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Genius #2: Feb '24

!!Today is Bandcamp Friday!!

Larry Michaels

01 Mar 2024 • 15 min read

Hello brainiacs it’s time for Genius #2! This month’s edition has a really long explainer on synthesizer circuitry (wow!!) & also a revisit on Keith Jarrett’s legendary Köln Concert. Plus: So many great records came out in February, I have a bunch of recs down below & the rest will come out in the scrap heap in 2 weeks. Overall, my recs this month are a little softer, I’ve been on a big ambient and songwriter kick. Let’s roll.

Capitalism:

NOTE: If you are reading this today (3/1), today is Bandcamp Friday! Please consider buying some records from artists on Bandcamp!

Earplugs

After playing a gig at the end of January, I discovered that my trusty Hearos earplugs were nowhere to be found. I’ve started researching new earplugs and picked up a pair of Etymotic ER-20s to tide me over while I look through some more options.

Short review: I wore the ER-20s to two gigs (see below) and I’m not 100% convinced. They feel a lot stiffer than my Hearos felt, and overall they don’t feel as effective at blocking sound. Like leaving a q-tip in my ear. Not the most comfortable concert experience I’ve had. Probably going to keep them as a back-up & try something else.

I also picked up like 15 albums last Bandcamp Friday, including Amor Muere’s A Time To Love, A Time To Die.

This experimental CDMX quartet (vocals, cello, violin, electronics/tape loops) is so cool. Each of the shorter tracks on their debut release has its own separate ecosystem, it’s own mood and language. But the final track takes up half of the running time — the 20min sprawl of “Violeta y Malva” gives each member a moment at the forefront of the composition: it opens with clanging field recordings and pulsing synths, before giving way to a vocal solo, then closing with cello & violin flutters.

Album Recommendations:

6 albums for your consideration: 3 from Feb, 1 from Jan, 2 older releases

Nathalie Joachim - Ki moun ou ye (Nonesuch, Feb. ‘24)

Provocative and bright baroque pop music from a Haitian-American songwriter. Her rich harmonies sit on top of a bed of glitchy resampled vocals and flittering flutes — the songs are bursting with buzzy synths and sparse, syncopated percussion. Joachim slips between English and Haitian Creole in songs that push the listener to engage with her as she interrogates her identity (the album title translates to “Who Are You?”). The song “Ti neg” in particular forces the listener to pay attention as she rolls racial epithets around in her mouth, as if demonstrating that she can produce them with beauty.

Astrid Sonne - Great Doubt (Escho, Jan. ‘24)

This quiet experimental album surprised me — Sonne’s songs are understated and confident. On “Boost” she stops the song in the middle of the verse to solo the drum beat, then jarringly replaces the solo’d drums: first with a 909 drum machine, then some kind of iphone recording of a drumkit in a cavern.. then she continues on with no drums at all. The way she creates “electronic” music by mixing In-The-Box synthesizers & resampled live instrumentation reminds me of Tim Hecker’s sonic palette.

Heems - Lafandar (Mass Appeal/Veena, Feb. ‘24)

It’s just so nice to hear Heems back and having fun. His boasts are still great and this record includes plenty of stupid bangers like “I roll around with two glizzies like I’m Slavoj Žižek” and “I’m like your city during COVID, my bars are infectious.” Even the more serious tracks like “Accent” hit their mark and don’t feel out of place. What pulls the whole thing together is Lapgan’s mesmerizing production: cascading zithers & tabla rhythms, pitched-up Indian vocal samples, and gritty drum hits. Each track is so lively. It’s 2010, baby — we are so back.

Luna Park Ensemble - Mushi Kui Mandala (unknown, 1998)

This 80s new wave/experimental band from Japan is hard to track down. A ramshackle mix of acoustic guitars, woodwind and brass, and various percussion instruments. At times, the instrumentation comes across like an alternate reality Rain Dogs, or maybe the Chaotic-Good answer to Ground Zero’s Chaotic-Evil. The compositions are freewheeling collages & Rorie’s vocals are very pure and sweet. Unfortunately, the whole album is not available on any streaming services, but the best song on this album (IMO) is available on Spotify (in the playlist at the top). It’s a real oddity!

Wire - 154 (Harvest, 1979)

Yeah yeah I’m in my 30s and I’m finally getting into Wire — it’s part of a beloved tradition over the past 50 years and I am not ashamed. Great mix of the familiar Pink Flag vibe of early Brit-punk and more forward-thinking, atmospheric pieces that basically predict Manchester’s musical contribution to post-punk. We love an experimental band who sounds like they know exactly what they are doing. Going to be digging deep on all 3 of their 70s albums for a while, if you’re in your 30s and haven’t undergone a Wire phase — maybe now is the time.

