Sunday, June 12
Jacen Solo, Virgo
More information on this release
I love the photo on the cover of Jacen Solo’s debut full-length, Virgo. It depicts the seedy underbelly of a large building, complete with wires in the air and on the ground, air ducts, tubes, big metal boxes, and other big things that make a lot of noise. For most people, these noises—made by air conditioners, generators, automobiles, and other machines—are irritants, the residue and consequence of living in a technological world. But not everyone finds these noises annoying, just as not everyone finds the visual sight of wires, processors, air ducts, and generators irritating. There’s a beauty in these machines and their sounds, and for a hundred years (ever since F.T. Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto), artists and philosophers have sought not to obliterate but celebrate machines and their rigidly repetitive sounds.
That’s electronic music, really: the celebration of repetition and artificiality. Sure, most electronic artists will try to tell you that their music transcends such mundane things as rigid, computer-controlled beats and processed loops. Heck, most music software now focuses almost entirely on transforming basic 4/4 beats into symphonies that alter and transform at the granular level. But, at its heart, electronic music hasn’t strayed from Kraftwerk’s central tenets: we live in a machine world.
Solo’s cover suggests that his music is directly connected to machines and to the history behind machines in a very direct way. And, in a way, the music backs this up: this is a textbook example of electronic music, incorporating all the bells and whistles that have characterized most electronic music for the past thirty years: funky beats, bouncy melodies, warbling pads, and, above all, a Teutonic insistence upon absolute order. Words like “Teutonic” and “absolute order” seem negative, as they suggest a rigid, robotic drive towards a singular (and, in musical terms, usually boring) goal. Rigidity has its place, however—and, when done correctly, rigidity and absolute control can produce some amazing results in music. I’m thinking of both ambient works by William Basinski and Richard Chartier as well as dance music by Frank Bretschneider, all of which use repetition to create fascinating art.
Solo’s music isn’t as interesting as these other works, but its failure is not due to the repetitive beats that structure each and every track. In fact, the music is technically fine. The problem is that it is formulaic; it uses the same basic song pattern that has been used for countless electronic works. It’s boring. Too bad, too, since I really do like that cover.
I love the photo on the cover of Jacen Solo’s debut full-length, Virgo. It depicts the seedy underbelly of a large building, complete with wires in the air and on the ground, air ducts, tubes, big metal boxes, and other big things that make a lot of noise. For most people, these noises—made by air conditioners, generators, automobiles, and other machines—are irritants, the residue and consequence of living in a technological world. But not everyone finds these noises annoying, just as not everyone finds the visual sight of wires, processors, air ducts, and generators irritating. There’s a beauty in these machines and their sounds, and for a hundred years (ever since F.T. Marinetti’s first Futurist manifesto), artists and philosophers have sought not to obliterate but celebrate machines and their rigidly repetitive sounds. That’s electronic music, really: the celebration of repetition and artificiality. Sure, most electronic artists will try to tell you that their music transcends such mundane things as rigid, computer-controlled beats and processed loops. Heck, most music software now focuses almost entirely on transforming basic 4/4 beats into symphonies that alter and transform at the granular level. But, at its heart, electronic music hasn’t strayed from Kraftwerk’s central tenets: we live in a machine world.
Solo’s cover suggests that his music is directly connected to machines and to the history behind machines in a very direct way. And, in a way, the music backs this up: this is a textbook example of electronic music, incorporating all the bells and whistles that have characterized most electronic music for the past thirty years: funky beats, bouncy melodies, warbling pads, and, above all, a Teutonic insistence upon absolute order. Words like “Teutonic” and “absolute order” seem negative, as they suggest a rigid, robotic drive towards a singular (and, in musical terms, usually boring) goal. Rigidity has its place, however—and, when done correctly, rigidity and absolute control can produce some amazing results in music. I’m thinking of both ambient works by William Basinski and Richard Chartier as well as dance music by Frank Bretschneider, all of which use repetition to create fascinating art.
Solo’s music isn’t as interesting as these other works, but its failure is not due to the repetitive beats that structure each and every track. In fact, the music is technically fine. The problem is that it is formulaic; it uses the same basic song pattern that has been used for countless electronic works. It’s boring. Too bad, too, since I really do like that cover.
Tuesday, June 7
Eurasianet's Georgian Profile
Eurasianet, the best source for news and information on Central Asia and the Caucauses (regions that geographers are collectively calling Central Eurasia) has just posted an incredibly detailed and fascinating examination of Georgia. The focus is the aftermath of the Rose revolution, where Georgians collectively stood up to their corrupt government and demanded change. The leaders of that revolution promised that change, but (Eurasianet asks) did the people get it? Find out.
If only my Central Eurasian profile looked as good as this one!
If only my Central Eurasian profile looked as good as this one!
Sunday, June 5
Ezekiel Honig and Morgan Packard, Early Morning Migration
More information on this disk
As I listen to the first collaborative work by Ezekiel Honig and Morgan Packard, I am sitting in my house in El Centro, California, just ten miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, watching (on satellite) a replay of a World Cup qualifying match between Switzerland and the Faroe Islands that is played on a barely-grass pitch in the Faroes under the watchful eyes of a handful of fans (mostly Swiss, it seems) and a collection of barren, tundra-like hills. For some reason, this music—a collection of tracks created separately by the two artists and then collected into a unified collection they chose to call Early Morning Migration—seems oddly appropriate to a world where someone in the teeth of the California desert can watch (on a whim) a soccer match played in one of the most isolated (and frozen) reaches of Europe. This is music that perfectly captures the surreal emptiness of everyday life in a digital world.
