September 21st 2009

21Sep09

So I started and have haltingly updated this thing driven by a desire to find a landing pad for my interests, as weirdly varied and slightly schizophrenic as they may be. The slow pace of posting is due both to life getting in the way and the very real truth that “A blog about shit BW likes” is vague. I ended up caught in a recursive loop of deciding whether something was worth talking about. There’s a big part of me that likes the idea of focusing solely on music, but much like my decision to not pursue a PhD, the reality of focusing on a single aspect of my interests is overwhelmingly boring. So while I’ll try to avoid posting pictures of my cat, even though she’s fetching, I think I’m going to stop trying to limit what goes here.

I promised to talk about Schubert and Bruckner and am going to try to do so now. Richard Pinnell has been talking about this Schubert Quintet in C for awhile now and after his lengthy post detailing five different versions I grabbed the one he most enjoyed in a final rush of eMusic downloading. I always feel inadequate in the ways Richard mentions when talking about classical music. I went from pop-punk to hardcore to metal to indie rock to noise to wherever I am now, which I think actually just encompasses everything. As happy as I am with my personal musical history nothing really prepared me to talk intelligently about classical music. I avoided it for a long time n ot because I didn’t like it but because I was discouraged by a sense that I was missing important things. Oddly my interest in avant garde music, experimental music, eai, etc. all things which fostered a desire to hear sounds as themselves, to listen to the noises made without an attempt to fit them together in a predetermined way has helped me approach classical music with a more laid-back attitude. There’s a lot I’m missing, sure, but I can tell you that the Schubert Quintet is a beautiful piece of music and that the Bruckner, while, yes, sort of syrupy at times, also contains some compelling moments. There are drifting melodies, and the pace is glacial thanks to the conducting but these pieces make the large-scale moments all the more entrancing. The last few minutes of the first movement are powerful and even if they come off as a bit cliched, there is something satisfying to me in those minutes. A feeling of pomp and magnificence that I don’t always get in the subtle, quiet and often tense music I’ve been obsessed with the past few years.

For me most of my classical listening is focused on moments as opposed to works as a whole. I may not be unique in this, I have no idea. But it’s easier to remember the opening of the Finale of Beethoven’s 3rd than it is to keep in mind the entirety of the piece, and much like in pop music the moments are what makes a song matter to me. I’ll listen to an entire song for one vocal line or one weird noise.

So that’s some talk about classical music. I’ve been pleasantly surprised the past year or so with my forays.

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In more recent news, this weekend I attended the two night shows of the On Land Festival, curated by Root Strata and put on with the help of many. I skipped the afternoon show for no real reason, but looking back I think it was for the best. Root Strata isn’t a label whose aesthetic I share necessarily. I like my share of pyche-y folk-y weirdness, but it’s an area I don’t have a lot of endurance for.

That said, the first night, Saturday, was an incredibly weird and varied lineup. Brief notes on the things that stuck out. Operative were first, from Portland and played a weird psycho-acoustic dance music. Insistent tones, machinic rhythms and incredibly tight focus. I liked them a whole hell of a lot, a really nice surprise. Joe Grimm’s audiovisual piece was technically impressive and was really intense for awhile, but it lasted just a tad too long for me. He is a man heavily influenced by Tony Conrad, that is obvious. It’s an influence I can appreciate. Light sensors on two projectors controlled analog synths I think. The images were abstract, sometimes clear sometimes fuzzy squares of light, fading in and out, flickering, focusing and unfocusing. Each movement of the light seemed to trigger a change in sound. It’s the sort of experience I’d love to have again, but this time perhaps sitting down. The result was mesmerizing, with the lights rapidly flickering and the buzzing, stuttering tones burrowing into your ear. Like I said, it lasted a bit long for me, but I came away impressed.

Pete Swanson was a bit disappointing and Ducktails… I liked the cartoon named that when I was a kid? That is all I will say.

