Saturday, December 19, 2009

Cabin Weather Recomendations



Holed up for winter. Snow storm today. The air becomes three dimensional with snow. Particles of white float down in space. Cold it is. Minus 20 yesterday. Today only about minus 10. I write and eat and sleep. Dreaming of the sun. The internet is a crystal highway out of here. I present some recommended media gleaned from the traffic ways of the cyber-nets during the last week. Enjoy.


The Roots of Tantra (PDF Book)
Collective works of this kind are notoriously difficult to summarize and assess. Here, the authors, scholars across various fields, attempt to deal with different aspects of the origins of Tantra as a movement in the ancient Indian subcontinent. Perhaps most interesting are M.C. Joshi's essay, "Historical and Iconographic Aspects of Sakta Tantrism," Thomas McEvilley's "The Spinal Serpent," and editor Harper's "Warring Saktis." Like the contributors, this reviewer flinches from the task of defining Tantrism. Suffice it to say that this volume is a savory and well-illustrated collection on certain aspects of religion in the Indian subcontinent. Highly recommended.


Orson Welles Vintage Radio | Open Culture
Back in the late 1930s, Orson Welles launched The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio program dedicated to bringing dramatic, theatrical productions to the American airwaves. The show had a fairly short run. It lasted from 1938 to 1941. But it made its mark. During these few years, The Mercury Theatre aired The War of the Worlds, an episode narrated by Welles that led many Americans to believe their country was under Martian attack. The legendary production was based on H.G. Wells’ early sci-fi novel, and you can listen to it here.


Merlin in Rags
Incredible Mp3 blog of ancient and archaic music

EKAR020/Various Artists pt.2

Deep House,Downtempo compilation. etoka records,various artists,compilation,release,ekar020,paskal,deyamre,andy hart,fassbinder,jaksa pavicevic,verano,jose quilez,sumsuch,si muir,hannes smith. V.A pt2 is a 20th release of Etoka Records & the last one of 2009. Compilation includes 10 tracks. We hope you enjoy this one!!!

DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
So over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that’s fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes. To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he’s done, software on Reetz’s computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn’t automated–you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it’s fast and inexpensive.

Salvador Dali & Igor Wakhevitch - Etre Dieu (1974)
Igor Wakhévitch is a French composer who gained a small cult following in the late 1990s after praise circulated by Nurse with Wound and Michael Gira of Swans. Wakhévitch was a part of the 1960s atmosphere of musical integration and crossing borders. He was friends with Robert Wyatt and Mike Ratledge of The Soft Machine and studied with Pierre Schaeffer and Terry Riley.

Bomber Blog: Pierre Henry - Mass for the Present time (1968)
The celebrated French composer Pierre Henry was among the pivotal forces behind the development of musique concrète, becoming the first formally educated musician to devote his energies to the electronic medium. Born in Paris on December 9, 1927, he began training at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten, studying piano under Nadia Boulanger and percussion under Felix Passerone while also attending the classes of Olivier Messiaen. Still, Henry had little regard for traditional musical instruments, preferring instead to privately experiment with non-musical sound sources; over time, he grew fascinated with the notion of incorporating noise into the compositional process, and perhaps unsurprisingly first attracted notice in performing circles for his prowess as a percussionist.

In 1949, Henry joined the staff of the RTF electronic studio, founded by Pierre Schaeffer five years earlier; he soon immersed himself completely in electronic music, heading the Groupe de Research de Musique Concrète throughout the greater part of the 1950s. Henry soon began compiling a "sound herbal," a catalog of any sound potentially useful from a musical standpoint -- everything from animal cries to editing techniques to speed variations, all of which he deemed superior to conventional instrumentation. It inspired 1950's Symphonie pour un homme seul, a 12-movement work co-written by Henry and Schaeffer employing the sounds of the human body; solo pieces including 1951's Le microphone bien tempere (the first attempt at notated musique concrète), Musique sans titre and Concerto des ambiguites (which combined live piano with its own recorded distorted sounds) all broke new ground as well.


Films of Artavazd Peleshian
Artavazd Ashoti Peleshyan (born November 22, 1938, Leninakan) is an Armenian director of film-essays, a documentarian in the history of film art and a film theorist. However his work unlike Maya Deren's is not avant-garde nor tries to explore the absurd, is not really art for the art's sake like Stan Brakhage's but should be rather acknowledged as a poetic view on life embedded on film. In the words of the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, his is "one of the few authentic geniuses in the world of cinema". Renowned Master of the Armenian SSR arts title (1979).

Third Ear Band: New Forecasts From The Third Ear Almanac (1989)

Recorded live at Teatro Impavadi, Sarzana, Italy on the 11th January
1989 - taken from official bootleg cassette on the ADN label

1. Egyptian Book Of The Dead
2. Third Ear Raga
3. Live Ghosts
4. Witches' Dance

performed by;
GLEN SWEENEY - hand drums
MICK CARTER - guitar
LYN DOBSON - flute and alto saxophone
URSULA SMITH - violin
All compositions by Glen Sweeney, Mick Carter and Lyn Dobson

Free Albums Galore :: Mu. - Arecibo Psycodelic Classics 17: Abortos Musicales :: November :: 2009
You know DIY has gone over the edge when the artist braggs that his music was recorded “with one mic made out of cell phone parts and a ball of aluminum foil”. The album titled Arecibo Psycodelic Classics 17: Abortos Musicales by Mu. is a cornucopia of percussive sounds that seem to be dually influenced by John Cage and an army of toddlers let loose in a music store. While there is a temptation to think of Mu as someone who simply wants to find as many sounds as he can get out of the household appliances, he is actually quite imaginative and has some structure hiding behind the noise. Those familiar with avant jazz percussion of the 70s will get this album faster than most but I think the rest will still enjoy this interesting noisefest. The album is available from the Headphonica netlabel in 320kbps MP3.

Acid Mothers Temple Live at Empty Bottle on 2002-10-20

Disc 1
1. Soleil de Cristal et Lune D' Argent
2. In C-->In E

Disc 2
1. Loved & Confused
2. Blue Velvet Blues
3. Pink Lady Lemonade
4. La Novia

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