week 49
Probably more like 52: ah well.
– I am trying to only listen to music written by female artists or by groups that are at least 50% female; this is called “All The Ladies’ Singles”. If I have time, I will do something with The Echo Nest’s API to help me with this…
– The first instance of this is Ellen Allien’s LIsm, which is amazing: it covers all the academic electronic cliches, does them better than most people in academia do, and then adds electro and techno,
– I accidentally went to see James Blake on Wednesday night: he’s still a monster. I can’t think of very many artists that appeal to ballad-loving girls, serious bro / bass dudes, techno heads, and jazz cats. I also loved how his loops would catch crowd noise at the start, as people cheered the start of a new song.
– Then, I went to see the Boston Pops play parts of Fantasia: Symphony Hall still sounds luscious. It makes me wonder how much of how we think of ‘classical’ string and brass sounds was affected by that hall, and by the importance of the BSO in the last century.
More importantly, I got to hear a member of a major orchestra screw up: a certain percussionist was late late late in an entrance. I never knew that the Gone With The Wind theme was that funky.
They played a first half of film music. Sigh. Beethoven 6 was just wonderful though, as was Rhapsody in Blue. I don’t care much for much of the Pops rep, but man, the hall sounds glorious