June 30, 2013

Playlist Week of 2013-06-29

Deafheaven - Sunbather

* Cage: Music of Changes (Tudor) (Hat[now]ART CD)
* Cage, Cardew, et al.: Piano Avant Garde (Tudor) (HatART CD)
* Takemitsu: Quotation Of A Dream, etc. (London Sinfonietta/Knussen, et al.) (DG CD)
* Takemitsu: I Hear The Water Dreaming, etc. (BBC Symphony/Davis, et al.) (DG CD)
* Takemitsu: A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden, etc. (TASHI, et al.) (DG CD)
* Takemitsu: In An Autumn Garden, etc. (Tsuruta/Yokoyama et al.) (DG CD)
* Charlie Christian: The Genius of Electric Guitar (Columbia/Legacy 4CD)
* Charles Mingus: The Jazz Workshop Concerts 1964-65 (d.5-6) (Mosaic 7CD)
* Slobber Pup (Joe Morris/Jamie Saft/Trevor Dunn/Balázs Pándi): Black Aces (Rare Noise 2LP)
* Tom Rainey Trio: Camino Cielo Echo (Intakt CD)
* Secret Keeper (Stephan Crump & Mary Halvorson): Zeitgeist Gallery 2013-05-10 (CDR)
* Rodger Coleman & Sam Byrd: Indeterminate (Improvisations for Piano and Drums) (NuVoid Jazz CD)
* Olu Dara: In The World: From Natchez To New York (Atlantic HDCD)
* Olu Dara: Neighborhoods (Atlantic HDCD)
* D’Angelo: Brown Sugar (EMI CD)
* Frank Ocean: Channel Orange (Island/Def Jam CD)
* Miguel: Kaleidoscope Dream (RCA CD)
* Grateful Dead: Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, Long Island 1979-11-01 (selections) (SBD 3CDR)
* Grateful Dead: Road Trips Vol.3 No.4: Penn State/Cornell ’80 (selections) (GDP/Rhino 3HDCD)
* Jerry Garcia Band: Garcia Live Vol.2: Greek Theatre 8/5/90 (Round/ATO 2HDCD)
* Black Sabbath: Black Sabbath (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†/‡)
* Black Sabbath: Paranoid (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)
* Black Sabbath: Master Of Reality (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†)
* Black Sabbath: Vol.4 (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†)
* Black Sabbath: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (Warner Bros./Rhino LP)(†)
* Yes: Going For The One (Atlantic/Audio Fidelity SACD)
* Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (Original Soundtrack) (Ardent/Omnivore 2LP)
* Queens Of The Stone Age: …Like Clockwork (Matador 2-45RPM LP)
* Opeth: Newbury Comics, Leominster, MA 2013-04-20 (AUD CDR)
* ASG: Blood Drive (Relapse 2-45RPM LP)†
* Beach House: Bloom (Sub Pop CD)
* Deafheaven: Sunbather (Deathwish, Inc. 2-45RPM LP)

†=iPod
‡=car

Commentary:
I’m currently reading Mingus Speaks, John F. Goodman’s new collection of interviews with Charles Mingus (and others associated with him) recorded back in the early 1970s as part of a never-realized collaboration (Mingus passed away in 1979). In his preface, Goodman says:
I quit writing about music in the 1980s in part because I could never resolve the critic’s dilemma: you either limit yourself to readers versed in various kinds of technical talk and bore them with musicological maunderings, or you write your impressions. Neither approach alone is sufficient to render the sense of what’s going in music…Unlike most other arts, music dances away when you reach out to it (p.xii).
Goodman is, of course, fundamentally, frustratingly correct. But he leaves out another option for the music writer: sociology. The eccentric personalities, colorful scenes and myriad subcultures are easier to pin down in words than that elusive, ephemeral thing, music. But this is similarly a dead end. It might make for interesting stories but they rarely get to the essence of “what’s going on in music.”
I’ve been confronted with this conundrum ever since I began contemplating the new Deafheaven album, Sunbather.
It would be easy to smirkily comment how vocalist George Clarke and songwriter/guitarist Kerry McCoy look more like fashion models than metalheads, or explicate the provocatively sexy title1 and the incongruously cheery salmon/pink gradient of the album cover2. Or, on a more substantive note, I could examine the lyrics, which wrestle with wealth, poverty, family, love, loss, envy, desperation, death and spiritual confusion—though Clarke’s shrieking, buried in the mix, renders them unintelligible. I could describe the music as a mixture of black metal, shoegaze and post-rock (whatever that is), a cross between Barzum, My Bloody Valentine and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, blithely proclaim Sunbather an important, “breakthrough” record and call it a day.
But that would not get at “what’s going on” in this music.
I could describe how it felt the first time I played this album a couple weeks ago, being swept away by its ferocious intensity and dramatic dynamic swings, drawn into the hour-long ebb and flow that somehow suspended time and how I was overwhelmed by the powerful yet inexpressibly emotions the music evoked. But then that would just be my impressions, personal and subjective—and useless as criticism. Having listened to it repeatedly since, I could then bore you with some “musicological maundering,” dissecting the dense layers of guitars, fetishizing McCoy’s variegated tone and subtly sophisticated technique and his creative use of electronic effects, meanwhile parsing the polymath drumming of Daniel Tracy. I could focus on the epic lengths of the songs—nine, twelve, fifteen minutes—and the atmospheric interludes that link them together (only one of which doesn’t quite work)3 I could emphasize the moments of breathtaking beauty amidst the harsh distortion and manic screaming: pretty chiming guitars, like a whiff of fresh sea breeze in a bad neighborhood. I could assert this is a black metal album that would appeal to many people well outside of the narrow subculture that now shuns them for stepping outside its boundaries.
But this still does not get at why this record seems to matter, why it packs such an emotional wallop, why I think you all need to hear it—even if you think you don’t like this sort of thing. Sunbather feels like a moment-defining record—a true breakthrough for a young, hungry and ambitious band—leaving me at a loss for words. Some will dismiss it as pretentious, “hipster metal,” others as senseless noise. I call it art.

