Vast and grand, monumental
David Byrne walks in increasingly frenetic circles while reading the titles of films released in 1986.
Latest Entries
BBC – Music – Review of Shearwater – The Golden Archipelago
There’s no getting round it: The Golden Archipelago is a profoundly beautiful record. Replete with moments of jubilance and tranquillity, cataclysm and contemplation, it feels like the successful culmination of everything the band have been aiming towards over their career to date. An assured, often fascinating and eminently listenable set, it’s less an album, more a bona fide artefact.
MySpace, R.I.P
Rupert Murdoch’s $580 million MySpace purchase has outlived not only its utility, but has also finally hit its expiration date. That last step came with the announcement this afternoon that Owen Van Natta was stepping down as chief executive of the company. This was nine months after he joined the Los Angeles-based venture. It’s circling the drains, if you ask me.
MySpace, R.I.P
Rupert Murdoch’s $580 million MySpace purchase has outlived not only its utility, but has also finally hit its expiration date. That last step came with the announcement this afternoon that Owen Van Natta was stepping down as chief executive of the company. This was nine months after he joined the Los Angeles-based venture. It’s circling the drains, if you ask me.
Lost City Products
Um, I think I need these crime scene pillows. My Law & Order obsession demands it.
Bill Murray and Anthony Bourdain Go on a Man Date
Bill Murray tends to show up in unexpected places, and his appearance on tonight’s aforementioned Hudson Valley episode of No Reservations is no exception. Here's a clip of Bourdain and Murray at X20 in Yonkers, and check out Tony’s blog for his story about riding shotgun with Murray (in an SUV, not a golf cart).
Lo and Behold!: Unquiet Thoughts
“This may be the most outrageous and beautiful soundtrack I’ve ever heard,” Robertson says, in a press release. It’s hard to argue with the claim, given that the playlist includes Cage’s “Music for Marcel Duchamp,” Scelsi’s “Uaxuctum,” Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel,” and Ligeti’s “Lontano.” Ligeti and Penderecki come out of the familiar Kubrick playbook—“Lontano” figured memorably in “The Shining”—but many of the other selections are unexpected, most of all the choice of Mahler’s Piano Quartet in A Minor.
Shining – Blackjazz
Here we have a record which will, at the very best, leave a lot of people perplexed. Making music this extreme and devoid of anything approximating 'pop' will have that effect. For better, or for worse. Despite that, though, there remains the elements of appeal – everything is screeched and stretched to fill the maximum possible volume and mass. You could tone it all down a few touches and be left with something that isn't completely off either end of the radar, but that would absolutely destroy the singular point of it all. Shining may not have completely killed the jazz overtones from their repertoire with Blackjazz, but they've sure as hell made a mutant of it and noise. Theirs is a career of true progressiveness, in every sense of the word.
Birds part
"If you look carefully you’ll begin to notice birds in all sorts of medieval manuscripts, used as anything from decorative flourishes to representations of the divine. In this series of posts I’ll explore a variety of bird imagery, beginning today with ornamental figures and moving on to birds as symbols of power. In the next post, birds of morality, philosophy, and religion."
Yeasayer’s track-by-track guide to Odd Blood
Okay, you’ve heard Yeasayer’s second set, Odd Blood, but do you understand it? Well? DO YOU? The band’s Anand Wilder provides some clues to their future-pop odyssey with this here track-by track-guide.
Audio: DIY Recordings of Awakening Sun
As the sun emerges from a long lull in activity, the star’s emissions in the radio band of the spectrum have also picked up. And from a shed on three acres of land outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft is making recordings of them available for download.
