ROBERT ASHLEY: Well, the problem in discussing hip-hop with somebody who doesn't like hip-hop is that they don't hear the melodies. There's no difference in the quality of the melody in any good hip-hop record now. There are so many I can't even name them. But there's no difference in the quality of the melody between that song and something like Billie Holiday for instance. It's just that the world has changed, the street language has changed and now you have to tune our ears to be able to hear that the very best hip-hop singers are singing exactly in tune. It might be going a little too fast; the melody might be going a little too fast for you to perceive it as melody, but there's no doubt that there's melody
LOL where's Geir when you need him most?
― ian, Friday, 29 August 2008 01:40 (fifteen years ago) link
wow
― I know, right?, Friday, 29 August 2008 03:06 (fifteen years ago) link
a tendency toward, MOTION PICTURES
― I know, right?, Friday, 29 August 2008 03:19 (fifteen years ago) link
Recent developments: I bought myself the "Perfect Lives" DVD set as a birthday present, loving it. I think I do prefer the LP versions of both The Bar & The Backyard/The Park, but the DVD really is something to see. I think some parts of it make my roommates feel weird or strange. S. is pre-occupied with the hands playing piano, hates the glitter.
Also, I just got Atalanta in the mail today. It's going to take me months to digest.
― ian, Saturday, 3 January 2009 05:14 (fifteen years ago) link
Great way to treat yrself - well done!
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 3 January 2009 11:04 (fifteen years ago) link
ian, you going? I wish I were.
http://www.theatermania.com/new-york/shows/robert-ashley-three-operas_149438/
January 15-25, 2009
― Milton Parker, Sunday, 4 January 2009 02:03 (fifteen years ago) link
holy jeeze, it looks like i have to, huh?
― ian, Sunday, 4 January 2009 02:06 (fifteen years ago) link
Three men have loved her. One a decade, on the average.
― ian, Saturday, February 23, 2008 9:04 PM (11 months ago) Bookmark
― ian, Monday, 26 January 2009 23:21 (fifteen years ago) link
CALLING ALL LONDONERS
http://www.ica.org.uk/Robert%20Ashley%3A%20Foreign%20Experiences+19567.twl
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 2 May 2009 21:52 (fifteen years ago) link
this is on in glasgow on friday too but i've already bought tickets to see le ballets c de la b. infuriating overlap!
― jed_, Saturday, 2 May 2009 21:55 (fifteen years ago) link
Yeah there was another improv gig on the same day, too - you can't win 'em all
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 2 May 2009 21:57 (fifteen years ago) link
Wow, that first link (from 4 yrs ago) still works. And is awesome.
― SQUIRREL WITH A PEOPLE FACE (╓abies), Sunday, 3 May 2009 12:49 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh yeah its UBU web, its gonna work
Here is an Ashley interview ahead of next Wednesday's concert.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article6180594.ece
― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 3 May 2009 13:00 (fifteen years ago) link
thanks for the link.i can't wait 'til the next Ashley performance in NYC--god knows when it will be, but the last three were amazing (despite some fuck-ups on Buckner's part, but whatev.)
― ian, Sunday, 3 May 2009 19:57 (fifteen years ago) link
I'll read as many sneak preview quotes from his upcoming book on Ashley as Gann decides to post - http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/06/drawing_the_connections.html#comments
"The only thing that's interesting to me right now is that, up to me and a couple of other guys, music had always been about the eventfulness: like, when things happened, and if they happened, whether they would be a surprise, or an enjoyment, or something like that... It's about eventfulness. And I was never interested in eventfulness. I was only interested in sound. I mean, just literally, sound in the Morton Feldman sense.... There's a quality in music that is outside of time, that is not related to time. And that has always fascinated me... That's sort of what I'm all about, from the first until the most recent. A lot of people are back into eventfulness. But it's very boring. Eventfulness is really boring."
― Milton Parker, Thursday, 18 June 2009 19:08 (fourteen years ago) link
cool, looking forward to this!
― ❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉Plaxico❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉❉ (I know, right?), Thursday, 18 June 2009 19:19 (fourteen years ago) link
Ooooh, had no idea this was in the works. Looks awesome.
― ian, Thursday, 18 June 2009 19:41 (fourteen years ago) link
three men have loved here--one a decade on the average.
