WILT_2020-10

A playlist of songs that intrigued me from Sunday to Saturday. Week of 29 Nov 2020 to 5 Dec 2020.

1. Computer Love – Balanescu Quartet
2. Mäßig Bewegt (feat. S/QU/NC/R) – Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, S/QU/NC/R
3. Fables – Girls in Airports
4. Burnt (Lubmyr Melnyk Rework) – Kiasmos, Lubmyr Melnyk
5. Gaia – Bremer/McCoy
6. Peace of Mind (with John McLaughlin) – Shakti, John McLaughlin
7. Sekoilu Seestyy (The Madness Subsides) – Pekka Pohjola
8. Amjad Sleeping Panorama – David Lang, Njo Kong Kie, Jennifer Thiessen, Jill Van Gee, Elisabeth Giroux, Gavin Bryars
9. Autowave – Kelly Moran
10. Oh Where – Kronos Quartet, Sam Amidon
11. Rambling Boys of Pleasure – Kronos Quartet, Olivia Chaney
12. Helicopters Hang Over Downtown – Kros Quartet, Laurie Anderson
13. Cadences I – Gavin Bryars, Sonic Open Orchestra, Jason Martin Castillo, Zachary Paul, Drum & Lace, David Valdez
14. A Thousand Feet of Sound (Trois cents metres de son) – Joseph Bertolozzi
15. A sodium codec haze – Tim Hecker
16. Anona – Otto Totland
17. This life – Tim Hecker
18. Spring Nocturne – Angus MacRae

Hyperlink to Spotify playlist: WILT_2020-10

Notes

I know I’ve been going on week after week about his busy I’ve been. Somehow or rather, I’ve still been busy this week, but I’ve had a lot more time to create tangible documents and outputs, versus spending too much in meetings. This means that I had the opportunity for deep focus at work, and deep listening with music.

Discoveries this week would include Kronos Quartet and Gavin Bryars, as well as the “genre” of style of music known as “Chamber music”. Which if my understanding is as barbaric and un-nuanced as I think it is, is something like punk rock for the classical and symphonic orchestras.

Fine, that was a pretty obtuse and poor comparison. Really, it’s just a smaller scale of musicians playing music, versus a large symphonic orchestra with multiple individual musicians and instruments playing in concert. But I did make the comparison because punk rock was an antithesis to rock. It was a simplification of an musical style, and a transformation of attitude, made possible by advancements in amplification technology, and perhaps also a response to the societal climate in that time. Similarly, a small chamber group is able to navigate the cracks of society by playing in much smaller venues, and without the perceived rigidity of a large orchestral ensemble.

One is not necessarily better than the other as I think they can be considered two sides of the same coin. Or, they’re all individual facets of the diamond. Music is music, and I adore the beauty in that concept.