Kali Malone - All Life Long (Ideologic Organ, Feb. ‘24)

This is organ drone queen Malone’s most accessible release yet and a great entry point for her other works. Twelve pieces in a breezy 78min (as opposed to her other albums which are often fewer tracks AND multiple hours long), composed for pipe organ, brass, or choir. An extremely clear and clean release — each pieces’ moments of dissonance sublimate into beauty. The vocal pieces are lovely, but it’s the brass pieces that surprised me — she arranges slow, twisting melodies mostly in the mid-ranges of the instruments, allowing them to meld together. They’re sad, triumphant little compositions. I recommend comparing the two versions of “No Sun To Burn” as loud as you can handle it — the way the organ’s air release matches the breathing of the brass band is remarkable. If you’re thinking you might be into drone music, but don’t know where to start, this is it.

Upcoming:

Very excited that Moor Mother will be back with another haunting, experimental & poetic record for Anti-. The Great Bailout will be out on 3/8.
Adrienne Lenker’s next solo outing, Bright Future comes out 3/22 on 4AD. Not interested in the Big Thief discourse! IMO every record she’s done has been stellar, this should be no different.
The rhythmic wizard Jlin is back!! Akoma will be out 3/22 on Planet Mu and has bonkers featured collabs like Philip Glass (!!) and Bjork (!!!).
LA composer/songwriter Julia Holter follows up 2018’s mirrored and complex Aviary with Something In The Room She Moves on Domino (also out 3/22). Love love love Holter’s work, excited for this one.

Replay:

Keith Jarrett - The Köln Concert (ECM, 1975)

I wish I were more intimately familiar with Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, but I have only listened to it 4 or maybe 5 times in my life. Listening to it a couple weeks ago transported me back to the first time I ever heard it (20 years old, bored at work — nothing’s changed except for my age) and I wanted to devote some time to this classic recording that nearly wasn’t.

Some background: This is the highest-selling solo piano album of all time, your parents might have a copy laying around somewhere or maybe their parents do.

Keith Jarrett got his start playing in traditional jazz groups in the 60s before linking up with with drummer Jack DeJohnette (who is more associated with weirder free jazz groups like Sun Ra and Miles Davis). Jarrett ended up joining DeJohnette in Miles’ electric band in the 70s, playing electric piano on the Bitches Brew tour dates. He and DeJohnette both left Miles band shortly after, and Jarrett went on to begin doing solo piano improvisational performance — a mix of jazz, classical, and improvised music. His style is dynamic, videos show him reeling, standing, singing along, hunched over.

In January 1975, Jarret was booked by an 18y/o concert promoter to perform a solo performance at the Opera House in Cologne at 11:30pm (due to an opera being scheduled right before his performance). Jarrett had been nursing back pain issues on the European whole tour and had barely slept — to make matters worse, he and the head of the record label drove together by car from Zurich to Cologne (takes 6 hours today, according to (gmaps) — and they arrived too late for Jarrett to grab a bite to eat.

Meanwhile, the promoter ordered a piano for him to play to the opera house, but the opera house accidentally brought the wrong one out to the stage! Instead of the beautiful full grand piano that was asked for, whoever was in charge accidentally dragged out the practice piano for the opera house: a baby grand that had been used by every visiting pianist as a practice drumkit/punching bag. The thing sounded like shit. No bass resonance whatsoever, tinny and even not really in tune. The promoter frantically got the piano tuner to work trying to fix the tuning. Jarrett has perfect pitch — he can tell when a note is even slightly off-center. He heard the shitty tiny piano, decided it wasn’t worth it, and started packing up to leave.

According to BBC, he basically was convinced to stay because of all the recording set-up that had been done for the performance. So he played through his back pain — and the piece that he improvised on the spot is nothing short of remarkable. An emotional, powerful mix of jazz, gospel, ragtime, classical — with motifs that he returns to and a sound that is bright and full of life. To get the best out of the piano, he focuses his playing on the middle notes on the keyboard and he hits them HARD to add additional bass resonance and percussion.

The piece is broken into 2 parts, with Part II split into A, B, and C sections. Part I opens with Jarrett mimicking the Cologne Opera House’s signal bell that the performance is about to start before he continues into the piece, then spends 26 minutes going from tentative minor chords into a more gospel-tinged rambling section (Jarret can be heard singing along to his right hand notes), before he finally shifts the tonality into huge major key section to end Part I.

Part II is a totally different vibe — he seems at ease and comfortable with getting the best sound possible out of the piano. He uses repeating, percussive left hand notes to add bass to the tinny instrument and uses his right hand to belt out bright and lyrical lines.

