artist Shinjuku Zulu

These posts are stories behind the songs from all the Shinjuku Zulu and K.I.A., reposted from http://mog.com/Shinjuku_Zulu <br><br>

Copy/Paste all http://www addresses into a new page in your browser to follow them cuz I'm too lazy to clean it up in these reposts...
(to get the actual songs mentioned in this blog, please see iTunes: Various Chimeras: Shinjuku Zulu: ..
Sonorous Susurrus: .. Adieu Shinjuku Zulu: .. )
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<b>Pointillism is the late 1800s compositional technique </b>of using tiny dots ("points") of paint, rather than blending, to create colors in a work of art. From a distance, you see the colors of the paintings as solids-- the colors "blend" in your eye-- but as you get much closer you see the individual component dots. (TV uses this method as well.) It developed from the Impressionist style of using unblended brush strokes of color placed side-by-side. One of the most famous Pointillist paintings is Georges Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Seurat

<b>My own visual art is like Pointillism in the sense that </b>my paintings are composed/constructed from multiple individual units whose aggregate froms a larger image. Works often use 50 to 100 panels (each panel being 12" x 18",) with the idea being that the paintings can be remixed-- that is, like music the original image can be deconstructed and rearranged into something completely new. "Masaimatical", for example, whose original image is of a red African shield composed of math formulae, can have each of its 35 individual panels (initially arranged 5 wide by 7 high), or its columns, rows, or groups of panels, rotated, moved, removed, etc., to change its overall shape. With various remixes, the shield transforms and can reference a kimono, a canoe, an insect, a tree, machinery, abstracted shapes, and so on...

<b>The paintings can remain flat or become three-dimensional on the wall, or become sculptures </b>and installations that you can walk around or into. The work can also use elements (like the addition of poles or wires) to extend the remix possibilities. And finally, all the works can be intermixed. A painting done 10 years ago can be enmeshed with one made ten years from now, allowing for new, unforeseen meaning and connotations. (See examples of the K.I.A. art "HERE":http://web.mac.com/neuphoria )

<b>In a sense, the painting is never finished-- </b> the rearrangements can be done infinitely. (Or of course, not at all.) The idea of the rearrangeable painting is like an invention engine-- it allows me to come up with shapes that I couldn't have imagined initially. For example, one configuration of the work "PolyVictorian":http://web.mac.com/neuphoria/iWeb/K.I.A.%20-%20Art/Large%20Paintings%20%26%20Remixes.html begins to look very much like Mayan overlays illustrated in the books "The Mayan Prophecies":http://www.adriangilbert.co.uk/docus/books/mayan.html by Gilbert and Cotterell, which I read years after I'd finished the painting. (However, I think artists intuitively embedded information in their work... similar to how I think musicians include (unknowingly) entrainment frequencies in their music--see the earlier "Frequency Following Response":http://mog.com/Shinjuku_Zulu/blog_post/58118 post.)

<b>Ultimately however, each remix or intermix is meant to be an entirely new work that can stand completely on its own,</b> and you don't have to know that it is the Nth arrangement, or connected to past and future arrangements, to 'get' the piece. Kinda like how you hear a song, love it... find out it's a remix or a cover... and prefer it to the original.

<b>The art and the music I make crossover a lot... both deal with scratching, sampling and remixing, tribal and technological themes, and also cross-cultural and multi-era mixing.</b> While Masaimatical is a good visual example of my work, here's a musical one: "Da Riddim Griffin":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068574 (described as "<i>japanese cheerleaders + electro + 1920s german cabaret + disco + dancehall + squaredance.</i>") However in both the music and the art, it works best (a la Beck, or Fatboy Slim) when elements are never just stuck together randomly, but seem to grow from one another-- for instance, in the aforementioned painting "Masaimatical", the math/science formulae are also depicted in arcs and curves on graphs, which echo the lines and shapes on the shield. One image denotes two sets of information: to a Masai, a wavy line on the shield denotes the carrier as "someone who lives near the river", whereas that same shape reads to a scientist as "y= A sin(wt-phi)", or a sin wave. In "Da Riddim Griffin", the idea was to create a song like a Gryphon (an animal with a bird's head and wings and a lions body) where the disparate parts grow from one another, so you see the similarities and the differences at the same time-- in the songs case, the calls of the cheerleaders aren't far in feel from the squaredance calls...

<b>In Part II of this post I'll get more into music and pointillism, Plunderphonics, Akufen and Rashomon,</b> but in the meantime, here's an example of visual pointillism expressed sonically as microdancehall. It's from the "Sonorous Sussurrus":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=30919350&s=143441 CD by K.I.A:

"Downquark at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919192

Below are the stories behind the songs from all the Shinjuku Zulu and K.I.A. CDs. HyperLinks (beginning with http://...etc. ) can be copied/pasted into a new window opened in your browser to follow. Note the posts "Collapsing Time & Hummingbird", "Singing Pi & Massive Ballerina", "Badminton & We Do Supersonic" for a good overview. More frequent updates over at http://mog.com/Shinjuku_Zulu

(to get the actual songs mentioned in this blog, please see iTunes: Various Chimeras: Shinjuku Zulu: ..

