HW through Thursday, May 9th, plus upcoming due dates

Thursday, May 2nd:  discuss "Dr. Don," put up a new column post.  

Tuesday, May 7th:  Chloe's second visit.  Bring your podcast "script," or as much as you can plan out.  Come with your plans for logistics--time, place, equipment--how you will go about interviewing/conversion, how you will introduce your podcast, questions, etc.  Aim for 1-3 min podcast.  

Thursday, May 9th.  Column post, unconventional review/blog post.  

Looking ahead:  Visit by Isaac Fitzgerald on 5/16.  

2nd interview due Tuesday, 5/21.  (I moved this back one class period from what I stated in class).

Term project due Thursday, May 30th.

REVISION: In Hindsight, a Collaboration

In Hindsight, a Collaboration:

Timbaland and Timberlake Share the Spotlight on The 20/20 Experience

In a review of Gangstarr's The Ownerz, Rolling Stone Magazine said that rapper Guru could rhyme from a technical manual and still sound hot over DJ Premier's production.  Justin Timberlake tests this theory in The 20/20 Experience -- the complex, funky production from a reinvigorated Timbaland headlines the album, overshadowing Timberlake’s musically delicious but lyrically immature vocals.

20/20 is undersold as simply a Justin Timberlake album.  It's a Timbaland/Timberlake collaboration, with Timbaland pushing the boundaries of a pop producer.  Timbaland has kept a relatively low profile since his string of hits in the mid-2000s that spawned 11 number one singles in '06 and '07 alone, many for Timberlake himself.  20/20 signifies Timbaland's reemergence as an elite hit maker and his maturation as a producer.

Timbaland is given free reign to color the eight minute opuses that pepper the album with his dynamic and layered production.  He displays a remarkable creative range that is well-adjusted to the trends in indie pop and hip hop.  'Don't Hold the Wall', 'Let The Groove In' and 'Tunnel Vision' all hearken back to his classic style that had me calling radio stations to request 'Promiscuous Girl' and 'Sexy Back' in middle school -- driving, danceable rhythms with a vaguely ethnic sounding drum backing.  Elements of 'Mirrors' feel like a happier, sexier 'Cry Me A River', while others expertly drop out to bass and piano tremolos.  It's club music, Timbaland’s forte.

Even out of his comfort zone, Timbaland excels.  He brings Flying Lotus-style ambient trip hop into the fold, highlighted most notably in 'Strawberry Bubblegum' and its flowing synths.  His deep bass kicks move in and out of a sparing drum kit in the second half of this track, smooth organs melting beneath Timberlake's vocals.  'Blue Ocean Floor' could have been a love child of James Blake and the xx's turn tables, or taken straight from the playbook of LA electro hip hop producer Nosaj Thing. 

In addition to this mood hop and his club tracks, Timbaland experiments fairly successfully with neo-soul.  'That Girl', 'Suit and Tie' and 'Pusher Love Girl' pushed his pop niche towards R&B, disco and even swing.  They're brass heavy, with bright horn highlights and funky bass undertones.  They kick with a retro style that first made me peg them as just a cheap nod to the past, until you realize that Timbaland may be churning out soul music better than the real thing.  Search his solo album, Shock Value, and these types of track are nowhere to be found.  But Timbo's work these days is the real deal and, with the help of a fantastic studio band, his production and songwriting bring 20/20 to life.

Don't get me wrong -- Justin Timberlake has pipes.  His vocal arrangements are strong and I will rarely get tired of a well-intentioned falsetto that can live up to the hype.  Timberlake’s register allows him to handle his falsetto expertly, one of his trademarks, and distinguishes him from other falsettos, like fellow blue-eyed soul crooner Robin Thicke.  His harmonies and riffs on ‘Mirrors’ are thoroughly enjoyable and nuanced –the stripped down beat beginning at 3:42 to the bass drop at 4:34 was the most vocally interesting and layered segment of the album.  His voice will occasionally settle into an awkward, lusty, mid-range rap-singing, reminiscent of past N Sync habits that are, in my opinion, mundane.  Fortunately, these instances are significantly less frequent than they had been on his previous release, FutureSex/LoveSounds.

Timberlake's lyrics, unfortunately, cannot match the top-notch musicality of the album.  While his voice is fantastic and Timbaland is at the forefront of trends in pop production, Timberlake is not on the same level lyrically as the premier R&B songwriters of the time.  In a year where Frank Ocean and Miguel dropped poetic manifestos, 20/20 just isn't close.  Lines like, "So thick, now I know why they call it a fatty," probably won’t cut it in the current cerebral and complex R&B environment.  He clunks his way through a number of clichés -- comparing a girl's love to drugs in 'Pusher Love Girl', loving someone "from the other side of the tracks" in 'That Girl'.  It's been done before, and he doesn't bring anything new to the table.  A number of the tracks could have been found their way into the liner notes of his first solo effort, Justified, with simple rhymes and up front, straight-forward intentions.  It's not painful, but it pales in comparison to the high bar set by Timberlake's recent R&B peers.

Get the album.  It’s a pleasure to listen to and Rolling Stone’s hypothesis -- that pedestrian lyrical content can be overlooked in the presence of high quality production -- is proven correct.  Timbaland will undoubtedly begin fielding diverse musical opportunites following this all-star performance.  Justin Timberlake’s limitations, however, may have been revealed.  Take a creative writing class, JT; it could serve you well on your next project.

Jazz as a Second Language

“Talking about jazz is like singing about architecture,” -Apocryphal, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise

Jazz is the music we made when we first climbed out of the primordial sludge and needed something to say. Jazz is Whitman's barbaric yawp, Ginsberg's howl, and what Plato was most afraid of. Jazz is not background music, despite what coffeehouses and elevators try to convince you. Jazz is the name for when you become human through music. It's imminent and it's intimate and it's ineffable.

