Trentemøller: Nightcap of a different flavor

(For maximum immersion, the editor highly suggests you click Play on the Shades of Marble live clip while reading. Extra credit for cranking the volume...)  

When one thinks of a nightcap, images of a soothing alcohol-based beverage not long before bedtime come to mind. Or, for those born before 20th-century heating, perhaps a garment worn on the head during cold nights. It could even be extended to some late night music to help wind down the soul after a crowded daylight. Whatever the origin, calm & slow & warming are the main ingredients. Thus, I was especially curious for the experience I would thrust myself into for a late Sunday night live set by the esteemed Danish electronic music composer / production artist Anders Trentemøller (also Wikipedia).

It is generally known that live shows at well-traversed clubs small & large in big cities tend to begin late and end early. And if there is more than the main act on the bill, said main act won't make an appearance until well after the crowd has arrived and many nightcaps have been had. And the stroke of midnight into the next day will have come and gone once you hit the pavement again. Such was the case recently at the atmospheric Mezzanine in San Francisco, home to an eclectic assortment of live performances clearly curated for the under 40 set, maybe even under 30. But concert demographics can be a confuzzling stat. I usually find that there is no norm and am wary of applying generalities to music lovers, fans and fun-seekers.

No norm himself, Trentemøller had been going at it as an indie musician & DJ artist for several years before letting his cat out of the bag internationally in 2006 with his wonderful electronic moody debut The Last Resort. Along with several re-mix projects, two more full-length albums have followed, Into The Great Wide Yonder (2010) and this last September's Lost. Each showcases a musician and production artist reaching forward with experimentation, no doubt crafting into the late night and pre-dawn hours. His pace of new releases amidst his own musical change is just about right, for me anyway. Any sooner to market, and my listener's cup would still be running over from the last collection. (I still have yet to grab his latest.) I caught him live once before at San Francisco's famed & historic The Fillmore in the fall of 2011, and after thoroughly absorbing the energy and sonic attack of his set, knew I had to dive in again. Although one might easily assume that an electronic artist like this would prefer producing tunes in the safe confines of a controlled studio only to turn out the lights and leave well enough alone, turns out Trentemøller loves touring and performing with his live co-ed band. The man in the hat is clearly front & center at his controls (a mix of stacked keyboards, midi-galore gear, samplers & programs & a cymbal, oh my!) but closely flanked by an important very live drum kit, scratchy and colorful if sporadic electric guitar, thumping bass and another bloke trading turns on various strings and inanimate objects. And it works! While experiencing his recordings don't always call for imagining a band, these same tunes sit very well on a stage with actual humans. As of press time, after the effective onslaught has faded and the mostly instrumental tunes have melted into an eventual night's sleep, it is difficult to describe the music and flow. Part deep-thump of groove, part moody psychedelia ambience, part soft clouds of thrash among other things. It would be much easier to have attempted this writing during the set, noting as many nuances and electrons as possible. But there was just no way. Club visits like this with an electronica music edge coupled with squishing bodies, wild eyes and over-filled ears allow for no further multi-tasking. And there's something freeing about this type of live performance - all that's truly required is to sit in and stand with it all, with no mind to what songs or this or that, instead welcoming a stream of consciousness zone to float in. This is all that Trentemøller expects and what we should expect of him. Most of us stood in the club for about 4 hours straight (there was an opener and the endless wait for it all), feet moving in spits and starts for moments in time, bodies buzzing, sonic immersion delights and challenges.

So this one late Sunday night performance did the trick for me, an energetic cap to a particularly great week. At the ripe age of somewhere north of highway 45 and south of rural road 55, some might call me brave and a tad nuts for crashing a party like this just before the dreaded Monday. But make no mistake, I felt right at home taking it all in, just like the late 20-something couple or ménage à trios bumping up against me and no doubt countless others of countless ages & ilk. We were all there to bask and sway in Trentemøller's fantastic aural glow of stimulations. And if further winding down is needed, who says a proper nightcap can't be enjoyed at 2 am? Certainly no one at Mezzanine on that or any other night!

