Month: June 2006

a quixotic endeavor?

returned from florida today. a couple highlights: air’s moon safari. that record gets better everytime i listen to it, like a fine wine that improves with age, or how the fox theatre seems to keep getting cooler just by continuing to exist. every song on that album is a masterpiece.

then there was kish kash, the most recent (2003) basement jaxx album (hey isn’t it time for a new one?). when i first got this one, it took me a while to really get into it and i continue to think that it is drastically uneven in its quality, but, ‘good luck,’  ‘right here’s the spot’ and ‘plug it in’ are among the best tracks in the duo’s catalog. ‘plug it in’ manages to succeed in spite of the n*sync connection.

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in tunequest news, i figured out how to use excel’s linear regression tools to calculate more precise trendlines.

tunequest graph 6/7/06

as you can see, the results aren’t pretty. this newly-accurate line predicts that i’ll have listened to 12,000 songs by the end of the year, about 2000 short of my goal. and, at the rate i’m going, i’m not weeding enough from my library; i’ll still be 500-1000 short. i guess all i can really do is re-double (quadruple?) my efforts again.

jim o’rourke’s damn fine lyrics

insignificance

i said yesterday that i'm convinced that jim o'rourke is a musical genius. at the time i was simply talking about his compositions. but i spun through his 2001 album insignificance today and i submit that the same applies to his lyrics as well. see this site for a full list (plus discography and other extras. it can be slow loading), but i like these lines in particular:

Listening to you, reminds me of
A motor’s endless drone
And how the deaf are so damn lucky

-Memory Lame

For a drive to Florida

It’s about a 350 mile drive from Atlanta to the florida panhandle (represent!) and it, without fail, rains in alabama every time. That’s not hyperbole; i’ve made the drive there and back 3-4 times a year for the past 4 years and literally, it rains at some point on I-85 or I-65.

as the skies went from downpour to sprinkles along the route to montgomery, my ipod provided a most suitable soundtrack: Saint etienne‘s b-side album fairfax high.

At this point, i don’t really remember how i stumbled upon the band, though i think i may have confused them with etienne de crecy from a remix of air’s ‘sexy boy.’ irregardless of the source, fairfax high was the first saint etienne album i heard (march 2000) and it impressed me enough that i was hooked.

i’ve always liked b-sides and b-side albums because of the new perspective they provide on a band. some of my favorite songs in many bands’ catalogs are b-sides, and saint etienne is no different. ‘hit the brakes’ and ‘hill street connection’ are both standout tracks from this collection.

Jim O’rourke, Cinematic Orchestra and DJ Krush: Downtempo day

First off today, Jim O'rourke's i'm happy, and i'm singing, and a 1, 2, 3 , 4, which consists of precisely three songs of significant length, one for each of the phrases in the album title. O'rourke is a musical genius and I'm convinced that if he had lived 100 years ago he would have been a master composer.

This album is a bit of departure for him. Principally known for his work in the rock mode (and his sometimes membership in Sonic Youth), this record seems to channel nobukazu takemura and is far more experimental in nature. Droning and glitch-filled, but not harsh. Very mellow and relaxing. It's further evidence that everything he touches turns to musical gold.

Rounding out today: some nice beats and trumpet work from dj krush and the sweeping soulfulness of the cinematic orchestra.

James Horner – Enemy at the Gates: Hacktackular

enemy at the gates

James Horner is a hack.

That’s my opinion. Some people think he’s a good or even great composer. I don’t. I happen think he has precisely 1.5 Good scores to his credit, namely Star Trek 2 and 3. Those two score, I also happen to think, are among the finest score of the late 20th century, with an asterisk. (the asterisk being that the highlights of each are highly derivative of Prokofiev).

I mention it because I listened to Horner’s score for the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates today and was once again frustrated by the music. Despite my accusation above, Horner can be a talented composer, I just think he’s fond of shortcuts that lower the quality of the final product. For example, this Enemy at the Gates score opens with the type of epic 15+ minute suite The River Crossing to Stalingrad that I am quite fond of. It effectively incorporates an all-male chorus and evokes the same Slavic character that I enjoy in Dvorak’s and Tchaikovsky’s work. Additionally, there are some really nice melodic passages throughout the score.

But…

And this is a deal-breaker, horner re-guritates the same "Menace" Motif that he originally wrote for StarTrek 2 (1982) and already recycled at least once for Aliens (1986). And this motif is everywhere in the score, ruining what might have been compelling music.

It’s not the motif’s fault really. It’s actually a simple and effective couple of bars of music. But in my mind, it is far too overused and too closely related to Khan for it to work anywhere else. So I may hang on the opening suite, but the rest of this score will be departing my library.