tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72778346083359542682011-12-05T09:25:53.879-08:00An ongoing inquiry into music, from classics to drones, with occasional pauses to admire the scenery.Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.comBlogger2881100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-86509991944674788762011-05-03T16:40:00.000-07:002011-11-03T17:25:44.604-07:00

With the recent posting of my review of Beautiful Ghost Wave, this blog will be on hiatus for an undetermined while due to other commitments. By the same token, I will no longer be able to accept promotional releases for review at Classical-Drone. I hope to continue writing for furthernoise.org, which recently posted my review of Netherworld's Glacial Movements release, Over The Summit. Without

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-19709942203546156462011-04-23T15:55:00.000-07:002011-04-23T16:06:51.894-07:00

Goh Lee Kwang, who runs the Herbal International label, contacted me earlier this year with an invitation to review Jason Kahn's recent CD Beautiful Ghost Wave. I have a few CDs with Kahn creating fairly static textural improvisations using percussion and electronics with like-minded musicians Jason Lescalleet and Toshimaru Nakamura. My only prior exposure to his solo work is the opus for sine

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-32257772452498316462011-03-17T10:54:00.000-07:002011-03-17T13:07:39.636-07:00

Compilation albums are intentionally a mixed bag, sometimes nothing more than a couple of big names strewn among introductory artists for a quick attraction to a new label. At their best, they contribute a complex and multivariant perspective on a pre-defined theme and become more than the aggregate of their individual tracks. Ghostly International, a "record label and art company" based in Ann

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-26156573280654006272011-03-14T17:19:00.000-07:002011-03-14T17:28:32.905-07:00

Saturday night, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's Legacy Tour came through Tucson with an evening of three dances spanning nearly fifty Cunningham's creative choreography. Let me state at the outset that I don't follow contemporary dance with anywhere near the avidity with which I approach music, so I don't have the vocabulary or experience to say much technically about the dances. My

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-63585285716585314412011-03-09T10:17:00.000-08:002011-03-09T10:29:08.645-08:00

My latest side trip into the world of J. S. Bach is a paperback I picked up on a whim at our local indie bookshop: The Cello Suites by Canadian journalist Eric Siblin. I was previously unfamiliar with these suites except from guitar or lute transcriptions. Emusic has an excellent recording by Pierre Fournier on DGG Archiv for a decent price, so I availed myself of the opportunity. A wise move,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-52973862316894468042011-03-04T07:48:00.001-08:002011-03-04T07:56:56.907-08:00

One of the joys of reviewing is the unexpected, the music that I never would have found, except for the promotional copy that arrives in my inbox. Such a case is a young Icelandic electroacoustician, Bjarni Gunnarsson, whose first solo album, Safn 2006-2009, was released last year on the Belgian microlabel Lamadameaveclechien (the lady with the dog, in French). Gunnarsson is a member of the duo

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-52491251353797991802011-02-18T15:46:00.000-08:002011-02-18T15:55:08.137-08:00

It's been a while since I last reported on the gems I've found inside Netflix that travel the same waters as yours truly. And I've found a nice one, My Cinema For The Ears, directed by Uli Aumüller and featuring mostly Francis Dhomont and a bit with Paul Lansky. The film's continuity and direction come from watching Dhomont work on a piece entitled Another Spring, which was released in 2003 on

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-59050882843870784952011-02-10T14:44:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:03:01.824-08:00

Enrico Coniglio first came to my attention in his collaboration with one of my favorite drone ambienteers, Oöphoi (whose work deserves a couple of articles here, but another time&hellip). He has been kind enough to keep me apprised of his work, and some time ago I received a couple of packages of CDs from him containing releases from different projects. Coniglio has deep roots in Venice, and he

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-63712369365003854072011-02-08T04:30:00.000-08:002011-02-08T04:35:54.059-08:00

The February issue of furthernoise.org is out, where I have two reviews: Chance Reconstruction by M. Ostermeier, a post-classical artist creating unusual work with piano and electronics; and the first volume of some nice droney Soundscapes from Edward Rizo. More info and links to the artists, plus other reviews and a new compilation of exclusive live tracks, at furthernoise.org.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-6565885435492966882011-01-28T14:35:00.000-08:002011-01-28T14:55:02.885-08:00

This week I completed a long-held goal for my studio, which was to enable surround sound listening. The path to this goal was unfortunately fraught with a couple of hidden perils, compounded by my piecemeal upgrade to various home audio installations of differing manufacturers and capabilities. I document them here as a cautionary tale.The first piece of equipment was a Sony Multi-Channel

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-59615195462308999282011-01-19T09:00:00.000-08:002011-01-19T09:38:30.840-08:00

Somewhere over the holidays I saw a notable-2010 book list that included Peter Doggett's account of the Beatles after their breakup, You Never Give Me Your Money. Not a bad read, but be forewarned that there is little discussion of music in the book. The solo post-Beatles albums show up as milestones in the unending legal battles that consumed the group starting in the late 1960s, while they

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-38811063259379358492011-01-19T05:27:00.000-08:002011-01-19T05:41:31.782-08:00