Notes:
1. “The [title] song came to me as I was driving around…I moved in with my mom to go to school for a bit and just chill out because life was really hectic. She lives in such a beautiful town—she moved there a few years after I moved out—but I got really depressed in this bourgeois, all-white seaside community. So one day I skipped class, drove around and I just saw this girl in the nicest house, and she was just laying there [sunbathing], and I was totally overcome with immense depression. It looked so nice, and I was in that ‘what the fuck am I doing with my life?’ mood at the time. I had a notepad with me, and the first half of the song was jotted down right then” (Clarke interview with Pitchfork 2013-05-29).
2. “[T]he color that you see when you’re laying down in the sun and your eyes are closed[.] The pinks and yellows behind your eyelids” (Clarke interview with LA Weekly 2013-05-22).
3. That would be “Windows.”

5 comments:

  1. This weeks listening has been pretty messy with a whole skew of new CD's arriving in the post and me only getting to listen to snippets of each set as well as other stuff already in my playlists. I'll start this weeks list off with all the new CD's that have arrived or been purchased while in the city on Friday.

    Sonny Rollins - Kind Of Roillins (10 CD Box Set,Including: Freedom, The Village Vanguard Vol.1, The Village Vanguard Vol.2, Solitude, Blue Seven, Wail March, Tune Up, Live In Europe, More Than You Know, Paradox)

    Lou Donaldson - eight Classic Albums (4 CD Set, Including: Wailing With lou, Swing and Soul, lou Takes Off, Blues Walk, Light Foot, LD+3, The Time Is Right, Sunny Side Up)

    Jimmy Smith - Eight classic Albums (4 CD Set, Including: A New Sound, A New Star, Vol.1, The Sounds Of Jimmy Smith, A New Sound, A New Star, Vol.2, A Date With Jimmy Smith Vol.1. The Incredible Jimmy Smith At The Organ Vol.3, At The Club Baby Grand Vol.1, At The Club Baby Grand Vol.2, A Date With Jimmy Smith Vol.2)

    Bruce Springsteen - The Bruce Springsrteen Collection 1973-1984(7 CD Set, Including: Greetings From Asbury park N.J, The Wild,The innocent and the E.Street Shuffle, Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River, Nebraska, Born in The U.S.A)

    Bruce Springsteen & The E.Street Band - Hammersmith Odeonm, London '75

    Mi-Sex - Original Album Classics (3 CD Set, Including: Graffiti crimes, Space Race, Shanghied)

    Miho Hazama - Journey to Journey
    Sun Ra - Secrets Of The Sun
    Muddy Waters - The complete Plantation recordings
    Muddy Waters - They Call Me Muddy Waters/Live At Mr.Kelly's
    Muddy Waters - Muddy, Brass & The Blues/Can't Get No Grindin'
    Muddy Waters - The Real Folk Blues/More Real Folk Blues
    The Lounge Lizards - live in Berlin 1991, Vol II
    Queens Of The Stoneage - ...Like Clockwork
    ZZ Top - Tres Hombres
    Painkiller - live In Nagoya


    Also been listening to snippets or complete albums of the following


    John Zorn's Book of Angels Volume 20 - Tap - Pat Methene
    John Zorn's Book Of Angels Volume 16 - Haborym - Masada String Trio
    John Zorn's Book Of Angels Volume 15 - Baal - Ben Goldberg
    John Zorn - Mount Anagolue
    Muddy Waters - Country Blues (2 CD)
    Muddy Waters - His Best 1947-1955(Chess)
    Muddy Waters - King Bee
    Muddy Waters - Hard Again
    Muddy Waters - Sings Big Bill Broonzy/Folk Singer (2 for 1)
    Sun Ra - Continuation
    Sun Ra - Heliocentric Worlds Volumes 1 & 2
    Various Artists - UNCUT 001 - Reel Music The Coolest Sounds From The Greatest Movies - January 1998 EMI 1
    Various Artists - UNCUT 002 - Reel Music 2 - Classic Themes From Classic Movies - March 1998 SS 2
    Various artists - UNCUT 003 - Unknown Pleasures - April 1998 UP

