Safeguarding music | Global Music Vault | Svalbard

Well, apparently seeds are not the only thing being preserved in the event of apocalypse…

I find some of my music through Pitchfork. Generally speaking, Rap/Hip-Hop isn’t my beat so I don’t listen to a new Rap album unless it has a really high rating. 8.9 on this one. I like it…

This young woman is my barista a couple of mornings a week. Really like her music…

nellybombs

Jack Davidson’s Alchemical Photographic Etchings

“I’ve never been a darkroom kid,” says British photographer Jack Davison. “I tried, [but] it just didn’t appeal to me.” With a new solo exhibition, Photographic Etchings, opening in north London’s Cob Gallery, Davison is instead reflecting on the tactile wonders and alchemical magic of photogravure, a labour-intensive, high-cost alternative to the darkroom that lies at the heart of this exhibition.

Jack Davison, Untitled (JD-08), 2022© the artist, courtesy of Cob Gallery

… what is it about snarling or perhaps just snapping or perhaps just skulking in a menacing way?… and depicted in a shadowy, high contrast way… see Daido Moriyama’s stray dog…

Somaya Critchlow, the Artist Reconfiguring the Black Female Nude

12 of Critchlow’s new paintings and drawings are now on display at Maximillian William gallery in London, in an exhibition called Afternoon’s Darkness. A sense of the macabre lingers across these new works, in which Black women are depicted revelling in their solitude – nude, semi-nude or in costume – backdropped by dimly-lit, domestic interiors.

Count Me Out, 2022© Somaya Critchlow. Image courtesy the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photography: Prudence Cuming Associates.

… increasingly, women artists are portraying women in ways that do invite the male gaze… the male gaze is such a convoluted gaze… is it appropriate or not in this “hashtag me too” era?… at the end of the day, we feel what we feel when we look at images of beautiful women partially or fully undressed… it’s what we do with those feelings that matters… do we treat such images as gateway invitations to the abuse of womanhood or do we simply appreciate the beauty of the female body?… have we matured as a culture?… patriarchy is alive and well… there are risks to trying to break through to a new attitude…

Henry Miller on Friendship and the Relationship Between Creativity and Community

This vital relationship between creativity and connection has been tensed and twisted in the era of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where self-marketing so readily masquerades as “friend”-ship.

… i have all but abandoned FB and Instagram, using the former to check in with “friends” now and again and the latter to post an image here and there… i never did have much use of twitter… these days i can be found on Vero (@smbk) and Micro.blog (@mbkriegh)…

“Usually the artist has two life-long companions, neither of his own choosing… — poverty and loneliness. To have a friend who understands and appreciates your work, one who never lets you down but who becomes more devoted, more reverent, as the years go by, that is a rare experience. It takes only one friend… to work miracles.” Henry Miller

Disgruntled American Tourist Smashes Roman Busts at the Vatican

An American man visiting the Vatican threw two Ancient Roman busts to the ground in a fit of rage after being informed that he could not see the Pope, Italian newspapers report.

… ok, the headline, “Disgruntled American”?… click bait really… when i first read it, it seemed unfortunately natural to think of any American as being an angry child…

The man who vandalized the sculptures, aged 65 and apparently “psychologically distressed,” seemed to have been visiting the Vatican alone and was turned over to Italian authorities the same day. He received an aggravated property damage charge and was subsequently released.

… and then i read the bit about “psychologically distressed” and wondered why not this headline… “Psychologically Distressed Tourist Smashes Roman Busts at the Vatican”?… then we would discover the tourist was American… which fact is more important?… “American” if you think or want people to think all Americans are childish rage-holics, and “psychologically distressed” if we are talking about the general propensity in humanity for there to be people not in their right mind…

Find My Friends… an app that tells you where your friends are at any given moment in time?… beyond the obvious serendipitous being in close by places at the same time… meet up!… there are the also obvious ways this might not be a good idea…

I feel so unispired. Inspiration. Can I have some of yours?

