jon abbey

Murakami used to run a jazz club in Tokyo before he started writing, he's a huge jazz fan. he wrote his first novel each night after he got off work. he used to occasionally shop at Downtown Music Gallery when he taught at Princeton, but I never saw him there personally.

the current issue of StN is up on the web in PDF format for a week, as a test: http://www.zshare.net/download/41730039af6835/ http://www.zshare.net/download/41733586224c80/

I have short sound clips of all of my titles on my site under the individual title, but it tends to be music that works at length and on repeated listens, as you figure out the unique language of that particular project. I'd recommend just picking up a few CDs and spending some time with them when you're in the mood. if you e-mail me, I'll give you a good deal on a starter kit of maybe three discs, or you could go to the Funny Rat thread here and ask them for suggestions. edit: electroacoustic music is more impacted by lossy formats like MP3s than most other kinds of music (classical also), because of the dynamic range, so sometimes even full-length DLs sound decidedly different from the original CD.

I agree that this particular topic becomes pointless once it degenerates into insults, I'm only trying to give my perspective here. in the circles that I travel, jazz being a historical genre is as common sense and underlying an assumption as Bush being a war criminal. it's so obvious that people don't bother talking about it anymore. using Loren as an example of the music I work with is a bad mistake to begin with. I did produce a record of his in 1999, and I am a big fan of his, but virtually all of what I've done since then is in a different area. Loren is closer to Jandek than he is to Erstwhile or electroacoustic improv. I don't have much interest in defending Loren's work, I think that's just a matter of taste and I can certainly see how people would not be into it. I will defend today's electroacoustic improv, obviously. jumping disciplines just confuses things, but one major error here is that you could make a strong case that the directors of the sixties overshadow all that have come since (although I'd take Lynch, Haneke, Tarr over Antonioni in a second, but again, a different discussion). electroacoustic music, on the other hand, has become far more sophisticated in the last decade, and (IMO) virtually nothing from the earlier electroacoustic composers holds up when played in close juxtaposition (some Xenakis, some Stockhausen, Ashley's Automatic Writing, a handful of others). people who feel that today's EAI is a pale imitation of older electroacoustic music either 1) are going by live performances they saw at the time that were never documented or 2) simply not listening. I've done a couple of eight hour DJ sets in the Experimental Intermedia festival, and for the first one, I tried to include as much historic material as I could, but almost all of it paled in direct comparison, either clunky and academic or rough and unpolished.

My, how fortunate for us you decided to play. my pleasure! enjoy the Blue Series!

such a dull game for me to play, but I'll answer once. never liked the WSQ, such a narrow palette. I wish Hemphill had really explored the "Hard Blues" more in depth, I don't think he ever did (and I have/had virtually all his records as a leader). none of these are jazz or even close. completely stolen from Hemphill and dull as fuck, every piece winds around for 30 minutes and goes nowhere. even when I was a massive jazz fan, Berne bored me. this is part of the problem with our discussion, I could give a shit about Loren's technical ability, but at his best, he was one of the last real bluesmen, albeit from Connecticut/NYC. I'm not looking for my mind to be changed on this, I'm pretty comfortable in my position and have plenty of new and exciting music to listen to. if you think I'm dead wrong, cool, more power to you, but it's a very narrow perspective IMO. I think pretty much everyone here would agree that Dixieland is a historical style of music, whether or not there are people performing it well still today. for me, all of jazz fits this definition and has for decades (I like to use 1975 and Agharta/Pangaea as the cutoff point for neatness' sake, but there were a few trickles after that, mostly from AACM-related people).

you didn't read it very well, as I actually find improvisation so exciting at its best that I've devoted my life to documenting it. both of those guys did their best work before when I'm talking about, Hemphill hit his peak with his first two records. my point is that nothing truly new has emerged within jazz for decades, and I believe it's impossible at this point because of the limits of jazz as an art form. the same boundaries that make something "jazz" or not are what's prevented it from continuing to develop, there's simply no room. don't get me wrong, jazz was a crucial building block in the history of improvisation, but it's a historical art form at this point. improvisation, on the other hand, is very much alive and well and flourishing on a global scale. I don't really get the analog/digital discussion here. there are still plenty of critics out there working largely the same way they always have, the issue is more that almost all of them aren't very good. if there was a fantastic online review zine, I'd see your point, but there isn't, something like Point of Departure has at least as many problems as Signal To Noise.

"Sure"? Don't get out much, do you? I do, but let's not have this tired discussion again.

