I would love to experience an outdoor performance of a John Luther Adams composition. I discovered his music thanks to this inaugural episode of Meet the Composer, an excellent podcast hosted by world-class musician/interpreter Nadia Sirota. The episode deftly reconstructs Adams' soul-search as a composer. I love the shift that occurs when we get to Alaska:
Every episode of Meet the Composer is worth a listen. I admire how it plunges into the world of contemporary avant-garde music in a way that retains less initiated ears like mine. *Fun fact: Sirota played the viola on Edo Van Breemen's original score for Fractured Land .
If I was to program The Lobster (2015), the imaginative dark funny feature by Yorgos Lanthimos, I would pair it with Alice Winocour's Kitchen (2005), one of my favorite short narrative films. They are completely different stories but share similar traits, like brilliant deadpan moments, careful composition of shots /color palettes... and lobsters.
I caught my second Chairlift show a few months back at the Biltmore Cabaret. Everything about this band is top-notch: their weird wonderful range of sounds, masterful arrangements conducive to dancing or kicking back, clever lyrics, wildly original music videos and lead singer Caroline Polachek's outstanding voice. After the show I had a chance to briefly chat with Polachek about one of my favorite music videos of all time, from their first record:
That hypnotizing glitch effect is a technique called datamoshing, which I'm sure will be of special interest to any codec nerds out there. Here's a great website about it, including how-tos. Curious what else could be done with this. I sense a lot of potential, e.g. used as device within feature films. Apparently the team behind the video was racing to release it before their peers, who were using the same technique for Kanye West. Yeezy's video came out second. Still excellent:
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November 2016
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