But jazz has had bad attorneys in the courtroom of public opinion lately. My personal quest is to try to expose people to the heart of jazzness, because everybody already loves it whether or not they're aware. And this means correcting the notion that liking jazz means having a copy of “Take Five” on your iPod or hanging a poster of Miles Davis on your wall or having any association with Michael Buble. Fuck Michael Buble. That belongs in another column, though.

Obviously, this has to be experienced though. Listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1Eo-6sDIE
And that means really listening. Attention must be paid. Give the music the respect it deserves, and it will respect you too.

This tune (jazz musicians say 'tune' more than normal people, and 'ditty' too, embarrassingly enough) is by the unparalleled trumpet player Lee Morgan, whose biography deserves more than this gloss. He, like other trumpet greats Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, and Clifford Brown, got his start as a teenager, recording as a solo artist for Blue Note Records, one of the most venerated labels in jazz. He worked with John Coltrane and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and was an integral part of several albums that changed the face of jazz in the '60s. He was the first trumpet player I loved. His heroin addiction forced him to take a break right at the pinnacle of his career.

He returned with Sidewinder, the record this song comes from. The groovy, bluesy coolness rocketed the song to the top of the charts and caused Blue Note to adopt this style basically through the present day. He continued to make amazing records until February 19, 1972, when he was just 33. His wife called his name while he was on stage getting ready to perform. When he turned to her, she shot him, then began crying out, “Baby, what have I done?” He bled to death because the ambulances were reluctant to go to the rough neighborhood the club was in. Jazz is, if nothing else, a series of tragedies.

I chose this song because many people of our generation say “the beat” is what matters most to them in a song. The first thing you hear on this track is Bob Cranshaw's bass. There's no better feeling than experiencing the sound of a fat double bass played through quality speakers. The bass ostinato (a repeating rhythmic or melodic figure) stays fairly constant throughout the song, which is fairly rare. Usually in jazz the bass will “walk,” or outline chords by playing one note on every beat. The effect of the figured bass is to establish a groove, along with masterfully laid-back drummer Billy Higgins. Higgins' cymbal is somewhere in between straight eighth notes and swung, which is where the second note of each beat is delayed. This is called playing “in the cracks.” If you can listen to this, combined with Barry Harris' bluesy syncopated (off-beat) chords, without moving a little, I don't know if I can help you.

The rhythm section plays through the form once to set the mood for the piece. Let yourself dig in and feel yourself in their groove. Listen to how each instrument fits perfectly in the spaces left by the other musicians. The bass note on the fourth beat of every measure is a major seventh, even though the key has a flatted (meaning lowered a half-step, also called dominant) seventh. This gives a sense of anticipation, whether or not you're aware.

(An idiosyncrasy of jazz is that, even without knowing all of the music theory that goes into it, your musical sense is affected strongly by very small changes. Learning the theory doesn't make you more susceptible to this, it just makes you more aware of what's happening to you. It's like taking literary criticism classes to learn why you like a book.)

The basic progression, or series of chords, is almost a blues. The uniqueness of the song, and what gives it its title, is the piano's shifting chords. Each measure starts one half-step below the key, then rises up to it. The ear still knows what key the song is in, but the moment of uncertainty leaves the song slippery and perpetually driving forward. At the end of this intro, there's a pause. Remember that pause.

The trumpet and sax (played by the wonderful Joe Henderson) enter and play the head, which is the basic melody of a song which serves to outline the chords that the musicians will solo over. Each repetition of the progression is called a chorus, and each chorus will follow the same progression. The basic structure of a song is head, solos by each musician, then a recapitulation of the head. While the soloists are doing their thing, the rhythm section will comp, or accompany, them, by suggesting the chords as well as by reacting in real time to the improvisations of the soloist. This is hard to do.

The melody is similarly driving, never really giving a moment's rest. The pause at the end is now home to one cool-ass bluesy lick that should make you squinch up your nose and go “Ooooh!” At the end of the head, Lee Morgan's solo begins. He's one of the true masters of soulful playing. His solo includes many snippets of the melody, which helps make it more cohesive. Listen to how he bends and growls some of his notes. The uncomfortable bit of dissonance is what it's all about. If you're paying attention, there's a lot of tension in the music. Without it, what's the point? He uses a lot of motifs, or repeating figures, with minor variations to subvert the listener and keep you on your toes. You should be shaking your head and shimmying your shoulders a bit. His sound has got a tinge of suffering in it, but in a way that reassures that it's all cool cuz he's got his axe and he's really blowin', man, this shit's cookin'. When he starts his third chorus he goes into a flurry of B-flats with accents on the beat. This raises the crap out of some tension. His resolution isn't quite convincing, so he has to go back into it and lead us out with explorations through the range of the scale that doesn't really ever solve the problem. He backs out, leaving us forced to seek resolution in other places we won't find it. C'est la vie.

Henderson's solo follows. While his blues work isn't as immediately accessible as Morgan's, he's got fun moments where you can feel the reediness of his tenor being used to its full bluesy potential. The repeated figures are common and an easy musical moment to latch onto for beginners. These licks are what drives a lot of blues based music and speak to us on a primal level. There's something about the immediacy of an insisted repeated melodic figure that makes us feel the performer's passion in a really clear way. Harris's solo uses the same principle, playing on old blues tropes.

Then bass solo, then head out. Jazz is tough to get into, I'll be the first to admit it. But once you make the attempt to understand jazz qua jazz, you've made the first step towards being able to experience one of the most truly religious endeavors of human existence. Is it worth it? If you have to ask, you'll never know.