At the encouragement of fellow Roland Kayn aficinado Massimo Ricci, I had another look at the liner notes for Kayn's early vinyl releases, which are posted on his site. Despite my earlier comments on the paucity of material in English, there is some English explanation in each set of liner notes. It's pretty clear from the documents that Kayn developed a generative music systen, nearly twenty

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-76784290611686865762011-01-12T06:18:00.000-08:002011-01-12T06:28:42.660-08:00

Jean-Claude Eloy's epic electronic work Gaku-no-Michi has long been on my short list for drone classics. Composed at the NHK Studio in Tokyo (like Stockhausen's Telemusik) in 1977-78, the 1979 double LP was one of my favorite electroacoustic works from my first hearing. But the four sides were only an excerpt, somewhat less than half of the total. Nevertheless, they grew in stature through its

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-48701763973277908252011-01-07T15:28:00.000-08:002011-05-07T08:32:41.251-07:00

Another of the great pioneer electroacousticians passed away this week. Roland Kayn was a part of the early electronic improv groups, Nuova Consonanza, with Ennio Morricone, Franco Evangelisti and Aldo Clementi, but his mark came with huge electronic epics that he started composing in the mid-1960s. One part of his Cybernetics project was released on the legendary DGG Avant-Garde series of LPs,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-61340711171331736542011-01-03T09:30:00.000-08:002011-01-03T09:50:20.454-08:00

2010 was a strange year for me and recorded music. I traveled to some major U.S. left coast cities and visited some world-class record stores, expecting to do some serious CD bingeing. The second trip involved two smaller stores, one of which I visited quite profitably in 2004. Unfortunately, both stores had shifted to fairly small CD displays, having switched largely to vinyl and used items,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-54197896213987329542010-12-29T10:22:00.000-08:002010-12-29T14:50:40.801-08:00

Christmas morning I finally finished John Tilbury's Cardew biography, Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished, having saved the final, political years for my third extended session with the book. In the 1970s, Cardew turned away from the avant-garde music that had gained his reputation, and began writing more populist music that would be useful in mobilizing the troops for the imminent revolution.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-57359058437285783292010-12-17T13:48:00.001-08:002010-12-18T04:56:42.050-08:00

René Daumal was a mystic and writer in interwar France, a fertile time for the imagination even if it was highly unstable economically and politically for most of Europe. Born in 1908, his early years most famously included a bit of drug experimentation, specifically inhaling carbon tetrachloride, which gave him a glimpse of a higher reality. Although he later renounced external stimulants, he

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-30171252596700973702010-12-17T13:48:00.000-08:002010-12-18T04:56:06.317-08:00

Sad news today that Don van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, passed away. I was a Zappa fan, and Beefheart sang Willie the Pimp on Zappa's first solo, Hot Rats, which rapidly became my favorite song on the album. Zappa had also formed two labels, Straight and Bizarre, and I picked up everything they released. One of earliest releases was Beefheart's monument, Trout Mask Replica. If this was

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-15229657949155404882010-12-06T14:07:00.001-08:002010-12-06T14:12:51.986-08:00

The December 2010 issue of Furthernoise.org was published today, and it includes two of my reviews, both featuring Australian music. The first is a review of Gail Priest's Presentiments From The Spider Garden, an extended web of unanticipated exotic territories formed into a long suite. The second is an overview of the first four releases on the Melbourne label Vicmod, which together show off

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-25707822158822606402010-11-04T12:46:00.000-07:002010-11-04T15:55:24.941-07:00

When I set up this blog nearly four years ago, I envisaged the Classical and the Drone as twin poles between which I would concentrate my humble observations. The intersection of these two worlds certainly exists, for example La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier, but the last time the two came together around here was about a year ago with Sunn O)))'s drone metal combined with classical instruments.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-17149257328009122252010-11-01T14:26:00.000-07:002010-11-01T14:35:36.999-07:00

Our first high cultural event of the season was last night at the University of Arizona's UAPresents, violinist Robert McDuffie and the Venice Baroque Orchestra playing the Seasons Project: Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons in the first half of the concert, and Philip Glass's second Violin Concerto, entitled The American Four Seasons. McDuffie commissioned the concerto with exactly this pairing

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-43818464791653605142010-10-21T15:06:00.000-07:002010-12-24T10:54:53.898-08:00

Settling back in after travelling involves finding various pieces of life and picking them up again. One of these pieces is John Tilbury's Cardew biography, which I've mentioned before. Needless to say, this wasn't a vacation book because of the FAA's continued enforcement of luggage weight restrictions. So this past week I've picked it up again, reading about the Scratch Orchestra, a

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-82218700555371805422010-10-20T11:45:00.000-07:002010-10-20T12:13:26.994-07:00

Brian Pyle's solo spinoff from the Starving Weirdos, aptly-named Ensemble Economique since Pyle played everything himself, released its third album this past summer, a gorgeous vinyl package in Amish Records' Required Wreckers series. Standing Still, Facing Forward moves away from the Ensemble's more industrial earlier releases, with a sound built up from bowed strings, winds and environmental

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-53169734577925224592010-10-14T16:48:00.001-07:002010-10-15T07:16:28.786-07:00

