Monday, December 20
Three Wise Songs
Happy Holidays, everyone! As a special treat for you all, here are three songs that I've written about in the past, each one representing one of my three musical obsessions: experimental electronic music, reggae/dub music, and traditional Central Asian music.
[UPDATE: You're too late. I've removed these from my server, so you'll have to get the disks yourself--NOW!]
William Basinski, "D|P 2.1" [The Disintegration Loops]
Here's the shortest track (a mere 10 minutes) from Basinski's epic, four-disk masterwork. Like all the other tracks, this one is a combination ambient musical loop and field recording. Basinski played this track as a loop and then recorded the sounds created as the original tape disintegrated into nothing. The loop used for "2.1" is strange: tentative, incomplete, and frightening. It's similar to the music played in horror films when the heroine is walking through a dark, empty house, fully expecting the monster or killer to jump out of nowhere and kill her. Since it's a loop, however, the monster never actually shows up; it's all build up, again and again, until, as the song goes on, the nerve-wracking loop begins to disintegrate (like the sanity of a horror victim, really). It's an amazing song from the most amazing album of the 21st century.
[visit Basinski's website here; buy The Disintegration Loops here]
King Tubby,"Dubbin' of the Ten Thousand" [The Sound of Channel One]
In my "Perfect Moment in Pop" article on this song, I noted, "I've been a fan of reggae for a long time, but the first time I heard this song was the first and only time I've ever sensed what reggae might sound like in Jamaica, in a culture submerged in music and poverty, where music and expression are the only things that keep some people alive. There's a deepness in this song that I've only glimpsed in other works. It's as if this song was not a few decades old but a few hundred, a few thousand years old, performed by the earliest musicians, sitting around a fire at night, wondering if the sky would ever return." Here's your chance to listen for yourself. Let me know what you think!
[read about Tubby here; buy The Sound of Channel One here]
Gevorg Dabaghyan, "Anush Garun" [Miniatures: Masterworks for Armenian Duduk]
Finally, here's one of the signature songs in Armenian musical culture, performed by one of the founding members of the Shoghaken Ensemble (Armenia's foremost folk group) and a true masters of the duduk. The duduk is a small, flute-like instrument made out of apricot wood and played in many parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. However, Armenians claim it as their own, and the instrument dominates most Armenian music. There's something about the warbly, melancholy tones of the duduk that speaks to the pain and suffering of the Armenian people. Many claim that the instrument's sound most closely resembles the sound of a human voice in pain. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I can tell you that "Anush Garun," which means "Sweet Spring," is an unbelievably elegiac song. I don't know the context for the song, but I'm guessing it is about loss and memory. Perhaps the "sweet spring" in the title is a hint of a place that the composer remembers fondly from his childhood but is now lost, thanks to politics, age, or culture. I've heard a lot of music from Central Asia and the Caucuses, and this is one of the finest works I've encountered.
[visit Dabaghyan's web site here; buy Miniatures here]
[UPDATE: You're too late. I've removed these from my server, so you'll have to get the disks yourself--NOW!]
William Basinski, "D|P 2.1" [The Disintegration Loops]
Here's the shortest track (a mere 10 minutes) from Basinski's epic, four-disk masterwork. Like all the other tracks, this one is a combination ambient musical loop and field recording. Basinski played this track as a loop and then recorded the sounds created as the original tape disintegrated into nothing. The loop used for "2.1" is strange: tentative, incomplete, and frightening. It's similar to the music played in horror films when the heroine is walking through a dark, empty house, fully expecting the monster or killer to jump out of nowhere and kill her. Since it's a loop, however, the monster never actually shows up; it's all build up, again and again, until, as the song goes on, the nerve-wracking loop begins to disintegrate (like the sanity of a horror victim, really). It's an amazing song from the most amazing album of the 21st century.
[visit Basinski's website here; buy The Disintegration Loops here]
King Tubby,"Dubbin' of the Ten Thousand" [The Sound of Channel One]
In my "Perfect Moment in Pop" article on this song, I noted, "I've been a fan of reggae for a long time, but the first time I heard this song was the first and only time I've ever sensed what reggae might sound like in Jamaica, in a culture submerged in music and poverty, where music and expression are the only things that keep some people alive. There's a deepness in this song that I've only glimpsed in other works. It's as if this song was not a few decades old but a few hundred, a few thousand years old, performed by the earliest musicians, sitting around a fire at night, wondering if the sky would ever return." Here's your chance to listen for yourself. Let me know what you think!
[read about Tubby here; buy The Sound of Channel One here]
Gevorg Dabaghyan, "Anush Garun" [Miniatures: Masterworks for Armenian Duduk]
Finally, here's one of the signature songs in Armenian musical culture, performed by one of the founding members of the Shoghaken Ensemble (Armenia's foremost folk group) and a true masters of the duduk. The duduk is a small, flute-like instrument made out of apricot wood and played in many parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. However, Armenians claim it as their own, and the instrument dominates most Armenian music. There's something about the warbly, melancholy tones of the duduk that speaks to the pain and suffering of the Armenian people. Many claim that the instrument's sound most closely resembles the sound of a human voice in pain. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I can tell you that "Anush Garun," which means "Sweet Spring," is an unbelievably elegiac song. I don't know the context for the song, but I'm guessing it is about loss and memory. Perhaps the "sweet spring" in the title is a hint of a place that the composer remembers fondly from his childhood but is now lost, thanks to politics, age, or culture. I've heard a lot of music from Central Asia and the Caucuses, and this is one of the finest works I've encountered.
[visit Dabaghyan's web site here; buy Miniatures here]
