blog

diamond halo grenade

simon — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 22:13:14 GMT

saw this today, damien hearst's $100 million diamond skull-piece... waste of energy maybe, but dude made it, and it reminded me of this song: http://www.yousendit.com/download/elNLRm84TkxsMHcwTVE9PQ check the making of the skull here:: http://www.supertouchblog.com/2007/07/21/techniquethe-making-of-damien-hirsts-diamond-skull/

go see this movie!

simon — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:20:54 GMT

paprika is sort of like an art-house hybrid of waking life and the matrix, amped up on psychedelics and creative imagination. if anything that's an understatement... super intense. go see it!!

one more beat for dilla

simon — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:48:41 GMT

i was reading a piece by the roots' drummer ahmir thompson (questlove) yesterday... he was talking about reactions to Voodoo, d'angelo's soul masterpiece from 2000.... about how it's kind of a litmus test for how a person feels about music..... he had played it for friends of his & people were just breaking down completely... laughter, tears, the whole deal... because of how it affected them..... quest writes about "Africa," the final song on the album, that it "gives you that sad feeling, cuz you know that's the last song you're gonna hear." i've been absorbing & reflecting a lot on the music of j dilla, who left the earth last year. i was first consciously aware of dilla's work when Donuts came out, a few days before his death (although i had listened to & loved much of his work & productions for Tribe, Pharcyde, Common, and many others, without knowing who he was)..... Donuts. I hadn't heard anything like it, ever. i quickly gathered everything else i could find.... & when i found the unreleased beat tapes, it was like the beggar who one day opens his pockets to find them overflowing with precious jewels...... the beat tapes are like snowflakes.... just raw creativity, some literally made from a hospital bed, dilla embodying the essence of skillful means & compassionate action in the face of his own mortality..... and listening to them you could be forgiven for thinking that they could go on forever.... there are that many ideas & styles going on. i was overjoyed at the prospect of that much more undiscovered work. as the obsessive archivist i sometimes am, i sought out all of these tapes..... and although i wished for an endless supply, i knew in the back of my mind that they were finite. the artist who made them had died, and there wasn't going to be anything else quite like it. i found the last tape today. many of the tracks i had heard before - this one i hadn't: http://www.yousendit.com/download/WFJWeVduQVNCSWMwTVE9PQ listening to it now is bittersweet, like much of dilla's late work. i urge y'all to check it out..... give thanks.

street art goes boom

simon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:57:51 GMT

yo! anywon in new york go check this out before they whitewash it:: http://www.fecalface.com/SF/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=437&Itemid=92 the beautiful//decaying tapestry of street art is won of the reasons i love new york.... i remember walking through downtown ny for the first time & this building totally blew my mind.... anyway wooster collective doing an installation at 11 spring st. before they clean it up & convert it to what? that's right more condos!!! :) peace yall.

(this is yr brain )( on burning man)

simon — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:18:56 GMT

noah's ark

simon — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 23:58:44 GMT

morning sun music:: http://download.yousendit.com/88E5E1C10B9BFFF1

Steve Reich // Erik Davis

simon — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:51:09 GMT

I'm just listening to Steve Reich drop science on everything under the sun, musically speaking.... thought some a yall might enjoy it. Reich is a minimalist composer/musician who set the vibe for a lot of electronic music today.... he's talking with terri gross on a radio show called fresh air, here: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&agg=0&prgDate=10-06-2006&view=storyview it also reminded me of a great piece by Erik Davis on the African aesthetic in jungle, drum & bass and dub music.. kind of a cool dialogue happenin... via techgnosis:: http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=articles&cat=music&file=chunkfrom-2005-02-21-1551-0.txt and here> http://www.techgnosis.com/chunks.php?sec=articles&cat=music&file=chunkfrom-2005-02-17-1532-0.txt