(I plan to re-tread the main floor and upper bar view of the Mezzanine path in May when another of my under-the-radar electronic favorites appears like out of thin air - Pantha du Prince. And I'll be a few days (or another year) older by then, as if that should matter. Listen to the videos on that page for a wonderful excursion.)

As usual, music samples can be found below, but note that each of his 3 albums are best heard, ahem...experienced, in their sequenced entirety.

Thanks for listening and don't forget to turn the lights out before you press play...

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net

Notable links and tune-age*:

• Anders Trentemøller website
• Trentemøller discography and related
• Take Me Into Your Skin from The Last Resort (nice shift at :25)
• Evil Dub & Miss You from same, classic Trentemøller polar opposites
• Always Something Better (Vocal Version) from same (Moby-tinged)
• Shades of Marble & Sycamore Feeling from Into The Great Wide Yonder
• ...Even Though You're With Another Girl & Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider Go!!! from same
• Still On Fire, Candy Tongue & Hazed from Lost

*prepare to test your system's (or paltry ear buds') bass frequency!

Moody Minimalist Lighting by the Lanterna

Back in the toddler days of our now 20-yr old WWW, I used to stream music via a website called Spinner*. It was the first Internet music service, becoming the largest by 2001. This was of course in the pre-iTunes/iPod days when Apple's future was still uncertain and stealing music on Napster seemed like the coolest thing ever. Spinner was an easy & effective new way of discovering unfamiliar music. On one no particular & foggy day, sometime in 2002 while working on audio out of my home in sea-sparkling Carlsbad, California, my ears perked up to a wonderfully refreshing sound. I didn't recognize it, but this was not unusual as I was often listening to a channel or genre that would unearth new treasures for me. I can still recall the triumvirate on my Spinner website player:

Atlantic

Lanterna

Sands

Somehow, music and the 3 words matched perfectly and I was drawn closer. Further scrutiny revealed the hypnotic song was Atlantic from an album entitled Sands by Lanterna. I immediately clicked on the song or artist link in Spinner and began to read...and listen more.

I relish this first moment of discovery, which has taken on such different forms through the years. From the first glimpses of a song back in the days of AM/FM radio coupled with the DJ's comments, to flipping through LP and later CD bins in the 'record' store (the famed Tower Records & so many others), listening to new material in various music classes and at live shows, and right up to discovering music on the web and now nearly solely depending on it and its various offerings - finding new stuff has always been like mining gold to me.

And so it was when I first heard Lanterna 12 years ago, and their newest album, Sands. 9 perfect instrumental tracks filled with acoustic-electric guitars, simple yet unique drums, swelling ambient space, psychedelic sonic washes, and a wall of reverb. Perfect for a drive down a lonely highway, top down or up. Someone somewhere once described their music as horizon-stretched! What a great visual. I'd say cinematic too. And something about their sound reflects the rolling and promising aspects of our California landscape and climate.

Lanterna is one of a long list of bands & artists that conveniently belong to a sub-genre often referred to as post-rock. As the Wikipedia entry and other descriptions note, post-rock is made up of the typical instruments of rock music (sans vocals), but with different sensibilities in texture, timbre and rhythm. Another way to put it - it's sort of stripped-down rock sprinkled with a touch of melancholy and refreshing new wordless characters added to the stories. Other spot-on adjectives I've run across are dark dream pop and ambient isolationism. Lanterna is essentially the project of midwesterner Henry Frayne, a sublime restless soul of a guitarist-composer he must be. Guitar-afficianados should be intrigued to know that his music owes nods to Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Neil Young et al. Henry seems to invite various musicians into his fold to produce his recordings, most notably a drummer-percussionist. I was an instant fan of Lanterna, and later some similar outfits, and have since collected all 5 of their albums from 1998 on. Sadly, it's been nearly 8 years since their last release Desert Ocean. No matter, the 58 songs that stretch across 5 hours & 17 minutes have accompanied me plenty on road trips and just seem to fit or create the mood even when idly standing & dreaming by.

