Brett’s Sound Picks
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Dominique Lawalree’s “Listen to the Quiet Voice” (c. 1978-1982)
(Musical rigor wrapped in simplicity.) Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Kit Downes’ “Kings”
(This organ music is mobile, regal, and torsioned, like a state of being you’ll aspire to. Does it sound like Olivier Messiaen filtered through Steve Reich—contemplation meeting sped up thoughts, chords refracted in rhythms—showing the travels of musical influence, from them to him to us?) Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Leadcutter John’s “Resurrection”
(Beginnings can grab you, middles might compel, but sometimes you listen to seven minutes and forty-six seconds of music to arrive at its beguiling final three.) Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Paulstretching A-Ha’s “Take On Me”
(Paulstretch is software that slows down music to a fraction of its original speed, turning a pop song into a glacial soundscape.) Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Oliver Alary’s “Pieces For Sine Wave Oscillators”
(You wouldn’t think sine waves could be so warm, so evocative of musical places you didn’t know you wanted to be. This is a beautiful recording.) Continue reading
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Brett’s Sound Picks: Ben Lukas Boysen’s “Golden Times I”
The music opens with a rolling triplet piano and ghosting guitar figure that takes the non-obvious harmonic route. There’s a melody now–a violin soaring in the midst of the piano/guitar clouds, and underneath more weather building in electronic bass burble and far away processed percussion. The system grows by cycling around and around, never showing its… Continue reading
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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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