Again, I’m no scholar on this piece — I’ve heard it a handful of times and felt compelled to return to it this month. If you haven’t given it a listen, I recommend listening to it on a sunny Sunday morning while sipping a cup of coffee and maybe doing a crossword puzzle, or doodling. Plus up that weekend vibe.

Garbage Corner:

Becoming a synth guy (the basics)

Over the past 6 years, I’ve felt myself go from a bassist to a guitarist to a “synth guy.” And, look — come on, no one is happy about it. In 2014, I was playing bass in a hardcore band, but I started to buy weird guitar pedals (starting with a Red Panda Particle delay) and in 2017, I picked up a Volca Sample and now we’re here (in hell).

I get a lot of questions about synthesizers now. Specifically: questions about getting into them and choosing one to purchase. People see the lifestyle (curse) I’ve got and they want it for themselves. This is my attempt to explain the very basics of synthesizers & what the jargon means.

Note: As with anything, the cheapest best way to get into synths is to use what you’ve already got. Websites like midi.city allow you to use your computer’s keyboard to make sounds. Pink Trombone will drive your roommates insane. I can’t overstate how good Koala is for mobile sampling & sequencing ($5!! It’s worth it!). If you have an Apple computer, Garageband comes free — buying a decent MIDI controller for it like a Novation Launchpad or an Arturia Keystep will do wonders for you.

Ok, let’s talk some etymology:

Oscillator: This is The Thing That Makes The Sound. An oscillation is air moving back and forward. There are 2 main factors: 1. the speed with which the air moves back/forward, which determines the pitch you hear (faster = higher pitched) and 2. asymmetry in that air movement, which (very broadly) determines the timbre of the sound. When you strum an acoustic guitar, the oscillator is the vibrating string. When you sing or speak, your vocal cords vibrate a pitch. When you press a key on a synth, an oscillator circuit is sent to the output of the synth, which goes thru an amplifier/headphone and then you hear it in the real world. There are several different types of oscillators, here are the 3 most common:

Analog: Analog synths use analog circuitry to produce sounds. The irregularities caused by their circuitry is part of what give these synths their specific sound characteristics. Analog oscillators are kind of expensive to make, so they are most common in simpler subtractive synths.
Digital: Digital synths use a function generator that produces perfect oscillations. These are cheaper to make than analog synths; they have more flexibility, but less “mojo” or whatever (you have to introduce the irregularities manually to get a more flavorful sound). Digital oscillators are commonly used in subtractive synths (“virtual analog”), but also in additive & FM synths.
Sample: sample-based synths (technically digital as well) use sound recordings as the basis. They allow the player to repeat a snippet of sound over and over again. If you loop a recording of a single-cycle of a wave (typically 1/60th of a second), it sounds like a synth with that timbre. You might also use a longer sample, as in a drum hit or with re-sampled vocal cuts. This is most common in samplers & wavetable synths.

Ok so the above had some new words to define:

Subtractive Synthesis: This is the classic synth sound, the easiest to wrap your head around. Think the “Thriller” bassline or the resonant filter sweep at the beginning of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer.” These synths use extremely rich, full-timbred oscillators and provide tools for the player to shave off frequencies & sculpt a tone. Beginner synth example: Moog Werkstatt-01, Korg Volca Keys
Additive Synthesis: This is an alt-classic weirdo sound that you might associate with noise experiments or sound-design. Suzanne Ciani’s Buchla concerts, the fluttering works of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, etc. In additive synthesis, you start with a simple waveform and add harmonics to it to create a richer tone — this type of approach can approximate real-world sounds with more accuracy. Beginner synth example: Make Noise 0-Coast, Microfreak
FM Synthesis: Often associated with the 80s, FM synths are complicated to explain. Similar to additive, you start with simple waveforms, but instead of adding in overtones, you multiply the waveforms together in varying amounts. The Yamaha DX7 was the first commercially available FM synth and became the most popular synthesizer for a whole decade (“Take On Me,” “Where Do Broken Hearts Go?” etc.). I love FM synths, they’re great for glassy, cold sounds but also brass, weird percussion, and wooden tones. Beginner synth example: Korg Volca FM 2, Korg Volca Drum
Wavetable Synthesis: This is a wacky one that I mostly associate with more modern electronic music. Wavetable synths take several different single-cycle waves and allow the user to “morph” from one to another. This can result in wubs when morphed quickly and evolving sounds when morphed slowly. Beginner synth example: software is the cheapest way to explore this, either Xfer Serum or Arturia Pigments.
Sampler: A pre-recorded sound is repeated, usually able to be pitched up/down and cropped. If you crop a sound to be a single-cycle. Some samplers have sequencers inside them, so you can use them as drum machines. Some are more piano-based. A classic version is the Mellotron, which used pre-recorded tape loops of specific sounds, when you pressed a key, it sped up and slowed down the tape. Wow!!

