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#Worktones: Autechre, Oliver Coates, Giadar

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Autechre – SIGN → Sasha Frere-Jones interviewed the legendary Autechre in one of his recent SF/J newsletters. It’s a lovely interview, with insight into the new album’s mechanics and how the duo manages to work together from different cities in COVID-times. But a highlight is the prose of Frere-Jones — I love how he writes about the music he loves. Check out his on-point description of Autechre’s album:

SIGN flirts with disintegration but only lightly, throwing its weight into a smooth ravine lined with translucent panels and reflective tape, a river of light running below the wind of turbines.

That’s a chilling reminder that I really need to work on my metaphors. But that won’t stop me from dropping some words of my own about this fascinating album.

Undoubtedly, there’s programming and coding involved in making this music. Numbers and figures set into a machine, then let loose to create tones and noises. How random are these tracks? Is this set-it-and-go music? Like Eno’s generative experiments, the process would border on ‘the joke’s on us’ if the result weren’t so lovely. 

I also like how this album can float in the background but is also open to deep listening. In other words, SIGN is a prime #Worktones candidate but also enjoys attentive ear-analysis. I haven’t immersed myself in Autechre’s back catalog in a while, but I can’t recall other efforts sharing these opposing qualities throughout an entire tracklist. 

SIGN has already received its fair share of accolades — and also criticism of what some see as a compromised sound. As the follow-up to an eight-hour album, SIGN won’t seem anything but a compromise to those critics. But, for me, the tug-of-war between the off-putting and the inviting is a sweet spot. Autechre’s done it, and, judging by how many times I’ve already listened to SIGN, it’s right in the pocket. 

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Oliver Coates – skins n slime → The new album from the innovative cellist finds Coates exploring his mesmerizing string-layers in forms halfway between compositional and textural. The music is also lightly confrontational, Coates’s instrument overdriven to excess and crackling with electricity. skins n slime appears separated into two sections, with the five-part “Caregiver” suite comprising the first half while the second half begins after a brief song ‘from The Bird Game soundtrack.’ “Caregiver part 2 (4am)” and “Caregiver part 5 (money)” are striking by how the strings take on the quality of either a distorted harmonium or Robert Fripp’s multi-layered guitar-tronics. Other moments resemble the cathartic plod of dark metal, a righteous feat for an artist working primarily with looped cello. The highlight for me is “Honey,” the penultimate track described in a RVNGIntl. press release as “tender, individual moments of pure cello beside decaying drone and the soaring planes.” It’s lovely, and I could listen to it all day.

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Giadar – Lost In My Underwater Unconscious → I recently watched this video essay about ‘the meaning of swimming pools in movies.’ The narrator tells us that filmic pools and bodies of water are often symbolic of a character’s subconscious feelings and thoughts. Dario Giardi, recording music as Giadar, captures this sentiment with his gorgeous EP, Lost In My Underwater Unconscious. The five tracks — each named after a different word in the release title — study ambient music’s melodic strain. The thematic inspiration and overall sound classify as ‘new age’ but lack the pomp and schmaltz often found in that genre. Piano’ed tones, embraceable synth pads, and iced gully reverbs pleasantly spill over these tracks. Dario tells me, “We have reached a kind of alienation from sound that has turned us into passive players without being aware of it. We are no longer used to paying attention to the features of what Murray Schafer has termed our soundscape.” Through his soundscapes, Schafer promoted the idea of acoustic ecology — understanding our relationship with the surrounding environment through the sounds around us. As Giadar, Dario explores this gentle power and its capability for healing — a welcome prospect in a year of turmoil. This EP, his debut, I believe, is a promising addition to a greater curative mission.

Old Man With Pink Hair

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Unfortunately, You Might be a Dingdong → In the new issue of his Roden newsletter, Craig Mod offers advice on dealing with dingdongs. He also provides clues to determine if you, unsuspecting reader, are unknowingly a dingdong. What’s a dingdong? Craig explains: “A dingdong is a subset of asshole, but for the sake of levity, we go with the former. A dingdong believes — genuinely! — that their opinion and their frequent, unsolicited deployment of that opinion is helpful. Often: It’s not.”

