eight o’clock, the lights are on at shea…, 4/06

“the lifting” – r.e.m.

“The Lifting” – R.E.M. (download here)
from Reveal (2001)
released by Warner Bros. (buy)

(file expires on April 24th.)

Being warm out and all, I got some quality roof/sunset time in this weekend. It made me want to listen to Reveal, by R.E.M.. Post-Automatic For the People R.E.M. tends to get a raw deal, I think. Admittedly, the last album wasn’t great (though I owe it another listen), but I think Up and Reveal are legitimate — if modest — records. There are no anthems, but that’s not their place. “The Lifting” is Reveal‘s opener. As soon as Michael Stipe comes in and the chord changes become obvious, it is unmistakably R.E.M.. The whole album is like that: virtual orchestras and noise washes, but there’s never any confusing the band. It’s a unified, unique sound, I think, often hard to place individual instruments.

Like most of my favorite R.E.M. songs (as well as Astral Weeks by Van Morrison), I’ve rarely stopped to think about the lyrics. I can sing along to “The Lifting,” I think (ditto for most of Automatic), but with few exceptions the songs have never cohered into complete thoughts or stories. Key words and phrases get lodged in my head: “seminar,” “sunken cities,” “the air was singing.” I have always associated this song with transcendence in the Sprawl. I think of gorgeous, late afternoon light hitting strip malls, chain restaurants, and parking lots. There is absolutely nothing in the lyrics to support this idea, but that’s what I love about Michael Stipe’s words: they tend to provoke nonsensical interpretations in me. They’re good carriers.

museum of natural history, no. 3: the gem room, 4/06

One way the Museum blurs facts into emotional half-truths is through atmosphere. Ostensibly, the Museum is devoted to the scientific, but the theatrical presentation is extraordinarily important. My favorite example is the squid vs. whale battle in the Hall of Ocean Life, where a fake whale battles a fake squid in a dark display case with no glass between the viewer and the subject. But that’s unphotographable, at least with my cell-a-roid.

A close second, and another childhood favorite, is the Gem Room (which I think is actually called the Gem Room). It is dark and circular, with all kinds of ramps and nooks and miniature amphitheaters and artifacts you can actually touch. As a kid, the room felt like a respite, with numerous places to hide and sit (a welcome break for a young biped). Despite the obstacle course Rachel and I had to cross to get there, it still felt that way. I love the vibe of the room.

A few years ago, I made an ambient sound collage out of very quiet FM static and drone-organ designed to be listened to in the Gem Room (as well as with the collection of meteorites next door). Oddly, I still haven’t actually listened to it there. It was called “A Clear Night.”

“strange invitation” – beck

“Strange Invitation” – Beck (download here)
from Jack-ass single (1997)
released by DGC (buy)

(file expires on April 20th.)

Like “Brazil,” “Jack-ass” is also a durable song. Besides the Odelay version, based on Van Morrison’s cover of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” there’s “Burro,” the mariachi arrangement, and this, “Strange Invitation.” Given that Beck has since made it one of his trademarks, it’s also worth noting that this is probably first string-heavy space-pop ballad. (David Campbell, Beck’s father, arranged the strings in question.)

Like both other versions, “Strange Invitation” is gorgeous. For me, the center of the song is the phrase “we will rise in the cool of the evening.” It conjures up something out of One Hundred Years of Solitude, of seeking respite from an oppressive, exotic heat and finding it in the transcendent nighttime shade.

museum of natural history, no. 2: ordovician snails, 4/06

Museums, and especially the Museum of Natural History, are intended to be places of learning. We look at exhibits, read the labels, and are educated. But we are bombarded with facts, and they tend to blur into glorious half-truths. On the mezzanine of the Hall of Ocean Life (what my inner seven-year old still calls “the underwater room”), there are a bunch of dioramas of what the bottom of the ocean maybe/mighta/kinda looked like in a few different prehistoric ages (one of them being the Ordovician) in various places (one of them being an ocean over present-day Ohio). Dang if I can remember the actual facts, but I sure remember the wild colors. Have I been educated? Absolutely.

another set of flowers in the museum

This week marks the release of AUX, a compilation organized by Ideas for Creative Exploration at the University of Georgia. It features a host of Elephant 6 conspirators — including Heather McIntosh (The Instruments), Will Hart (The Olivia Tremor Control/The Circulatory System), Hannah Jones (Lorkakar/Tuning the Air), and the long-awaited official debut of Korena Pang (do some Google searching)– as well as a host of other fine Athens-based musicians. I really like “Waiting For the Dawn to Break” by The Leapyear, an act I need check out more from.

