search

Miles of Miles and Ella

I’ve published two music articles elsewhere in the past couple weeks.

One is an article for the Arts & Leisure section of this past Sunday’s New York Times, about a new and startling 4-CD boxed set of previously unreleased Ella Fitzgerald sets, recorded in an L.A. nightclub in 1961 and ’62 (i.e., her peak years), called Twelve Nights in Hollywood (Verve).

The other is a brief review for New York Magazine of an eyebrow-raising 70-CD Miles Davis boxed set called The Complete Columbia Album Collection. That’s 52 albums, plus a previously unissued DVD of the 1967 quintet playing…

An Important Sale

Oh, the aptly named Important Records, one of my favorite sources for outstanding experimental, noise, and otherwise out-there recordings, is having a crazy holiday sale, yo. Check it out: You can buy 44 compact discs for just $44. Or 66 compact discs for just $66. Finally! And your purchase comes with a sweet tote bag. You’ll need it for hauling around all those compact discs.

Vinyl lovers, there’s something for you, too, of course. Important is offering a selection of great, colorful vinyl for just $5 or $10 an album. Dan Friel's exultant Ghost Town for just five dollars…

Fluid Piano

Cool. I’m kinda scared by the possibilities of this thing. Let’s get two: One for Bob Reina and one for Robert Silverman. For more info on the Fluid Piano, visit The Guardian.

By the way, this is just one of the many interesting stories I’ve come across thanks to the Stereophile Twitter page, which now has 67 followers. Whee!

Not Not Fun!

On Friday, I promised myself that I would spend no more money on records until after the New Year. On Saturday, I found myself at Other Music with three LPs in my hands. Gah! I brought them up to the counter, where the cute girl with the black hair was waiting. I felt despicable.

With a heavy heart, I handed my records to the girl.

“Oh,” she exclaimed upon scanning the first LP. And then, “oh,” again, with the second LP. And then, “oh,” once more, with the third LP.

“You win ‘Shopper of the Day,’” she said.

“Are you Karen?” I asked.

“Yes.”

…

In A Strangeland

This is what I want from music:

Yeah, that’s right.

Good thing Talk Normal’s debut LP, Sugarland, is now available. It’s been blasting from my office and through the halls of 261 Madison Avenue since its release. I wonder what the girls from Soap Opera Digest think. The album was recorded by Nicolas Vernhes, at his Rare Book Room studio, so the sound is appropriately powerful and spacious.

I was a bit upset over missing Talk Normal open for Sonic Youth during their recent show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, but no sweat: Talk Normal will be playing this…

Livin' In Paradise

I’d say on average that about 85 percent of the people I ask, hate Christmas music with an undying passion. I am one of a crazed minority who actually like the stuff and have long cultivated a collection of the stuff. Although I usually begin the season with the two volumes of Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits, both of which are now out of print (C’mon Rhino!), but are easily found used on Amazon, my general rule with Christmas music is: the weirder the better. And God knows when it comes to weird, Bob Dylan’s new collection of guttural holiday croakings is truly amazing.

I do…

Even in the Rain

Here’s the video for the Fiery Furnaces’s hit single, “Even in the Rain,” which is possibly my favorite track from the band’s excellently easy-to-listen-to album, I’m Going Away. (It’s not really a “hit.” I just made that up. But it could be, if we lived in a different world.)

I mean, even in the rain, man. That’s a powerful concept. Like this cat won’t even soften up for the time it takes to offer his lady a protective helmet for her delicate head while they ride his hog cross country, in the rain. That hits me right there.

What’s that weird modulation thing that…

The Way We Listen Now

Okay, read this: The Decade in Music: The Way We Listen Now, from NPR’s “All Things Considered.”

I know what Sasha Frere-Jones means when he says, “There are days where I don’t know what to do.”

The limitless exposure to new music offered by the Internet is staggering, can be paralyzing, painfully overwhelming. It's as if we can have anything we want. And, of course, we want it all. The decline of physical media has changed our relationship with music. As Maura Johnston says, we no longer struggle to find space for it all; we now struggle to make time.

But,…

The Way We Listened Then

Have you read that, yet? Okay, now read this: “Reconsidering the Revival of Cassette Tape Culture,” by PopMatters’ Calum Marsh.

If the idea of a “cassette tape revival” completely freaks you out, then think back to our July 2009 interview with Thurston Moore, guitarist of Sonic Youth. When the conversation turned to preferred music formats, Moore, a fan of the vinyl LP, admitted to finding the most new music via cassette tape:

I’m really into bands who put out stuff on cassette only. There’s still a cassette underground that puts out a lot of the best music I hear…

The Labor of Love

I wonder if Karen, over at Other Music, has gotten around to listening to Sex Worker’s The Labor of Love. I’d like to tell her about it. I probably wouldn’t tell her like this:

“PTSD” (for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, perhaps?) begins with scintillating and warbling minimalist electronics and subtle washes of restrained feedback, all gradually building and building into a cacophony of maniacal screams, demented moans, and horror movie organ. It sounds like the sort of stuff that would be trapped within the deranged mind. (I’m imagining.) A horrifying howl grows from the…