Craig rightfully points out that website comment sections are ‘dingdong bonanzas.’ I believe this extends to comments on Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest. His prescription? Block or mute. Or, even better, reply with something like, “That’s interesting — thanks!” and then block or mute. Craig calls that technique “The Dalai Lama Stance.” 

In the essay, Craig makes this case for ignoring dingdongs, no matter how tempting: 

… dingdong engagement has a very low energy-in to positivity-out yield. Almost zero. In the exceedingly small chance that you end up in a fruitful back and forth with a dingdong, it’s likely you’ll look back on that tête-à-tête and wish you had been doing literally anything else with your time.

It’s true! I remember when I was active on DJ and electronic music forums in the early ’00s. I got in so many stupid arguments. And even in exchanges with dingdongs where I felt it was my duty to set things straight, I came out defeated. I remember eventually thinking, “Has anything useful or positive ever come out of arguing in an internet forum?” Once I had my answer, I logged off for good. Now I follow my friend Zed’s advice: I don’t argue on the internet. 

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Kelly Lee Owens – “Corner Of My Sky” (feat. John Cale) → This new track from Kelly Lee Owens is excellent, and it features vocals from John Cale, who just sounds great. I want to hear from him more often (just as this vocal cameo from Brian Eno makes me want to hear him sing a lot more). And, since the early days of MTV, I’ve aggressively disliked music videos that mix in dialogue and in-video sounds over the music. But this music video is the exception — I love it so much.

But! Since writing the above paragraph, John Cale answered my plea and released a new one-off song (and video) called “Lazy Day.” It’s a weird one, not exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted John Cale to sing some more. But the song is fun, cool, and catchy, and Cale has transformed into ‘old man with pink hair,’ which is a not-too-terribly-surprising development.

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Khotin – Finds You Well → Canadian electronic music producer Khotin went and did it. He named his album after 2020’s eternal email send-off, “I hope this finds you well.” I’m sure he’s not the only one. But it’s possible this album of hauntology-nodding textural beat constructions conveys the wistful sentiment better than the others. Yes, we’ve entered Boards of Canada territory (Boards of Edmonton, in this case), but where BoC is a tad clinical, Khotin offers the personal. Take the swirling pads and the inserted voicemail messages of “Outside in the Light” — it sounds like someone listening in, from space or the future, deciphering pleasant memories. 

Not Good Enough for Vinyl

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Tom Waits – Big Time → Tom Waits’ Frank’s Wild Years is a longtime favorite album of mine.1That album followed Waits’ Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs, completing one of the great album trios in recorded music. In 1988, a concert film from this album’s tour was released, titled Big Time. The movie is beautiful, and the performances of the songs are creative and mischievous. It’s as good as Stop Making Sense, in my opinion (that Talking Heads concert film was probably an influence on Big Time). Big Time has been missing all these years, only available via used DVDs and extremely low quality torrented files. But! Without fanfare, Big Time suddenly appeared to stream on Amazon Prime Video at the beginning of the month. Watch it. (Side note: fingers crossed Laurie Anderson’s digitally unavailable Home of the Brave follows soon.)

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ECHO: The Music of Harold Budd and Brian Eno → ECHO is billed as a YouTube documentary about the early ’80s collaborative relationship of Brian Eno and Harold Budd. In actuality, it’s a mix of music from their classic albums The Plateaux of Mirror (1980) and The Pearl (1984), accompanied by snippets and quotes from interviews. The visuals are suitably ambient — dreamy pastures, scrolling snow-fields, and misty cityscapes. The video does have some interesting bits, including Eno pointing out various ‘treatments’ and even identifying tools like the Lexicon Prime Time delay. Despite the occasional commentary, the 40-minute film ends up as soothing and hypnotic as the subject albums. Hat tip to Sasha Frere-Jones, who listed this today in his always illuminating email newsletter.