As luck would have it, I actually had the chance by happenstance to see the 2-3 guys of Lanterna live and in concert. This might never have happened if I had not moved further north to Long Beach in 2003. I lived in the quaint Belmont Shore neighborhood. Just a stroll along the main drag from my place was a local music & arts/culture store called Fingerprints. As I sometimes did, I wandered in there sometime in late 2003 on my walk home from work at Design Science software. I noticed a flyer of an upcoming in-store performance by Lanterna. What??!! So of course I wandered in again another day to see and hear Henry Frayne and a couple of his music electrons comrades. It was very homespun on the little makeshift 'stage' at the back of the store, and sounded wonderful. It was a true rare treat to catch them. Amazingly, Fingerprints is still in Long Beach (at a new, larger location) selling music and local garb and continues to offer in-store live performances - kudos!

An Amazon reviewer summed up one Lanterna album very well - "It's like a good long supper with wine and candlelight and good food with an intelligent person you're really interested in - there are different moods and rhythms and topics, but overall the feeling is one of being at ease and also very *engaged*."

In all fairness, it wouldn't be right not to mention Signal Hill, an almost sister-like band to Lanterna. While Henry and his Lanterna hasn't released any new music since 2006, Signal Hill is active, with a new album out in 2013, Chase The Ghost. Other notable company includes the southwest's Scenic, who integrate a bit more post-edge and psychedelica into their post-punk. Note especially 2003's The Acid Gospel Experience. I encourage you to give Lanterna and their relatives a listen. It's music that sometimes seems to go nowhere yet transports all the same. Perhaps the sounds will inspire and calm you, whether you're moving at 80 mph or sitting in the still.

Thanks for listening and don't forget to turn the lights out before you press play...

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net

Notable links and tune-age:

• A fairly exhaustive listing of post-rock artists
• Lanterna discography
• An outdated official Lanterna website

• Atlantic, Grey, 1975 and Lonely from Sands
• Luminous and 48th & 8th on Desert Ocean
• Elm Street, B Minor and Smoke from Elm Street
• Brightness, Adriatic and Seasons on Highways
• Dark Spring, Achieving Oneness and Puerto de Luna from Lanterna

(*Spinner, along with other AOL Music properties, was abruptly shut down in April 2013 by its longtime owner.)

Moby reveals his heart through electrons & groove

Richard Melville Hall may not be a name that rings a bell to the overtly casual music listener, or even some of his ardent & loyal fans, but his 'stage' & artist name should be much more familiar to musicElectrons readers. (I'll let the more literary among you decipher the connection between his artist & birth name.) I first really heard and took notice of Moby during my first viewing of the 1995 Michael Mann LA crime/action thriller Heat. The film possesses a very eclectic, dark & powerful soundtrack & score, including two Moby cuts - New Dawn Fades (a tight, edgy, guitar epic production from Moby's pantheon, reincarnated Joy Division from the 70s) and the ocean lush, melancholy, looping piano/strings-driven God Moving Over the Face of the Waters. A shorter edit of the latter would also be included on 2 original Moby albums, including I Like To Score from 1997.

Moby the person and musician may be many things to those of us who are grateful for him (and even those who may turn their noses & ears). His musical palette includes original compositions & productions that form a bridge across genres of electronica, dance, techno, down-tempo, trip-hop, ambient, DJ-remix, alternative rock and yet somehow more. And he's forged his own independent artist's path through & mostly around the music industry.

His most commercially successfully album (over 10 million sold, double-platinum in US), which also critically broadened his reach, is his fifth, 1999's Play (more info), a true classic IMHO. Several of its cuts permeated US & international media culture for a few years into the new millennium. Play was composed, assembled (from many gospel & folk samples) & produced entirely in Moby's Manhattan apartment, nearly by his lonesome, a wonderfully romantic ideal. No electronica-related collection should exist without Play. His most recent ambitious effort, Innocents, was released just this last October. A sort of production-opposite from Play, it was 'made in LA,' his new home, and includes more collaborators than ever before. 4 months ago I had the great fortune of catching 1 of the only 3 live shows Moby is (was) doing to showcase Innocents and his broad catalog. Maybe a future post will detail that magnificent road-trip odyssey.