Sonorous Susurrus: .. Adieu Shinjuku Zulu: .. )

Thanks for you interest...



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FREQUENCY FOLLOWING RESPONSE... & UNEUNOIA
Frequency Following Response (FFR) or brain entrainment is a phenomena where the brain locks on to an external signal and begins to mirror it, or follow it, which produces a change in the brain's chemistry, which translates into altered behavior. ( "Jose Delgado":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Manuel_Rodriguez_Delgado was studying this in the 60s, at Yale, where he found that a modulated radio frequency could alter mood.)

The dark side of this phenomena is where a device like HAARP and its pulsed radio frequency energy could be used, among more nefarious things, to stroke the ionosphere and broadcast frequencies onto a crowd to induce fear, a flight response, lethargy, even anger or other less coherent states. (Want that anti-war mob to disperse from in front of the White House? Dial it up.) Check out this "video":http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7963555722939047362 , at the 0:55 and 1hr 21 minute mark. It's by "Nick Begich":http://earthpulse.com , who wrote Angels Don't Play This HAARP; also refer to his radio show Changing the Way We See the World.)

The positive side of this entrainment effect is that it can be used to induce meditative, higher (more coherent,) or altered states, as in what the Monroe Institute is doing with it's hemi-synch system. Monroe has talked of how it's being used to promote or enable out-of-body experiences, leading to a larger spiritual experience of the universe. (A good thing, all the better for not being done through the use of psychotropic drugs.)

Briefly, and very simply, it works like this: two tones of slightly different frequencies are broadcast and the difference between the two is what the frequency picks up on. So with a tone of 500 HZ and 510 HZ, the brain would pick up on the 10 HZ subsonic (which is in the middle of the alpha range, see below.) Here's "more":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwave_synchronization .

Brain states:
1-4 hz; Delta; deep asleep;
4-7 hz; Theta; semi awake, aware of dreams but know you're awake...4 yr olds 7 yr olds function in this range
7-13 hz; Alpha; in this zone when writing, doing creative work, sports...
13 hz Beta, everyday functioning

Love, empathy, etc. show very coherent, rhythmic EEG patterns, and are in the lower states. As you go higher you get into the more agitated states.

I think musicians have intuitively been doing entrainment for as long as they've been making songs. They unconsciously embed their songs with these frequencies, or maybe harmonics of those frequencies, or at the very least use the techniques which can create that FFR so the listener will be carried along with their feeling or emotion. If, when listening to a song, your mood is suddenly elevated, or you find yourself feeling creative, or maybe even angry and aggressive, when you weren't a moment before, your FFRing.

As the brain is both a receiver and a transmitter, this could also explain the in-synch feeling you can get at a large concert... or even in a riot. (Ever heard of a silent riot?) It's why trance and rave music works. It's how drumming circles work, and Tibetan chanting. This entrainment is also what happens for me with the Steven Reich's Violin Phase song and it's modulating melodies and frequencies, that I refered to in this earlier "post":http://mog.com/Shinjuku_Zulu/blog_post/47841 .

Eunoia is a word that denotes a "normal mental state" (13+ hz,) which I first came across when it was used as the title of a great book of "poetry":http://www.chbooks.com/archives/online_books/eunoia/text.html by Christian Bok. (It's also the shortest English word to use all five vowels. Bok used one vowel only for each of the 5 chapters of the book).

As a music-maker, the last thing I want a song to do is to leave you in a "normal state", so I used the word Uneunoia for the title of a chillout song from the downtempo disc of the "Sonorous Susurrus":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=30919350&s=143441 CD to hint at it's intent.

The song Uneunoia has the effect of bringing me-- whether it's through embedded frequencies or the repeating but evolving pattern --into the 7-12 hz zone. (The song is in the zone of some Boards of Canada tracks, or maybe Air's "Alone in Kyoto".)

But forget all the high-falutin' hemi-synch and entrainment talk; hopefully the experience of Uneunoia would be like that of an audio spliff...

"Uneunoia at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919285


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SOMEONE GREAT...AND TUKTUYUKTUK TO TIMBUKTU

I think figure-skating rules have been applied to the new release by LCD Soundsystem.

That is, the judges (critics) were so pre-disposed to love it that they graded it higher than it actually should have been. Unlike a lot of music writers, overall I think the CD is a disappointment, and it leaves me a bit flat.

But having said that, is does have one fantastic song: "Someone Great". It really is terrific, and here's why: it's not ironic, humorous, or self-deprecrating, like most of the other songs on "The Sound of Silver". And as a result you can really feel the emotion of the singer directly... there's no filter, or veil, of wit, and it has more impact. (But of course I'm a sucker for sad songs; see "Mrs. Major Tom":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=5126742&s=143441&i=5126722 )

The good thing about digital distribution is that you can buy a single song. So you could buy just that one song. The bad thing about DD is that you can buy a single song. It's always so much better to experience a work in a fuller context (a painting in an exhibition, a chapter in a book) because the multiple connections to it's surroundings can lead to a broader understanding.