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Rimarimba – Below The Horizon → I recorded my first ‘album’ in the ‘80s, and it was cassette-only. I was a part of the self-released cassette movement (as documented in the book Cassette Mythos), even having my ‘albums’ reviewed in a few ‘zines. I still remember a friend of mine, also active in the cassette underground, telling me one day: “I know why all this music is released on cassette. Because it’s not good enough for vinyl.” Ouch.

There might have been a little hard truth in that. I mean, just revealing that I recorded some cassette albums in the ‘80s has me a bit nervous, because I would hate the fine folks at RVNG Intl. or their Freedom To Spend side-imprint track down these cassettes and offer to release them. Because they really weren’t ready for vinyl. In retrospect, they were quaint but kind of terrible (btw – Ira Glass is right). But that’s not the case with Rimarimba, an artist who I’d not heard of until today and who seems to have once existed on the edges of the ‘80s cassette underground.

That said, Below The Horizon might not count — according to Discogs — as it was released on cassette in 1983 but made its way to rare-ish vinyl in 1985. And, this time, it is good enough for vinyl. What’s not to like? The first couple of tracks sound like Penguin Cafe Orchestra playing the last 30 seconds of Faust’s “The Sad Skinhead.” If that doesn’t sound wonderful to you, then … still give it a try. And then this final track, titled “Bebang,” is 20+ minutes of layered, ringing guitar loops and riffs, a fanciful, improvised toy synthesizer line, and a subtle tick-tock rhythm that helps the song’s time pass in an instant.

Kosmiche Clicky Keyboard

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I’ve got a few quickies for you and then some music news. 

First, I’ve officially entered the clicky keyboard club. Mechanical keyboards have tempted me for years, and this Kickstarter campaign finally inspired me to take the plunge. My Keychron K8 arrived today, and this post is pretty much the first thing I’ve typed on it. I’m doing a lot of writing and thought a more physical keyboard — with clicks and noise! — would help inspire and lead me frequently into ‘the zone.’ It’s too early to say. I’ve heard some people can’t get used to these keyboards, and it is larger in height than I’m used to. I’m using a palm rest, which helps, but it’s still going to take effort to get acclimated. But so far, so good — the feel is impressively tactile, and I love the keys’ noise. The fancy backlighting makes typing feel special, too. I’ll report back once I get some serious use out of this thing.

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Here’s a fun piece about John Cage’s expertise with edible mushrooms. Well — he was an expert most of the time as there’s that dinner where he unintentionally poisoned his guests. If you know about Cage but didn’t know about his mushroom obsession, then you’ll find this paragraph fascinating:

In one particularly famous episode, in February 1959, Cage appeared on the Italian television program Lascia o Raddoppio (Double or Nothing) and won five million lire (something like eight thousand dollars) by being able to name 24 white-spored agarics — edible mushrooms — that were mentioned in the Studies of American Fungi field guide. Cage listed them in alphabetical order and then bought a Volkswagen bus for his partner, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and a piano for his home in Stony Point.  

There’s a new two-volume book — John Cage: A Mycological Foray — that details Cage’s mad mushroom skills though his writing and essays by others. It looks lovely.

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Speaking of lovely-looking books, Craig Mod — who might be responsible for my favorite email newsletter — has self-published a book based on his incredible Eater article, I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast. I know the title of that article is baffling but, seriously, give it a read if you haven’t. This new book is titled Kissa by Kissa, and it expands on the article with lots of new graphics, photographs, and text. It’s obviously a labor of love and looks fantastic. Even more fantastic, Craig coded his Kickstarter-style platform to raise money and sell it from (he jokingly calls it ‘Craigstarter’). It’s open-source and downloadable from Github. Labels and recording artists take note — you could use this to do a PledgeMusic (ugh) style fundraiser for your next album right from your site. (Update: I see the book sold out. Congratulations to Craig! I imagine it will be online in some form in the future, like his ‘digital book’ Ise-ji: Walk With Me.)

