Live Music

My two favorite shows were at EMPAC. The pummeling dished out by The Boredoms + 9 drummers easily takes the top spot. Garth Knox’s viola and viola d’amore might have been the polar opposite of The Boredoms but was no less riveting. I was also mightily impressed with 2009 ASAC guests Area C and Ben Bracken.

Recorded Music

The only new release on my list this year is Take Me To the Water from Dust to Digital. It’s a solid (maybe even stolid) collection of gospel–no real surprises or major standouts. But combined with the beautiful book I know I’ll be returning to this one often.

Two older CDs of music by Arthur Russel and Julius Eastman are now safely ensconced in my desert island collection:

Arthur Russel World of Echo
Where has this record been all my life? I had heard Russel’s avant-disco but was unprepared for the intimacy and sweet strangeness in this recording.

Julius Eastman Unjust Malaise
A life-changing collection of prescient music from a singular talent. There are so many standouts in this collection that it’s hard to choose a favorite.

And some assorted highlights from the year’s listening:

The Hub The Hub & Wreckin’ Ball
Tim Perkis/John Bischoff Artificial Horizon
Some of the synthesized sounds on these records date them, yet no one has better explored the potential for musicking with communication technology. The Hub is still at the heart of the genre, and sadly the genre is still too small. Maybe all those laptop orchestras with their hemi speakers will carry on some this work. They would do well to revisit these recordings.

Junior Kimbrough and the Soul Blues Boys All Night Long
Languorous sound that builds a Calatrava-style bridge between a juke-joint in Mississippi and the sacred sites of minimalism, drone and raga. On second thought, maybe that juke-joint in Mississippi IS a sacred site of minimalism, drone and raga.

Art of Field Recording Volume I
Another Dust to Digital release. I lived with these recordings for most of the year–and won’t be forgetting them soon.

Gloria Coates Symphonies Nos. 1, 7 and 14
This was recommended to me when it first came out. I’m sorry I missed it until this year.

Books

This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitan was probably the most fun I’ve had thinking about music and sound in a while. His Six Songs is less interesting/convincing, but a good intro to questions about music and evolution.

I enjoyed John Adams‘s Hallelujah Junction more than I expected, based on my experience with Adams’ music. (When will John Luther Adams write a book?) I found his tales about his origins and development illuminating and his writing refreshingly frank. It was especially interesting to read about his life in San Francisco during the 1960s which leads to…

The San Francisco Tape Music Center: an excellent overview of an under-appreciated group of electronic music pioneers and their fascinating intersections with popular culture. This collection puts a new spin on the usual Columbia/Princeton/Bell Laboratory history of electronic music in the US.

Music Technology

I expected 2009 to be about Max for Live, but I never got around to buying Live and then had no reason to get Max for Live. Instead, the one piece of music gear that’s made the most impact on my work in 2009 is an 1860′s style fretless tackhead banjo built by Eric Prust.

Back to the software side, the most notable music software I used this year was for the iPhone

Cleartune is easily the best tuner I’ve ever used. It still makes me a little giddy at how wonderful it is to be able to switch between equal tempered tunings and all manner of Pythagorean, just, meantone and historical tunings. My trusty clip-on tuner finally died this year; I’m not sure I’ll replace it.

SoundLevel is a free, bare-bones sound level meter app. I haven’t upgraded to SoundLevel Pro because the free app does me just fine. The convenience of always having a sound level meter on hand means that I’m much more likely to use it. In fact, it’s become an important step every time I set up a PA or go to a friend’s house to listen to mixes. Not to mention the ability to quickly check how loud that blender really is–time to put in earplugs!

On the productivity/inspiration side of things, OmniFocus for iPhone is essential for me. And the iPhone’s built-in Voice Memos app has become my favorite way to capture a sonic idea or lyric phrase–if only there were a better way to offload those files to my machine rather than having to go through iTunes…

Looking ahead to 2010

Maybe 2010 will be my time for Live and Max for Live. I’ve just started dipping into the Pinewoods International Collection of folk tunes and I expect the book will occupy me for most of next year. I’m hoping that by 2011 I’ll be able to frail my way with ease through all those odd time signatures. Finally, I’m looking forward to making more field recordings with my recently beefed-up rig which now includes a Fostex FR2-LE and a Rode Blimp.

Nic Collins’s wonderful book, Handmade Electronic Music – The Art of Hardware Hacking is getting an update. Routledge is publishing a new edition with, according to Nic, “lots of new circuits and illustrations, more examples of artists’ designs, and a DVD with 87 1-minute video clips by hackers from all over the globe, as well as a series of step-by-step video tutorials.” I can’t wait to see it. After the jump are a number of events surrounding the release.

