jazzy_dave (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jazzy_dave) wrote2017-05-28 10:26 pm
jazzy_dave) wrote2017-05-28 10:26 pm
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Wire 400th
I mentioned in a previous post that the current June issue of Wire is its 400th.The magazine has been going since 1982 when it was just a bimonthly or even less magazine.it was not til 1990 that it became a monthly one.
For many years this was my bible, and again it still is.It introduced me to so many genres since i stated reading it way back in 1990. What i do like about the mag is the absolutely absorbing and intelligent discussions about music,the culture and politics if any behind it, and the theories generated from disparate analyses such as ethnology, psychology,philosophy, feminism, aesthetics, and cultural studies.
Here is a sample of the writing -
The Wire #250, In Praise Of The Riff, 2004: David Toop “Riffs, Resolutions and Clusters”
It’s hard to isolate just one entry from this issue – it’s all about the cumulative effect, just like its subject matter – although if I had to I might pick David Keenan’s appraisal of the riff that transforms Roxy Music’s “If There Is Something”. In Praise Of The Riff consists of short entries, each one of which draws you to a different music, and to a different definition, or different framing, of what a riff could be. Looking back on it now, I wonder whether it decontextualises traditional Balinese music to compare it to Bo Diddley, or if it does the riff a disservice to hear it in Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke. Maybe, but at the time I just thought it was great that Simon Reynolds had picked “Ruckzuck” as Kraftwerk’s choicest riff (it is!), and I have a feeling that this issue is where I first came across Takehisa Kosugi’s hypnotic Catch Wave. The themed section concludes with an essay by David Toop on the riff in free jazz, which explains how hypnotic repetition helped to channel the explosive energy of 1960's free jazz; something I’d sensed from listening but now could put into words. Reading it today, I notice that David references Alice Coltrane’s Huntington Ashram Monastery, which I didn’t hear until some years later, but it is now my favourite of her recordings, not least because of Ron Carter’s bass riffs.
https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/the-portal/wire-400-archive-portal-frances-morgan
For many years this was my bible, and again it still is.It introduced me to so many genres since i stated reading it way back in 1990. What i do like about the mag is the absolutely absorbing and intelligent discussions about music,the culture and politics if any behind it, and the theories generated from disparate analyses such as ethnology, psychology,philosophy, feminism, aesthetics, and cultural studies.
Here is a sample of the writing -
The Wire #250, In Praise Of The Riff, 2004: David Toop “Riffs, Resolutions and Clusters”
It’s hard to isolate just one entry from this issue – it’s all about the cumulative effect, just like its subject matter – although if I had to I might pick David Keenan’s appraisal of the riff that transforms Roxy Music’s “If There Is Something”. In Praise Of The Riff consists of short entries, each one of which draws you to a different music, and to a different definition, or different framing, of what a riff could be. Looking back on it now, I wonder whether it decontextualises traditional Balinese music to compare it to Bo Diddley, or if it does the riff a disservice to hear it in Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke. Maybe, but at the time I just thought it was great that Simon Reynolds had picked “Ruckzuck” as Kraftwerk’s choicest riff (it is!), and I have a feeling that this issue is where I first came across Takehisa Kosugi’s hypnotic Catch Wave. The themed section concludes with an essay by David Toop on the riff in free jazz, which explains how hypnotic repetition helped to channel the explosive energy of 1960's free jazz; something I’d sensed from listening but now could put into words. Reading it today, I notice that David references Alice Coltrane’s Huntington Ashram Monastery, which I didn’t hear until some years later, but it is now my favourite of her recordings, not least because of Ron Carter’s bass riffs.
https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/the-portal/wire-400-archive-portal-frances-morgan