Music Meridian

Stop the presses! Spin magazine's website has a review for Guns N' Roses upcoming album "Chinese Democracy"!


This must mean a few things:

1. Promo copies have been pressed and sent out to reviewers (P.S. Where's my copy?)

2. A release date must be set

3. It actually exists.

I'm in shock. Really. And the review actually sounds pretty good, yet skeptical. I'm ready to hear it....

UPDATE: For those of you who didn't know what weekend it was, click here. Thanks for playing.

I bought the new Prince CD "3121" today. I was hoping I would find the ol' Willy-Wonka ticket in it and be on my way to Paisley Park, but alas, I was not a winner.

However, the music is very very cool!! The title track has Prince alter-ego "Camille" on vocals and there's even appearances by old standbys Maceo and Shelia E! Mostly it's Prince playing everything and running the show and he's still in very fine form. The songs are catchy as hell too.

It definately harkens back to his 80s hayday...it's much better than Musicology. But it's still no Purple Rain or Sign O' The Times. That's what happens when you set the bar so high I guess.

Recommended.

On a totally unrelated tangent, Crucial Blast is taking pre-orders for the new Behold...The Arctopus!/Orthrelm split CD. It's a bargin at only $4.99 with free shipping.

Lollapalooza 2006 announced most of their lineup today. It's a pretty incredible list of bands. 3 Day passes are currently $130.

Here's the complete lineup with bands MusicMeridian.com is excited about seeing in bold.

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kanye West
Manu Chao
Wilco
Death Cab For Cutie
The Raconteurs
The Flaming Lips
Ween
Queens of the Stone Age
The Shins
Common
Matisyahu
Ryan Adams
Umphrey's McGee
Sonic Youth
Thievery Corporation
Sleater-Kinney
Nickel Creek
Blues Traveler
Broken Social Scene
The New Pornographers
Iron & Wine
Poi Dog Pondering
Coheed And Cambria
The Secret Machines
Eels
Panic! At the Disco
The Disco Biscuits
She Wants Revenge
The Dresden Dolls
Reverend Horton Heat
The Smoking Popes
Andrew Bird
Gnarls Barkley
Cursive
Blackalicious
Editors
Lyrics Born
Lady Sovereign
Hard-Fi
Calexico
Nada Surf
Feist
Aqualung
The Frames
The Hold Steady
The Go! Team
Mates of State
Pepper
Particle
The Redwalls
Mute Math
Wolfmother
Sparta
The Subways
Of Montreal
Blue October
Jeremy Enigk
Living Things
Sound Team
The M's
Hot Chip
The Benevento-Russo Duo
Matt Costa
The New Amsterdams
deadboy & the Elephantmen
Sybris
Anathallo
The Burden Brothers
What Made Milwaukee Famous
Manishevitz
Husky Rescue
The Towers of London
Ohmega Watts
Boy Kill Boy
Jim Noir
The Standard
Be Your Own Pet
Elvis Perkins
Trevor Hall
Midlake

and more to come...

Relapse records is now sending out a new label sampler with every order you make at relapse.com.

As you may recall, in an earlier post I complained that the sampler that came with the new Call Of The Mastodon CD had mostly old tracks and didn't have anything on the flurry of new releases the label will be unleashing this spring.

This new sampler is correcting that. I still wish I would have recieved this sampler for buying the Mastodon CD, but I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought a Zombi limited edition tour EP off of the site to get my free CD.

I'm really excited about the fact that it has new tracks from some of my favorites like Dysrhythmia, Uphill Battle and Alchemist. What's even more exciting is it has a brand new Don Caballero track!! Can't wait for my order to arrive.

So I went to the percussion show last night at Northwestern with my friend Ryan.

Let me first express my disappointment with the turnout. The place had tons of empty seats! Why? [sarcasm alert] Is it because things like Xenakis are played live so often that there's no need to bother showing up? [end sarcasm].

It a word, it was inspiring.

The program started with "Alter de Neon" by Gabriella Oritz. It was a pretty full band piece with 4 percussionists. Pleasant and kind of got you in the mood, but I wasn't that impressed.

Up next was Edgard Varese's "Ionisation". I've listened to this piece for a long long time in recordings but I've never saw it performed live. Let me just say, it's WAAAAAY better in the flesh. Watching the percussionists grabbing all kinds of weird instruments and nailing every change. The constant shriek of the siren. The sheer power of the drums at full blast in the concert hall. I'm still reeling.

After that Steve Schick from The Bang On A Can Allstars played a solo percussion piece by Xenakis called "Psappha". The amazing thing here was, he MEMORIZED it. Lots of rhythmic complexity and cachophony. Melodic patters on woodblock and metals striking against powerful toms and bass drum, among other weird sounds. When the piece was over he was sweating and out of breath and I felt the same way.

The first half concluded with a piece by Louis Andriesen called "Workers Union". It was a minimalist-inspired piece with lots of cylindrical parts between the players (2 xylophones, saxophone, viola and bass clarinet). It was like hearing the seeds of bands like Zs. All these interlocking rhythms and melodys that stretched and held interest for it's full 20 minutes.

After a brief intermission for setup of the final piece, the show really took off. Persapphasa by Xenakis!!!! 6 percussionists set up AROUND THE ROOM in an octogon shape. My friend Ryan likened it to "THX on steroids". Totally washed in the sound of the drums. Rhythems so complex, I'd need to hear the tune again dozens of times to begin to unravel it's mysteries. Lots of melody mixed with dissonence and non-stop excitement. For half the piece, there was even a conductor with a baton cueing the percussionists. I was kind of wondering how you would go about conducting a piece of this nature. In the end even he was tired and sweaty.

All in all, the best night of music I've had in recent memory. Why were't you there????

In a slightly related note... (I'm all about solo-percussion music lately..which in turn is really aiding my compositions. Coming soon!!) I just picked up the new CD by Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche called "Mobile". Anyone who thinks he's just some alt-country beatmaker best pick this up. All composed by him except for the first piece with is a variation on Steve Reich's "Clapping Music", it's solo percussion of the highest order. Highest possible recommendation.

This Wendesday an unbelieveable set of music will be played in Evanston at Northwestern University. You bet you're bottom dollar I'll be there, and you should too as this will probably be one of the best things happening all month. From the Chicago Reader:


CONTEMPORARY MUSIC ENSEMBLE AND PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE Northwestern University's Contemporary Music Ensemble and Percussion Ensemble--with guest Steven Schick, a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars--are combining forces for three industrial-strength 20th-century works and an exciting contemporary pick. The highlight is Edgard Varese's Ionisation (1931), regarded as the first chamber piece written entirely for percussion. Born in Paris, Varese moved to New York in 1915 and was enthralled with the noise of the city; he began to draw on it for inspiration as he made his split from "mummified European music." Likened to a "sock in the jaw" at its premiere, Ionisation calls for 13 musicians and 37 instruments--among them, famously, two sirens. Workers Union (1975), by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, calls for "any loud-sounding group of instruments" in its partly indeterminate score, provided it sound "dissonant, chromatic, and often aggressive." The final work on the program is Iannis Xenakis's Persephassa (1969), a composition for six percussionists. Opening the concert is Altar de Neon by Gabriela Ortiz Torres, a Guggenheim fellow who's considered one of the best young Mexican composers today; Schick will perform a solo work as well. 7:30 PM, Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Northwestern University, 50 Arts Circle Dr., Evanston, 847-467-4000 or 847-491-5441, $6.50, $4.50 seniors. --J. Niimi

See you there??