hypnotic

Steve Reich – Music For 18 Musicians

/ David James / 5 Comments

Steve Reich is possibly my favorite living composer.  His strain of mimimalism has coursed its way through several branches of the tree of modern music.  These ideas have proved to be the backbone for a plethora of genres and soundscapes we enjoy today.

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His music feels like the core of something – the central axis of entire galaxies of sound.  Anyone hoping for a solid grounding in modern music needs to get closer.  Reich is scriptural-level essential.  His tones are so identifiable that once you’re familiar, you’ll start to notice the signature embedded in everything.

I’m hoping to avoid giving the impression that listening to Reich is akin to homework, so here’s the real score:

This is some of the trippiest, most hypnotic, enveloping and overwhelming music I’ve laid ears on. The style may be minimalism, but it only feels that way if your volume is turned improperly low.

Here is a first taste of Reich: The original Music For 18 Musicians on ECM records.

reich18musicians

While not necessarily the man’s best composition, Music For 18 Musicians is a wonderful introduction to the unique harmonic building blocks with which Reich constructs his work.  Warm oscillations breed an inviting serenity in the first moments, and the listener is quickly whisked down a gently cascading river of sublimity.  Based around an ABCDCBA structure, each section melodically deconstructs a given chord and rebuilds it;  every bit is cyclical, and the whole piece winds into itself at the end.  Perfect symmetry.  It sounds simple, and it is.  Nothing has ever been so divine.

[grab this original ECM recording from amazon – there are several other recordings of this work which I will be covering in the future]

ending in ing

/ David James / 2 Comments

I haven’t felt this floored by such a new artist in… ever. With the small amount of recorded output as evidence, I have no doubt ending in ing will get the attention he deserves.

Hear for yourself

endinginging

The simplest and most direct thing I could say about this music is that it’s a perfect amalgam of several exhilarating, timelessly enjoyable elements.  Inducing a euphoric, wide-eyed, windblown hair on a sunny day feeling, this is classically perfect pop construction for the laptop generation.  The only comparison I could personally offer would be to the Avalanches – high praise indeed, but at the expense of the personal nature on display here. This man crafts songs – coherent, concise songs, without so much as a whiff of collage-style construction.  And these songs are made to get lost in.

endinginging2

I’m not going to describe the sounds themselves – it’s your job to find out.  PLEASE check out ending in ing’s myspace, as there are several other tracks available for streaming.  The tracks I’ve shared are all free, so be sure to THANK the artist personally, and encourage him to keep producing magic like this.

ROVO – Mon

/ David James / 4 Comments

ROVO.  Get familiar. Featuring electric violinist Yuji Katsui and guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto (of Boredoms), this group has built a rock solid career releasing consistently vibrant, energetic, forward-looking, impeccably arranged tribal/jazz/electronic/noise/funk/dance-fueled records.  Yes, I just made a reductive chain of genre names.  Read on to know why…

mon

Mon is an unequivocal masterpiece.  Currently in the center of ROVO‘s ever-expanding discography, this is, to me, their most representative album – an absolute highlight of effortlessly addictive yet experimentally-tinged instrumental groovy goodness.  I truly hope you give it a listen.  For your own sake.

For many people (like myself), discovering this band is that *aha!* moment when they realize there is, in fact, a group making the kind of music that resembles what they’d subconsciously love to hear.  This is dream music in the most literal sense; it’s a perfect combination of previously-unrealized elements brought together in a cohesive, ambiguously, strikingly original sound.  Still, there’s a warm familiarity bred of the intuitively catchy, effortlessly hypnotic beats.  Even if it’s not horizon-expanding for you, this album has my guarantee as an invigorating wave of narcotic bliss.  Jump in, the water’s warm.  You’ll be back for more.

[this is a reasonably difficult album to track down, but I’ve found copies on amazon.jp (don’t worry, it can be read in english) and ROVO’s myspace has more info]

Gang Gang Dance – Saint Dymphna

/ David James / 11 Comments

gang-gang-dance-saint-dymphna

Saint Dymphna is the patron saint of those who suffer from mental illness. You can find all manner of pop-pyschology diagnoses relating the unique title choice to this indisputable masterpiece of an album, from the lowliest myspace blog to the glossiest of mainstream magazines; I feel that talking about the music itself is probably more relevant.

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