yes yes, it's another one of those new year's eve what about the past year things.
what music/sound has impressed you during 2007?
edit: this isn't really about what came out this year, but about what you're listening to more broadly--which can include new releases of course, but need not. there's also a strange twist to all this by considering the number of reissues about, particularly in experrymental/new music....
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this has been a strange year in that most of my listening has been routed through getting an artist's residency and so through the spurious landscapes project, getting ready for it then doing it. so there's not alot of pop on my list this time around.
A. general
1. probably the most overwhelming single recording i remember having heard is by pandit pran nath...the morning raga.
you can get an idea here:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/nath.html
but you have to actually listen.
just trust me on that and do it.
B. stuff that has smeared my brain during 2007 (best i can do):
2. david tudor: rainforest 4: sliding pitches in the rainforest in the field
an extraordinary piece in every way: basically it's a huge sound installation made up of dozens of metal sculptures miced in various ways, the signals run through a homebrew mixer and effects. stunning. not like music from this planet quite.
3. earle brown: centering
some of the coolest contrapunctual bits i have heard in years unfold and disappear within this recording.
4. pandit nam narayan:rag purya-kalyan (live at the salle gaveau, paris, 1978)
o my this is a beautiful thing.
o my o my.
i'm listening to it now--i think the thing tht amazes me most about this performance is the sense that everything is floating.
it comes from the intonations that ram narayan uses on sarangi--and the space left around the phrases.
5. luc ferrari: petit symphonie intuitive pour une paysage de printemps
um.. yeah.
like sun ra once said: there are other worlds they have not told you of and they want to speak with you.
6. toru takemitsu: music from kwaidan
i have been captivated by takemitsu's film music for quite a while now--i have a little mission of seeing every film that he did music for--and while there are many excellent examples (the triolgy that takemitsu did with teshigahara--woman in the dunes, pitfall, face of another is great), kwaidan is in another place, both as a film and as a soundtrack. getting ahold of this recording is difficult, but doable, and absolutely worth the effort.
my god this is good.
humbling.
7. jimmy guiffre: free fall
this entire record causes me to sit in one place and do nothing for the duration except listen. it's a 1963 session i think with paul bley on piano, but most of it is solo clarinet and is just lovely.
poptreats.
it's been a bhangra year.
8.
9.
and because sonic youth toured daydream nation again this past summer: