>Talking of whom, one of the more better (and more interesting)
> releases this year is Black Dog's Music for Real Airports, a reposte to
> Eno's Music for Airports. You can read about it and hear snippets here:
> http://www.musicforrealairports.com/live/
Thanks for reminding me about this, I love old Black Dog and I had heard about 'Music for Real Airports' but it slipped my mind. Good stuff... I have to say though that it would be nice to live in a world where Eno's version would make sense in airports.
Speaking of Eno, I just read a savage review of his new one in the Wire by Ian Penman:
"This may be the first solo Eno work that is entirely without interest. It is bafflingly below par. Start with that wincingly twee title, so icky and precious it sounds like some high-scorn Young British Artist parody of a previous art era’s solipsistic formalism. I dunno really: what IS it? Eno’s idea of a joke? Some personal code or anagram? A joke about the dangers of self parody?... Mall Gift In Silk Wrapping doesn’t even have the virtue of being terrible, or boring. If it broached the sublime shadowlands of Boring it might not be so bad... Eno is not a dumb guy. Does he not know that, in 2010, the bar has been raised – in terms of both quantity and quality – as far as anything Ambient/Drone/Imaginary Soundtrack related goes? In other words, is it merely the result of myopic laziness, or of overly diversified priorities (in other words, straightforward CD-making isn’t what really interests or excites him any more)? Or is it something more on the level of a kind of politely veiled dishonesty – for if the real Eno were to really make music about his real thoughts and drives and emotions (an Eno who is, as we know, in real life, full of mischief, eros, humour, anger, politics, politicking, who is wide open to new sounds and musics) it would surely be a world or two removed from this... this... overly polite, formulaic, neat-freak suite of instrumental bits and pieces, things that appear to have no real need to exist."
> Joel, if that's your thing, seek out Chris Watson's work. You may remember
> him from Cabaret Voltaire in the early 1980s. My favourite of his is a
> recording of glaciers shifting, which he turns into a troubling, emotional
> piece of work, believe it or not.
That's Vatnajokull off Weather Report - I came across this recently too, as it happens, and I love it too. I hear he does the sound recording for David Attenborough.
Mike Beggs