anish kapoor

simon — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 16:57:15 GMT

originally published in the Guardian UK: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1877909,00.html Into the deep Sculptor Anish Kapoor invites Simon Hattenstone to his studio to talk size, price tags and whether his art is really all about vaginas Saturday September 23, 2006 The Guardian 'My art is upside down and inside out' ... Anish Kapoor with the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago. Photograph: AP On Anish Kapoor's table, a posh pen, a primitive calculator and a state-of-the-art mobile phone sit next to each other, a little too neat for comfort. The table is large and, except for a folder, empty. There is no sign of Kapoor. I open the folder to pass time - it contains proposals for renewing the landscape of a major British region. Against a white wall, box file after box file, containing the names of projects and cities and companies, stand to attention. Near the far end of the room is an espresso machine. On a spare wall hangs a deep red abstract, gash-like, made of ripped cotton. It looks more like an architect's office than an artist's. Perhaps appropriately so - much of Kapoor's work straddles the two. Many of his recent public sculptures (commissioned by art funds, architects and local government) are used to redefine public spaces, casting new light on the relationship between natural and man-made environments. They are easy to spot: typically huge curved steel abstracts, literally reflecting the world, with hollow, womb-like interiors. Article continues -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kapoor, 52, arrives, full of life, a small, squishy man with glue on his trousers and a big smile on his face. He is Indian and Jewish and sounds terribly British. Unlike many artists, he enjoys talking about his work. Perhaps his best-known piece is his least typical - a literal representation of an ear trumpet that filled the turbine hall at Tate Modern and was, at 150m long, a triumph of scale over substance. He makes coffee and brings over a small model for us to play with. This is his latest project - a huge steel dish, three storeys high, that has just gone up outside the Rockefeller Center in New York, where it will sit for a month before, hopefully, finding a buyer with as much money as space to display it. Sky Mirror is a monumental version of a sculpture installed in Nottingham five years ago. "The piece is a concave mirror," he says, "rather like a big shaving mirror, in fact. It's 10m in diameter, a very simple form. What happens, of course, is that it turns everything upside down." Kapoor likes the cultural connotations of turning the world on its head. "The upside down, symbolically speaking, it's one of those perennial images of death." But it has a beautiful, life-affirming effect, too - the sky and clouds carpet topsy-turvy New York in a blue-white haze. On its convex side, the mirror morphs passers-by into elongated weirdos. The reflections make it an ever-changing artwork, depending on where you're standing and on the weather. Kapoor's most famous reflecting sculpture is the great steel bean, Cloud Gate, in Chicago, 10m tall, 20m wide and 110 tonnes in weight. It is by far the most expensive piece he has produced, costing $25m and paid for largely by the cake-making Sara Lee Corporation and the City of Chicago. It is thought to be one of the world's priciest commissioned artworks. Though Kapoor has a wonderful way with shapes, what much of his work is about is actually nothing - the nothingness at the heart of life, the hollow at the heart of objects. He has come so far since the early abstract sculptures that sat on gallery floors like aesthetically pleasing turds, yet the work remains defiantly Kapoorish - meditative and playful, childlike and adult, otherworldly and gynaecological, populist and esoteric. Likewise, in Kapoor himself, artist, designer, philosopher, magician, physicist and businessman happily converge in the one man. There are two parts to making art, he says: what you look at and how you choose to look at it. "The whole question of what it means to look is complicated. There's the observer, the lover, the voyeur. One thing that artists are very good at is intimacy, not simply saying, come and look at me, but come and look at me, I'm part of your life in some way, can engage in some hopefully deep meaningful way." So is he primarily observer, voyeur or lover? "All those things. That's what engagement means - one passes through different phases. I would like to make work that entices one to be a lover, frankly." Before meeting Kapoor, I looked at a book of his paintings. Like the sculpture on the office wall, almost all are red, gynaecological gashes. If Rothko had been vaginally obsessed, he might have produced work like this. Would Kapoor agree that, if art were divided into masculine and feminine, his would fall into the latter category? "I'd agree with you. Tell me why," he says playfully. "Well," I say, "everything you paint or make seems like a fanny in one way or another." "Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha!" I don't think I've ever heard such booming laughter. "My art is upside down and inside out. Absolutely. I've always said that. You might be quoting me there, hahahahaha! I would say that to make new art, you need to make new space. The modernist space, all the great modern art, has been like the rocket, phallic, onwards and upwards. The new space is the opposite of that. It's in the gutter, it's deep, dark, inverted, it's inside out. If you think what the space of the internet is, it's a curious non-space - it's like it's turning itself inside out because that way you can create so much more space by going in and deep. So this is, in a curious way, the future, and it links psychologically to the past and, of course, as you say, it's sexual." He