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Brian Eno. Laurie Anderson. Nitin Sawhney. Simon McBurney. These four brains got together (on Zoom) and had a conversation about listening. It’s terrific. And Eno’s lockdown beard is impressive.

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My bit of music news is about Gemini Revolution. The brothers Dedric and Delaney — from the cool Kansas City combo Monta At Odds — lead this project. We call Gemini Revolution their ‘alternate timeline band.’ I’ve just released their rad new album Supernova Remnant on the 8D Industries label. Earlier today, I described this album to a friend as “kosmiche-styled space jams, ambient builders, and textured dream-droppers.” I won’t back down from that description. Have a listen in the player below, and if it strikes your fancy — it should! — then please head down to Bandcamp where the album is downloadable at the special price of ‘name your price.’

The Comfort in Listening

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I haven’t quite settled into the writing rhythm, and putting this week’s newsletter together was a struggle. The working-at-home aspect isn’t a big deal as that’s where I’ve worked for most of my (sorta-)professional life. But the background hum of uncertainty, concern, and — let’s face it — fear throws new challenges into the mix.

I’m not alone in walking a tightrope between ‘now’s the time to get stuff done’ and ‘take it easy for your mental health.’ It’s an unusual juggling act, at least for me. I miss the days — they seem so long ago — when I would get lost entirely in creative tasks, the mind focused straight ahead for hours. It’s been like that for a while, but lately, the distraction dial goes to 11.

It’s about reclaiming space, throwing that bellowing inner voice off to the side. It’s a modern ploy to call this act ‘mindfulness,’ and I’ve regularly meditated for years, but that’s not helping right now. We need solace and beauty — something that whispers hope. We need art now more than ever.

In my review of Jogging House’s beautiful album Lure, I talk about music as an optimistic glimpse at what’s possible. I quote Brian Eno: “One of the reasons one makes music, or any kind of art, is to create the world that you’d like to be in or the world that you would like to try.” And, in the case of music, the listener experiences a taste of this world by losing herself in the sound.

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Pioneering experimental composer Pauline Oliveros called this ‘deep listening.’ Deep Listening originally was the title of an album Oliveros recorded with her ‘Deep Listening Band’ in an empty underground reservoir. The space featured a natural 45-second reverb tail, creating washes of sound out of the trombone, didjeridu, accordion, and other employed instruments. There’s no resisting this immersion in sound.

But ‘deep listening’ was soon synonymous of a “radical attention.” Oliveros explained this interpretation as “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what one is doing.” It’s the opposite of how most people (myself included) stream music: in the background as a complement to our mood, office productivity, or housework. With deep listening, you LISTEN — no other activity is in the foreground.

Deep listening pops up in Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing, which I recommended a few newsletters ago. Odell poses the concept as a resistance to a constant inundation of information and newsfeeds. Oliveros and deep listening also appear in Kyle Chayka’s The Longing For Less, which I’m presently reading. Chayka writes, “Such intense listening is meant to inspire compassion and understanding, a kind of acceptance that goes beyond the noisy concerns of the current moment that usually crowd our consciousness.”

Chayka, citing Oliveros, refers to this listening as “meditating on the organic sounds of nature and experiencing the resonance of unique spaces like caves, cathedrals, or wells.” But our present crisis makes it difficult to go out in public to explore these places. In quarantine, we need to listen deeply at home.

In the Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts proposes a different take on deep listening: we should do it with albums. Silence your phone and any other potential distractions, set the mood (“Light a candle or not.”), sit comfortably between two speakers or put some nice headphones on, and listen — really listen — to an album from beginning to end. Lose yourself in the sound. Examine the lyrics and the performances. Imagine where the music is taking place. Roberts says, “The point is to listen with your ears in the same way you read with your eyes.”

