Engineering Hubris
A-Minus-Minus
Future
Startling
To Be Wanted
Friday, 9 September 2011
Wednesday, 7 September 2011
Why Twitter is Brilliant (pt. 94)
Yes, the 140 character limit can be restrictive, but the opportunities are there for instantaneous access between anybody. The full Slanket of Con gallery can be viewed here.
Friday, 2 September 2011
Desert Island Disc #2
And then there's this.
Today, in Britain at least, it's so familiar that you might take it for granted. You might find it difficult to remember a time when this music was considered mysterious, alien and terrifying. Difficult, that is, unless you ever watched Doctor Who as a child and experienced the delicious sting of panic as the opening theme began. Too late now to run and hide, the show was starting and you were caught!
For viewers in the '60s and '70s, unfamiliar with the musique concrète avant garde, it was utterly unearthly. Devoid of recognisable sounds, the recording was literally physically constructed: each note was painstakingly produced from white noise, plucked piano strings or oscilloscope harmonics, before being modified, cut and edited by hand into vast lengths of analogue tape that ran out of the Radiophonic Workshop and up the corridor. With no multi-track equipment, the different tracks were mixed manually by synchronising individual tape players - that is, simultaneously hitting the 'play' button on multiple machines!
The writing credit belongs to Ron Grainer, but the genius behind this extraordinary arrangement was Delia Derbyshire. This original version of hers from 1963 is still bizarre, remarkable and like nothing else in British popular culture.
And... it's the first piece of music I ever bought.
On a shopping trip, my mother allowed us to choose one record each. My sister, Hannah, chose a double A-Side release of "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window" and "Polly Wolly Doodle", I think. And I found a seven inch single of the (relatively) new arrangement with a grinning Peter Davison on the cover. I was five years old or so - it's difficult to be sure because I can't find any catalogue details for this particular release. Since I can't track it down, I can't tell you what the B-Side was called either, but Han and I called it "Running Through the Jungle" music, by which we meant (self-evidently) a spacey, alien jungle because this was Doctor Who after all. We would play it and run around and around the front room until it stopped or we got dizzy and fell over, whichever came first..
If I could find it, I'd post that, but I can't so it'll have to be this instead!
Today, in Britain at least, it's so familiar that you might take it for granted. You might find it difficult to remember a time when this music was considered mysterious, alien and terrifying. Difficult, that is, unless you ever watched Doctor Who as a child and experienced the delicious sting of panic as the opening theme began. Too late now to run and hide, the show was starting and you were caught!
The writing credit belongs to Ron Grainer, but the genius behind this extraordinary arrangement was Delia Derbyshire. This original version of hers from 1963 is still bizarre, remarkable and like nothing else in British popular culture.
And... it's the first piece of music I ever bought.
On a shopping trip, my mother allowed us to choose one record each. My sister, Hannah, chose a double A-Side release of "How Much Is That Doggy In The Window" and "Polly Wolly Doodle", I think. And I found a seven inch single of the (relatively) new arrangement with a grinning Peter Davison on the cover. I was five years old or so - it's difficult to be sure because I can't find any catalogue details for this particular release. Since I can't track it down, I can't tell you what the B-Side was called either, but Han and I called it "Running Through the Jungle" music, by which we meant (self-evidently) a spacey, alien jungle because this was Doctor Who after all. We would play it and run around and around the front room until it stopped or we got dizzy and fell over, whichever came first..
If I could find it, I'd post that, but I can't so it'll have to be this instead!
.
You're Welcome.
I'm rationing these now. I'll just post five of my most favourite once a week.
Hallucinations
Organic Fuel
Cat Proximity
Excessive Quotation
Commitment
Hallucinations
Organic Fuel
Cat Proximity
Excessive Quotation
Commitment
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Benjamin Britten
This wasn't where I was going to start. It's not early or very recent, it doesn't produce the Proustian rush of memory that some songs do. But it is important to me and it is beautiful and it is the opera that makes all the duff ones worthwhile as far as I'm concerned.
I'm still dubious about opera, partly because I can't really appreciate or understand all the effort that goes into producing it. I very much enjoy being told a story but for me the music is normally pretty, ha ha, incidental.