― ian, Thursday, 16 July 2009 02:23 (fourteen years ago) link
d'oh, her.
Busted out Automatic Writing recently, man what piece. How rarely do you come across that "What's going on here?" sort of feeling.
Love this bit from Steven Stapleton:
"A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambience and the 'breathing' of the building."
Taking acid and listening to Automatic Writing is not my idea of a good time, but to each his own.
― Mark, Thursday, 16 July 2009 02:37 (fourteen years ago) link
A Missing Sense is a great record! Or, I guess i have it on tape. whatever.
― ian, Monday, January 26, 2009 11:21 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark
― ian, Thursday, 16 July 2009 02:38 (fourteen years ago) link
looking forward to Kyle Gann's book on Ashley
― matinee, Friday, 17 July 2009 00:02 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2009/08/iliad_of_the_midwest.html#comments
hope he's writing this as fast as he's blogging about it, I can't wait to read it
one of his earlier blog posts mentions the first complete performance of 'Perfect Lives' at Northwestern University, the tape lost somewhere in their archives:
It was my favorite version of Perfect Lives ever, just Bob and "Blue" with a drone on a background tape, before Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem and a dozen other elements were added in for a kind of information overload. It was still like his "Yellow Album" that came out that year.
idea of all seven parts played live in the manner of that first LP makes me want to buy a plane ticket & offer to help them look for that tape
― Milton Parker, Friday, 7 August 2009 22:53 (fourteen years ago) link
really looking forward to kyle's book on ashley.
this may seem weird but this article changed my life:
http://www.kylegann.com/JIreasons.html
stumbled across it as a clueless 17 year old not really wanting to pursue classical music any further. i read this and it opened up a whole new world for me.
― Crackle Box, Friday, 7 August 2009 23:22 (fourteen years ago) link
Gann's book "American Music" is hands-down the best book on new music ever written-- very expensive, as I remember it, but one hell of a book. funnily enough, i leant it out to a professor of mine and am having dinner with her tonight, so i can finally have it with me again.
― nice! he have the balls to say the truth! (the table is the table), Friday, 7 August 2009 23:50 (fourteen years ago) link
But isn't Morton Feldman's sense of sound filtered through his erm 'elastic' feel for time's passage?!?
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 8 August 2009 17:20 (fourteen years ago) link
Can't wait for Gann's book.
― ian, Saturday, 8 August 2009 22:03 (fourteen years ago) link
Carl's still president over at the bank, ain't he?
― ian, Friday, 11 September 2009 01:39 (fourteen years ago) link
What's that Ashley opera set at the airport, with the couple who've had the fight in Mexico or wherever and they're both leaving, and the voices are all treated? I sort of regret not buying that when I saw it used, now.
― bamcquern, Friday, 11 September 2009 01:41 (fourteen years ago) link
I think that one is "Improvement (Don Leaves Linda)" maybe? I'm not super familiar with it tbh.
― ian, Friday, 11 September 2009 01:43 (fourteen years ago) link
Yeah, Don Leaves Linda. Not sure what the hang up at the listening station was. It's weird when art hooks you long after you've rejected it. I remember doing that with this early-ish Kundera story, recently. You don't even realize how fundamental something is until you go away and it comes back to you under your hypnagogic state.
― bamcquern, Friday, 11 September 2009 01:48 (fourteen years ago) link
disc 2 of Improvement is where it catches fire. disc 2 track 4/5, 'The Doctor' / 'The Offering Of Images', that's one of my all time favorite Ashley pieces. and 'Tarzan', that's a truly strange song.
― Milton Parker, Friday, 11 September 2009 01:57 (fourteen years ago) link
'in that pwermanent state of wapture you are mentally OK'
― Milton Parker, Friday, 11 September 2009 02:01 (fourteen years ago) link
has this been posted before?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWBB3KgAk94
― plaxico (I know, right?), Sunday, 22 November 2009 00:27 (fourteen years ago) link
new Ashley book out 12/15/09: "Outside of Time"http://www.lovely.com/books/bookslist.html#anchor1307922
Q'est-ce que c'est?????
