Saturday, March 06, 2010

Much Media to Meditate On

It has just occurred to me that I have not posted any recommendations for online media since January. The past month was a blur of work and it has only been in the last few days I have been able to settle into a routine of the constant but not frantic.
Online the amount of free and really interesting media content continues to astound. This list includes more streamed videos and music than you can consume in a month. As well the Google archive for SPIN magazine. Music from around the world including albums by CAN, The Necks, and The Pixies. as well there are some books. Let the fun begin:

Google Books SPIN magazine archive
Archive of SPIN magazine from 1985 to 2009.

RAGA BLOG: Namagiripettai Krishnan - Nadhaswaram

Namagiripettai Krishnan - Nadhaswaram
(nadhaswaram)

01 Gnanavinayagane-Raga Nattai
02 Jesinathella-Raga Thodi
03 Vasudevayani-Raga Kalyani
04 Evarani-Raga Dhevamrithavarshini
05 Paramapavana-Raga Ranjani
06 Maye-Raga Tharangini
07 Thillana-Raga Chenjurutti
08 Amuthamuri-Raga Sindu Bhairavi

Greatful Dead Live 1966: Can you pass the Acid Test?
As 1966 began, San Francisco was rapidly becoming the epicenter of a cultural and musical shift that would impact the world. Dance hall promoters like Bill Graham and Chet Helms were in the early stages of opening venues where local bands could perform for the throngs of young people looking to dance socialize and listen to live music. Local writer Ken Kesey and his friends (known as The Merry Pranksters) were doing the same on a smaller scale, but adding high quality LSD to the mix, which was then still legal and readily available. As Kesey’s parties, or “Acid Tests” as they were called, began attracting more and more adventurous people, it was inevitable that The Merry Pranksters parties would merge with local dance hall venues, which is exactly what happened on January 8, 1966.

Ponytone: A Cross Cultural Mix Tape
Like a ghost ship hovering somewhere off the coast, broadcasting crackly pirate-radio blasts into the ether, Ponytone is as mysterious as it is unrivaled. And by that I mean it is an aural treasure. Welcome to the second installment of an irregular series in which I highlight some of my favorite voices online (and beyond). Reportedly based in the Con Dao Islands off the southern coast of Vietnam, Ponytone’s founder/editor, Lucie, digs through crates of vinyl in the darkest corners of the globe with an emphasis on jazz, disco, rock, soul, psychedelia and off-kilter pop from around the world. Much of the music featured has never before been available online. Without question, one of my favorite music blogs going today.


UbuWeb Sound - Survival Research Laboratories: The Illusion of Shameless Abundance (Mp3)
Survival Research Laboratories was conceived of and founded by Mark Pauline in November 1978. Since its inception SRL has operated as an organization of creative technicians dedicated to re-directing the techniques, tools, and tenets of industry, science, and the military away from their typical manifestations in practicality, product or warfare. Since 1979, SRL has staged over 45 mechanized presentations in the United States and Europe. Each performance consists of a unique set of ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire. Humans are present only as audience or operators.
Check out two films by SRL:

Virtues of Negative Fascination (1985-86)
A Plan for Social Improvement (1988)


geometria innamorata: dWh - the fourth letter
A simple haiku, almost ambient. Well maybe it is... And this time you can download it on Soundcloud... If you need to add the extension, it's a ".flac".

Jesse Stiles
Jesse Stiles does great music.
This album was recorded out of a backpack while travelling in London, India, and Australia from August 2000 to August 2001. Documenting a weird and wonderful year, "Watson Songs" combines field recordings, lush electronics, crackling beats, and transient collaborations with fellow travelers. "Watson Songs" is the first full-length record from Stiles' electronica alias "The Jesse Stiles 3000."
Here is another one: The Target Museum

Julian Schnabel - Le scaphandre et le papillon AKA The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French: Le scaphandre et le papillon) is a 2007 French/American biopic/drama film based on the memoir of the same name by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The film depicts Bauby's life after suffering a massive stroke at the age of 42, which left him with a condition known as locked-in syndrome. The condition paralyzed him, with the exception of his left eyelid, so that he could only communicate by blinking. The film was directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, and stars Mathieu Amalric as Bauby. It won awards at the Cannes Film Festival, the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Awards, as well as four Academy Award nominations.


