the art of memory

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

darkness moves (tracing the skins of clouds)

(seth nehil & jgrzinich - stria)

(plinth - music for smalls lighthouse)

(belong - colorloss record)

(elegi - varde)

listening-music, some old, some new

- asher - miniatures - sourdine - 2009
- sibylle baier - colour green - orange twin records - 2006 (1970-73)
- aidan baker - the sea swells a bit... - a silent place - 2006
- belong - october language - carpark records - 2006
- belong - colorloss record - st. ives records - 2008
- andrew chalk - east of the sun - hic sunt leones - 1997
- andrew chalk & daisuke suzuki - the shadows go their own way - siren records - 2009
- loren chasse & steve roden - the gift - performance at new langton arts - 2009
- coelacanth - mud wall - helen scarsdale agency - 2004
- jonathan coleclough - cake - siren records / robot records - 1998
- jonathan coleclough & andrew chalk - sumac - icr - 1999
- jonathan coleclough - windlass - korm plastics - 1999
- jonathan coleclough - cake (alternate version) - siren records / robot records - 2002
- david dunn / patrick farmer & sarah hughes - western harvester ants/is - compost and height - 2009
- elegi - sistereis - miasmah recordings - 2007
- elegi - varde - miasmah recordings - 2009
- lawrence english - a colour for autumn - 12k - 2009
- jgrzinich - phase inversion - mystery sea - 2009
- jon hassell - last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street - ecm - 2009
- tim hecker - an imaginary country - kranky - 2009
- jacaszek - treny - miasmah recordings - 2008
- hitoshi kojo - and/oar/out (kumoma/shigemi/mogari) - compost and height - 2007/2009
- bruce langhorne - the hired hand - blast first petite - 2004
- jasper leyland - sediments - moar - 2009
- matt marble - various recordings
- stephan mathieu - the key to the kingdom - dekorder - 2009
- mountains - sewn - apestaartje - 2006
- mountains - chorals - thrill jockey - 2009
- seth nehil - tracing the skins of clouds - kaon - 1998
- seth nehil & jgrzinich - stria - erewhon - 2002
- seth nehil - amnemonic site - alluvial recordings - 2007
- seth nehil & matt marble - ecllipses - and/oar - 2008
- adam pacione - still life #2-4 - bee eater recordings - 2009
- arvo pärt - in principio - ecm - 2009
- plinth - plays victorian machine music - rusted rail - 2006
- plinth - dulcimer music - apollolaan - 2009
- plinth - music for smalls lighthouse - durtro jnana - 2009
- eliane radigue & charles curtis - naldjorlak - shiiin - 2008
- steve roden - ecstasy showered its petals with the full peal of the bells - ferns recordings - 2009
- mathieu ruhlmann - fourteen worms for victor hugo - gears of sand - 2009
- ryuichi sakamoto - out of noise - commmons - 2009
- taku sugimoto - opposite - hat hut records - 1998
- svarte greiner - kappe - type records - 2009
- david sylvian - gone to earth - virgin - 1986
- andrey tarkovsky/vyacheslav ovchinnikov - ivanovo detstvo soundtrack - toei music - 1995
- giancarlo toniutti - ura itam taala' momojmuj löwajamuj cooconaja - ferns recordings - 2007
- giancarlo toniutti - qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik (and now he almost did make himself into hemlock needles, it is said) - alluvial recordings- 2008
- mark peter wright (hands of sand) - clay dreams - nothing out there - 2007
- mark peter wright - a quiet reverie: an audio exploration of site, solitude, and perception - mark peter wright - 2009
- neil young - 1960/70s albums
- various - bruits et ambiances d'afrique nr. 1 + 2 - ocora

Thursday, March 19, 2009

such were the images which paraded before my eyes

the realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, - not the material of my every-day existence - but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

edgar allan poe - berenice - a tale - 1835

here began for me what i shall call the overflow of dream into real life. from this point on, everything at times took on a double aspect - without, however, my reasoning powers thereby ever lacking in logic and without my memory loosing the least detail of what was happening to me.

gérard de nerval - aurélia - 1855

balzac much admired this sublime leap of imagination which soared across intervening reality and arrived directly at the object of fantasy, regardless of all difficulties of time or place..... it was simply the intensity with which he (nerval) projected the dream, the power he had to create something beyond the limits of time or actuality; it was, so to speak, an almost tangible vision, and it was eventually to find its conclusion in his pathological hallucinations.

théophile gautier - the poet (on gérard de nerval) - 1867

(gérard de nerval - image, title)

Monday, March 16, 2009

the sublunar light with its softened colours

at times octavian even imagined he could see indistinct human forms flitting among the shadows, but they dissolved the moment they passed into the moonlit parts of the street. low whispering and indefinite murmurs drifted upon the silence. the solitary visitor at first attributed them to some nervous flicker of the eye, some tingling in his ears. or perhaps they were merely a trick of the light, the breath of the sea breeze, or the slither of a lizard or grass-snake through the nettles. for in the natural world, everything is alive, even inanimate matter; and everything has a sound, even silence.