Since I make music with multiple-vocalists (from rappers to Japanese cheerleaders to opera singers) and with cross-genre elements (from dancehall to squaredance to dance-rock,) at first my own CDs might sound like a collection of individual songs, but they definitely work better in the context of a full release. For example from my "Various Chimeras" CD, when the female character in "Coal Coal Black":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068615 sings "...my love, my liar/ run back to me" she is actually refering to the male character in the song "Dirty Liar":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068518. And both songs use a similar lyric; she sings "Coal, coal black/or a flawless cut diamond/they shine the same/since you're no longer mine ," and in his song he raps "A rock, a diamond/they both got the same shine/since I been gone and you're not mine". Those two songs are separated by 12 tracks, so the song-linkage might not be noticed, but it's there, and it opens up both songs if you do happen to pick up on it...

As well, a few other songs on the Various Chimeras CD are thematically linked: "My Man, Amen":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068609 , "Scarborough Fair (A True Dub of Mine)":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068611 , and "The Way You Move":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068621 are all about lost-love; and another, lighter theme is an internationalist, name-dropping of different locations around the world: Tuktuyuktuk, Timbuktu, Shanghai, Tokyo, Kamchatka. The first of those two show up multiple times (as a sort-of running-joke to myself) in the disco-punk "Da Riddim Griffin":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068574 , the dance-rap "Shanghai Masai":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068501 , the title of the electo-chant "Tuktuyuktuk to Timbuktu":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068614 , and the second two get dropped in a few times throughout as well... So while I think each song from VC works completely on it's own, I think each one works even better when listened to in and around the other songs around it...

So back to the "Sound of Silver" CD: even though "Someone Great" is probably the only track I'll continue to listen to months from now, I'm glad I got the whole release. Because having heard the track in the context of the music that surrounds it does add to the experience and enjoyment of listening to just that one song.

Context is all. Probably even in regards to say, Nelly Furtado's ouevre. (Nelly Furtado's what? No, not that I mean her body of work. Take off that veil of wit!)

Final thought: pre-mp3, I always wanted to release an album/CD where you somehow programmed into the disc that each time you listened to it, there was one song you wouldn't get to hear. So the first time you heard it, you wouldn't hear track 5, and the second time you listened to it, you wouldn't hear track 9, and the next time, no track 1, etc...each time you listened to the CD it would be a brand new experience, with a slightly different context for each track each time. If you wanted to hear the song that had been dropped out, you'd have to play the entire CD again. Now with Shuffle buttons on iPods, etc. you can almost do that, you can randomly reorder the tracks, and it does change your experience of the CD, but it's not quite the same thing... Maybe future mp3 players will add a 'drop out a random song' play option...

"Tuktuyuktuk to Timbuktu on iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=154068465&s=143441

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MUSIC IS MY HOT HOT SEX, MUSIC IS MY RADAR, MUSIC IS MY DNA

I was dreaming, and I heard a very beautiful sound, familiar, like it had always been in the background, but strange, like I'd never heard it before.

As I concentrated on it, more distinct parts became audible. It was, in fact, a song-- and it was coming from my body. Specifically, my DNA. Each strand was vibrating, like a harp or violin or guitar string, and emitting its own melodic sound, and the combination of the melodies created a song...

At that moment in the dream someone passed by, and I heard the song specific to her resonating DNA. Next to her was a man, and he had his own song... and a child near them, who had his own song... in the dream I then had an aural birds-eye-perspective... I heard all the songs from all the people in the plaza, and how together, they formed a much larger and more complex song. It was symphonic, not cacophonic.

Sometime later, in the real world, I read about string-theory, which is where, to quote the Wikipedia entry, "... the fundamental constituents of reality are strings of extremely small size... which vibrate at specific resonant frequencies":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

That is, the stuff that makes up the universe vibrates like a harp string...and if people are made of of different and unique combinations of those resonating strings, then everyone is their own symphony (or LCD Soundsystem).

So the genisis of "Music Is My DNA" by K.I.A. (from the "Sonorous Susurrus" CD) was to make a song that had very distinct parts (or DNA) spliced together to make a cohesive sound. So in it you'll hear some middle-eastern chants, a hum that makes up a background beat, some flutes, a latin tango, an African chan,t some electro-funk, some disco and digi-reggae... even some piano and glockenspiel, all of course mosaiced with electronica.<br>
Of course there are many artists building music from disparate DNA (don't call it frankentronica please,) but the obvious ones are Fatboy Slim, the Chemical Brothers, Manitoba (Caribou), Four Tet, Kid Koala, Cut Chemist, Gorillaz... the list could go on forever. So for fun, here's a different list instead, of some more "Music Is My..." songs, links to clips on iTunes:

"Music Is My DNA by K.I.A.":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919209

"Music Is My Hot Hot Sex by CSS":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=162252578&s=143441&i=162253040

"Music Is My Radar by Blur":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=9692113&s=143441&i=9691054

"Music Is My Boyfriend by The Hidden Cameras":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=27155393&s=143441&i=27155372

And for fun here's an iMix of 13 "Music Is My":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=219974241&s=143441 songs

One final thought: I'm also a "visual artist":http://web.mac.com/neuphoria (more on how that relates to the music in another post) and what recently struck me was how you cannot invent new colors never seen before, but you can invent new sounds never heard before (synthesizers didn't exist two hundred years ago).
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SINGING PI...and MASSIVE BALLERINA

So I made the mistake of mentioning the idea for a song to Sinead O'Connor, and Kate Bush ended up stealing it.

