The Sound of That Much Life

Here's another track from New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, Colin Stetson's new album: 'Fear of the Unknown and the Blazing Sun' features Laurie Anderson's somehow detached and puzzling spoken-word contribution and Shara Worden's singing on the top of Colin Stetson's hypnotically pulsating saxophone playing - the latter was recorded live, in one take by twenty microphones placed around his instrument (the clicks and claps you hear come from Colin pushing the keys of the saxophone).

Tape-bow Violin, v2.0

When a Laurie Anderson lecture proves seminal...


Young St. Louisian composer and musician David MacDonald, having gotten inspired by Laurie Anderson's tape-bow violin as an undergraduate student some years before, has now created the Sampolin, the tape-bow violin's digital version.

The Sampolin has got the shape of an analogue violin but it's filled inside with electronics and it's got some extra knobs and buttons.

Similarly to the original, a certain short sample of sound is assigned to the bow: the sample 'starts' at one end, and it 'ends' at the other end of the bow. If the bow touches the the string on the Sampolin, the string tells the computer which part of the bow is touching it, so the computer will tell which part of the sample to be played. By pushing the buttons aligned on the neck, the player can easily switch between the samples he wants to play. Plus, by turning the tuners in the pegbox, instead of fine-tuning the strings, the player can add extra effects to the raw sound, for example an additional musical tone that is extracted from the original sample.

Watch David's introduction of the Sampolin:

Witness the Darkness. (Literally, It's Removed)

 :(

Do not hold your breaths any longer: it's here at last, in its entirety! After a deliverance of more than two weeks, now you can watch a complete video recording of 'The Speed of Darkness', a live performance by Laurie Anderson from 1997, uploaded by LukeK79 (whose other Andersonite uploads are also highly recommended).


'The Speed of Darkness' features stories about, amongst others, 

control

while

holding a mirror up to late twentieth century techno-culture.

The musical parts contain elements from 'Bright Red', the 'Nerve Bible' performances as well as the then-subsequent 'Moby Dick' / 'Life on a String'.

Playlist:

1. Intro / World Without End
2. Alexander the Great / Hey Ah Hey / Music and Sand / Cybersex
3. Technology / Content Providers / Hotel Hot Dogs
4. Hunting for Information / The Night Flight from Houston
5. To the Moon / You've Got to Have Leaders
6. Rockefeller Center / Theme Park with Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno
7. Therapies / Can You Hear Me? / Someone Else's Dream / Microsoft and Vatican
8. Interspecies Communications / Michael Jackson / Elvis Séance / Video Conference
9. Video Conference (cont'd) / Work Ethic and Control Rooms
10. The Language of the Future (as the Voice of Authority)
11. Muddy River / Pillow Speaker Song

Duets on Ice in London, 2011 a. k. a. Auditive Solace for the Remote and Deprived (Plus Photos, Yay)

... a. k. a. that's what friends are for!

Files on a String now proudly presents timeiswide's recording of 'Duets on Ice' in London, performed at the Barbican Art Gallery a few days ago: prepare your ears for 2 x 12 minutes of groovy freeform improvisation onto musical bases that may be familiar from 'Delusion' (plus, I dare say, 'Homeland'). Yes, there are two recordings since the first session of 'Duets on Ice' (8 PM) was sold out so the organizers announced yet another performance at 9 PM. Considering Laurie's genuine inclination towards random playfulness, it comes as no surprise that the sessions are quite different from each other.

"[...] also, Laurie almost fell off the very tiny stage .... during the second session, the ice on her right skate broke off, and Laurie lost her balance .... [then] got her balance back. Laughed, smiled and immediately continued with now only one ice block, received an extra applause from a relieved audience ... "


"[...] and what felt as a long long time when Laurie lost her balance due to an ice-break on her right foot skate turns out to be a split second on the rec!
See, what you sense and experience as many seconds turns out to be different, on a recording!"