… my wife is a huge fan of David Bowie, me, not so much, but i love Nick Cave!… and i love his Red Hand Files in which he answers questions sent to him by his fans… that he seems to have his head on really straight helps too…

In my experience, inspiration is not something that finds you, or offers itself to you, nor for that matter is faith. Inspiration and faith are similar in so far as they both ask something of us. They each require real and constant practical application. For me, inspiration comes only when I practice certain things regularly and rigorously. I must commit fully to the task in hand, sit down each day, pick up my pencil (actually it is a medium black or blue Bic Biro) and get to work. It is not exactly toiling down the coal mines, but it is labour enough, and I undertake it through the good times and the bad, through the dry periods and the periods of abundance, and I keep on going regardless of my successes or failures. Inspiration comes because I put in the work.

Blue Rev, Alvvays

The Toronto band’s third album is a triumph of power pop, a densely layered, witty, blithe, and beautiful record that sets a new benchmark for the genre.

… 231.2 lbs…

… Heather Cox Richardson about the accomplishments of the administration, which are considerable… and yet, the people are not happy and Republicans may succeed in steering us to a one party state…

Love or hate what Biden has done, he has managed to pull a wide range of countries together to stand against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian attack in Ukraine, and he has managed to get through a terribly divided Congress laws to make the lives of the majority better, even while Republicans are rejecting the idea that the government should reflect the will of the majority. That is no small feat.

Whether it will be enough to prove that democracy is still a viable form of government is up to us.¹

… i believe in the messy multiarchy… i hope more people can look at what is going on and support democracy… i am pessimistic about that…

… last night we watched Blue Bayou, a movie centered on the deportation of a Korean American who was adopted but for whom the appropriate paperwork had never been completed… apparently there are 25K to 50K adoptees from foreign countries that have the same problem… how is it possible that there isn’t some kind of understanding in the system that it isn’t the adoptee’s fault that the paperwork was not done or done properly?… how are we so tied to the rules that we can’t see our way to making an exception for this class?… how are we sending people back to countries they have never known and can’t even speak the language?… i read the wikipedia write up on the movie and learn that a law passed in 2000 made many in this legalization limbo citizens, it did not cover those 18 and older at the time…

… i read about bird flu killing tens of thousands of seabirds… i wonder if this is something related to climate change… i read the article to the end… it’s not… i remember B warning us that the flu was going around and to mask and glove up when we cared for the chickens this past winter… i wonder about the meat birds coming… tomorrow i think…

… because we have at least one in town, this article on Little Libraries caught my attention… the trend started in Wisconsin as a memorial to the mother of Todd Bol, who was a schoolteacher…

… monkeypox continues to grow as an issue around the globe… i feel like i am reading too much about this new disease of concern… i have read it is only spread through direct contact… is that changing?…

… an article on Tony Wang in Ain’t Bad… i almost don’t click on it, but then do… wait… i know this guy’s work!… he showed at the last Salon… he showed the very work published in the article… he was testing the sequencing… way to go Tony… hope we see you again!…

… Kitchen and Coffee after a walk down Main Street… not many pictures… not much that inspired an effort… it’s Sunday so i treat myself to hot chocolate… it is a spiritual experience… i really have to try making it at home…

… published yesterday’s notes… getting ready to publish yesterday’s group of photos… the things i look at… pay attention to… Gilbert O’Sullivan, _Alone Again (Naturally)_ playing on the sound system…

… haven’t heard that song in a long time…

… signs of Beacon Open Studios around town… wanted to go to some of the studios but the heat dampened my enthusiasm… lots of evidence of people in town… lots of cars parked on streets adjacent to Main Street, where they aren’t during the week… not as many people on the street as there are when the weather is better…

… it’s no longer projected to be 100 today… top out at 96 or 97… cooler tomorrow but more 90 degree weather heading our way next week…

… some more Etel Adnan…

Within seconds, X rays and gamma rays have hit us at light speed. A cloud of nuclear particles at 5 million miles an hour engulfs everybody’s brain. We are monitoring the universe in real time.²

