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From The Archives: Bill Bruford’s “Bruford And The Beat”
“Sometimes faults can be turned to good advantage. A musician is the total not only of his good things but his faults too. And when you can understand your faults and live with them and turn them to creative use, that can be of interest.” – Bill Bruford The two things that made the drummer Bill… Continue reading
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Music Distillation: On Nest’s “Stillness”
Four phrases, five notes– cluster broke into fragments, clouds of emptiness. Continue reading
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Music Distillation: On King Crimson’s “Nuages (That Which Passes, Passes Like Clouds)”
Skittering sub bump, synth chords floating harmonies, sobbing lead guitar. Continue reading
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On The Music In Apple’s FaceTime Commercial
“Seeing music as a model could seem cold or trivializing. But the urgencies and the passions of living are among the things that music models: music doesn’t belong to the detached world of mathematical modeling. And there is nothing trivial about the musical enterprise: it is far removed from toy model airplanes or fashion models… Continue reading
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On African And Electronic Music Influences In Dawn Of Midi’s “Dysnomia”
“Dysnomia is an album about time; it is an expression of the fractal unfolding of the present, demonstrated through rhythm.” – Aakaash Israni, bassist There’s a part near the end of John Collins’ excellent documentary on West African rhythm, Listening To The Silence: African Cross-Rhythms, where Collins makes a striking observation. African music, he says, is… Continue reading
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Music Distillation: On Dawn Of Midi’s “Algol”
Stasis as tension, stable fragments as timeline, offbeat becomes on. Read more about music distillations here. Continue reading
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Music Distillation: On AlunaGeorge’s “Your Drums, Your Love”
Triple pitch drumming, saccharine auto-tuned voice, synthetic joy-noise. Continue reading
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On Musical Time And Running Speed
One night I was playing my part, listening to the part of another musician. All systems were running smoothly, and we were in sync. Then, suddenly, I had a sense that the other musician was pushing the time, just a hair. My ears perk up: Oh, this is interesting. I was sure of my sense that… Continue reading
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Borrowed Thoughts: Notes On Four Words
curiosity ~ desire to know intuition ~ the faculty of attaining direct knowledge or cognition without rational thought and inference kind ~ of a sympathetic or helpful nature wonder ~ rapt attention at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience Continue reading
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Music Distillation: On James Blake’s “Digital Lion”
Chromatic voices, chords and oscillating bass, halftime pulse, steady. Read more about music distillations here. Continue reading
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