Back in the spring I reviewed a two-CD set by Brooklyn dronemeister Kyle Bobby Dunn purporting to be an introduction to his music, but if someone really wanted to approach Dunn's music from out of the blue, his more recent limited edition Rural Route No. 2 might be a better place to start. Dunn is originally from Canada, and this release is from an unusual source, a print shop and publishing

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-47952276324358522322010-10-12T05:49:00.000-07:002010-10-12T05:54:56.920-07:00

The October 2010 issue of Furthernoise features two reviews of mine: Distances by Obsil and Cranes Fly West by Richard Lainhart. Lots of other interesting items too, including Alan Lockett's overview of the recent Thomas Köner reissues, including my drone classic Permafrost.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-27003587185047992502010-10-07T16:35:00.000-07:002010-12-24T10:54:03.990-08:00

Over the past year I have reviewed three albums on Glacial Movements, an label from Italy that furthers the exploration of isolationist music. The label's most recent release is The Art of Dying Alone from bvdub, who DJed in some of San Francisco's deep trance and techno raves in the 1990s before relocating to China, where he worked as a translator and recorded this album. The artist's moniker

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-73368785366114177162010-10-02T16:37:00.001-07:002010-10-02T16:48:19.914-07:00

We've returned from our travels, two weeks in Peru with organized tours in the Sacred Valley and the Peruvian Amazon and a side trip down the desert coast with a flight over the Nazca lines. Besides the hundreds of photos to sort through and the treasured time at Macchu Picchu, we are especially grateful to the guides who showed us so much of their country, introducing us to local artists and

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-15807090740366810922010-09-11T16:07:00.000-07:002010-09-11T17:00:14.257-07:00

We have major travel rapidly approaching, and my access to the internet will be sporadic at best. I'll post a picture if I can, but comment moderation is unlikely. My iPod is stocked with new music and some old favorites in anticipation of some long plane flights. I've treated myself to some noise cancelling headphones, so I hope to hear some late Feldman, maybe the studio recording of

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-38764906684513273092010-09-02T17:24:00.000-07:002010-09-03T06:40:51.923-07:00

Celer is the musical offspring of Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long, a husband and wife whose posthumous discography now runs into the dozens. Typically their ethereal drones are composed from highly processed recordings of environmental sound or acoustic instruments such as piano, violin and flute. Their recent album on Dragon's Eye, Dying Star, is both one of their most subdued sonically,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-77896508040748943912010-08-16T11:09:00.001-07:002010-08-16T11:22:15.800-07:00

I've written before about the joys of Bach transcriptions, and one of the BBC Proms concerts this year programmed a delightful set of Andrew Litton conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, streaming for a few more days here. In addition to ever popular works like Respighi's version of the Passacaglia and Fugue, the program includes a suite by William Walton and new commissions from younger

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-50780248471898009812010-08-14T10:49:00.000-07:002010-08-14T11:11:13.606-07:00

Musique concrète is enjoying a resurgence from phonographers, taking to the sonic environment with portable recorders and excellent microphones and using the results to create a variety of unique sound works. My previous exposure to Vancouver sound artist Mathieu Ruhlmann has been through works where field recordings were part of the texture, but where long unbroken threads were more prominent.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-14403212261065674272010-08-09T09:59:00.000-07:002011-04-30T18:06:44.387-07:00

I have two reviews in the August 2010 issue of furthernoise.org: a collaborative soundtrack between Per Boysen and Erdem Helvacioğlu, and a new music lounge jazz trio, the Jack Curtis Dubowsky Ensemble.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-87579177895160883252010-08-05T10:59:00.000-07:002010-08-05T12:51:52.878-07:00

While virtually all of the albums in my occasional drone classics series have been painstakingly composed over an extended period of time, it is of course not uncommon for artists to perform and compose drones on the fly. One strand of drone performance stems in part from the live electronics work from the 1960s: Cage and Tudor, Stockhausen, and collectives like AMM. Keith Rowe, tabletop

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-71374495281236075012010-07-23T17:37:00.000-07:002010-07-30T05:35:30.615-07:00

It might be odd to find a memoriam here for Dutch bandleader Willem Breuker, who died today, but I have a special fond memory of his music. Probably in the early 1990s, hanging out on the Zorn List, I explored some of the byways of European jazz, and eventually came to Breuker's Kollektief. Maybe the first CD I got was Heibel, which came packed in a cheese box. But the second one was

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-68466759027525721842010-07-07T16:05:00.000-07:002010-07-07T16:59:31.562-07:00

The second and third movements of De Natura Sonorum share hidden origins in direct response to the orchestral tradition in western art music. Accidents/Harmoniques (Accidents/Harmonics) was originally envisioned as a parody of Instrumental Music ("with a capital I", says Parmegiani), and Géologie Sonore (Geology of Sound) took a specifical inspiration from Arnold Schoenberg's Klangfarbenmelodie,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-82242669325974852352010-07-03T11:04:00.000-07:002010-07-03T15:42:20.471-07:00

For as much as I love, have written about, and continue to listen and perform the music of John Cage, I'm equally drawn to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, in many ways Cage's polar opposite. Cage composed with chance operations, and some of my favorite Cage works (like the number pieces) produce sound events differently at every performance, epitomizing what has come to be called "open form.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-86442058978635910082010-06-21T15:30:00.000-07:002010-12-24T10:55:24.187-08:00