likes to answer a question fully, does Kapoor. Would he say that, as an artist, he has reclaimed the vagina? "I would not disagree with you." He starts laughing. "Hahahahahahaha!" It goes on so long that it becomes disarming. I'm not sure if he's laughing at me or with me. "Forgive me!" he finally says. "One of the things I've worked with a lot is darkness. I'm interested in the way we carry darkness within us. I'm not talking about when the lights go off, I'm talking about an inner self, and it links to Freud, and it links to the uncanny, that half-known that lurks in the black." Kapoor was born in Mumbai and went to school in the city of Dehradun. His mother was an Iraqi Jew, the daughter of a cantor, his father a secular Hindu. The family didn't keep kosher, but to all intents and purposes it was a traditional Jewish household. He says his father, a hydrographer, was a modern man, a cosmopolitan man at ease with himself and happy to marry outside his faith. But the young Kapoor wasn't so at ease with himself. The only non-Hindu at school, he always felt like an outsider. His parents moved to Monaco, then to Toronto, where his father became director of the International Hydrographic Organisation. But Kapoor didn't go with them. At 17, he moved to Israel to live on a kibbutz. It was 1971, not long after the Six Day War, and he had gone there to realise his dream of the good life. "It was the utopian post-hippy period. There was no idea of Palestinians or any of those uncomfortable things, Palestinians were thought of as Israeli Arabs. There was such a deep socialist collective ideal. But by 1973 when I left, I felt something wasn't right. There was a certain discomfort, a growing nationalism." He hitchhiked across Europe, arrived in England and, in the midst of the three-day week, studied at the then radical Hornsey College of Art, where he became even less certain of his identity. He set up as an artist, paid the bills by teaching, and went on a downward spiral. He ended up in psychotherapy. Had he flipped? "That is one way of putting it. I just had a very deep crisis of ... you know ... I don't know ... it's very hard to say what it was, but anyway it was a deep crisis. Psychoanalysis is the hardest work I've ever done." He didn't come out of psychoanalysis for 15 years. Why was it so painful? "Because it is painful. Looking at what you are and what there is, it's deeply painful. I wasn't doing this out of some intellectual exercise; I was doing this because I desperately needed to." Because he was unhappy? "Exactly, and I felt I couldn't be an artist until I'd done it. Until then I felt that my work defined me, that if I didn't work I'd somehow fade away, a terrible feeling that if I don't fulfil this part of me, then I'm nothing. Since I finished the psychoanalysis, I really remember that moment where I felt the work is the work, and me is me." Whereas the received wisdom is that inner turmoil makes for good art, Kapoor believes he has become a better artist since making peace with himself. Did he come out of psychoanalysis knowing what was at the root of his unhappiness? It's not as simple as that, he says. "I'm not interested in psychobiography. Tracey Emin, I'm afraid, it just isn't for me." He couldn't attempt to explain his life in terms of facts and figures, beds and tents: "It's not that you discover something and then you're fine. It's a process. But being an artist is like that. Art is not, 'Here I've got an idea and I'm going to go and form it.' A lot of artists work like that, but I don't think it makes very good art. My view is quite the contrary - the process is akin to psychoanalysis. You spend time in the studio, you do something good, bad or indifferent, then you watch it and allow it to propose a language." He has practised Buddhism for 15 years - what attracts him to the religion is the contemplative open space at its heart. We head off into the bowels of the building where his art is being made. It smells of childhood glue, the type used to stick Airfix models together. There are men and women at work, drilling, smoothing and painting a number of sizeable abstractions for a major new show at the Lisson Gallery in London. The shapes are cavernous, inviting you to stick your hand or head in. He shows me a sculpture that retreats into the floor. "This dark space in the floor is something that has never been done before. It's an idea about space that never existed. It's something that happened to me. I didn't think it up, it happened to me in the studio as I just described." He seems awed by his own imagination. When Kapoor became an artist, it never occurred to him that he would be able to live off his work. There were only 10 or 20 artists in the country who could. It was in 1981, soon after he started psychoanalysis, that he first made decent money from selling his art - £100. Shortly after, the Tate bought a piece for £3,000. Did he go mad with the money? "No, I'm terribly boring. Even then, I thought, what this means is I can rent my studio, I can do my work, I might be able to stop teaching." He was in the vanguard of a new group of British sculptors, including Richard Wentworth, Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley and Richard Deacon. In 1990 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale and in 1991 he won the Turner Prize. His work now sells for a fortune. Which is lucky because it costs a fortune to make. I ask how much the piece in New York cost, and he comes over all coy. "More than £10,000?" I hazard a guess. "I'd say!" "Surely not more than 100 grand?" "I'd say!" "More than 200 grand?" "Actually, that's the last figure I'm going to go to. Much more than £200,000! Hahahahaha!" And the laughter echoes round the studio. "You can imagine to make something of that scale, 10m round, that's as big as a house, that's a big thing of polished stainless steel, it's incredibly difficult