Around the Well collects two CDs worth of Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine project, including rarities, B-sides, and previously unreleased songs. Beginning with solo efforts, bedroom recordings simultaneously relaxed and inspired (“Sacred Vision”), the compilation gradually unfolds Iron & Wine’s current state of affairs: a full band capable of intricate, lustrous arrangements (“Kingdom of the Animals”).
Predictably, a few of those fans who labored long and hard to acquire the band’s odds and ends prior to this handy compilation are grousing a bit. But even the most dedicated completist will find enough new fare here to intrigue. For example, “Arms of a Thief” takes Beam’s Texas folk trappings and transports them to Persian environs: percussion-heavy and replete with undulating grooves.
Also included are selections from film soundtracks for Garden State and In Good Company. The latter film features Beam’s songs arranged to best advantage: there are copious beautiful vocal harmonies on “Belated Promise Ring” and “The Trapeze Swinger” is Iron & Wine at its most epic and expansive. Their next LP is slated for release in 2010, but Around the Well is no mere placeholder: it’s a delightful collation of fine alt-folk.
Kay and I went down to Barrow Street to hear the second Keys to Future concert last night. In addition to some pieces with which I was very familiar, the program also included works that were new to me. Discovering a new piece or previously unfamiliar composer in a live venue can be thrilling; especially when Amy Briggs and Stephen Gosling are playing! It was an excellent show; my review of it should post on Musical America later this week.
We got to the Village a little early, and had time to enjoy a preconcert dinner and stroll around the shops on Bleeker Street. A browse through Bleeker Street Records reminded me of one of the reasons why I’m so glad that there still are a few brick ‘n mortar stores around; and why I’d be sad if they went away. ‘Digging’ for vinyl or CDs can reveal sought-after treasures; but it can also lead to pleasant digressions and discoveries. While looking for something else, one of the CDs I grabbed off of the rack struck my visual fancy. I have no idea who the band is, what style of music they play, or whether they are any good. The artist who rendered their booklet cover, on the other hand, had such a vivid imagination that it was worth the five bucks just to see if the music could compare.
One of the debates as we ‘go green’ and cut costs is about the efficacy of digital distribution; whether we really need artifacts or whether digital copies, with all their conveniences (and foibles) instead suffice. I have grudgingly converted to obtaining some recording acquisitions via digital download. Even with the current sonic compromises of MP3, the convenience and comprehensiveness factors of many digital stores are seductive. And the 30-second sonic snippets can be handy for triaging selections.
Still, the experience of digging through shelves of recordings in person and having some album art catch your eye, paging through the storybook of lyrics and wondering if the musical rendering will compare – that’s magical!
One of my favorite places to browse in the digital domain is Silber Media. The imprint specializes in experimental artists, particularly of the alt-electronica persuasion. A number of their artists are on tour this summer; dates below!
The mystery CD from Bleeker Street is in the changer. I’m about to press play – wish me luck!
Silber Artists on Tour
Aarktica ( www.myspace.com/aarktica )
May 21 2009 8:00 PM
AARKTICA w/ Mark Van Hoen (Seefeel), Millimetrik, Luxa (Loveless Music Presents) New York
Hotel Hotel ( www.myspace.com/hotelhotel ) – post rock
May 22 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ rgrs denton, Texas
May 23 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ the foundation kansas city, Missouri
May 24 2009 8:00 PM
hotel hotel @ nomad pub minneapolis/st. paul, Minnesota
May 25 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ LEMP st. louis, Missouri
May 26 2009 8:00 PM
hotel hotel @ tba columbus, Ohio
May 27 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ bela dubby cleveland, Ohio
May 30 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ friendship cove montréal, Quebec
May 31 2009 8:00 PM
hotel hotel @ tba boston, Massachusetts
Jun 1 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ goodbye blue monday bushwick, brooklyn, New York
Jun 2 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ the khyber philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Jun 3 2009 8:00 PM
hotel hotel @ the good cherry forest, Virginia
Jun 4 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ caledonia lounge athens, Georgia
Jun 5 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ kavarna decatur, atlanta
Jun 6 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ the blind mule mobile, Alabama
Jun 7 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ tba new orleans, Louisiana
Jun 9 2009 9:00 PM
hotel hotel @ superhappyfunland houston, Texas
Remora ( www.myspace.com/remora ) – post apocalyptic pop
May 25 2009 9:00 PM
Remora @ The Nightlight Chapel Hill, North Carolina
May 30, 2009 – 8:00 PM
Remora @ BFF Bog Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Small Life Form ( www.myspace.com/smalllifeform ) – aggressive ambient
May 31 2009 8:00 PM
Small Life Form @ Badgerhaus Raleigh, North Carolina
I’m teaching the composition class at Westminster Choir College for the first time this fall. The course includes all of the first-semester composition majors as well as non-majors interested in composing (or, perhaps, needing an elective).