Not much gets done during a summer in Tucson. It's just too hot. Repeated days of triple digit temperatures encourage reflection rather than action. And last Sunday morning, I enjoyed simply sitting and listening to one of my guilty pleasures, Otto Klemperer's 1961 recording of Brahms' Requiem. So it's taking me more time perhaps than usual to work through music books. Besides the Parmegiani

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-4706889602707417212010-06-07T16:44:00.000-07:002010-06-07T16:48:21.316-07:00

The June issue of furthernoise.org has my review of Eric Glick Rieman's Trilogy from the Outside. Rieman plays a prepared electric Rhodes piano, a unique instrument that combines the electronics with mechanical noises from the original instrument, a very interesting set of music. The review has links to Rieman's site and sound samples.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-27243439896273291912010-06-07T16:24:00.000-07:002010-06-07T16:50:06.044-07:00

Tucson's Solar Culture Gallery had another great show last night, the ambient artist Robert Rich. He played a continuous 90-minute set with more rhythm than I typically associate with his music, many passages underpinned with a tribal beat, which must have been pre-programmed since I didn't see Rich make any action that would have produced drum sounds other than hitting a couple of keys on his

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-5762010883199416102010-06-06T14:32:00.000-07:002010-12-24T10:52:51.288-08:00

Enrico Coniglio is based in Venice, Italy, where he trained as an urban planner, and his music has deep roots in his environment. I reviewed one of his collaborative works a while back, and this year he released Songs from Ruined Days digitally on the Touch sublabel Spire. At first glance it seems like an odd alliance, since Coniglio's only traditional instrument is the guitar and Spire is all

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-51617120655493487702010-05-24T12:40:00.000-07:002010-05-24T18:22:48.534-07:00

Roland Kayn is one of the few remaining old school electronic music composers, with a resumé that includes working at the NWDR studio with Herbert Eimert in the early 1950s and live electronic improvisation in the 1960s with Gruppo di ImprovvisazioneNuova Consonanza and a side-long electronic composition, Cybernetics III, in the legendary DGG Avant-Garde series. Backed with Luigi Nono's amazing

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-43304402991406133672010-05-07T13:41:00.000-07:002010-05-07T15:18:26.869-07:00

De Natura Sonorum thematizes contrasting binary pairs, one of which is stated at the outset with the first piece, Incidences/Resonances. Excerpts from the interview: I wanted to check out the different ways that concrete elements could combine with electronic elements, always seeking a certain homogeneity. It was about making composite objects, where the attack was concrete and the "resonance"

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-13284577217373219932010-05-05T12:11:00.000-07:002010-05-05T12:28:55.317-07:00

Last night we went to see a post-rock twin bill, Balmorhea (from Austin, Texas) opening for Mono (from Tokyo) at the local club Plush. In general I feel fortunate to find local concerts from groups I admire, and unfortunately last night there was a serious conflict. The Solar Culture Gallery had the drone rock group Growing, which I'm sure would have been great. But we picked the post-rockers,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-53710967737361443772010-05-03T17:02:00.000-07:002010-05-07T14:54:26.149-07:00

Through an accident of education I majored in French at university back in the 1970s. For several years I maintained it by continuing to read trendy French fiction and philosophy, but gave it up a decade ago and celebrated by reading Proust in the revised Moncrieff translation. Anything I might want to read would eventually get translated, I thought. Well, wrong again. In 1982 Jean-Jacques

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-19585837792776235862010-04-28T13:43:00.000-07:002010-04-28T13:58:01.499-07:00

Astute drone followers will have already noticed Kyle Bobby Dunn from his early limited-to-150 release Six Cognitive Works on the Swedish label Kning, or more likely from Sedimental album Fragments & Compositions, released in 2008 and favorably reviewed in big international music media. Although Six Cognitive Works has an occasional noisy edge (Dunn put it in the genre Rock and added Death Metal

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-57256380335058022382010-04-06T10:53:00.000-07:002010-04-06T10:59:24.142-07:00

Furthernoise.org has published two of my reviews in the April issue. The Black Album, a new compilation on the net label Untitled & Afteran electronic Union by the California composer Kyron

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-14566985270464574032010-04-06T09:02:00.000-07:002010-04-06T09:19:07.212-07:00

Sometimes I have to stop and admire the scenery. Southern Arizona has had a lot of rain this winter, so the wildflower season has been pretty spectacular. I couldn't decide which of the two photos to post, so here they both are, from the Sutherland Wash in Catalina State Park. The yellow flowers are Mexican Poppies, and the tall, spiky blue ones are Lupines, and the blue flowers on the shrubs

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-82794033678581346122010-04-04T10:22:00.000-07:002010-04-04T13:07:07.162-07:00

One of the few criticisms that I had for Graham Collier's The Jazz Composer was that he didn't have much to say about contemporary jazz figures other than himself. Henry Threadgill was probably foremost in my mind when I made that remark. The Brooklyn Rail has a fine article by George Grella about Threadgill, with some depth in the discussion about his compositions (hat tip: Avant Music News).