Though not emphasizing the ‘deep’ aspect, Amanda Petrusich wrote about the reassuring qualities of listening to a favorite album in The New Yorker. (Side note: that article has the coolest gif and I wish I could steal it.) She refers to one album as “a reliable and instantaneous balm, no matter what’s happening to me or the world.” Petrusich also offers this: “The best thing about records is that, even when you don’t have anything left to give, they keep showing up for you.”

I propose we regularly set time aside to lose ourselves in albums. Choose an album and listen without productivity or house chores on the agenda. What should you listen to? A new album is fun, but hearing something for the first time might be too much work. No playlists allowed — only an intentional album song sequence will do. A favorite album or one that’s attached to nostalgia is good. Maybe an album you like but haven’t listened to more than a few times. Or perhaps listen to an album you’ve enjoyed but have only heard in the background while working or cooking or all the other things. Give it the attention it deserves.

Listen. Sit in one place, close your eyes if that’s comfortable for you, and listen with purpose. Pick out all the instruments, hear the acoustics (natural or digital) they’re playing in, follow the lyrics, note how the sequence flows. It could be tricky — sitting still is for meditators, not music buffs. But don’t give up. There will be a moment that you forget what’s going on in this world, replacing it with a “world that you would like to try.” That moment’s why we’re doing this.

What albums come to mind? If you try this out, what albums will you play? Why? I’m so curious. Please let me know in the comments section for the newsletter. I’ll get the thread going with a couple that I’m starting with. These aren’t recommendations, just the albums that are helping us get through this thing. We’re listening together, rooting for each other. It’s what we do.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Marc Méan’s Collage: Imperfect in the Best Way Possible

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Long before Brian Eno dreamed-up the term ambient music, there was “Furniture Music.” Coined by composer Erik Satie in 1917, “Furniture Music” intends to “make a contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation, a painting in a gallery, or the chair in which you may or may not be seated” (Satie’s words).

There’s a story of the debut of “Furniture Music” (or more correctly “Furnishing Music” — ‘musique d’ameublement’). Satie performed it during the intermission of a play, and the audience was encouraged to mill about as they usually would during a theater break. Instead, and much to Satie’s frustration, the audience stayed seated and listened. 

Marc Méan is a Zürich-based musician who has found inspiration in Satie’s “Furniture Music” 100+ years later. It informs his fascinating album Collage, a set — and cassette — of two twenty-minute compositions that vibrate from ethereal soundscapes to lightly percussive sound design. It’s experimental in sound and process and, though “Furniture Music” serves as a launching pad, like Satie’s intermission music Collage leaves the listener more attentive than passive. 

“[Satie’s] approach fascinated me,” Marc says. “Before that, I was playing mostly jazz and improvised music, which required me to be active and personally involved as a listener and as a performer. It’s music where you have to be highly reactive to everything around you, where everything happens fast, where one prefers evolution to repetition. I wanted to find an approach to music where I could slow things down, where I could stretch time, be more passive, find simplicity.”

The inspiration came through the acquisition of an unusual electronic instrument. Marc explains, “It all began when I acquired Peter Blasser’s instrument the Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus. It is a weird synthesizer-sampler that has a life of its own.” 

Originating in Portland and partly hand-crafted out of wood, the Cocoquantus is a sampler combined with looping delays and multiple analog synthesizer engines for modulation. Blasser himself describes the Cocoquantus as “not for the faint of heart: but once you speak its language, nothing else is quite the same.”

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“Peter Blasser’s instruments don’t come with manuals,” Marc says. “Nothing is labeled on the instrument, so you have to explore it yourself. And I have never been someone who likes to practice for the sake of practicing. I always need to work in a musical context to learn something new. So while taming this new instrument, I recorded all my experiments.”