New York City
On Friday evening, April 17, from 6-7PM we’ll celebrate the book release at Bent 2009 at The Tank (354 West 45th Street.)  Books will be available for purchase (I’ll sign them with my illegible scrawl), I’ll screen some of the video from the DVD, demonstrate a few projects, and maybe give a brief performance.  Check the Bent website for more information: http://www.bentfestival.org/#Event/Nic_Collins_Handmade_Electronic_Music_Book_Release_Party.

Berlin
April 20 & 21 I’ll be presenting a 2-day hacking workshop at NK (Elsen Str. 52, 2. Hof.) The workshops will run from 11AM until 7PM, and we’ll have a concert, party, and book signing on Tuesday evening.  For more information see http://www.ausland-berlin.de/hardware-hacking-nicolas-collins.

Amsterdam
STEIM, the Vatican of hacking, is offering a 3-day workshop with me from April 24 to 26.  The workshops run 10AM to 5PM. For more information see http://www.steim.org/steim/workshops.php?id=133&b=1&r=1.  Then on Tuesday evening, April 28, we’ll have a little concert and book party at STEIM.

Chicago
On Saturday, May 2, at 3PM Quimby’s Bookstore (1854 W. North Avenue) is hosting a book release party. I’ll screen some video, demo a few projects, and the Chicago Symphacking Orchestra (CSO) will perform.

It’s a fun read, thanks largely to Mulholland’s cheeky streak but even more so to his idealism. Mulholland values his pop music for its world-changing properties as much as for its booty-shaking abilities. And his disappointment as each starry-eyed group and movement sells itself short to crass commerce and popular opinion is somehow registered with eternal optimism: maybe something stuck this time around, maybe lessons were learned, maybe it will all be different next time around… Too bad it never quite works out that way.

Fear of Music is also a fun read because it’s a list, and I love lists. Some of the usual suspects appear here:

• The Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
• Michael Jackso: Thriller
• Brian Eno and David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

But there’s some surprising overlap with the records of the early- and mid-80s that I held dear. These were records that I kept returning to even as my circle of friends either left them behind or ignored them in the first place. Here’s a partial list:

• Adam and the Ants: Kings of the Wild Frontier
• Bad Brains: I Against I
• The Cramps: A Date with Elvis
• The Fall: 458489 A-Sides
• Gang of Four: Solid Gold
• Husker Du: Candy Apple Grey
• Prefab Sprout: Swoon (my pick for the most under-appreciated album of its time) and Steve McQueen (or Two Wheels Good in the US)
• The Specials: The Specials
• Squeeze: Singles 45′s and Under
• Talking Heads: Remain in Light (essential!)
• Violent Femmes: Hallowed Ground
• Yazoo (or Yaz): Upstairs at Eric’s

Twenty years later, it’s reassuring to have my teenage crushes validated.

Mulholland has already turned me on to some new records or in some cases reminded me of forgotten gems including

• The Afghan Whigs: 1965
• Kate Bush: Hounds of Love
• De La Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising
• Defunkt: Thermonuclear Sweat (where have you been all my life, Joseph Bowie?)
• Johnny Dowd: Pictures From Life’s Other Side (the world could use more avant-country)
• The Jayhawks: Hollywood Town Hall
• The Modern Lovers: The Modern Lovers
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: The Boatman’s Call
• Portishead: Dummy
• Television: Marquee Moon
• A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders and The Low End Theory

Then there are Mulholland’s recommendations I’m still looking forward to checking out:

• Au Pairs: Playing with a Different Sex
• Echo and the Bunnymen: Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here
• The Jam: Sound Affects
• Lloyd Cole and Commotions: Rattlesnakes
• The Rezillos: Can’t Stand The Rezillos
• Siouxsie and the Banshees: Juju
• The Slits: Cut

So far, one recommendation has fallen flat: The Human League: Dare!. I knew the closer hit “Don’t You Want Me” and expected the rest of the album to at least approach it in quality, but it doesn’t come close. Ouch. Maybe this one belongs in Mulholland’s previous book This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco.

I recommend Fear of Music, particularly since so few books and writers focus on the post-punk era; in Mulholland’s hands 1978 seems like the most magical and musical of years in recent decades. Mulholland’s across-the-pond proclivities occasionally seem stilted (I doubt many other music writers would afford the Manchester scene of the early ’90s so much space). But I forgive him a few lapses of enthusiasm, particularly given the rest of his picks and what good fun they are to read.