Champagne Bubbles and Polished Chrome

Wiley Webb is a freshman progressive house DJ from Malibu, California and his common app essay began "At my first rave".  I heard his two latest singles, 'Humour' and 'Ambrosia', shortly after they dropped in early April, so I jumped at the chance to sit down with him and talk shop. 

Stanford Arts Review: How would you describe your music?

Wiley Webb: Eclectic.  Fun.  Unclassifiable.

SAR: Ok.  How would you describe your music to someone deaf?

WW: Champagne bubbles and polished chrome.  Yeah.

SAR: Woah.

WW: Warmth.  Warm summer winds; not hot but energetic and playful.

SAR: Why do you describe your sounds in themes?

WW: EDM is more abstract -- with acoustic music, it's clearly defined.  EDM can be transformers having an argument, a romantic vacuum cleaner encounter.  Visuals are a big part of the production process.  I like to imagine things of a different sense and then try to translate it into another sense.  There's a detachment between you and what's creating the sound since it's all synthetic.  It allows for room for imagination

SAR: Why is EDM blowing up right now?

WW: To start, the technology is available and being used for music.  As that becomes more widespread, popular taste becomes accustomed to electronic music.  Honestly, it's more fun, it's more interesting, and to my aesthetic taste, it's superior music.  EDM is designed for live environments, and people are down with losing themselves in the moment.  In other types of music, you're forced back into reality in between songs at a concert.  Dance music shows, until very recently with the emergence of celebrity DJs,  were about dancing, and not about the performances.

SAR: Do you think the great musicians of the past would value EDM?

WW: Yes?

SAR: What would John Lennon like about your music?

WW: What type of hypothetical John Lennon are we talking about?  Like, has he listened to Skrillex?

SAR: Let's say this is an open-minded Lennon -- he's looking for positives.

WW: Lennon would love the sound design and cohesion. Cohesion is a big thing for my music.  As a producer, I'm working wit ha conglomeration of sounds.  I'm trying to sew them into a Frankenstein of melodies, where you can't see the seams.  Every sound should work towards the song as a whole, which is what separates amateur from quality producers.

SAR: What about Biggie?

WW:The booty bass  section of 'Humour'.  It's basically a fat kicking bass with a wonky synth over it.  And the main part is very rhythmically conscious.

SAR: Michael Jackson?

WW: The hook.  He'd like the hook.

SAR: You're generally not the biggest drinker or drug user.  Is it weird that there is such a strong drug culture surrounding the type of music you produce?

WW: Yeah, it's a little weird but never disconcerting.  It's never really been about that for me.  If you look at someone like Kaskade -- he's a 42 year old Mormon dude.  It can be done.

SAR: Kaskade is 40?  And Mormon?

WW: Yeah.

SAR: Interesting.  Who are you favorite artists right now?

WW: As for EDM, out of the big guys I likeKaskade, yeah,  deadmau5 and Daft Punk, of course.  As for lesser know guys, The M Machine, Madeon, Porter Robinson.  I opened for Madeon at Ruby Skye in January.  Outside of the genre, I'm getting really into the artsy electronica scene.  Flying Lotus, James Blake, Bonobo all came out with albums in the last three months, so I'm really happy.  They're starting to sway me towards stronger songwriting as opposed to straight production -- song, notes, melodies as opposed to sound structure, arrangement and mixing.

SAR: You think they'll influence your own work?

WW: Yeah.  I'm starting to use a lot of non-traditional chord progressions and my stuff is very melodically based.  If you're not starting on the piano or in some melodic way, it's just not really going to sound like music.

SAR: Do you always start from the piano?

WW: Yeah.  Or in the shower.  I thought of 'Humour' in the shower.

SAR: What's next for you, career move-wise?

WW: Here's where I'm at now.   I feel like I've developed a unique sound that I can call my own.  This summer I'm going to do a lot to try and release some tracks and see what kind of traction I can get with those.  From there, I'll try to figure out if I'd like to do my own thing as a producer/DJ or try to produce for other people.  I just met with a manager to produce for a pop-rock singer looking to expand her creative sound.  It will be a new experience to try to work within her style of rock while making in more interesting and danceable.

SAR: With Skrillex and Diplo doing testing their waters in hip hop, would you consider doing work in that genre?

WW: Yeah.  There's still a lot of room for individuality in creating hip hop beats, even if you're doing it for someone else.

SAR: Is working in hop hop selling out?

WW: It's a way to flex production muscles in a different way and in a different environment.  You dress up in different clothes to go to the gym than for dinner, but it's still you.  Different settings demand different applications of yourself.

SAR: Is DJ Wiley Webb different from Stanford kid Wiley Webb to construct a sort of brand?

WW: As far as I can tell, no.  It's a lot easier not to have to think about

SAR: Did you know DJrankings.com has you ranked as the 10,730th best DJ in the world?

WW: Nice.

SAR: What will it take to get you to crack 10,700?

WW: That's been my dream since day 1.

Wiley's two latest singles, 'Humour' and 'Ambrosia', can be streamed and downloaded at http://wileywebb.com/.  He'll be opening for 3lau at Ruby Skye in San Francisco on Thursday, May 30.

Street Art for Neurotics

Dr. Peter Mann teaches SLE at Stanford. He's also an accomplished visual artist (you can see his work at pmannia.com).

Stanford Arts Review: What first seriously drew you to art, pardon the pun?

Peter Mann: I definitely drew all the time as a kid. I was into cartooning and drawing action heroes and that kind of thing. I first got serious about art in college, especially in my semester abroad in Spain. My friend brought watercolors, and I just sucked at them. My first reaction was that I sucked at art, that all my cartooning had been no good. I had just read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy and had become convinced that art was the highest form of living. God this is going to sound so pretentious in interview. So through an act of will I threw myself into art back in college.

