Saturday, July 5, 2025

Messiaen

Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time

Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen 10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th century, he was also an outstanding teacher of composition and musical analysis. Wiki

Thursday, July 3, 2025

The Sweet Sound of Lapsed Time

R. Luke DuBois is a composer and visual artist in New York City. His work builds on notions of cultural and romantic memory, exploring how information can be accelerated for emotional impact. This half-hour film combines conversation with visuals, performance and behind-the-scenes footage. Featured in the film are Mivos Quartet, Fair Use Trio, and performance artist Lián Amaris.

This debut documentary by H. Paul Moon premiered at the 2011 DC Independent Film Festival, won the 2011 "Best Short Documentary" jury prize at the Chicago International Movies & Music Festival, won the 2011 "Silver Medal for Excellence in a Music Documentary" at the Park City Film Music Festival, and won the 2013 "Best Short Film" jury prize at the Reel Indie Film Fest in Toronto. It later screened at the 2017 Short Sounds Film Festival in Bournemouth, U.K., and a projected excerpt from the film looped on exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York in 2019-2020.

Running Out of Time (2011)

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Erik Satie

Satie: Gymnopédie No. 1. Lent et douloureux

Erik Satie (1866–1925) was a French composer and pianist. Today he is best known to us through his well-loved Gymnopédies, the small melancholic piano pieces from 1890, but at the time of his death in 1925, Satie was barely known beyond the city limits of Paris.That's not the case today.

Sommerville Media Center

SOMMERVILLE MEDIA CENTER

Monday, June 30, 2025

The Dixie Dewdrop

Uncle Dave Macon Jordan Am A Hard Road

The Dixie Dewdrop
Uncle Dave Macon (October 7, 1870 - March 22, 1952), also known as "The Dixie Dewdrop", was an American farmer, banjo player, singer, songwriter and comedian.

Born David Harrison Macon in Smartt Station, Tennessee, Macon farmed for many years, playing the banjo as a hobby. At age fifty, he joined a vaudeville touring company, putting on a comedy show and playing old-time music accompanying himself on banjo. Immediately popular, within a few years he was in New York City making country phonograph records that became almost instant bestsellers, and at age 56 he was one of the first stars of the Grand Ole Opry on WSM radio in Nashville. Macon continued to perform until his passing in 1952 at age 81 in Readyville, Tennessee. He was inducted posthumously into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966.
Wiki


Uncle Dave Macon Jordan Am A Hard Road

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Bathtub Music by Anarchestra

Believe Me...You Gotta Love It

With performing roots in free jazz and punk rock, I’d always tended to be disparaging toward so-called ambient music and thought of it as something “you’d listen to in the bathtub” (which I like doing with Afternoon of a Faun, Augustus Pablo, Dark Star, In a Silent Way, and things like that). I was kind of surprised to find myself making music like this.

Bathtub Music is the first cd I made entirely without the conventional meters. Its drum free sonic environment allows the signatures to exist as cycles and undermine the linearity they had tended towards on 4/04. The relative stasis implied by cycles permitted me to approach the phrases as autonomous events rather than elements in a continuum (they could have occurred in any sequence). I was thinking a lot about Messiaen and his desire to make music as physical spaces (stasis) rather than temporal events (linearity). I was intrigued by the way the regularity of the (unfamiliar) cycles contributed to a sense of timelessness in ways unmetered pulses, which we would tend to subconsciously group into fours and threes, wouldn’t have. From that point forward the relationship between these two aspects, particularly the ambiguities generated in their intersections within the odd meters, has always been on my mind when I make music –to me it has become a basic element, just like tempo or key.

I found that the absence of horns and percussion encouraged the absence of narrative I had been seeking (the ostinato played on Basuka in #2 works against this --I suspect I played it for so long in the hope of pushing through the other side of it). Narrative (and its implicit desire for drama) tends to locate the centers of musical interest on the player (whether in a jazz solo or the first violin part in a string quartet) and I was interested in finding ways of making the player disappear.

A performing musician’s work is built on appearing. Ones stock in trade is ones visibility (or willingness to be visible). That’s the context a blue collar musician necessarily inhabits and naturally the skills and musical values one develops over time are based upon that. With the shift in my perceptions of tonality, timbre, and meter came an equally fundamental shift in my attitude toward myself as a performer. Prior to Anarchestra the music I’d made had always been, whether it was the point of it or not, a demonstration of prowess (a willingness to be visible). Making this music seemed to absolve me of that responsibility.

The shop had a high ceiling and it was sort of cavernous, with a big empty sound. I recorded the parts as they sounded in the space, experimenting with distant mic placements, getting reverbs and phase relationships that contributed to the consensus of tonality. The pitches by themselves (stripped of their context within the architecture of the shop) would have generated conflict with one another, but in the generality of the empty space they don’t seem at all “out of tune” (at least to my ears).

I price all of my music at $0.00, but Bandcamp only allows a limited number of free downloads per month. If you see a price it means that the free downloads have been used up for the month. If I set a price lower than the $7.00 default, there won’t be any free downloads ever. If there are more sales there end up being more free downloads. I’m not trying to get anybody to spend money (I loathe capitalism and the comercialzation of everything, especially the arts). I make music, not product. If you end up buying something, at least you have enabled 2 other people to get something for free (which is a good thing). Or check back until it’s free again. Please feel free to duplicate and pass along.

About:

Bathtub Music (30:23) Recorded June 2004 at Railyard 1, Santa Fe, NM Released August 28, 2014

Played on: Bosco 2, Bosco 3, Pharo, 2 Sly for 1, La Bas, McKeytoo, Basuka, Mickey One, Peddlar, Quesera Played by: Alex Ferris

Bathtub Music by Anarchestra Released August 28, 2014

Discography

Back Story

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Kenneth Rexroth Reads Poetry To Jazz


Why do we do it? No theories. We do it because we like to. It’s fun.

— Kenneth Rexroth

this is an audio post - click to play



© the Kenneth Rexroth Estate

Originally Published on 8/27/05 4:38 PM

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Independent Music Plays Here (not anymore)




                              KDHX

                                           

If you haven't heard St Louis Community Radio is in the process of being sold to the Gateway Media Foundation.

The board of directors ran the station into the ground, filed bankruptcy and now is no longer a beloved community station. Some of us can't have nice things.


A bit of an explanation

Donnybrook

Original post from 2010

Sunday, June 8, 2025

Darkness Falls

Darkness falls on a nugatory space, Warmed lead fills the flesh with radiation, Like a dying man's last meal. Consumed not out of necessity.

Dust crumbles into the palm of a man's hand. The rafters fail and the debris accumulates, filling salty memories. Convalesced not to the light but an empty eternity.

A void filler unfolds, To occupy unlimited space. But has no spine, no meaning. Tempered by its own weakness.

No courage, no fear, Converging alternately, the books are balanced. The unhinged fall to stronger prey

Like a timekeepers watch in illiterate hands, A beat misplaced, a lonely man's rancor dissolves Into pain, hate, misunderstanding.

Rooted in the less realized matter of self. Criticized, uncircumcised, undignified. Destined to be destroyed, and no memory can recollect.

Soundscape: Bombilate by Rail Dog