The final three performers were all great. The Alps I remember really liking, but honestly almost everything was blown away by Keith Fullerton Whitman. He took the entire club on a ride through the possibilities of an analog synth. Some dance-y parts, the requisite bloops, a scratchy, somewhat delicate at times portion and some noisey static. At this point I was incredibly tired so details are fuzzy but this set was easily the highlight of the night for me. Tarentel are a band I’ve loved for a long time. We Move Through Weather is a weird, weird album. It’s the sound of a post-rock band escape the tropes and letting the songs just meander. From there they’ve gone in all sorts of directions and I’ve enjoyed exploring each of them as a listener. Their set was pretty equally split between some beautiful, somewhat standard instrumental stuff and an extended droning feedback squall. The music was great as was expected, but was somehow made even more enjoyable with Paul Clipson’s films projected behind them. Clipson’s films were all over the festival and I was uniformly impressed. I wasn’t quite as into the insect footage, but the nature films were just bowl-me-over beautiful, cycling from abstract to clearly nature and back again. The city footage functioned similarly, showing clear buildings, then impressionistic lights then a focus on a pattern, then back to cityscape. I hope to see more of his work.

Sunday night was long. I had completely forgotten Brendan Murray started the night which is weird since his and Keith Fullerton Whitman’s names were the biggest draws for me. It was completely and totally everything I ever wanted out of a Brendan Murray set. I just sat, sometimes watching the film, sometimes just dead to the world, my mind emptied. The sound on Sunday seemed better than Saturday, but maybe it was just the chair. Regardless, when he was done I wished he was playing the entire night. RInging tones gradually building in volume and register, sliding all over one other. Just astoundingly good.

Sun Circle made an impression and Christina Carter’s set was great, as you’d expect, but most of the rest of the night blurred into overdriven guitars. By the time Grouper started I listened for a bit before admitting I wasn’t having fun anymore and drove home to read some more of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, a book I’m going to talk about next before ending this ridiculosly long entry.

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So I love fantasy. I just do. I think the imaginative potential is exciting and perhaps I could make some sort of theoretical case for its importance but honestly it’s that I think wizards are fucking cool and love new ways of doing magic and new ways of organizing a society with magic in it. A particular favorite trope is the “secret magic user” trope, most famous recently because of Harry Potter. Now, I like those books. I think they’re pretty well-written even if a couple are far, far too long and find the world enchanting. But The Magicians takes the basic Harry Potter premise, knowingly, and goes to a more realistic place.

Lev Grossman’s book is a weird, very self-aware take on the Harry Potter world. I’m only halfway through but am a huge fan. Quentin, the main character, is a sad, incredibly smart high school senior who hides in fantasy novels that are an obvious take on the Chronicles of Narnia. He does magic tricks in his spare time, but dime-store novelty magic, not the real stuff. One day it all changes and suddenly his world is turned upside down. He’s not a wide-eyed kid, he’s a depressed teenager. And the school isn’t a magical land of excitement and adventure, it’s basically a rigorous prep school for magic. Most of his days involve tedium, endless, drudging tedium. But still, he’s doing magic!

The writing is sharp and funny. It feels real, too. Quentin seems like an actual person. There are some characters I’d call missteps, Penny for one, but so far it feels less like fantasy than like a coming-of-age story with some weird parts. I think it’s promising too that so far the biggest mystery is that Quentin has lost a book. I’m halfway through, Quentin’s done with school and it seems like Grossman’s going to spend the rest of the book dealing with Quentin’s search for something to do. He’s in his 20s now and while he definitely does magic, the real problem for him is going to be finding a career, a purpose and a passion.

It’s refreshing to read something that is both so aware of itself and so willing to play with expectations. It’s not radical, but Grossman has taken a by now very familar template, the Potter template, and is doing something new, something more real. But with magic, which is awesome.

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I was going to write about Michael Pisaro, but instead of doing that, you should probably just go read this post by Brian Olewnick about Pisaro as he says everything I wanted to say, but more clearly. And it, you know, exists which my Pisaro post does not.

I agree with everything he says, but want to extre double super special agree with his take on Transparent City, which I think is, without a doubt, the most engrossing piece of Pisaro’s. I only have the first set, but adore it. It’ll be awhile before I do another erstwhile distro order, but it’s clear I need the rest of his catalog.

And with that I’m going to stop typing and go read more of The Magicians. Or draw. One of the two.

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