to do, first of all, and a very expensive thing to do." What will they do with it in the end? "We'll sell it, I hope." At a profit? "Of course, millions and trillions! Hahahaha! From the outside, money makes no sense in the art world, but the truth of the matter is there's a logic to it. It's like any other commodity." What's the most he's sold a piece for? "I'm not going to tell you!" I tell him I've read that one piece sold for £1m. "I would say there are some that have sold for much more than that. Talk to the Lisson Gallery and they will tell you. Hahahahaha!" "Typically, a work of Anish's will go for somewhere between £75,000 for a small-edition piece to £700,000-£1m for a major work," says Nicholas Logsdail, the Lisson's owner. Logsdail met Kapoor at his graduation exhibition 25 years ago and they began working together soon after. "I walked into this room with pigment works on the floor and thought they were so powerful. Anish was in his mid-20s and was a shy, rather boyish-looking man." Kapoor is slightly younger than his peers in the group that became known as the New British Sculptors, and Logsdail says he found it frustrating being treated as a junior. "He believed he was as good as, if not better than, the others. It was clear that he had this absolute fuck-you determination to make his work. I guess this comes from his background; his sense of belonging and not belonging to the culture." What does he think Kapoor's art is about? "The big subject is the origin of all things; the beginning and the end. Of course it has sexual connotations, but it's deeper than that. Our experience as human beings is that we come out of the dark into a world of light and consciousness, and we return to darkness. But we only know about the light." He pauses. "Anish gets very irritated when people talk of the spirituality of his work. But [his work] takes you out of your normal state of consciousness, or unconsciousness even, into a different state. You have no choice but to be engaged, unless you choose to turn away." Logsdail says he has come across few artists who have managed this, citing Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman as rare examples. He is astonished that Kapoor has managed continually to create something new while reaching an "endgame" - what he means is that the work continues to be different while being the same. "This will be very evident at the new exhibition." The show has cost the gallery a fortune, he says, well over £1m. Is he hoping to sell all the work? "I bloody well hope so." Back in the studio, I ask Kapoor if it shocks him that his work sells for so much? He ums and ahs, before answering with admirable honesty. "You know, when you've been doing this for a while, you get used to it. No, it doesn't shock me. It's not immodest to say, it's just the truth. I can sell everything I make." What's the most extravagant thing he's done with his money? "We're building a new house." He lives with art historian Susanne Spicale; they married in 1995, around the time he finished psychotherapy, and have two sons. Where's the house? "Chelsea, so that is a pretty big extravagance." Today Kapoor is very much an insider. He recently replaced Chris Ofili on the Tate's 12-member committee of trustees and he is often seen at parties, hobnobbing with the glitterati and literati. As we wander round the studio, he instructs his employees. There are between 12 and 15 people working for him at the moment, many of them artists in their own right. He says they rarely leave, so he must be doing something right. He shows me the unfinished piece he's doing with Salman Rushdie - two bronze boxes and loads of red wax entrail-y things, surrounded by circles of text, the result of a 20-year dialogue with Rushdie. Whereas many of Kapoor's pieces make you swoon with their heavenly otherness, this is all hell, fire and damnation. What's it about? "Sex and death." Now we're heading for a mirror receding into the wall. He tells me to stick my head inside, and as I disappear into the ghostly dark, he cackles manically. More death than sex this time. The magical mystery tour continues with a model for a 6m-wide mirror ball going up in Washington. He tells me to walk up to it. As I do, I get bigger and bigger until the image flips on me, and I'm standing on my head. Does Kapoor think of himself as a magician? "Absolutely." He smiles. "I think magic is wondrous." He stops. "I hope it's more than a trick, though." He talks about his interest in public space, how his work has become more architecturally based, and shows me a model for a subway in Naples. It's beautiful: classically, vaginally Kapoor. He shows me where the shops will be. "Ah, the womb superstore," I say. "Exactly, you've got it. You've got it. You're obsessed with this idea." "You're the one obsessed." He laughs. "There are only two kinds of form. The one that sticks out and the form that sticks in. Everything else is flat, that's a fact." He apologises for this being a model - models are pathetic representations of the true majesty of a sculpture, he explains. "Sculpture has its scale. A thing can only be a thing at its given scale." Isn't there a danger that size will become everything - that every new city will want you to do something bigger than the last? He nods. "Sometimes one is under the illusion that bigger is deeper or more meaningful. Mostly it's an illusion. Bigger is sometimes less meaningful." His favourite artist, Barnett Newman, understood all about that, he says. "He used to say that scale is not a matter of size, scale is a matter of content, so the deeper and richer a thing, the bigger it is." What does he love so much about Newman? "He was a deeply abstract artist who made no referential thing at all, ever, yet his work is full of deep content, real content." He bursts out laughing. "Deep is a word I use a lot. I'm really interested in it. Depth of all kinds."