théophile gautier - the tourist from my fantomes - nyrb - 2008
roman polanski - tess - 1979
cinematography by ghislain cloquet and geoffrey unsworth

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

a moment later everything disappears

le grand meaulnes - 1913

Monday, March 2, 2009

nothingness

untitled (plum and dark brown) - 1964

your paintings are like my films. they are about nothing... with precision

michelangelo antonioni to mark rothko, during a visit to rothko's studio in 1962, according to motherwell and peter selz
see temps mort: rothko and antonioni by jeffrey weiss
found in mark rothko published by skira - 2008
for the complete story

Sunday, February 1, 2009

till her breath warmed his face

tarrl lightowler

new review of colin andrew sheffield's signatures by jim haynes in the wire magazine, right next to giancarlo toniutti's stunning new cd qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik (and now he almost did make himself into hemlock needles, it is said) sound-field for rattle-harp

....there's plenty of preamble when it comes to this album from colin sheffield. this artist works reductively with appropriated material, and this is a label that is dedicated to works evoking avian life and their environment. signatures presents an opaque set of recordings through that conceptual lens in these four monochromatic tracks of suspended drone and din. the flattened layers of the first three tracks have the gravity of thick grey concrete, occasionally arcing into curved surfaces and bulging masses. while it's hard to categorise any of these sounds as birdlike, they are impressively physical renderings of a minimalist ethos. the album's finale "breath of day" is considerably lighter, with a sustained tone burst that resembles the church organs from touch's spire series. sheffield directs us toward heaven: and in casting our eyes upward, there's the chance we might spot a rare bird soaring in the sunlight.

other fine reviews:

hardformat
textura
bagatellen
just outside
vital weekly
tokafi

darkness moves:

- svarte greiner - penpals forever - digitalis limited - 2008
- svarte greiner - kappe - type - 2008
- svarte greiner - man bird dress - smtg limited - 2008
- elegi - sistereis - miasmah recordings - 2007
- elegi - verde - miasmah - 2009
- jacaszek - treny - miasmah - 2008
- mark peter wright - a quiet reverie - resonance fm - 2009
- andrew chalk (as ferial confine) - first, second, and third - siren records - 1986/2008
- john luther adams - in the white silence - new world records - 2003
- loren chasse - exfolia motors - unique ancient tavern - 2000
- loren chasse - fantasy apparition - s'agita recordings - 2002
- loren chasse (of) - quartz pond - jewelled antler - 2004
- loren chasse, phil mouldycliff, colin potter, keith rowe - debris field ambient wash - icr - 2006
- tim hecker - an imaginary country - kranky - 2009
- the hafler trio - how to slice a loaf of bread - phonometrography - 2003
- celer - tropical - mystery sea - 2008
- celer - cursory asperses - slow flow - 2008
- the jewelled antler library - porter records - 2008
- steve roden - ice - 2009
- steve roden - a slow moving boat - new plastic music - 2008
- machinefabriek - dauw - dekorder - 2008
- stephen vitiello - stephen vitiello with eighth blackbird - magic if 2008
- apm - sprint mill - icr - 2008
- alexander knaifel - blazhenstva - ecm - 2008

title from thomas hardy's tess of the d'urbervilles

Friday, January 23, 2009

trains in cinema, part 5

- american mutoscope and biograph co - the blizzard - 1899

- jon amiel - the singing detective - 1986

- paul thomas anderson - there will be blood - 2007

- michelangelo antonioni - l'avventura - 1960

- busby berkeley - gold diggers of 1935 "lullaby of broadway" - 1935

- curtis bernhardt - possessed - 1947

- g.w. "billy" bitzer - interior new york subway 14th street to 42nd street - 1905

- robert breer - fuji - 1974

- marcel carné - port of shadows - 1938

- grigori chukhrai - ballad of a soldier - 1959

- joel coen and ethan coen - miller's crossing - 1990

- alex cox - repo man - 1984

- jules dassin - the naked city - 1948

- jules dassin - thieves' highway - 1949

- delmer daves - dark passage - 1947

- víctor erice - el sol del membrillo - 1992

- robert j. flaherty - the twenty-four-dollar island - c. 1926

- robert florey - skyscraper symphony - 1929

- scenes from ford education weekly - 1916-1924

- howard hawks - red river - 1948

- monte hellman - two-lane blacktop - 1971

- shohei imamura - the eel - 1997

- otar iosseliani - falling leaves - 1966

- ken jacobs - new york street trolleys 1900 - 1999
- ken jacobs - let there be whistleblowers - 2005

- nunnally johnson - the man in the gray flannel suit - 1956