Shades of Eternal Night

Saying…sometimes I’m going to get real wordy with my posts and then sometimes I’m just going to post a picture of Erykah Badu looking sanctified and her smoky cover of a Donald Byrd classic. There’s room for both…

(More pictures from the recent Stones Throw/Brainfeeder event at Coachella here.)

To all of those into the Cassius remix I posted a while back—thanks for the love! Here’s another classic track from the same era—my first exposure to the wonders of DJ Falcon, who keeps tweaking the same loop over and over while applying the most glorious filter passes you have ever heard. So simple, so ecstatic. Bonus points for the Chuck Close-aping cover art.

I will listen to this music forever.

I had previously briefly mentioned the mammoth 64-song, two-part benefit compilation Antiopic released last month. Obviously some contributions are better than others, but I could still make a “great tracks only” mix that would last two hours, so be a good soul and donate.

This is one of my favorites, the last track of Part One. Chatham is primarily known for his guitar work, but this is a quietly brilliant piece for trumpet and electronics. The way the flittering notes emerge from the thicket of fog halfway through…the way everything sounds like it’s suspended in space…there is so much to admire here.

Everyone has rainy day music, right? An album or set of songs that works especially well when it’s dreary outside and you’re warm and comfortable at home? Yesterday’s thunderstorm reminded me how That’s What I Call Sweet Music has been one of those mood enhancers, off and on, for me for a decade or so. Compiled by R. Crumb from his personal collection of 78s, this music is so totally and distinctly from another era that it couldn’t be anything but transportative.

Writing about music has made me think more about what I like and why—I am, bashfully, pretty into it. My experience with the music of this era—a time when jazz and popular music were still fairly synonymous—is almost entirely limited to this CD and to Woody Allen’s films. That said, I think my first real exposure was during an hours-long drive to summer camp with a friend and his dad, who had taped hours of Phil Schaap’s WKCR show, “Traditions in Swing.” Punctuated by the torrential downpour smacking against our car, the ride in the backseat was soundtracked by the sound of crackly vinyl, short bursts of song, and men speaking reverently, at length, about people I had barely heard of. I’m sure this is why this music soothes me if it’s stormy outside.

Sometimes I chide myself for being a tourist when it comes to certain genres of music, and dixieland jazz is definitely one of them. That said, this compilation is a beautiful souvenir, one made especially interesting because of its curator’s passion. I have no particular fondness for R. Crumb—I haven’t ready any of his books, and all I know about him I gleaned from American Splendor and Crumb—but his artwork and liner notes here convey how revelatory this music was for him:

“I was 15 years old; the year was 1959. I was an eccentric kid, woefully out of step with my own time. I liked old things. I went around wearing an old Abe Lincoln frock coat. I kind of liked some of the early rock and roll records, but I loved the background music in the old 1930s Laurel & Hardy and Little Rascals comedies…

I was always snooping around in second hand stores, looking for old comic books. One day I noticed some old 78 records with very intriguing labels. They radiated some kind of power—a magical aura, even though the names of the tunes and the bands were unknown to me…

Ten seconds after putting the needle down…I knew—this is it! I was thrilled to the core, overjoyed! This was the music I’d been searching for! It existed on old records! In that moment I became a record collector for life…”

I would imagine that a lot of people have had a similar musical moment reshape their lives, even if it wasn’t to a record by “Charlie Fry & His Million Dollar Pier Orchestra.”

Anyway, this is a great comp, and you can download the whole thing here—though the song above by superstar crooner (and Sunnyside resident!) Rudy Vallee is probably my favorite of the whole group. The lyrics are sweet, witty, and completely silly, which seems appropriate given that the song is a celebration of the first blush of love. Here’s the man himself:

This may be my first D’Angelo post, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last…

The image above is the cover of a promo 12” called Voodoo DJ Soul Essentials—thought it would be a good switch up from the iconic cover of the album this song actually comes from. The archivist in me apologizes for the a/v discrepancy, though.

Read this piece from Spin from two years ago—it’s probably the most thorough account I’ve read of what has happened to D’Angelo since Voodoo came out and explores the deep insecurities that have been crippling him from releasing more music.

(You know every past issue of Spin is on google books, right?)

Hope it’s not sacrilege to say that this is my favorite Boredoms release… 

The reissue of this album is certainly cause for celebration—though nothing too cacophonous, as that would disrupt the bleary, melancholy tone of the music. Like many Basinski releases, this one has origins at a couple different points in time; originally recorded in 1979, it was first issued in 2003 as an LP on Three Poplars, the label run by Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman of Mirror. Quickly out of print, Heeman’s own Streamline label now presents a new edition on CD. Somewhat crucially, the lone, 45-minute title piece is now able to play uninterrupted instead of being split up over two sides. A Red Score in Tile also gets some new artwork courtesy of James Elaine, whose mixed media piece of the same name inspired this piece and is excerpted for the cover. 

Frankly, I’ve never really warmed to Basinski’s work on the whole, though I know many find it to be some of the best ambient or experimental music released in the past decade. To me, it’s usually too static and austere, and I have a hard time investing emotionally in it. Oddly, A Red Score in Tile could probably be considered his most static and austere piece, but something about it clicks. The essence of it is a twenty second piano phrase—no other music appears, though the muted hiss and clipping of the tape looping on itself is present. As you cycle through it, though, the loop seems to take on different iterations and possibly, as is Basinski’s hallmark, reveal disintegration. It’s hard to be sure, honestly, if these things are happening, and it’s this illusory quality that really makes the music successful.

Listen to the excerpt above: it was taken from the middle of the piece, spanning ten minutes. I can’t promise you the excerpt would sound much different if it started twenty minutes earlier, or ten minutes later. And yet: the loop is so brittle and delicate, so much a specter of itself, that it grows hypnotizing. Though beautiful, it’s also undeniably sad, which is why I can’t just put this on anytime and have it act as wallpaper or white noise. Its worn, murky fidelity works best in the predawn hours, before the day and all of its demands take hold.