interesting times...

simon — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 23:56:10 GMT

found this photo in the paper today.... something like the horrible beauty of chaos, reminds me of Goya or the grid of the enlightenment smashed to bits, tangled in the lines//

brightblack morning light

simon — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 06:19:22 GMT

this is crucial! new music from brightblack// west coast avant-folk-rock collective.... everybody daylight>>http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=CB4A3A6B255976E8 and.. from a split-lp with bonnie prince billy... the organ at the end is nice:: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=2D3E1AA14E33CC3E

untitled #108

simon — Tue, 30 May 2006 22:02:36 GMT

click on the photo for the life-siz'd version....

juana molina :: four tet remix

simon — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:20:36 GMT

i was psyched to find this.... juana molina is an awesome singer/songwriter from argentina that drapes beautiful melodies over minimalist electronic backdrops. kieran hebden (four tet) is on point with the remix & their styles vibe so well together. depending on how many peeps have downloaded it it may not work for ya.... but it's worth a shot:: http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=F1E229484CCBDB44

sundrop

simon — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 17:55:05 GMT

sound: soft wind thru trees and bells

water mirror

simon — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 04:10:15 GMT

winter turns to spring

simon — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 22:46:09 GMT

STS9 NYE Review

simon — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 18:20:48 GMT

originally posted at www.glidemagazine.com On the surface, there’s something ironic about a STS9 new year’s show. For a band with its early roots in the cosmic neon arithmetic of natural time and the Mayan calendar, the 31st of December might not be that important, except for it being the biggest party nights of the year. But for the past few years (since 2000, really), they’ve been able to pull off a good trick – transmuting the pent up potential energy of New Year’s eve into huge creative explosions. Now that I look back on it, it was easy to tell from the start that things were different for this run. 2005 has seen the shift in the band’s music that began in 2003 come into its full expression. Gone is the shakiness, the sometimes out-of-tune fuckups, and the uncertainty that sometimes surfaces in their extended sound trips. That’s been replaced by a sound that, although still instantly recognizable, has become for lack of a better word, “bigger.” If there was a slogan for 2006, it might be “STS9, now bigger.” Almost all of their songs have been reworked and expanded upon in recent months, some with entirely new sections and rhythms. And instead of taking it easy in their newfound free time (finally earned through years of steady touring), they have redoubled their energies and come away from months of rigorous practice in their adopted home-base of Santa Cruz with about a dozen new songs, including a few major works. But all that was still floating in the air by show time on the 29th, like the electric, effortless and familiar vibe fans have come to expect from these kinds of events. So, the shows on the 29th and 30th were big. Highlights on Friday included a surprisingly powerful Satori opener and a Baraka encore that was probably among the best jams played the entire weekend. The energy continued to build on the 30th, which brought a scorching version of the band’s classic funk turned drum and bass heater “Ramone & Emiglio” early in the first set. All of these exhibited probably the most promising trend of 2005, that of guitarist Hunter Brown fully stepping up his presence in the mix. One of the special things about STS9 is that it doesn’t have a “front man” in the typical sense. In fact the lack of ego involved in their music is so complete that no band member seems entirely comfortable soloing. But the past few years have seen Hunter gain much-needed confidence in his own playing. While the music has always been propelled by a strong core of drum and bass, Hunter has increasingly become an energetic catalyst, launching an otherwise tame or low-key musical passage into new orbits, bringing the rest of the band (and all of us) right along with him. David Phipps in particular seems to love playing off of Hunter’s energy in the mix, adding insanely subtle ambient flourishes and pounding out crushingly beautiful notes over top of the cresting