We’re going to be using three books as texts during the term:
- Modal Counterpoint, in the Style of the Sixteenth Century, Ernst Krenek (Boosey).
- The Study of Fugue, Alfred Mann (Dover).
- A Basic Course in Music Composition, Ralph Shapey (Presser).
Each of these is a small primer on one of the big, central topics in the craft of composition: Sixteenth century counterpoint, fugue, and twentieth century composition approaches. I like that two of them are exercise-heavy – the Krenek and Shapey – while one includes a more historiographical approach, with plenty of examples from the literature. Each author strikes a different tone: Krenek is thorough-going, Mann authoritative and Shapey brilliantly creative, if a bit on the cranky side.
None of them are complete discussions of their respective topics. But each provides a tantalizing, instructive introduction. The three are easily portable; making them easy companions for student composers to take along to muse over on the quad, in the library, or off-campus. What’s more, the combined price tag is less than the cost of many textbooks.
Next up: the listening list. I’m very open to thoughts from Sequenza 21 contributors and readers. Which pieces do you think are essential listening and study for first-semester composers? Drop some suggestions in the comments section!
I have a feeling the toughest part of preparing the course will be winnowing this down to a manageable number of pieces!
Circa twenty years since its founding, Tortoise releases its sixth full length recording, Beacons of Ancestorship. The band’s first LP of new material since 2004′s It’s All Around You, Beacons also follows The Brave and the Bold, an eclectic collaboration with William Oldham on a multifaceted selection of pop covers, and 2006′s lovingly curated career-spanning boxed set A Lazarus Taxon. The members of the band have also been busy touring together and separately inhabiting a plethora of side projects and other musical outfits. Thus, while the five-year wait is understandable, one’s glad to see this project come to fruition. Beacons of Ancestorship is a rare beast for a mature effort. Strongly identifiable as Tortoise’s, it shows the group mindful of its legacy while simultaneously pushing at their musical boundaries.
In and of itself, this is remarkable; Tortoise’s polystylistic approach to music-making has, from its inception, encompassed a wide variety of amalgams and juxtapositions. But from the album-opener, we are reminded that the postmodern, post-rock, jazz-meets-minimalism catchalls that the press has long employed to try and pin down the band have always fallen woefully short of fully descriptive. After an undulating drum ‘n bass duet intro, with a killer riff introduced in the bottom octave, “High Class Slim Came Floatin’ In” unfolds section after section as fragmentary episodes; a mélange of IDM club signatures, minimalist reiterations, polymetric rhythmic assemblages, and liberal doses of motoric, edgy synth loops, proggy string pads, and rock guitar riffs alike. The one constant amidst the kaleidoscopic changes: the evolving beat structure is still visceral enough to keep your head bobbing throughout. The coda wears its Reich on its sleeve, with phase-like shifts modulating insistent arpeggios into an incandescent shimmer.
