Early December Muzak

I listened to some good music today and I'd like to share my thoughts. 

I ordered two albums from the library and both of them came in today, wonderful. The first listen was John Zorn's Naked City band album also entitled Naked City, released in 1990 on Nonesuch Records.

<sup>The music on Naked City is all over the place but it has its moments. The opening track for instance is quite alluring because it reminds me of some sort of Batman theme, that might've even been the song. Another stand out moment was the James Bond theme, that was memorable and signifies a certain point towards the end of the album. There's tons of free jazz moments, grindcore death metal thrashing, punk rock screaming and shouting, lounge jazz, rock and roll, and more. It does all of these styles in an eclectic way. I can see why this is one of John Zorn's best albums. Its all over the place but it still sounds nice in a "I can put this on for anybody sort of way." However, its not for everybody. Grindcore purists will scoff at this sort of thing and jazz fans won't exactly find the punk parts to speak for them. For someone like myself in the middle I can simply say, "This is ok." I see its relevance in today's musical climate and I think that would be saying a lot of the album and John Zorn's work in general. After all, I have been listening to a lot of his music-enough to make critical assessment of his career.

The other album is also associated with John Zorn. It's a Pat Metheny album called Tap: Book of Angels Volume 20. It's an album where Metheny plays compositions written by John Zorn from his Masada Book 2. It was released on Tzadik Records and Nonesuch Records in 2013. This album I would also say was just okay. However, it had its moments. There was a great moment where Pat plays a melody with the guitar synthesizer and he gets this really cool trumpet/flugel horn sound. *Edit: He actually played real flugelhorn!* That knocked me out. Most of the sonic atmosphere Metheny gets using guitar effects don't really go anywhere interesting but his acoustic guitar playing Zorn's melodies really give the music a Medieval feel. There's a lot of creativity coming out of Pat's arrangements of Zorn's music but at the end of the day there's a sense that John Zorn and Pat Metheny don't really mix. Most of the album combats this idea until you hear the acoustic bits and see the beauty in the melody lines. 

Pat plays so many instruments on this album! Here's a list of personnel.</sup> 

Personnel

• Pat Metheny – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bandoneon, sitar guitar, baritone guitar, orchestra bells, orchestrionic marimba, keyboards, piano, bass guitar, tiples, percussion, electronics, flugelhorn
• Antonio Sánchez – drums
• Willow Metheny – vocals

<sup>Finally we have the last piece of music and probably the most interesting of the bunch. I listened to Stockhausen's Kontakte (Contracts), an electronic piece of music mixing electronics with instrumental music. What can I say about this piece? I don't know enough about it to be too technical with my analysis but here we go.

The other day at dinner I mentioned to my dad's composer friend that I admired Stockhausen and his music. I asked him what he thought of Stockhausen's work and he said "it lacks soul". What I can tell you about this piece is that it has plenty of soul. There's life and beauty to this music. There's melody from the piano and the electronics, and silence is used in an almost rhythmic sensibility. So far this is my favorite Stockhausen I've heard, the first and only other one being Gesang der Jünglinge. 

The point of this post? Yes, sometimes its easy to get distracted by popular musings. But don't forget about the true masters of the avant-garde like Stockhausen (pictured above).</sup>
 

New Music, Jazz History, and Science Fiction

I've been doing more research into jazz and new music, avant-garde classical music. I've also been reading science fiction and such.

The science fiction novel is easy enough to explain. It's a science fiction novel set in the future where a scientist is trying to find out what happened to a town in Germany called Eifelheim. Then it goes back into Medieval German times where a priest named Dietrich is working as the communication between humans and these insect-like aliens called Kreken. The novel explores this idea: Can we convert aliens? There's other ideas and tons of rocket science abstraction (dense reading!) in it but this is the primary subject of the book. Its called Eifelheim and its written by Michael Flynn. The book was nominated for a Hugo award back in 2007. Although the book came out in 2006 this is already ancient by today's memelord society.

I also picked up two new books on jazz. Both seem superb after only reading a bit. They're two books written by Nat Hentoff. Jazz Life and Jazz Is. Both explore jazz in a variety of ways with interviews, history, and in depth analysis of the music, the musicians, the audience, and the time periods (some of which include when jazz wasn't popular). Hentoff is a Jewish writer (that wrote for pretty much every major publication) that was well known for his politics. He comes to know the music personally because he met and knew most of the "greats" as a kid in New York. I find his insight on the people to be enlightening. He explains that although the people who play jazz are flawed, the music itself isn't. I'm looking forward to reading both books and I hope to learn a lot more about the history (black history) and people that made such great music.

Then there's the readings on and about the new music scene. I've become a listener of the avant-garde, so called "new music", or as I like to say avant-garde classical music. It started during the Chicago trip when I saw Messiaen's Quartet For the End of Time performed and then it just expanded from there like a mothership dropping its young onto an unsuspecting planet.

I've become particularly fond of Xenakis, Ligeti, Guillermo Gregorio (Argentinian clarinetist and improviser), Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and others. Xenakis wrote a great book about mathematics and music but once I got past the initial introduction the book goes a little over my head. Interesting to check out and read about still.

The thing I like about this sort of music is that it sounds like it could've been completely improvised but it was all written down and thought about. They didn't just throw together random stuff and some people say it sounds random and not music at all (a general opinion on the avant-garde) but I've come to learn that music can be made out of anything and everything, a lesson this music has taught me more so than ever. These composers were revolutionary because they didn't follow the standard norms of composition and influenced music of the twentieth century in a profound way. 

Guillermo Gregorio's music is great. His playing is as my dad put it,"dated". He has a sound that was popular back in the mid to late 1960's jazz, free jazz to be specific. He has the sound of Eric Dolphy, if Dolphy was from Argentina and became an intellectual artist inspired by architecture and European art and philosophy. I don't want to generalize him but his playing reminds me of Dolphy a lot. And I dig that very much.

On the other end of the spectrum (the one where European/American art music and rap don't mix!) I read the entire LA Weekly edition that just came out and in the back they had a list of fifteen of LA's best rappers. I'm not a fan of rap but I figured I would check out some of these guys and see if they had done LA proud with their work. DJ Quik has a nice funky style and Tyler the Creator has become a rap darling. Apparently the guy who doesn't give a fuck about anything actually cares.

All of this stuff will enrich my musical and literary palette. I'm trying to improve the blog, do more editing and limiting my posts and sentences, something before I never would have done because I thought too much editing was a bad thing almost akin to censorship. My goal is to eventually be showcased somewhere on a website and for something to come out of all of this. After all, nobody should write for free. But a free thinker must express his ideas to others lest it all sit inside one's head. As Grace Slick (from Jefferson Airplane) sang in White Rabbit, "Feed your head."

Picture is the composer Ligeti