My director friend Jon Goldman and I got another chance to catch one of our favorite artists at the Disney Concert Hall last week: Cornelius. It was a great show, *despite* the acoustics of the concert hall...and what I mean by that is, while DCH is no doubt a gloriously rich and reverberant space, the sound tends to favor a blended, warm sound that benefits a symphony orchestra; whereas Cornelius' music relies on tight, rhythmic interplay between instruments that is better suited toward a drier space.
Nevertheless, it was thrilling, and we were both excited to see his drummer again...a tiny Japanese woman who goes by the name of Mi-Gu, but who sounded like the second coming of John Bonham. We're both amazed by the way she's able to internalize Cornelius' complex drum parts (especially on Fit Song), and she drew a standing ovation from our mutual drummer friend Andy Featherston. (Side note: Andy, again, my apologies for not calling you back two years ago!!!)
Here's another track by Cornelius, entitled Wataridori. He uses delay (music jargon for 'echo') to great effect in this one.
I’m blogging again because it’s 3:00 AM, and I can’t sleep. Mostly album related issues, but I’ll get to that later….
In the meantime, I’m going to ramble about Takeshi Murakami, probably the most famous pop artist since Andy Warhol. The LA MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) is running a show of the Tokyo-based artists works, and it’s driving me nuts that I don’t have the time to just run downtown to go see it.
Murakami is the founder of the Superflat movement—which in essence is both a rebellion against the staid restraint of traditional Japanese art, as well as a celebration—and sometimes criticism—of contemporary Japanese pop culture. It’s a largely character-based movement—that is, much of the art deals with manga-inspired cartoon characters who require no more reason for existance than that they’re ridiculously cute.
Like Warhol, his work is a marriage of fine art and commerce—and one of the most noticeable unions of these concepts is his design of a Louis Vuitton handbag (which sells for a mere $1520). Murakami goes one step further with the partnership, however, and actually created a little animated film to promote the product:
What I love about it in particular (being a musician) is the soundtrack, a song by a great J-Pop artist called Fantastic Plastic Machine. J-Pop is a particular interest of mine, just because I find it so much more creative than American pop (which for various reasons—cough Clear Channel cough American Idol cough hip-hop culture cough—has become image driven and homogenized). Some of my favorite artists (including previously-blogged-about Cornelius) all come from the trendy Shibuya district of Tokyo, and FPM belongs to this Shibuya-kei movement.
What’s particularly ingenious about this music, though, is that it seems to be a reinvention of a concept in German avant-garde concert music of the 1910s called klangfarbenmelodie, which translated, means ‘tone color melody.’ That technique, pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern (who, along with Alban Berg, comprise the Second Viennese School) is the utilization of tone color as a new element to the progression of a melody. So for example, instead of having a melody played by just one instrument, these guys would break up the melody amongst different instruments in the orchestra, so that each note was sounded with a different tone color. Fantastic Plastic Machine has done this here as well—although the melody and chords would fit very handily with one instrument, the main riff is broken up into various combinations of acoustic guitar strums (going forwards and backwards), keyboards, pizzicato strings, filtered synths, and weird honking sounds. It’s mesmerizing, and works really well with the schizophrenic nature of Murakami’s visuals.
Oh, and guess what the name of the song is? “Different Colors.” How appropriate, both to Murakami AND klangfarbenmelodie.
And in other news, the reason I’ve got insomnia is because I spent much of today thinking over the comments that I’ve gotten from various people I played my most recent album draft for—and I’ve realized that there comes a time when an artist simply needs to stop collecting feedback, and just does what they want to do. And so even though there were some valid suggestions that came from my friends and colleagues in the past couple weeks, I’ve nevertheless reached a point where I’m comfortable with my material, and can confidently move forward with it. And truthfully, one could workshop something forever, and each time someone will have something new to say. It has to stop somewhere! More than anything else, this is telling in that I’ve finally reached a total comfort point with all my material. Next stop: Abbey Road.
I absolutely love this song. It's from a Japanese pop singer named Mika Nakashima--her music runs the stylistic gamut, from dance/club hits to retro 70's-tinged ballads. My personal favorite, though, is the song 'Love Addict.' It's a great jazz number with a rocking hemiola section at 2:21 (that's music-speak for when you have a three-against-two rhythm).
The instrumental at the end is great--trumpet and tenor sax twisting and turning in octaves, with high violins soaring above. Matter of fact, I absolutely love this chart on the whole; great counterpoint, great string writing...whoever did this is brilliant.
(Jazz purists might say that they've heard better charts....and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. I'll be blogging about a genius-friend of mine, Billy Childs, later on...)
I still say, though, that in the context of a bubble-gum J-Pop singer doing a crossover, this track absolutely sizzles.
From time to time I discover a great new artist so unique and so unusual that I can't help but share his stuff with everyone I meet.
I got turned onto J-Pop (Japanese pop music, for those who don't know) through the soundtrack to a quirky video game called Katamari Damacy. Through various internet forums, I met a guy in Japan who had great taste in music; and for awhile he was sending me a number of MP3s of these great pop, jazz and electronica musicians who were doing the most amazing material over there. There are too many to go into detail here, but I will mention one artist who has several releases already stateside (and is available on iTunes). His name is Cornelius, and he's on the trendy and tasteful Matador Records.
For those musicians out there, this song's a real delight. First of all, it completely inverts the classic hierarchy of the rock band, where the drums and rhythm section establish the barlines; instead, the vocals mark the bars, and the drums are allowed to float all over the place, only occasionally alighting on a downbeat. The way the drums are played too is extraordinary--really melodic, as opposed to rhythmic.
And for those of you who wonder if the verb 'plays' is really appropriate for an electronica-based artist like this, in the case of Cornelius, the answer is an enthusiastic 'yes.' My writer/director friend Jon Goldman and I caught his live show at the El Rey a couple months back, and we both agreed that it was one of the most impressive concerts we'd ever seen. Not only are all the parts played live by his tight-as-all-hell rock quartet (including hocket-rhythms bouncing back and forth between musicians on stage), but they synchronized their playing to their music videos....without click track, as far as I could tell! Astounding.