“Gigantes” also weaves its way through an impressive assortment of polystylistic material; similarly, rhythmic underpinning allows for a host of distantly related sections to coalesce. Less successful in this regard is “Yinxianghechengqi,” where the use of juxtaposition blunts some of the more powerful buildups of the piece. Still, its thunderous walls of sound demonstrate an affinity for avant exploration that can take the group on thrilling musical excursions. “deChelly” is a all-too-brief example of delicate soundscaping.
The impressively fluid and virtuosic “Prepare Your Coffin” and “Penumbra” are somewhat reminiscent of the outstanding fusion of jazz and progressive rock found on David Sancious’s albums in the Seventies. Riffs played in guitar and bass, doubled in octaves, ornately metered yet constantly propulsive drumming, intriguing chord progressions and extended keyboard voicings, and soaring guitar solos placed up top. Both fusion and prog have been much-maligned over the years – post-rock’s continuation of their confluence has been as well – and the zesty yet airy arrangements of “Coffin” and “Penumbra” suggest that the detractors of these genres have, at best, painted with too broad a brush.
“Northern Something” is one of the cuts that pushes against the aforementioned boundaries of Tortoise’s language. Edgy, reiterated riffs and a militaristic drum refrain create a bellicose (perhaps current events-inspired?) ambience. “Monument Six One Thousand” adds Middle Eastern-inflected rhythms into the equation, pitting their undulating flexibility against brash quarter notes articulated as piquant rhythm guitar downstrokes. “Minors,” stands in stark contrast to these two. A carefully shaped, elegantly rendered piece, its funky rhythmic underpinning sidles up to lyrically deployed solos, affecting harmonies, and the album’s most winning melodies.
An excellent installment, well worth the wait, Beacons of Ancestorship is easily the best material Tortoise has released since 1998′s TNT.
For the past five years, Richard Skelton’s music has been imbued with elegy. Since 2005, under various artistic monikers, the Lancashire, UK native has released recordings featuring his late wife’s visual art; dedicated to her memory. Even without knowledge of the weighty biographical background of these works, there’s no denying their exquisite, lonesome lyricism.
The original limited edition of Box of Birch was aptly named: it came in a hand-crafted birch wood box. While most listeners will have to content themselves with a CD, LP, or even download, the musical contents are fashioned with equally attentive care.
In the ancient spirit of the term – in the Renaissance, a broken consort was an ensemble containing instruments from more than one family – acoustic guitars, bowed strings, reeds, and pitched percussion combine in slowly evolving soundscapes. Evocative simultaneously of Celtic folk, raga, and post-minimalism, Skelton’s work has a lovely surface and creates a meditative, gently dolorous ambience.
Hard-edged yet multifaceted techno is the stock in trade of San Diego’s Kid 606 (AKA Miguel de Pedro). His latest CD recording for Tiger Beat 6, Shout at the Dõner, pushes his music even further into polystylistic terrain. Added to its previous amalgam of thrashtronica and metal are extra doses of glitch-techno elements. Cast in four large sections (titled movements) further subdivided into individual tracks, the album flows with the pacing of an alternative DJ’s set.
While much of the fare is suitable for raves, its big, pulsating beats don’t prevent it from retaining a sense of humor; nor a sense of complexity. The humor is abundant in whimsical track names – “Underwear Everywhere,” “Baltimorrow’s Parties,” “Be Monophobic with Me,” “Malcontinental,” “American’s Next Top Modwheel,” – and wryly witty spoken-word samples. The latter are best displayed and boisterously employed in a faux-revival on “The Church of 606 is Now Open for Business;” one imagines its congregants dancing in the aisles! A disturbing phone call from the police populates “Mr. Wobble’s Nightmare;” after a purely spoken intro, the music flirts with glitch and scratching before yielding to the thrumming call of a darkly appointed dance floor; loops and synths are interspersed with voice snippets.