Really.

Well, maybe. A few years ago (when I was writing for the music mag, see other posts below) I was interviewing Sinead O'Connor, and we were talking about how songs originate, and I mentioned that I'd had a dream where a person was singing the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard... the song was perfect, it was mysterious, and it was endless.

It was the number pi.

But in the dream the song didn't feel dry, abstract or mathematical; it was very emotional and meaningful and passionate... and you weren't even really able to hear the numbers, it was more a connection to the energy conveyed through the syllables of the words of the numbers... sort of like how Elizabeth Fraser chooses her words for the beauty of how they sound (including taking words from foreign dictionaries) not for any literal meaning (i.e. "Frou Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires" by the Cocteau Twins.)

So I didn't record the song, but I did write a story in which the main character is a performer and she sings the song Pi. She sings it as a love song to her husband. (She is married to a visual artist who exhibits his work in his stomach. As far as I know there haven't actually been any artists who use their belly as an exhibition hall... but hey now that I've mentioned it... please don't do it. It's a (purposely) bad idea.)

I'm not sure if you can ever claim an idea, or if you even should. I do believe in the collective unconscious, and that certain ideas are maybe 'out there' in the ether and can be thought of or discovered simultaneously in different locations (a la the product nylon, discovered in New York and London at the same time). And anyway music, maybe more than the other arts, (writing, sculpture) is all about building and evolving on ideas, like say the tradition of when you write a 'new' traditional Irish song that at least one third of it should be taken from previous songs as an ode/recognition... or like say sampling, building from sounds or components lifted from songs, or mashups where whole chunks of two or more songs are spliced together.

So back to Kate Bush, song-stealer. Did Sinead talk to Kate at a music festival, or talk to someone about the song idea who knew someone who knew Kate, or did someone read the magazine interview who passed along the idea who... well in a six-degrees-of world, maybe. It is a very very specific and unsual idea for a song. But who cares? Really, the idea sucked- the song would come across as very cold and abstract and well, mathematical, unless you had an extraordinary singer to give the number lyrics a haunting, ethereal, transcendence, a singer like, say, Kate Bush...

So I'm reading CD reviews about Kate Bush's newest (this was in late 2005) because I've always been a fan, and every interview and review mentions this particular song Kate sings called, you guessed it, Pi, where she sings 3.14...

At first I'm a little bugged, but then upon hearing it I'm immediately glad she did it (hey, she walked it, I'd just talked it); her voice makes the dry numbers sing, and she leavened the numerical with the lyrical- the verses are all words -and, here's the best part, the song is a love song... to (or about) her husband.

Her song is much better than I would ever have been able to do anyway- I mean, she's Kate Bush. When the genesis of a song is an idea (rather than an emotion) the whole point is to bring it back to the level of feeling... otherwise the song is just sound... and of course Kate "Wuthering Heights" Bush is an expert at emoting.

A lot of electronic artists like Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin, and countless artists from Berlin have songs that are head-based, but unfortunately they often seem to remain there, never moving down the heart. So wheras BoC's "In A Beautiful Place Out In the Country" is emotionally transcendent, they have a lot of songs like "Music Is Math" which have a certain intellectual appeal but leave me cold. So what if you use Fibonacci sequences, or use medical equipment (Matmos) to make a song if it doesn't make you feel anything? And where I appreciate Aphex Twin, records like "Drukqs" are hard to listen to more than once (if even that). Even Kraftwerk, those Teutonic geniuses, often fail to do engage more than the grey matter- I far prefer "Hall of Mirrors", a very moving song, or even "The Model", to "Numbers" or "Pocket Calculator" or "Autobahn" or or or... all of which I suppose are meant to be empty. (however, I do love the sounds in all of them).

So the genesis for the song "Massive Ballerina (Pirouettes For Millenia)" from the "Various Chimeras" CD by Shinjuku Zulu was primarily to see if an obvious computer-generated voice could sing an emotionally transcendent song. (A few artists have used that Mac robo-voice... I think Radiohead used it in "Fitter Happier " -a song that's basically a list, which reads well but doesn't listen-well).

Massive Ballerina (Pirouettes For Millenia), for those of you who don't bother listening to lyrics, is not about an overweight dance in a tutu. (However, if you do a google on "Massive Ballerina" all sorts of weird sex stuff comes up related to just that. Who knew?) As to what the title imagery is about, here's a hint: the lyrics start off small and close, but end very huge and very far away.

