[scrypt]

5/7/03: Music Purchase List

CDs about Which I Feel Ambivalent or Worse

1. Broadcast: Pendulum (WARP). I've been asking myself why I bought this every-twelfth-hair-out-of-place archly distorted and faux-spontaneous follow up to a follow up, though I did like Broadcast's first EP, Work and Non Work.
2. Thomas Campion: Elizabethan Songs (Harmonia Mundi). Countertenor Drew Minter has an inexact quavering slide-whistle-pitched Dramamine-sales-boosting I-can-barely-read-this-suicide-note falsetto that could trigger testosterone rage in a clique of Dusty Springfield impersonators. "No more tremolo-underlined vibrato, for the love of Katherine Hepburn!" you want to shriek at this massage-therapy-altered pissant. Suffering the obscenely flat wag-a-lung pap of this hell-hole made me contemplate stitching over his lips with his discarded foreskin (even though he'd *still be able to produce quavering notes through his nostrils*). Don't bother with this album, cronies, because, prince that I am, I've literally saved you fifty-eight minutes and twenty-three seconds of involuntary flinching. If you want to hear Campion, get the Hyperion recording instead.

CDs I'm Glad to Own

1. Prokofiev Plays Prokofiev (Naxos). Every child should hear this recording (after listening to Gesang der Jugend first).
2. Geoff White and Stewart Walker: Discord (Force Inc.). Best of both soundworlds.
3. Barbara Morgenstern: Nicht Muss (Monika). No, I don't love this CD, or even like certain parts of it, but keyboardist/singer Morgenstern's collaboration with Pole and Thomas Fehlman is unlike anything else: her self-described four-track generated "living room music" becomes the source material for Steven Betke's sonic Mondrians of hiss and static. Strange, to hear clinical microdub production frame songs with lyrics and chromatic modulations.

SACDs

1. Mahler: Das Lied Von Der Erde, Piere Boulez (DGG). [It's all good.]
2. Mozart: String Quintets, Fine Arts Quartet, with Yuri Gandelsman (Lyrinx). Awaiting delivery.

Vinyl Bijoux: Coruscating Trinkets

1. Kit Clayton/~rand split (Progressive Forms). Limited pressing from Japan. Silver plastic sleeve, clear vinyl.
2. Thomas Koner: Unerforschtes Gebiet (Die Stadt). Picture disk of imaginary world map, disc #258 of 700 copies pressed. I haven't listened because I'm rather afraid to play it.

DVD

1. Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire/Schumann: Dichterliebe, both sung by Christina Schaefer (Arthaus). I'm enjoying the performances, am slightly disappointed by Schaefer's interviews and am utterly nonplussed by the director's I-Heart-Matthew-Barney vids (though Schaefer mentioned wanting to do them because she was inspired by the use of classical music in films by Stanley Kubrick). Will be picking up Schaefer's concert DVD with Boulez next week. It promises to be a better fit.

Software:

1. Digital Performer, OSX upgrade
2. Reaktor 4.0 (awaiting both in the mail)

 

[pcolbeck]

Last five CDs purchased:

Holst The Planets - David lloyd-Jones/Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Fantastic Mars, even my six year old thinks its brilliant and on Naxos for £5 its an absolute steal.

A State of Wonder - Glenn Gould, Goldberg variations in both his 1955 and 1981 versions.

Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, Book 2 Angela Hewwit. Lovely, I am saving up for Book 1 as this was a tad expensive.

The Collection - Steve Earle, the best of his early albums several of which I have but they are in the attic with the rest of my vynl. Great music for driving.

London Calling - The Clash, the seminal political punk album !

Whats next, probably the Elgar Cello concerto with Jaquline Du Prey or maybe some jazz I am not sure, depends how I feel next time I go to the record shop.

Pat

 

[Old Pa]

Yusef Lateef "Live at Pep's" - Lateef with a sympatico quintet for a nicely recorded date

Max Waldron "The Quest" - Waldron with Eric Dolphy, Ron Carter and three others; this is about as modern as I generally like

Hank Mobley "No Room for Squares" - Hard bop in a quintent setting with three horns - "an obvious community of understanding exists between the players"

Sonny Clark "Cool Struttin'" - A 1958 recording with Art Farmer, Jackie McLean and 'Philly' Joe Jones - another session made special by the experience of the players and the way they then interrelated

Oscar Peterson Trio with Milt Jackson "Very Tall" - landmark bop recording that led to three sequel albums.

All were well recorded and mastered to digital; "Very Tall" is in a 24bit remaster

 

[stereth]

My five:

Skyclad - Folkemon. Folk metal, with some heavy thrash guitars. Very cynical, good sense of humor in the songs. Skyclad has the best song titles I've ever seen, for any genre. Just take a look at the list here.

Falconer - Falconer. Heavier than their second album...I like it even better. It's not often you hear a metal band with a frontman whose vocals can stand on their own. (Actually, he left the band to do so.)

Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind. Nothing like some good traditional metal. Not as good as Powerslave but still some heavy, epic songs.

Bad Religion - Stranger than Fiction. I'd only heard a little of Bad Religion before this, starting with their song You on the Tony Hawk 2 sountrack. I saw them in concert at the Vans Warped Tour last year...as far as I saw, the only band with a natural absence of hair. Good punk rock, honest, clear. Clean sounds.

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. I can definitely see why people compare Tool to Pink Floyd. It's very atmospheric music, in the background but in a good way. My only complaint is that the album is too short, about 43 minutes.

 

[Old Pa]

Quote:

Originally posted by stereth Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon. I can definitely see why people compare Tool to Pink Floyd. It's very atmospheric music, in the background but in a good way. My only complaint is that the album is too short, about 43 minutes.

Ah, yes, the LP era . . .

 

[penvzila]

I hate macs more than you can imagine but today in Writing 121 have been great with them. I used a school powerbook in the library to download macromedia studio mx and photoshop and burn them to a cd, all before the 90min period was up! I love high speed wireless access! Tomorrow i am going to see if i can acess some of my favorite music ftps.

I also bought a couple of cds i wish i hadn't: Squarepusher - Selection Sixteen and ATP 3.0. Selection Sixteen wasn't worht the money and ATP 3.0 just sucked. I had though i'd sworn off music purchasing forever, but for some stupid reason i bought them. Oh well, the cover art from Selection Sixteen looked great in my school Zine project (don't ask, it's incredibly gay).

 

[graphiteacorn]

The last music I bought was...

M.C. Hammer - U Can't Touch This (The Single)

When I tried to pay for it, the guy at the record store counter paid me a dime to "get that crap out my store". Me and my friends were looking for stuff to test out some turntables with.

The last real CD I bought was The Ataris - Anywhere But Here (Remastered). Great stuff.

 

[aos]

Thanks to some posts here, I picked this after work today:

- Bach - Mass in B minor - Gardiner/Archiv

Only listened to first 6 movements... Has a very intimate feel, sounds like a small ensemble, and is on authentic instruments which gives it peculiar sound. But I have to say that at least for Gloria I prefer (only) other recording I have, by Eugen Joachim and Staatskapelle Dresden. It sounds more... glorious. Neither is as well recorded as I'd like. Or perhaps I have one of those
days when nothing sounds good - you know, loud stuff sounds like it's clipping, everything sounds smudged and veiled, imaging is terrible, basically as if you were listening to cheap and
crappy source/speakers.

- Naxos: An Introduction to... Bach, containing Brandenburg Concertos 4 & 5 - haven't opened it yet, but I remember very much liking one movement of 5th I've heard on another Naxos CD (which was a sampler by A&B sound, local store).

- Also by Naxos, Brandeburg Concertos 1, 2, 3, 6 - just so that I have complete Naxos on this subject

- On my own I got hybrid SACD of Vespers and excerpts from Lithurgy of St. John Chrisostom by Rachmaninov, Prague philharmonic choir / Jaroslav Brych. Clean and articulate but doesn't seem to have enough of that orthodox choir sound - an old CD I have by a Moscov choir is much better in that respect. I have heard this performed (Lithurgy) live by one of the best orthodox choirs 10 years ago so I still remember how it's supposed to sound.

I also got few days ago:

- Mahler's 3rd Symphony hybrid SACD - Wiener Phil / Boulez / von Otter - pretty good, and given that the price = regular CD price, worth checking out. I personally far prefer 6th movement of this
symphony to the 4th of 9th Symphony - they sound to me like
two different attempts to tell the same story, and in the 3rd
it was just done better. Yeah I know this people will disagree,
but I really dislike 9th, only 7th is worse in my opinion. It's
not a question of mastery of the form and orchestration - which
is at that point as high as it can be (I consider Mahler certainly
among top five symphonists, if not the best) but it is just like he
run out of things to say. Themes are unoriginal and uninspired
and all the mastery of transformation he attempts on them
just doesn't work in my opinion, with partial exception of
3rd movement. He just tries over and over again but what worked for him before now just sounds tedious. I like that 10th symphony (what's left of it) much better. Anyhow, last movement of 3rd is better, and overall
I enjoyed this disc.

- Dvorak's 8th and 9th symphony hybrid SACD , by Ivan Fischer and Budapest Festival Orchestra - another "cheap"
hybrid disc, very spirited performance - maybe not the best one
ever but certainly not dull - and excellent recording quality.

