On Listening - Again.

It's Victorious Festival weekend. I have nothing meaningful to say about that. Occasionally I get asked what kind of music I like. Hmm. Well, I like a lot of different kinds of music dependent on my mood, where I am, who I'm with and what I'm doing.

Left to my own devices, I love challenging music. Music that makes you stop whatever you're doing and really pay attention. The antithesis of what my sister calls "Music to vacuum to". The kind you actively have to go find, 'cos you ain't gonna get it on the radio. Not Background music. 

I meet, work with, a lot of people who want music to be a background noise, aural filler, just something to listen to to take their minds away from "spending too much time with [their] own thoughts". People who hate "being in [their] own heads".  These are actual quotes from conversations I've had with people.

They work in a factory which is a constant cacophony of >70 - 75db machinery, alarms, sirens, beeps, loud bangs and crashes - but this they consider not really sound. Noise is not really sound... And the silence must be killed off at all costs. They hate silence. Can't stand it. And being in their own heads makes them feel lonely... Local commercial radio is their drug of choice.
None of which is comprehensible to me.
I cannot imagine what that must feel like.
There but by the grace of good fortune, go I. 

I love the kind of music that suddenly grabs you by the hair from behind and drags you violently to a stop, and makes you exclaim!  "What the fexpletive is THAT! " Like dropping off a cliff in the dark. That feeling of being winded by the unexpected. Discovery!

I enjoy actively Listening. Close listening is to me, like free-swimming. Absolutely liberating and calming and fascinating and stimulating. And it is just as good as a shared, social activity as it is a solitary one. Especially because as a social activity, it often means that everyone present shares a similar sensibility.

But above all, I guess I want music to be interesting. Isn't this what having a mind is for? Isn't this what we are? Explorers, experimenters, curious and creative? Playful?

So. Todays playlist. 

Six albums I've had on already this morning. Six infinitely interesting, compelling aural landscapes for listening, close listening, or just filling the void between your earballs with noise of a different origin. 

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Towering Inferno - Kaddish - Island Records - 1993

Richard Wolfson and Andy Saunders with Márta Sebastyén and Endre Szkárosi

Terrifying and beautiful reflections on the Holocaust, including Eastern European folk singing, Rabbinical chants, klezmer fiddle, sampled voices (including Adolf Hitler), heavy metal guitar and industrial synthesizers. Yeah. Like I say. Interesting.

Biosphere - Substrata - All Saints Records - 1997
Geir Jenssen

Stunningly beautiful, spatial, intimate, immersive aural landscapes and domestic interiors. Audio spatial, cinematic, documentary. Domestic and field recordings, and samples of speech taken from among others, Twin Peaks.

Meeting - Two Worlds Of Modal Music - Harmonia Mundi - 2004
Dominique Vellard, Ken Zuckerman, Swapan Chaudhuri, Keyvan Chemirani

Traditonal Indian classical raga meets Gregorian chant/medieval music. To begin, the two alternate and contrast, but as the songs progress there is much more interplay developing towards some incredible blending of the two forms. By the end, this is virtually metal.

Dead Can Dance - The Serpents Egg - 4AD - 1988
Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry

Extraordinary. The frequency of several of the tracks being used in numerous film and tv soundtracks is a testament to the power and sophistication of the vision, the writing and the performances. 

Peter Gabriel - Passion - Music for The Last Temptation Of Christ film by Martin Scorsese - Realworld - 1989
Peter Gabriel

Absolutely NOT like anything else he ever did. Stunning album. Includes some of his earliest forays into world music and ambience. As befitting its cinematic purpose, it paints glorious, dark soundscapes steeped in classic (now vintage) synths, mixed with modern and trad instrumentation from African and Asian cultures.

Simon Fisher Turner and Derek Jarman - Live Blue Roma - Mute Records 1993

Live performance of Fisher-Turner's soundtrack to Jarman's highly acclaimed film 'Blue',his final feature film, released four months before his death from Aids-related complications. Such complications had already rendered him partially blind at the time of the film's release and he was only able to see in shades of blue.