A friend sent me a hilarious-but-really-good version of Holcombe Waller performing Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" a few weeks ago and it got me curious as to who this guy is. In that video it's pretty clear that he's damn good so I checked out some of his other material and stumbled on his video for "Hardliners." Said song is incredibly beautiful and it lead me further down the path of hearing some of his stuff so, after cherry-picking the majority of the album on iTunes, I just threw my hands up and decided to blindly buy the entire thing. Not a disappointment at all. It's all incredibly moving. The beginning of "Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan" seems impossibly high but it ends up being a testament to just how unique this guy's voice is.
How many times have you had to sit and and get all Barococo with one or more of Vivaldi's Four Seasons? At least an annoying amount, right? Max Stoffregen told me about this Il Giardino Armonico album a couple of months ago and, although I was skeptical at first, he wasn't kidding around (I should know this about Max by now...he's brilliant). I don't know exactly what kind of strings the ensemble is playing on (I'm assuming gut, maybe?) and, due to the ubiquitous nature of this music, I haven't studied the scores for these pieces but--damn--whatever they did here makes them actually interesting; like the first time you heard The Black Album or The Rite of Spring. The second movement of the winter concerto is especially different than anything I've heard. There are sul ponticello effects all over this entire album which lift the music out of any of the quotidian nature its acquired. Or I could be wrong about all that and it just turns out that I'm woefully unlearnéd about this type of string playing. Either way this album effing rocks.
I was talking to a colleague the other day and he challenged me to sum up my musical tastes. All I could come up with was that I either like my music super sophisticated or super trashy. So...res ipsa loquitur. Especially "Criminal" what with the janky, MIDI flute.
On the sophisticated side (at least with regard to the hyper-literate lyrical content) I'm in love with The Decemberists' new album, The King is Dead. This might be their last album for a while and it's a good one. "January Hymn" reminds me of growing up in the Midwest ("How I lived a childhood in snow...stuffed in strata of clothes") and "Don't Carry It All" is loaded with positive vibes ("A neighbor's blessed burden within reason becomes a burden born of all and one"). They just announced that keyboardist Jenny Conlee has been diagnosed with breast cancer so here's hoping she'll be back to the stage soon.
Julius Eastman, you guys! He was a singer/composer/provocateur (1940-1990) who wrote some proto-minimalist stuff back in the day and then died penniless and destitute way too early.
"Stay On It" is an exercise in this really bubbly vibe that persists for almost 25 straight minutes. And then there's this crazy piece called "Gay Guerrilla" for four pianos which is even longer. So far there is only one anthology of his work out there called Unjust Malaise (thanks in no small part to Mary Jane Leach) and you should definitely check it out. Eastman ran in so many seemingly disparate circles it's ridiculous and, if you have some time, his Wikipedia entry is worth a read.
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