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-3815893143108716242010-04-03T06:21:00.000-07:002010-04-03T06:48:54.619-07:00

Some time ago, fellow blogger Brian Olewnick wrote about a weekend road trip accompanied by the entire five-CD Aldo Ciccolini recording of Erik Satie's complete piano works. This post contained a seed that, nearly a year later, has sprouted: Something like the 4th Nocturne (still, gun to head, my favorite individual piece of music, as played by Ciccolini) utterly dies when pushed along too

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-53554858809004088162010-04-02T19:43:00.000-07:002010-04-02T19:48:04.436-07:00

Blogger hatta from the Spiral Cage is in Boston this week attending the concerts concluding Christian Wolff's month-long residency at New England Conservatory. His report, first of several, is here. Should be an interesting series.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-82482443210221594132010-03-25T14:45:00.000-07:002010-10-07T14:15:06.403-07:00

Francisco López is one of the most prolific sound artists active today. Since his earliest releases, more than twenty years ago, he has released well over a hundred albums and has rejuvenated musique concrète through extensive use of field recordings and other types of found sounds. I wrote about Wind [Patagonia], one of his overt field recording albums, here a while back. For as many López

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-51565685283479856452010-03-19T10:32:00.000-07:002010-03-19T12:54:56.076-07:00

One of the reasons I was attracted to Cage's music at an early age is that he famously declared to have no feeling for harmony, a sentiment I recognize clearly in myself. A few years ago, I had a piano teacher who claimed that he could hear the tonal structures in big romantic symphonic works, a feat I find staggering. Despite many years of enthusiastic and studied involvement, I can't hear key

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-77883666541328778272010-03-11T17:47:00.002-08:002010-03-11T17:53:04.880-08:00

Much is being made of 2010 being Chopin's 200-year anniversary. I hope there's as much fuss in 2012 for John Cage's centenary.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-82018091513672989292010-03-09T13:59:00.000-08:002010-06-19T14:59:43.675-07:00

This past weekend, my wife and I flew to San Francisco, where we attended two of the three concerts from the 15th Other Minds festival. Focussing primarily on new chamber music, the concerts also featured electroacoustic composer Natasha Barrett and an ecstatic jazz performance by Kidd Jordan with William Parker and Warren Smith. But the majority of the pieces we heard maintained the composer/

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-416592594782610462010-03-03T16:19:00.001-08:002010-03-03T20:03:01.749-08:00

There are a couple of ways I could introduce Tomorrow Becomes You, the third album by the Brooklyn-based quintet Slow Six. Christopher Tignor, who writes the music, is a software designer by training, and his instruments are both more and less than fancy GUIs, ways to transform live sound in a group context, instruments that require the same kind of practice as their acoustic counterparts. A

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-47509700113299124092010-02-25T20:16:00.000-08:002010-02-25T20:16:00.349-08:00

My ongoing interest in piano miniatures has led me from Mompou and Scriabin to the Ukrainian composer/pianist Valentin Silvestrov. Born in Kiev in 1937, Silvestrov's earliest compositions date from the late 1950s, many for solo piano. Reportedly written in a modernist style characteristic of the musical upheavels elsewhere in Europe and performed at Darmstadt along with the other luminaries of

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-38563465080235749122010-02-11T06:53:00.000-08:002010-02-11T07:06:20.811-08:00

Recently I stumbled across a fascinating article in the Atlantic on the Grateful Dead's archive, which they donated to the University of California Santa Cruz a few years ago. One of my family has supported the archive since before its inception, so I'm very pleased to see it getting such positive attention. The article points out what truly visionary business people the Dead were, with

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-54051498096279221792010-02-11T06:49:00.000-08:002010-02-11T06:53:53.506-08:00

I have two reviews in the February 2010 issue of Furthernoise.org: Extended Night, an EP by Dining Needle, an ambienteer from the Seattle area; and Anthropology, Vol. 1 from Loren Dent, on Infraction. Sound samples and more information at furthernoise.org.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-70308788877552783552010-02-04T08:57:00.000-08:002010-03-19T13:02:36.142-07:00

The more time I spend looking at alternate musical notation, the more I come to Graham Collier's statement about jazz: all that matters is the performance. Notation always leaves something out, although classical musicologists might like to think otherwise. Recent entries around the blogosphere provide more evidence, or at least food for consideration. Composer, educator and writer Kyle Gann

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-79987111547873444972010-01-18T15:30:00.000-08:002010-01-18T16:01:06.667-08:00

An ongoing theme of this blog is the nature of a musical work, especially in light of the radical modifications to that concept since World War II. Most of the musicians I've discussed in this context so far have come from the classical tradition, with its strict dichotomy of score and performance. Jazz comes from a completely different background, yet its contrasting compositional practice has

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-77237388946968659442010-01-08T16:23:00.000-08:002010-01-09T05:47:46.931-08:00

From the earliest examples of musique concrète, practitioners have started from instrumental rather than environmental sounds, taking samples from sympathetic performers as the origin for their electroacoustic works. Although environmental and field recordings become more prevalent in recent years, in the mid-1990s composers like John Wall re-initiated the use of instrumental fragments. Wall's

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-41563169469044093702010-01-01T14:40:00.000-08:002010-01-17T06:27:47.098-08:00

