Early music

Eric is a new friend; he’s made me feel very welcome at SHARE, introduced me to a great program to start doing live visuals with and helped me learn it. On top of his visual skills (surprise, surprise) he’s a skilled musician as well. In a remarkable coincidence, Eric — like another friend who introduced me to ars electronica — plays the lute. On his site Asteria Musica you can download three beautiful tracks of Eric singing and playing early music with his partner, Sylvia Rhyne. If you listen to only one medieval song this year, make it Quant La Douce Jouvencelle.

Fognode

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon some excellent ambient music from a very talented multi-instrumentalist producing under the name Fognode. Fognode is Brian Siskind and his music is ambient in the sense that it creates a space, an atmosphere — a place where you can go. Listen to “Mandala” off of Beat Hollow, which has a beautiful sound that Brian described to me as “kinda gamelan on a kalimba (thumb piano).”

Kid Icarus not included

When we lived in Belgium we had to use a step-down transformer to convert the European 220v to American 110v for our Nintendo Entertainment System. It weighed at least 10 pounds, had very sharp edges and could give you a serious burn after, say, 10 hours of Rygar. I have many wonderful memories of playing Nintendo games with my brother. I also have many grey, stale memories of frustrating, compulsive hours of Shadowgate, A Boy & His Blob, and Friday the 13th, which had a permanent bug that made all the items intangible and the game thus unbeatable. But even when a game sucked hardcore, the music was generally addictive (read: endurable even after many hours) and to hear it now brings back all those fond/stultifying memories. I give you the Nintendo Breakz, a collection of short remixes of classic Nintendo game themes, which includes such classics as Punch Out, River City Ransom, The Legenda of Zelda (1 and 2), Excite Bike, Metroid and Megaman. Best listened to with sore thumbs, lower back pain and a full bladder. [danke, BB.]

Is it washable?

Some of the Autechre tracks I’ve been listening to lately are achingly beautiful. The garbled line, ‘is it washable’, from “Under Boac” off of LP5, keeps running through my mind and out my lips. You can listen to the whole thing at Warp Records’ BLEEP online store. I would also suggest “Fold 4, Wrap 5″, which too is gorgeous. (BLEEP isn’t easy to link to, but you can go to this page if you just want to hear those tracks and don’t mind not having the other frames showing.)

Eno

Listen to more Eno. We demand it!

Late addition: Steve Reich

Steve Reich was one of the pioneers of experimental, conceptual music. An excerpt from his fierce tape-looped piece “It’s Gonna Rain” can be heard in a mammoth, two hour Brian Eno interview available from the Internet Archive. In the multimedia section of his website, you can download a twelve minute sample of his Music for 18 Musicians, a beautiful, hypnotic piece.