" – Peu importe d’où l’on vient. Il n’y a pas de tonique. Le thème et son développement ne sont qu’un mirage…
Il y a une musique toujours inattendue.
– Et les dissonances ?
– Dieu les a créées, elles aussi…"
Jaume Cabré - "Voyage d'hiver" - 2014

”La terre, il se pourrait bien après tout que ce soit une espèce
de merveilleux petit appareil enregistreur, plaçé là par on ne sait qui,
pour capter tous les bruits qui circulent mystérieusement dans l’Univers.”
Pierre Reverdy - ”En vrac” - 1929

”J’entends tous les bruits de la terre grâce à mes oreilles et mes nerfs de cristal
dans lesquels circulent le feu du ciel et celui des volcans.”
Michel Leiris - ”Le point cardinal” - 1927

"L'écoute, c'est l'ombre de la composition"
Pascal Dusapin - 2008

"Go, go, go! ... Go! go! ..."
John Lee Hooker"

 

27/02/2018

Normil Hawaiians


 


Normil Hawaiians is an english band formed in 1982 who have their first "More wealth than money" album re-issued this last december.

to re-discover.








Described by the press upon its release in 1982 as an "absolutely mesmerising double album travelling through progressive rock, via industrial folk to freaky art-punk whilst sounding delightfully coherent" and "a huge slab of mindblowing dark psychedelia" the album was critically acknowledged for its peculiarly British kosmische.
label source: upset! the rythm



https://www.discogs.com/artist/306056-Normil-Hawaiians

"hmm – now where were we?"

"returned..."?
...

Travelling west




& "goin down ..."

 

20/02/2018

Trame XI & una Rosa


Martin Matalon (born in Buenos Aires in 1958) compose "Trame XI" en 2011,
* sur une commande du GMEM de Marseille.
* faisant partie d'un cycle d’œuvres concertantes commencé en 1997
* pour double-bass, flute, clarinet, viola, piano & percussion

"Trame XI" est composé de 8 mouvements courts qui s’enchaînent et dont la durée varie entre 30 secondes et 3 minutes. Des sections plus ou moins longues s’intercalent de manière à créer une dynamique et un rythme formels.
L’idée de miniature... C’est un véritable défi que d’utiliser ce procédé formel car deux problèmes surgissent:
1) l’œuvre résulte d’un patchwork, un collage de sections indépendantes
2) la tension formelle est inexistante en raison de l’absence de direction qui est habituellement donnée par les différents types de développements…"
Martin Matalon


_______________________________________

une interview à propos de son opéra "L'ombre de Venceslao" créé en 2016


& aussi "La rosa profunda", créée en 1992, autour de textes de Jorge Luis Borges.
dans le cadre de l’exposition “L’Univers de Borges” organisée par la BPI du Centre Georges-Pompidou.

Somptueux!

sur une mise en scène de Diana Theocharidis
Scénographie: Emilio Basaldúa
Vidéo: Maro Echeverría
Comédien: Rodolfo de Souza
Mezzosoprano: Isabelle Socoja
Ensemble Ars Nova sous la direction musicale de Philippe Nahon

15/02/2018

Every noise

http://everynoise.com


is an exorbitant website, 
an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, 
based on data tracked and 
analyzed for 1384 genres by The Echo Nest.

Let's try it!

11/02/2018

Burning Ghosts



Burning Ghosts is a band from the Los Angeles underground.
leaded by the trumpet player Daniel Rosenbom, the band explodes jazz-metal gender that singes the fabric of a fraying American culture.

The four musicians are the most acclaimed musicians in the LA experimental music scene. Playing scorching instrumentals that touch on heavy metal and jazz, the music is uncompromising and intense, filled with precise rhythmic complexity and textural power. Their first release on Tzadik is an incendiary blockbuster and is destined to become an instant classic! 

"The music spits fire and lightning, maintaining it's fast speed, regardless of the complexity of the music. The dynamics at play are powerful with the music moving from slow and ponderous to white hot and fast... This is heavy and dense music that is still able to retain a tenuous tie to the jazz tradition while blasting it relentlessly into the future."

Daniel Rosenboom | Trumpet
Jake Vossler | Guitars
Richard Giddens | Bass
Aaron McLendon | Drums


Here is one of their first live performance with Tina Raymond on drums.
Live at Curve Line Space on March 11, 2016
Now the drummer changed and is Aaron McLendon.
 

06/02/2018

Dhrupad




Dhrupad is the oldest surviving form of Hindustani classical music.
It is the oldest form of compositions in indian classical music and a form that is also found in the South Indian as Carnatic music.






The Dagar dynasty is the main stream for 19 generations to maintain the tradition of this music. They all belonged to a prestigious family of dhrupad singers whose founder was Baba Gopal Das, an Hindu who is said to have converted to Islam at the time of Emperor Muhammad Shah. His younger son Behram Khan established himself in Jaipur, where he became a court musician of great repute. He taught his brother's grandsons Allabande and Zakiruddin Khan who used to sing together, quickly asserting themselves as the foremost dhrupad vocalists of their time.


Ustad Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar (1934 - 1989) and Ustad Nasir Zahiruddin Dagar (1933 - 1994) are the younger brothers of the family. They trained many students, including Ustad Faiyaz Wasifuddin Dagar, the son of Nasir Faiyazuddin Dagar, who is keeping the family tradition alive along with other dagarvani exponents.
You can listen to their talent starting at 13' of this movie. Impressive!
and totaly amazing around 33'...




***********

You can also look to the 1982's movie titled "Dhrupad" directed by Mani Kaul.
(unfortunately, no subtitles)




*****

after years, my personal focus to this music was renewied recently by  "The Hum", the famous blog runned by Bradford Bailey whose ecclectic interrests cross miscellaneous musical fields as Fluxus, electroacoustic music, improvisation areas, figures as Henry Flynt, La Monte Young, Harry Partch, John Fahey, Steve Reich, James Tenney, Glenn Branca and many many others...
"The Hum": highly recommended!

02/02/2018

Related Rocks

  

"Related Rocks" is an amazing 1997 music by the finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. In 1977, Magnus Lindberg is - along with Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen - one of the founding members of the association Korvat auki! ("Open your ears!"), whose mission is to promote contemporary music by organizing concerts and offering a meeting place for composers, instrumentalists, critics and musicologists. In addition to his compositional activities, Lindberg is a pianist, and his concert career will lead him to create many pieces. In 1980, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, he founded the experimental ensemble Toimii! ("It works!"), which must become, according to his own words, "a laboratory where composers and instrumentalists could work together on new means of musical expression", notably through a work on improvisation in concert.

******************************* 

for 2 pianos, 2 percussionists and electronic set, "Related Rocks" is a kind of patchwork with lot of different sounds, very different harmonic and rhythmic patterns, even distant stylistic allusions. 

percussions : Samuel Favre, Victor Hanna  & pianos : Hidéki Nagano, Sébastien Vichard,  

all 4 soloists of the Ensemble Contemporain




*************

& to listen to: "Kraft", one of the main composition of Lindberg, considered as one of the great sonic brouhahas of the late 20th century. "Kraft" is the aural result of what happens when German metal-merchants Einstürzende Neubauten meets Xenakis (two of Lindberg’s most important inspirations at the time) filtered through an iconoclastic twentysomething Finnish composer’s imagination.