Last Friday was an interesting day in the office. No one was here, but Ariel. Robert Baird was whooping it up at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and John Atkinson and I would soon be on the road. It was the first day of spring, and snow was falling like mad.
On the train this morning, deep into Aaron Copland’s classic, What to Listen for in Music, which Art Dudley discusses in our November issue, I read a bit about rhythms and polyrhythms. Copland is giving a brief history on the use and evolution of rhythm in modern Western composition, explaining how we got from basic two-four time marches to much more complex combinations of two or more independent rhythms in varying times. This is what I read:
In our December issue, I write about the Emotiva ERC-2 CD player, which, at $449, brought me many hours of listening pleasure. Stereophile editor John Atkinson will describe the player’s measured performance in an upcoming issue. In January, I’ll write more about the Emotiva, and, in February, I’ll discuss NAD’s affordable ($300) C 515BEE CD player.
Obviously, I’ve been listening to a lot of CDs lately; and, while I have started to long for my LPs, I haven’t really gone crazy or anything. Listening to CDs can be fun, tooespecially when the discs hold music by Alva Noto and Ryuchi Sakamoto, David Sylvian, and Matthew Shipp.
Meanwhile, Natalie and Nicole have mentioned a rumor that’s spreading all over the Internet:
Last night, I listened to Mississippi Records’s latest Abner Jay release, Last Ole Ministrel Man, a lovingly packaged 10”, three songs on each side, rawer than winter in New York City.
Please click the External Link to enjoy the latest stop on Michael Lavorgna's Road Tour. Exit 11A leads Michael down the ramp to DeVore Fidelity, where we spend another lovely day at the hard-working Brooklyn Navy Yard and learn more about John DeVore's design philosophy.
Her name was E. and the gentle quaver in her soft voice gave me the impression that she was nervous, anxious, young. Something about it seemed sweet, seemed sincere. Which made me want to help her more. She was calling from England, and the connection was crystal clear. I could hear her perfectly, though she was so far away. She was doing research on the high end hi-fi industry.
Every now and then, work infiltrates my dream-life. Deadlines, forum issues, an e-mail I forgot to respond to these and other things have, at times, disturbed my gentle sleep.
Regular readers of this blog have noticed that I am hard up for some loving. I'm aware of this because a few regular readers have actually mentioned it to me. (Hi, mom!) I mean, shit, casual readers only have to scan the first few posts on this page to realize that "it's been a long time for me."
On this grayest of Fridays, the City's streets are wet with such strange sadness. How could it have happened? I, and many others, wake still stunned. How is it that their season is already complete, without ring, without title?