SAR: Who are some of your major influences?
PM: I love German expressionism. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Darger, who's this crazy outsider artist who was like a William Blake of the 20^th century.

SAR: Do you find yourself trying to emulate their style?
PM: I find myself copying the German expressionist style somewhat, especially Egon Schiele. But mostly I try to do my own style. I do think that the best way to learn is to try to copy the masters. I draw from lots of photographs now.

SAR: So you've just finished a series in which you made a unique drawing on every page of Don Quixote. Are you trying to sell those pieces?
PM: Actually, what I did was go to bookstores around the city and leave the pages inside of books with a label that had my website on it. I've already heard back from some people who got the pieces and responded and registered their pieces with me.

SAR: What was the selection process for the books you left them in?

PM: Well, I think that since Don Quixote was the birth of the novel, I had a kind of free range with which books I could leave them in. So some were books that had really affected me, others were books by authors that I enjoyed but hadn't gotten around to reading yet. It was like stamping the books with my own interests.

SAR: Are you interested in this kind of guerrilla art?

PM: This was my first foray into it. I was interested in street art that could be privately or intimately experienced. Street art doesn't really turn me on visually, so I guess in keeping with my bookish nature I wanted to do it through this setting. Like street art for neurotics.

SAR: Who are some contemporary artists you're into?

PM: Andrew Schoultz, William Kentridge, David Shrigley. I'm mostly into graphic designers, like Joe Sacco and R. Crumb, if he counts as contemporary art. He's still alive, right? The piece that's moved me the most lately is by Christopher Marclay, “The Clock.” It's a 24-hour film of movie characters referencing the time of day. It blew my mind when I first saw it.

SAR: Do you have an artist's statement?

PM: No, I'm very much anti-artist's statement. I wrote a manifesto against them a while ago. “The Found Manifesto of Unhinged Lyricism.” You can probably find it online.

http://www.waxworksandroustabouts.com/2009/02/unhinged-lyricism.html

You most certainly can.

Alex Clare: Defying Genre and Expectation

When listening to Alex Clare’s The Lateness of the Hour on repeat for the past several months, I pictured Clare as dark, handsome, and brooding, a man whose soul poured like liquid from his throat. When I arrived at the Regency Ballroom on Tuesday for his concert, Clare turned out to be a rather short British ginger, complete with full beard and knitted beret, whose awkwardness was endearing and whose smile was only slightly less jolly than Santa Claus.

The crowd at the Regency Ballroom was an unexpected mix of families, young professionals, and messy, drunken high schoolers. My attention was frequently drawn away from Clare by the saga unfolding directly in front of me: two drunk friends (or gay lovers?) had a falling out, one left, and the other made friends with a girl next to him when he offered his matchbook to light her joint. As I watched with trepidation and amusement, the two began smoking together until a man with an obnoxious nose piercing in front of them asked them to stop. “I have asthma,” he said. “It’s a real thing.”

With effort I refocused my energies on Clare, whose performance during this first part of the concert left something to be desired.  His nerves were apparent during the first half of concert; Clare seemed uncomfortable in his skin, hiding behind a combination of hat, beard, and microphone and bobbing his head awkwardly during instrumental sections.

Perhaps some of his nerves are excusable; this is his first tour and he is relatively new to fame. Clare’s song “Too Close,” which accompanied Microsoft’s latest advertising campaign for Internet Explorer 9, debuted at #68 on the Billboard Hot 100 and even reached #1 in Germany in March 2012. The song, thankfully, is much better than the browser, and many of Clare’s other songs feature the same soulful voice, powerful pop lyrics, and driving bass that places them somewhere between soul, pop, and electronic.

Even so, it took the commercialization of “Too Close” to get The Lateness of the Hour off the ground. The album was released in the U.K. in July 2011 with little stir and resulted in Clare being dropped from his record label. However, Universal Republic came knocking after the exposure from the Microsoft commercial and the album was released in the U.S. last May.

Clare’s background is eclectic.  Born in Northwest London, he began his musical career with the trumpet when he was seven. He trained to be a chef in order to continue playing music. In 2006, he briefly dated singer Amy Winehouse and is a practicing Orthodox Jew. His music, influenced by everything from the jungle and garage music of his youth to soul, dubstep, and dancehall, is just as difficult to label.   

After hearing him sing live, The Lateness of the Hour begins to sound flat, the process of recording eliminating a portion of Clare’s vocal depth. Live, he belted every song, adding effortless vocal flourishes to his somewhat simple melodies. The power and rich quality of his voice was unexpected and overwhelming, but he faced the danger of over singing, proving his status as a novice performer. Several of his ballads suffered when he sang them at the same intensity as the dance-pop numbers. 

However, once Clare put his hands on an acoustic guitar and simply played his music, he began to blossom as a performer. He sheepishly introduced an acoustic cover of American folk song “Goodnight Irene” by explaining that it was the first song he learned on the guitar.  The sentimentalism fit him perfectly, and when he expressed his hope that the audience would enjoy the song despite its depressing lyrics, I was sold. The same humble, sheepish quality would appear later when he taught the audience the chorus to “Where Is The Heart?” and asked us to sing with him. “I hope you don’t leave me high and dry,” he said earnestly. No one did.

Standout songs included “Up All Night,” which had everyone dancing and singing along, and a bass dropping “Too Close,” the song that started it all. Clare even reprised crowd favorite “Treading Water,” singing with a new flair and performing with a new confidence.

