We Should See Other Blogs

It’s amazing how we can get used to things, isn’t it? I think so. I imagine you might think so too, after looking at that sentence for a while. Yet maybe even more amazing is what we get used to.

I don’t have any grand point here. I just had a thought this morning, and I’m sharing it with you, because I’ve found you can even get used to that dull, massive pain of a tooth in trauma. And if you can get used to that, what other just plain backwards stuff can you just come to accept over time?

Sometimes I get the feeling that people are like entire worlds, in a way. We’re these microcosms that walk upright, and talk about sports, and think in the car on the way to work, and fight with our wives, and try to build a bigger bomb, and like coffee whitener instead of cream or vice versa. We’re all these little pieces doing these things all at the same time, running down bit by bit.

I can see the people of these worlds eating apples for millennia. Then one day, the apples start poisoning people. People start dying. And for a while, there’s a public outcry. But after a few generations, people begin to forget that apples didn’t always kill the people who at them. People begin to forget that apples are supposed to be good.

That’s all I have to say. But if you take anything away from these words, let it be this: apples are good. Especially a ripe Fuji.

Yesterday’s drifting snow is today’s
patch of muddy ground.
I say this because like every good drunk
this new year is a good day to be
sober.

Three hours of sobriety and
already the bottle’s in the back
of my mind,

where the shovel is in the back
of your garage.

Don’t take off those tires
just yet.

I know, I know. I’m boring, and so you have two FMT’s in a row. I assure you there are lots of things I’d love to write about, but between my work, my woman, and my (not drinking any) wine, I seem to have lost most of my free time. Not that I’m griping. I’m just saying.

This week’s FMT comes courtesy of 12rec.net, a pretty fantastic Netlabel I found the other day. Fantastic because it’s the home of bands like Milhaven, and records like Milhaven’s Bars Closing Down.

Now, some of you know I’m a sucker for postrock. I’ve said as much before. I’ve this funny idea that — in terms of pop music, at least — postrock is the new instrumental Common Practice Period.

That said, Bars Closing Down is not spectacular postrock. It’s solid, and it’s competent (two things very difficult to find on the Netlabel scene, at least when looking for music that is a) not electronica, and b) any good at all), which is enough for me to recommend you download Bars Closing Down and give it a listen.

Zip set; 192kb MP3
Release Page
Label Page

Okay, so I was sick and I missed Tuesday and it is instead Free Music Wednesday. But let’s not quibble about technicalities.

The real question is this: what does a 10-piece drums and bass outfit sound like in their seminal years? Keiretsu, a UK band consisting of horns, guitars, drums, and other live effects, answers with their debut EP, “Seismosis”.

You can download the .zip here, if you so wish. It’s fun music. Danceable music. But above all, it’s free music.

I’ve never met a style of music like minimalism, or minimal music as some like to call it. Yes, it’s yet another label pulled from the visual art world and pasted over a style of music like a theatre poster on a construction fence, and as labels do, it fails to completely encompass what the so-called “minimalist” composers are all about, but at the end of the day it works. It says “I am not concerned with certain things, like those aspects you assume brings music to life.” Maybe minimalism is the fundamentalism of music, but without the pitchforks and prohibitions.

It’s really quite an acquired taste, though. Like jazz, and rock, and quite a few other styles of music–that is to say that minimalism is hardly alone in being difficult, generally. In that it’s often concerned with rhythm at the expense of melody and harmony, and permutations in repetition at the expense of traditional development, it’s so very different from “regular” music as to seem sometimes alien. And if you’re not in the right frame of mind, a lot of it can drive you bonkers.

Take one of the chief practitioners of the style, Steve Reich. He’s written several pieces of music that can, on occasion, make me crazy. Ever listened to Four Pianos or pretty much any part of The Cave? If you have, you know what I’m talking about.

Minimalism shares something with the arranged noise of Merzbow and company, I think, in that it functions excellently as single-listener music, but horribly as background music. If you devote some time to meeting the art form on its own terms, instead of using it merely as yet another soundtrack to yet another day, you can get a good feel for what the artist is trying to say, and in that grow an appreciation for what the music is and how it works.

You should listen to Steve Reich’s Music for Eighteen Musicians. Really, you should. It has tonnes more harmony that you’ll usually find in a Reich piece, but it also has all the earmarks of his best works: repetition, rhythm, innovative technique, and this feeling that you’ve be transferred into a bizarre world where your pre-existing understanding of music doesn’t apply.

You should also listen to Philip Glass’s Dancepieces and Music in Twelve Parts.

Then go on to just about any choral work by Arvo Pärt.

After that, check out John Luther Adams.

Yeah, you’re going to have to give some time to this, and maybe you’ll wonder why you gave the time after your first listen. I’m not going to say that it’ll be worth it. Maybe it won’t be, for you. I’m not even saying it’s somehow a superior musical form. It’s just… different. Minimalism has certain things popular music won’t have (although of course contemporary classical is heavily influenced by pop music), and popular music has things minimalism doesn’t. That is to say, both have their place. But if you’re itching for something different, give it a shot.

I’ve been feeling a bit strange lately… a little off kilter, if you will. It’s been looming for close to a week now, and here it is, finally. Yesterday I was iffy. Today I am laid low.

This is, I think, the cold to end all colds. Either that, or I’m a huge baby.

This really amazes me. Every time I think I’ve achieved some level of peace with the minor foibles of those I interact with regularly, one of them pulls a rabbit out of the Annoying Hat and I have to restrain Thunder and Lightning with all my might.

Seriously, do these people go to school for this?