Just your average day...

Wake up, go to a lecture, go to Rotterdam, meet Steve Reich, go home, go to bed: pretty much just your average day here in The Netherlands.

Of course, there's a reason for all of this:
Yesterday, me and a few friends headed over to Rotterdam for a concert of Steve Reich's music, which included 'Clapping Music' played by the man himself (still decked out in trademark baseball cap, even when on stage), 'Different Trains', 'Music for Pieces of Wood' and 'Tehilim'. Though being in an odd position to the stage (on a balcony that stretched towards the back left of the stage) that caused some pretty odd acoustics, the concert was pretty fantastic. 'Clapping Music' and 'Music For Pieces of Wood' in particular were wonderful and, from my position in the audience at least I could hear a whole set of different acoustic phenomena colouring the sound due to the shortness of their attacks.

Anyway, after the show, there was an interview with the man himself in the foyer and I got to ask him a question about 'Different Trains' (something along the lines of 'Why did you decide to have a live string quartet in the piece rather than having them all recorded and making it a straightforward tape piece?' Answer (something like): 'I'm interested in live instruments and when the cello and viola double the vocal samples in the recording you get a personification of the characters the samples are of'.')

We hung around a bit afterwards, asked him some more questions and got this lovely picture with the man himself: Does this look like a man who's 72?
(Maya, Christiaan, Steve Reich, Robert, me; see if you can spot one of the most influential composers of the last century?)

Apparently he's working on a piece for tape and rock 'n' roll band, called '2x5', which I think is being performed in Manchester next year, and a work for the Kronos Quartet and electronics for November 2009.

Unfortunately this is going to make very little sense to anyone who doesn't know who Steve Reich is, in which case, I suggest some youtube therapy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU23LqQ6LY4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhhIZscEE_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMA8CRyNUMc

dp

Haagcore Podcast #2 - Prinsjedag

Well, the new podcast is up at:
Haagcore Podcast #2: Prinsjedag: https://www.yousendit.com/download/bVlCSXQrdzhtNEozZUE9PQ

It includes everything you could wish from a podcast, as long as the things you wish for are: anti-monarchism; Dutch food, trams and toilets; radiohead covers; me going waaay off topic; The Large Hadron Collider; Soulful Dave P and my Top 5 Favourite Dutch Things (as of 16 September).

Thanks to everyone who said they liked the first podcast.

THE REDEEMER
I have recently had an idea which I have decided to call 'The Redeemer' (both after Our Lord And Saviour, and after the most powerful weapon in the computer game Unreal Tournament 2003).
It was inspired by some music I have been working on lately: The first piece of background music in the podcast is a dance track made almost entirely from samples of the much (and unfairly) maligned 1990s Britpop band Sleeper. I have also just heard a new Soulful Dave P track now up at his myspace, in which he samples Jethro Tull's track 'Dot Com' (a song with possibly the worst chorus ever written) from the horrifically bad album 'J-Tull.com'.

These both inspired me to set up a project whereby the idea is to take the worst pop songs in recorded musical history and turn them into solid pop gold.

I'm not talking about novelty records, I'm talking about just earnestly meant but genuinely awful music, like: New Kids On The Block, Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction, and Pj and Duncan's second album. I'm talking about music so bad that its creators are too embarrassed to sue for copyright infringement; music so bad that it would turn up on the list of 'pros and cons' you'd draw up if you were deciding whether or not to commit suicide.

The idea behind the project would be to sample these tracks in such a way to make them good music. They say you can't polish a turd - but, damn it, I'm going to try!

Suggestions for songs to use would be welcome; and if anybody has too much time on their hands and wants to participate by creating their own track, that would be awesome: we could set up an online community for making bad stuff good! Contact me if you're interested.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Just so you know when I'm back in the country:
October 28th-1 December - In Huddersfield for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Arriving 10:10am at Leeds Bradford - Flying Back 17:55.

Christmas:
22 December - 4 January. In Lincoln.

Hope everyone is cool.

dp

The Story So Far...

I'm currently splicing together the next podcast; I thought I'd wait until I had enough to say until posting something as I'm aware how easily these sort of diary-style things can quickly disintegrate into; "this week I have been mainly eating pasta and looking at wool" which is never very interesting.

The main things that have happened over the last weeks have been getting my time table or 'agenda', as they're called over here. I've got quite a lot of old-school theory lessons to be going to, which start next week and I'm pretty stoked about it all, been doing quite a bit of composing and completely unnecessary things like staying up until 3am creating a dance track solely out of samples from the 1990s britpop band Sleeper...

Also went to Amsterdam at the weekend for the Gaudeamus Music Festival, which is basically a festival for new composers and new music. Went to a 192 speaker 'wave-field synthesis' performance of electronic music and saw a 'night of the unexpected', which was a similar thing to the one that occured at last year's Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Ceephax was playing there and did an absolutely fantastic set of old-school acid house on a table full of synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines.

Anyway, there is more to say, but I shall leave you waiting for the next podcast installment.

dp

P.S. Everytime I hear something about the American election I can't help but be reminded of the tagline from this film:
[apologies for the link to the poster going down.]