Anyway, because the lyrics only appear briefly in the mostly-instrumental song, below are the lyrics to Massive Ballerina (Pirouettes For Millenia). The track is available worldwide at iTunes here: "Massive Ballerina":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068612

intimately, beneath a digital moon,
fractal flowers, in full bloom,
sway back and forth as one...
infinitely dreaming of the analog sun

massive ballerina
on a dark stage, pirouettes for millenia;
starred arms out, awaiting a hero...
only to embrace endless night, and absolute zero



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LONG SONGS...and COAL COAL BLACK

I understand short attention spans and all that, but I do like the idea of slow being the new fast. Or rather, long being the new short.

There's a company that provides a service to radio stations of cropping down songs to just the 'best' parts, i.e. the hooks, and will chop out, say, that unecessary third chorus, or that outro, or that bridge, so that all songs fit into a two-minute format, on the theory that people really only want the good parts anyway and don't have time for more. (In fact record companies have also sliced up songs into ring-tone portions; you pay more for the chorus than you do for the verse.)

I'm not a big fan of nostalgia (hate it, in fact) but when the odd mood strikes me I'll go on iTunes and listen to thirty-second clips of old favorites. Of course you don't get the full emotional arc of the song or have time to get into the groove... but in my head I already know the song so that's enough for me, so I kinda get the evil reasoning...

I also used to be the music editor for a music mag, and would get, sometimes, 100s of CDs a month. I could only review a handful, and set up a couple of interviews. Now these were all CDs that had the weight (that is, finances) of a large corporation behind them, so you knew that at least the production quality was going to be pretty good, and that enough people had to like the music for it to even get released (in fact it's how I first heard "Dubnobasswithmyheadman" by Underworld, and fell in love with a certain "Cowgirl",) unlike the ocean of Myspace artists. So to give everything a fair chance, I'd fall into the trap of listening to the first 45 seconds or so of the first three songs, fast forwarding through a song, or skipping ahead a few tracks to maybe listen to one more. If something caught my attention, I'd listen to the whole thing, and if it was good and I really liked it, I'd study it and set up an interview or do a review. Now this was a small magazine... I can't imagine the volume of material the New York Times must get. I empathize, with you Jon Pareles. You must have a lot of coasters at your place.

If you read music reviews, one thing critics hate (for the above reasons) is a long recording. The words 'bloated' or 'self-indulgent' will inevitably be used. And to be sure, that is sometimes the case, but not always; however you will very rarely read a review that says something like 'at 24 songs, this cd is just the right length'. I have noticed that there is a correlaton between better reviews and shorter discs. Through a very unscientific study, according to my observations, most good reviews are for CDs under 38 minutes, which means most songs in the 2 to 3 minute zone. For writers on a deadline, I get it. For civilians (music lovers) though I hope this isn't the case.

Dangermouse (of Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley, The Grey Album fame, etc) said something like all he needs for a song is about two minutes. Iggy Pop gave an interview recently (the Stooges have a new disc out, "The Weirdness") where he said that when they were originally putting out albums they only had to have 6 to 8 songs, and songs back then were barely three minutes... and that making an album these days requires at least twice that effort. (So their new single is about 2:30, so 12 songs at that length still put the new full-length at only about half-an-hour. My guess is the CD'll come in around 38 minutes. I also suspect that it'll get 3 star reviews, because it won't be very good but there will be the nostalgia factor giving it that extras-star. I will listen to it on iTunes in 30s clips for this reason.)

This isn't a quantity/quality argument, what I'm saying is I like good long songs. And I'm not talking about remixes, just the original versions. One factor is that the experience of the song is like that of reading a really, really good novel versus the Coles-notes or Reader's Digest version; you get more involved intellectually and emotionally, and want that feeling sustained. (An shorter analogy: sex). Longer songs are harder to make captivating. They have to evolve, not just repeat elements in a familar pattern.

I don't think any musician sets out with the motiviation of specifically wanting to write a long song (well, not me anyway) because they aren't so easy to write, they do take 3 or 4 times the effort...but they just happen, and if in the re-writes and edits they don't get cropped down because all the elements truly remain necessary, they can be just as precise and impactful as a shorter song.

So having said all that, here's just a few of my favorite long songs. (The two at the end being from my "Various Chimeras" CD by Shinjuku Zulu; the heartbreaking vocal on Coal Coal Black is by Shankhini, and the mournful, bluesy vocal on My Man Amen is by Sydney White:

Trentemoller "Take Me Into Your Skin":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=198723009&s=143441&i=198723109

Massive Attack "Angel":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=9688045&s=143441&i=9685924

Underworld "Dark and Long":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=42027216&s=143441&i=42027133

Simon & Garfunkel "Canticle/Scarborough Fair":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=1160580&s=143441&i=1463982

Shinjuku Zulu "My Man Amen":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068609

Shinjuku Zulu "Coal Coal Black":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068615


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BANJOS AND ELECTRONICA ... and DIRTY LIAR

Banjos (or is that Banjoes? Dan Quayle, I feel your pain) and pop music are great, especially in electronica. Yes, you heard me, electronica.

So below are some are some fantastic banjo tracks, (that's not an oxymoron) arranged in order from more tradtional to more radical genres, from singer/songwriter (Sufjan Stevens) to Old Tyme/Bluegrass/Country (O Brother) to dance/electronic (The Grid) to folk/electronic (Four Tet) to country/electronic (K.I.A.) to ambient electronic (Air) and finally, rap/dance/blues/electronic (Shinjuku Zulu).