… i read from dot to dot… making my way slowly through the book… usually, there is a passage that jumps out… today it was the above… the idea of monitoring the universe in real time… do we have nuclear particle receptors and don’t know it?… will we one day figure out how to tap into them?… will our minds then expand to be the universe?… will we loose our selves when this happens?… will it be hive mind?… i think about how, in my society, everything is geared towards being the unique, outstanding (good or bad) individual… we are to brand ourselves… make ourselves into a recognized and marketable quantity… is this the right way to think about being?… should we, instead, enjoy our selfness quietly… i oscillate on this… being part of the fabric, undistinguished, doesn’t bring resources… it does bring community?…

… just now i am thinking about how the patriarchal Oligarchs want to remake American society… i hope we can stop them…

… paid the bills…

… edited this morning’s pictures…

… bought the makings of ratatouille at the farmers market… especially wonderful dish in the summer with fresh vegetables… i will cook it on the Green Egg with the hope that it will develop a smokey flavor on top of the oven caramelized flavors this recipe develops… i post my intentions to Micro.blog and Facebook…

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> Little things I should have said or done

> I just never found the time…

… the point at which any sane person would walk away… like “you were always on my mind” is supposed to fix things?… unless, of course, the person singing it to you was Willie Nelson…

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No question. Just can’t wait for your show in Austin.

When I watch you play live my soul is lifted but I am not sure what that even means. It feels religious! What is the soul? See you in Montreal!¹

… the response…

To walk on stage and perform a series of songs is an attempt to invigorate the collective soul of an audience. Whatever is happening to the soul of the audience is also happening to the soul of the performer. This mutuality is a circular and escalating intaking and outpouring of love. It is, by its very nature, a religious experience because it is in the service of a greater transcendent goodness. It is truth.²

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The Red Hand Files, Nick Cave

… what a fascinating website from a fascinating creator…

This article on rap music by Daniel Levin Becker catches my attention… especially this assessment of Rap music…

Rap music serves, consistently, contagiously, sometimes in spite of its own claims to the contrary, as a delivery mechanism for the most exhilarating and crafty and inspiring use of language in contemporary American culture.

… i struggle to get very much into Rap, even as i am aware of its enormous significance… i keep trying though… this article may be a window in, as it analyzes lines from a number of songs (raps?) and so could point me to some raps to listen to…

This is just it: taking words at face value is what good rappers almost militantly don’t do. They find the blind angles, the shortcuts, the secret overlaps, and use them, sometimes, to build stunning models of invention and entente, spaces where small discords combine into larger resolutions and we see, hear, how boring it would be to live in a perfect world where like belongs only with like.

… hmmm… saving this article…

… wow… every now and then i hear a song for the first time and it completely blows me away… Billy Bragg’s Mid-Century Modern is one of those songs…

”I Shot The Sheriff!”

… but i did’nt shoot no deputy…

… [this is an interesting court decision](https://reason.com/volokh/2021/11/11/court-should-start-with-a-presumption-that-art-is-art-not-a-statement-of-fact/ “Volokh, Eugene, “Court Should Start with a Presumption That Art Is Art, Not a Statment of Fact”, Reason.com”) about whether an artist’s work, in this case a rap song, is admissible as evidence that the artist did what they are accused of doing… Muadhdhin Bey-Cousin, a rapper, maintains he was wrongly arrested, convicted and jailed… he is suing for damages… counsel defending the officers are(is?) trying to submit song lyrics as evidence of a truthful depiction of the incidents that led to his arrest… the judge ruled that artistic product cannot be used to determine truth or falsehood of a question at issue, since the very nature of art is to embellish on experience to transform it into something transcendent… therefore, there is a high burden on the part of those wishing to submit art content as evidence that there is strong reason to believe the artwork in question is factual and not embellished…

… among the examples cited was the Bob Marley song that is the title of this post…

… from the decision:

As a society, we have decided to encourage free expression in all its forms. The Court will not adopt a rule that might undermine that goal. It therefore adopts a rule that presumes that artists tell stories, even when they draw inspiration from reality. Officers Cherry and Powell have not overcome that burden, so the Court will grant Mr. Bey-Cousin’s Motion and preclude evidence of his lyrics…¹

…strange, beautiful, compelling… im-hole by aya

Myriam Gendron

… Canadian songwriter… review of Ma délire — Songs of love, lost & found… gets an 8.0 on Pitchfork…

_ The ambitious new album from the Canadian songwriter features thoughtful and transformative interpretations of traditional music. It is both a meditation on the past and a novel step forward._¹

… as i read the review i note that this recording features Chris Corsanon on drums, whom i have heard live when Quinn’s Monday night jazz was up and running… the reviewer invokes Daniel Johnston…

_ According to Gendron, what unites the crossbred pieces across this 15-track, 76-minute album are the eternal themes of love and longing. But just as important is Gendron’s own voice, a distinct, clear tool that works on multiple levels. With patient deliberation and gut-level resonance, she often sounds like she’s simultaneously intoning a children’s song and painting a portrait of complex emotion. Some singers approach similar territory—think of how David Berman talked and sang at the same time, how Daniel Johnston treated serious subjects with childlike wonder, or how Haley Fohr uses low tones to vibrate her music—but Gendron’s mesmerizing intonation has no exact parallels. Her voice is often both frank and enigmatic, grounded and limitless._²

… so, it becomes a must listen… i crank it up on Spotify…

Wiki, Half God

… i am not generally a fan of rap music, it doesn’t connect much with any of my life experiences… it has to be pretty highly regarded for me to take note of it, thus, when a new release by a rap artist i have never heard (not because they are obscure, almost all rap artists are obscure to me) of gets an 8.5 rating i add it to my list of music to listen to and decide if i like it…

_ His latest album, Half God, is a record about what it’s like to come of age in New York: the way it shapes, hardens, prematurely ages you. Produced in its entirety by Navy Blue—the skateboarder/model turned prolific producer/MC born Sage Elsesser—the record captures the varied tempos of city life in colorful vignettes. A warbling guitar loop soundtracks a contemplative smoke session on “Roof”; the stuttering soul samples on “Can’t Do This Alone” stroll with Wiki and Navy Blue through city streets; hi-hats crunch and snares snap on “The Business,” as Wiki spews vitriol at the gentrifiers changing his home into something unrecognizable._¹

If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power

… the title of Halsey’s new album… what an interesting dynamic in that statement… i have been known to say i don’t want power… i would perhaps amend that statement to: i don’t want power, but i want to be powerful… that is, i want to be a powerful presence because of the wisdom with which i move through the world, not because i can make the world conform to the way i want to move… now, the idea that it is love or power… hmmm…

Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A

… this blog is all about the attention i pay… it is rare that i read a Pitchfork review from beginning to end, but BS is sort of my era… i like, sometimes love, his music, but i have never been an avid fan… truthfully, i have never been an avid fan of practically anything or anyone… i have my flirtations, but they all stop short of avid fandom, which always struck me as giving too much power to the heroes… excused you from being your own hero… it’s also rare that Pitchfork gives a 10 rating to an album, so i read, and kept reading to the end…

… it seems that BR enjoyed the stardom and didn’t…

… Born in the U.S.A. speaks about an America that i grew up along side of, but not in… it’s full of blue collar music that appealed to me as i rejected the white collar life my parents brought me up in as being sterile and boring… i have always been more comfortable in artistic communities and neighborhoods that sit on the edge between blue and white collar, if those things mean anything anymore…

… i may have to crank the album up later on…

New (to me) Music

… among my somewhat daily routines is to look through Pitchfork reviews of newly released music… i will pay attention to anything with a rating of 8 or higher, sometimes to things with a 7.5 or higher if it is a genre of music i am fond of… i have music nerd friends who say this is a terrible way to find new music… all i know is that i have often enough found new-to-me music that i really like… so i continue to the practice… here is some new music added to my to be listened to list…

