Monday's Long Song

It's become one of those things you see on the internet, that since David Bowie died in January 2016 the world has gone to pieces, and while the two may be coincidental rather than related you can't help but feel some grand cosmic imbalance was created when David Jones breathed his last breath and that we've been sinking into the abyss ever since. The five years since 2016 seem to have passed very quickly too, events hurtling at us at a rapid speed, leaving us no time to get to grips with things before some other calamity strikes us. 'News had just come over/ five years left to cry in', the man himself wrote and sang in 1972. 

In 2013 James Murphy, the LCD Soundsystem man I posted about last week, got his hands on one of the songs from Bowie's comeback album The Next Day. He cut and looped some clapping from a Steve Reich track, sampled the synth from Ashes To Ashes and created a monumental remix, minimal, sleek and modern. Bowie sounds superb too, back in touch and vital, 'your country's new... but your fear is as old as the world'. The full ten minute version is the one you want obviously, a long remix that you don't really want to come to an end. 

This the edited version. It's worth mentioning that the 12" release was a beautiful artefact, white vinyl, die cut and embossed sleeve. The hole in the centre was square rather than circular.

Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix By James Murphy For The DFA Edit)

The Next Day was trailed by Where Are We Now?, Bowie's nostalgic tribute to the years he spent in Berlin in the mid 1970s. He recorded it (and the whole album) in secret in autumn 2011 and released the single onto the internet without fanfare on his 66th birthday. 'Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz/ You never knew that I could do that', he croons, a man looking back at his youth, 'just walking the dead'. Time passes, everyone ages, nothing stays the same. The Berlin of 1975 and the Berlin of 2011 are as different as a city could be. David Bowie of 2011 was not the same man he was in 1975. And though he and we didn't know it then, he had just five years left, almost exactly to the day. 

Monday's Long Song

In the late 1960s in New York Steve Reich, inspired by the work of Californian composer Terry Riley, started experimenting with tape loops and noticed the effect of two or more identical recordings slipping out of time with each other. His first phased recording, It's Gonna Rain, was an accident, the result of mucking about with two tape loops of a NY street preacher saying 'it's gonna rain'.  Reich then transferred the effect of phasing into composition and began to write simple melodies based around 12 note figures, changing slightly while repeating, music that was concerned with process and that was deliberately non-linear, there was no climax. I'm sure there are people much more informed about all of this than me but when you listen to Reich and put him in context you start to spot his influence all over the place- tape loops, phasing, repetition, rhythms made without using drums, overlapping parts, the meditative and trance like state that this music creates and so on.

Four Organs is a fifteen minute piece for four electronic organs and a maraca, originally written and performed in 1970. This version was recorded by Bang On A Can in the 1990s and mixed by Reich.

Four Organs

Four

Apologies- this is a bit late but it's New Year's Day and I didn't think anyone would be too bothered if I didn't have a post up by 8am. Better late than never.

On January 1st 2010 I published my first ever post which means Bagging Area is four years old today.

By far the most popular/read post here is my Lily Allen post (the one with the picture of her flashing her arse, which shows the power of Google images and an eye catching pic I suppose, cos I can't imagine 37, 935 people have been looking for her cover version of Straight To Hell with Mick Jones).

A choice of songs for you today depending on the state of your head and hangover. First, The Creation, sharp and noisy 60s mods who wrote several key parts of the textbook...

Making Time

If that's too much then how about some Steve Reich? Electric Counterpoint III



Happy New Year.

A Big Hand Please

I didn't put this in my 2013 list. I can't imagine how I missed it when I listen to it now.