Brett’s Sound Picks
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Huerco S.’s “The Sacred Dance”
I know little about how Huerco S. makes his electronic music, except that it seems loop-based, it has many layers, and creates a serene sensation of pulsation–circling, echoing, flanging, and chugging along, around and around, almost the same but always somehow changing just enough. My favored track on his For Those Of You Who Have… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: The Field’s “Pink Sun”
“I think that the music of our time has succeeded in achieving a kind of texture in which musical atoms (pitches and intervals) and dualisms (melody and harmony, dissonance and consonance, diatonic and chromatic) become absorbed in an overall background, so that what one hears in a great deal of contemporary music is background brought… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Trance Frendz’s “00:26”
A collaboration between Olafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm, “00: 26” is a beauty: an electronic keyboard sound sequenced in steady pulsation –rhythmic filter, filter-rhythmics– opening and closing in waves, keeping you in it. You can listen to this piece in the video below. Scroll to 28:26-33:50. Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Kara-lis Coverdale’s “Ad_renaline”
“Music is an adjectival experience.” -Simon Frith (Performing Rites, p. 263) The mood of Canadian organist and composer Kara-Lis Coverdale’s “Ad_renaline” is optimistic, though tinged with mystery too. The music is made up of layers of organ (organ-ish?) sounds and voices. We hear three pulsing staccato chords of uneven counts repeating a two measure phrase, with… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Rebekka Karijord’s “Morula”
Rebekka Karijord’s two and a half-minute “Morula” seems built entirely out of voice. It begins with a simple sung arpeggio–a three chord, nine note statement. The voice seems processed, maybe auto-tuned, or maybe sampled. By the third time around its call is responded to in a higher register, with a contrasting shape. We also hear… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Four Tet’s “Morning Side”
Four Tet’s “Morning Side” from his Morning/Evening is a 20-minute track that presents a gentle techno beat as a backdrop for a sample of legendary Indian playback singer Lata Mangeshkar singing “Main Teri Chhoti Behana Hoon” from the 1983 film Souten. The music unfolds gradually with a slow-moving chord progression, chattering hi hats, floaty synthesizer lines,… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Rachel Grimes’ “Book Of Leaves”
If, as the composer Steve Reich once said in the liner notes for his Desert Music, the evolution of tonality can be imagined as a raft bearing a flickering flame floating slowly downriver towards unknown waters, then the modern composer’s use of harmony is always worth thinking through. Pay attention to the colors and shades… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Alva Noto’s “Xerrox”
Two pieces from Alva Noto’s Xerrox that I like: The first piece, “Xerrox 2ndevol”, has three layers at work: a soundscape of buzzing, a drone-chord that oscillates between a root note and its relative up a fifth, and a bubble lead tone that bounces among a few pitches, creating suspense. The second piece, “Xerrox Radieuse”,… Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Nosaj Thing’s “Medic”
Nosaj Thing’s “Medic” is two minutes of a falling four note melody that catches you off guard melo-harmonically and rhythmically–a low register becomes a higher one, a quarter note becomes a quarter note triplet, a slow tempo is revealed as a fast 4/4–reminding you of music’s power to surprise. Here is an excerpt: Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Second Storey’s “Reserved”
I found the artist Second Storey while browsing through a huge BBC new music playlist put together by DJ Mary Anne Hobbs. Second Storey’s track “Reserved” has a few compelling things going on: tightly syncopated percussion sounds playing individual start and stop patterns that dovetail; a sense of ambiance created through a combination of dry… Continue reading
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