Sufjan Stevens, "All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=179550383&s=143441&i=179550425

Soggy Bottom Boys, "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=2356345&s=143441&i=2356335

Air, "Alpha Beta Gaga":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=5790752&s=143441&i=5790736

K.I.A., "Box the Gnat":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=5126742&s=143441&i=5126724

Four Tet, "She Moves She":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=50065416&s=143441&i=50065388

The Grid, "Swamp Thing":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=240123&s=143441&i=240061

Shinjuku Zulu, "Dirty Liar":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068518

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ACAPPELLAS...and SWEETNESS LIKES THE REVERB

I was in Istanbul, it was twilight, and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard...

Even though I make 'electronic' music, or at least make music with electronic devices, and love love love cool production (shoutouts to Timbaland and William Orbit and The Neptunes and Flood and Mad Professor and...) there is, of course, no better thing than to hear an unaccompanied human voice in a song. (Unless it's mine, that is; I have a terrible voice, which is why I've worked with a multitude of vocalists, from rappers and toasters to opera, blues, soul, choral, pop and folk singers.) And I always include an acapella or two on my releases...

So back to Istanbul... sitting on a rooftop, overlooking the Bosporus, moments away from the Blue Mosque, sun setting, and the first call to prayer starts, and then a few moments later, another one from a mosque slightly further away, in a different voice, and then another one, still further away, another voice...and then more, and the echoes overlap and the shadows are lengthening and the sky and the sea and the East and the West and such a feeling of timelessness... and it's kinda like the first time I heard Violin Phase by Steven Reich. (A solo violin playing a repeating motif, with tape recorders playing the same motif, but slighty later, so the music overlaps and phases and new melodies spring into existence.) It's extaordinarily simple and complex, and very beautiful. It's like the aural equivalent of looking into a pond, dropping a rock, and then another one, in a slightly different place, and another, and watching the shapes formed by the overlapping wavelets. The fact that the call to prayer was not in English also allowed it to bypass my logical thought and go straight to my emotional core (maybe one of the reasons I also use chants in many songs.)

A fantastic example of the above is the call to prayer featured on the "Powaqqatsi" soundtrack by Phillip Glass-- it's called "From Egypt" (but listen the "Mr. Suso 1" and "Mr. Suso 2" which are sequenced just before and after it for the full effect).

So that was probably the genesis of the song "Sweetness Likes The Reverb" from the first Shinjuku Zulu CD, "Shinjuku Zulu". It's a haunting vocal (once again by Larissa Gomes) and layers of reverb, each 'verb with different settings, so spatially you'll feel like you are simultaneously in different rooms (a church, a living room, a cavern). The lyrics use the analogy of a reverb, ... oh, well, forget explaining, here's the lyrics:

sweetness
oh love
the reverb

Love
my sweetness likes the verb
the action word, the reaction word
the reverb
coming back at her

love
my sweetnees likes the noun
ecstacy found
the profound happiness
gently rocking her
so gently rocking her

love
my sweetness likes motion
the deep feeling
the revealing emotion
overwhelming her
oh overwhelming her

sweetness

So here are some of my favorite acapellas (or nearly... certainly a bare minimum of instrumentation, like a drone...) or anyway, songs that focus mostly on the voice:

Sheila Chandra, anything from her "A Bone Drone Crone" release, but you must hear "A Sailor's Life":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=73442709&s=143441&i=73442345 from the Zen Kiss CD. Extra-ordinary.

Imogen Heap, "Hide and Seek":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=83486513&s=143441&i=83486130 (But everybody knows this one)

Bjork, "Mouth's Cradle":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=21393649&s=143441&i=21393734 Didn't really like her all-vocal CD "Medulla", but this track from it was great.

Don Mclean, "Babylon":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=489600&s=143441&i=489562 from the "American Pie" release.

There's more of course, which I'll add as I think of them.


And here's some Shinjuku Zulu / K.I.A. acapellas... some melodic, others rhythmic:

"Sweetness Likes the Reverb at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=7899232&s=143441&i=7898129 From the Shinjuku Zulu CD

"Goa-di":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919336 by K.I.A., from the "Sonorous Susurrus" CD. Ambient.
"Shinjuku Zulu":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=7899232&s=143441&i=7897615 from Shinjuku Zulu. Beatbox drum'n'bass.
"Bedouin Engine":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=5126742&s=143441&i=5126738 from the "Adieu Shinjuku Zulu" CD by K.I.A. Rhythmic chants.
"My Man Amen":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068609 the intro, anyway, from the "Various Chimeras" CD by Shinjuku Zulu.



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SOUND ART...and LARGE SLOW RIVER

Addendum to the below Micro-poems post: my one and only own foray into spoken-word-over-music realm is the song "Large Slow River" from the "Sonorous Susurrus" CD by K.I.A., where I use (an officially approved) sample of the sound artwork "A Large Slow River" by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. More on it in a moment.