The process developed into a creative game (or, as I like to say, a tiny accident). Marc explains: “I like the idea of organized chaos, of controlled randomness in my work. The more I surprise myself in the creative process, the more interesting the music will be to me afterward. In the end, I felt that the material had a strong unity because of the gear I used. The Cocoquantus has such a strong personality that it binds the recordings together.” These exploratory pieces were combined to form the backbone of Collage. 

The resulting album is a lovely and imaginative trek through experimental ambiance. There are haunting piano moments, teasing through snatches of melody transmitted from a distance. Distinctively electronic antics appear, manipulated bleeps and clicks that soon give way to luminous passages. For all of its digital manipulation, Collage is warm and organic sounding, and the two twenty-minute stitched-together compositions don’t sound stitched-together at all.

Though there are elements of ambient ‘drone’ music, Collage‘s pieces develop and subtly change, sometimes offering surprises for the listener. “I can’t help myself but to have things evolve and have some drama,” Marc says. “The two sides are designed as a response to each other. One doesn’t need to listen to both sides back-to-back, but I would recommend listening to each in its entirety.”

I get this impression even as I listen to Collage as a digital stream on Bandcamp. The nature of the tracks, their grainy sound, and 20-minute lengths make Collage imaginable in a cassette format. Marc embraces Collage on cassette: “I like when music can be tangible; when music pairs with an object. It grounds things into a reality in this era where everything is virtual. Also, analog tape was used during the recording to transform and give color to certain elements. So for me, it makes sense that Collage is available on a physical medium.”  

Thus Neologist Productions has issued Collage on cassette, limited to 30 copies. The artwork is beautiful and visually fits the tone of the music. And, as Marc points out, the cassette may be the best way to experience Collage: “Because of the physicality of the cassette the listening experience is different. Cassettes sound different than a digital medium. Cassettes are lo-fi in comparison, they wobble a bit, they age, they are imperfect in the best way possible.”

Listen to Collage on various streaming platforms or on Bandcamp (where you can also purchase the limited edition cassette).

Tiny Accidents

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A useful skill in songwriting is the subtle deployment of the unexpected. When there’s a sudden chord change out of nowhere, a melody that rises when you think it should fall, a strange production effect that changes the tone of the song — these surprises generate listener goosebumps. My favorite: when the bass line in The Feelies’ “Slow Down,” which is a constant single note for most of the song, changes to a second note at 2:19. There’s nothing to this — it’s so simple — but it gets me every time.

The trick is that these surprises can’t be too surprising. Sure, in compositions aiming to unmoor the listener (often in experimental music) the surprises are abrupt and heavy. But I think there’s a higher art in subtlety — sonic and compositional changes that are unexpected but not necessarily out of place. Sometimes these sound like accidents, but tiny ones.

Occasionally these surprises or imperfections are genuinely accidental. Think about a singer whose voice cracks mid-phrase, or a botched note in a guitar riff, or a tape delay echo tail that gets a little too out of control. In the podcast series and accompanying book Ways of Hearing, Damon Krukowski mentions his imperfect drumming in recordings by the band Galaxie 500. “We played as steadily as we could,” he says. “But this was a performance. We were nervous and excited. And we sped up at the chorus.”

Sometimes these flaws are unwelcome and distracting. In Galaxie 500’s day, an inexcusable mistake would mean recording a new take of the song. Other times these unplanned incidents are at the edge of unacceptable — such as speeding up in the chorus — and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to re-record. So they get left alone. And, a lot of times, these strange little errors grow to become favorite song moments for both the listeners and the artists.

Now, instead of re-recording, one can ‘fix it in the mix.’ A quantization or manual shifting of beats in the DAW can correct that excited drummer. A singer can choose from multiple takes of a vocal line to replace that bit where her voice cracked for a second. The tape delay is an automated plug-in, so there’s no chance of that echo getting distorted and out-of-bounds.