(excerpt from Timeiswide's review of the sessions)

• Laurie Anderson's 'Duets on Ice' in London (2011-03-03), Session One at 8PM (audio length: 13 mins 2 secs, file size: 17.9 MB)

• Laurie Anderson's 'Duets on Ice' in London (2011-03-03), Session Two at 9PM (audio length: 12 mins 5 secs, file size: 16.6 MB)

Laurie Anderson playing 'Duets on Ice'

at the Barbican Centre in London, England

photo by Rune Hellestad

(FYI: more photos of the event at Contactmusic: here and here. Also in Barbican's Facebook photo gallery!)

The Never-Had Art of Conversation, LOL

"Art and tv don't mix, everybody knows that. If people wanted to see art on tv, they'd say "hey, you know, I want to see art on tv"."

(Tad Eustace Ghostal a. k. a. Space Ghost sharing his doubts about Laurie Anderson's guest appearance on his talk show)

Behold yet another rip-roaring slab of quality talk show entertainment: in an episode of 'Space Ghost Coast to Coast', an animated late night show, Space Ghost had the displeasure to interview downtown musician type Citizen Anderson on subjects like remote controls, online invisibility and Richard Nixon.

To stay diplomatic, the episode was not the highlight of Space Ghost's professional career as a talk show host. But who cares if you can get a screen capture that reveals its message only when flipped horizontally :)

Visual Solace for the Remote and Deprived

A photo gallery and a video tour of the joint exhibition of the early works of Laurie Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown and the late artist Gordon Matta-Clark at the Barbican Art Gallery in London:

The exhibition is called Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s. It opens today and it runs until May 22nd, 2011.

FYI: Tonight Laurie Anderson will re-perform one of her early trademark acts, Duets on Ice at the gallery.

Sigh.

A Singing Carpenter's Level and Other Everyday Stuff...

21 more or less tabloid-sort questions and 21 adequately neat'n'bland (sometimes informative) answers, still a pleasant read - this is New York Magazine's recent interview with Laurie Anderson.

The End of the Moon... Almost

Read Tom Gordon's breathtaking story about a Laurie Anderson gig's soundcheck turning into a disaster right before the show... Tension. Twist. Thrill. More tension. In a theater near, uh, Reno NV (snare, snare, hi-hat).

Laurie Anderson at ICA (London), 1990

"[...] thrills for me are discovering something while I'm working or talking to someone or suddenly realizing "oh I could see that upside down for a second" or you just suddenly get a totally different point of view of a very familiar situation. To me that's a kind of key of... if it's already familiar but I can look at it as if it's not at all."

(Laurie Anderson, 1990)

Listen to a gorgeous conversation between Laurie Anderson and Sarah Kent at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, UK. According to the British Library's archive, the recording was made back in November 1990, cca. a year after the release of 'Strange Angels' album, and towards the last month of the 'Empty Places' Tour which was running almost during the whole year in 1990. Consequently, it's no surprise that among the topics were the current tour and the album; Wim Wenders; learning to sing; having a lot of different voices; speed and avant-garde; senator Jesse Helms and 'Coolsville' - plus many many more. There's a particularly amusing part about Ken Nordine around 38 minutes into the record; Laurie did a hilarious imitation of his manner of speaking.

• Laurie Anderson talk at ICA (1990) (audio length: 73 mins 13 secs; listen to the stream directly in the archive of the British Library)

Filling the Garden with a Single Melody

The Singing Trees project in Basel, Switzerland is not going to be Laurie Anderson's first garden sound installation - in 2002, she filled the World Financial Center Winter Garden with an enormous sound cloud created by her violin/viola.

Read about the details of the project Sonic Garden website or listen to Laurie's introduction and an excerpt of the lovely melody directly by clicking to the following URL:

• Laurie Anderson's Winter Garden Project (audio length: 2 mins 22 secs, file size: 3.27 MB)

Metrópolis, 1986

"While I criticize technology I use several thousand Watts of power to say that."

