tunequest

this morning i increased the number songs on the tunequest playlist from 300 to 1000 songs. that translates to about 110 albums or so, alphabetically ranging from ‘0′ to ‘Bo.’ even though alpha-by-album method pretty much ensures a random assortment of musical styles, i decided i wanted an even larger variety to choose from. so without further ado, here are today’s entries.

• thomas newman [american beauty]
• christopher franke [babylon 5: the face of the enemy]
• christopher franke [babylon 5: river of souls]
• christopher franke [babylon 5: messages from earth]
• chris isaak [baja sessions]
• mercury rev [all is dream]

today was the first of what i’m sure will be several babylon 5 days in the coming weeks. tangerine dream member christopher franke wrote the music for every episode of the epic sci-fi series and has released the score from about 30 of the 110 episodes for a total of about 17 hours to my taste, the music is very laid back and mellow; appropriately spacey with a handful of memorable themes and catchy action cues. thelogbook has just about everything you’d want to know and more. •

i don’t know much about thomas newman or his composing style, but his unorthodox score for the 1999’s american beauty is unique and compelling. i haven’t seen the film, so i don’t know what effect the score generated on screen, but the music, based primarily on percussion, is simple, subtle and itself beautiful. •

lastly, i’ve never paid much attention to Chris Isaak, but a bunch of his albums came with my marriage, and i’ve found that i do enjoy his laid-back style. today, he took me to a little bit of mexico while channeling elvis and roy orbison with his baja sessions. Though he was trying to hard on Only the Lonely.

Today’s roundup:

• system 7 [777]
• tortoise [digest compendium of the tortoise's world]
• oasis [what's the story morning glory]
• styrofoam [a heart without a mind] single

A little story about System 7: back in summer of 1997, when only a handful of people knew what "mp3" meant, I ran across a song file called system 7-dizzy spoon on an old-school Hotline server. Being a Mac guy, I was intrigued by a band named after a defunct operating system. And being in the first year of college, I was susceptible to doing the typical college-age experimentation, so download it I did. I remember enjoying the song almost immediately, but because my musical world revolved mostly around rock at the time, I didn’t seek out any other material by the group and left it as a one-off in mt collection.

Then a funny thing happened three years later in summer of 2000. I discovered the most excellent german band of the 70s: Can. The last song on their 1972 album Ege Bamyasi is entitled Spoon and I think I nearly had an aneurysm of excitement the first time I heard heard it. I immediately recognized it as the same song as the Dizzy Spoon file. Rather, it was almost the same song. Dizzy Spoon turned out to be System 7’s contribution to the 1997 Can remix/tribute album Sacrilege.

Since then, Can has become one of my most respected and admired groups for its innovations and influence and I like to think that I was pre-destined to enjoy their music from the moment I downloaded that mislabeled mp3.

As for System 7, the group’s engaging ambient techno continues to entertain me, though 777 is one of their earlier efforts and is a little disappointing. "faydeaudeau" is the standout track and overall the album is decently mellow space out music, even if the composition is overly simple.

Speaking of early works, that Tortoise album is a bit difficult to handle, which is probably why I hadn’t listened to it for nearly 4 years. Digest Compendium is a collection of early singles and remixes, where the group seems more experimental, having not yet found their sound. As such, it’s uneven, and at times dull. Event though Tortoise is one of my favorite bands, I ended up removing a handful of songs from my library because I couldn’t see myself listening to them again. however, it did serve to remind me that I’ve been neglectful of the band lately. I had better rectify that soon.

today included:

