Kaija Saariaho - L'amour De Loin

Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer, born in Helsinki 1952. She wrote several string quartets (e.g. Private Gardens), before she in 2002 wrote her first opera L'amour de Loin. This opera uses very few implements - often only lead vocal and piano, the piano often using clusters while the female vocal especially, can sound almost schizophrenic at times. The true beauty of this composition lies in the minimalism and the atmosphere created with such small amount of implements. You could draw lines from her piano compositions to composers such as Penderecki (also described here at the index), with the difference that Saariaho uses fewer instruments to create the atmosphere she wants. Saariaho has studied in both Helsinki, Freiburg and New York and is widely acknowledged, meaning that her latest string quartet Terra Memoria had premiere in Carnegie Hall this year. L'amour de Loin is not for the weak heartet, but if you don't happen to be one of those you will surely enjoy.

Listen right here

George Antheil - Ballet Mécanique

George Antheil was an american avant-garde composer (born 08/07/1900). With Ballet Mécanique he took the avant-garde music to new places by including, among else, 8 pianoes, several airplane propellers, an alarm, 6 bass drums, 3 xylophones and so the list carries on. Ballet Mecánique was created for a film by Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger, but the common project was given up eventually, since the composition was too advanced to perform and record for the film. However the work was played as a concert in Paris in 1926 and later at Carnegie Hall in New York. This is one of the most fascinating avant-garde pieces ever written, and if you think that it is stupid, it is probably just because your toupee was blown of during one of the performance.

You can watch it being performed with modern technique here

Or you can watch the film with the music (rather bad sound though) here

This was written under influence of Current 93 - Black Ships Ate The Sky

Morton Subotnick - Touch

This is not a 60's sexploitation record. This is not a sampling of speeches regarding the finer ways of subtle selfpleasuring. This is in fact one of the most abstract collections of bizarre rhytmic experiments that are ever likely to emanate from a single Buchla modular synthesizer!

I won't even try to describe this beast step by step. Positioned somewhere between the ambient sonic craftings of later times and the musique concrète of the very earliest electronic music, Subotnick manages to hypnotize the listener and leave him (or her) in an altered state. The different outputs range from grinding, formless pads to strangely complex yet attractive percussive arrangements that flicker in and out of the definition of a "beat" with the precision of a drunken tape-recorder in a convulsive tap-dance routine. Covering the entire LP with just two side-long tracks, Touch is an avant-garde mammoth, worthy of attention from anybody who doesn't think music was invented by Van Halen!

R-tards!

Listen here

Pearls Before Swine - Balaklava

Pearls Before Swine was an american psych-folk band that released several records in the late sixties/early seventies. They have a very blurred sound, common to i.e. Bobb Trimble. Balaklava and One Nation Underground is considered as their main works.

The cover is by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, a dutch renaissance artist, picturing a great battle, just as the title of the album indicates. The battle of Balaklava was fought during the Crimean war in 1854. The opening tune "Trumpeter Landfrey" is in fact a recording of one of the surviving soldiers from this battle playing his trumpet. The whole album has, as Tom Rapp stated himself, an anti-war-theme making the lyrics more sombre. You don't get the feeling of listening to a protest-record though (thank god). I thought i had a lot of clever things to say about this record, but i will cut it down to: Good record, listen, now.

If you like war more than this record you're an ignorant and should be dumped in the ocean.

Listen Here.

Jedi Mind Tricks - Visions Of Gandhi

So here's the deal. Being a DJ you hear a lot of crap, but this one time beat them all. Some black guys comes up to me, telling me they wan't to hear some hip-hop, so i think to myself; well fine, let's have some hip-hop, since I love hip-hop. So first off i play some of the crap they wanted - 2pac and some mainstream snoopdogg. Then i start playing killer hip-hop like Jedi Mind Tricks, Jurassic 5 and others. While On The Eve Of War is on the player, this guy from before comes back. He asks me to play some hip-hop. I merely couldn't believe this. I considered the fact that he was deaf, but after threatening to kill my mom and dad if I wouldn't play more hip-hop, i had to draw the conclusion that he was a fucking moron.
I got nothing against black people and i got nothing against hip-hop, but i got something against some poser, believing he is true, because he once saw a Snoop Dogg comercial on MTV. I wanted to kick this guy in the face. Not for saying that he would kill my mom and dad, but for being such a fucking moron, not knowing what good hip-hop is. Today people think that they can slip in a pair of baggy jeans and a gold necklace, and suddenly know what hip-hop is. My anger towards this is guy and other people alike him can't be described in words. If he would lie down and die today, fine.

Visions Of Gandhi is one of the best hip-hop records ever made. Vinnie Paz rapping over Stoupe The Enemy Of Mandkinds beats are absolutely stunning. This record was somewhat their mainstream breakthrough, though a lot of people still consider the former Violent By Design as their main piece of work (it's not though). If you listen to Visions Of Gandhi and still think that Snoop Doggs new album is "actually okay" you are not even worthy reading this and will be IP-banned.

Now go listen

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The Antarcticans - Teach Children: Fear All Teachings Of Eternity

So The Antarcticans. The chances that you've heard about them are small, though they released this album as late as 2006. They are a post-rock band basically. On the other hand they got a lot more to offer than just plain post-rock. Picture yourself Dick Dale playing Godspeed You! Black Emperor, while listening to Sonic Youth Records. The harsh mix between Post-Rock, Noise-Rock, Surf, Psych (the list carries on) makes this album one of the greatest released last year.

There is nothing to discuss. If you don't listen to this and/or don't like it, you're an ignorant. Enough has been said, now;

Listen here.