Describing Julian Lynch’s music is difficult, period. But it is even harder to describe his music without falling back on certain buzzwords, terms that have been so overused by music journalists over the past year that they seem to designate everything and nothing at all. We might say, for example, that Julian makes blissed-out 21st-century psychedelia, waltzing lackadaisically through the bottomless archive of musical references (Western and non-) that the internet puts at our fingertips.
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Archive for the ‘Portraits’ Category
Portraits: Interview with Julian Lynch on Tiny Mix Tapes, plus one question that was never published
Friday, October 30th, 2009Body Actualized Control at the Market Hotel: An Interview with the Ubiquitous “Us” Behind North Brooklyn’s first Cosmic Yoga Party
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
When I emailed Jan Rew Midelfort and Etienne Pierre Duguay asking for an interview about the weekly Yoga party they started this summer on the roof of the Market Hotel in Bushwick, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to get away with just sending over a list of questions. Duguay–one of the venue’s resident promoters, as well as the drummer for Real Estate and Predator Vision–responded demanding that I arrive at 7:00 pm sharp the following Wednesday to participate in the Yoga class myself. Midelfort–also a musician, and one of the most talented psychedelic music DJ’s I know–added that I should bring my violin along, because it would be “awesome” if I could perform a continuous drone during the New Age music component of the event, which happens after the sun goes down. I did not have the chance to get in touch with Aurora Halal, the event’s third core organizer, but I’m pretty sure she would have responded with yet another suggestion encouraging me nix the habit of passive spectatorship that journalists tend to fall back on.
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Remembering When Times Were Drastic: Rhys Chatham on the early ’80s
Friday, August 7th, 2009
Walk into any spot in New York City where guitar nerds tend to linger and you’re bound to hear someone talking about it: minimalist composer (and Visitation Rites astrologist) Rhys Chatham is back in New York for round two of last year’s rained-out performance of A Crimson Grail, and somebody you know–or somebody who knows someone you know–is probably rehearsing for it. Boasting the combined decibel power of 200 electric guitars, 15 basses, and a high hat player, Crimson’s North American premiere presents a monumental orchestral slant on Chatham’s signature cross-fertilization of rock and experimental minimalism–dating back to an ear-opening encounter with the visceral punch of NYC punk in the late 1970s, and culminating in what many now identify as the world’s first incarnation of “noise music.”
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Guitar Parts: An Interview with Jonathan Kane
Monday, June 15th, 2009
Minimalist and pop music have always been closely linked, the vocabulary of the latter coloring the austere principles of the former. Terry Riley and Philip Glass drew inspiration from jazz, just as Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, in their monumental symphonies for electric guitar, did from rock ‘n’ roll. Since 2005, and February, his first opus, Jonathan Kane has been revisiting the history of the blues. What could be more logical? “The blues is an intrinsically minimalist art form,” he shares. “John Lee Hooker [...] often played consisted of one droning chord and a melodic, repetitive riff. Minimalism, yes?”
Germ Studies, live at Ausland in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg
Sunday, June 7th, 2009
Germ Studies is an Australian duo made up of Chris Abrahams on a DX7 synthesizer and Berlin-based Clare Cooper on a zither-like instrument called a guzheng. I was fortunate enough to see them perform at Ausland in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg on 4 June.
No Fun Fest 2009, by PRSE and Emilie Friedlander
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
As close to a scene report as contemporary noise can afford, No Fun Fest, with Carlos Giffoni at the helm, each year confronts problems of selection. Over three nights, some 25 acts say their piece, spanning a vast geography of provocation and anomie. But how to organize such a spread?
FUCK SEPARATION: A Conversation, by Alessandro Keegan/Mattin
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
Mattin is a musician and performance artist from the Basque Country. He has produced a slew of releases under the names of Deflag Haemorrahge/Haien Kontra, Sakada, Billy Bao, and No More Music. He has also collaborated with many artists, including Drunkdriver, Margarita Garcia, Tim Goldie, Taku Unami and Tony Conrad, to name a few. His work mixes laptop electronics with politics and, in the case of Billy Bao, some harsh, deconstructed rock and roll. In the live setting, Mattin is subversive, sometimes abrasive, and always finding ways to undermind audience expectations and break the boundaries inherent to performance.
The Reactable: “That was one of the goals: let’s allow everyone to have fun playing the instrument.”
Friday, May 1st, 2009
If you have ever heard or seen the Reactable in action, it was probably during Bjork’s 2007 tour. Largely influenced by the Moog synthesizers of the ’60s and ’70s, this new instrument is a translucent table with movable colored blocks that produces a range of rhythms, melodies, and sequences. If the Reactable has not received the mainstream recognition it warrants, this may be because it is not its tonal qualities that make it revolutionary for live performance, but its components. While its sound is unlikely to break the mold, the Reactable is a dramatic innovation in both interactive performance and music technology.
An Extremely Drastic Case of Déjà Vu: Karole Armitage and Rhys Chatham Revive Underground Dance Classic in NY
Monday, March 30th, 2009
People who view the New York No Wave scene as one of the last truly exciting chapters in the city’s cultural history can buy as many compilations and artist’s monographs as they like, but nothing beats an opportunity to time-travel. Earlier this month at The Kitchen, New Yorkers jumped at a chance to spend two hours back in the early ’80s — a time when drive-by shootings and burning cars were daily staples of downtown life, but also when a late-night walk down 19th street just might land you in the middle of a dialogue between a professional ballet dancer and an army of electric guitars. Think Punk!, an evening of music and physical performance by choreographer Karole Armitage, cast a younger generation of New York Noise-makers in a recreation of Drastic Classicism, an explosive collision of classical ballet and No Wave punk…
Infinity Window: An Interview with Taylor Richardson and Daniel Lopatin
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Infinity Window is a bit of a game-changer. Not that there’s anything drastic about them, but listening to their atmospheric lull is bound to effect you. Try putting on “Artificial Midnight” on a late, dark Saturday afternoon with your friends, like I did, and see the change. If your friends are anything like mine, they’ll sink into the couch and won’t budge an inch. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t traveling.