Six of the eleven tracks here are by Honig; five are by Packard. I know this only because of the liner notes. Had I listened to this cold, not knowing who did it or how, I would have assumed this music were the product of a single artist, creating a Hecker-like soundscape out of fragmented rhythms, wavering synths, and digital debris. The fact that each of these works was created separately is, then, rather impressive, if only because the tracks, while all unique, all share a similarity of tone and theme that would suggest a single creator.
That tone is sadness. These are sparse, isolated works that each seek to express the same lilting despair in different ways. For example, "Billow" features a sparse, lilting piano that floats down and down into a pool of washed-out fuzz. "White on White" features some sort of synthesized (and repeated) trumpet bleat that repeats in downward, sputtering archs over the song's course. "Planting Broken Branches Pt. 1" begins as a frail, ISAN rhythm of thrown-away noise fragments that sound like empty drops of rain falling on rusty buckets before slowly developing into a funkier rhythm composed of thrown-away noise fragments (sans buckets). And "A Lake of Suggestions Pt. 2" features a Tim Hecker-like shimmering array of static underneath a variation of the same funky groove heard throughout. That's four different ways to sound sad; there are seven others on this eleven-track work.
A lot of people hate being sad; others revel in it. I don't follow either camp, but I do appreciate sad music when I hear it, if only because it's often so quiet, so devoid of all the bells and whistles that seem to dominate most songs. Sad music needs space to let the lone, isolated sounds have their say. The best sad music—anything by William Basinski, Gorecki, Sigur Ros, Tim Hecker, Gevorg Dabaghyan, or Radiohead—has a loneliness at its center, and that loneliness sounds like a single instrument being played against either a stark backdrop of noise or a blank canvas of silence. It's the contrast that comes through, and it's the contrast that creates the feelings of sadness.
Early Morning Migration might not come up to the level of those other artists, but it's plenty sad—in a good way: a way that gives you enough space to think about the world around you and start to ask questions and formulate answers. It's the kind of music that makes it easy for someone like myself to ponder the similarities between deserts and islands, heat and cold, and noise and silence. It's the kind of music that helps me to contemplate the incredibly weird fact that I take it as given that I can watch sporting events unfold from thousands of miles away yet I cannot remember the name of the person across the street from me. This is music that lets me think about stuff like this. It's delicate, quiet, and sad—qualities that are incredibly rare in music these days.
As I listen to the first collaborative work by Ezekiel Honig and Morgan Packard, I am sitting in my house in El Centro, California, just ten miles from the U.S.-Mexican border, watching (on satellite) a replay of a World Cup qualifying match between Switzerland and the Faroe Islands that is played on a barely-grass pitch in the Faroes under the watchful eyes of a handful of fans (mostly Swiss, it seems) and a collection of barren, tundra-like hills. For some reason, this music—a collection of tracks created separately by the two artists and then collected into a unified collection they chose to call Early Morning Migration—seems oddly appropriate to a world where someone in the teeth of the California desert can watch (on a whim) a soccer match played in one of the most isolated (and frozen) reaches of Europe. This is music that perfectly captures the surreal emptiness of everyday life in a digital world.
Six of the eleven tracks here are by Honig; five are by Packard. I know this only because of the liner notes. Had I listened to this cold, not knowing who did it or how, I would have assumed this music were the product of a single artist, creating a Hecker-like soundscape out of fragmented rhythms, wavering synths, and digital debris. The fact that each of these works was created separately is, then, rather impressive, if only because the tracks, while all unique, all share a similarity of tone and theme that would suggest a single creator.
That tone is sadness. These are sparse, isolated works that each seek to express the same lilting despair in different ways. For example, "Billow" features a sparse, lilting piano that floats down and down into a pool of washed-out fuzz. "White on White" features some sort of synthesized (and repeated) trumpet bleat that repeats in downward, sputtering archs over the song's course. "Planting Broken Branches Pt. 1" begins as a frail, ISAN rhythm of thrown-away noise fragments that sound like empty drops of rain falling on rusty buckets before slowly developing into a funkier rhythm composed of thrown-away noise fragments (sans buckets). And "A Lake of Suggestions Pt. 2" features a Tim Hecker-like shimmering array of static underneath a variation of the same funky groove heard throughout. That's four different ways to sound sad; there are seven others on this eleven-track work.
A lot of people hate being sad; others revel in it. I don't follow either camp, but I do appreciate sad music when I hear it, if only because it's often so quiet, so devoid of all the bells and whistles that seem to dominate most songs. Sad music needs space to let the lone, isolated sounds have their say. The best sad music—anything by William Basinski, Gorecki, Sigur Ros, Tim Hecker, Gevorg Dabaghyan, or Radiohead—has a loneliness at its center, and that loneliness sounds like a single instrument being played against either a stark backdrop of noise or a blank canvas of silence. It's the contrast that comes through, and it's the contrast that creates the feelings of sadness.
Early Morning Migration might not come up to the level of those other artists, but it's plenty sad—in a good way: a way that gives you enough space to think about the world around you and start to ask questions and formulate answers. It's the kind of music that makes it easy for someone like myself to ponder the similarities between deserts and islands, heat and cold, and noise and silence. It's the kind of music that helps me to contemplate the incredibly weird fact that I take it as given that I can watch sporting events unfold from thousands of miles away yet I cannot remember the name of the person across the street from me. This is music that lets me think about stuff like this. It's delicate, quiet, and sad—qualities that are incredibly rare in music these days.
