Singleversity #1

We at Audiversity have been toying with a few ideas to mix things up a bit without losing our straight-ahead ethos of music reviews. Bigger things in bigger ways are the stuff of bar chats over cold brews, but for now we have decided to devote Saturdays to the glory of literary limitation. This new aspect gives us a chance to comment on videos or music that do not fit into either the New Release of Essential Classic columns, but it's a place where we can still have a little fun. In celebration of this being Post #144, we each picked a song or video of our choice and commented on it using exactly 144 words. There are no restrictions on the music chosen and we are given full creative freedom for literary style and approach. So, in the name of all things random, we proudly present:



Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in exactly 144 words.

(Ed. - Originally this was called Threeversity, but in the spirit of simplicity we've decided to retroactively relabel all of these posts. The content remains unchanged.)

MA:
(#144 of a random playlist generated from my ever-changing database of 12,500+ songs)



I decided to approach the column with a hearty devotion to the random selection of music, perhaps more so than Patrick or Jordan as my overhead description explains. Drum-roll please. This week’s random selection is… Sonic Youth’s "Stones" from their excellent 2004 album Sonic Nurse. I am a big fan of latter day Youth, even if I end up getting flogged every time I mention to another music fan that I prefer the later albums to their early output. I have immense respect for the groundbreaking work the Youth produced in the 80s, I just really dig the refined groove of their last couple albums. OUCH! I mean Goo is better… though I think it sounds a bit aged… OW! OOF! Er, Daydream Nation is genius… OH! EEE! [sobbing in pain] “Teen Age Riot” for life [sniffle sob] “Teen Age Riot” for life…

PM:



An Ode to William Basinski in Slant Grossblank (Or, Pretentious)

I’ve taken a bit of “poetic license” (bad pun) with the Grossblank:
12 syllables a line is 12 words here… Iambic hexameter be damned.
The first nine lines set up a “problem,” the final three comment.
Problem: Ill-fitting line-breaks, 6AM local, no iTunes. Solution: William Basinski.
But it can’t be that simple. His “Disintegration Loops 1.3” was fate,
a 12-minute piece that soothes and repeats as it falls apart.
You may know his Brooklyn story, 9/11, how it was so ironic
for it all to be happening outside his apartment as he watched,
his four-part master work copped from aged 80s tapes totally recontextualized…
But did you know that Basinski’s ambient bits gently coax me awake
in another form of recontexualization? There’s dark and light to every story,
but for me, Basinski is both: The dark of another day. (Emo?)

JR:



Call it a conflict between nature and nurture, but I used to despise Vulcans. That is until I painted a fluorescent "NO!" on the tabula rasa. It goes on. I'd argue Vulcanism isn't an evolutionary jump, pure logic is equally deplorable. Musical Vulcans tend to gravitate towards austerity as well; finding more merit in screeching noise than plaintive ballads. Its a different lense, for sure, and maybe I've reached a breaking point, flute solos are sounding mighty good right now, especially when done by dimension-tripping voyagers from the late 60's. Watch German kraut/prog masters, Embryo, get down with the Karnataka College of Percussion in Bangalore. These Germans break out the marimba and the oud before it was even postmodern being down with third-world music. This jam sesh is brought on by the perspective only articulated by psychedelic drugs or advanced intelligence.

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Oh! We're also featured in an article on the second page of this weekend's "Pursuits" section of the Wall Street Journal, which is pretty mind-boggling in its own right... But in honor of opinionated disagreement, not quite the summation we were hoping for. We very very very much appreciate the attention, but it's not totally accurate saying we cover "rare" music. We concentrate on new releases that are sometimes overlooked by the mass public and sometimes not. In the simplist terms possible, it's the music we enjoy. Whether it's something as popular and obvious as LCD Soundsystem or seldom-heard music from the Western Sahara, it's music that moves us enough to spend time writing about it and that we feel deserves your attention as well. We are obviously not breaking any new ground or kidding ourselves as important tastemakers; we are simply three guys who enjoy music and writing, and since we have the opportunity to be exposed to so much amazing new music, we feel we should share the experience with you. And don't worry: The irony of the quotation in the article is not lost on us.