Okay, okay, I have a problem. But I saw this going cheap – Rilke’s only novel, which I’ve never read – and grabbed it. I will honestly probably stop for the year now.
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
Wasn’t going to buy any more books this year, but I remembered reading the reviews of this and it showed up for 99p so…whoops?
The stack of unread books on the Kindle is now fully absurd.
Oh, I coveted this one.
Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011-2021
Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased in the vinyl format. Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes, and EPs; singles and original film scores; as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.
It is marvellously calming and exquisitely, intricately beautiful.
I’ve been on a bit of a “Laura Cannell and associated artists” kick lately, and this new record just arrived.
Internationally acclaimed musician Laura Cannell releases a 30 minute Overbow Violin recording inspired by the 1000 year long composition Longplayer by Jem Finer (Artist, Composer and one of the founders of The Pogues). BOW & CREAK was recorded in a single take at Cannell’s Suffolk studio and the name was inspired by the corner of the Thames where the snaking tidal river meets one of London’s oldest navigational waterways in the country, Bow Creek, this is where Finer’s Longplayer has been installed since 31 December 1999, playing without repetition.
Cannell used a snapshot of Finer’s ever changing Longplayer score to create a longform violin track. Circular bowing motions on her violin are made with a deconstructed bass viol bow to play polyphonic chords, and improvised melodic passages are re-iterated with asymmetric repetitions which are combined with ancient tune fragments and the ghosts medieval and renaissance ornamentation. Captivated by the upturned bell sounds of the Longplayer singing bowls, Cannell used fragments of structure, fragments of note shapes and the circulatory image of Jem Finer’s original score to create a mini violin response to Longplayer.
I’ve had the Longplayer app on my phone for years, so this was interesting serendipity for me. It swirls and skirls and shifts around the eternally transforming shapes of Jem Finer’s Longplayer form. It’s all water and circles, and I find it transporting.
Don’t recall now how I discovered Ruby Colley’s work, but these are marvellous records. Broadly contemporary classical violin, but interpolating field recordings, folk and electronics. Music that wanders and explores.
I don’t know why I didn’t pick this up when it was released in June, but I finally gave it a listen the other day. Laura Cannell is a violinist who composes with and in specific sites and places, chiefly in East Anglia. Here, she collaborates with six other women, living in six other places and working in six other genre spaces, to reimagine some of her compositions. To my ear, only one track out of twelve didn’t really work so well for me personally. The others range from fascinating to immense. I’ve always found Cannell’s work somewhat autumnal, so this might have been the right time to discover this collection of voices and strings and electronics. Misty music.
I’ve wanted to see this for some while now, and decided to treat myself. Yet another Second Run issue – I have seven others.
Physical media in your home cannot be randomly deaccessioned from streaming services.
Today I learned the Coen/Washington TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which is a very beautiful film with very interesting composition, is not actually available on physical media.
Bells, drones, chants, unsettling sonics, big occult energy. I’d forgotten I ordered this. Glad I did.
I started reading a sample of this two nights ago and was so hooked that I pressed the button last night and bought it. The translation by Shaun Whiteside reads as smooth as silk. Being an idiot, I like books that explain philosophical schools and tools with easy clarity, and this really does it, on a par with AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE, which I now discover I never put my notes about up here.
TIME OF THE MAGICIANS at Amazon.
A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century
The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe’s wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with Husserl’s phenomenological school. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture on a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama. Over the next decade the lives and thought of this quartet will converge and intertwine, as each gains world-historical significance, between them remaking philosophy.
Time of the Magicians brings to life this miraculous burst of intellectual creativity, unparalleled in philosophy’s history, and with it an entire era, from post-war exuberance to economic crisis and the emergence of National Socialism.
I love Tokarczuk’s work, but this is a doorstep of a thing – even on Kindle, I think it took out 5% of the battery life just downloading the bastard – and I’d been putting it off because this year I’ve been in the mood to read nimbly across shorter works. But autumn is approaching, and I feel now like it’s time to settle in with a few very long books. Also, obviously, Fitzcarraldo can sell me pretty much anything.