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2010: concerts of the year

December 30, 2010 · by · in

So much mind-shattering music:

Janos Sandor – Orchestral Favorites

When a concert has the finale of Beethoven 3 as the second piece on the program, well, that could just be luck. When the first half ends with the finale of the Firebird, we could still be in the realm of coincidence. When, however, the second half is a custom-built symphony that goes from Mahler through Brahms to the jaw-dropping clockwork majesty of Sibelius 2, you can be sure that you’re at Janos Sandor’s (first) farewell concert, and that you will be doing a lot of clapping for a rightfully legendary conductor.


Heather Harker – Graduating Recital

My friend Heather has my favorite voice and sings all my favorite songs to utter perfection. (Ave Maria, Barber’s Hermit Songs, Ain’t Misbehavin’, etc).


Shostakovich – Symphony No. 15

As played by the Konzerthaus Orchestra in Berlin, Shostakovich’s final symphony is exactly the sound of a old man dying alone in Soviet Russia. It’s soaring, tragic, and heartrending, to say nothing of being a tour de force of quotation, allusion, and orchestration.

Nick Piper – Locus Iste / Daniel Brandes – Different Windows

A graduating recital by two of UVic’s composition grad students: Daniel’s piece was intimate, personal, quiet, and subtle. Nick’s was exactly the opposite. Daniel’s was performed in the nave of Christ Church Cathedral, and had the audience holding their breath for the whole thing. Nick’s was performed in the hall, complete with organ, bells, and a surround sound ensemble, and had us sitting with our mouth’s open in awe.


Margaret Ashburner – They Let Their Brushstrokes Show

Not to be outdone, Margaret put her piece across three rooms of Victoria’s art gallery, with blown-up pieces of the score as artwork. I had the honor of recording it, and let me tell you, it’s a bit of a wonderful piece.

Honorable mentions to: Max Murray & Mason Koenig’s grad recital, Alex Granat’s grad recital, Ensemble Modern’s Different Trains, and the youth orchestra / conducting party that did the Concerto For Orchestra and a monumental Beethoven 5.

2010: singles of the year

December 23, 2010 · by · in ,

So much to talk about!


Best Stuck-In-Your-Head-Vocals: KZSS – You & I
The vocal was in my head from about March to July, nonstop, at which point I remembered where I had heard it, and why I was remembering it. Yes, it’s earthshattering dubstep, yes dubstep is “over”, but hell, what a tune.

Best Nostalgia For The Future: Moa Pillar – Water Lilly [Error Broadcast]
NASA samples, gleaming 8-bit synths, crunk-as, post-everything drums, and actual song structure. It’s also a bit of a bomb. Who knew that Russians got down like this?


Best Oh My God: Michael Jackson – Scream (Neon Tetra Aquarium Astronaut Remix) []
Came out last year, but my man Liam deserves lots and lots of post-hop love, because it’s amaaaaaazing.


Best Use Of Silence: James Blake – Limit To Your Love [R&S]
I don’t even have a copy of this yet, but whenever I put it on the youtubes, I have to listen to it ten times in a row.

Honorable Mentions:
Maetrik – Paradigm House [Treibstoff]
Steve Bug – Trust In Me (John Daly Remix) [Poker Flat]
Agoria – For One Hour [InFine]
Four Tet – Angel Echoes [Warp]
Caribou – Bowls (Holden Remix) [City Slang]
Washed Out – New Theory
Avus – Reality Itself [Border Community]

2010: sets of the year

December 22, 2010 · by · in ,

Fewer this year, oddly enough. Probably because I was at SoundCloud listening to that every day for four months. Makes it harder to keep track of things. Regardless:

James Holden – JUNE XLR8R PODCAST

Jimmy The Hamster Holden may never touch his insane Loft set from a few years ago, but this summer psy-cosmic-tech romp comes pretty close. It may take a few listens, but you’ll find that the middle six deal with everything that is good about DJing.

Kenzie Clarke – KENZIE

Kenzie hits this list for the second year in a row, this time with the simplest, most personal of mixtapes.

Booiamrudolf – MAYA

Ok, it’s a live set. It’s also one of the most heartrendingly beautiful things I’ve ever heard (Deep, bitcrushed breaks, soaring melodies, tragic pads, etc), so go and listen to it just the same.

Honorable mentions to: Gobe – Subdivision Podcast, Wood & Soo – The Vault, The Big Reds – Live @ Rifflandia, John Talabot – Summerized, Chris Longshanks – Subdivision Podcast, and Mano Le Tough – Noice Podcast.

2010: albums of the year

December 20, 2010 · by · in ,

Bethi Ferguson – NEWVEMBER SONGS

Yeah, so my friend Bethi finished this song-a-day-recorded-into-Garage Band last November. Yes, the audio quality is often awful. Did I listen to anything else more this year? Not even close – I cannot recommend all 32-some songs enough.

