18 months ago, i was standing in a forest. It was located on the Lohusalu peninsula, near the village of Laulasmaa on the north-west Estonian coast. This is the site of Aliina, Arvo Pärt’s country retreat, as well as the enormous archive of his scores, sketches and a myriad other materials that have been collected throughout Pärt’s life and which, at the time of my visit, was still being catalogued and organised in a separate building facing Aliina. In addition to this, about 100 metres away into the forest, was a large construction site where diggers and cranes were starting to make preparations for The Arvo Pärt Centre, a hub for the composer’s complete life and work, intended not only to make the archive accessible but also to feature a museum and a concert hall.
all that dust: music by Morton Feldman, Matthew Shlomowitz, Séverine Ballon, Milton Babbitt and Luigi Nono
The launching of a new label devoted to contemporary music is something to celebrate, and the newest kid on the block is all that dust, the brainchild of composer Newton Armstrong, soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop. The label’s first five releases have recently appeared, and there are a couple of things to say more generally before getting stuck into them individually. First, all that dust is a label not only concerned with the newest of the new; two of these releases are works composed in 1964, and another dates from the early ’80s. Second, all that dust is interested in digital as a valuable medium in its own right: two of the releases are only available digitally, and have been specifically engineered for binaural listening. Third, the label’s approach to presentation is slick but nicely generic, opting for abstract artwork rather than tailoring each one with something personalised. This somewhat extends to the liner notes, which while they do at least provide some context for the music are generally rather meagre and perfunctory. Overall, though, in terms of presentation what all that dust are clearly seeking to emphasise above all else is the music, indicating that we shouldn’t fuss about admiring fancy covers or reading lengthy tracts but just launch as quickly as possible into these five very different soundworlds. Hard to argue with that. Read more
Björk – Crave (Odd Duck Mix); Hearts & Bones; Undone
In my most recent mixtape, exploring the noble art of the remix, i included a track by Björk – ‘Crave (Odd Duck Mix)’ – that i mentioned had been made available as a download back in 2001, but which was no longer available. There were in fact four tracks that Björk released as downloads at that time, and since three of them have been unavailable for over a decade, i thought it would be interesting to revisit them.
It’s worth saying at the outset that throughout her career Björk has been more responsible than most musicians for cultivating an extensive catalogue of remixes of her songs. i began collecting her work in 1993, the year she began her solo career (having left the Sugarcubes), and each successive single felt like a substantial release, usually coming in the form of two or sometimes three CDs (later including videotapes or DVDs) containing a mixture of additional songs and remixes of the title track. The number of these remixes was at times considerable – one of her earliest singles, ‘Big Time Sensuality’ (1993), had as many as seven – but beyond this, these singles would also frequently include new renditions of other songs: ‘Violently Happy’ (1994) had acoustic versions of ‘Anchor Song’, ‘Come To Me’ and ‘Human Behaviour’, ‘Isobel’ (1995) featured a harpsichord version of ‘Venus as a Boy’, while ‘It’s Oh So Quiet’ (1995) – one of Björk’s only singles never to have been remixed – included three versions of ‘Hyperballad’, a song that wouldn’t be released as a single until the following year.
Björk’s predilection for remixes has remained consistent, reaching a peak during the late 1990s (the Homogenic period) when ‘Bachelorette’ (1997) and ‘Alarm Call’ (1998) were treated to ten remixes each. More recently, 2011’s Biophilia was supplemented with a series of eight singles collectively titled Biophilia Remixes containing a total of 17 remixes, and while there are far fewer of them, a handful of remixes have been released to accompany her last two singles taken from Utopia (2017), ‘Blissing Me’ and ‘Arisen My Senses’. Furthermore, in addition to singles Björk has also regularly released anthologies of remixes, including The Best Mixes from the Album Debut for All the People Who Don’t Buy White Labels (1994), Telegram (1996), Voltaïc (2009) and Bastards (2012). Remixes are clearly a logical extension of the restless imagination and urge to collaborate that drive Björk’s creativity. Read more
Mixtape #50 : Remix
The new 5:4 mixtape is a celebration of the art of the remix. However, i should stress immediately that the emphasis here is not simply on that word’s implied legacy of beats and dance-based forms of music. The scope for this particular mixtape is altogether more broad and open-minded, exploring some of the most unusual, unpredictable and unhinged ways that musicians have rethought, rearranged and reimagined both their own and others’ existing musical material.
