The Composer Seduced into Carpentry

Outsider composer Harry Partch abandoned a university musical education, lived as a hobo for ten years in depression era America, and wrote an opera based on Yeat’s translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. At an early age Partch forsook the ‘dead, white, middle class musical tradition’ and the Western system of musical notation; developing new scales (including a 43 tone scale, with 43 notes per octave rather than 12!), inventing new methods of musical transcription, and constructing instruments which could ‘capture the melodic contours of dramatic speech’.

Above is a youtube playlist featuring a fascinating BBC documentary on the composers life, music and influence. To quote the documentary ‘[Barstow] created an obscure, strange, difficult but always fascinating musical universe in an attempt to exist apart from the modern world’. Radicalised by his homosexuality, Partch remained apart for much of his life from even the radical fringes of the classical establishment, obsessively studying the musical notation and instrumentation of ancient civilisations, building his instruments and composing pieces to express their radical capacities.

Partch’s influence can be seen today in a variety of contemporary experimental composers, in radical outsider musicians like Jandek who record and perform using microtonal tunings, and in the continued construction of custom instrumentation to achieve previously impossible ranges of sound. You can read more about Partch and one of his most accessible works, ‘Barstow‘ appropriately enough on another anablog – this one written by the Analog Ensemble. You can also hear clips of a variety of versions of Barstow, on Corporeal.com.

Music at Play – Pixeljunk Eden

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uutttk4AT0]

Music and video games can be a sublime combination. Whether you’re performing humiliating karaoke versions of cock rock classics with your friends on Harmoix’s Rock Band, or fiddling through rhythm action puzzle games like the recent PSP title Patapon, or trippy two and half D hiphop kungfu classic Parapa the Rappa..

Kick Punch, it’s all in the mind, if you wanta’ test me, I’m sure you’ll find, that all the things I’ll teach ya, is sure to beat ya, nevertheless you’ll get a lesson from teacha

..there’s a special thrill to be had in a soundscape that responds (however trivially) to the interactive elements of a compelling game. The degree of such interactivity can vary hugely, from the now ubiquitous (often unnoticed) matching of musical pace to narrative peaks pioneered by Lucas Arts point and click adventure games in the mid nineties, to the sophisticated transpositional / compositional auditory components of games like Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s ‘Rez’.

Indie darling’s Q-Games, are one of a new breed of developers designing high quality experimental titles for console distribution on Microsoft and Sony’s online stores. Well known for tiny, esoteric but highly acclaimed titles released under their Pixel Junk brand, Q-Games have just released the stunning platformer Pixel Junk Eden. With an ambient electro soundtrack light years ahead of even the most critically lauded musical games, and starkly colored organic art direction, Pixel Junk Eden transforms an otherwise simple platforming dynamic into a deeply absorbing, if occasionally unsettling, experience. As a tiny insect like creature you leap from plant to plant in a surreal series of (apparently undersea) gardens, collecting pollen which fills seeds and springs plants into twisting fluxing life.

Art direction and music for the game were provided by Baiyon, a Japanese multimedia artist (Pixel Junk, although established and run by British born graphics coding genius Dylan Cuthbert, is based in Kyoto). As such, music and play elements combine preternaturally well. An aquatic soundtrack – a million miles away from the high bpm blips and beeps you might associate with chiptune / 8bit (see Paul Bond’s article in this months Analogue) – mixes with squishy sound effects, shifting tempo and urgency in response to an ever draining timer and swaying, growing plants. Oddly, most reviews in the gaming press have described the result as relaxing, when in fact the subliminally unsettling soundtrack, together with the titles tight difficulty curve, should be the only things giving the PS3 owners among you pause. Assuming you can tolerate the games oddly bleak beats and quirky physics, I’d recommend picking up Pixeljunk Eden, right the fuck now.

Alternative Trinity Ball

After this years radically disappointing Trinity Ball line-up, it’s time to re-evaluate the bands we get to play the event. Lets imagine, with a new Ents officer, arguably less in the pocket of philistine event management companies, the best ball we could possibly have next year. What do you suggest?

Here’s one idea for a line up, this isn’t a ‘My Favourite Bands’ list, it’s a group of folk, all excellent, mostly upbeat, many of whom have a large student following. Most importantly none of the acts listed are too big to play the ball.

Main Stage

Go! Team
Sigur Ros
Portishead
The Knife

Dance Tent

Squarepusher
Girl Talk
Zero 7
Boards of Canada
Thievery Corporation
Kompressor

Alternative Tent

Magnetic Fields
Final Fantasy
Strip Squad
Jens Lekman
TV On the Radio

Front Square Stage

Fight like Apes
Decemberists
Deerhoof
Regina Spektor
M.I.A

Realistically, nothing’s likely to change. No Ent’s officer, however decent, can wrest control of the ball from corporate interests. Word is, when tickets sold out in record time this year, Trinity got shafted for the unannounced ‘good’ Oxygen acts (sic). The ball’s become an event, not about the music, but about the socialising. That’s not the worst thing in the world. Trinity Ball is like a great big wedding, filled with mediocre bands and friends you haven’t seen in ages, all dolled up in tails and top-hats. But can you imagine, if they really tried, the night we’d have?