Music
Breaking Down the Fourth Wall—Again
By Andrew CappettaAt the two-day Minor Musics Japan concert at ISSUE Project Room this past September, Takahiro Kawaguchi and Taku Unami (in a duo with Annette Krebs) proved that, although it is now a well-defined genre, experimental music in the Cagean vein has not become overly stylized and mannered.
Translation As Erasure In Leonard Cohen's Songs From A Room
By Marshall YarbroughTo describe Cohen’s approach to Songs from a Room as minimalistic doesn’t quite capture its atmosphere. The word that better expresses the record’s denuded landscape feel is erasure.
Riffing On Schoenberg: Fieldwork's Hypnotic Virtuosity
By David St.-LascauxThe celebration of the John Cage centennial in 2012 will certainly owe a debt to Cage’s mentor, Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most influential innovators of modern music. Schoenberg said (and Cage repeatedly recounted) that Cage was “not a composer, but … an inventor—of genius.”
Outtakes
By Steve DalachinskySo I’m walking down Spring Street on a blustery winter day, when I’m greeted by the somewhat out-of-tune sound of an alto sax playing Bird. Suddenly I hear hysterical screaming coming from somewhere above, “Shut up. Go home. You can’t play. SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”