guitar-waves. In particular, songs like the new composition “Open E” see Hunter take the lead with searing intensity with a louder, crunchy and distorted sound that echoes Trey Anastasio and John McLaughlin, both undoubtedly major influences. Like the new sounds, of which there were too many to note, the openers and guest artists for these shows also reflected the changing nature of STS9’s music and potential fanbase. It’s no secret that Sector 9 has recently been on mission to blow the fuck up. And there’s nothing wrong with that at all. But inviting Elliot Lipp and Scott Heren (in his Prefuse 73 manifestation) was not about “reaching out” to the indie electonica crowd or jumping on any bandwagon. It was about showing support, exposing the fans to new voices, and probably most of all about energetic collaboration with artists that STS9 both respects and takes inspiration from. As David Murphy told the crowd on the 30th in typically humble fashion, “we should be opening for them.” Except for perhaps LTJ Bukem, no electronic artist has been more influential on STS9’s new sound than Scott Heren, whose broken beats and huge synth-heavy riffs as Prefuse 73 STS9 has clearly taken inspiration from. That’s not “biting,” but inspired borrowing in the same way the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan took sounds and whole songs from the Blues and other seminal rock groups like the Velvet Underground. Pablo Picasso put it best when he said, “good artists borrow, great ones steal.” Tokyo, with its huge Prefuse-inspired breakdown rocks harder than anything I’ve heard from STS9 or Heren. The fact that he really showed and gave such an enthusiastic performance, rocking the MPC alongside Elliot Lipp over beats spanning all of his albums, confirms that he is totally on the level as well. It was total professionalism & positivity. The only question on my mind (and many others’) was why he wasn’t turned up as loud as STS9, or even the DJs that spun between sets. For all the changes, though, STS9 is still all about community and supporting like-minded artists. Painting their visionary landscapes into existence on either side of the stage were artists Kris Davidson, whose own work has evolved just as fast, if not more so, than STS9s, and J. Garcia (representing, like the opening DJs, both east and west coasts). On the ambiance tip, San Francisco-based light artisan Kaia Jacobi controlled a vast (and blinky) LED display behind the stage and Floral wizard Anthony Ward blessed the stage with flowing, organic sculpture while behind the scenes organizing a few midnight surprises. This is why STS9 shows are so special. It’s not just about music, it’s about taking seriously our collective potential for creativity, and nurturing and cultivating that potential. Because, really, that’s what we’re all here for. As for the New Year’s show itself, it is hard to know what to say about it. The predominant feeling at the show, while it was happening and afterwards, was one of disbelief. Questions floating around where twofold – first, “where the fuck did that come from?” and second “what does this mean for the band and its fans as a community?” Once thing was for certain – some serious shit went down. We knew going in that the band had been “practicing” and that, as David Murphy posted online, “there were a few surprises in store.” But nothing could have really prepared us for what happened as the second set began. Before I get to that, though, let me say this: the mothership has landed. The new songs they debuted (and the more recent ones that accompanied them early on) were as funky as anything I’ve heard. This was not “white boy” funk, or even, as much as I dislike the word, “jam band” funk. This was alien, Cronic-era-Dre-meets-Bootsy-Collins P-FUNK of the highest order. I kept waiting for Big Boi, whose brother, coincidentally, was working the venue that night, and Andre 3000 to emerge from a cloud of smoke and merge with these beats. They were that dirty. I mean, I don’t know what interdimensional being David Phipps got his new synth sounds from, but they sound huge. There were some missteps, like the overlong and repetitive breakdown in the otherwise stellar new composition “Pianonoir,” but for the most part the new tunes are surprisingly dope. Songs from STS9’s recently released Artifact also benefited from reworking and came out sounding fresher than ever. Versions of “Native End,” “Somesing” and “Glogli” where more fully fleshed out, more atmospheric and swimming with subtle electronic flourishes courtesy of pretty much everyone in the band. One of the nice things about experiencing