By nature (or un-nature), digital production provides fewer opportunities for accidents. If a musician or producer wants to incorporate the unexpected in a song, she must program the error into the digital tool. There are now plug-ins and scripts that feature options to randomize settings. One can get carried away — check out the lengths Brian Eno goes to in randomizing Logic Pro:

We commonly refer to these fortunate misfortunes as ‘happy accidents.’ And, outside of software, one can encourage these detours in the analog world. Artists often purposefully set up loose creative environments to inspire a moment of chance. Musicians jam or improvise to see what happens, hoping for a phrase of synergy to develop into a previously unimagined song. Guitarists might try alternate tunings, or drummers might play on unfamiliar percussion set-ups. Even recording in strange surroundings could inspire different outcomes.

There are also creative games. I mentioned Gysin and Burroughs’ The Third Mind in an episode of my email newsletter. The cut-up method detailed in that book is used by a number of artists to summon unforeseen creative options. Here’s a video of David Bowie using the cut-up method. Other examples of creative games are Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno’s well-known Oblique Strategies cards (even used by country music superstars) or John Cage composing “Music For Changes” using the I Ching.

At the beginning of last year, I tried my own creative game project. Before starting a song, I set up a bunch of rules to output random results. These rules covered the sounds I’d use, the tempo, the audio plug-ins, even the song’s title. The project was short-lived but inspired the process of creating the ‘theme songs’ for my newsletter. And I had a name for that project, which I also use to describe the ‘unexpected but not out-of-place’: Tiny Accidents.

In my experience, these accidents are valuable creative exercises. They allow artists to step outside of their heads and develop works that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Each throw of the dice is a chance to learn new techniques by outwitting artistic obstacles. The process is incredibly satisfying. So, I’m resuming my Tiny Accidents practice. And I challenge you to start one.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Energy Fools the Magician

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I ran across this delightful short film from 2008 promoting the Brian Eno/David Byrne collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today:

From the video, a good quote from Byrne:

Adding little bits or changing your expectations is what keeps music really interesting. Because when you listen to music you can generally tell what’s coming, but then when you get surprised by what actually does come then — if it’s not too surprising — it’s kind of pleasurable.

I appreciate the caveat “not too surprising!” But, yes, unexpected elements are often responsible for pushing a song into the ‘special’ zone. These elements can be lyrical, a change of chords or dynamics, unannounced instrumentation, or anything else that comes to mind. And they don’t have to be in-your-face — subtlety is powerful.

The bass line in The Feelies’ “Slow Down” comes to mind. After playing one note for 2:19 of the song the bass unexpectedly switches to a second note. On paper, this seems insignificant, but in the context of the song, it’s a special moment. I get those song tingles everything I hear it — one of my favorite musical subtleties.

You can see Brian Eno reacting to the unexpected elements placed within Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Check him out at 6:05. It’s fun and reassuring to see Eno get excited about the music he’s worked on, especially after all these years. He seems self-aware of his enthusiasm a few seconds later, pulling back a bit.

And then check out Eno at 6:50. What a riot. I asked Twitter to make a GIF for me, and David Wahl came through with this piece of magic:

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One last note (and timestamp) on this video. If the amount of clutter in your home studio has you feeling down check out (what I assume is) David Byrne’s workspace at 4:23. The ‘80s Trimline telephone is a nice touch.

Jogging House’s Lure: A Quiet Resistance

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A review of the album Lure, by hopeful ambient artist Jogging House.

There was this charming quality to a lot of ambient music in the ’90s — optimistic and melodic, far off from today’s dominating dark drones. It was a different era, and perhaps the sound reflected a rosy view of what awaited in the new millennium. But what we find in the 2010s are the hushed rushes of disconcerting noise and queasy clashing of synth lines, an ambiance of tension and uncertainty befitting our times. It makes sense — the world is an increasingly scary and debilitating place, and sometimes our music sounds like it. But optimism is resistance — it really is — and that’s what makes Jogging House’s latest album Lure so welcome, special, and quietly radical.