Flying Lotus – COSMOGRAMMA

FlyLo keeps providing justification for electronic music as a celestially high artform. That he does so while keeping things funky as fuck is just more testament to his genius. COSMOGRAMMA takes off from where L.A. left off, and goes further, futher, and further again.

Bibio – AMBIVALENCE AVENUE

Again from 2009. I am slow and stupid, please forgive me. But this one sure is worth listening to again. Drowned in folk noises, foundsound, and gorgeous instrumentation, AMBIVALENCE AVENUE proves, again, that us techno people can steal from wherever we want, whenever we want, and make it sing.

Honorable mentions to: Clark – Growls Garden, Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones, Hrdvsion – Where Did You Just Go, and Four Tet – There Is Love In You.

sunworship

December 20, 2010 · by · in

Happy Solstice – we made it ’round one more time, somehow.

get your lounge on

December 15, 2010 · by · in

I will be playing briefly (8 to 9) at Whitebird this Saturday, with the mighty Natron, for his and Mr. B’s Common Ground deep house / lounge soiree. My set is so short because I then have to sprint to Hush to judge the Hush DJ Contest finals. Life is hard.

Then, in DEEPEST JANUARY, the 15th to be exact, I am tagging with Davin ‘AFK’ Greenwell at the third volume of CRUSH at Sunset room. Also on the bill are Toby Emerson and Nima Saeedi from Lotus in Vancouver. More on that as we move closer to it.

tempus fugit

December 7, 2010 · by · in

This is a mixtape that I just had to get out. It’s short, it’s simple, it’s sad, and it’s for people I miss. Get it here.

1: Ralph Vaughan Williams – Wither Must I Wander (Alex Granat & Bethi Ferguson)
2: Samuel Barber – The Desire For Hermitage (Heather Harker & Karl Hirzer)
3: Olivier Messiaen – Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus (Tashi Quartet)
4: Igor Stravinsky – The Firebird – Berceuse (Janos Sandor & the UVic Orchestra)
5: Igor Stravinsky – The Firebird – Finale (Janos Sandor & the UVic Orchestra)

the city, she don’t like you

November 30, 2010 · by · in

I finished China Mieville’s THE CITY AND THE CITY recently: it’s kind of like Borges meets…well, Borges, really, but slightly less elegant and much more tense. It also reads very oddly for someone who spent a summer living in Berlin, with a visit to Budapest thrown in. Mieville plays his fantasy very straight, as befits the noir / detective style, but it’s still fantasy: there are organizations with strange powers, nods to elder forces, and so on. And all of this works, and I recommend it highly.

However, after walking over the Berlin Wall several times this summer, this got me thinking: what if there’s no fantasy involved, no magic powers, except the boundless ability of people to fool themselves? What if a city could be split in two by sheer will and propaganda, with no need for walls, magic, or anything else? Having been through small portions of the former Eastern Bloc, this doesn’t seem so unlikely to me anymore.

the second derivative

November 27, 2010 · by · in , ,

Many thanks to Sunset and Hush for having me out last weekend – both gigs were fun and gave me a chance to push wildly different styles of music.

I’ve had a note in my files for about a year now to write a thing about “Rates of Change”, as applied to DJing in specific and music in general. So:

In DJing, the rate of change is pretty static, and is, in general decided by the style of music one is playing; deep techno and deep house move pretty slowly, hip-hop and dubstep move pretty fast, at the moment. (This touches on the timeless DJ question of how much respect one should have for one’s music, but we’ll mostly ignore that for now.)

What we won’t ignore is how this motion can be manipulated over time and over the course of a set. A DJ who mixes slowly at the beginning of a set and quickly at the end has set up an increasing curve not only for the velocity of his set, but also for the acceleration of his set. Appleblim and his 110-to-140-to-70 BPM sets spring to mind here.

However, it can be REALLY hard to manipulate this in ways that are not linear. Having a DJ flash through three records, then play two looong tracks, then play two more fast ones will, 90% of the time, not work. Steady ramps are best, when talking about acceleration.

This also applies to composition, especially in dance music. If you’re making a track with dramatic changes every sixteen bars, you need to keep that up, or risk people getting bored. Likewise, if you’ve set up a massive, 32-bar groove, any fast changes will feel like a break before the groove comes back. This leads into points about moving just outside people’s expectations, as opposed to totally outside their expectations…but I’ve made those points before, so I won’t do so again.

In conclusion: change is good. Changing your change is also good – but do it most carefully.

resistance and faith

November 17, 2010 · by · in

Make with the download.

1: PVT – Light Bright Fires (Nathan Fake Ambient Remix) []
2: Caribou – Bowls (Holden Remix) [City Slang]
3: Agoria – Grande Torino [Infine]
4: John Talabot – Matilda’s Dream [Permanent Vacation]
5: Etienne Jaumet – For Falling Asleep (Carl Craig Remix) [Versatile]
// Andre Kraml – Safari (Holden Remix) [Crosstown Rebels]

I guess it’s good that I’m old and busted these days….because it means I can DJ 116 BPM deeeeeeeeeep tech in my bedroom and dance around like an idiot.