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12-04-2018, 02:32 PM | #661 (permalink) | |||
Music Addict
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: The Organized Mind
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Joyicity: A Beautiful Treasure for My Home!
Note: While this entry is not music-related, the news was just too exciting not to share, so I am including it in my journal out of pure joy.
Words cannot express my excitement at what has come to pass. As all my friends know, I adore James Joyce and particularly Finnegans Wake and have been collecting Joyce rarities for some time. Last summer my journey brought me to the Second Reader Bookshop, owned and operated by a local Joycean scholar and a fellow of the Poetry Collection at The University at Buffalo, home to some of the rarest and most exquisite Joyce manuscripts. In his shop, I beheld a framed print of a Joyce-themed play by the local Irish Classical Theatre called Nightmaze. I loved it and asked if I could have it at any price but the owner smiled and said it was a treasure with which he’d never part. But I didn’t let that stop me. I looked up the Audience Services Manager at the Theatre and inquired about the artwork, and she provided me with the contact info of the original graphic designer who conceived all of the Theatre’s promotional materials over the years. I reached out to him and was surprised to receive an immediate response. The artist, Michael Gelen of Inkwell Studios shared that he actually favored another portrait of Joyce he’d designed for the award-winning one-man play celebrating the life of Joyce titled, Joyicity. Excitingly, it was the first show ever produced by the Irish Classical Theatre Company in 1990 at the former Pfeiffer Theatre on Main Street so there is some real history here! “Joyicity,” the word, is taken from Joyce’s final novel, Finnegans Wake, and is laden with puns and multiple meanings –Joyce: joyousness; city: Joyceness, Joyce’s city etc.--and comes from his version of “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” expressing the extraordinary joyfulness of the little singing insect, just as the creation of art is joyful for Joyce, and Joyicity is a celebration of that joy, and its creator Joyce, and his city, Dublin. Gelen generously offered to reprint the artwork without the advertising text so as to just depict Joyce in portrait, at any size I wished, complete with matting, at an incredibly reasonable price. He even signed the print for me! I was overjoyed at the opportunity to display such a wonderful piece of Joyce and Buffalo history in my own home! Here it is - framed handsomely in my living room beside the fireplace. JOYICITY! <3
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12-24-2018, 05:26 PM | #663 (permalink) | |||
Music Addict
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: The Organized Mind
Posts: 2,044
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Celebrating the Season
It's been a magical Christmas so far. I've attended a Solstice soiree, met a new intellectual peer to share musical passions, as well as the great pleasure of meeting a long-distance friend for some holiday company and esoteric antiquarian gift-giving. We took a trek up to see the Falls in their wintry glory, I visited several delightful Christmas parties, and tomorrow, I've been generously invited to attend a cozy Christmas brunch at a small gathering of beautiful and inspiring friends.
To mark the holiday, I'm quietly ringing in the new year indulging in two of the most hauntingly beautiful drone recordings ever committed to vinyl. Time stands still when you play these records, and sometimes that's all you need. "I simply feel that they are making the most important music of the 21st century." - Ivo Watts-Russell - 4AD label founder Here at last are ...and Their Refinement of the Decline and The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid. 6LP holy grails of tranquil solitary stillness. Happy holidays, my friends. <3
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12-25-2018, 09:30 PM | #664 (permalink) |
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 4,007
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Congratulations on your ostentatious aural bath in the Austinites
Stars of the Lid warm, soothing waters. You might be interested in my new acquisition. Hope you had a good holiday (you said you did!) |
12-26-2018, 11:31 AM | #665 (permalink) | ||||
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Happy holidays!
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01-09-2019, 09:50 AM | #666 (permalink) | |||
Music Addict
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: The Organized Mind
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It's The Simple Things
It's the simple things in life which bring us the greatest pleasure. I was generously gifted this vintage Yamaha CR-840 receiver back in high school by a dear friend. It was manufactured between 1979-81 (my birth year) and has faithfully provided me with beautiful sound all these years.
Of course, periodic maintenance is required for a 40-year old amp and four of the switches/selectors/dials had built up quite a bit of static. So this morning, I picked up a bottle of Deoxit, opened the amp and gave it a good cleaning, (admittedly my first time performing the task), and now she's singing beautifully once again. A $7 solution for a life-long source of joy. #buyvintage
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01-10-2019, 06:49 AM | #668 (permalink) | ||||
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Definitely an influential figure in my life.
