2013 year-end music list

Once again, this by no means is a “best of 2013” list, but instead a list of things I stumbled upon and stuck with me. I found myself impressed with a lot of mainstream pop music this year, but only listed a few here. There’s so much I missed that I hope to investigate in 2014, such as the vast array of wildly differing 2013 Richard Youngs releases (I mean, seriously, what is up with that guy ?), all the awesome things that Devonté Hynes did, much of the Improv and/or composed music (etc) I missed out on, and a lot of early electronic/Musique Concrète reissues.

Most of my year was spent settling in Portland, after kind of throwing myself into a new city with absolutely no connections, after zigzagging Texas, the Southwest and California for three months. Since being here, becoming more connected with gardening, farm animals, working with kids, exploring the amazing state of Oregon and becoming involved with the Creative Music Guild has all been very engaging.

All of the album titles are linked to either a Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Youtube or Discogs page which contains some or all of the music contained within said album/single.

In no particular order, other than roughly sectioned by genre:

Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet & 7-tette – Navigation (Firehouse 12 Recordings)

John Cage (performed by Jovita Zähl and Thomas Meixner) – The Piano Works 9 – First Recordings (Mode)

John Cage (performed by Gary Verkade) – The Works For Organ (Mode)

John Cage (performed by Sabine Liebner) – Solo for Piano (Wergo)

Antoine Beuger ‎– Cantor Quartets (Another Timbre)

Iannis Xenakis – GRM Works 1957-1962 (Recollection GRM ‎/ Editions Mego)

Graham Lambkin / Jason Lescalleet – Photographs (Erstwhile)

Kevin Drumm – Tannenbaum (Hospital Productions)

Eliane Radigue – Adnos I-III (Important Records)

Total Life – Bender / Drifter (Debacle Records)

Grammies – Award Winning (self-released)

Marina Rosenfeld – P.A. / Hard Love (Room40)

Julia Holter – Loud City Song (Domino Records)

Angel Olsen – Half Way Home (Bathetic Records)

Autechre – Exai (Warp Records)

Tuluum Shimmering ‎- Raag Wichikapache / Lake Of Mapang (Space Slave Editions)

｡-_-｡)a – Soundcloud

D/P/I ‎- Espresso Digital (CHANCEIMAG.es)

Mark Fell – n-Dimensional Analysis (Liberation Technologies)

Death Grips – Government Plates (Third Worlds)

The Kniφe – Shaking The Habitual (Brille Records / Mute)

Arca – Fader Mix

Sensate Focus – Sensate Focus 2 (Sensate Focus / Editions Mego)

Rainer Veil – Struck (Modern Love)

Sophie – Bipp / Elle (Numbers.)

Shlohmo – Laid Out (Friends of Friends)

Annie – The A&R EP (Pleasure Masters)

Annie – Tube Stops And Lonely Hearts (Totally)

AlunaGeorge – Body Music (Vagrant / Island)

Chvrches – The Bones Of What You Believe (Virgin)

Miley Cyrus – Wrecking Ball (RCA)

Sky Ferreira – You’re Not The One (Capitol)

Abigail Wyles – Mantra (MTA Records)

Laura Welsh – Cold Front (CFCF Remix) (Polydor / Outsiders)

Drake – Hold On, We’re Going Home (Cash Money Records)

Kanye West – Yeezus (Def Jam Recordings)

Creative Music Guild Compilation 2013

Creative Music Guild presents a cassette compilation for 2013 :
Side A :
Elfin Elephant
Rich Halley
Marisa Anderson/Lori Goldston/John C. Savage

Side B :
Grammies
John Gross Trio
Amenta Abioto
Catherine Lee

For sale here, digitally :
http://creativemusicguild.bandcamp.com
and here, physically :
info@creativemusicguild.org

Artwork and design by me.

Lubber at Albany International Airport

Saw this incredible sculpture, entitled Lubber, by Dean Snyder, at the Albany International Airport yesterday. They exhibit some of the best artwork I’ve seen in any airport.

Unfinished, published by the Creative Music Guild

An eBook entitled Unfinished has been released through the Creative Music Guild, based in Portland, OR.

Featuring interviews with Marisa Anderson, Linda Austin, Tracy Broyles, John Butcher, Loren Chasse, Ben Goldberg, John Gross, John Gruntfest, Buke and Gase, Catherine Lee, Tatsuya Nakatani and Nate Wooley.

It can be bought for 5$ here:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/386617

Cover designed by me.