It's that time again, to look back and reflect on the music and events from the past twelve months. Staggeringly, I acquired almost twice as much new music this year compared to 2008, largely through the discovery of web sites and blogs that make available bootleg radio broadcasts. This had the unfortunate side effect of reducing the number of netlabel releases that I was able to absorb, because

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-1473565795046462552009-12-18T19:12:00.001-08:002009-12-18T19:22:03.404-08:00

Because it's not Arizona. We've come across the water to the 50th state for the holidays. Not only is it green, an unusual color for a landscape, but it's extremely humid (as you can see from the haze — that cliff isn't very far away from us). But while we're here, music posting will be non-existent, and other access will be limited. Have a good time celebrating whatever you celebrate, and

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-90683144776669234542009-12-12T05:59:00.000-08:002009-12-12T06:38:13.380-08:00

Stockhausen's intuitive pieces, From the Seven Days, are more than historical oddities; they continue to interest creative musicians and spur new perspectives. In February 2009, a group of five improvisers whom I've discussed before, including Werner Dafeldecker (of Polwechsel and Autistic Daughters) and Kai Fagaschinski (Magic I.D., among others) performed the most severe of the set, Gold Dust,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-45749605838000675972009-12-02T08:26:00.000-08:002009-12-02T08:47:08.222-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a Sun Circle concert, featuring Greg Davis and Zach Wallace. One of the albums I picked up at the concert is Wallace's Glass Armonica, a live recording of an instrument he built based on Benjamin Franklin's design. It's a very nice set of drones, played by four performers, emphasizing the unique set of overtones that come from working with glass. But besides

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-51098982198888003932009-11-25T14:29:00.000-08:002010-01-17T09:33:50.502-08:00

In a recent interview at Paris Transatlantic, composer/improviser Richard Barrett commented that Stockhausen's recordings of his text compositions, From The Seven Days (Aus den Sieben Tagen), "represent one of the pinnacles of achievement in improvised music," a remark which has generated a fair amount of discussion on the IHM forum. I've expressed my great admiration for these recordings before

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-78810205813226169952009-11-16T22:29:00.000-08:002010-06-07T16:43:21.740-07:00

Seldom does Tucson get the kind of live drone shows that seem to appear regularly in Chicago and New York, but this evening we were blessed with performances by Jeph Jerman and Sun Circle, a duo of Greg Davis and Zach Wallace. The Solar Culture gallery, which presented the show, has been the subject of some controversy recently as its landlord changed rather abruptly from the state of Arizona to

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-30889739393426304222009-11-16T06:09:00.000-08:002009-11-16T06:52:54.357-08:00

I have two reviews in the latest issue of furthernoise.org: Echoes of Syros, a live concert recording by Deep Listening trombonist Stuart Dempster, ambient Tuba player Tom Heasley, and prepared Rhodes performer Eric Glick Rieman; and Derivative, a set of ambient guitar instrumentals by Remora based on short fragments from various rock, soul and pop inspirations. Sound samples are available

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-62130249388631193442009-11-11T15:34:00.000-08:002009-11-11T15:51:32.672-08:00

What makes ambient isolationist? In the early 1990s it was a reaction against the highly rhythmical, ornate, more-techno-than-ambient music that, oxymoronically, was often used for dancing. Stripped to the most minimal, artists like Thomas Köner created very quiet, slow moving music that seemed like the sound of absence. Polar regions seemed an apt metaphor, a featureless, flat, wind-swept

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-57342373311769865672009-10-23T16:28:00.000-07:002009-10-23T16:36:13.072-07:00

With sadness I note the passing of Maryanne Amacher, a sound artist whose work impressed me the first time I heard it many years ago. She will no doubt be best remembered for her massive multi-room installations, which she populated with "sound characters" whose interaction she considered in narrative terms. Sadly, I never had a chance to hear any of these, but her recorded work is very

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-40554446088214964142009-10-10T14:54:00.001-07:002009-10-10T14:59:04.164-07:00

Another photo from our road trip last week. There actually is a very small town in Arizona called Paradise, and we took the one-lane dirt road across the Chiricahua Mountains to get there.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-7897997941461814942009-10-10T13:48:00.001-07:002009-10-10T14:29:30.113-07:00

If music contains the power to evoke our emotions, what is the sound of love, the most fragile and most sincere of emotional states? Celer's brief but prolific musical trajectory circles this question, adopting a mystical perspective towards living and working through a fragile existence. Their recent CD Brittle was recorded last winter but released just a few weeks after Danielle Baquet-Long's

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-73117030440594373952009-10-08T08:48:00.000-07:002009-10-08T20:31:38.137-07:00

There's a lot of activity in the blogosphere about new FTC rules for disclosure, which take effect December 1. Although the rules are targeted at larger fish than the micro editions that appear in my posts, I believe full disclosure is generally a good idea. So here's mine.Through my activity as a reviewer for furthernoise.org, I occasionally get unsolicited promotional materials, usually CDs

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-75070030023910428702009-10-07T15:58:00.000-07:002009-10-07T16:07:03.463-07:00

Katherine Norman's book on sound art, which I wrote about a month or so ago, prominently featured maps as a tool for personal discovery. I have always loved maps, even as a kid, poring over atlases and letting my imagination wander. I still collect maps, using visits to the local outfitter as an excuse to find some other representation of the surrounding regions. Surprisingly, they disagree on

