putting the j in jjosh

Saturday night Maxine and I went out to this new(ish) place in the Village called (le) poisson rouge to check out a performance of Steve Reich’s "Music For 18 Musicians". Reich was one of the founders of the minimalist school of music along with Phillip Glass, and their music sounds pretty similar. Except that I love MF18M much more than I love anything by Glass. Mike H gave me the album ages ago and it pretty much blew my mind. He went to a performance in New York years and years ago, and I remember thinking how cool it would be to see the piece performed live.

And it was. It was really really great. The musicians set up in this weird in-the-round way (you can sort of tell from the pic below) with xylophone players facing each other and pianists set up so sometimes two people can play the same piano, and clarinets, bass clarinets, vocalists, strings, sitting down. The sound system in poisson rouge was fantastic, and sometimes the sounds would be so eveloping…plus, to see how some of the sounds were made was very elucidating. Things that I had thought were electric guitars and feedback were actually clarinets and vocals. Whoa. Quite a performance.

Here’s a piece of the piece:

Steve Reich – Music for 18 Musicians, Section IV

the evening continued…click here to read on

Pretty sweet. I’m on a crusade to find a replacement for my old CDJ system, for reals. The thing is, there’s so much info, and so many different components that plug into the laptop…

this vid doesn’t really show anything I’m considering, but it’s always fun to see man vs machine…

From an interview with Flying Lotus on XLR8TR:

Stumbled across this site yesterday called cratekings.com that seems to be full of great stuff…interview with Nicolay, some RZA stuff, and this cool session with Pete Rock talking about a few of his famous beats…including this bit where he talks about Nas’s "The World is Yours" with 9th Wonder, Just Blaze, Nu-Mark and DJ Revolution…

I love in the beginning where all the producers are listening to the beat and just head-nodding… 

Are you down? Feeling full of woe? Overwhelmed? Tired? Need to sleep? Full of The Case? Trying to relax? Allow Flying Lotus to help:

Auntie’s Lock/Infinitum – Flying Lotus

Recommend: downloading, listening on headphones on repeat until stress fades into the background. Maybe take a bath.

(Trivia: Flying Lotus is the grand-nephew of Alice Coltrane.)

Sometimes you see something that gives you a new appreciation for the true definition of a word. Such is this film and the word "archivist". Perhaps also the phrase "vinyl junkie". Worth watching for the first :30 alone.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

I love how nicely this is shot and put together. The world of HD and laptop digital editing is truly a sweet sweet world.

summer = officially over, unofficially still rocking

I Know Where The Summer Goes – Belle & Sebastian

Sure to become a crazy hyped blog-phenom, I want to hate these teenagers but can’t. there’s something about the song that won’t leave my head. There’s something about the video that embraces hi and low tech. There’s something about the way they both skewer and embrace hipster-ism. Who are these kids?!

Some people are going to hate this stuff big time. But really, give it a minute and let the good times roll over you. Also they kept it to 1:30! They know you can’t take too much of this stuff!

Also fun: watch closely when the whale shows up…there’s a Getty images watermark on the shot! Copyfight!

natalie portman’s shaved head – sophisticated side ponytail from thatgo on Vimeo.

from Freewillamsburg, natch

Overheard in the elevator this morning:

WOMAN: So how was it last night?

MAN: It was fun…I think…

WOMAN: Oh, you black out in the cab ride home again?

MAN: No…I don’t think I did…

I should note that the building I work in has MTV on 3 floors, so there’s lots of young party-types in the building…contrasting with the tax accountants on another 2 floors…

On my ride in to work I was listening to some tracks off The World According to RZA, a record that didn’t get a US release. It’s RZA going around the world and highlighting a bunch of foreign rappers and hip-hop types…it’s a bit hit-or-miss, but it’s pretty fun, and you really get a sense that these foreign MCs are really giving it their all because they know it’ll have RZA’s name on it. JG and I came across it while doing research for our all-things-RZA talkinwu project.

Here are two tracks from World According to RZA…in the first one, there’s this great intro bit out on the water (the sfx are fantastic) and RZA talks about how he’s against killing whales because he "heard they was here before us, you know?" The second track starts with a typically mighty Ghostface verse before moving on to a RZA verse (I love how he says "cranberry") and then some French(?) rap that is so smooth of flow…I wonder what they’re saying…

North Sea – RZA feat. Diaz

Saian — RZA feat. Ghostface & Saian Supa Crew

Recently I came across a CD of audio from this semi-band project I was in back in something like 1999 or 2000. My pal Bijan and I were gonna both play guitar, and then instead of having a singer, we’d just have a dat player playing these stories that we would record. (I’m sure This American Life was on at the time, but I wasn’t aware of it.) The songs’ dynamics would match what was going in the story…

I only managed to record 3 stories, and we had all of 4 practices before we gave it up. Then I advised Bijan at work that if they didn’t give him a raise he should quit. They didn’t, he did, and the next thing I knew he had moved to New York. It was crazy.

The CD I found has two of the stories I recorded — the third, which was fantastic, has been lost to the aether.

