Day: February 23, 2012

A listicle!

Erik Satie - score for "Entr'acte Cinematographique," Rene Clair's film that ran between the two acts of the Relâche ballet. The film music is better than the ballet music; it's very contemporary-sounding in its use of loop-like compositional fragments that could be cut, stretched or repeated to accommodate the action onscreen. Alternately bombastic, comical, hypnotic/seductive, mock-elegiac, these fragments could be arranged like furniture (which is how Satie often described his music).

Zomby, Dedication. Just listening to this for the first time tonight, and was surprised by the Satie-like piano composition "Basquiat" plunked in among the repurposed club bits. Lots of one and two minute songs - yeah.

Ennio Morricone's score for the Mario Bava film Danger: Diabolik. A completely nutty, echt-1960s romp with surf guitar, Yé-yé vocals, hammond organ tone wheel freakouts, and eerie strings. This music leaps out of the speakers, grabs you by the neck and chokes you. You can't unhear it and you can't get it out of your mind. Brilliant.

4Hero, In Rough Territory and Tek 9, The Early Plates. This is the same artist team recording under two names, a couple of years apart. In Rough Territory captures the moment when Manchester Bleep'n'Bass was starting to become Jungle/DnB, tipped off by a song called "The Last Ever Bleep Track (Used to Death)." My favorite song is "Mad Dogs (Feeding Propaganda)," with its magnetic, layered sample of a voice over tinkling piano keys that reveals more of itself as the song progresses. Tek 9's "You Got to Slow Down (Original Mix)" has those great pads, Rhodes stabs, and meaty breakbeats of classic drum and bass (i.e., no heavy drilling yet).