Music of any complexity (and even "Three Blind Mice" is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about.
Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.
The things by which our emotions can be moved - the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way the clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music - all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers.
That's not a reduction of it, that's the beauty of it. Ask Newton. Ask Einstein. Ask the poet (Keats) who said that what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.
-from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Chromeo, aside from being the first successful collaboration between and Arab and Jew, are an electronic duo who play funky sing-songy 80's tinged dance music. They are certainly tongue-in-cheek and maybe some people would think that their music is too obvious in some way. Like, too much wink-wink going on, but I love it. Chromeo is composed of Dave 1 (older brother of the amazing A-Trak) and P-Thugg and the other week I got to tell Dave just how much I enjoy their tunes.
As Charlotte and I were looking for a place to satisfy our hunger downtown, a tall, lanky dude in glasses walked past us. I says to Maple, I says "that's totally Dave from Chromeo." I did not want to accost him on the street, so I rebuffed Charlotte's suggestion to talk to him. Then he meets up with a fine young lady and walks into the Apple store that is down there. I decided to walk in after him and we quietly approached him as he was checking out some shiny new Apple product.
Charlotte: Are you Dave? Dave: Yup Charlotte: From Chromeo? Dave: Yup. Charlotte and Alex: Cool! We just saw Chromeo a few weeks ago at Camp Bisco. Dave: That was the really wet one right? Us: Yup! Mud up to our knees! Dave: Yeah, all out equipment was destroyed that night! Save one irreplaceable keyboard, but then the festival paid for everything else. Us: Great! Well, that sucks, but great that they paid for it! We also just saw your brother (A-Trak) tear down Webster Hall last Friday. Alex: The Macklovitch family makes some of my favorite music today! Dave: Awesome! I'm going to tell my dad!
It's cool because I have never made Dave dance and he made me dance many times over, in private and in public.
What has happened to me since my last post over a year ago?
Not much has changed. I still work in Manhattan, I still live in Brooklyn (albeit one floor up), and I still love to eat cottage cheese with fruit preserves. One thing has changed though and it eclipsed any other mundane things in my life. That one thing is the love of a wonderful woman. She has a world of color and music churning around inside of her head and the love emanating from her is heady and intoxicating. It is reciprocated from my end and that results in Super Happy Awesome time, which must last for the rest of my life. Anything else would be inconceivable!
I like them black girls I like them white girls I like them Asian girls I like them mixed race girls I like them Spanish girls I like them Italian girls I like the French girls And I like Scandinavian girls I like them tall girls I like them short girls I like them brown hair girls I like them blonde hair girls I like them big girls I like them skinny girls I like them carrying a little bitty weight girls
Calvin Harris is a Scottish electro producer with a punk rock bent and he has just produced the first Dizzy Rascal mc'd track that I like. Actually, I love it! I usually find Dizzy Rascal's flow too disjointed, and while I appreciate it, I don't listen to it. Maybe I just haven't heard the right thing... Anyway:
Listen to more of Calvin's music on his mySpazz page here. I recommend "Acceptable in the 80s" and "Merrymaking At My Place."
Yesterday, I found myself inside a drained public swimming pool in Brooklyn with thousands of dancing people. The reason we were all there was M.I.A. throwing down her weird, otherworldly rhymes, while air sirens and steel drum rhythms permeated the air. Holy Fuck opened. If you are not familiar with Holy Fuck, they are an experimental lo-fi electronic group. The sound is akin to a mash-up DJ with a rock attitude. However, no records or computers are used to create the sound. Instead, the band uses live drums, guitars, and keyboards, along with toy instruments and indescribable devices. Peak energy and some awesome twisted sonics throughout their whole set! Then Diplo came out in a Tickle Me Elmo suit (the head kept being removed) and played some tracks nonchalantly, including a Santogold tune ("Creator" to be exact). Then some girl came out to little fanfare and I, along with what seemed like many others, mistook her for M.I.A. She was skinny, black, and weird so she fit the description. After throwing down some rhymes and warming up the crowd, she exited the stage. M.I.A. finally appeared when it got darker to a oddball video introduction. The stage was lined with glowing palm trees, a giant screen and colored bars on either side. Although I thought the sound was a bit muddy (we were in an empty swimming pool, after all) her energy was contagious. She loves her air horn sound too. I suppose it inspires feelings of attack and revolution, which I think is her goal. She attacks her microphone and her DJ attacks the air with (sometimes harsh) blasts of sound. I could not even see the DJ (I think it was Diplo) because for most of her set, the stage was filled with 100+ dancing people! Good beats by the way! I shook my moneymaker and my friend Richie was kindly asked by security to remove himself from a raised platform, on which he had made his personal dance floor.
Musically, I enjoyed Holy Fuck more, but the overall energy and atmosphere of the entire night was fantastic!