• Mega Bog: Life, and Another… this review got my attention because of the high rating the music is given, that it is experimental, referencing folk, jazz and chamber pop, but also because i learned about Green Porno, a series of films wherein Isabella Rossellini costumes herself as a variety of animal creatures and demonstrates their sex lives… trust me, watch the trailer, it’s hysterical…
• Yves Tumor: The Asymptotical World EP…
  • The music of Yves Tumor moves like something molting. At first, it cleaves to genre, taking recognizable shape—a loping bass line, a steady backbeat. And then the shape dulls. It starts to appear as a copy of itself, not a rock song but an imitation rendered from paling memory. And then the form splits, and from the split comes something glistening and new, in the same arrangement as the old, dulled thing but rawer and more perceptibly alive.¹

03 Laurie Anderson, United States Live

… fascinating review of the performer and album…

And so began Laurie Anderson’s own state of the union. The record of this eight-hour, two-night show—1984’s four-and-a-half-hour box set, United States Live—is a gesamtkunstwerk, a bold federation of hobbyist tinkering and scientific wizardry, sound sculpture and rock music, gender and social studies, philosophy and linguistics. With performance chops equal to the Gipper’s, Anderson untangled Reagan’s knot of tech and hope and power and wove together an alternative form of patriotism, one that centers disorientation and finds authenticity in imagination. Along the way, she created an American masterpiece.¹

… on most days i scan the music reviews on Pitchfork… my rule is that most anything with an 8.0 or higher rating gets remembered for later listening with slightly lower bar for genres i like (Jazz, Rock, Folk, Folk Rock, Experimental, Etc) and slightly higher bars for generes that just aren’t my thing, most Rap or Hip-Hop for example, and really high for genres i really am not fond of, Heavy Metal for example…

… this morning there were three releases that warranted saving…

… Blue: Gene Tyranny: Degrees of Freedom Found…

_ The fearless work of the late avant-garde pianist is celebrated with a momentous new anthology, showcasing his immense talent and passion_¹

… Anthony Joseph: The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives…

the title alone on this one made it a no brainer…

_ Backed by veteran jazz musicians and newer players, the Trinidad-born, London-based poet summons spirits of the Caribbean diaspora to ask what it might take to build a better world._²

… Ski Mask: Pool…

… dance/electronica, not my thing, but rating high enough to give it a listen…

_ Compiling several years’ worth of material and spanning nearly two hours, the Munich producer’s first full-length since 2018 feels cohesive, virtuosic, and thrillingly physical._³

… this image immediately catches my attention…

Greentea Peng, Photography by Stefy Pocket

… good hook image, red, woman… sex… i am also a little intrigued by the hook line “Your the Musical Jesus!”… what does it mean, i ask to myself, to be a musical Jesus?… image and headline compel me to find out…

… a conversation between two music personalities i haven’t hear of, the genre seems to be rap, hip-hop, he is older, established, she is younger, up and coming, this is her first album, written and produced during the pandemic, her pandemic project (don’t we all have one in one way or the other?)… the album being discussed is Peng’s Man Made, i look for it on Spotify, not there, some single are, i will listen later… i find the Jesus reference, seems to be something about being a carpenter, craftsman?…

… it’s Sunday morning, i peruse my Feedly feed and come across a review of The Score, by the Fugees on Pitchfork… i am not a fan of hip-hop, culturally it is miles from my life experience, but it gets a 9.3 (of 10) rating, so i decide to read the review… after a bit i decide to cue up the album and listen to it… i like it…

… this sentence from the article reverberates with my own life experience…

For Wyclef, the endeavor was a 24/7 lifestyle. He had moved into a bedroom upstairs after being kicked out of his home in Newark by his religious father for creating sinful music.¹

… i have a lifetime of experience with disapproving patriarchy…

… as i am listening, these words, “too many MC’s and not enough mics,” which sums up the attention driven culture we live in perfectly…

… the album is clear, beautiful in places, i understand it, at least partially, which i often don’t in this genre of music… so many references to history i experienced through tv news…