(Laurie Anderson, 1986)

Caution: the following videos are recommended only for those who are inclined to bear overdubbing on the original (English) sound.

TVE's (Spanish national tv) cultural magazine Metrópolis has made this interview with Laurie Anderson around the time of the 'Home of the Brave' Tour. I originally found the video in the online archive of TVE but soon it proved to be simply crap - halfway into the video, vision and sound slip out of sync which gets really serious / annoying towards the end (cca. 15-20 secs). So I decided to synchronize the sound bit-by-bit back to the video. Sadly, the overall quality of the original video was quite poor (for example, at some points you can hear an opera aria seeping into the left channel, etc.), plus, I had to create a different sound intro as well. Now the result is on YouTube; you decide about its enjoyability.

In the interview Laurie discussed topics like American pop culture; being a social critic; Laurie's love-hate relationship with technology; the wide range of one-of-a-kind instruments used during the 'Home of the Brave' Tour (including, among others, the keyboard tie and the drum suit) and many more. She was also talking about the imagery of 'Blue Lagoon' and the Spanish lyrics of 'Smoke Rings'.

Hablar... Gone... Awry

"I looked out and every single person had gone..."

(Laurie Anderson on her worst concert experience)

... the quote above is taken from Laurie's adventure with Spanish language from the time when she was trying to get rid of one of her bad habits. Read the rest of the story at WorstGig, music journalist Jon Niccum's interview series on artists' worst concert experiences.

Laurie Anderson 101 - the Audio Edition

Two hours of Laurie Anderson's music - from two recent audio portraits from Europe:


1. First, a podcast from Spain, presented by Alex Kocic / UEMCOM Radio.

• ivoox Artist of the Week: Laurie Anderson (audio length: 59 mins 21 secs, file size: 27 MB)

Playlist:

• Transitory Life
• Born, Never Asked
• White Lily
• Coolsville
• Hiawatha
• World Without End
• Speak My Language
• Washington Street
• Beginning French
• Strange Perfumes
• O Superman
• Bright Red
• Only an Expert

2. The other one comes from Stockholm: Laurie Anderson's musical portrait as part three of Sveriges Radio P4's 'Poets, Dreamers and Visionaries' series. Along with Carin Kjellman's introduction (in beautiful melodic Swedish, of course):

• Bohemen, Drömmaren och Visionären: Laurie Anderson (audio length: 55 mins 2 secs) (click to the PLAY button in the bottom banner of the page)

Playlist:

• O Superman
• The Ouija Board
• Love Among the Sailors
• From the Air
• Cartoon Song (from United States Live)
• Baby Doll
• Thinking of You
• Big Science
• Rotowhirl
• My Eyes
• The Dream Before
• In Our Sleep
• Strange Angels
• The Beginning of Memory
• The Lake
• Flow

Detroit vs. Laurie

Reviews of Laurie Anderson's recent lecture at the Detroit Institute of Arts - one from each side:

• The Detroiter: Who Are You People? - a lengthy description provided by Geoffrey LaRue at Crasstalk

• Laurie Anderson Lecture at DFT: Had I paid for tickets, I woulda been pissed! - LAWRENCEcreative was not blown away by what he witnessed, to say the least. Oh well.

The (Late) Night America Got Its Insanity Fix

A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a wo... whatevs. Laurie Anderson is the master of confusion. Performing as her male alter-ego Fenway Bergamot on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night (February 24, 2011), (s)he stirred a tidal wave of WTF among the viewers of the show which, for a few hours, sent the term "Laurie Anderson" among America's top trending topics on Twitter.

Super wicked creepy awesomeness - or just 'Another Day in America':

If you are interested what people thought about Fenway Bergamot, check these out:

• Prefixmag's review of the performance
• Tweets posted during and after the performance, collected by Mnemosyne (some seriously hilarious genuine reactions - explicit language!)