First is Mr. B (initials for names to protect the storytellers)…a guy I worked with a handful of times. A real old-school producer guy, who talked a mile a minute and smoked constantly. He wore all black and was a blast to hang around with. I just figured he’d have a good story, so I got the mic and started recording…his story is split into two parts…the first sound you will hear is Mr. B lighting a cigarette…

Mr. B’s story part 1 – 5:12

In part two, at the appropriate time, Bijan and I were going to start playing J Geils’ "Angel is a Centerfold" and it would slowly get louder and louder as the story went on, before erupting into a massive crescendo at the end! Whatta show it would have been!

Mr. B’s story part 2 – 2:05 

Next is J, who worked with us for a while at Team. If you knew her, you’d never guess that as a kid she was chubby and unathletic…Bijan and I were practicing in Team’s rarely used 2nd floor space, after-hours, and J saw us one night and asked what we were up to. An aspiring actress (wonder where she is now?) she said she had a good story…

J’s story – 4:13

I’m amazed at how maleable the muppets seem to be when it comes to remix culture…and how great they are. I think it’s really a testament to the imaginative power of the muppets and how purely creative and fantastic they are…

This vid makes me talk like I’m talking about Wu-Tang…where once I might say "that Rza verse is really good, but Ghostface just nails it!", now I say Ernie’s really good, but when Bert comes in, he totally kills it! Nice one Bert.

From the "shreds" series, the first one I saw and the mad classic, Eric Clapton shreds. Post title from some old college-time site we went to that was full of ukelele stuff and how the author loved Eric Crapton (??? can this be right? I can’t remember…Sam Uz, do you remember?)…

this clip made me cry tears of laughter when I first saw it, and it is still amazing…part of the Spiritualized show from Sunday was a bit jazz noodley and it reminded me of this…

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

find more shreds vids at stsanders.com, though I’m telling you, this Clapton one is the best…

Saw Spiritualized at Terminal 5 last night with my sister, and every song was a different shade of epic, ranging from epic huge guitar slow burn song to epic big spiritual rock to epic over-the-top guitar freakout. They played a ton of new stuff, but luckily the new stuff sounded great, and I’m stoked to pick up the new album Songs in A&E…

Reminded me of this amazing video they did for "Do It All Over Again" off Let It Come Down…I couldn’t find hi-rez, but hopefully this is good enough that you get a sense of how cool it is…

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Apparently there’s no green-screen involved, it’s all Jason Pierce really doing it…

I hunted down the set list from last night’s show, and then cross-reffed the songs, because I was curious what albums they all came from…looks like they did play a bunch of old stuff (including some Spacemen 3 tracks!), but a lot of new, and a lot from Amazing Grace, which somehow I don’t have (how did I miss it?). We did miss the first 4 songs which is too bad, ‘cuz I’d have liked to hear "Electricity" especially…and looks like only the encore came from Let It Come Down. Set list looks like this:

you lie you cheat
 – AE

shine a light
 – LazerGuidedMelodies

cheapster
 – AmazingGrace

electricity
  – Ladies&Gentlemen

soul on fire
 – AE

sweet talk
 – AE

sitting on fire
 – AE

walking with jesus – Spacemen 3

oh baby
 – AmazingGrace

rated x
 – AmazingGrace

lay back in the sun
 – PurePhase

death take your fiddle – AE

she kissed me
 – AmazingGrace

come together
 – Ladies&Gentlemen

take me to the other side – Spacemen 3

encore:
lord can you hear me – LetItComeDown

Since I’m taking the subway again, it’s time to get reacquainted with books, magazines and podcasts. Luckily for me Fluxblog has just started doing podcasts (or fluxcasts)…it’s like listening to the best college radio DJ ever, good times…

From fluxcast 3, here is a track from the Scissor Sisters’s unreleased first demo album…when I first heard it, before I knew what it was, I def thought the ending sounded very Scissor Sisters, but the main body of the track kind of doesn’t…it’s a little more primitive, the electronics are simpler, the vocals are coming from a slightly different place — but all of these elements actually help it.

Lots of sunshine in the sound, lots of sunshine in the sky, the temp has come down to the 80’s, the weekend is nigh…could the Case be on the wane?

Scissor Sisters – Backwoods Disco

Adding to my Case: the fact that sometimes I feel like everyone else on the internet is some kind of damn genius. This guy worked out how to make a sequencer using paper, skittles and a webcam. The webcam picks up where the skittles are placed, and somehow software translates each position to a different drum sound. Moving the pieces around makes different patterns of different instruments.

Weird science.

I Eat Beats from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

On his Vimeo page, the author says:

Future directions may include: more sensor types (e.g., a slider for tempo control), note-sequencing mode, and assigning the different colors to different rhythms or instruments (purple as bassline, or yellow as "every other measure").

There is a cut in the middle where it transitions from solo improvisation to three people interacting simultaneously. Any out-of-sync audio/video is due to my frazzled camera.

One of the other big problems: people like to eat Skittles.