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-91051329755396187732009-10-07T05:06:00.001-07:002009-10-07T07:16:57.966-07:00

My article on Toru Takemitsu's visionary graphic score Corona for Pianists has been published at Néojaponisme. I had originally intended to post it here since it dovetails with many of my recent posts about open form, but it overlaps nicely with Néojaponisme's interest in creative endeavors outside of established genres.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-58208715807135284952009-09-25T16:46:00.000-07:002009-09-25T17:12:56.209-07:00

Although I don't usually write about major label releases, Sunn O)))'s Monoliths and Dimensions blends contemporary classical music with experimental metal with stunning results. Most of the press surrounding the group focuses on their loud and ritualistic concerts, with the group dressed in monk's cowls and the stage filled with fog. Concerts are fine if you live in London or New York, but

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-44728282757461623262009-09-14T05:55:00.000-07:002009-09-14T05:58:07.304-07:00

My review of New Works for Processed Electric Guitar by Richard Lainhart and Hakobune is published at furthernoise.org.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-13051416328294645202009-09-13T16:40:00.000-07:002009-09-13T20:37:42.505-07:00

Part of Brian Eno's ambient music manifesto was that "Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular." Quite often my mind wanders during a music performance, invaded by myriad isolated thoughts from recent internal and external events. Nevertheless, either through increased familiarity or a serendipitous awakening, repeated

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-24769901761081270062009-09-03T15:30:00.000-07:002009-09-03T17:16:10.502-07:00

Keith Jopling over at Juggernaut Brew has a recent post about managing large and ever-growing music collections. He accurately describes the oversupply problem, and then he presents a prioritized five-category approach:The back catalogues of my recently discovered favourites. Play all the classics at least once a year.Listen to more music that’s ‘different’.Give the old masters more time.New

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-23091795212923087922009-09-01T10:54:00.001-07:002009-09-01T11:06:20.798-07:00

For a number of reasons, it's been a while since I posted. First, I have been writing, but for other outlets. I'll post links when the articles are available. Second, I've been struggling with a dying computer, so I now spend the first half hour or so of every session trying to get everything up and running normally. All very disheartening, but I've ordered a new one, so this problem should

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-74258071721283565842009-08-09T15:54:00.000-07:002009-08-09T17:02:53.307-07:00

As usual, Professor Gann nails it — the whole valorization question that I've wrestled off and on, whether a musical work is "good" or not. I've never really been able to tell, because a whole lot of music that a whole lot of people think is Tony-the-Tiger-Great leaves me bored witless. And while I'm willing to concede that craft and skill exist, music still has to speak to me, and so much

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-13744405199743639882009-07-19T14:31:00.000-07:002011-02-16T10:02:23.852-08:00

A few years ago, Belgian composer Henri Pousseur donated all of his papers to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Switzerland. For his fourth trip to deliver his archives, he was accompanied by filmmakers Guy-Marc Hinant and Dominique Lohlé. The resulting documentary, Hommage au Sauvage, was released on DVD by Sub Rosa's video branch, OME. Most of the film is Pousseur seated in the back seat with

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-84778736893658136812009-07-16T17:36:00.000-07:002009-07-17T21:15:10.740-07:00

My instrument, the piano, with its twelve equally tempered notes per octave, has a critical historical role in the foundation of the underlying harmony and melody of most music that we hear today. So I take special notice of artists who use the piano to undermine these lofty aims, a challenging task that generally relies on the performer moving away from the keyboard and exploring the inside of

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-38202183393493661472009-07-11T07:09:00.000-07:002009-07-11T07:15:02.196-07:00

The July issue of furthernoise.org has my review of an audio-visual album entitled Elements by the Melbourne-based sound artist Abre Ojos.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-22689996923797158572009-07-09T20:43:00.000-07:002009-07-09T20:57:32.626-07:00

With great sadness for the missed opportunities but immense appreciation for her serene and peaceful music, I note that Danielle Baquet-Long of the duo Celer passed away yesterday.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-7038274985287501512009-07-02T18:21:00.000-07:002009-07-02T18:27:33.238-07:00

From a call for submissions:If your work is accepted, we will then request a three-sentence bio…. We prefer your bio sentences to be more Hemingway than Foster Wallace when considering length. Hat tip: TuScene.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-63139784952850296832009-06-21T11:08:00.000-07:002009-06-21T12:00:29.461-07:00

Three months after his passing, post-war composer Henri Pousseur finally got an obituary in the English-language media. The article mentions in passing a new project devoted to the composer, the Scambi Project at Middlesex University in England. Run by John Dack, a specialist in musique concrète, the Scambi Project is collecting documents relating to Pousseur's open-form piece for tape.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-8219956566402813062009-06-20T22:25:00.000-07:002009-06-20T23:09:42.804-07:00

One of the most thorough electronic music packages I've ever seen is the boxed set of "The Complete Tape Music of Dick Raaijmakers," which includes three CDs and a 200-page hardbound book of bi-lingual (English and Dutch) notes explaining the pieces. The pieces date from 1959 to 1996, and although a lot of analog electronic music sounds a bit dated, I find Raaijmakers' work not only listenable,