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01-15-2019, 11:47 AM | #669 (permalink) | |||||||||
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A Look at Ethan Hayden's 33 ⅓ Book on Sigur Ros’ ( )
Ethan Hayden is a linguistics expert, composer and performer who received his Ph.D. in music at the University at Buffalo, US. I had the pleasure of attending one of his performances of his work, "…ce dangereux supplément…" in April of 2015. The work is a set of phonetic studies for voice, video, and electronics in which Hayden makes a wide range of vocal sounds, none of which are coherent expressions of any known language. After the event I blogged most enthusiastically: Quote:
So what does one write about an album with no discernible theme or statement? And how would one begin to describe the nonsense sounds of the Hopelandic language? Over the course of 150 pages, Hayden expertly addresses these questions and presents both a critical analysis of Hopelandic and a philosophical perspective on the recording itself. The book adds a fascinating critical dimension to the album and aims to help listeners approach the recording with a greater sense of understanding. At the outset of the book, Hayden endeavors to outline the fundamental principles of language and nonsense. From 1: Nonsense: Language and Meaning (pp13-16) Quote:
From 1: Nonsense: Vaka Quote:
Later segments of the chapter explore the musical xenoglossia, echolalic phonosymbolism, and phono-erotic lyrics of the French progressive rock band, Magma, Burroughs’ critique of language through glossolalia, and how Hopelandic contrasts to each of these. In closing the chapter, Hayden describes Hopelandic as, either “a quasi-echolalic xenogloss with phono-erotic tendencies or a glossolalic vocalise producing nonsense from the innermost roots of language,” and calls it “welcoming, even celebratory.” “In the end, all that we are left with is the excess of non-semanticity, the concrete material of Hopelandic itself: voice and melody.” 2: Voice outlines the critical significance of voice over other sounds of the natural world. Quote:
After addressing the question of whether or not music can bring sense to nonsense, Hayden returns to the album and examines “Samskeyti” - the record's one voiceless song. He describes the Sonic texture and progression as a cyclical, circular logic and how it evokes a sense of stasis: “beautiful, elegant, and ultimately uneventful.” And when visiting “Njósnavélin,” Hayden quotes Simon Reynolds’ commentary on the modus operandi of post-rock: Quote:
3: Space opens with a quote from Pauline Oliveros who said, “Any space is as much a part of the instrument as the instrument itself.” Hayden notes that Sigur Ros initially intended for the album to be recorded in a decommissioned NATO tracking base on a mountain in Iceland, but that they found it too ice-ravaged to be usable. Instead, they opted to record at a space in the town of Mosfellsbær containing an emptied swimming pool. He explains, “The pool's high ceilings allow for a very resonant space” contributing to the expansive sound of the record. Hayden points out that the musical properties of each song enhance this effect, such as the bowing of Jónsi's guitar, the music’s slow tempos, and the long durations of each piece. 4: Hope The final chapter frames the hopefulness of ( ). Hayden presents the failures, caveats, and imperfections of the world's languages, their inconsistencies, sources of miscommunication, and the quest of man to reclaim our original (or to construct a new and more perfect) language. He notes that Sigur Ros lacks the apocalyptic sensibility of their post-rock contemporaries and instead “lean more on the jubilant, celebratory, and the inspiring” and that while ( ) may be the darkest of Sigur Ros’ output, that the music remains fundamentally hopeful. Hayden takes great care not to over-interpret (and thus compromise) this work. “Perhaps the best approach,” he suggests, “is not to interpret it at all. To do so tries to bring the album into the very real it resists as a work of art; to do so would be to force it to name the Name. Perhaps gaps are most useful to us when they are empty, as there is so little in the world that is empty.” Hayden closes with a brief but poetic and philosophical afterward, titled, “).” He highlights the importance of emptiness, and of play for play's sake. His final words are the most potent of the entire text: Quote:
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Last edited by innerspaceboy; 01-15-2019 at 02:04 PM. |
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01-15-2019, 02:59 PM | #670 (permalink) |
one-balled nipple jockey
Join Date: Dec 2010
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It sounds good but it also sounds like he just wrote about whatever the **** he wanted to write about.
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