With gorgeous, handmade artwork, AUX is truly a labor of love. I’m proud to have contributed an essay to their equally handmade website. To read it, enter the site, click through the AUX logo, wave the cursor until a map of Athens appears like Brigadoon, click, find the shadowed outline of the falling aeroplane, click again, and check out “Another Set of Flowers in the Museum.”

museum of natural history, no. 1, 4/06

Last week, en route across town, a friend and I got stuck in rush hour traffic near Central Park. We hopped out of the cab, and walked across the park. Despite the warm weather, it was nearly deserted. The only people about were New York caricatures in garish jogging suits or walking hilarious dogs, all of us extras in a Woody Allen movie. Near the Sheep Meadow, the midtown skyline placid in the blue dusk, I felt transported to the timeless city that runs unchanging beneath the ever-shifting storefronts, advertisements, and neon. I might as well have been 12, visiting from Long Island. Today, the Museum of Natural History felt the same way.

(As Owen and I once discovered, while the other stuffed animals in the dioramas are posed vaguely naturally, the gemsbok simply stare disarmingly back. They almost break the fourth wall.)

“april showers” – marcos fernandes

“April Showers” – Marcos Fernandes (download here)
from phonography.org, vol. 1 (2001)
released by phonography.org

(file expires on April 14th.)

Good field recordings are deceptively hard to make, especially of things that are simple, like rainstorms or waves crashing. At least when I’ve tried, unexpected noises have always sullied the result: people talking in the next room, sudden gusts of wind at odd angles to the microphone, etc..

Marcos Fernandes’ “April Showers” is the Platonic rainstorm. Water pounds in sheets on the porch roof, its tempo and intensity changing subtly, and — midway through — dramatically. A sparser sub-network of percussive drips plays in oblique counter-rhythm to the main drone. Airplanes (I think) cut through the atmosphere far above, issuing parallel rumbles like enormous pieces of construction paper ripping in extreme slow motion.

Sometimes, even if it is April and supposed to rain, it’s good to listen in advance to the music you are about to hear.

multi-touch

Tonight at dorkbot, I saw NYU’s Jeff Han present on the multi-touch systems he has helped invent. These are touchscreens that expand their input from one finger to, in theory, an infinite amount. In his presentation, Han argued that the one-cursor/one-mouse model that computers have run on for decades is limiting. If he hadn’t insisted that the screens depicted in his videos were real, I would’ve sworn the clips were mock-ups.

Hands roamed a celestial desktop filled with photographs, effortlessly resizing them and sorting them at will; they soared over a GoogleEarth-like mapscape zooming in and tilting with mild finger twitches; they sculpted a virtual face as if it were clay; they danced across a MaxMSP-type environment, attaching sound widgets to oscillators, keyboards, drum machines; they played strange futuristic games; they navigated pure abstractions. I guess it’s kinda that whole virtual reality thing, huh? Whether or not it will ever catch on, it’s straight-up next level.

Here is a short overview video demonstrating the multi-touch project.

“some clouds don’t” – fred frith

“Some Clouds Don’t” – Fred Frith (download here)
from Cheap at Half the Price (1983)
released by East Side Digital
reissued by ReR Megacorp/Fred Records (2004) (buy)

(file will expire on April 12th.)

Matt turned me onto avant-guitarist Fred Frith’s frickin’ fantastic Cheap at Half the Price several years back. I finally got my own unscratched copy in today’s post. It’d be cheap (at less than half the price) to compare the disc-opening “Some Clouds Don’t” to Brian Eno’s ’70s pop excursions (to which Frith himself contributed)… but I think I just did anyway. Like those albums, Cheap is a rare trip into vocal-based music. Frith’s ragged voice, lo-fi complexity, and tweeting keyboards are all cheekily charming. The harmonies are nice, and there’s something willfully naïve about the lead guitar playing that I like (especially coming from somebody as nimble as Frith). The whole album — recorded on a four-track with Frith playing most of the instruments and assembling all of the sound collages — is extraordinarily personable.