Sector 9 live is that you have no idea at any given point what sounds are being produced by which band member, or even what instrument – such is the wealth of sounds and textures that modern live electronic music affords. A hugely expansive version of “Movements” was a return to form in a Bukem-esque drum and bass style that recalled the more stretched-out excursions of STS9’s early days and a surprise cover of the Boards of Canada song “ROYGBIV” was like a surprising confirmation from the band that “yes, we take electronic music as seriously as you do.” Back to New Year’s Eve. The energy was clearly peaking as we approached midnight. Spontaneous cheers spread like wildfire in the open lobby of the Tabernacle, waking up all the old spirits inhabiting the building and announcing the arrival of some new ones. The obligatory “2006” sunglasses began to appear and that familiar nervous excitement set in. Now, I don’t know about everyone else – but it seems to me that to drop not one, but three brand new songs in a row at the beginning of the second set of one of the biggest shows of a band’s career takes some serious balls. And it worked. Probably the best of all the new songs, Warrior was not only a soaring, epic, emotionally charged affair, but it turned out to be so powerful as to obliterate the whole concept of “New Year’s Eve.” After the countdown (David Murphy from the stage: “aight let’s do the damn thing.”), when the song really began to burst open, the idea of placing so much emphasis on a single moment, when 2005 became the equally irrelevant 2006, became almost ridiculous. For that stretch we were timeless, soaring with the music beyond any artificial constraints. Love and energy flowed and formed with hugs and smiling exchanges throughout the floor and balconies while flower petals and were thrown by the bucket-full and showered over the ecstatic crowd along with what felt like gallons of water courtesy of some overly enthusiastic fans. The latter gave the effect of a fresh spring rain infusing the theatre. “Happy new year” indeed. Apparently, much of the band’s practice in the months prior to NYE were focused on just this show. Mid-way in the second set, it clearly paid off when right as the drum and bass jam Hubble was peaking, the entire low end went due to a sub-woofer blowing out. Happening just as I’d decided to get up out of my seat to dance it out, it had the effect of a warped pressure drop, totally throwing me for a loop until a friend beside me confirmed it with an excited tap to her ear. The music immediately shifted to mirror the crowd’s tension, turning into a dark, minimal electro beat: the whole thing became very high drama. Fortunately the crew was on there toes and the bass kicked back in to thunderous cheers from the audience, flooding in like a deep inhalation after a long out breath, all of which must have been baffling from the stage, where the band (unbelievably) wasn’t aware of the technical difficulties as they were happening. The illuminated cosmic soul harmonies that signaled the opening of a remixed “Really Wut?” were the perfect followup to the sound problems & tense drama of Hubble, lifting the vibe into the spheres and immersing the crowd once again in warm bass tones and familiar, sparkling electronic waves. That was just one instance. I could go on, picking up this or that intense moment or musical passage. There were a million stories, infinite angles of experience brought by every individual in attendance. What it all added up to was a powerful statement of purpose, from a band that seems to still be on its upward arc and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Those not lucky enough to be in attendance can rest assured that the event was thoroughly documented, for better or worse. Cameras hung on huge motorized arms were positioned almost everywhere, capturing all the action (including fans in various stages of freak-out) for a DVD reported to be coming out within months. If it wasn’t before, the cat is now officially out of the bag. If there was one shortcoming of the show, it would have to be that it ended too early. When the lights came up to the sound of Michael Jackson’s 1979 hit “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough” put it just about perfectly, and the Tabernacle turned into a full-on disco party. In a perfect world (where there are no curfews), a crew of DJs (got Bassnectar?) would have taken the wheels on the main stage (or the one downstairs for that matter) to take the party to sunrise, a journey which most of the crowd would love to have taken. But that is what the future is for.