Columbia Gorge, frozen

Drawing and new wood piece

A drawing, made while not looking at the paper, of a new sanded and filed down wooden piece. I found it, covered in dirt and thick bark, on the ground while walking on Sauvies Island. I then added some elements to the drawing.

A poem: Bombs in the Basement, by Gary Lindorff

Recent poem by my father, featured on the political activist site Counterpunch.org:

Bombs in the Basement
by Gary Lindorff

Today my toast looks like Christ,

like planet earth,

like Venus

like me in a dinosaur-proof suit,

bristling with spikes

that I invented when I was afraid to fall asleep.

But I don’t have time for visions. Christ,

I don’t have time for anything!

Bombs in the basement. That’s for the NSA.

A toast to the NSA!

(Lift up your cups, your mugs, comrades!)

The NSA keeps us mad.

Mad as a Hatter.

Without madness I just start

thinking about whether I flossed last night.

I can’t tell you what I’m really thinking.

But it’s whispering.

(I tell spirit in the stone-people’s lodge, I

sweat out truths that are so far beyond

anything I can put to words.

Sometimes sweat speaks louder than words.)

I wish I trusted my instincts!

Damn this

buzzing in my head. Can’t

think clearly. Want a revolution.

You too?

(My toast wants a revolution!)

I’m a Vietnam peace-veteran. And

so much more. They took my childhood,

my youth, my old age.

(Next life I’m going to

get ‘em back.) They took my father’s soul for

Christ’s sake. . .He was a Marine. . .

But he got it back before he died.

I was there. He got it back!

Bombs, bombs, I mean Buddha

in the basement.

Good morning NSA.

It’s a metaphor, you idiots. You literalists.

It’s code for, you guys should get out more.

This whole piece of toast is looking like Snowden now

who looks like Christ, by the way,

who looks like you and me and Buddha

flossing under the Bodhi tree,

who looks like Snowden.

Dear Snowden,

It snowed yesterday.

And I still have gardens to put to bed. . .

New drawings

Forthcoming

Update:  Now they’re available here.

 

Collages

After making this handbill for the Creative Music Guild, I was inspired to make some collages using similar techniques, but much more involved. I’ve never really done work like this before, except for a bit in college, and creating these was extremely satisfying. All the elements were collaged from my photographs, often abstract photos taken with either an old cell phone or an iPhone 4.

Handbill for Untoward benefit

This is a handbill I created for the Untoward Festival, a benefit for the Creative Music Guild. The following bands are playing: Grammies, Paper / Upper / Cuts, Dragging an Ox through Water and Marisa Anderson. DJ vs. Nature from Beacon Sound will also be spinning throughout the night.

Worth it

Dream

I was in an unknown room. It was dimly lit, with some natural light coming through the windows, and maybe one artificial light source somewhere, but I could not identify from where. There was a projection of a three-dimensional bird, like a cartoon bird, a rendering of a bird, flying around. It had a light source that provided its movement. It was just a rendering. It swooped and curled in the air, like a bird in a Disney cartoon. It seemed very happy. Then I was trying to explain to my mother how it worked. I was sitting with her in the dark room, explaining how light worked. I was using a large print of an abstract painting as an example. I think it was by Kandinsky, and had enormous colorful circles drawn around and into each other. I told her that in order for us to see the print, light had to land on it, and either the pigment on the print would reflect the light or absorb the light. The pigment that reflected parts of the light spectrum would be seen, for instance, as red or blue or yellow, and other parts of the light spectrum would not be seen, because they would be absorbed. She didn’t really understand. She didn’t understand that if there was no light, there would be no color on the print to be seen. And that if it was a black print, it would be absorbing all of the light spectrum. Black absorbs everything. Anyway, I was telling her this because apparently they figured out how to project the light of the bird, and somehow the light stopped mid-air, without being reflected or absorbed by a physical object. It just stayed in the air, and I didn’t understand how that happened.

The coast

This is from a couple months ago. Most of these were taken along the Oregon coast, somewhere south of Lincoln City. A few of the final ones are in the valley, along Route 99 going back to Portland.

Poem

A hummingbird silently flickers
near a flower
like a flapping cloth-cloaked candle
drying out its flame

EV Fest photographs

Some pictures from the EV Fest, located at the galleries Multiplex, Sohitek and Timeshare. A fantastic array of experimental and improv electronic, hip hop and varieties of dance music. At Multiplex, there were many video synthesizers at work, as is evident in these photos.  Some of the others are of the enormous parking garage which connected the galleries, spanning a city block.

(Camera: Cell phone)

(Camera: Cell phone)