The Fulcrum; Elliot Cole and Brad Balliett (2011)
The Fulcrum, Elliot Cole and Brad Balliett (2011)
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Lyrics:Elliot Cole
Music: Brad Balliett and Elliot Cole
from the album The Oracle Hysterical 2011
via the Elliot Cole Website
The religious imagination – with its long memory, appetite for layering metaphors on metaphors, and genial ‘suspension of disbelief’ – often strikes me as more dazzling and profligate than the secular, ‘artistic’ imagination. Whereas the market-pressed artist today chases difference, the religious imagination pursues resonance, drawing on deep cultural memories and freely (re)mixing words, images, symbols and references to that end. This EP – my first experiment writing rhymes and rapping them – was a project of this kind of imagination. As I wrote this ‘history of the world (to c.2000BCE)’ I worked hard to layer each image on a resonant one from a distant source: the Biblical Wheels of Gagallin are imagined as the spinning circles that draw sine waves, sine waves as the regular crest-and-trough of farmland and irrigation channel, irrigation channels as formants in a tone. The result: my own personal mythic syncretism of folk cosmogonies, Lucretian materialism, fake Deleuze, Mesopotamian history, acoustics and, well, a hundred other things.
Dan Kreiger (aka For Jerz): The Notorious B.I.G. & Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag: Just Playing/Dreams (NSFW)
Dan Kreiger (aka For Jerz): Just Playing (Dreams) ft. The Notorious B.I.G. & Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag (NSFW)
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The Notorious B.I.G. ft. Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” – Just Playing (Dreams) [pianist/pd: Dan Kreiger] by Dan Kreiger aka For Jerz
“One thing that I have always loved about The Notorious B.I.G. is the overall musicality and beauty of his voice. It is somehow simultaneously low and high in timbre, and also carries a passionate tone that I find indescribably gripping.
Because of his natural ownership of the meter, as well as the timeless quality of his voice, I believe that Biggie’s rapping invites different accompaniments. I decided play Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” in its entirety along with Biggie’s “Dreams (Just Playin).”
Perhaps the least organic aspect of this project was using ProTools. In other words, I close mic’ed a Boston acoustic grand piano, put on headphones, and played Joplin’s classic ragtime piece along with Biggie’s acapella vocal track.
John Coltrane once said that losing his place while playing with Thelonious Monk was like “falling down an empty elevator shaft.” Coltrane was commenting on the fact that Monk had a sense of time so unique and solid, that one must be completely engaged and immersed in the groove in order to follow along.
The challenge while creating this Joplin/Notorious B.I.G. piece was reminiscent of Coltrane’s quote. Biggie’s time is spot on and one wrong note or rhythmic error on my part meant “edit, undo, start over.” Therefore, I had to know Joplin’s piece well before I could play it with Biggie. BIG’s always in the pocket, and therefore I knew that as long as I stuck with him rhythmically and dynamically, then the music would hook up.”
http://www.dankreiger.de
http://www.dankreiger.com
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Matt Marks-I Don’t Have Any Fun (2010)
Matt Marks-I Don’t Have Any Fun (2010)
from the opera “The Little Death Volume 1″
“The Little Death: Vol. 1, Matt Marks’ post-Christian nihilist pop opera, is an ambitious new work that fuses bombastic electro-pop hooks, frenetically chopped break beats, hypnotic lyrics, and apocalyptic Christian imagery. Holding these disparate elements together is a unconventional narrative that follows two characters, Boy (Matt Marks) and Girl (Mellissa Hughes), on a journey through the world of Fundamentalist Evangelism, as they cope with repressed sexuality in a modern world.
The sample-heavy work draws on musical references that echo the character’s sexual-religious confusion, including pop songs and gospel standards with evocative titles (“He Touched Me” and “When God Dips His Love In My Heart”). Marks took most of the sampled material from his own collection of 1970s gospel albums and classic hip-hop and soul recordings. Using a DIY approach, he produced the album using only a couple of microphones and a laptop running Ableton Live.
The stage show as directed by Rafael Gallegos takes inspiration from a number of sources, including The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and church lock-ins”