After the show-stopping “Too Close,” Clare interestingly chose to close with piano ballad “Won’t Let You Down.” With his fantastic pianist almost stealing the spotlight, Clare sang simply and touchingly, harkening back to his singer-songwriter roots. Two audience members near the front raised their lighters, the two small flames a tribute to honesty, imperfection, and the refreshing glow of raw, untarnished talent.  It was a perfect finish to a night of awkward affability and sentimental spirit from a new artist who defies both genre and expectation.

Collaborative Review Question 5: Kronos/Anderson

5.  We sat in the back (choir) section.  What are those seats like?

Collaborative Review Question 4: Kronos/Anderson

4.  Confounding/maddening/what-the-heck-is-going on parts?

Collaborative Review Question 3: Kronos/Anderson

3.  Favorite/cool/take-you-to-another-world aspects of the performance?

Collaborative Review Question 2: Kronos/Anderson

Question 2:

2.  Thoughts on the Bing performance hall itself, and how well it works for performances like the one we saw.

Collaborate review Question 1 of Kronos/Laurie Anderson

Put your answers as replies to this post.

What exactly was this piece?  Does it defy categorization entirely?

The 20/20 Experience: Timba and Timber

In a review of Gangstarr's The Ownerz, Rolling Stone Magazine said that rapper Guru could rhyme from a technical manual and still sound hot over DJ Premier's production.   Justin Timberlake tests this theory in The 20/20 Experience, milking complex, funky production from the reinvigorated Timbaland to play the starring role under his musically delicious but lyrically immature vocals.

20/20 is misrepresented as a Justin Timberlake album.  In reality, it's a Timbaland/Timberlake collaboration with an emphasis on the Timbaland.  Timbaland has kept a relatively low profile since his string of hits in the mid-2000s that spawned 11 number one singles in '06 and '07 alone, many for Timberlake himself.  20/20 signifies his reemergence as an elite hit maker and his maturation as a producer.

Timberlake seems to afford him a fair amount of freedom throughout the eight minute songs that pepper the album to highlight Timbaland's layered and dynamic production.  The range he displays on this album is remarkable and well- adjusted to the trends in indie pop and hip hop.  'Don't Hold the Wall', 'Let The Groove In' and 'Tunnel Vision' all hearken back to his classic style that had me calling radio stations to request 'Promiscuous Girl' and 'Sexy Back' in middle school -- driving, danceable rhythms with a vaguely ethnic sounding drum backing.  Elements of 'Mirrors' feel like a happier, sexier 'Cry Me A River', while others expertly drop out to bass and piano tremolos.  It's club music, and Timbaland has proven time and time again that this is a forte.

Even out of his comfort zone, Timbaland excels.  He brings Flying Lotus-style ambient trip hop into the fold, highlighted most notably in 'Strawberry Bubblegum's flowing synths.  His deep bass kicks move in and out of a sparing drum kit in this track, smooth organs melting beneath Timberlake's vocals.  'Blue Ocean Floor' could have been a love child of James Blake and the xx's turn tables, or taken straight from the playbook of LA electro hip hop producer Nosaj Thing. 

In addition to this mood hop and his club tracks, Timbaland experiments fairly successfully with neo-soul.  'That Girl', 'Suit and Tie' and 'Pusher Love Girl' pushed his pop niche towards R&B, disco and even swing.  They're brass heavy, with bright horn highlights and unbelievably funky bass undertones.  They kick with a retro style that first made me peg them as just a cheap nod to the past, until you realize that Timbaland may be churning out soul music better than the real thing.  Search his solo album, Shock Value, and these types of track are nowhere to be found.  But Timbo's work these days is the real deal and, with the help of a fantastic studio band, his production brings 20/20 to life.

As far as Justin goes, don't get me wrong -- this guys has pipes.  His vocal arrangements are strong and I will rarely get tired of well-intentioned falsetto that can live up to the hype.  His register allows him to handle his falsetto expertly, one of his trademarks, and distinguishes him from other falsettos, like fellow crooner Robin Thicke.  His voice will sometimes settle into an awkward lusty, mid-range rap-singing, reminiscent of popular but musically questionable Nsync habits.

Timberlake's lyrics, unfortunately, cannot match the thorough quality of the album's music.  While his voice is fantastic and Timbaland is a the forefront of trends in pop production, Timberlake is not on the same level lyrically as the premier R&B songwriters of the time.  In a year where Frank Ocean and Miguel dropped what could be conceived as collections of poetry, 20/20 just isn't even close.  It's going to be tough to get by with lines like, "So thick, now I know why they call it a fatty".  Clever, Justin, clever.  He clunks his way through a number of clichés -- comparing a girl's love to drugs in 'Pusher Love Girl', loving someone "from the other side of the tracks" in 'That Girl'.  It's been done before, and he doesn't bring anything new to the table.  A number of the tracks could have been found their way into the liner notes of his first solo effort, Justified, with simple rhymes and up front, straight forward intentions.  It's not painful, but it pales in comparison to the high bar set by Timberlake's recent R&B peers.

Get the album.  It’s a pleasure to listen to and Rolling Stone’s hypothesis is proven correct that over high quality production, pedestrian lyrical content can be overlooked.  Timbaland will undoubtedly begin a diversification process in his clientele with an all-star performance like this once.  Justin Timberlake’s limitations, however, may have been revealed.  Take a creative writing class, JT, it could serve you well on your next project.