Terry Riley - The Harp of New Albion
Terrence Mitchell Riley, better known as Terry Riley (born June 24, 1935), is an American composer associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music.
His music is usually based on improvising through a series of modal figures of different lengths, such as in In C and the Keyboard Studies. In C (1964) is probably Riley's best-known work and one that brought the minimalist music movement to prominence. Its first performance was given by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, and Morton Subotnick, among others, and it has influenced their work and that of many others, including John Adams, Roberto Carnevale, and Philip Glass. Its form was an innovation: the piece consists of 53 separate modules of roughly one measure apiece, each containing a different musical pattern but each, as the title implies, in C. One performer beats a steady pulse of Cs on the piano to keep tempo. The others, in any number and on any instrument, perform these musical modules following a few loose guidelines, with the different musical modules interlocking in various ways as time goes on. The Keyboard Studies are similarly structured – a single-performer version of the same concept.


The Master Musicians of Jajouka - Apocalypse Across The Sky (and some oriental stuffs)
The album Apocalypse Across The Sky and The Master Musicians of Jajouka - Recorded live in France. As well as the Master Musicians of Jajouka - Black eyes, ancient Turkish music in Europe, The Kudsi Erguner Ensemble - Peshrev and Semai of Tanburi Djemil Bey.

Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Way of Tarot
Alejandro Jodorowsky—well known to readers of this site as the director of El Topo, Santa Sangre, The Holy Mountain and several other film reels of symbolic dementia, is also one of the world’s most recognized experts on the Tarot, which he has studied as a tool of self-exploration and transformation for almost 60 years. Destiny Books just released the English translation of his 500-page magnum opus The Way of Tarot, which summarizes his work with the cards. Interestingly, Jodorowsky works with the old European deck—the Marseilles Tarot—which far predates the more commonly used Rider-Waite or Thoth packs. Looks like absolutely essential reading for fans of the man and the tarot alike.

SFMOMA | OPEN SPACE » Blog Archive » Art Work
In support of Temporary Services’ recent newspaper project Art Work: a national conversation about art, labor and economics, I’ve created the beginnings of an “audio book” version, starting with one of my favorite texts in the publication. I then asked artist Sam Gould to record one of his choosing. You can download them both here. I’ll extend the invitation to anyone who might like to audio record a text from the newspaper, to be added to this post. You can download the newspaper in full here.

The Necks live at WFMU (MP3) - WFMU's Beware of the Blog
In honor of the return of this Australian trio to New York, here's the full MP3 of their transcendent performance from my radio show back almost exactly one year ago (why do they keep leaving the warmth of the southern hemisphere?). For the uninitiated, the Necks hail fron Sydney, and since 1987 have utilized the piano/bass/drums format in a singular, unorthodox fashion that has left them uncategorizable, yet critically-acclaimed and in high demand from jazz, ambient, and avant-rock festivals. The trio of Chris Abrahams (piano) Tony Buck (drums, percussion) and Lloyd Swanton (stand-up bass) have performed their sprawling, dense, and tranced-out pieces in art spaces, clubs, the Sydney Opera House

Nomades Du Niger: Musique des Touareg, Musique des Bororo (Ocora )
These great recordings were made in Niger in 1963 & '64 by Tolia Nikiprowetzki, who also wrote the notes in the accompanying booklet. Here's an extract:
The Tuareg are nomads of Berber origin, who live in the central Sahara and the steppes - or Sahel - to the south of the desert. They live in tents and raise livestock. They are estimated to be about 500,000 in number. There are some 300,000 in the Republic of Niger, scattered among the northern and middle-western regions.


Accelerando - Charlie's Diary
This free ebook edition is made available by kind consent of my publishers, Ace and Orbit, under a Creative Commons license with certain restrictions attached. In particular, you may not create derivative works or use the work for commercial gain.

dstilwell's Bookmarks on Delicious
Thousands of links to streamed and downloadable media

Thomas Bey William Bailey @ dorkbot Chicago 2010.01.28 on Vimeo
Thomas Bey William Bailey is a multi-disciplinary artist and cultural researcher, whose work has manifested itself as books, articles, music releases, sound installations, experimental radio shows, and completely undocumented or personal creative actions / interventions. He has lived and worked in Japan, Central Europe,and the U.S., struggling to overcome the psychic fatigue which is unique to our 21st century congestion culture. His work critiques and frames this culture by avoiding the obvious, easily perceptible middle ground and instead focusing on 'micro' and 'macro' aspects of lived experience in an information-saturated epoch.

New free e-book every month from the University of Chicago Press!
Every month U of Chicago Press publishes a free ebook. Get it here.


CAN: Live at Paris Olympia [May 12, 1973]

Holger Czukay
Michael Karoli
Jaki Liebezeit
Irmin Schmidt
Damo Suzuki

1. Queueing Down
2. One More Night
3. Spoon
4. Stars and Lines
5. Vitamin C

Pixies
free live EP to celebrate 20 years of Doolittle

Enjoy the approaching Equinox, no God shall deny you this.

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