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On Soft Fascination And Music
While reading Wallace J. Nichols’s book Blue Mind, I came across a passage explaining nature’s capacity to clear our minds. Stephen Kaplan uses the phrase “soft fascination” to describe the involuntary sensation of being effortlessly caught up in the sounds, sights, scents, and feels of nature. He then explains how this experience gives our minds room… Continue reading
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Notes On Elizabeth Margulis’s “On Repeat: How Music Plays The Mind”
I began reading this book like a runner hitting a downhill, rushing forward with exhilaration and abandon, carried along by the gravitational pull of my interest in its subject. My initial read-through was quick, and I’ll certainly be returning to its pages, walking back up the uphills to take in the details. To say the… Continue reading
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Two Reviews Of Books On Electronic Music Making And Remixology
My reviews of DJ Culture in the Mix (Bloomsbury 2013) and Remixology (Reaktion Books 2014) are available here and here. 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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Notes On Toggling Between (Disparate?) Musics
Lately I’ve been thinking about toggling. I think about it as I switch among various go-to apps on my phone–email, news, Twitter, blog, music player, Wikipedia, calendar, amazon.com–back and forth, quickly, seamlessly, without thinking much about it. The process, made possible by the technology of my phone, feels like the essence of thinking itself: continuous… Continue reading
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Notes On Oval’s Voa
One of the most interesting aspects of Oval’s recent recording, Voa (2013), a collaboration between German electronic musician Markus Popp and a series of singers from South America, is that its instrumental parts don’t necessarily do the things you might expect them to do. In a recent interview Popp explains his interest in acoustic instruments:… Continue reading
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On Endless Beginnings
Some twenty years ago the professor for my Psych 101 class once said “Never be afraid to be a beginner. Because you’re going to be a beginner over and over, all your life.” It was good advice, and it came to mind recently as I was browsing through old music files on my computer. In… Continue reading
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Krista Tippett On Listening
Listening to a podcast, my ears perked up when I heard the day’s guest, Krista Tippett, talk about what it means to listen. Tippett wasn’t referring to music listening per se, yet her words had me thinking anew about what listening in a musical context might entail. Here are some quotes, along with elaborations on… Continue reading
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