As an experiment, I decided to try making a iMix of the items in my FRT that are available via iTunes. Please let me know if you like this; it’s a bit of extra work for me which I don’t mind doing, as long as people use it… but if no one wants it, then I’d rather not spend the time setting it up.
- Dirty Three, “I offered it up to the stars & the Night Sky”. As usual from my
random lists, it’s a post-rock ensemble. Dirty Three are classical leaning; not quite so much as
the Clogs, but still very much on the classical side. They tend to be slow and mellow, with
a gradually building intensity. Great stuff. - Hamster Theatre, “Oye Comatose”. Wierd, but cool, from a “Thinking Plague” spinoff band. (Incidentally, I received an email this week from the TP guitarist letting me know that I was wrong that he was a
GuitarCraft graduate. I’d heard this from the store I bought the CD at, and his playing sounds very crafty, but apparently the similarity in sound is just a coincidence that was turned into a rumour.) - Martin Hayes, “The Lark’s March/Kilfenora Jig/The Cliffs of Moher”. Beautiful traditional Irish music
played by a violin virtuoso at speeds that you could actually dance to. Martin is one of my favorite trad Irish artists. - The Fiddlers 4, “Atchafalaya Pipeline”. An old-timey folk tune from one of Darol Anger’s latest projects. Darol is brilliant as always.
- Gyorgi Ligeti, “Hamburg Concerto”. Very interesting modern classical. Definitely a piece of music with
a learning curve, but well worth the effort. Take some time to learn to understand it; it’s a wonderful piece of music. - Lunasa, “The Dingle Berries”. A rollicking fun Irish jig from a brilliant band.
- Dysrhythmia, “Appeared at First”. Very rock-oriented post rock. This was recommended to me
by a friend who’s also into post rock. I can appreciate it on a technical level, but I’ve never
really been able to enjoy listening to it; something about it just doesn’t work for me. - Godspeed You! Black Emperor: “Lift Your Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven…”. My favorite Godspeed track. Godspeed was introduced do me by Orac, and I’m terribly hooked. One of the very best Post-Rock ensembles around.
- Sonic Youth, “Rats”. Sonic Youth is a brilliantly strange band. This is from their most
recent album. Overall, the album is less blatantly strange than some of their past work. It’s still full of weird guitar playing and microtones, but they’re done subtly. Great stuff. - The Clogs, “My Mister Never Ending Bliss”. Post-rock from one of the best neo-classical post-rock
ensembles. This is off of “Stick Music” which is not one of their more accessible albums, but it is
my favorite.
I’ll second your remarks wholeheartedly vis-a-vis Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Glad to see you the Ligeti is growing on you. Perhaps a blog on the acoustics of the upper partials of natural horns vs. equal temperament would be appropriate (as that is a key component of the Hamburg Concerto).
There are some great videos of Ligeti’s piano music and his Poeme Symphonique for 100 Metronomes available if you search Youtube
If you get a chance to see Dysrhythmia live, you should check them out. I think they come across better in the live environment than on record.
Mark says:
Please let me know if you like this; it’s a bit of extra work for me which I don’t mind doing, as long as people use it… but if no one wants it, then I’d rather not spend the time setting it up.
No thanks. (You asked.) ^_^
Ligeti? He had some electronically manipulated gong music that was used in the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, and I have been exposed to his “micro-polyphony”, which all sounds like a swarm of depressed bees. Presumably he’s written something more human-enjoyable, because my brother mentioned listening to something by him, too, and he didn’t even know of his plink-plonk reputation 🙂
Ligeti? He had some electronically manipulated gong music that was used in the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
That was a Stockhausen piece.
I have been exposed to his “micro-polyphony”, which all sounds like a swarm of depressed bees
Damn fine music though. Anyone who has the 2001 DVD can hear his “micropolyphony” in the intro, when the monolith appears and in the psychedelic sequence at the end.
his plink-plonk reputation
No, he never wrote either a plink nor plonk, you must be thinking of Stockhausen again.
Mark, please e-mail me ASAP
Harald wrote: ‘Presumably he’s written something more human-enjoyable’
That’s got to be one of the strangest presuppositions I’ve come across. Who else listens to Ligeti? Squirrels? He doesn’t write music for machines to listen to, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps you should listen to his string quartet #1. It has much to owe to Bartok and is more traditional than his experimental work. What ‘plink-plonk’ reputation could you possibly be referring to? His best known works are ‘Atmospheres’ and ‘Lux Aeterna’, neither of which have the slightest hint of ‘plink-plonk.’ His entire works are available on Sony and Teldec. Explore please.
There was a Ligeti piece in Hitch-hiker’s. Stockhausen, too, I think, but most certainly one by Ligeti. I don’t know what his supposedly best-known works are, but what _I_ know is the micropolyphony stuff, and I stand by my assertion that it sounds like depressed bees, not like something humans would enjoy.
Albert, I happened to write a long rant on my weblog on a related topic. “Explore please”, if you want to be offended. Or you could say like me that there is so much better music to listen to, and better blogs to read, fine with me 🙂
Harald:
Your statement that a work like Lontano is “not something humans would enjoy” is refuted by any number of intelligent humans, including myself, that enjoy the work. You admit no more than a passing familiarity with Ligeti’s work but see fit to pass judgment for all humanity on its merit. If you don’t like it that is your right, but don’t turn your personal taste into some aesthetic dogma.
BTW your rant just trots out a tired straw man of modern classical music. The same tired charges you bring out were made against Beethoven in his day.
No they were not. There is a difference between trying to be slightly ahead of your time, which all artists who attempt to be fashionable do and trying to make a clean break with the past, which Schönberg clearly stated that he wanted to. He did that in the context of the same ideological framework as communism, namely historicism. (“an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their primary aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‘rhythms’ or the ‘patterns’, the ‘laws’ or the ‘trends’ that underlie the evolution of history”)
That historicism led to despicable results when applied in politics does not taint modern CM. It does, however, show some of the flaws of the historicist method, and it disgusts _me_ at least to pick up a book on music theory and see Hegelian rhetoric, exactly parallel to what you can see in old communist tracts: gross abuse of historical description to paint themselves as the self-evident pinnacle of evolution. Musical, in this case, rather than social.