The underlying pulse is frequently apparent in Kid 606′s material, but it’s also blurred with deft incorporation of overlaid syncopations and polyrhythms. This is particularly explicit in the Frankensteinian mixture of “Monsters” and the Reich-like phasing of “Getränke Nasty.” Even the album closer, “Good Times,” is wrapped in enigma; it supplies buoyant reggae rhythms but offsets them with a quirkily chromatic bass line and more complex, skittering background material. Shout at the Dõner trusts the Kid’s devotees to follow him further out. One hopes they will, as the CD is an excellent addition to his catalogue.
Brooklynite Annie Clark, who now performs as St. Vincent, had a varied early musical career. It included a range of stints as a supporting musician, for Sufjan Stevens, Glenn Branca’s guitar orchestra, and even the robe-clad indie collective Polyphonic Spree. In like fashion, her second LP as a solo artist, Actor, has classification-hunters stumped.
Musically sophisticated yet unabashed in its pop appeal, it showcases Clark considerable skills as an instrumentalist (guitarist/keyboardist, et cetera) and her beautiful, flexible yet gutsy singing voice. Her choice of bandmates is wide-ranging; it includes concert music performers – violinist Daniel Hart, flutist Alex Sopp French horn-player Michael Adkinson, and wind-player Hideaki Aomori – as well as drummer Matthias Bossi and bassist William Flyn, members the of indie rock band Midlake. Integrated in the mix are deftly incorporated elements of electronica; displayed to great advantage on the IDM-ready, eminently memorable “The Stranger.” Similarly, “Just the Same but Brand New” lives up to its title; pop styles past – from 50s to 90s vintage – waft through a postmodern kaleidoscope, setting the stage for Clark’s evocative, supple singing.
Despite her nuanced musical approach, St. Vincent has captured mainstream media and even pop culture attention. A recent article in the NY Times ran with the headline, “Friendly, and Just a bit Creepy.” The latter description is doubtless due in no small part to the video for Actor’s leadoff single “Actor out of Work” (watch here, courtesy of YouTube). Under St. Vincent’s enigmatic, piercing stare, a succession of auditioning actors is reduced to tears. While the visuals are arresting, the music, which combines a Sixties-era “Wall of Sound” pop chorus, including layers of Vandellas-esque vocals, with a postmodern electro-pop aesthetic, is most engaging.
The lyric content on Actor doesn’t eschew provocation either; once again, juxtapositions abound. This is front and center on “Laughing with a Mouth of Blood;” an overtly visceral image is belied by the loveliness of the song and its rendition. A fully fleshed-out synthetic arrangement is wonderfully juxtaposed with Clark’s acoustic guitar solo introduction and breaks.
The CD closes with a gently articulated ballad, “The Sequel,” that features Actor’s assembled chamber orchestra, highlighting a beautiful solo from Adkinson. Clark channels jazz singer stylings in her breezy, lilting delivery; the song clocks in at just under two minutes – an all too fleeting, but eminently lustrous, miniature. One hopes a sequel to Actor will be fast forthcoming.
Andrew Kenny’s outfit American Analog Set made the bedroom rock aesthetic an artful one; cultivating several lovely, homespun yet musically sophisticated releases. His latest project, the Wooden Birds, releases Magnolia, their debut LP, this week. In a more egalitarian arrangement, Kenny’s enlisted several collaborators, including songwriter Ola Podrida, film composer David Wingo, guitarist Leslie Sisson (who also played with AmAnSet), and drummer Michael Bell (Lymbic System).
The results retain some of the sonic signature of Kenny’s previous work; indeed, leadoff songs “False Alarm” and “The Other One” would be right at home on an AmAnSet release. “Bad” pits gritty strumming against angelic-hued vocals: a juxtaposition reminiscent of the vibe frequently found on releases by their label mates Death Cab for Cutie.