Onto matters of the heart, Moby's heart that is. Those of you fairly familiar with his output may already realize what I want to get at here. Ever since that first listen to God Moving Over... during the final celluloid of Heat, on through his wonderful catalog including the very ambient & achingly beautiful s-l-o-w The End Of Everything (as Voodoo Child), to Play, 18 and beyond through more to Innocents, I have consistently felt the musician's open heart poking right through. Moby's use of strings, keyboard, loops and related electronics seems to reveal what he feels deep within - and it must be a heart of compassion, concern, empathy, loss, love and hope. His musical phrasings and layering are his vehicle for this expression, and one of his most notable trademarks. Sometimes passages can bring me to tears, sometimes remind me of or comfort me during lonelier or alone times, other moments tell how even in the grayest of times light and the fresh dawn await. At his peak during these parts of the arrangements, the most beautifully moving melodies can be heard and felt. It's in these moments that the purity of a musician is available to any ear, any soul, for healing and respite from the usual noise around us. Whether you're familiar with Moby or not, I invite you to pull closer and appreciate the feeling in this music that I do. Perhaps it can expand our notions of what electronica & technology can realize in the best of warm hands. A carefully curated sample of Moby tunes & videos across 2 decades is below, possibly a playlist to accompany a winter's night alone or summer's dusk shared by two.

I don't need to have the last word here. As one fan & music reviewer, analog1, so perfectly put it, "...MOBY is always best when no one is listening and he lets his heart make the music." (Well, at least no one but you & me!)

Thanks for listening and don't forget to turn the lights out before you press play...

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net

Open your ears:

Moby albums en iTunes masse

Rushing from Play
Blue Paper from Hotel
Landing from 18 B Sides
Whispering Wind from Play B Sides
Inside from Play
Jltf from Wait For Me
Lie Down in Darkness from Destroyed
Natural Blues from Play
Division from Wait For Me
One Of These Mornings from 18
The Last Day from Innocents
Porcelain from Play
Downhill from 18 B Sides
Rockets from Destroyed
Gentle Love from The End of Everything
Pale Horses from Wait for Me
In My Heart from 18


Open your eyes & ears:

Porcelain (1999)




Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad (1999)




In This World (2002)




Be The One (2011)





The Lonely Night (2013)




Almost Home (2014)

(Tape) Music for a Darkened Theatre

On the eve of Sunday the 5th of January 2014 I was amongst about 80 other brave but wide-eared souls to hear the third night of 'performances' of the annual San Francisco Tape Music Festival. The 2 hour event was held at the Z Below Theater, the small intimate basement space of the larger 13,000 sq/ft Z Space venue, a 20-yr old institute in the Mission District which is "a hub for artists and audiences to revel in the creation, development, and production of outstanding new work."

I have been an appreciative student & fan of the experimental & avant-garde of music since the very early 80s. One branch of this wide under-the-radar milieu is music specifically composed on 'tape' that results in a piece on some sort of fixed medium (media). The composer essentially constructs the piece by bringing together sounds 'found' in the natural world and/or sounds specifically created on tape/computer using technology of the day. About 70 years ago this process involved using all sorts of reel-to-reel & other formats of analog tape & recorders, and later alongside the earliest analog synthesizers such as Buchla and Moog. (The Buchla line of purely electronic instruments was actually designed by a SF Bay Area pioneer in the early 60s, as part of a commission by the SF Tape Music Festival itself!) The earliest nearly mid-20th century compositions spawned a style of electronic music called 'Musique Concrète' and it in turn has brought forth a host of approaches and productions in the last half-century and then some. These days the composition platform du jour is typically the computer and other specialized platforms, where sound elements of any origin can be manipulated beyond belief down to the electron.