• bavarian radio orchestra performing beethoven's no.5
• badly drawn boy [about a boy]
• english symphony performing delius' florida suite
• disney's magic skyway music from the 1964 new york world's fair
• all tomorrow's parties 1.0

you know, the back-to-back playing of delius' florida suite (which is magnificent, btw) with dvorak's no.9 has given me the idea to put together some kind of "impressions of america" compilation. dvorak's 9th was written during the time the czech composer spent in states (it even premiered in new york) and delius was inspired to write his florida suite by his experiences while he live in jacksonville. both composers wrote their works near the end of the 19th century and i guess i'm just intrigued by late-romantic music influenced by the american landscape and psyche of the time. i'd be tempted to only put foreign composers on that compilation (delius was british), but then i wouldn't be able to include copland's appalachian spring.

also, i must call out the disney music. richard and robert sherman's compositions for the magic skyway exhibit at the new york world's fair is simply a modern-era musical gem. the futurism is thick and the music just exudes the scientific and industrial "up-and-go-get-em!" ethos of the era.

Now that’s more like it. Eight hours of music over two days should put a dent in the deficit i developed over the weekend. If i can keep up the pace of 4 hours of music per day, i’ll complete this project on october 23, 2006. However, 4 hours appears to be my practical listening limit, fat chance on that. Of course, i could be more generous in my weeding, but i suppose that would be cheating.

::

Dvorak’s 9th is among my favorite orchestral works; It so made my evening drive though suburban atlanta much more pleasurable.

Also mixed in today was, for intents and purposes, the Mouse on Mars remix album. It’s not billed as such, but that’s essentially what Agit Itter It It is. It takes material from Niun Niggung and reworks it as if it were from the Idiology session. untitled states of and Spedualist are pretty damn cool that way.

Ah, sweet weekend, the first without rain in about 2 months. Naturally it’s time for yardwork. I can finally finish my fall raking, just in time for spring. Even though I actually loathe doing yardwork, it does present much opportunity for music listening. Too bad I didn’t get to take advantage of it; I was too busy fighting an alternator.

Curse those who designed the 1997 pontiac sunfire–my hand got stuck in the freakin’ engine!

Still, I did manage to get in some Add N to (X) [add insult to injury] and mad season. no, not the drivel from Rob Thomas’ band–my library may not always reflect it, but I do have a modicum of taste. I refer, instead, to the worthwhile 1995 grunge side project of Pearl Jam’s Mike Mcready and Alice in Chains‘ Layne Staley. I literally hadn’t heard the album in years and for the most part, it has held up since i bought it in high school. It’s an order of magnitude better than the much more publicized Temple of the Dog side project.

progress-wise, it seems that recent slacking is taking its toll. I now have to listen to 45 songs per day (up from 44). with an average song length of 4:05 minutes, by my calculations, I should finish with three days to spare. then I can gear up for tunequest 2007!

I had a short day at the office, so i only managed to work in about 2 hours of music. no albums today, just handful of singles. highlights include stayin’ alive [bee gees], a couple tracks from velocity girl’s¡simpatico! and the hand that feed [nine inch nails] (i’m kinda bummed that i won’t get to hear it again for the rest of the year.

oh well, on with the mission.

i also dumped 2 boards of canada tracks from a few old tunes, vol 2.

One of the effects of loading the iPod alphabetically by album is that I’m getting a refresher course in live music. The tagging scheme I use for live performances looks like this:

year.month.date venue, city

Thus, all the shows are listed chronologically. As far as iTunes is concerned, each show is just an album that starts with a number.

Today found me listening to a 1995 Soul Coughing show in New York City, a completely rockin’ Toronto 2004 performance by Mouse on Mars who I’ve managed to see, twice. If you get the chance, go! and a 2001 show by Air [french band] in Los Angeles.

Also sandwiched in there was A Data Learn the Language, an uber-smooth postrock record by The Mercury Program. Good stuff that.

Highlights: John Williams score for A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a breathtakingly moving film score, particularly The Mecha World suite. The man was on the mark with that one.

In a similar vein, I also enjoyed movements I. and II. from Mahler’s 6th Symphony performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as some groovin’ Les Baxter.

I removed a dull number by Hooverphonic and a non-song by An April March.