Some tracks are more closely associated with the diverse songworlds of pop, rock and electronica – including Gazelle Twin, Nine Inch Nails, Björk, Kate Havnevik, The Irrepressibles, Marina & the Diamonds, Beastie Boys, Erotic Market, Susanne Sundfør and Belle and Sebastian – though in some cases the ways that their music has been remixed establishes a sizeable distance from the original. Indeed, in the case of Björk’s ‘Crave (Odd Duck Mix)’ – a remix created by Matmos that was made available as a download from Björk’s website in 2001, and is no longer available – it’s by no means immediately obvious that the track is actually a remix of her song (from Vespertine) ‘An Echo, a Stain’.
Away from songs, i’ve included a number of tracks that occupy dream-like soundworlds of varying levels of stability, comfort and drift. At the more abrasive and/or disquieted end of the spectrum are the likes of Fovea Hex, AM and the UV, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Shinkei + Mise_en_scene, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, Brian Reitzell, Kim Cascone and Ektoise, while more sublime environments are found in the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Andrew Liles, Jonathan Coleclough & Colin Potter, Carl Sagan’s Ghost, Missy Mazzoli, Ben Frost, Sylvain Pohu and Christina Vantzou. Something of an odd one out in the mix as a whole is the track by World’s End Girlfriend, a wonderfully bonkers oddity by an artist whose work i’ve never managed properly to get my head around.
Structurally, it’s pretty much a stream of consciousness, with me more than usually just following my nose, and as a consequence the mixtape veers quite wildly between periods of calmness and seriously ramped-up intensity. Having said that, i’ve started and ended with a pair of tracks that complement each other as an effective overture and finale to the mix as a whole. Access to Arasaka‘s remix of Klangstabil marries elements of dark ambient with glitched beats and electronics, whereas Techdiff‘s grime and dubstep-infused remix of Hecq & Exillon‘s ‘Spheres of Fury’ is quite simply the most accomplished and downright exhilarating remix i’ve ever heard by anyone, retaining an obvious connection to the original while transmogrifying it into a structurally dramatic foray through a series of rhythmically discrete episodes, culminating in the equivalent of a firework display of beats triggered by a barrage of interconnected machine guns. Just amazing.
Two hours of radical reinterpretations; here’s the tracklisting in full, together with links to obtain the music. As usual, the mixtape can be downloaded or streamed via MixCloud. Read more
Tags: Access to Arasaka, AM and the UV, Andrew Liles, Bass Communion, Beastie Boys, Belle and Sebastian, Ben Frost, Björk, Brian Reitzell, Carl Sagan's Ghost, Christina Vantzou, Colin Potter, Ektoise, Erotic Market, Exillon, Fovea Hex, Gazelle Twin, Hecq, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Jonathan Coleclough, Kate Havnevik, Kim Cascone, Klangstabil, Marina & the Diamonds, Michael Begg, mise_en_scene, Missy Mazzoli, Nine Inch Nails, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shinkei, Specta Ciera, Susanne Sundfør, Sylvain Pohu, Techdiff, The Irrepressibles, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, World's End Girlfriend
The Barbican, London: Ryoji Ikeda – Music for Percussion / datamatics [ver. 2.0]
Last Sunday, the Barbican in London was treated to an evening of music by Japanese composer Ryoji Ikeda. For much of Ikeda’s career, he’s created a unique kind of electronic music, blending the aloof coldness and potential impenetrability of the most raw sounds – sine tones and noise – with more warm and accessible extra-musical associations derived from aspects of the world around us: temperature, time, space, and above all, data. More about that later. Ikeda’s compositional interests go beyond electronics, though, demonstrated in the first half of the concert which was devoted to his recent Music for Percussion (released on CD earlier this year on Ikeda’s own Codex Edition label), performed by members of Swiss percussion collective Eklekto. This is not the first time Ikeda has ventured into writing for acoustic forces; his 2002 album op. features three works for strings (the first of which i directed the UK première of a few years ago) – works that, considered retrospectively, are at some remove from Ikeda’s usual tone and aesthetic.
