26 October 2009
Significant Music at DNK
'significant for you, significant for us'
A specially selected group of Amsterdam-based musicians, artists and designers each play 1 significant piece of music from their collection. An intimate offering of music played on vinyl, tape, cd or digital means lasting no longer than ten minutes. This evening will have a structured but informal setting, taking place in the Auditorium of Smart Project Space.
1. Seamus Cater: Colin Cater - The Number Two Top Seam
A song my father recorded in 1970, the year I was born. I only discovered the recording last year.
2. Andre Avelas: Carcass - reek of putrefaction/exhume to consume
Picture disc! It has a special place in my non-existent heart.
3. Brian McKenna: Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples Of The Moon, 1967. [excerpt]
The back of the record says, "This album of electronic music represents a single event in the related history of music and the phonograph: for the first time, an original, full-scale composition has been created expressly for the record medium." Subonick's liner notes states of the composition, "...it is intended to be experienced by individuals or small groups of people listening in intimate surroundings . . . a kind of chamber music 20th-century style.
I don't have much to say about the record, except that during music-school in 1997, i found it, seemingly discarded in a cupboard next to a similar 'nonesuch records' release, a VCS synthesizer, and a bunch of reel-to-reel tape machines among other things. of course i employed this stuff in the making of electronic music.
4. Koen Nutters: MF Doom - Licorice, Mullien, Buckeyes
Having listened for many years to the most complex music I could find I recently re-discovered the beauty of repetition and simplicity in the instrumental tracks of MF Doom.
5. Mike Ottink: Glen Branca - Lessons Nr. 1
I wanted to listen to Branca's symphony #3 Gloria, music for the first 127 intervals of the harmonic series, but its way too long. Lessons Nr.1 for electric guitar. so much for significance! This first instrumental No wave recording is my root to noise in general, as it is to lots of other musicians who played, Branca's orchestra like Michael Gira (Swans), Page Hamilton (Helmet), Lee ranaldo, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth).
6. Andreas Busche: Field Recordings from Burundi, 1967 - Pierre Toureille (Ocora Label)
Two vocal pieces, both sung by two women. Very different in tone and timbre. The first is a ubuhuha, a kind of blow-singing, which nowadays has literally disappeared from the Burundi musical tradition. The second one is a greeting , sung by two young girls in a remarkably polyphonic interplay. It would be easy to look for all-too well-known influences of these traditions in Western music (Residents, Steve Reich) but the simplicity and raw beauty of this music defy any urge for contextulization. Just listen!
7. Natalia Dominguez: Morton Feldman - Neither [1st movement]
Words by Samuel Beckett
'To and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once away turned from gently part again beckoned back and forth and turned away heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other unheard footfalls only sound till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other then no sound then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither unspeakable home.'
Neither is frequently called an opera, and occasionally even an "anti-opera," it bears more relation to a "Monodrama" than any conventional opera.
8. Vela Arbutina: Bob James - Take me to the mardi gras
In the history of hip hop music, Bob James's "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" (1975) has been sampled by many hip hop artists such as RUN DMC, LL Cool J, Beasty Boys Missy Elliott, Common, Wu Tang Clan
9. Gert-jan Prins: B.C. Gilbert & G.Lewis - Selection from Dome1, vinyl, 1980
No comment
10. Philippe von Wolputte: Gil Scott-Heron - We almost lost Detroit
No comment.
11. Taylan Susam: Hector Berlioz - Grande messe des morts (1837) - Agnus Dei
"Christian Wolff once told me that 'Orchestra' just means that all the instruments are there. I dare contend that Hector Berlioz was the first composer to reveal this simple but elusive truth - and in consequence, that a single sound can be as deeply moving as anything."
12. Bernardo Gaeiras: Jan Driver - Kardamoon
There is a good amount of reasons for me to choose this track but ultimately i think that it is interesting the way the beat and the loop are created. It is a track that puts us in a context, with a precise and full soundscape, and still, it is house music.
13. Esma Moukhtar: Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer - Vertigo
Verpletterend, lijkt nergens op; een vroege vorm van hardrock, voor clavecimbel
14. Roland Spekle: Gyory Ligeti - Lux Aeterna
No comment.
15. Ivana Hilj: Selda Bagcan - Utan Utan
Selda saved my life once with her music. My amazing friend Teague got her life saved by Selda too, once - she says. She introduced me to her music and we listened to this track together. Teague is the only person I was able to sing with and since she left Amsterdam I don't sing anymore.
16. Paul Glazier: Presque Rien No 1 (Le Lever Du Jour Au Bord De La Mer) [Excerpt]
This piece really brought home to me that music is how you listen as much as the sound itself.
17. Skafte Aymo-Boot: Ceephax - Thames Disco
Brilliantly conceived, (almost) perfectly executed. A musical readymade. Significantly insignificant.
18. Harm van den Dorpel: Anton Webern - Six Bagatelles for String Quartet Op. 9
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