Jogging House — whose name is apparently a letter added to ‘jogging hose,’ AKA sweat pants — states the album is “about accepting the things we cannot change and finding comfort in uncertainty.” This philosophy is the pragmatism of the stoic, and it’s also not being paralyzed with helplessness when the world is out of control. Staying in motion and hopeful as an artist and creator rather than blocked and immobile in the face of hourly ‘breaking news’ and topical turmoil. That’s resistance.

I want to connect Jogging House to Brian Eno, but not to compare him to another composer working in the ‘ambient’ realm. Instead, I think Lure‘s songs closely reflect something Eno said in an interview: “One of the reasons one makes music or any kind of art is to create the world that you’d like to be in or the world that you would like to try. You would like to find out what that world is like.” That’s how I feel when I listen to “Tulip,” Lure‘s opening track. It’s transportive — light and playful, melodies as aspiration and reassurance that’s calm and kind. And it’s gorgeous, on the verge of sadness but not quite getting there. This is a world I’d like to try.

The album’s eight tracks share this gentle atmosphere, evoking a separate era. It’s the optimism of the past looking forward, like the mentioned-above ’90s electronic acts but also not too far from those pioneering the form in the ’70s. I’ll give in and sonically connect Eno anyway, as the beautiful “Weavings” wouldn’t be out of place on a Cluster album. Lure was recorded on 1/4″ tape, after all, using a variety of not-in-the-box gear.

But I emphasize this isn’t merely a throwback — it’s music fit for our times. These sounds are an encouragement to persevere rather than wallow; to foster hope and the imagination of something better for us all. You may ask, how can something so serene inspire action? It can, I respond. It really can.

Conny Plank: The Potential of Noise, a Son’s Tribute

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The documentary Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise was more touching than I expected. The film is a collaboration of director Reto Caduff and Stephan Plank, Conny’s son. Stephan drives the documentary as conversations with musicians who worked with Conny Plank help him understand and rediscover his father.

Conny Plank died of cancer at 47 when Stephan was just 13. A lot of Stephan’s memories of his father revolve around these odd musicians who stayed and worked at the farmhouse studio. Often the musicians would join the family for dinner (indulgently prepared by Stephan’s mother Christa), and they would become Stephan’s temporary playmates in between sessions. So, in this documentary, Stephan is meeting people who not only have perspectives on his father but are also part of shadowy childhood memories. The musicians are also taken aback — the last time they saw Stephan he was a child and an oblivious studio mascot.

The highlight of the documentary is Stephan’s meeting with the classic rap duo Whodini. Did you remember that Conny Plank produced part of Whodini’s first album? I forgot, too, until this film pleasantly reminded me. Whodini was an upstart act in their late teens, suddenly flown to a farmhouse in rural Germany in a bold choice by their label. The duo grew to love the eccentric but brilliant Conny Plank, and this love and respect pour out of their interview segment. Stephan is visibly emotional as he hears another warm story of the universal impact and guiding influence of his father. Even I choked up a little.

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There’s so much more in this film, including interviews with Michael Rother (Neu! and — early on — Kraftwerk guitarist), Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart (who may have been the last to work with Plank), and Holger Czukay (Can). Czukay comes off as kind of a jerk in his honesty about how Conny cared more about his studio than his relationship with his young son. It seems that Stephan has come to terms with this.

Noticeably absent is Brian Eno who stepped into Plank’s studio on more than one occasion. A section on the recording of Devo’s first album allows Eno most of his screen time, and that’s given to Gerald Casale talking about how he didn’t like Eno’s attempt to add his ‘pretty’ vocals and synth lines throughout the record.

Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise is inspiring and a stirring tribute to a person who lived the creative life. But most of all it’s the story of a son finding his talented but distant father. With Father’s Day approaching, I can’t think of a better movie to watch, especially for those of us missing our dads.

Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise currently streaming on Amazon Prime and available as a ‘rental’ on other services. And here’s a fine interview with Stephan Plank about the documentary. For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure the no-show Stephan refers in that piece is Eno, not Bono.