Music of this nature is usually presented as playback for the audience from the original master tape, or in the case of this event and most performances today, from a laptop or similar. This evening was a treat because we basically listened to six 8 to 26 minute pieces through 24 speakers in surround in a darkened theater, which left the ears & mind alone to submerse in the odd & creative delights. My neighbor (and yours) would hardly refer to this as music, but my & fellow spectators' very open (some might say tolerant) ears understand this to be music all the same. It's about the furthest from Top 40 radio, jazz & western classical as one can get! It challenges our very notion of what composition, structure and form are about. And the sonic wonders presented are sometimes fantastical, at the least remind us of what we have yet to learn.

One of my two favorites of the evening, as I reflect back, was the 11-minute Bastet (2004) by Elsa Justel from Argentina. To quote a portion of the composer's description, "...Bastet, this naughty cat deity, has slipped into the piano box. Confused by the strange appearance of this place, she tries to find the exit while holding on to the strings." This was a delightfully playful & chaotic & at times humorous piece that combined acoustic instrument strings & parts of drums in all manner of attack, friction & processing. It is not clear if the cat was ever let out of the bag or not! Listen to the 2-minute excerpt found at the link above.

Another notable experience of the night was the 22-minute Hot Air (1995) by Jonty Harrison of the UK. This closing selection, one of the longest of the set, was hypnotic, fat, tiring and elating. One could feel the collective sigh/awe of the audience when it ended, like air finally being let out of tires after a circus inside. In Mr. Harrison's words, "...One of the principal source sounds for this work — balloons from children’s parties — gave rise to a train of thought which, after linking ‘toy’ balloons to ‘hot air’ balloons, went on to draw in numerous other concepts of air (breath, utterance, natural phenomena) and heat (energy, action, danger)." Excusez-moi?

So all that just begins an attempt to describe the SF Tape Music Festival. It was a treat to attend, and sits in wonderfully stark contrast to some of the more traditional, predictable live music shows I often enjoy. Perhaps next time around I will hit all the performances.

Thanks for listening and don't forget to turn the lights out before you press play...

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net

Starting Line

Finally, a unique blog dedicated to electronica & electronic music - we call it musicElectrons!

...or...

Why is this here at all?!




After a few years since landing this lovely locale, I am finally ready to blast this thing off with some actual content. 

My idea is 2-fold & simple - create a place where I can share my unique but not unusual passions & explorations for mostly under-the-radar, falls-between-the-cracks music styles, genres, artists & their sounds; explore my own need & knack for writing, ideally about things I know, think I know and love.

My gut tells me that posts will be weekly or more, and mostly pertain to the various & sundry electronica & electronic music out in the world. This is an immense category of sonic wonder, a path I've been on since 1981 and my earliest college days at UCSD in La Jolla, California. Dropping some household names (to those in the know-ish), think non-western avant-garde stuff from John Cage (see also Wikipedia), Steve Reich, Milton Babbitt & friends, to contemporary groove-oriented trippy-hoppy electrons from Thievery Corp, Massive Attack, Moby, Sounds From The Ground (SFTG) and Trentemøller, to more pure electronica, ambient & down-tempo / chill from Telefon Tel Aviv, Autechre, Michael Stearns, Brian Eno and Ultre, among many others. I suppose in all honesty much of my musing will come from the latter 2 camps, though my 30+ year appreciation crosses many borders in this blurry landscape, as it should be (yes?). If this meets your reasons for staring at a screen while making better use of its static electrons, please stop back occasionally or more. Comments and conversation will be allowed, encouraged, sometimes responded to and all that. And I do intend to offer actual music listening samples, as permitted, etc.

So do hold your breath, but not for too long! This is an organic work-in-progress. My hope is to enlighten, possibly entertain, and maybe upon reading & listening you'll want to grab some new sounds for your own collection, tired, new or old or not.

See you again soon...thanks for jumping off your train for a bit.

Aurally yours,
david

david@musicelectrons.net