Influences – Deerhoof X Stargaze

‘You’re Living All Over Me’ introduced me to what was gonna be ‘my kind of music’, full stop. But Poledo, at the end of that record, really blew my mind. I checked on the record sleeve and saw it was Lou Barlow’s solo composition, an apparent outsider, soon to be dismissed by the band and finding his own path built on this release (or so it goes in my mind). It was the first time I realised how rock or pop and in this case also folk music could be ambitious, experimental; how the genres could be bend and new doors were opened and I am still tapping in the dark today, following this experience…

A classical, ‘spectralis’ Italian composer who died far too early, in 2003, at the age of 41. He had a background in, and love of, metal and electronic experimental and noise music and somehow managed to merge such elements in complex contemporary classical composition. This is his late masterwork – the film part is not necessarily my favourite element of this triptych-video-opera, but the music itself is an immersive, psychedelic experience of the highest order. For this piece he collaborated with Pansonic, who contributed the electronic interludes.
There is a track by Fripp and Eno with the same title – it might be a reference? What is a reference for sure is the sample that keeps winding up at the beginning of Romitelli’s work, which is taken from Pink Floyd’s ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’.

My favourite music film ever. Made me cry several times. Guy Piciotto hanging from a basketball rig/net. His movement on stage, the wildest, bendiest and most elegant stage animal I have ever seen. The spirit. The idealism. The audience on stage with the band, dancing. The music. Everything I’d ever wished for and could live on.

This brought me onto Tyondai’s solo work, released while he was still with Battles, which I really digged. It’s a really well crafted version of bringing his looped electronics work together with classical notated composition, and the fast part and its propelled rhythm made me jump out of my chair when I first heard it. Had the pleasure of conducting it live (there are french horns blasting away too which you don’t really hear in the studio version) and at that part I had to hold on to my music stand in order not to dance away with some crazy jagged moves…

The ultimate songwriter, the ultimate lullaby, the inventor of ‘opera’. Italian renaissance composer Monteverdi was so great with words, simple harmony, and tunes; the Godfather of all songwriters using just the sparsest material and means to get their message and emotional content across. Yet he had a richness of expression, rhythmic and melodic variation and freedom to equal none. Here the sublimely pure voice of a counter-tenor is accompanied by a ‘guitar’ (theorbo) and stringed bass instrument only (viola da gamba).

Recently they found some dried out bugs from 25 million years ago. They added water and the bugs came back to life and lived out the remainder of their two-week lifespan. I was going to tell a sad story of the death of classical music, but then I found Patricia Kopaschinskaja. Fire is not allowed in a museum because all the pieces are flammable. If you add fire to old music it becomes new music. If you add water to dead music is becomes alive music.

There was a time, my friends, when the Bach purists hated the Swingle Singers for putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa. At the same time defensive avant-gardists wanted it perfectly clear that neither Moog Bach nor scatted Bach should be mistaken for the truly up to scratch. Luckily nowadays Bach, scatting, and the avant-garde are all equally uncool. When the main Art of the Fugue theme comes in as the second subject it sounds like a melody pasted in from somewhere else, like the “oh oh oh oh oh” section near the end of Kenny Loggins’ “Theme from Footloose”.

People say Deerhoof is condensed but listen to Pierrot Lunaire. Sometime I should sit André down and have him translate what is being sprechstimmed in this video. I am sure that I like the green lights. When Deerhoof plays we want that colour.

Anton Webern was convinced that in a few years’ time his style of 12-tone music would be so popular that schoolchildren would sing it at recess. While I find most definitions of ‘human nature’ or ‘music as the universal language’ to be nothing more than excuses for the worst in totally avoidable human behavior, I am sad to report that Anton’s prediction did not come to pass. But we can console ourselves with the fact that Igor Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto, first movement WAS used in a children’s stop motion homework assignment in Holland.

While recording Deerhoof Chamber Variations in Berlin, André wondered aloud if we were making a one-sided LP, or if we should find another work for side B. Without hesitation I suggested Gerald Barry since he is my favorite. Andre said Gerald was ‘mad, but somehow always right’ and immediately compared him to me, at least the mad part. And yet as you watch this video, you can almost feel the sadness of the fact that neither did Barry’s music make it on the LP nor have I been personally introduced. Maybe on the next Stargaze LP?