If one wanted to, one could suggest that the level of insight in most of the current writing about music is by and large equivalent to the level of insight in the current music itself. If one wanted to... from my perspective, this clearly isn't true. if you're talking about jazz only, sure, that's an area of music that's been pretty much creatively bankrupt in any kind of macro sense since the Ford administration. but for improvised music as a whole, the "level of insight in most of the current writing about music" is much lower than the level of insight in the best music being created today. I'd venture a guess that this has always been the case to an extent, but right now is probably the worst it's ever been.

well, that was friendlier than I expected, thanks. I try to stick to producing records, curating festivals and other live shows, and distributing other labels, and leave the criticism to others. but when I'm in attendance at an event that I think shouldn't disappear unnoticed, sometimes I take it upon myself to report on the events from my vantage point, which is what I did there. and not sure if you've been to the Rothko Chapel or not, but pretty tough to avoid a solemn/serious tone when discussing it, Rothko had killed himself before it was even finished and the actual paintings are pretty oppressive. next, we already don't need another drone record, especially involving SoTL. I've been trying to get Keith to break up his drones as much as possible for 2-3 years now (you should check out Between, last year's double CD with him and Toshi Nakamura, for some evidence). he's playing Issue Project Room on the 23rd and 24th, you should come by. back to the topic, I could sit and poke holes in StN all day, but I really don't see the point. Pete's doing his best and there's a fair amount of quality stuff in most issues, Jason Bivins is my current favorite writer in this field (way better than Warburton, who tries to hear everything and ends up doing justice to very little), Jon Dale is another one who can be quite good. FWIW, The Wire is dreadful on reviews of current material, they're much better with their historic pieces (I disagree with Clem's Licht criticism, I think Alan is usually pretty good, especially on NYC-based older artists). the bigger point is that there are virtually no insightful music critics these days, in any area of music, largely because there's no money in it whatsoever except as a launching pad to bigger and lamer things (Neil Strauss, I'm looking at you). the real shame is that someone like Clem, opinionated as fuck and almost as knowledgable as he thinks he is, mostly just sits on the sidelines and slams other people instead of just going out and doing better himself, kicking ass and taking names. talkin' loud and saying nothing, jon

no love for my Houston live review in the current issue, Clem? I don't write very often but I was pretty happy with how that one came out.

wow, looks like Dormant Rat these days... probably anyone interested reading this already knows, but just in case, I've got an ErstDist clearance sale going on, details here: http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php...57&start=20 thanks for taking a look!

since no live footage of her seems to be available (according to the liners), I can't really argue the first, but you're dead wrong on the records, particularly They Say I'm Different, which should be in anyone's funk pantheon based solely on its content.

she's usually a cellist, definitely bass there?

I hate to agree with Clem on anything but he's dead on here: Fresh, Riot and Greatest Hits are all you need. I heard lossless rips of the first three over the last couple of weeks just to refresh my memory (and make sure the remasters didn't change anything to revelatory), and they're OK at best, as Clem said. stick to Fresh and Riot for now, and wait until Greatest Hits gets spruced up, or if you can't wait, Stand! is also pretty good. but in general, Sly's body of work is pretty thin, although Fresh especially is fantastic and underappreciated. I still haven't summoned up the courage to check Small Talk, although it is in my iPod for when I do.

hey, just saw this... what did you decide on? I was part of that pre-show discussion, I thought it went OK considering. and Nate, that's Okkyung Lee, not Okkung.

I have a copy up for sale on eBay now: http://cgi.ebay.com/Ken-McIntyre-Complete-...1QQcmdZViewItem

that Trapist is very strong, most of Hat's forays into Vienna EAI I don't like too much, but that one's a winner.

there's no actual bid there. a seller can ask for whatever they want, that's not impressive in and of itself. it's when two people decide to pay that much (because one alone won't do it) that things get crazy.

distributors take copies and then go out of business, leaving the labels screwed.

thanks for that, John. FWIW, most of the "brick-and-mortars" these are in, chances are I never got paid and will never get paid for those copies, direct ordering is always the best (this doesn't apply to a place like DMG, of course, I mostly mean chain stores).

like I said, don't know any more than that. but I don't think any of Christian's collaborative projects in the works look especially promising (to me, obviously): the Sparklehorse one, one with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and one with Mike Patton.

there's going to be a Fennesz/Sparklehorse record next year, don't know any more than that.

there's been bad blood between the two teams the last few times they've played, George Karl is very good friends with Larry Brown and feels like Brown got screwed by Isiah in NY (which is totally laughable, but that's beside the point). so the reason the starters were still in a 20 point blowout with a minute to go after playing the night before also was to try to show up NY even more (as if they weren't awful enough on their own). and whoever said this was worse than Pacers/Pistons needs to do some Youtube searches immediately, not even in the same ballpark.

as for a mildly on-topic post, copies of this CD sell for a lot on ebay, I think I sold mine for around $80 or $90 earlier this year. I was never a big SME fan, even when I was much more into first-generation euro free improv, but I much prefer the later Quintessence period, the sixties material never worked too well for me. I wish I'd seen Stevens live, though.