What I have found is that the more productions I see of a particular piece, the more important and memorable the music becomes - partly just through reinforcement, partly because I am concentrating less on who is stabbing who and partly because it is the bit that doesn't change between versions. The opera I have seen done most often is Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It's my favourite too. It benefits greatly from Shakespeare's play, inheriting a familiar story, strong characters and a beautiful, compelling English libretto that mixes mortal wit and passion with eldritch poetry. As an opera it has other advantages. Opera isn't reality - people are singing for God's sake - and it suffers when forced to portray the humdrum. Dream not only takes us, the mortal audience, into an escapist love story, it shows us a whole new fantasy world order where the realms of Athens and Faerie intertwine under the trees. And Britten's music wonderfully evokes this fantastical setting. The opening, a sliding sinewy chorus of twisting branches and swaying boughs, brings the forest to life immediately and pushes us deep within.
My favourite part, the extract I have chosen, as it were, Kirsty, is from the beginning of Act III where the lovers awake from the muddled madness of the previous night, calmed and remedied. It is the emotional catharsis of the piece, the resolution of the drama. In the play, this scene features quite a blustery piece of exposition, with Demetrius explaining to the Duke that everything has been fixed. But the opera shows us the emotional journey. One small line from the play is taken and magnified, echoing around the lovers, first as realisation, then as growing wonder and finally, unifying and mutual bliss, as they each declare their chosen partner "mine own and not mine own".
Out of context it might seem a disturbing or sceptical analysis of a relationship, dwelling on ideas of possession and ownership. But really it's a beautiful, arresting thought, hinting at the mysterious and inexplicable alchemy that binds us to another and them to us. The act of falling in love is often a solitary, internal process, beset by doubts - this moment in the opera shows us the transcendent, wonderful instant of reciprocity, when the jewel we have found sings back our own thoughts.
For all that, the piece, and the moment, is not without its problems - both the play and opera ask that we conveniently forget that Demetrius preferred Hermia to Helena before the Fairies chemically overrode his desires and one might be left hoping, for his sake, that the effect is permanent. I've a hankering, now I think about it, to see a production where Demetrius visibly and knowingly resigns himself to the narrative inevitability, not coerced by magic, but submitting to the needs of the many.
But of course, to us as much as to the Faeries, these mortal lives and loves are mere playthings and, at the end, the four lovers are paired correctly to our satisfaction.
All is well and as it should be.
I'm still dubious about opera, partly because I can't really appreciate or understand all the effort that goes into producing it. I very much enjoy being told a story but for me the music is normally pretty, ha ha, incidental.
What I have found is that the more productions I see of a particular piece, the more important and memorable the music becomes - partly just through reinforcement, partly because I am concentrating less on who is stabbing who and partly because it is the bit that doesn't change between versions. The opera I have seen done most often is Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
It's my favourite too. It benefits greatly from Shakespeare's play, inheriting a familiar story, strong characters and a beautiful, compelling English libretto that mixes mortal wit and passion with eldritch poetry. As an opera it has other advantages. Opera isn't reality - people are singing for God's sake - and it suffers when forced to portray the humdrum. Dream not only takes us, the mortal audience, into an escapist love story, it shows us a whole new fantasy world order where the realms of Athens and Faerie intertwine under the trees. And Britten's music wonderfully evokes this fantastical setting. The opening, a sliding sinewy chorus of twisting branches and swaying boughs, brings the forest to life immediately and pushes us deep within.
My favourite part, the extract I have chosen, as it were, Kirsty, is from the beginning of Act III where the lovers awake from the muddled madness of the previous night, calmed and remedied. It is the emotional catharsis of the piece, the resolution of the drama. In the play, this scene features quite a blustery piece of exposition, with Demetrius explaining to the Duke that everything has been fixed. But the opera shows us the emotional journey. One small line from the play is taken and magnified, echoing around the lovers, first as realisation, then as growing wonder and finally, unifying and mutual bliss, as they each declare their chosen partner "mine own and not mine own".