And some more CDs I'd recommend, that I've been listening to these days:

- Romantic Piano Concerto series from Hyperion is a MUST for anyone who loves piano concertos. Most of the stuff in this
series are forgotten or neglected works, and some of them
are more than just excellent - they should be on standard
repertoire. Such is certainly Joseph Marx's Romantisches Klavierkonzert, a delightful and deep piece (I've been listening to this one for over a year). Another good one is no. 23 in series - Holbrooke/Wood performed by BBC Schottish Symphony / Brabins / Hamish Milne. This last disc sounds better than some SACD's - really splendid recording quality. And the music is sweet and not super-original or deep (not the Marx's concerto, which is a brilliant work) but so what, we all need a break from same old sometimes.

- Bruch's violin concertos, on two separate discs - each of them won Juno award (Canadian equivalent of Emi) in classical category the year it was released (last and this one) . Performed by James Ehnes and Montreal Symphony. Great music, great performance, great recordings, what more to want? Sounds incredibly good in mp3 on iPod for some reason.

 

[scrypt]

Quote:

Originally posted by penvzila I also bought a couple of cds i wish i hadn't: Squarepusher - Selection Sixteen and ATP 3.0. Selection Sixteen wasn't worht the money and ATP 3.0 just sucked.

While I don't exactly despise 3.0, I do suffer from occasional amnesia whenever I try to listen. That anthology of ellipses is less tangible than a series of lukewarm blasts from an air conditioner set to room temperature. You don't even feel it until you turn it off. I can't pay attention to any of it except to skip past certain cuts (such as generic hip-hop by fossil fuel skool college djs-turned-institutions and the wretched noise guitar solo by some indefatigable dink).

We need to track down the foont who recommended that album and torch his Van Dyke with a Bunsen burner while playing Graf Gantz discreetly.

Too bad. I'd have liked to think Autechre would have better taste.

I didn't dislike Selection Sixteen, though I never listen to it unless I'm at work (and then only rarely). I just think it's the sort of thing that ought to be recommended to fans of Frank Zappa.

 

[minya]

Gantz Graf.

- Chris

 

[scrypt]

The inversion was deliberate. On a better day, it might have passed for style.

[Edit: Stay tuned, though, and you will catch me inverting chronologies (of albums) and terms (like coaxial and optical). Mine is the occasional kind of conceptual dyslexia. It's fueled by impatience, by haste to get to the next idea.]

Aos:

Hating the Ninth just means you're going to become an addict later on. I, too, loathed it at one time, and shocked my orchestration teacher by referring to the divisi strings (which I thought sounded muddy, aimless and insufficiently fleshed out) as "Mahler's patented cesspool of sound." My teacher's revenge came later, when I grew utterly addicted to the Ninth by way of the Kindertotenlieder (which is still my favorite) and spent an entire summer in the library analyzing every Mahler symphony and choking back tears like an idiot half the time.

 

[razerx]

Enigma - The Greatest hits. I am not a huge fan but a compilation should be pretty good and I was sure the sound would be ideal for headphones.

Depeche Mode - The singles 81-85. This is "Catching Up" remastered. Nostalgia trip!

Bob Marley and the Wailers - Catch a Fire. All time classic remastered!

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound. I am getting into Peter Gabriel again but never heard his early work. Great stuff.

Brian Eno - Ambient 1/Music for Airports. I heard Nerve Net and loved it and came across Ambient 1 on sale. Reminds me of Philip Glass.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Of the ones I mentioned in the other thread:

Justin Sullivan - Navigating by the Stars -- not New Model Army before, but still got that classic singalong quality that I like about Justin's songwriting so much. Pretty much all ballads (although not "power ballads") more akin to campfire songs, but production is delightful. Recommended.

Phaser - Sway -- space rock, along the lines of Spiritualized, Voyager One, recent Mercury Rev, et al. Highly recommended.

Blue Man Group - The Complex -- excellent, unique, PVC music. If you've seen their Pentium III (?) commercials, you know what their basic music is like, but then add some guitars and keyboards, and vocals this time, and you have a good idea. Pretty fun covers of "White Rabbit" and "I Feel Love", too.

Autechre - Draft 7.30 -- yeah, sorta like "gantz_graf" (note correct punctuation), yet...not. Less busy, and possibly just a notch more lo-fi.

 

[penvzila]

Well, there was one track on the ATP compilation that made me get an album by them (Disjecta, I just got Clean Pit And Lid) and find myself listening to that 10 minute guitar thingy a lot. Knowing what acts were there that could have been included is dissapointing, and i surely hope Autechre didnt have much to do with the cd.

 

[scrypt]

A lot of people seem to like Disjecta (note correct capitalization); a friend even lent me a few earlier albums to scrutinize. They haven't impressed me so far. I didn't mind their cut on ATP 3.0 (though I can't agree with you on the guitar track), so perhaps I'll listen to the new CD at some point.

If you like that sort of guitar, you might try History that Has No Effect, by Tyondai Braxton (Anthony Braxton's son). There's a bit more tonal movement, color and information on that album than post-Sonic Youth noise guitar albums have generally. The other guitar album I like a little bit is Goodbye Twentieth Century. For the most part, though, I'm just not fond of guitar bands.