Playlist: Black Kaspar Scrapbook 08/2018

Ah, another damn playlist!

This one is a sound palette for the revival of Black Kaspar - bound to be big news for two or three of you - and bears a lot of resemblance to the Drone Wars Scrapbook from late last year. As a matter of fact, there is overlap: Drone Wars Scrapbook has Movement #3 from Górecki's Third, and this one has the entire Third. They also shared Throbbing Gristle's "Wall of Sound" until I replaced it with an Earth cut.

Speaking of Górecki, this version of the Third is different than the one in the earlier playlist. This one is an earlier version (perhaps the premiere recording?) than the famous Elektra/Nonesuch 1992 recording which actually managed to chart. If you are a devotee of the Third, you will hear a difference: there is more space, more air, the playing is more understated and at the same time more dynamic within the slow, minimalist scope of the composition. The nearest analog I can think of for the rockers out there would be that this version is like The Kinks' "You Really Got Me", and the Zinman/Upshaw/LSO version is like Van Halen's cover of "You Really Got Me" . . . Van Halen's version is melodramatic, overdriven, (over)polished version of the original which no doubt has its charms, but loses some of the subtlety and nuance of the original. You can find a very brief discussion of Górecki 3 versions here, as well as an mp3 for this version.

As for Black Kaspar, we will be going forward as a duo. The plan now is to rely heavily on electronics to accompany the two guitars (I briefly considered recruiting another guitarist so that I could move to electronics full time, but decided against it for the time being). As always, plans can change, but for now we are two, and we likely will not be back on stage for a few months yet.

I will likely be producing more audio scrapbooks. They will be here if/when I do.

Bernadette Mayer

from Poetry State Forest

Bill Orcutt Solo - Festival Météo, Mulhouse, 2017

Playlist: Acoustic Blues

Summer is in full swing now, the heat and humidity a blanket over the Ohio Valley. The oppression of the weather is likely weighing down on you where you are as well. Nothing like a big tumbler of iced tea (spiked with bourbon, if it's more than just your thirst that needs work) and some low down dirty blues to pass the time until sundown and beyond. Settle down with this playlist at about 8 pm and it will take you into the midnight hour when, hopefully, it will finally be cool enough to sleep.

Fragment: Swimming to the Moon with Jesus

the moon, the children, the transcendent ineffable

          frozen like a statue of Apollo

          and dead, dead, dead

          dead as the dream of a crystal city on a hill    

          dead as the consolation of order by law

          dead as founder’s intent

          dead as white dreams of America

              that you have been sold like subway tokens to a better world

          dead as a heaven that exists only in books

Sorrow III - Colin Stetson (2016)

Picked up a copy of Colin Stetson's Sorrow: a reimagining of Górecki's 3rd Symphony, based on a long obsession with that piece. I don't know that it's completely successful - I don't know if I'm troubled because the decisions are bad, or because they aren't decisions I would make - but it's worth listening to, and thinking about. I tend to like it best when it strays furthest from the source material, as it does above. I also like the way it doesn't sound quite "right" somehow, like a doom metal version but oddly voiced.

HBD Lydia Lunch

BLACK JUJU - Lydia Lunch - Retrovirus from Dominika M on Vimeo.

Happy 59th, Lydia!