― My Parents Named Me Zbigniew, Sunday, 22 November 2009 05:03 (fourteen years ago) link
more great posts as he moves towards the book
http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/02/the_curse_of_the_recital.htmlhttp://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2010/02/erasing_the_timeline.html
― Milton Parker, Thursday, 11 February 2010 00:32 (fourteen years ago) link
http://lovely.com/titles/cd3303.html
― plax (ico), Friday, 13 August 2010 10:07 (thirteen years ago) link
god the new one is really something
definitely the most straightforward one in a little while as far as the narratives are concerned, and hamilton's music really fits with it this time around
I saw Ashley & Humbert perform the last two of these live at Mills about ten years ago. but the first piece is so disjointed and crazy it might even be my favorite, his voice has gotten so strange, the sound of someone drifting off to sleep at the end of every single sentence he speaks
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 18 August 2010 22:22 (thirteen years ago) link
what's the new one?
― jed_, Wednesday, 18 August 2010 22:27 (thirteen years ago) link
its a sequel (?) to atalanta, i havent heard it.
― plax (ico), Wednesday, 18 August 2010 22:34 (thirteen years ago) link
plax linked it -- evidently Atalanta is staged with modular stories which are faded up and down at different moments, making every performance slightly different, and the new album is 3 of the complete stories presented all the way through.
before this one, I liked 'Foreign Experiences' the most of all the ones he's put out in the last 10 years -- it's really paranoid, has a high density of memorable lines -- though that one's more a Sam Ashley showcase than a Robert one. and 'Now Eleanor's Idea' takes a bit of work, but by the end of the last 20 minute piece, it really pays off. 'Dust', 'Celestial Experiences' & 'Concrete' are all kind of samey ensemble operas with good moments but some of the musical settings just kind of snap me out of the mood
the new one though, played it four times in the last week already
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 18 August 2010 22:37 (thirteen years ago) link
ok, i wasn't sure if you were talking about the same release.
but atalanta 2 seems to be parts of the original opera that didn't make it on to disc first time around so are they new recordings or old?
i haven't loved any of them after Improvement, and i really loved that, although i liked bits and pieces.
― jed_, Wednesday, 18 August 2010 22:42 (thirteen years ago) link
bits and pieces of the stuff that came after that, i mean.
the stories date from the original opera but these are new recordings
though they're very very similiar to the versions I remember from the Mills concert 10 years ago -- might be exactly the same backing music. but you can tell these are recent recordings, ashley has never sounded this diffuse. or... old, basically
it's odd how my favorite two of the recent deluge of Ashley sets have been the ones that showcase other performers, Sam Ashley & Joan LaBarbara, so even on those, you kind of feel like something's missing (i.e. Bob). but the first disc on the new one is ALL about his voice. the second disc of the new one is mostly a Jacqueline Humbert showcase, even most of the stories clearly come from her, but Ashley's punchlines every few seconds are the glue
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 18 August 2010 23:10 (thirteen years ago) link
Somehow I thought "Improvement" was much later than it was. Scratch my previous point about not loving anything that came after it.
― jed_, Thursday, 19 August 2010 19:36 (thirteen years ago) link
Milton, does the section known as "flying Saucer Dialogue" (which was on the "Music from Mills"compilation) turn up on this new release? i absolutely love that. who is the woman on that?
-Particles of what?-Paticles of the subject, Sir-Coming up through the monitors?...-Where is it now?-Who knows?-That tone is not allowed, Lieutenant -I'm sorry, Sir-The answer then?-It comes and goes...-Intermittent?-Precisely, Sir
― jed_, Saturday, 21 August 2010 17:10 (thirteen years ago) link
no, that's just another bizarre satellite track. the woman is a very young jacqueline humbert, and the keyboards / sound design is paul shorr so that track is kind of like a trial run for the original recording of atalanta in 1985
Flying Saucer has come to Earth for important information concerning humans: The Marriage of Atalanta. Problem: Apples.
― Milton Parker, Saturday, 21 August 2010 20:48 (thirteen years ago) link
― ian, Thursday, 16 July 2009 02:23 (1 year ago)
― peacocks, Wednesday, 1 December 2010 19:27 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah, i've become near-obsessed with ashley in the past year and a half; this is pretty welcome right now.
― mike powell, Saturday, September 15, 2007 6:08 AM (3 years ago)
world = small
― sarahel, Friday, 3 December 2010 10:03 (thirteen years ago) link
very titantically.
― not everything is a campfire (ian), Saturday, 4 December 2010 04:14 (thirteen years ago) link