The Index: Voodoo, D'Angelo

Number of critics: 4

Number of critics who had recently returned from Coachella: 3

Hours since arrival:  12

Hours spent awake: 4

Critics under the influence: 3

Critics who had heard of D'Angelo: 1

Shakes of my head induced by previous statistic: 12

Length of album, in minutes: 79

Length of discussion, in minutes: 79

Approximate time spent discussing music, generally, in minutes: 45

Approximate time spent discussing Voodoo  in minutes: 18

Approximate time spent discussing a critic's Big-Little Pairing form for her sorority, in minutes: 18, disparately

Years ago that Voodoo came out: 13

Tracks that featured 'vocal percussion' (beatboxing) by Roots drummer ?uestlove: 1

Percentage of critics who had heard of ?uestlove: 50

Tears shed at previous statistic: 3, internally

Interests piqued with lusty guitar, bass kicks and Redman verse at beginning of 'Left and Right': 4

Number of rap verses, out of four total, that result in laughs or furious head nodding: 4

Critics who were aware that Redman and Method Man were on D'Angelo songs: 0

Critics who were aware of Method Man and Redman, period: 1

Seconds after 'Left and Right' completes that contemplation over where D'Angelo would fit into past musical genres begins: 12

Critics who agree with assertion that his low, soulful tones would have benefitted him in 60's blues: 4

Time spent arguing about whether biological or  social processes characterize "good music", in minutes: 10

Critics who felt that "good music" is a purely subjective matter once you pass a certain threshold from noise in to music: 2

Critics who think there may be a fundamental 'pleasure pattern' in art that connects musical, visual and tactile stimulation: 1

Critics who pondered that hypothesis deeply and silently  while listening to 'The Root': 4

Number of inane questions on the Big/Little application that broke the critics from their musical trance: 2

Kronos and Laurie

The first thing I said about the Kronos Quartet and Laurie Anderson under the cover of thunderous applause was, "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhit!"  That exclamation had quickly followed the first breath I allowed myself  since the tumultuous, rising climax like  a high speed chase, an active war zone where we became paralyzed bystanders that could do nothing to stop the beautiful destruction in front of us until it denoued into layered, weaving strings.  Shhhhhhhhhhhhhit.

My experience with classical music doesn't extend far beyond movie scores and elevators, so I didn't know what to expect heading into Landfall, the west coast premiere of the collaborations between  experimental performer Laurie Anderson and the avant-garde Kronos Quartet.  I certainly didn't expect Bing Concert Hall to turn into a morphing piece of abstract art.  The hall moved between deep reds, purples and blues into great golden backlights, projecting matrix code lists of extinct species and letters and symbols that "transcribed" Anderson's words.  She used voice distorters to created an artificially low voice (think Houston's 'screwed' style) and spoke about false Hebrew letters, secret countdowns in Russian overlaying the strings, too-fast text scrolling on the screen to the point where it felt imagined.  Her words felt independent of and disconnected from the music, hinting at the bizarre relationship between language and meaning while Kronos spoke in themes and colors.  "Don't you hate it when people tell you about their dreams," she asks, while the audience looks on, unsure of whether we’re dreaming or not.

The five players fought through 36 episodes of beautifully percussive, somber moods.  The strings worked into lamenting, rolling harmonies to fill what Anderson describes as the "big sound spaces" accentuated by teary-eyed  "pin drops of sound".  About halfway into the 70 minute piece, violinist John Sherba moved to the center of the dimly lit string circle into a few dramatic plucks, followed by a phrenetic and adrenaline-paced solo.  His chaotic tribute to violence was a highlight of the show and felt like a challenge, a call to the ring.  Anderson’s underlying ambient synths, strings and occasional beats paced the entire show quite effectively.  This may have been what created the most cohesion in the show to allow the many episodes to flow together.

Anderson said that the piece was a reflection on the fantastic, beautiful power she witnessed in the flooding of New York City during Hurricane Sandy.  The complex and discordant emotions evoked by immense power and destruction were matched by those I felt watching Landfall.  Their flowing, driving collaboration was mysterious, vicious and majestic, and a great success.

Hidden Musicians: A Living Player-Piano

Kenny Leung, resident pianist of Larkin in Stern Hall, can’t read music. Instead, he can play any song he knows by ear. He’s known for his adaptive medley, where listeners shout out a song while he is playing and he transitions into it effortlessly. When I sat down in the Larkin lounge with him and asked for a demonstration, Leung switched from Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” to frat party fav “Get Low” to “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons without effort.

“A big part of it is not really caring if you mess up or not. I had totally give up on piano actually,” Leung said. “I was never going to play the piano again, so I didn’t really care about messing up. I think that was one of the biggest factors in learning to improvise.” He took lessons from first until eighth grade when he stopped because he couldn’t read music; for years, he could only play a song if his teacher played it for him first. In high school, he began playing songs that were on the radio. He would guess-and-check the melody, then layer on bass patterns and chords.

In order to do the adaptive medley, Leung transposes every song into the same key so that he can easily transition between them.  “I like the key of G. It’s pretty simple and it’s my default,” said Leung. He considers it his “own personal key.” “I try to abstract the relations between all the chords I hear in the song. I’ve attributed certain emotions to every chord. For example, the C chord is anticipatory. I know what kind of emotions each chord produces and I play off of that.”

Leung prefers to play with groups of people, who give him song recommendations and sing along with him. He believes he is known more for singing than for piano, and he and his friends often take inappropriate rap songs and turn them acoustic. “Get Low” is a dorm favorite. “I do this thing when it’s 3 am and we’re all in the lounge working on something and everyone’s really bored. I’ll sit down at the piano and I’ll start narrating all of our lives. But that only happens after 3 am.”

While Leung is taking a more active role in music at Stanford by doing regular coffeehouse performances with a friend, he is conflicted about taking formal lessons and learning to read sheet music. “I don’t want to lose my own personal touch on music. I don’t want to feel like I have to conform to some structure.”

