Dash Snow R.I.P.

JULIAN CASABLANCAS - PHRAZES FOR THE YOUNG (PREVIEW)

Black Sabbath - The Unholy Trinity And The Birth Of Heavy Metal

As Black Sabbath, Paranoid and Master Of Reality get the reissue treatment, John Doran from The Quietus revisits them and the birth of heavy metal.

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1969 Tokyo University Protests

The two-day process was warlike. The police used 10,000 tear gas grenades and sprayed the gas from helicopters as well. They lined up an array of water cannons as well as fire engines capable of throwing up water with far greater pressure, enough to smash through the boarded-up windows of the auditorium.

The students responded with different weapons. They flung broken-up flagstones and Molotov cocktails from the roof and windows of the clock tower. They dropped chairs and desks. In place of truncheons, they carried and wielded square lumber poles that were often spiked. [Click image to enlarge, ed.]

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Thelonious Monk, Berlin, 1971

© Karlheinz Klüter

Thelonious Monk, Berlin, 1969

Photo: © Karlheinz Klüter

Igor Stravinsky "Le Sacre Du Printemps (Stefan Goldmann Edit)"

Producer Stefan Goldmann will enter into the world of edits as only he can with a Macro release later this year that sees him cutting up a dozen recordings of Igor Stravinsky's legendary classical composition, The Rite of Spring.

Unlike many disco edits where the producer takes out the bits they don't like and lengthens the ones they do, however, Goldmann has curiously claimed that despite more than 146 cuts between the dozen recordings that nothing has been left out and that nothing has been added. So: why bother editing it all? We'll let Goldmann explain:

Every couple of seconds you find yourself in a different room, listening to a different orchestra under a different conductor. A journey through microphone positions and mixdown decisions. Each time a different world in the headphone. Also the different shades of tape hiss in the recordings make it sort of an electroacoustic avant-garde work, as you can follow a floating noise contour throughout the work—probably the clearest evidence of the edit process. It's putting a focus on the subtleties of orchestral interpretation—a field often neglected and widely unknown to the electronic society....

Motivation. The current edit-mania didn't remain unnoticed. Though I feel often edits basically show disrespect and low understanding of the original works and composers' intentions. Edits have too often been an easy way to connect one's name with something without having to go into the depths of remixing or doing anything else useful or creative. I felt the urge to leave the composers intentions as I found them and not to mess with the structure of the composition at all. This has probably never done before in such a complex edit.

On the other hand hardly anyone has ever dealt with the in-depth details of classical interpretation, the great Tonmeister-tradition and the "invisible editing" techniques employed in classical music where the utmost goal is to keep engineering inaudible. For me it is about celebrating one of the greatest pieces of music from the 20th century and to promote these aspects to a public that's hardly aware of these aesthetics and its huge influence on the music important to us today.

So this is my "minimally invasive" approach to a classic and I believe it's pretty much the opposite of what everybody else has been doing in that direction. I hope this encourages the listener to dig deeper into the art of composition, interpretation and recorded orchestral music.

Get Stefan's radio shows as MP3 files here.

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What a cool way to hang photos :-)

Mikey Dread had a hard time with EasyJet

Just watched a scene from the British docu-soap 'Airline', where the late reggae singer Mickey Dread is trying to catch a plane to Glasgow to play a reggae concert. He not only missed the plane, but he came so late to the airport, that the plane had already been to Glasgow and back! EasyJet, however, insisted that he bought a new ticket, giving him a hard time. Quite entertaining scene in a silly TV show, actually.

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Futurism

The Mad (with Screaming Mad George), "I Hate Music"

Video of concert at Max's Kansas City, NY, 1979.

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Amatla and Zargifon

Stanley Crouch on Michael Jackson in 1987

I have been searching for this intelligent and seminal article on Michael Jackson by jazz journalist Stanley Crouch since I read it in a café New York City in the eighties.

I have always defended MJ's 'surgical expeditions' at dinner parties. But then again, I had been enlightened early on by a brilliant columnist in The Village Voice!

It has now finally been re-published and is online here.

Read it and regret your ignorance for the last 20 years.

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Apparati Effimeri

Video of a mind-bending light projection by Apparati Effimeri, an Italian interaction-design firm.

APPARATI EFFIMERI Tetragram for Enlargment from Apparati Effimeri on Vimeo.

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Interview with Martin Gore

In this short interview with Danish Radio [WindowsMedia], Martin Gore reveals his mobile phone, the Dave 'hiccup' and about talks the usual stuff (inspiration, fans, vintage gear, alcohol).

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This is it! I am moving to New York City!

INDISCRIMINATE gluttons and discerning gourmands alike have long been crazy for pizza. But over the last few years, they have elevated their passion to a vocation, sending pizza into a whole new stratosphere of respect. It isn’t just loved, and it isn’t just devoured. It’s scrutinized and fetishized, with a Palin-esque power to polarize.

Does a wood-burning brick oven yield more flavorful crusts than a coal-burning one? Which flour lends the most character to dough? Is buffalo-milk mozzarella a silky blessing or watery curse?

On such questions the most durable of friendships have foundered and the most principled of pizza makers — pizzaioli, they are now called — part company. [Related article here, ed.]

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Kitsuné : a short film by DELPHIC

Kitsuné : a short film by DELPHIC
by MaisonKitsune