Out of context it might seem a disturbing or sceptical analysis of a relationship, dwelling on ideas of possession and ownership. But really it's a beautiful, arresting thought, hinting at the mysterious and inexplicable alchemy that binds us to another and them to us. The act of falling in love is often a solitary, internal process, beset by doubts - this moment in the opera shows us the transcendent, wonderful instant of reciprocity, when the jewel we have found sings back our own thoughts.
For all that, the piece, and the moment, is not without its problems - both the play and opera ask that we conveniently forget that Demetrius preferred Hermia to Helena before the Fairies chemically overrode his desires and one might be left hoping, for his sake, that the effect is permanent. I've a hankering, now I think about it, to see a production where Demetrius visibly and knowingly resigns himself to the narrative inevitability, not coerced by magic, but submitting to the needs of the many.
But of course, to us as much as to the Faeries, these mortal lives and loves are mere playthings and, at the end, the four lovers are paired correctly to our satisfaction.
All is well and as it should be.
Music
I'm not at all musical. Living, as I do, surrounded my professional musicians, this has become something of a mantra. I consider myself to be a civilian.
But I am musical, of course, in the sense that I have spent my life absorbing it, as we all do. I listen, I hum, I mull, I (God help me) might even do a little dance if nobody's looking.
And of course I am aware, as we all are, that there are songs, pieces of music that prise us open and leave us vulnerable or exuberant or bewitched. When they materialise from the depths of a playlist I become transfixed, transported... but, agh, I am invariably alone when this happens and thoughts, if not shared, either wither or fester. And if I write them down here, it doesn't feel so much like I am talking to myself, which is an important consideration too.
Rather than limit myself to the paltry eight tracks that are allowed by the fabled Desert Island Discs ("Yes Kirsty, my luxury item is the Internet.."), I'm going to start jotting down the important ones as they occur to me. Where possible, I'll include links to Spotify, which you can get for free in the US and UK. Sometimes I'll be trying to safeguard a powerful memory against accidental deletion, sometimes I'll just want to share something special, or rant momentarily.
I won't loftily dangle the promise of esoteric gems and eclectic range before you - there'll be a depressing amount of '90s Britpop I expect - but hopefully what I can do is demonstrate my own connection with each piece, the thing which makes it mine. I don't know where we'll end up, but it'll be more than eight and less than everything.
(You're probably not allowed to take the Internet, but someone (Nick Hornby?) took his iPod. My luxury item would actually be Salisbury Cathedral, which poses other problems I suppose..)
But I am musical, of course, in the sense that I have spent my life absorbing it, as we all do. I listen, I hum, I mull, I (God help me) might even do a little dance if nobody's looking.
And of course I am aware, as we all are, that there are songs, pieces of music that prise us open and leave us vulnerable or exuberant or bewitched. When they materialise from the depths of a playlist I become transfixed, transported... but, agh, I am invariably alone when this happens and thoughts, if not shared, either wither or fester. And if I write them down here, it doesn't feel so much like I am talking to myself, which is an important consideration too.
Rather than limit myself to the paltry eight tracks that are allowed by the fabled Desert Island Discs ("Yes Kirsty, my luxury item is the Internet.."), I'm going to start jotting down the important ones as they occur to me. Where possible, I'll include links to Spotify, which you can get for free in the US and UK. Sometimes I'll be trying to safeguard a powerful memory against accidental deletion, sometimes I'll just want to share something special, or rant momentarily.
I won't loftily dangle the promise of esoteric gems and eclectic range before you - there'll be a depressing amount of '90s Britpop I expect - but hopefully what I can do is demonstrate my own connection with each piece, the thing which makes it mine. I don't know where we'll end up, but it'll be more than eight and less than everything.
(You're probably not allowed to take the Internet, but someone (Nick Hornby?) took his iPod. My luxury item would actually be Salisbury Cathedral, which poses other problems I suppose..)
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
Sometimes I feel like this...
For good or ill, Captain Haddock was always the character with whom I identified most in the Tintin books.
(Hergé's Red Rackham's Treasure is brilliant and well worth a read, even if the ending is a little.. lacklustre. It's available to buy here.)
(Hergé's Red Rackham's Treasure is brilliant and well worth a read, even if the ending is a little.. lacklustre. It's available to buy here.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)