DRAM

One hell of a sexy title, am I right? 

Well, the fact of the matter is this: I have a lot of good news and not a lot of tippity tappity in my fingers to waste on pleasantries, so let's get down to the proverbial metal fasteners. DRAM has been one busy mug over the last year and, as these things sometimes happen, everything we've been working on has come to fruition at one time. 

First of all, DRAM is very pleased to announce that you can FINALLY get an individual subscription to the database.  After years of only being available to universities and public libraries, we've finally figured out a way to allow the average joe or josie get their hands on 3, 6, or 12 months of unlimited streaming music by composers like Robert Ashley, Morton Feldman, Michael Pisaro, and James Tenney (and many more on our over 3,000 recordings and counting).

How?  Well, right, that's a good question.  And, it leads me to the next portion of our good news.  DRAM has started a brand new website and quarterly online journal called Sound American.  On this site, we will be featuring streaming audio interviews and archival material available only in DRAM (and in some cases specifically made only for Sound American) as well as essays and visual art.  All of this is geared toward being a more relaxed, casual companion piece to all of the research new music engines out there. 

Sound American is a place to gain context on new and experimental music and to discover that new and experimental does not in any way equal difficult and inscrutable.  Upcoming topics will include the new additions to Ben Hall's amazing collection of Southern Gospel 45s, interviews with electronic music and computer networking pioneers John Bischoff and Tim Perkis of the League of Automatic Music Composers, as well as a discussion between Nate Wooley and electro-acoustic composer Chris Brown.  Later in the year, we'll be doing a feature on John Cage in conjunction with the massive Bowerbird Cage festival in Philadelphia.

For the time being, Sound American is celebrating the inclusion of the first wave of recordings from Phill Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Archive.  The first 31 pieces are up now in DRAM and feature live performances by and interviews with such artists as Eliane Radigue, George Lewis, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, Lois V. Vierk, Carl Stone, and many more....including multi-instrumentalist Ned Rothenberg, whose program we feature for download here at FMA.

So, three pieces of good news, three times to beat our breasts with pride.  It's a rare occurence and we are excited to share it with you.  Please stop by Sound American, linger, enjoy, maybe make a tax-free donation to DRAM and get the fantastic premium in return of 3, 6, or 12 months of access to the site.  Drop Nate a line and tell him he done good.....he's so fragile.

If you've lived in New York for any amount of time, and especially if you've spent time on the NYU campus, you know this pitch.  Most likely you've fallen for it once...exactly once.  The question is followed by a cheap CD-R being shoved into your hand and basically a shake down for a "donation" to help someone's hip hop career.  Okay, fine, you do what you have to do.  I write a million emails to try and book gigs, so it's probably not that different.  The reason you only have this happen to you once, though, is that (if your CD-R was anything like mine) the music was HORRIBLE.  I listened, it's true, and was treated to limp beats, bad rapping about questionable subject matter, and a generally gross apathy.  So, lesson learned.  The next time I was asked the question, I stopped, looked the guy in the eye, gave him a buck and said "no, I don't like music", put my headphones back on and went on my way, adding a new plateau to my general level of self-hatred.

It's always bad to start your writing with the digression, but there it is.  I'll get to the point later and you'll see how it ties in.  I imagine you'll be quite impressed with my narrative arc once you see it.

When I started writing posts for DRAM/New World here at FMA we had just put out Music for Merce (1952-2009), which I still think is one of the best box sets of the past five years, featuring little heard music from David Tudor, David Behrman, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, and more.  Also, my head was still ringing with the sounds of Alvin Curran's Solo Music (The 1970s), which had just come out a couple of months earlier. If this sounds like a shameless plug, it is, but not yet.  Wait for it. 

It was a little early to ask for permission to make tracks from either of these records available, but the idea hit me that it would be interesting to combine a post featuring some of these recordings with some new music by a composer I think truly deserves wider recognition, John King.  John's music is featured on Music for Merce, and I've been a fan of his since starting to work with him 5 years ago in TILT brass. There had to be a way to do a whole post of his music and somehow remind folks of how good these records are...a little karmic internet "do you like music" combined with a healthy consumerism.

Well this week I got my chance.  We found out at the office that both Music for Merce and the Alvin Curran recordings made The Wire's 2011 Top 50.  This is the sort of thing I should highlight, of course.  These are two great recordings and it's nice to get a little bit of justification from a publication like the Wire.  It allows me to shamelessly plug not only the people I work for (which is actually nice when you like the people you work for and believe in what they do), but also to try and convince people to buy two recordings that would be on my top 10 year end list as well.  Professionally gratifying, personally gratifying...surely I can't live much longer at this level of life satisfaction.

Back to John King, now that my hucksterism has found vent. John was one of the first people I wrote after starting these blog entries, and he returned my mail almost immediately and with a great deal of enthusiasm.  This is a personality trait that I equate almost exclusively with John, this specific kind of enthusiasm, not put on and not naive either, something rare in the music business, and non-existent in New York.  You get the feeling that John truly loves music and is (as he should be) proud of the fact.  I'll bet he stops and gets a CD-R every time.   

John sent three tracks, all unreleased, all different, all personal and beyond description here.  I have always thought it a cop-out, but in this instance the adage "letting the music speak for itself" is apt, and so I will.  I need to say, however, that my experience with John's music has always been a mix of seriousness and true joy; his writing is a perfect combination between rigorous composition and a palpable feeling of improvisation (improvisation, not as a concept or an articulation of material, but as a practice free from philosophy or mysticism).  The three tracks here are testament to that as I think you will experience here.  I hope they provide the impetus to discover more of his work (on the mighty Tzadik label).

Consider it an attempt to fix my karma for years of denying my love of music.....