{music} – Page 336 – { feuilleton }

High Priorities

In which your humble narrator enters a contest…

Speak Up, in collaboration with New York magazine, is proud to announce the first-ever open contest to design the visually acclaimed, graphically exhilarating, by-invitation-only “High Priority” feature illustration in the magazine’s year-end, December 18, 2006 double issue.

High Priority highlights five activities, suggested by New York writers, that are not to be missed. Every week designers and illustrators from around the world are invited to create an interpretive typographic illustration to open “The Week” – the listings section of New York Magazine. New York readers place great weight on these five recommendations, and this page is a regular destination for many.

For examples of past editions of High Priority please visit:
New York‘s High Priority archive
Design Observer’s Variations on a Theme: New York‘s High Priorities

I knew about this listings feature from having read the Design Observer piece (I’ve never seen a copy of New York), and liked the idea for what amounts to the design equivalent of a “standard” in jazz, with different designers having to present a riff on the same brief in each issue. The restrictive nature of the problem is part of its appeal; only two colours are allowed (red and black), the box must be the shape it always is, and the design has to incorporate five categories—Movies, Theater (sic), Art, Nightlife and Restaurants—with the date, the words “High Priority” visible somewhere, and the accompanying critics’ recommendation for each category. Aside from that, anything goes.

My attempt can be seen above. I was going to do a couple of different designs then pick the best one but in the end I ran out of time. The initial idea was to do something along the lines of the cover for Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin (below) but—as is often the case with first ideas—making it work wasn’t so easy.

Led Zeppelin’s building is a great photograph of a New York brownstone (the original vinyl sleeve had slots cut in the windows through which the lettering and various pictures on the inner sleeves could be seen); mine had to be pieced together from separate pictures of New York in the 1930s. It doesn’t quite work because there’s not much justification for having the category lettering arranged like rows of birthday cards on the window sills. But maybe I’m being too hasty in pulling it apart when the winner won’t be announced until December 4th. Until then you can browse the 186 other entries. I have to say that the quality of these is really exceptional, if I were one of the judges I’d have a hard time choosing only one. Most of the time I wouldn’t give a second glance to an online contest but this one was fun and the high standard of the other entries has made it worthwhile.

All you need is…

In which the lovable moptops get the official mashup treatment courtesy of George Martin’s son, Giles. Very creditable it sounds to these ears although it strains a bit much in places to shoehorn tiny bits of the very familiar songs into other very familiar songs. The added sound effects are pretty superfluous, some of them are probably only there for the multi-channel DVD mix.

The Beatles are where my music listening began, thanks to a mother who was a fan for a while (until they started taking drugs and weirding out), and I can never quite forget this when I listen to them. As with all mashups, it’s the juxtaposition that fascinates, the moment when you think, “wow, song A fits really well with song B!”. So Strawberry Fields Forever ends with Piggies and the end of Hello Goodbye running together, while Within You, Without You really benefits from the addition of the drums from Tomorrow Never Knows. And the sound is fantastic, serving to highlight once more EMI’s disgraceful refusal to properly remaster these albums. I like the cover, a successful combination of the youthful exuberance of the Hard Day’s Night band with the later psychedelic period.

I keep wondering if this is the future of these cultural monuments. Just as Shakespeare’s plays are given new life by fresh interpretation, further reappraisal would help revitalise some of those stale back catalogues. The problem, of course, is that the whole question of copyright has been getting worse in recent years. Much as I’d like to see EMI’s vaults thrown open to sound collagists like John Oswald or Holger Czukay, it isn’t going to happen, is it?

1 “Because”
2 “Get Back”
3 “Glass Onion”
4 “Eleanor Rigby” / “Julia” (transition)
5 “I Am the Walrus”
6 “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
7 “Drive My Car” / “The Word” / “What You’re Doing”
8 “Gnik Nus”
9 “Something” / “Blue Jay Way” (transition)
10 “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” / “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” / “Helter Skelter”
11 “Help!”
12 “Blackbird” / “Yesterday”
13 “Strawberry Fields Forever”
14 “Within You Without You” / “Tomorrow Never Knows”
15 “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
16 “Octopus’s Garden”
17 “Lady Madonna”
18 “Here Comes the Sun” / “The Inner Light” (transition)
19 “Come Together” / “Dear Prudence” / “Cry Baby Cry” (transition)
20 “Revolution”
21 “Back in the USSR”
22 “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
23 “A Day in the Life”
24 “Hey Jude”
25 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)”
26 “All You Need Is Love”

Arthur #25

Arthur #25, coming soon.

A playlist for Halloween

Der Tod als Erwürger (1851) by Alfred Rethel.