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-91774647966752954242009-06-01T12:55:00.000-07:002009-06-01T16:08:54.472-07:00

One of my earliest musical memories: in high school in a small town in upstate New York, the local variety store had a small area up front reserved for records, where a tenth grader, already with a penchant for the unusual, finds a striking album cover, a red face with wide eyes and very white teeth, mouth wide open, looking behind in fear, much more effective on the large 12-inch LP cover than

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-5795502355535859642009-05-07T11:21:00.001-07:002009-05-07T12:29:18.474-07:00

My iTunes library reached 20,000 tracks this week with the addition of Black Sleep by Jasper TX, alias for the Swedish musician Dag Rosenqvist. A while back, I wrote about the Polish composer Michael Jacaszek, whose album on the Norwegian microlabel Miasmah was at the time only available electronically at Boomkat and Thrill Jockey. I was pleased to see that Miasmah releases are now available at

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-39776718579042431592009-05-07T10:20:00.000-07:002009-05-07T11:17:16.609-07:00

Decaying telephone poles in the distant Australian outback, a desolate landscape, populated only by a few scraggly shrubs and an unrelenting wind. Into this forsaken desert, I imagine an intrepid scientist with portable recording equipment, capturing the sounds of the wind and the wires before the whole structure collapses into dust. Thus I have always pictured Alan Lamb, a biologist who made a

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-5520991616921889372009-04-26T16:18:00.000-07:002009-04-26T16:40:05.341-07:00

My recently confessed immersion in Alexander Scriabin's music is because he, like Federico Mompou, is one of the great composers of miniatures for piano. The Russian composer-pianist wrote a large number of miniatures, atmospheric little pieces that presage Stockhausen's moment form better than Mompou's. Scriabin's various extra-musical activities may be better known, such as the development of

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-7852955634612656102009-04-24T08:24:00.000-07:002009-04-24T12:12:34.986-07:00

Earlier this week, Phil @ DialM posted a meditation on the nature of the performing self that disappears into the flow of the performance, leading Phil to question the nature of the decisions that comprise a performance, and wonder to what extent these decisions are conscious. Composer and part-time blogger Douglas Boyce took Phil's performance thoughts and related them to composition, moving

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-87341936758926100432009-04-21T15:53:00.000-07:002009-04-26T16:40:35.211-07:00

Lately I've found myself immersed in the music of the Russian composer-pianist Alexander Scriabin lately. Born in 1871, Scriabin flourished at the cusp of tremendous musical and social changes before he died somewhat prematurely in 1915. His earliest compositions are very much in Chopin's shadow, including Chopin's favorite genres of the etude, prelude, nocturne, waltz and mazurka, and even a

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-20452693735071729782009-04-13T09:37:00.000-07:002009-04-13T11:10:47.712-07:00

If the genre "world music" wasn't already defined as pop music from different cultures, one might be tempted to use it for the ever traveling Michael Northam, whose sound composting methodology has created some deep and resonant drone pieces over the past decade. A look at his discography, approaching three dozen items from nearly twenty years, shows a blend of solo work with a changing group of

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-52418915933117889692009-04-06T08:29:00.001-07:002010-01-08T16:33:41.068-08:00

I have a new review of a recent release by a live drone trio from Chicago, Haptic, up at furthernoise.org.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-46726086692456552982009-04-02T07:24:00.000-07:002009-08-09T17:00:40.608-07:00

Leigh Landy is a composer and scholar interested in the accessibility, or rather its lack, of electroacoustic music. Several years of performing and study have led him to the creation of an all-encompassing web site, EARS (the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site), and the publication of a recent book, Understanding the Art of Sound Organization, that introduces the site. Landy believes that

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-14569557495346583142009-03-23T08:09:00.001-07:002009-03-23T08:29:13.725-07:00

Yesterday we had the great privilege of visiting Aravaipa Canyon, a federally protected wilderness area with extremely limited access (fifty people per day) and one of the few full time riparian areas left in southern Arizona. The canyon walls are steep and the bottom fairly flat, reminding me of Canyon de Chelly in the Navajo country. But Aravaipa is much narrower than Canyon de Chelly, and

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-41549561485147946122009-03-11T16:44:00.000-07:002009-03-12T15:24:31.010-07:00

During the 1960s, Christian Wolff continued writing indeterminate scores along the lines he started with the Duos for Pianist and For Pianist. A 1967 residence in London led him to the idiosyncratic improvisation of AMM, for whom he wrote Edges, but the sixties also saw the other classic indeterminate pieces For 1, 2 or 3 People, For 5 or 10 players and In between pieces, all for unspecified

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7277834608335954268.post-63181413892554625142009-03-09T14:59:00.000-07:002009-06-21T11:56:35.448-07:00

We have lost another pioneer. Belgian composer Henri Pousseur passed away last Friday, March 6. Born in 1929, Pousseur was one of the seminal post-WWII composers, working with aleatoric forms, multimedia events, a kaleidoscopic blend of styles. I don't have anything to add beyond what I wrote about him a while back, but he will be missed. Image of Henri Pousseur copyright CRFMW.

Caleb Deupreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14013497049609718830noreply@blogger.com0