even the very existence of serious music? […] The first and most common abuse hurled at the likes of me is that an education towards an understanding of, and working with, serious Western classical music is ‘elitist’. Michael Billington, discussing this year’s Edinburgh Festival in the Guardian, wrote: ‘there is a strange reversal of values, particularly in the media. A concert or opera attended by 1,000 people or more is seen as ‘elitist’; a small-scale event attracting a dedicated handful is regarded as ‘popular” - ie, inverted snobbery at its most pungently destructive.” - story
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Alright, here’s something entirely different: Meet Joseph, the beat box (he starts his routine about half a minute into the clip).
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I’m the kind of person who’ll order the same dish at a restaurant, simply because it’s good. That, of course, makes me a very likely fan of The Fall, because, after all, their songs basically all sound the same (with minor variations - it’s extremely simple, repetitive music with an old man, who might or might not have a speech impediment and loose dentures, ranting over it): It’s the Fall Sound (this from their most recent album).
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(Just kidding, he’s only 50.)
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I have lately spent a lot of time listening to classical music, with Dmitri Shostakovich (and others) on heavy rotation, especially his Symphony No. 13.
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And something about music: A fine interview with Tom Waits.
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I just came across a bunch of videos by German “krautrock” band Can, among those one of my all-time favourite songs, Mother Sky. Others: Vitamin C, Paper House, Deadlock, and errrr… a version of Can Can that features dancers and - as if that wasn’t bad enough - German “comedy” (I’m not making any of this up).
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This page has the link for an excellent Squarepusher mix track.
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Find out all about Kraftwerk in this excellent radio documentary.
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Too good to pass over: “For a woman apparently ill-suited to anything more taxing than standing around nightclubs in a pair of really enormous sunglasses, Paris Hilton is quite the polymath. […] You read her CV and boggle at what wildly improbable occupation she might turn her hand to next. Spot-welding? Cognitive neuropsychology? Alas, no: it’s singing. Lest one carp, Hilton has been quick to point out that singing is a vocation for which she is eminently skilled. ‘I know music,’ she reassured the Sunday Times children’s section. ‘I hear it every single day.’ While this obviously gives Hilton a massive advantage over those who have never heard any music and thus believe it to be a variety of cheese, there remains the nagging suspicion that this might not represent sufficient qualification for a career as a singer, in much the same way as knowing what a child is does not fully equip you for a career as a consultant paediatrician. […] Listening to her sing Rod Stewart’s Do Ya Think I’m Sexy, you are gripped by the fear that civilisation as we know it is doomed and that brimstone is going to start raining from the sky any minute. It doesn’t, but a sense of terrible foreboding is further stoked by the sleeve notes, which make reference to “all my albums to come”. You might call that another example of the sheer force of will that has got Hilton so far in so many improbable careers, but on the basis of the 11 tracks here, it sounds more like a threat.” (full story)
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By chance, I just found this very nice feature about the life and music of Dmitri Shostakovich, with an interesting focus on the string quartets.
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Matmos (their record company’s page can be found here) must be one of the most creative group of musicians around. Or maybe they are the most cerebral (or both?). At first, there doesn’t appear to be anything unusual when you listen to their music, except that some of the sounds might or might not be a bit unusual. The thing with Matmos is that if it sounds like a fart, it actually is a real fart. And some sounds are enjoyed better if you do not know what they are, like those on the album A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure - music largely assembled by sampling sounds produced during plastic surgeries. Those who insist on reading the booklets will of course find out about the gory details; the new album Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast includes, if I remember correctly, the aforementioned fart, sperm sounds (yeah, don’t ask - I didn’t), sounds produced while handling a dead cow’s uterus and vagina, plus, and this has got to be my favourite, the sounds produced by having a bunch of snails intercept some laser signals used to trigger a theremin (or so). And more. Now, all that sounds pretty weird, and if you want to give it a listen you can download the a sample from The Civil War here; and there’s a neat sample from Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast here.
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