---
VIEWINGS
AVACADO HEADS
by Bill Hall
Animal or vegetable?
---
MUSIC
This season, the Hotel is hosting a mélange of eclectic sounds from various Brooklyn-based ensembles. The common thread between these selections is the alchemical synthesis of indigenous styles these artists have fused into dazzling "post-gypsy" tapestries. As imaginatively conceived as it is expertly performed, their music courses a path that could be said to run from mangy Cuban brothels to turn-of-the-century Parisian bistros to Austrian vaudeville houses to Chicago speakeasies, terminating at the entrance to Barbés. We might call it The Silk Road of Brooklyn.
Chicha Libre
[from "Amazonicas"]
Greg Burrows (percussion), Josh Camp (Hohner Electravox & vocals), Olivier Conan (cuatro & vocals), Nicholas Cudahy (bass), Vincent Douglas (guitar), and Timothy Quigley (percussion).
1. El Borrachito
2. Popcorn Andino
The Four Bags
[from "Live at Barbes"]
Mike McGinnis (saxophone, clarinet), Brian Drye (trombone), Jacob Garchik (accordion), and Sean Moran (guitar).
1. Tent Song
2. Pins/Needles
Gato Loco
[from various recordings]
Stefan Zeniuk (tenor sax), Brian Drye (trombone), Joe Exley (tuba), Mike Gamble (guitar), and Greg Stare (percussion set).
1. Red Light
2. All Purposes Rendered Void
Rare Bird Rhumba Ranch
[from "Bull Feathers"]
Greg Stare (conga kit and lead vocals), Michael Attias (alto sax), Josh Camp (accordion), and Taylor Bergren-Chrisman (electric bass).
1. Songs to be Sung
2. Song for Dying Cow
---
SONIC EVENTS
Ah, space.
The following items (all but the last) were excerpted from various archives of interstellar recordings. Many of them are strangely beautiful and really quite unnerving. How is it that solar winds penetrating magnetic fields could sound like wolves howling? Or that the frequency of ambient plasma is indistinguishable from a Theremin? Or that the Northern Lights sound like the echoey chirps you might hear in a tropical rain forest? Or that the lightning on Saturn make noises like sliding pennywhistles?
Inner Space
[Atmospheric Discharges]
1. Whistlers
2. Proton Whistlers
3. Multi Hop Whistlers
4. Auroral Radiation
5. Chorus
Outer Space
[Heliospheric Radio Emissions]
1. Radio Saturn
2. Bow Shock
3. From the Magnetosphere
4. Jovian Cyclotron
5. Chirp
Dr. Who
[by Ron Grainer/BBC]
1. Opening Theme (Original): "Dr. Who"
---
RADIO PLAYS
there is still time
The text is limited to the words spoken by Ophelia in Hamlet, though there is no reference to that character or to the play. Griffiths's novel let me tell you, which uses the same restricted vocabulary, is, by contrast, voiced by Ophelia, who tells her story up to the moment when the play is about to begin. Two chapters from the novel have appeared in Golden Handcuffs Review; the complete text will appear in 2008, published by Reality Street Editions.
Excerpt:
- Think of that day
Words written and spoken by Paul Griffiths
Music composed and performed by Frances-Marie Uitti
Recorded and released by ECM.
---
back to Archives listing
