The single most time-consuming activity of the past couple months was the inevitable yet long-delayed dumping of Windows Media Player and the ridiculous 30gb brick of an mp3 player (1lb per gb?) I've been schlepping around for the past three years. They've finally been replaced with iTunes and...
The Greek Anna Netrebko as Tosca
...an 80gb video iPod! All of my computer time has been spent ripping DVDs (thunder, thunder, Thundercats ho), adding album covers to the music library, and tackling the Herculean task of digitizing my Composer Music (as we call it here chez C—).
Looking at the list below, I'm reminded of one of the more interesting albums that arrived via The Mailing Room last year. Warp Records, which has been releasing excellent experimental electronic music albums for more than 15 years, put out a 2-CD set of the London Sinfonietta playing works by Ligeti, Cage, Nancarrow, Reich, Stockhausen and Varese—forefathers to some of Warp's artists—juxtaposed with acoustic arrangements of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.
They're recordings of live performances, and I can't say that I'm all that thrilled with the sound, which is thinner and flatter than I would've liked. But I am thrilled with seeing this album stocked in the electronic music section at Amoeba. I don't give a rat's ass, as they say, about "crossover potential" or "expanding the classical music audience" per se or "reaching out to young listeners." What pleases me about this project is that it isn't an(other) embarrassingly ham-handed attempt by an orchestra to repackage themselves as "hip," hoping that 25-year-old concertgoers will suddenly emerge to fill the ranks of their Young Friends of the Orchestra rosters. Rather, this album is a thoughtful collection of avant-garde works compiled respectfully for thoughtful, adventurous listeners who may not be regularly engaged with composed music.
Warp set up a special page for the album, which is titled Warp Works & Twentieth Century Masters.
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| Otto Klemperer: Brahms, Symph No. 4 | Carlos Kleiber: Brahms, Symph No. 4 |
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