Good Stuff

Today I went to Zulu, probably the best record store in Vancouver. I ended up with four CDs, all one dollar each.  Cheap, but with outstanding quality. First off I found a CD from a group/collective I’ve been interested in for many years but have never come across: Hagans. The album is called Animation/Imagination and contained the title track that I have been so amazed by for so long. If the term “future jazz” exists it can definitely be applied to these guys. The album is released by legendary Blue Note. Click here for a listen: http://www.amazon.com/Animation-Imagination-Tim-Hagans/dp/B00000HYBM

I am right now listening to an amazing compilation that I also picked up, “Space” a mix album by Kenny Hawkes. If there is anything that gets me going it’s House music from 1994-1998. Why doesn’t today’s House music have that feeling anymore.

I aso picked up Micheal J. Schumacher’s “Stories” as well as some soulful electro by Robert Strauss in his album “Quasars and Phasars”

Now I got some listening to do.

Review of David Grove’s “Stops Starting (0.05)”

Walking into the Surrey Art Gallery is a quiet experience. It is hard to believe that the exhibition Open Sound is about sound at all. But when you reach the counter you will be handed a pair of wireless headphones, there is in fact a couple of different headphones for different works. Then you can walk around the gallery disconnected from everyone else. A phenomena that happened on the streets long time ago, in form of the Walkman, and to a much larger extent when the iPod was introduced, now it has happened in the art galleries. The piece I will be talking about is David Grove’s Stops Starting (C0.05), a work consisting of three tape loops that has three different sine waves with different frequencies. What is fascinating is that the light is controlling the speed of these loops, so the sound is always changing. I enjoy the fact that the sound/music is always playing, but also changing. It reminds me of the Internet stations that always play music, without a particular order or any sort of DJ, they are just constantly playing music. It is also an interesting notion that the creator of the piece, David Grove, hasn’t made the music, rather he has made the electronics that make the music, this reminds me of the works of artist like Tinguely; the artist is only the engineer or constructor of the machine that makes the art. However, the sound created is not very ground breaking, the construction and the sound alteration is what is fascinating. It question the format of music, do songs need to be in a particular timeframe to be counted as a song. Or can it just, like this piece, be indefinite. It also questions authorship of music, what and who should be defined as the author?
The exhibition catalogue says that the artist is creating “soundscapes with a conscious resistance to modern, digital methods of sound creation” (2). But I cannot see this at all; the materials he has chosen to create sounds with is just an artistic choice to me, just because it is not made by the latest technology doesn’t mean it is critiquing or resisting it, rather it just creates a specific sound, but then, it is also hard to understand what the viewer/listener is supposed to focus on, the actual soundscape or how the soundscape is made. I also found that the work was presented in a quite mundane way, the piece was hung up above the elevator, without the feeling that it was put there for a reason. It felt more like the gallery was out of space, this made it hard to study how the electronics actually worked, it also made it hard to alter the amount of light that reached the tape loops making it troublesome to actually witness the change of the loops corresponding to light. Overall the piece was an interesting experience, but not even close to be the main attraction of the Surrey Art Gallery, which is undeniably Janet Cardiff’s Forty-Part Motet.

Digital/Acoustic (2)

Today I watched an interesting video from G4TV’s daily Attack of the Show podcast. The segment was called The Loop: Musicians in the Digital Era. A contributor for Wired News, Eliot Van Buskirk and Phil Kay from a Nuclear Free City was invited to discuss the new digital technology of music and how it affects independent musicians. Although interesting, I found the arguments and topic quite obvious, but what I think was the most intriguing point was when they started talking about the physical formats. Van Buskirk argued that people are beginning to go back to vinyl, probably due to that the format is far opposite from digital formats. I think this is a very valid point.

I now recall a conversation I overheard in one of downtown’s record shops. That business is going better due to all the kids that buy frames for record covers, want to buy vinyl because of the ‘cool factor’ of the covers. I like the fact that vinyl starts to get cool again, it’s not just a nerdy collector or a DJ (or a fusion of them both) who gives attention to vinyl, but a broader sense of the public. This will gain the true vinyl nerds because it will probably make less stores go bancrupt.

I was also skimming through a book today by Frank Broughton and Bill Brewster called How to DJ (Properly), I came across an interesting chart of positives and negatives of DJing with CDs compared to spinning vinyl. Although there were many positive notes on why you would want to play CDs the last one said “once you’re bitten by the DJ bug you’ll probably want to get into vinyl as well.” A quote I think signify the physical value of a vinyl record. As a DJ that grew up practicing on vinyl; I find it very hard to accept a strict digital setup. Since all my records are back in Sweden I am forced to stick with a digital setup over here. Playing on a computer is functional, but I honestly find it extremely hard to choose a song to cue up for the next song, since all music is just in a massive library of mp3s, they are all just in a dull list of titles, when playing with vinyl you have a whole crate of large colourful sleeves that you put together for that particular night, you don’t only get the pleasure of sitting home choosing what to bring and imagine what you might play, you also get the sense of where to find them in the crate (an important aspect of DJing, since not finding the song you want to play is one of the biggest nightmares of playing out). So even if more and more DJs play CDs today, understandably to the lower costs and and learning time, acknowledging both formats will definitely make you access a broader variety of music and hopefully that leads you to play better music.

Which one do you prefer?

Digital/Acoustic (1)

I have recently stumbled upon quite a few interesting things that can add to the discussion about digital versus analogue/acoustic in music. It seems to me that classical symphonies, instead of looking back in time in a conservative way that might be thought of has instead started to collaborate quite extensively with the electronic/digital music scene. Maybe the most known phenomenon of this is in music today is Detroit techno legend Jeff Mill’s collaboration with Montpelier Philharmonic Orchestra (clip can be seen here). And today I found this on one of my favourite record label’s website. It is a trailer for a DVD and CD by the band Phoneheads and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker. An interesting collaboration indeed. Another example of this is the popularity different Symphonies around the world have gained with performing nostalgic tunes from video games. I’ll try and deal with this in another post.

Kultur 2007

When I look back to last year. I realize it was a great year. Culturally.

In the summer I went back to Sweden. On a trip to Stockholm I went to the most memorable exhibition of the year; Speed For Life. It was an exhibition by fashion photographer Mikael Jansson. But instead of exhibiting fashion photographs, Jansson showed the result of a three year long project where he has followed the Formula 1 race all over the world documenting it his own style. The photographs were beautiful, and amazing.

Back in Vancouver I finally got to see my favourite painter’s Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. In a great exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery her work was presented along with some famous photographs of her by her husband Alfred Steiglitz. The exhibition was very satisfying. I did miss a little bit some of her city paintings, which I find her most interesting work, but what was shown was inspiring enough.

Music hasn’t hit me as hard. Although I have discovered great artists such as Juana Molina and Lt Fisk. The best album I bought was probably Nouvelle Vague’s Bande À Part.

Many great films have come out from last year, and I have many to catch up with. Films I have seen and enjoyed has been Death Proof, Lust, Caution and The Darjeeling Limited, but the best one is Roy Andersson’s You, The Living, a movie that just won’t leave my head.

To finish it off, the best trip for me 2007 was to the Scottish island Islay, a little island in the Atlantic ocean that is full of single malt Whisky distilleries such as Laphroaig, Bowmore and Lagavulin. This is where I also made the discovery of the year; Caol Ila 12 year old single malt, my favourite whisky so far.

There. Now I can move on and appreciate what has to come in the new year.

Coal Ila Whisky Distillery