Spoken word is so tricky-- it often comes off as pretentious/artsy/faux-poetic, boring, or worse, in some cases, funny. Good funny is bad; it's like a joke, and once you get it, why hear it again? (Never understood why people buy comedy albums, however brilliant, for this reason.) Bad funny is bad, because... well, that's self-explanatory.

There are so many examples of bad spoke-word-over-music, from the William Shatner stuff (bad funny) to the tracks on the "Dead City Radio" CD by William Burroughs to "Fire Coming Out Of the Monkey's Head" by Gorillaz, and I think even Leonard Cohen ventures into it a few times... and certainly the vast amount of music that samples film dialogue at length (Star Trek, Apocalypse Now, Scarface...yawn.)

Of course, there are some exemplary examples of spoken word too: Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" (not rap, not yet, it's only 1970, but you can see where it's going) and... um, are there any others? Oh yeah, "Little Fluffy Clouds" by the Orb from "The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld" CD.

So anyway... "Large Slow River". Janet Cardiff is a Canadian sound-installation artist. She has done a series of walking audio tours where you place on headphones and listen to the sound installation (which is her talking about what you're seeing, what she saw, memories, surrounding sounds, her footsteps, etc.) as you follow the path she originally took. It's binaurally recorded, so the sounds have a 3D effect and sound very 'real' (unlike stereo, which is only left-right.) So the reality of what you are hearing is the same, but different, from what you are actually experiencing... it's like an overlay from another time or dimension. In the case of "A Large Slow River", a piece that starts in a gallery and moves you outside through a garden, for example, there's a moment when you hear a jet overhead... a very common sound in any urban enviroment, but in the context of the art-piece it forces you to wonder if it really is overhead or just in the recording... and this particular piece also deals with time, as it has splices of an 'earlier' recording in it; so you're not only moving along in 3-D as you walk, you're moving through the same space in a few different time realities... to me though, what elevates this piece is that the writing is so good that it actually is emotionally moving. (See previous post on "John Lilly" by Laurie Anderson)

I was working on this long (dare I say 'epic') track that evolves significantly from beginning to end, and that was sort of in the IDM (intelligent dance music) genre but not quite, and the song needed something to lift it... I came across Large Slow River, started to use pieces of it and it was perfect lyrically: "I wander through the house" fit in with the house beats; "Time travels around me like a large slow river", "turn to the left" and "turn to the right" were great to use with some interesting panning effects; her footsteps I used as a syncopatic drum pattern (something I'd already done with the song 'Freedom', also on 'Sonorous Sururrus'); hell, I was even able to use the lyric "the bridge" for my musical bridge and 'stop' to drop out the beats...anyway, the result is the song does take you on a journey musically and lyrically (yes that old cliche but hopefully a little cooler,) ending on the line "...there are so many moments that we forget about, it's like we're underwater most of our lives, and we only come up for air every once in awhile".

"Large Slow River at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919222



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MICRO POEMS, JOHN LILLY...and DUBMARINE

I've always been a fan of e.e. cummings, because his poetry is so song-like; you can hear the music in this quote from his poem "somewhere i have never traveled":

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Generally, I'm not a big fan of spoken-word, or poetry with music... except for Laurie Anderson's work, because she's so good at it. Of course as in the song "O Superman, but for me especially in the song "John Lilly", where in a micro-poem, she manages to compress more meaning and emotion than there is in many a novel. Here's the lyrics, but go listen to the song:

John Lilly, the guy who says he can talk to dolphins,
said he was in an aquarium and he was talking to a big whale
who was swimming around and around in his tank.

And the whale kept asking him questions telepahtically.
and one of the questions the whale kept asking was:
do all oceans have walls?

Songs that really are poems with music function in a different way than songs that are, well, songs... if they are good, there's an element of revelation, and re-evaluation. Like with that Laurie Anderson song, you're listening to the lyrics, wondering what is going on, and then the very last line opens up the whole story and gives the previous lines so much more meaning. The hook is the lyrical meaning and the emotion, not the vocal or beat... and to hear it again you have to replay the whole song, because it doesn't repeat because it doesn't have a verse/chorus structure.

So the idea behind "Dubmarine" (from the chill-out side of the "Sonorous Susurrus" CD by K.I.A.) is to have what seems to be an ambient instrumental suddenly open up lyrically, with the vocals occuring only in the middle of the song, and then drifting away. The lyrics are these two haikus (that is with a 5/7/5 syllable structure, and a concrete image in the third line that brings together the meaning of the previous two lines), sung by the reggae singer Prince I:

carry us along
take us down till we drown in
an ocean of song

nothing disturbs us
adrift with grace, breathing bass
under dub's surface

Why the haiku structure? For one it enforces brevity (it's the antithesis of a blog) and the compression I was talking about... and two, I think it's kinda interesting having a singer from Jamaica performing lyrics written in a traditional Japanese poetry style. Just kinda continuing exploring the Shinjuku Zulu cultural/temporal themes...

"Dubmarine at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919261


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THE WHEELS OF STEEL and DA RIDDIM GRIFFIN

Collage songs and chimerical music; I've always loved 'em (which is why I also make 'em.) Like poetry, it is a powerful way of combining a multitude of things; emotions, eras, information, cultures, even architectural spaces (because different songs were recorded in different 'rooms') in a very, very condensed way.

