Midnight Rain

So now it is time for my post midnight music choice. This time a classic minimalist avant garde composition from the sixties, Steve Reich and "It's Gonna Rain". I always liked the way this repetitive music, particularly in part one,  locks into a groove and phases through various imperceptible changes.Hypnotic in a strange way.

It's Gonna Rain Part I 0:00
It's Gonna Rain Part II 7:59

It is not to everyone's taste but i hope you like it.

Feldman's Unfolding Music

Another artist of the slow unfolding music genre would be Morton Feldman, famous for his "Rothko Chapel" music, and hence music that does require attentive listening. Here is a piece called "Coptic Light" from 1986.

I love his music so much. Quiescent unfolding dreamscapes.

And for good measure here is a version of "Rothko Chapel". I find it profoundly beautiful, and is ideal listening to with a Rothko painting in mind.

Enjoy.

Conrad's Darkness

Well, all the hoovering , upstairs and downstairs , has been done. Brunch was eggs and Wiltshire ham, and now some reading. Halfway through Joseph Conrad's "Heart Of Darkness" , and studying it in conjunction with "Legacies - Units 27 -32 , Arts Third Level Course , The Nineteenth Century Novel and Its Legacies (A312). I found the text book in a charity shop for a quid.

Hence, some close reading approach is being done.

A Rainbow Sunday

A nice slab of early electronica for today's Sunday music. One of my all time favourite pieces of abstract music - Terry Riley and A Rainbow In Curved Air.

Enjoy.

Young's B flat Dorian Blues

If you have more than a passing nod or knowledge of music it is amazing to find some really obscure stuff on You Tube. Continuing my look at abstract music of the avant garde, there is a whole range of music by La Monte Young, most of which is very difficult to find in either LP or CD variety, but here for you is his classic B flat Dorian Blues.which was recorded by La Monte Young and the Theater Of Eternal Music on October 19th, 1963,

Enjoy.

Pan Sonic

Finnish electronic pioneers of minimalist techno Pan Sonic also fit into the Athabasca music category. Here is their track Corona -

Originally they were called Panasonic but had to drop the A as the Japanese ectronics firm did not like it!

I first heard of them via The Wire magazine, which educated me in all aspects of strange musical byways.
From one of the earlier albums a track called Maa -

I also recommend the 4 CD box set Kesto.
Enjoy.

.. And Now a DVD

Completed a few hours of reading the Conrad book alongside the course book i found in a charity shop in Canterbury which looks at the book , along with others. The next texts to be read will be "The Fox" by D. H Lawrence, "Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, which i read many years ago, "A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man" by James Joyce, and "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf. These will form the basic of my fifty book challenge this year.

With sport being watched downstairs i will now watch a DVD on the new laptop,possibly the copy of Noah that my bro sent me, or the Salzburg Marionettentheater DVD of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, with the LPO conducted by Sir Georg Solti.

On Heart Of Darkness

I found this on You Tube concerning the novel Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It gives another aspect to the novel to help me come to terms of what it is about.

Is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" a masterpiece of art? Or is it, as Chinua Achebe persuasively argues, a racist and deplorable book? What are we to make of Kurtz's dying words, "The horror! The horror!"? Could we read these words as his passing judgment on his own life? Can language even convey or communicate moral truths? Or are our ethical assertions only expressions of our personal attitudes? Are Kurtz and Marlow's dubious response to him fair portraits of moral subjectivism? Is the human heart, like nature itself, ultimately inscrutable?

Very interesting.