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!

(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