Anderson and Kronos Quartet

For a portion of Laurie Anderson’s “Landfall,” all I could think about was how I couldn’t remember the name of the tree people in Lord of the Rings (they are called the Ents, as Google kindly informed me afterward). The work itself was strange enough—segmented into a variety of smaller pieces with uneasy, sometimes abrupt transitions and a frenetic, lulling blend of electronic and acoustic sound—until Anderson began to speak in a male voice. I initially tried to understand what she was saying, something about how 99.9% of all species that have lived are now extinct. I remembered that the piece was inspired by Hurricane Sandy and realized all of a sudden that Anderson’s voice, with its slow, methodical dips and turns, was just like that of the speaking trees in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Lord of the Rings. As I pushed back into my memory, Anderson’s rhythmic voice began to lose its grasp on language; the words became sounds became part of the music, and Anderson herself ceased to be a woman but instead morphed into a living instrument.

I eventually gave up on my memory, lost in the whirlwind of carefully placed sound.  Combining Anderson’s electric violin, vocals, keyboard, and synthesizers with the technical virtuosity of the Kronos Quartet, the performance was in the Bing Concert Hall and took full advantage of the hall’s multicolored lighting, vast curved surfaces, and acoustical prowess. The five musicians were individually spot lit in a semi-circle in the center of the floor. Around them, the lights changed from blue to green to pink to orange, helping to delineate the smaller pieces within “Landfall.” Words, which were written in different fonts and devolved slowly into representations or even different languages, were projected upon two of the curved walls, scrolling and flashing to the beat of the music.  More traditional melodies collapsing into strange riffs and atonal scratches as the musicians hammered away on their instruments. Anderson pressed pedals under her keyboard to summon up a deep bass.

The pieces ranged from mournful to nostalgic to hopeful. Anderson spoke to the audience in several, sometimes as a spoken word poet, sometimes as a stand-up comic, creating a jarring experience for an audience that took her first poem about disaster seriously but could not reconcile her story about being in a Dutch karaoke bar with the horrors of Hurricane Sandy. Still, I laughed when she joked about how we don’t really want to hear other people’s dreams, especially when they can’t remember what happened themselves.

Ultimately, the piece lacked the unity I wanted it to have. While it came back several times to the same theme, the order of the pieces appeared random. A climactic moment came when the violist stepped forward and played a solo as projected words flashed to the rhythm of his riffs—but it had no resolution, instead spiraling outward into tangents of sound and voice, coalescing into a electronic-rock ballad for a moment before docilely accompanying the text.  Nevertheless, the audience clapped long enough for the musicians to return for an encore bow. 

Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet

 Laurie Anderson is a gifted composer and should be content with that. Her performance with the Kronos Quartet at Bing this weekend was a testament to her skill in this area and her belief that she has skills in others like poetry and performance art.

The show consisted of music from Kronos with Anderson accompanying on electric fiddle, synthesizer and spoken word as projections appeared above house left and house right. These projections and the spoken word covered varying subjects, such as an alphabetical list of galaxies, a denouncing of Lincoln as a liar, a complaint about people who share their dreams, a story of a trip to a Dutch karaoke bar, and meditations on extinction and the Hebrew alphabet, among other things. The poetry that this sought to be was unfortunately lost in cliches and heavy-handedness. This wasn't helped by the cheesy Arial font over a gradient background used for most of the projections, especially when Wingdings was used liberally to hammer in her theme, viz. language is just a series of inscrutable symbols, or something equally coffeehouse-slam-poetry-night-esque. Ironically, her greatest lyrical work came when the poetry felt most slam, as in a moment where each note of a viola solo triggered the switch to the next word. Dictating the time for the audience to read each note gave the work an immediacy that was gripping. This sense of importance was lacking in the rest of the piece, however.

The projections had the effect of showcasing the beauty of Bing's interior. The lighting designer's contributions gave the impression of total immersion, and the soft lights and curved panels inside Bing wrapped up the audience. The idea of the projections is cool in its own right. The subject matter just left something to be desired.

The music itself was unique in that it used fairly gimmicky elements without sounding gimmicky, which is why the gimmicky nature of the vocals was even more disheartening. The music was a subtle blend of acoustic and electric music, the synthesizers filling in for the natural holes of a string quartet. Anderson's score helped Kronos do what they do best, which is to make Western sonorities feel like more than their constituent parts, causing the listener to feel free of their musical preconceptions and simply experience the movement through time of the music without the detritus of expectations. At its worst, the piece felt like a movie soundtrack done in a simultaneously Asian and Celtic medium. At its best, it felt like that, but in a good way. There were many interesting moments: the aforementioned viola solo, which was a passionate spiccato atonal attack with lovely changes in timefeel; a vamp consisting of a simple arpeggiating melody as the harmony shifted nebulously between B major and G major; and an unusual and sudden break with a Nine Inch Nails-like drum machine beat under a Eurythmics-like dance ostinato and what sounded like Tibetan lyrics.

All of these were wonderful and original but lost their mood with the entrance of Anderson's voice. Her lyrics brought back self-consciousness, an obstacle to the appreciation of the music qua music. It was as if she was not content to let her music speak for itself. Her poems didn't add anything that was lacking from the music. The words just came out more like gratuitous dalliances with synthesizer technology instead of a positive contribution to the mood of the piece.  

Insanity, Poetry and Opera

Beyond the more cosmetic complaints I have about Visitations, the two new one-act operas by Jonathan Berger that premiered in Bing on Friday, there is a deeper issue present in the first of the pair. Berger and librettist Dan O'Brien do an unfortunately poor job of representing psychosis, namely paranoid schizophrenia, in Theotokia.