the big note

simon — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 01:10:30 GMT

The Big Note (via "beauty in music") In 1965 at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, two radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, developed a well-calibrated-supersensitive, 20-foot horn-shaped antenna. The antenna was designed to detect radio waves bounced off echo balloon satellites. No matter where they pointed this antenna at the sky, they heard the same hum. This was not their expected result. Penzias and Wilson thought they had made a mistake. They even considered the possibility that it was due to "a white dielectric substance" (pigeon droppings) in their horn. Their puzzling findings were published in a famous paper,Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s. Penzias and Wilson were radio astronomers, with expertise in electronics rather than cosmology. It soon came to their attention through Robert Dicke and Jim Peebles at Princeton that this unexpected noise, this background radiation, had been predicted years earlier by George Gamow as a relic of the evolution of the early Universe. Penzias and Wilson had, in fact, accidentally discovered the Cosmic Background Radiation, the fingerprint of the early Universe, the echo of the Big Bang. In 1978 Messrs Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. The Cosmic Background Radiation is a residual vibration from the explosion of the Big Bang, vibrating at a frequency of 4080 Mega Hertz (4,080,000,000 Hertz). All vibrations can be interpreted as sound. Octaves are defined as the lower frequency being half that of its higher frequency. For example, A 3 = 440 Hz and one octave above is A 4 at 880 Hz. Twenty-two octaves below The Big Note (4,080,000,000 Hertz), is calculated to be 972.75 Hz. This is slightly lower than B4 at 987.77 Hz and somewhat higher than B Flat 4 at 932.33 Hz, in equal-tempered tuning. Therefore, the Universe is resonating at a tone a little flatter than B, as defined by standard tuning. Physicists think that time began with the Big Bang. Today, just about every scientist believes in the Big Bang model. The evidence is overwhelming enough that in 1951, the Catholic Church officially pronounced the Big Bang model to be in accordance with the Bible. The Tibetan Gyuto Monks perform Buddhist ceremonies while chanting on one fundamental note. Their refined chanting technique enables each member of the choir to sing a hree-note chord, exciting the harmonics of the fundamental drone note. the monks are droning on a note slightly flatter than B, exciting all the overtones above. Their valve-less brass horns are designed to play this note as the fundamental partial. The Gyuto Monks have been resonating the Big Note for the past 500 years at the Gyuto Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet, now living in exile in Dharamsala, India. Beauty In Music ? 1992

rain falling sideways

simon — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 17:27:37 GMT

sound reveals infinite space sight fills it with illusion we move through//thoughts like water