The four works that comprise Music for Percussion are much more closely aligned to the rest of Ikeda’s output. The most obvious thing they clarify is his indebtedness to minimalism: the opening section of Body Music [For Duo], featuring isolated claps that slowly coalesce into a concrete rhythmic pattern, could hardly evoke more instantly Steve Reich’s seminal Clapping Music. Yet where Reich was presenting something nascent, germinal, arguably more a concept than a deeply engaging composition, Ikeda’s Music for Percussion is a logical extension and, more importantly, an analogue of his work in electronics. Those claps in Body Music are swiftly supplemented with an assortment of thigh slaps and foot slams to elicit the same kind of stripped-back timbral palette employed in his intricately rhythmic electronic work. However, whereas on disc the connection to Ikeda’s earlier music is emphasised yet further by the dry clarity of the performance, watching Alexandre Babel and Stéphane Garin negotiate their way through the formidable complexities of its constantly varying rhythmic patterns bestowed on the music a palpable frisson of instability – even fragility – that’s entirely absent from Ikeda’s electronic oeuvre. Performed without music, facing towards the audience rather than each other, Garin and Babel were simply mesmerising to watch. Read more
Gigs, gigs, gigs: Ryoji Ikeda, An Assembly, Kammer Klang, HCMF
As of yesterday, autumn is officially here, so it’s time to take stock of some of the more interesting concerts looming on the horizon. Most imminently, Japan’s most dazzling audiovisual electronic pioneer Ryoji Ikeda is making a rare visit to the UK. His Barbican concert on Sunday night (which i’ll be reviewing), featuring datamatics [ver. 2.0] and a live performance of his recently-released Music for Percussion, (available via Ikeda’s own Codex Edition label) is sold out, but for those in the vicinity of Plymouth Ikeda will be presenting a live set of his 2013 album Supercodex at the Plymouth Guildhall on Friday night as part of The Atlantic Project. Tickets are still available – and very cheap – so it’s a great opportunity to experience Ikeda’s uniquely beautiful blending of sound and data. Aside from Ikeda, The Atlantic Project (which runs from 28 September to 1 October) promises a shedload of intriguing events including an evening of sound and film with Café Concrete, and the ‘Immersive Orchestra’, a performance at Plymouth Hoe in which swimmers ‘conduct’ an orchestra of 100 guitarists. To prove i didn’t just make that up, and to find out everything else that’s going on, visit The Atlantic Project website.
New music ensemble An Assembly are going out on the road for a small-scale autumn tour, performing three works, two of them ensemble commissions: Louis D’Heudieres‘ Laughter Studies 6b – the title of which seems apt, since the mere description of it, involving four vocalists “describing and imitating their own private soundtracks of synthesised tunes and field recordings, transmitted to them via earphones” had me chuckling just thinking about it, Charlie Usher‘s An assembly – a 45-minute epic made up of 14-second miniatures – and a new work by Rowland Hill responding to a 1959 review of Stravinsky’s Agon. They’ll be performing these pieces at Manchester’s Anthony Burgess Centre on 1 October, at City University in London the next day (this concert is free) and finally in Birmingham’s Centrala Café on 4 October. Full details can be found on An Assembly’s website. Read more
Proms 2018: the premières – how you voted
Once again, there was something of an imbalance in the extent to which certain pieces attracted more votes than others. For the last few years, whichever new work is played first in the season – often in the first night of the Proms – has usually attracted the largest number of votes, which isn’t necessarily surprising, both in terms of the amount of time people have to express a view about this piece being longer than any other, as well as it generally tending to attract more attention as it gets the Proms ball rolling. That was again the case this year, with Anna Meredith’s opening night première Five Telegrams receiving the most votes (97). Aside from this, the ‘turnout’ figure for most of the pieces was broadly consistent, though as ever there were one or two that stood out due to apparent voter apathy, the worst affected this year being Iain Bell’s Aurora, curiously attracting a mere 17 votes.
It’s perhaps worth mentioning in passing that, in addition to establishing what you’ve deemed to be the best and worst new works, my number-crunching also looks at the most divisive and most uninteresting (i.e. ‘meh’) pieces as well. This year, Ēriks Ešenvalds‘ choral work Shadow proved the most divisive, with the positives and negatives exactly matched, and the piece that left the majority of you shrugging with indifference was Luca Francesconi‘s weird WWI commemoration We Wept. But let’s turn our attention to the real winners and losers this year. Read more