music
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On Another Kind Of Wonder
My new recording, Another Kind Of Wonder, is available now. Here is the first track, “Splash”: The recording is available at cdbaby. Continue reading
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On Pantha Du Prince And Bell Laboratory’s Elements Of Light
“I think techno music at the moment is just an infrastructure. Basically, it’s not a musical term anymore. It used to be more like straight, technical funk. Nowadays, it is more of an infrastructure where you have certain beat patterns that you can call techno music. But in the end, it’s a social and economic infrastructure. The name… Continue reading
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Microthought: On Musical Process
Music. Music finds a way around us. Music, that subliminal force, finds a way around us, through our ears, into our hearts. Your Music might not be my Music, that subliminal force that finds a way around us, through our ears, into our hearts. If we traded musics, you and I, do we trade minds… Continue reading
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Zadie Smith On Joni Mitchell’s Blue
In her recent essay in the New Yorker, novelist Zadie Smith recounts her listening history with the music of Joni Mitchell–specifically, Mitchell’s 1971 album Blue. Here is the title song from the record: Smith describes encountering Mitchell’s idiosyncratic and alternate tuning jazzy-folk music for the first time while in college and hating it. But years… Continue reading
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On Sounding A Bigger Energy: Mumford And Sons
When I first saw Mumford and Sons on Saturday Night Live recently I wasn’t sure what to make of them–which is my fault not theirs. They seem like a throwback to an acoustic bluegrass-folk-rock sound. No synthesizers, sequencers or drum machines, just acoustic guitar and bass, piano/organ, banjo and dobro, a horn section, sing-song group… Continue reading
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On Voice, Authenticity, And Not Being Fake
In a recent online interview excerpted in The Guardian, musician and Portishead member Geoff Barrow discusses the idea of singing with a “fake” voice. Leading the pack in Barrow’s view is the late Amy Winehouse, a white singer who sang, some people say disparagingly, like a black jazz or soul singer from an earlier era–or… Continue reading
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On Small Things And Big Pleasures: David Guetta’s “Titanium”
I get excited by small things. The other day I bought a mechanical pencil to highlight books with as I read. While holding the pencil that evening and underlining, I was struck by the pleasure this $2.19 purchase had brought. It’s precise, light, and helps do a job, with the added grace of having an… Continue reading
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On Four Tet’s Good Taste
“It’s very rare for me to use instruments or synths or anything like that.” – Kieran Hebden I have long felt that the electronic musician Four Tet (aka Kieran Hebden) has good taste. He makes what critics once labelled “folktronica” music, a term that probably came about in an effort to describe how Hebden deftly… Continue reading
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On Capturing Thoughts In Formation: Notes On Listening
It would be a blog post about listening. *** It would be about the relationship between what we listen to and what we create as musicians. About the tension between wanting to listen to many (new) musics briefly and listening to one (older, familiar) music repeatedly. Is one approach “better” than the other? Or–as it’s… Continue reading
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