8.31.2010

Wind Shower Particle


Bob Burnett: I just put together a mixcloud mix called "Wind Shower Particle" that touches on a range of compositions and creations. The title comes from a cut on sound sculptor Sawako's album Bittersweet, another 12k release that has great sonic depth. I continue to enjoy Vladislav Delay's The Four Quarters, an album of four long form compositions that touch on diverse tempos, improvisation, tonal variation and flow. I've included "The Third Quarter" here in its entirety--but must say this plays beautifully as an album; a solid hour-long composition. From there the mix goes into a direction of the sense of harmonics and tonal qualities that happen when the physical action of touch takes place. Opitope's Hau with its warm, melodic sheen, Paul Metzger's deep-diving banjo improvisations and the unmatched intensity of the Joseph Holbrooke Trio's Edinburgh. The Joseph Holbrooke Trio was the free improvisation collaboration of Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley and Gavin Bryars. This cut comes from their Moat Recordings release on Tzadik.

I went from Holbrooke into the visceral tones of Z'ev's Ghost Stories. I just acquired the full 65 minute composition after having a segment (courtesy of Napster) from years ago. I am greatly attracted to the physical qualities Z'ev conjurs in Ghost Stories; the deep echo, the sensations of metal on metal and clanking construction site energy taking place. The mix concludes with an AMM-derived duet from John Tilbury and Eddie Prevost from Discrete Moments.

Thanks for listening--I hope you enjoy it.

8.11.2010

A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn+ some music


Bob Burnett: I haven't been "listening" to music recently. In fact, I recently went more than 2 weeks without playing anything on my stereo, computer or iPod. It seems music has tended to play a role of interrupting other events or moments--blasting from a nearby car with windows rolled down, playing in a public space as a shopping enhancer or as something happening in a restaurant and managing to soak into whatever I was doing or trying to do. In the past I was able to figure out a work-around to competing sources of music. One method was to recast the invading sound in a "suppose I listened to the sounds around me as if they were music,"John Cage-approach. That was all well and good until the sounds around became identifiable as Toto's "Rosanna".

All this is a roundabout way of saying I've fallen back into music thanks to the new listening experience Kyle Bobby Dunn and his A Young Person's Guide to Kyle Bobby Dunn collection has brought me--a 2 cd set that makes for two hours of much needed re-introduction to what music is capable of meaning. Inasmuch as Toto becomes identifiable from down the street, Dunn's music thrives on being a mix of a variety of sounds that blend and float into a lovely whole without the need to identify how they were created. The album drifts elegantly and beautifully--a series of flowing musical moments (in the 6-17 minute range for the most part) that at times reflect the natural world--pastoral yet not feeling the need to re-create the sounds of nature in a thematic "flute-as-butterfly"" moment. The sound is from a variety of masked and treated instruments (ie guitar, brass,strings) moving slowly in a way that brings you along the same way a good movie allows you to forget the edits and the camera moves. And for me, the same way Lamonte Young made The Well-Tuned Piano and Eno made Discreet Music do exactly the same. Needless to say, there have been repeated listens. I find I mostly enjoy playing Dunn's work through speakers, filling a room, increasing the volume and letting it expand the space.

I made the mixcloud sequence (included below) around his composition "Promenade". He sparked my ears in a way that allowed me to build other music around his into a mix, which became Air Curtain.

I hope you enjoy Air Curtain but I also hope you explore Dunn's music.