    In the Work Van this week I managed to get through;

    Various Artists - Uncut Magazine CD June 2013
    Shearwater - animal Joy
    Led Zeppelin - Celebration Day
    Ryan Adams - III/IV
    DR. John - Locked Down
    Masters Of Reality - Masters Of Reality
    Radiohead - OK Computer
    P.G.Six - Starry Mind
    P.G.Six - Slightly Sorry
    Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill
    The Dead Weather - Sea Of cowards
    Neneth Cherry and the Thing - The Cherry Thing
    The Decemberists - The King Is Dead
    First Aid Kit - The lions Roar.

    And finally I managed to track down online(mostly from Yotte's Blog) several Sun Ra live recordings and radio broardcasts which I burned to CDR and sampled;
    Sun Ra - 1971-10-12 stockholm, sweden (fm)
    Sun Ra - I Roam The Cosmos
    Sun Ra - Live Parady Hall Kansas City 11-5-1985
    Sun Ra - Sun Ra 1971.11.11 Delft, Netherlands (1971)
    Sun Ra - Village Vanguard November 15, 1991 NYC
    Sun Ra - Village Vanguard November 17, 1991 NYC
    Sun Ra - Whats New.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Now I am listening to a downloaded copy of Black Sabbath's New CD "13" and I take baCK most of what I said earlier. This is outstanding, classic Sabbath, showing all the pretenders how to really do it. A copy will be in my hot little hands as soon as my next visit to the city. Massive sound, massive riffs, Oh yeah!


    oh and by the way, I just found this on Amazon.
    http://www.amazon.com/Upstanding-Young-Americans-UYA/dp/B005QQGUO8/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_2_RJDC

    It is now winging it's way to my letter box.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here are my lists from last week:

    Playlist 2013-07-01:

    *Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Recording
    *Anthony Braxton: 4 (Ensemble) Compositions 1992
    *Anthony Braxton Diamond Curtain Wall Quartet: 2010-10-05 Mannheim, Germany (CDR)
    *Anthony Braxton: Echo Echo Mirror House
    *Colla Parte: A Cast of Shadows
    *John Coltrane: The Gentle Side of John Coltrane
    *Walt Dickerson & Sun Ra: Visions
    *Duke Ellington: Take the A Train: The Legendary Blanton-Webster Transcriptions
    *Andrew Hill: Dance With Death
    *Charles Mingus: Mingus Dynasty (original edited version)
    *Charles Mingus: Mingus Moves
    *Charles Mingus: Changes One
    *Charles Mingus: Changes Two
    *Roscoe Mitchell: Nonaah
    *New Ting Ting Loft: 2013-06-10 “Sound Construction” (wav)
    *Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble: Memory/Vision
    *Sun Ra: ESP Radio Tribute highlights (discs 3, 4)
    *Sun Ra Quartet: New Steps
    *Sun Ra Quartet: Other Voices, Other Blues
    *Cecil Taylor: 3 Phasis (side 2)
    *Beach Boys: The SMiLE Sessions (disc 1)
    *Beatles: Mono Masters (2009 mono remaster) disc 1
    *Beatles: Hard Day's Night (2009 mono remaster)
    *Beatles: Help! (2009 mono remaster)
    *Beatles: The Beatles (disc 1)
    *Jeff Beck: Shapes of Things: 60s Groups & Sessions
    *Scott Brookman: Smellicopter
    *Copywrite and DJ Scratch Johnson: Carbon Copy’s Phony Art Pub Scam
    *Dead Tape: 2012-11-28 “Dark Star” (streaming)
    *Grateful Dead: 1974-05-14 University of Montana (CDR) “Dark Star”
    *High Llamas: Santa Barbara
    *Yani Martinelli: Bubble Station
    *Jackie Mittoo: Last Train to Skaville
    *Residents: The Third Reich 'n Roll
    *Rolling Stones: Exile on Main St. (deluxe ed., remastered) disc 1
    *Rolling Stones: Live at the Tokyo Dome (disc 2)
    *Soft Machine: Sweet Music (vol. 1, 2)
    *tUnE-yArDs: Whokill
    *Various artists: MegaHz
    *Various artists: Girl Group Sounds: One Kiss Can Lead to Another (disc 1)
    *Yardbirds: Live Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page

    Reading List 2013-07-01:

    *Theroux, Alexander. Laura Warholic, or, The Sexual Intellectual (in progress)
    *Weldon, Michael J. Psychotronic Video Guide (in progress)

    ReplyDelete
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