Tonight! 2011 Sonic Circuits Fest

Tonight, September 18th, Jesse Kudler will be playing alongside the famous Keith Rowe.

Sonic Circuits is a Washington DC based experimental music producer. 

The show is at Pyramid Atlantic in Silver Spring, MD. 

More information here.

Happy Birthday, Mendelssohn. Fuck You, Wagner

Interesting little bit about Mendelssohn over at NPR in honor of his 200th birthday. Apparently, there is a 2nd version of his 4th Symphony! I'd love to hear it, but haven't been able to find it in my interwebs searchings. I think they exaggerate how big of an impact Wagner had in slandering Mendelssohn out of the canon, but it's worth mentioning how big of a douche-bag Anti-Semite Wagner was.

In my opinion, Mendelssohn is a bit underappreciated, so it was nice to hear the story. Here's the 1st movement from his 4th Symphony... enjoy!

Three (plus one) Great Covers

I found some great covers recently that I'd like to share. The first is from River Cuomo's 2nd collection of home recordings, Alone 2. Love the combination of mid 90's distortion and Beach Boys harmonies -- two of my most favorite things!

Rivers Cuomo: Don't Worry Baby (Beach Boys cover)

The second is from the forthcoming Jon Brion Remix EP of Of Montreal songs. I'm really looking forward to this -- I love what Jon Brion does and thought he did great with the minimalist sound of Spoon in The Underdog and with the 1st version of the Fiona Apple album. I didn't think that Of Montreal could somehow get more Baroque, but Jon Brion did it. Just like how I didn't think that the Shins could get more poppy, but Of Montreal did it anyway (Oh, I should throw that cover in, too).

Of Montreal: First Time High (Reconstructionist Remix of An Eluardian Instance by Jon Brion)


Of Montreal: Know Your Onion (Shins cover)

The last cover is Bon Iver doing Feist -- a really lovely slow jam for you all :)

Bon Iver: The Park (Feist cover)

Song of the Year?

Nothing Ever Happened - Deerhunter

Eh, maybe not. But it's still a really fucking good song.

Mile High Music

Just got back from Taiwan (had a great time). The only thing bad about trips to Taiwan is the long, long flight. But luckily, I brought a ton of new music to listen to on the flights. I also learned that Ulysses is really difficult to read.

One album on constant repeat was Alpinisms, School of Seven Bells's debut LP. Perfect album for that half-asleep, half-awake state I was in for most of the flight. They sound like a cross between Sunny Day in Glasgow and Ladytron -- cool, droning female vocals floating on top of a glimmering backdrop of electropop/rock. Kind of a neo-shoegaze thing going on there, too. Really solid album. Highly recommended.

The other new album I was listening to was Marnie Stern's This Is It & I Am It & You Are It & So Is That & He Is It & She Is It & It Is It & That Is That. Her music sounds like a mix between freak-folk and heavy metal, with a little bit of Hella and Dan Deacon thrown in. Super high energy, funny lyrics, hilarious (and highly technical!) guitar riffs make this album a really fun listen.

These two albums, along with Girl Talk's Feed the Animals and The Fleet Foxes album are my favorites of the year so far.

My First Art-Love

My first art-love was classical music. After starting out on piano (duh, I'm Korean) I moved on to violin (duh, I'm still Korean). Even though I wasn't that great, I was good enough to get into youth orchestras and was perfectly happy hacking away in the back of the 2nd violin section. For a while, all I listened to was classical music. Yes, I know. It's hard to believe that I was that cool.

Classical music was my first introduction to having a real and deep relationship with art, and also an introduction to how art can really transport you. It also taught me how art can help validate being human, how creating is an invaluable, life-affirming human trait. You listen to Beethoven, and you're like, "Yeah! We can do it!" Ugh, that sounds lame, but whatever.

Anyways, I'm realizing more and more how important this experience was for me as an artist. Classical music is essentially abstract music, from the abstract notation that you have to learn to read, to the abstract structures like symphonies, fugues, etc -- even "sound" itself seems so abstract. And yet through such abstract materials people like Bach and Beethoven were able to create something so specific in terms of how it sounds and how it emotes.

I guess I'm just realizing through my work and through thinking that I'm way more interested in the abstraction of music than I am the history of Western Modernist abstraction, and I think the work is starting to reflect it more and more.

The "Grosse Fugue" from Beethoven's 13th String Quartet is one of my "desert island" pieces. Sorry that it gets chopped up.

Dusty Rock from SoCal

The Golden Animals's debut album Free Your Mind and Win a Pony has been in constant rotation on my playlist this month. It's got this great dusty swagger to it -- like it's some long lost album that you would find in your Dad's closet along with his baggy linen shirts, hemp necklaces, and pictures with his girlfriend named Aurora Moonbeam Hope. Well, not my dad, but, you know, "dads" in general.

Anyways, the album is really really good. I was starting to get worried because I haven't heard a good album this year since the Fleet Foxes and Girl Talk albums.

Golden Animals - "The Steady Roller" from I Guess I'm Floating on Vimeo.

Shosty!

Lisa and I saw the Philly Orchestra on Thursday night. It was the first show with Charles Dutoit as the new chief conductor, but more importantly they had Martha Argerich playing Shostakovich's 1st Piano Concerto!!! For those that don't know, Shostakovich is in my Holy Trinity of composers (Bach, Beethoven, Shostakovich). Obviously, I would love a guy who said "When listeners laugh at a concert of my symphonic music, I am not in the least bit shocked. In fact, I am pleased.” His music is almost schizophrenic, going from hilarious to grotesque to heartbreaking to tender and lyrical.

The 1st concerto is a lighter piece, filled with wonderful moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity and an almost hysterical and uncontrollable forward motion. Argerich was perfect -- completely destroying the piano during the more aggressive parts and snap-changing into a lyrical and subtle sound when it called for it. Awesome, awesome stuff. Here's Argerich playing the 1st movement, which is a good little snap-shot of the whole piece.

They also played Prokofiev's 1st piano concerto, which he wrote while still at Conservatory. I really liked the piece -- it definitely felt like early Prokofiev and he still hadn't gotten some of the kinks out yet. But the piece was a ton of fun and really showcased Argerich's virtuosity.