Thomas Brett
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Three (Fictional) Grooves On (Real) Advice
It takes as long as it takes. 1. That was her advice to me. Take your time–meaning: don’t go slow per se, but move at just the right cadence and clip, claim the time, make it yours, grasp its contours, bring it with you, take it somewhere, play with it and examine its parts, unravel… Continue reading
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On Finding Cross-Sensory Inspiration: The Spell Of Michel Bras
The Michelin-starred, self-taught French chef Michel Bras may as well be a music composer, such is his multi-sensory approach to his culinary craft. In the ambient and thoughtful documentary Inventing Cuisine: Michel Bras (2008), directed by Paul Lacoste, we see Bras at work on the kitchen–poaching fish, peeling veggies, brooding over his (fascinating) sketchbooks, and… Continue reading
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On The Sound Of Epic Achievement And Luxury: A Rolex Soundtrack
While overdosing on Wimbledon 2012 TV coverage over the past few weeks, I noticed a recurring ad for Rolex watches that features Roger Federer. In the 30-second spot the narrator begins by asking “When is greatness achieved?” as we see a montage of Federer’s milestone wins throughout his career interspersed with still shots of him… Continue reading
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Moving Serenity: On The Resonances Of Scott Jurek’s Eat and Run
At first glance, ultrarunner Scott Jurek is an odd bird: he enjoys running astonishingly long and punishing distances like 100+ miles. But at a second, longer glance by way of his lucid autobiography Eat and Run, Jurek seems to be motivated less by extremes as ends in themselves and more as means to help him… Continue reading
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Content, Form, And Versioning A Song Everybody Knows: Gotye’s “Somebody I Used To Know”
Sometime not overly long ago, Gotye’s song “Somebody I Used To Know” went very viral–becoming a song meme that was (and still is) hard to escape, whose video on YouTube has been viewed an astonishing 259 million times (or by some 518 million ears!). At least two or three of those views were mine, the… Continue reading
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On The Filtering Of World Music: A Nexus Percussion Performance
Formed in 1971, Nexus is a Toronto-based percussion ensemble that has been making hard to classify music using a massive array of instruments for over three decades. Their repertoire spans experimental free improvisation, West African and North Indian drumming, contemporary classical pieces (including commissioned works from the likes of Toru Takemitsu and Steve Reich), original… Continue reading
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Still Centers: On Harold Budd’s Piano Music
“I realized I had minimalized myself out of a career. It had taken ten years to reduce my language to zero but I loved the process of seeing it occur and not knowing when the end would come. By then I had opted out of avant-garde music generally; it seemed self-congratulatory and risk-free and my… Continue reading
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On Amateur Cultural Critique
In the Sunday New York Times magazine a few weeks ago there’s an article by Sam Anderson, “How Roland Barthes Gave Us the TV Recap”, that explores the pioneering work of French literary critic Roland Barthes (1915-1980) as well as the importance of consumer-generated cultural critique. Anderson writes: “To my mind, the thing that’s exploding… Continue reading
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On The Strange Sources Of Blog Traffic
One interesting thing about keeping a blog is that as you post on various topics and include keywords relating to those topics in your post headings, your material gradually enters the ocean of searchable data on the Internet. So when someone is looking for something that you’ve posted on, there’s a decent chance they could… Continue reading
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On The Nature Of Blogs II: Matching Form And Content To Capture Meaning
As I have said elsewhere, practically speaking this blog is more for me than for you, sure, and tries to ask questions about musical things as I encounter them. And by things I mean: musical sounds, instruments, artists, aesthetics, technologies, codes and systems of signification, compositional techniques and performance practices, and so on. But metaphorically… Continue reading
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