Voices: A synthesizer can only produce as many tones simultaneously as it has voices. A typical analog synth has between 1 and 4 voices, with some luxurious ones offering as many as 8 and superluxe options with 16 voices. A digital or sample-based synth can produce more voices cheaply, so you might get 8 or 16 voices. A mono synth (one voice) can be really useful for bass and lead sounds (where you only want 1 note at a time) and they’re usually a lot cheaper too. Most of my favorite synths have 4 voices, but they’re not a great option if you’re a piano player and want to play more than 4 notes at a time.

Amp: Short for amplitude, this is the loudness of the synth. Max is usually (confusingly) considered 0dB and the Min is usually called -∞dB. Amp can almost always be affected by an ADSR Envelope.

Filter: Used in subtractive synthesis to shave off frequencies, this is a big part of the “sound” of a subtractive synth. There are several different filter architectures and they sound totally different and are used for different things. Filters are usually not static, they can usually be affected by an ADSR Envelope or by LFO (or both!).

ADSR Envelope: Short for Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release. An envelope automatically slews the response when you press a key (usually can be directed towards the Filter and/or the Amp). When you press a key, you don’t always want the sound to start immediately, and when you let go of a key, you don’t always want the sound to immediately shut off. The Attack lets you fade sounds in and Release lets you fade them out — Decay and Sustain are slightly more complicated: Sustain sets the level that the synth will stay at (if below the max) and the Decay sets how quickly the level drops from maximum to the Sustained level.

LFO: An LFO is a low-frequency oscillator — it usually oscillates below the human-hearing range. It basically automatically twists a knob on your synthesizer for you, so you don’t have to do it. Can usually be directed at the Filter, oscillator tuning, etc.

More Advanced stuff: Oscillator sync allows you to sync one oscillator to another (when one oscillator reaches the end of its cycle, the other is forced to start its cycle). Ring Modulation multiplies 2 oscillators together.

A basic first synth should have: at least 1 oscillator (preferably 2), a filter, at least 2 ADSR envelopes (one for the amplitude, one for the filter), and at least one LFO. I also try to steer folks towards “knob-per-function” synths: menu-diving is a pain and if you can avoid it, I would. I started with a Korg Minilogue (an analog subtractive synth with 4 voices) & it was a perfect companion: it has all of the above, the keybed is ok, and it has an oscilloscope so you can visualize how your changes are affecting the sound.

Ok that’s way too much synth stuff, let’s move on. If you’re serious about learning synths, hit me up because I have a lot of other garbage to say about it.

Scene Report:

Tomb Mold @ The Meadows (2/23)

This show was moved from St Vitus after they were abruptly closed by the NYC Department Of Buildings earlier this week. Tomb Mold were great, but the sound in the venue was terrible: all rack-tom and kick and (blissfully) the lead guitar. Whenever the vocals came in, everything else ducked in the mix. The sound of a bass, 2nd guitar, and the rest of the drumkit was all “the rest of the sound.” Oh well — I suppose that’s what happens when your venue gets closed a few days before showtime. Still killer to see some of the newer songs live.

Outline Festival: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Alan Sparhawk, Marina Herlop, Maria BC

Ok, if doors are at 7 and set times are not listed anywhere — show starts at 8, right? I got in at 8pm and Maria BC were playing their last song of the night. Trash stuff! And there was no food at the venue AND i got very hungry! That said, Catalan experimental songwriter Marina Herlop absolutely blew me away: self-harmonizing, jumping between a MIDI sample rig & a Nord electronic keyboard, while keeping the songs flowing. Amazingly talented, worth checking out her 2023 album Nekkuja.

At this point in the night, I had not eaten since 2pm and I was losing my mind. I’d never caught Godspeed before, and the set was a nicely varied selection: they played one of the heavier, more melodic track from 2021’s Gods Pee, but otherwise stuck to new material. There’s a specific “Godspeed” guitar sound that I don’t know how to describe, but it comes through around 4:20 (nice) in the video above: at once shimmering, shrieking, and see-through like catching a glimpse of a ghost. Hearing that sound live is remarkable. Lowest part of the night: when the guy next to me started texting & vaping at the same time. But then I left my spot to watch the projectionist work instead — crazy how involved it is!!

March upcoming shows:

More later shows:

*St Vitus currently closed, see above. Looks like most shows are being held at The Meadows (also, see above).

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