It’s a fact (sad or otherwise) that a substantial percentage of my music collection would make good Halloween listening but in that percentage a number of works are prominent as spooky favourites. So here’s another list to add to those already clogging the world’s servers, in no particular order:

Theme from Halloween (1978) by John Carpenter & Alan Howarth.
What a surprise… All John Carpenter‘s early films have electronic scores and great themes, Halloween being the most memorable, and one that’s gradually infected the wider musical culture as various hip hop borrowings and Heat Miser by Massive Attack demonstrate.

Monster Mash (1962) by Bobby “Boris” Pickett.
The ultimate Halloween novelty record. A host of imitators followed the success of this single while poor Bobby struggled to be more than a one-hit wonder. It wasn’t to be, this was his finest hour. Available on These Ghoulish Things: Horror Hits for Halloween with some radio spots by Bobby and a selection of other horror-themed rock’n’roll songs.

The Divine Punishment (1986) & Saint of the Pit (1988) by Diamanda Galás.
Parts 1 & 2 of Galás’s Masque of the Red Death, a “plague mass” trilogy based on the AIDS epidemic. These remain my favourite records by Ms Galás; on the first she reads/sings passages from the Old Testament accompanied by sinister keyboards, making the Bible sound as steeped in evil and metaphysical dread as the Necronomicon. On Saint of the Pit she turns her attention to French poets of the 19th century (Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval & Tristan Corbière) while unleashing the full power of her operatic vocalizations. Einstürzende Neubauten’s FM Einheit adds some thundering drums. “Correct playback possible at maximum volume only.” Amen to that.

The Visitation (1969) by White Noise.
An electronic collage piece about a ghostly lover returning to his grieving girlfriend. White Noise were David Vorhaus working alongside BBC Radiophonic Workshop pioneers Delia Derbyshire and Brian Hodgson to create an early work of British electronica and dark psychedelia. The Visitation makes full use of Derbyshire and Hodgson’s inventive tape effects and probably accounts for them being asked to score The Legend of Hell House a few years later. Immediately following this is the drums and screams piece, Electric Storm In Hell; play this loud and watch the blood drain from the faces of your Halloween guests.

Zeit (1972) by Tangerine Dream.
Subtitled “A largo in four movements”, Zeit is Tangerine Dream’s most subtle and restrained album, four long tracks of droning atmospherics.

The Masque of the Red Death (1997) read by Gabriel Byrne.
From Closed On Account Of Rabies, a Poe-themed anthology arranged by Hal Willner. The readings are of variable quality; Christopher Walken’s The Raven is effective (although I prefer Willem Defoe’s amended version on Lou Reed’s The Raven) while Dr John reads Berenice like one of Poe’s somnambulists. Gabriel Byrne shows how these things should be done.

De Natura Sonoris no. 2 (1971) by Krzysztof Penderecki.
More familiar to people as “music from The Shining“, this piece, along with much of the Polish composer‘s early work, really does sound like music in search of a horror film. His cheerily-titled Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima is one piece that won’t be used to sell cars any time soon. Kubrick also used Penderecki’s equally chilling The Dream of Jacob for The Shining score, together with pieces by Ligeti and Bartók.

Treetop Drive (1994) by Deathprod.
Helge Sten is a Norwegian electronic experimentalist whose solo work is released under the Deathprod name. “Electronic” these days often means using laptops and the latest keyboard and sampling equipment. Deathprod music is created on old equipment which renders its provenance opaque leaving the listener to concentrate on the sounds rather than be troubled by how they might have been created. The noises on the deceptively-titled Treetop Drive are a disturbing series of slow loops with squalling chords, anguished shrieks and some massive foghorn rumble that seems to emanate from the depths of Davy Jones’ Locker. Play it in the dark and feel the world ending.

Ouroborindra (2005) by Eric Zann.
Another collection of sinister electronica from the Ghost Box label (see this earlier post), referencing HP Lovecraft and Arthur Machen’s masterpiece, The White People. Spectral presences haunting the margins of the radio spectrum.

Theme from The Addams Family (1964) by Vic Mizzy.
Never the Munsters, always the Addams Family! If you don’t know the difference, you must be dead.

Happy Halloween!

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The music of the Wicker Man

NBC censors Dixie Chicks ad

More happy news from the Great Banana Republic Across the Water: the Dixie Chicks, who faced earlier censure and death threats for daring to criticise ~~Generalissimo~~ President Bush and the war in Iraq, have had their ad for movie Shut Up and Sing stopped by NBC who say they “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.” Cowards. Think Progress has the offending item so you can judge for yourself.