Favorite video of the year. Liz Green youtube channel

Excellent record from last year, O Devotion | Last.fm | BBC review & preview

So many great mainstream records came out in 2011. This mix can only showcase only a handful of the supreme moments. Consider the veterans Burton and Jarrett; each released new milestones in their illustrious discography. Then juxtapose Erena Terakubo, who is 19 years old, and, after playing alto saxophone for ten years, strikes me as having set a new standard for precocity. Put it this way: she’s mastered the alto styles of Charlie Parker and Jackie McLean and Joe Henderson.

320kbs iPod ready download Rapidshare |

1 Nicole Mitchell-F.O.C. 6:07
2 Carlo De Rosa’s Cross-Fade Brain Dance 2:37
3 Animation-Spanish Key 10:58
4 Laïka-Watch Your Back (Appointement In Ghana) 5:32
5 Iro Haarla Quintet-Satoyama 4:49
6 Peter Evans Quintet-The Big Crunch 2:56
7 Tied & Tickled Trio
f. Billy Hart-Lonely Woman/Exit La Place Demon/The Electronic Family 11:13
8 Shift-Gavotte 5:03
9 New Zion Trio-Gates 4:59
10 Harriet Tubman-Sideral Flux 4:03
11 The Jack Dejohnette Group-One For Eric 21:18

There is so much improv being woven between musics not having much to do with the narrow term ‘jazz’ that I’ve come to understand jazz proper has recently entered its next developmental phase. The gist of it is young and youngish improvisors from every continent are no longer beholden to the conventions of classicism or the avant-garde.

So it is the term ‘fusion’ has become vital again as a marker of unfussy experiments and shaking up of genre conventions.

Full stream:

320kbs iPod ready download Rapidshare |

1 Charles Bradley::Trouble In The Land 00:58
2 Charles Bradley::Lovin You, Baby 5:25
3 Hot Tuna::Vicksburg Stomp 3:44
4 Lucky Peterson::Running Down The Railroad 6:38
5 ReBirth Brass Band::The Dilemma 3:53
6 Hawthorne HeadhuntersNo Crying Now, No Lyin Down 3:07
7 Gina Sicilia::Gimme A Simple Song 3:54
8 Me’shell Ndegeocello::Crazy and Wild 4:29
9 Mayer Hawthorne::Work To Do 3:55
10 Ceux Qui Marchent Debout::All Together 4:00
11 Johnny Nicholas::(It’s All Over Now) Baby Blue 5:04
12 Steve Cropper::Right Around The Corner 2:36,
13 Tracy Nelson::One More Mile 5:52
14 The Funk Ark::From the Rooftops 4:30
15 Blind Boys of Alabama::The Last Mile of the Way 4:26
16 Eric Bibb with Staffan Astner::People Get Ready/Get Onboard 11:20

Having settled back sometime ago into a decidedly old school frame of mind, there’s nothing here cozying up to any kind of envelope.

320kbs iPod ready download Rapidshare |

1 Kalabi – Disputed Claim 4:55
2 Krome & Time – Ganja Man (DJ Hype Remix) 6:42
3 The Prototypes – Born to Rise 2:27
4 Calibre – Who’s Singing 5:43
5 Cyantific – Touch Me  4:48
6 Foreign  Concept – Radiation 5:21
7 Majistrate & Sly – One World 3:34
8 J Majik & Wickaman – Ritual 5:36
9 DJ Nut Nut – Special Dedication 3:21
10 Hamilton – Brainstorm 4:03
11 Crystal Clear and Zen – Heavy VIP 5:20
12 Sigma – The Jungle (Funt Case Remix) 5:58
13 Lyptikal – Problem Solvers/We Be Flocking 2:00
14 Lenzman – Broken_Dreams 6:05
15 Radio Silence – Beginning Of Sunday 5:25

compiled by DUB COLLISION
noguts noglory studios | cleveland, oh 2011

DNB = drum and bass for all of you who fell off the train
ETZ = etzetera

Full stream:

320kbs iPod ready download Rapidshare |

Gaz and Nick nailed down a name for their IOS5 audio show, Sonic Touch. The previous episode is here. Sonicstate’s IOS5 news page is essential.

My current favorite hand audio app is Animoog for iPhone 4. The following video features the previously released Animoog for iPad.

A Tour of Animoog from Moog Music on Vimeo.

Perpetuum Jazzile (Slovenia) on youtube | youtube search | home page

Comparisons with Pandora quickly come to mind when describing Senzari. Both services let you search for your favorite artist to create your own radio station which will mix that artist’s tracks and similar ones by other bands. Since algorithms aren’t perfect, you can still skip a few songs if you don’t like them.

However, Senzari’s CEO is quick in pointing out the differences between his service and Pandora’s. One of them is the depth of its catalogue: with 10 million songs, Senzari boasts “10 times more tracks than Pandora”. This is clearly a huge asset for Senzari – we all know how frustrating it is to fail to find an artist on these services. This is also an important element for a platform that hopes to please listeners all over the world, with different music tastes, including Brazilian and Hispanic music. (How Senzari Plans to Take On Pandora and Traditional Radio)

Sometime in my second hour of auditioning Senzari last week I realized its algorithm for choosing music sucked. I suppose I should qualify this impressions by adding ‘for my purposes.’ After all, my purpose, as long as I’m going to be subjected to some kind of algorithm, is to enlist it to aid a serendipitous journey of discovery.

Pandora leverages the Musical Genome Project to great effect. The Pandora user loads in multiple “seed” choices when initializing and developing a custom radio station. This really revs up the subsequent unwinding of the algorithm’s musical choice-making. It is easy to develop custom stations that step off trail.

Whereas Senzari’s current algorithm fails. To set-up a station you select a single artist. There’s no way, yet, to refine this initial choice. The ensuing broadcast set reflects this ‘monological’ approach.

Presumably, refinement of this “single factor” comes with plugging in social factors gleaned automatically from Facebook friends on Senzari. Whatever…

I started with rock choices, and started stations with the seed of The Byrds, then of Quicksilver Messenger Service. Initially The Byrds station reflected the folk rock core of the early Byrds, ignored the group’s country-rock breakthrough, and, then morphed into a mostly non-stop 1965-1967 pop hit machine, interspersed with minor tracks from Roger McGuinn and Stephen Stills. My first thought? Way too much of the machine part involved in executing the algorithm was showing through.

My Jellyfish station cycled through Jellyfish and XTC. Inexplicable. Likewise, the Ry Cooder stations cycled through about ten artists. Senzari didn’t get the AFrican core of Abdullah Ibrahim or Randy Weston. The most successful station I created was the one with experimental guitarist Aidan Baker, but only Baker’s context and musical relations are not very familiar to me.

Nor could Senzari make a station from Amos Garrett or The Quarter After. I stopped trying to stump it when it went 0-2.

Next I decided to challenge the obviously thin formula by introducing two left field seeds, Pauline Oliveros, and, Bill Laswell. In both cases, the test I posed to the darn algorithm. was to travel down the various branches implicit in the substantial diversity on offer by Oliveros and, then, Laswell.

Here’s what the formula spun on the Pauline Oliveros station:

Gordon Mumma
Deep Listening Band
Gordon Mumma
Henry Cowell
Pauline Oliveros
Charlemagne Palestine
Henry Cowell
Terry Riley
Pauline Oliveros
repeat: Gordon Mumma
Charlemagne Palestine
Deep Listening Band
Lou Harrison
Harry Partch
Pauline Oliveros
Oliver Messiaen
Gordon Mumma

On one hand this provided an intriguing aural trip. On the other hand, the formula revisited the same records by Mumma and The Deep Listening Band and Henry Cowell, and so shouted out to me how stupid it is, as a musical set-inducing piece of programming.

The Laswell set was even more narrow, and, as a ‘machine take’ purportedly able to access hundreds of recordings related to the various genre preoccupations of Bill Laswell, laying into Jah Wobble and Burnt Friedman for seven of the first twelve tracks was ludicrous and revealing.

Burnt Friedman
Jah Wobble
Praxis
Bill Laswell
Burnt Friedman
Bill Laswell
Muslimgauze
Jah Wobble
Burnt Friedman
Jah Wobble
Material
Burnt Friedman

Senzari won’t be damaging Pandora based in their having a superior music-choosing technology. For me, if there are sensitive muso types laboring for Senzari, their day hasn’t arrived. The musical results sound random, and in comparison to Pandora, Senzari’s hype is cynical.

However, the archival photographs which get plugged into the broadcast interface are wonderful.

Deep Listening Band

Buffalo Springfield

1 Glenn Jones – Menotomy River Blues 1:30
2 Barn Owl – Midnight Tide 5:16
3 Ellen Fullman – Flowers 9:56
4 Erik Wollo – Silent Currents 2, Part 6 3:15
5 Julia Holter – The Falling Age 9:14
6 Tim Hecker – Sketch 3 1:20
7 Trouble Books & Mark McGuire – Life in a Peaceful New World 4:47
8 Aidan Baker & Kevin Micka – Figures 14:42
9 A Produce & Loren Nerell – String Theory 3:54
10 Nauseef, Mori, Parker, Laswell – Majuu 3:33
11 thisquietarmy – The Pacific Theater 11:58

Imagine what a very long slow sweep of a wide brush laden with several shades of paint looks like. This mix captures a sweep of slow music, a favorite genre known–otherwise–by different labels. Yet, as you have the opportunity to hear in this bringing together of some of my favorite brush strokes from recordings of the last year or so, it all could be termed sound painting too.

Synthtopia iPad/IOS tag

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