The basic premise of Theotokia is that Leon, an overweight and bedraggled schizophrenic, is haunted by voices from both the spiritual leader of the Shakers and the Yeti Mother, a Mary figure. There is also the requisite figure of the terrible mother who only sees how her child's mental illness affects her, reminiscent of every other artwork featuring a mentally ill person, because the idea of bad parenting is easier to grasp than the horrible implication that similar conditions could befall anybody.

Many problems are evident already: Hearing voices is not necessarily a sign of mental illness and should not be stigmatized. And there's the whole 'equating orthodox religious belief with mental illness' issue. And for the grand catharsis (which I only gathered from the gloss in the program; the lyrics were basically indecipherable), Leon realizes he's been hallucinating and is in fact just crazy, the great improbability of which beggars character development that has been lost in all of the confusing dream-sequence trickery.

These could, possibly, be excused. It's only one-act, it can't be scapegoated for the way that mental illness is portrayed across virtually all media, etc. But it's the aesthetic choices for how schizophrenia is depicted that are truly offending. Berger plays into the idea that all music for stories dealing with crazy people should be harsh, dissonant, atonal and arrhythmic, the effect of which seems to be mostly to drive the audience as crazy as the characters. Think Black Swan or Donnie Darko or any play written by a high-schooler that strives to be deep. The music was dark and percussive and left no time for any sort of levity. Most of the melody consisted of random ascending runs of whole tone scales or arpeggiations of augmented chords from various members of the orchestra. The only moments of harmony came in scenes featuring the Shaker congregation, which were rather nicely warped melodies reminiscent of hymns. Tempo was similarly lacking. If there was a beat at all it was fast and frenetic, a cheap way of building tension with no substantive shift in the style of the music.

Poetry Magazine opened their February issue with a poem entitled “The Orange Bottle” by Joshua Mehigan (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/245222 ) that, until the last line, does a remarkable job of depicting the trials of psychosis. Identifying where Theotokia falls short is easier when compared to this poem.

Serious mental illness isn't like listening to a John Cage piece all the time. It's like being subject to a structure that no one else around you recognizes. “The Orange Bottle” is primarily a lilting, almost whimsical series of ABAB rhyming quatrains that teeter on the brink of strict meter. In strong moments, or moments where the reader should assume the central character's view, the meter slips away and the poem's form starts skipping like a record, lingering just long enough on a line for it to become uncomfortable. Creating this effect with music is difficult, far more difficult than settling for unnecessary dissonance, but it's powerful. Examples that come to mind include the second movement of Symphonie Pathetique, Tchaikovsky's otherworldy paean to grief, which features an undanceable waltz in 5/4 time, or Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, which succeeds despite and because of its shirking of traditional tonality, or any of Shostakovich's string quartets. Berger even made allusions to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in the piece, which is the greatest argument for the benefits of atonality done well.

I'm no expert in music theory, especially classical, by any stretch of the imagination. Just because I couldn't discern any deeper significance to Berger's musical choices doesn't mean none exists. But I have at least a cursory knowledge of theory, and probably more than most of the audience at the concert. If it wasn't noticeable at all to me, then the likelihood that a majority of the audience left feeling the opera did more than just string together random groups of notes is fairly low. An accurate, or at least compelling, portrayal of mental illness demands some finesse. Dissonance with no structure is an insultingly elementary way of demonstrating the protagonist's mental instability. This is only worsened by the fact that there's no progression whatsoever in the play. Leon starts crazy and ends crazy, with a brief confusing moment of recognition. The music has no chance to build or develop because the opera itself doesn't.

This isn't to say the music was beyond redemption. The parts written for percussion were wonderful. Scene III featured Leon beating a rhythm out on his body, which was done on drums and was precisely what I wished the rest of the opera was like. It was motivic but was based on simple rhythms that aren't common in any Western music genre. It felt like a pattern that could make sense, but lied just past the scope of accepted musical figures. And the singers, especially Leon, were all remarkable talents. The acting and singing were compelling in their own right.

The set design came so close to accuracy and escaping cliché that its failures were all the more upsetting. A large swath of white cloth hung down from the battens over the seating directly behind the stage, which served as a projection screen for shots of candles and the Himalayas. The candle imagery was rather trite, like the gimmick as a whole. But there was one redeeming moment: During a breakdown scene, a clip was aired that appeared to be a video of a cell dividing over and over again played backward, the effect being that a swarm of moving polygons slowly collected and merged until one fuzzy circle remained. The trypophobic discomfort of watching this unfold was far more effective than any sudden appogiaturas that Berger employed in conveying the horror of being in a world your brain isn't suited for. This was seen also in the lighting design. Most of the stage was lit by three ellipsoidals with grid patterns that were at acute angles to each other. These again caused an uneasy clash throughout the show; the patterns seemed to be a part more of Leon's world than the audience's. These successes were off-put by Leon's direct surroundings, which consisted of a series of charcoal drawings of circles. The doodles seemed too simplistic. Far more could be made of what brought Leon to draw. I think the most fascinating part of stories about mentally ill characters is seeing their creative output. But Leon was constantly denied a voice throughout the show. I felt like Berger and O'Brien tried too hard to make his hallucinations speak for him, but his final realization showed that more existed to the character than these visions, which could only be seen in his percussion solo and these repetitive drawings.

Theotokia is ambitious. It basically seeks to narrate the thoughts of a deranged man in such a way as to make him both a figure of pity and of commiseration. Unfortunately, Berger's reliance on abstract and uncompelling musical motives leaves his main character just an uncomfortable man in a straitjacket. The composer would do well to look at how the mentally ill have been depicted in works like “The Orange Bottle” as opposed to the Black Swan method of aggressive and unenlightening discord.