Re: [microsound] microsound+melody

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:14 AM 4/3/00 -0400, you wrote:
> yeh, but that bloodsucker waits was trendy at the time.

I like Waits - and I find his approach to sound in his recordings quite 
remarkable for "pop" music - but for me his inclusion in "Jesus Blood" was 
a major detraction from what was already a fairly sterile and lifeless 
rendition.  It seemed that Point wanted to give Bryars the level of pop 
music appeal noticed in the music of Arvo Part (whose label ECM wisely kept 
the references to Michael Stipe on the removable stickers and out of the 
recordings), but the results were a watered Bryars and a desalinated 
Waits.  A far better reworking of Bryars was undertaken by Les Disques du 
Crepescule, whose extended water tower recording of "The Sinking of the 
Titanic" includes the composer rather than any sales-bloating pop heroes 
and could have continued for hours without becoming waterlogged.  I can see 
Glass' purpose in poppifying the issues on his Point label, and the 
education of pop audience in academic music is not in itself a bad thing, 
but to stretch the Bryars piece out of its melancholic hypnotism toward 
tedium and kitsch seems the wrong way about such a project.

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