But generally speaking, the Wooden Birds skew a bit closer to the alt-folk genre. Devotees of Iron &Wine are apt to enjoy the part-singing accompanied by acoustic guitars on ballads such as the winsome “Quit You Once” and gently bluesy “Anna Paula;” Meanwhile, “Seven Seventeen” mixes the best of these folksy trappings with a honeyed hook and chorus that may well be the indie pop serenade of the summer.
Elliott Carter: A Centennial Portrait in Letters and Documents, by Felix Meyer and Anne Shreffler. Rochester, NY: Boydell & Brewer, 2008.
Elliott Carter turned 100 on 11 December 2008, bringing to a close a marathon year of festivals, performances, recordings, and publications celebrating his centenary. When asked about whether he enjoyed all the fuss, Carter’s stock reply was, “No one likes to be reminded of their age, but I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t happening.” And he worked for his birthday cake! Carter provided several new compositions for the festivities in 2008, including his first choral piece in over six decades, a work for percussion ensemble, and Interventions, his fourth piece for solo piano and orchestra.
It’s probably safe to say that A Centennial Portrait is the first ‘coffee-table book’ about a modern American concert music composer. A hefty 352 pages, its presentation is exquisite; with large, readable score excerpts and composer sketches, re-typed portions of personal correspondence, handwritten missives, and telling rehearsal notes. There are also a number of engaging letters written to the composer from a veritable who’s who of 20/21 music. Sketches for compositions from throughout Carter’s career – from early works such as Minotaur and the First String Quartet to his recent Boston Concerto, Mosaic, and hot-off-the-presses Mad Regales – offer insights into the genesis and evolution of his working methods and styles. Equally tantalizing are the abandoned projects: a sonata for two pianos from the 50s; a projected second opera from 2001.
Sometimes an example does double-duty. For example, the autograph for Steep Steps, a solo bass clarinet piece written in 2002, includes a note from Carter to Virgil Blackwell, its dedicatee and a member of the composer’s inner circle: “Virgil – How about this? Elliott.”
In order to compile the volume, Felix Meyer and Anne Shreffler have done extensive research at the archives of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, where most of Carter’s papers are kept. One might think that the sketches and biographical material of a composer whose work has received intense scrutiny might not yield too many surprises. But the authors have provided fresh material to whet the appetites of Carterians, while simultaneously creating an accessible volume that is an excellent overview of Carter’s first hundred years.
A dozen years in, Mark Nelson’s Pan American project is still with the same label (Kranky) and still creating fascinating ambient soundscapes. But one shouldn’t mistake continuity for stagnation!
Indeed, there’s a combination of novelty and comfortable familiarity to be heard on the LP. Joined by bassists Jim Meyering and William Lowman and percussionist Steven Hess, Nelson pursues a more collaborative sound scheme than on some of his more soloistic recent recordings. Hess’s co-authorship of two of the cuts, as well as his tasteful vibraphone playing and drumming, lends an organic quality to “For Aiming at the Stars” and “Dr. Robert Goddard in a Letter to H.G. Wells, 1932.”
At the same time, there are echoes of Labradford, Nelson’s other outfit, to be found amidst the reverberant soundscapes here. “There Can Be No Thought of Finishing” and “Literally and Figuratively” feature deliciously sepulchral (and ever so well-recorded) bass drones; akin to bass-lines found on some of Labradford’s most winning work (E Luxo So, Fixed: :Content). Indeed, Meyering’s strummed chords provide a beautiful counterpart to Nelson’s treble-register harmonic pads.
“Is a Problem to Occupy Generations” demonstrates a capacity to be simultaneously ambient and experimental; its questing melodies are awash in reverb, arching towards an endpoint never quite to be reached. Conversely, the folk-like pentatonic phrases that inhabit “There is Always the Thrill of Just Beginning” seem to give the lie to much ambient-inspired “World” music, by eschewing its easily palatable background designs in favor of a more enigmatic – and far more interesting – hypnotic blurring.
Pan American remains a hardy, worthwhile endeavor; White Bird Release features some of Nelson’s most beautiful music to date.
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