I remember hearing "The Wheels of Steel" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five for the first time and being electrified... Chic/Queen/Blondie and and and...all in one song.

So here's a list of fave 'meta-music' songs to check out, with a list of some Shinjuku Zulu and K.I.A. songs at the end...

"Duck Rock" by Malcolm McLaren, a major influence. Hip hop, Juju, double dutch, merengue -- the song "Buffalo Gals" of course, but also the track "Punk It Up": African singers, Soweto-style funk, lyrics about the Sex Pistols... and later "Madame Butterfly combining opera, electronica, scratching, and spoken word elements...

"Paid In Full" (the Coldcut Remixes) by Erik B. and Rakim was another influence... the "Im Nin Alu" sample by Ofra Haza, so beautiful and suprising when if first appears...

"Pump Up the Volume" by M/A/R/R/S, tons of references, great dance track.

"Deep Forest" with its pygmy chant and "Enigma" with its gregorian chants, combined with electronica-- yes, a little cheesey, but still...

"Praise You" by Fatboy Slim. Soulful, weird.He has a 3rd degree blackbelt in sampling.

"Little Hop of Horror" by Akufen, who introduced (or at least popularised) micro-sampling, where a sample is under a second long, at most.

"Smells Like Teen Booty". Mash-ups often combine the worst of two things: clever-cleverness and nostalgia. You like it only because it combines your favorite songs, or you get the 'joke'. Having said that, this one was pretty good.

"The Grey Album", by Dangermouse, and other projects he's involved in: Gorillaz, Gnarlz Barkley especially. Very good at integrating elements so that they don't sound like references or samples but something entirely new.

The list above of reference/influences could go on much longer, of course but I've got to get back to recording... so here's the Shinjuku Zulu and K.I.A. tracks that I'd describe as chimerical in style (chimerical where one element grows from another, as opposed to collage, where elements are stuck together):

"Da Riddim Griffin at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=154068465&s=143441&i=154068574 by Shinjuku Zulu - it's been described as japanese cheerleaders vs. german cabaret vs. electro vs. dancehall vs. square-dancing.

"Rashomon at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=30919350&s=143441&i=30919233 by K.I.A., where 30+ previous tracks by Shinjuku Zulu/K.I.A. are micro-sampled.

"Allelujah at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=5126742&s=143441&i=5126720 by K.I.A. 17th century dancehall reggae.

"Brando at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=7899232&s=143441&i=7897906 by Shinjuku Zulu. Neil Young & Africa.


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I (LARGE HEART) MUSIC...and MRS. MAJOR TOM

I love music-- I make it, I buy it (yes, buy!), I read about it, I analyze how it's made, I wonder who likes what and why... I like to hear how songs came about, the history of music, and what the next development is; I read the credits on CD covers, I know the names of critics; I'm curious about new technology related to it (hello iPhone!), and blah blah blog.

So I'm happy blogs came along, because I can now put down some thoughts. (Though not always coherent nor carefully-edited, due to time constraints). So I'll be putting out some anecdotes, thoughts, lyrics, stories behind songs (mine and other people's), etc. for anyone else who happens to (large heart) music.

So... first anecdote:

When I bought the album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by David Bowie back in the day I thought it sucked the first five or six times I played it. But I'd spent my money so I was going to keep playing it. And then about the seventh or eighth time it was on, I began to like it, and then of course I eventually loved it. I remember listing to Ashes to Ashes over and over again, with that haunting line "My Momma said to get things done, You better not mess with Major Tom..."

But I did mess with Major Tom. More on that in a sec.

I'd always loved sad songs and especially laments (you know, those songs where the sailor is lost at sea and the lover is standing on the shore waiting for them to come home)-- and songs like Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil (with Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins fame on vocals) and Into Dust by Mazzy Star and Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens and Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush and The Twilight Hour by The The, and Black Swan by Thom Yorke and History Song by The Good the Bad and the Queen, and That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore by the Smiths, and Nightporter by Japan and... seems to me sad songs are timeless and you can listen to them longer (years) and not get tired of them (like, say Galang by M.I.A., which I love but stopped listening to a few months after getting it).

I also have always found the idea of response-songs (especially in dancehall and some early hip hop, where the topic is the same, but the lyric is from a different perspectice, and sometimes the same beat/music is used) and revisionist stories (like say the re-telling of the Wizard of Oz tale in the book Wicked) fascinating...

So on my second release, Adieu Shinjuku Zulu, (recorded under the name K.I.A.) all these came together in the song Mrs. Major Tom. It continues the story that started in Space Oddity, then in Ashes to Ashes, then in Major Tom (by Peter Schilling)... but now told from the perspective of the wife left at home. (It's sung very beautifully by Larissa Gomes.) Check it out online, at iTunes, etc. (and it's own revision/redo/remix, Nevermine, on the Sonorous Susurrus CD by K.I.A.)

"Mrs.Major Tom at iTunes":http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=5126742&s=143441