Aiko Shimada Cannot Be Pegged But She Can Be Much Appreciated

Originally posted on December 19, 2008

Singer and songwriter Aiko Shimada does not produce music that is in any way what one might expect, whatever that could be. Her Blue Marble (Tzadik) release goes from piece to piece in a way that fascinates and enthralls. She can sing a rather tender song that is arranged for voice and small string group, she can traverse landscapes of breath, breadth and significance with a recurring guitar pattern and ambient drones interspersed with nicely wrought instrumental interjections while her multi-tracked voice waxes ethereal.

She also lets guitarist Bill Frisell construct tapestries of stringed moodiness that set her voice off dramatically. It’s another really nice one from Tzadik. They impress me with the widely ranging sorts of music they release and the taste with which they select the artists and pieces involved. Someone who likes Bjork may find Aiko a subtle counterpart to such vocalisms, only rather more gentle, perhaps. The music sticks with you after a few hearings. You might want to give a listen yourself.

Brad Lubman's Muscular Avant Garde Music

Originally posted on November 18, 2008

One more in the contemporary classical mode and then it’s on to other things. Brad Lubman cannot be said to be a household name. He is a prominent conductor in new music circles and Tzadik recently put out a disk of his compositions called Insomniac. As with some of the previous composers discussed recently, his music combines in various ways instruments in real-time along with electronically altered and pure electronic sounds. He gives you dramatic contrasts and reference to machine-like tapestries as well as sounds more conventional to the modern concert arena.

He tends to grab the listener a little more aggressively than some of the other composers we’ve been reviewing. His music is a little in-your-face and in the end it makes for a memorable program. This is more muscular material, less involved in dreamscape weaving. The music decidedly will not accept relegation to a background role. You either listen to this music or you turn it off. It demands to be accepted on its own terms. If you agree to that, you get a program of music in a whirlwind. Music for an age where our machines still create infernal clatter out there. It’s consequently more of an urban thing, more industrial in the many ways one could use that word. Good for us when there can still be drastically differing approaches to organizing sound. Here’s one of them—a completely valid way to go about things, executed with a good ear for melding the unusual and the familiar in a personal blend. It will give your ears a workout and you might just like it. Give it a shot.

Electro-Acoustic Music From Maryanne Amacher

Originally posted on November 11, 2008

We make a seemingly wide leap from yesterday’s Teddy Bears to electro-acoustic composer Maryanne Amacher. Her latest CD Sound Characters 2 (Tzadik) constructs sprawling landscapes of electronically altered sounds. The disk contains the long work “Teo.” At least part of this was generated through the acoustical properties of a cavern deep underneath the ancient Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan. It is ambient sound without much in the way of melody or conventional tones, but it’s less harsh than some of the pure noise pieces being created today. What’s interesting to me is that the entire piece holds together with its own internal logic, like some intelligent space alien that is attempting to communicate with humanity in a language not understood.

There’s something about it that seems reasonable and sensible, and yet the meaning component is elusive. I especially like the intensity of the final section, which drones and undulates like a chromium hornets’ nest. If you listen to metal or jambands or whatever, you will find this pretty much of a jar out of your usual ideas of what you should be hearing. It is more of what is happening TODAY in the world, and a good example of it at that. You can ignore it, hate it, embrace it or disdain it, but it is not going away. It is a party where if you don’t like what’s going on YOU are the one that has to leave. Ms. Amacher will stay. And to me she is most welcome to do so.

So what does this have to do with guitars? Nothing. Everything. It is all connected. We are in a period of post-whatever-went-before. A musician should be aware of what comes after what-already-has-been. There never could have been a Dark Side of the Moon without Stockhausen and Cage. And the same sorts of things are true today.

Ito's "Watermill" A Musical Zen Rock Garden of Styles

Originally posted on November 7, 2008

The MUSIC OF THE WORLD and WORLD MUSIC, if you think about it, are two different shades of the same thing. The first implies the sum total of all musics made anywhere at any time; the second resonates with the idea that this a particular music of a particular time and place, somewhere not where the listener happens to be. As technology evolves and intra-communications become ever more possible and intensified, so that regions become less isolated and more exposed to other regions and their music, that distinction can break down.

Now you can have music that combines a number of different world styles, and it may be made in your backyard. Music that is here where we are, but partakes of other and self musics too. Maybe that’s the way it’s always been anyway, but the process took more time in earlier ages, like watching the hour hand on an analog clock instead of the second hand. So American music, some of it at least, involves African and European elements combining with things that happened in the Caribbean, for example, and then transmutes in the US and further transmutes as it spreads out to the rest of the world.

Today’s CD has something of the minute-hand quality of that melding. Composer Teiji Ito’s Watermill (Tzadik) combines Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan, Native American and modern classical and avant elements in this piece that was originally performed for Jerome Robin’s ballet in New York, 1971. We can now listen to this new performance in 2008, so that collapses the time element too. The minute hand has temporarily stopped and we listen.

What of the music? It is compelling, sometimes meditative, sometimes extrovertly agitated, but always interesting. It’s one of those recordings that you have to think a little about where you would file it. And so the artist too. Where does he fit? All over the place. That’s the beauty of Tzadik Records releases, they often challenge accepted categories. That’s good in general and it makes Watermill a musical Zen rock garden with objects you don’t expect to find in there, not just rocks and sand. In your mind, you are challenged to arrange the elements in various ways. And of course there’s no one perfect way. An open age should have open-ended music. Are we there yet? Maybe.

Anthony Pateras Presents His New Music

Originally posted on November 4, 2008

Who is Anthony Pateras? He’s from Australia, is pretty young, and he composes contemporary music for ensembles and electro-acoustic music, which combines natural musical and extra-musical sounds and alters them electronically and/or simply juxtaposes them in different ways. He has a new CD, Chromatophore (Tzadik), and it gives the listener a good idea of what the new Post-Classical concert music can be about. It probably would not appeal to someone looking for the familiar and safe. It’s avant and so one must be prepared to open one’s ears. What it IS should be listened to by anybody wanting to know what’s going on at the edge.

There is a percussion quartet that emphasizes sound as direct sensuality and also other works that present interesting combinations of instruments, voices, and electronic and natural sounds. This is music. It is good music, appealing even, if one opens one’s mind. On Election Day, one’s thoughts and hopes open up to the future. The future will begin to arrive by the end of the day but this music brings the future to you at this very moment. Like it or not, that future will not go away. We must act and embrace it, and by doing so help shape it. Listen and vote.