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I listen to a lot of music, but it seems I rarely talk about it. This online magazine has sat unused for too long, mostly because of the spammers who sought to co-opt it, and a general lack of interest from readers. So, like a good new release at the store, here's to a fresh outlook on ears :)
Spent the day making changes to the store - no doubt someone pulled some funny looking pages at some point, and Len 37 wrote once to say that their were no products on the store - doh! Everything should be fixed now, and Patrick must want a raise because he said it looked awesome ;) I can't stop tinkering with the site lately, but hopefully it's for the better.
Anyway, on music, watching the new Looper/John Tillbury DVD as I write this (with one eye, that is) and I'm quite impressed. The visuals are one concept, layers of images at various transparencies, which change to give a different foggy composite that wags back and forth a bit. Faces, bodies, textiles, many religious icons, and who-knows-what-else emerges - right now a fascinating juxtaposition of lips and eyes with something that looks like a turban shifts on an axis. Before it seemed like Barbara Eden in her Jeannie garb was trying to emerge out of a cloud. Odd stuff, and not really something to stare at continuously (unless you've taken opium or the like!) I'd love to see something like this on the wall at a club or bar... if they'd play the music too.
But that's unlikely, given that it's very minimal progression, AMM-like scraping, bowing, rumbling, really beautiful and rich sound textures. Tilbury plays gently on top of that, so gently that the piano simply hints at melodies and progressions. Looper are Nikos Veliotis on cello, Martin Küchen on sax and Ingar Zach on percussion. I've heard a good amount of Ingar Zach, but Looper as a unit is new to me. Their restraint within a good deal of sonic pressure is impressive, the cello providing continuous tone as Küchen plays with an amazing subtlely that hardly sounds like a saxophone. Haunting and gorgeous.
A great follow-up to the new NVO titles I listened to last night, , Heribert Friedl's excellent label with artists like Bernhard Günter and Richard Garet. We just started selling this label after listening to the impressive promos they sent. It reminds me considerably of the Portugese Creative Sources label, really understated slow moving but sonically fascinating improvisations. More and more I find this music something like a wooly (and often erratic) blanket that I can wrap myself up in while I'm cataloging CDs late at night.
Looks like MASS has ended for the night, so no doubt it's time to take a break.
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