music reviews
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Fluid Metrical Feels, Delay Effects, And Rhythm In Nils Frahm’s “A Place” and “#2”
Over the past few weeks I’ve been spending quality time with Nils Frahm’s latest recording, All Melody. The album alternates between intimate solo piano work that is perhaps Frahm’s signature quietudes sound, and more expansive (and long) pieces built upon rolling electronic keyboard arpeggios swirling in delay-effected, rhythm deluges. Not that we need to categorize Continue reading
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On More From Less: Haim’s “Right Now”
“Why does it have to take off in a conventional sense? Enjoy the layers instead.” (worst coast) “I don’t understand why people are complaining that this isn’t ‘going anywhere.’ Girl, it does not have to go anywhere! You hear that raw emotion in her voice? Yes queen!” (Becca Britton) Haim is a pop-rock band from Los Angeles Continue reading
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One Way To Listen To Music: Notes On Mark Fell’s “Multistability 6-B”
One way to listen to music–and by to I mean up and over and through and around music–is to imagine it as proposing a set of ideas for our consideration. From this perspective we can think about any music as sonically embodying, modeling, and organizing itself through these ideas. As we listen the ideas become Continue reading
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What Is Adele Doing That So Many People Respond To?
The English pop megastar Adele has an epic voice and it’s this quality of epic-ness that sets her apart and draws us towards her music. What makes her voice epic? Her flawless sense of pitch, her phrasing, her all out power. Most of us who aren’t singers or have no particular interest in the voice–this Continue reading
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Notes On The Africa Express Version Of Terry Riley’s “In C”
“Rules are not as important as results.” – Terry Riley (from an interview here) If you happened to be knowledgeable about the rhythmic riches of African musics and also happened to attend one of the early performances of Terry Riley’s pioneering minimalist piece “In C” in 1964, you might have noticed that something was up. You Continue reading
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Notes On A Sample In A Song By Drake
In 1972 a Miami-based R&B keyboardist and singer-songwriter named Timmy Thomas had a hit song with “Why Can’t We Live Together” which topped the charts and sold several million copies. Two notable things about Thomas’s song are its instrumentation and structure. Alongside Sly and The Family Stone’s “Family Affair”, “Why Can’t We Live Together” was Continue reading
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Outsider Music II: Notes On Moondog’s “A New Sound For An Old Instrument”
“I’m into swing. I get that from the American Indians like the Sioux, the Arapahoe and the Apache. They have this drum-beat, heart-beat. Bom, Bom, Bom…I got that influence when I was six years old in Wyoming. My father took us to an Arapahoe Indian reservation. The chief let me sit on his lap and Continue reading
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Notes On Aphex Twin’s “Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt 2”
Quick on the heels of last fall’s Syro, Aphex Twin, aka Richard James, recently released an EP of computer-controlled acoustic instruments, titled appropriately enough, Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2. I had heard about James’s collection of such instruments and even saw a photo somewhere of a snare drum attached to which were metal claws holding Continue reading
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On Less Is More: Lorenzo Senni’s Music
Lorenzo Senni has an interesting musical thing going on. On his recent recordings Superimpositions (2014) and Quantum Jelly (2012) he makes a kind of electronic trance music that does away with the beats, leaving only pulsing, echoing, and arpeggiating synthesizer chord sequences. Without the metrical context of the relentless 4/4 thump, the synth chords are Continue reading
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Notes On Marsen Jules’ “Beautyfear”
Have you listened to the music of Marsen Jules? Jules is a German electronic musician whose music I first came across some ten years ago. His sound is a kind of abstract yet atmospheric minimal wash of slow-moving and multi-layered ambient chords played using analog synthetic string timbres. Having recently found Jules latest recording, Beautyfear, on Continue reading
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