Tuesday, January 15, 2008













Went to the Knit last evening, my belated first visit to the ongoing sigogglin series, curated by Brian Eubanks down in the Old Office. The opening set was by Jonathan Zorn & Katie Young, probably the only computer/bassoon performance I've seen in the last couple of months. It wasn't very good. Zorn's sounds were pedestrianly computerese (still somewhat astonished when I hear something like this these days, flashing back to the mid 80s loopy blurps) and Young's reed work was just rather blah. Always felt sorry for the guy being stuck with that moniker and working in a new music arena, but I lost much of that sympathy during the second piece, where he blew a harmonica and transformed its (very aggravating) sounds through his G3 in a multitude of uninspired ways.

Happily, Benito Cereno (Tim Albro/guitar, radios, electronics; Ian Fraser/laptop, tapes, radios and electronics; Dustin Hurt/trumpet; Jesse Kudler/guitar, electronics, synthesizer, radio, and tapes; and Chandan Narayan/autoharp) were far more enjoyable, especially their first piece, a relaxed, confident exploration that did a fine job filling the small room with gritty richness and detail. Good young players from whom I'm always eager to hear more (their website here.

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One other brief note--I presumably simply overlooked this site before (link on the right), but I only recently discovered the stream at timescraper.de (Radio wandelweiser) and have been greatly enjoying the sounds there. Check it out.

3 comments:

  1. Doing a little bit of research on Benito Cereno (the book), I rekindled an interest to read through Melville, having only read the obvious novel and that one some 25 years ago. So I picked up "Typee" just now.

    You never know what serendipitous benefits you'll derive from attending a concert of contemporary noise!

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  2. I'm a big Melville fan and should get back into reading some of his books that I haven't got to yet. In my looking into it, two post Moby Dick novels are regarded as its equals in power and scope. These are The Confidence Man and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities . These have been on my "to read" stack for far too long. I haven't read Typee either, but it is of course his first novel (and most popular) and is much more like a travelogue.

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  3. Yeah, I figured I'd do it chronologically. Read the intro to "Typee" while at lunch and it looks like it'll be both enjoyable on a pure "fun reading" level and possibly containing some interesting, for the time, social criticism.

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