I suppose one reason I didn't post in so long was because I hadn't heard much of anything that really inspired me to tell people about it. That changed about 30 minutes ago when I got home from the record store with, among other things, 'Useless Creatures' by Andrew Bird.
This album is considered a "sister-album" to Bird's 2009 release Noble Beast. In fact, if you pre-ordered the limited edition of Noble Beast you received Useless Creatures as a special companion disc of instrumental music. This was only offered for the very first run and was subsequently discontinued. I guess it was later reissued as a stand-alone album, or else I don't know how I could have bought it.
Useless Creatures was recorded in the Wilco loft and features percussionist Glenn Kotche of Wilco and jazz musician Todd Sickafoose on double bass. Here's a couple pics of the famed Wilco loft...
(that's not Andrew Bird)
(You can see more of the Wilco loft in the rockumentary 'I Am Trying To Break Your Heart' filmed during the production of their album 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'. I would highly recommend it, and it's on Netflix!)
But back to the matter at hand. Useless Creatures is unlike any other Andrew Bird album I've heard for a couple of reasons. For one, it's completely instrumental. No lyrics. No vocals (aside from some head singing on 'Master Sigh'). Bird even holds back on his trademark whistling. Another reason I find this so different from Bird's other musical ventures is because of the inclusion of sounds from other parts of the world. 'Nyatiti' is based on a traditional Kenyan folk melody and 'Hot Math' is based on a West African polyrhythmic groove. Bird described 'Carrion Suite' as "a collection of all the ideas that come out of me when I’m warming up at sound check. A little Dvorak mixed with gypsy-Nuyorican jazz and Afro-Cuban Bach". If that quote doesn't make you want to listen to this album, I don't know what will. Nuyorcian, by the way, is a portmanteau for New York and Puerto Rican referring to the Puerto Rican population in New York.
The track on the album that Bird was most excited about making is 'The Barn Tapes'. To make this track he and an engineer friend set up in a barn in Illinois and opened all the doors and windows. They hooked up Bird's violin to 6 amps and placed microphones all over, inside and out. Then Bird commenced to record four hours of loops on a quarter-inch tape machine because he wanted to have that sound of the tape machine slowing down and speeding up. He made a loop for every note in the 12-tone scale, major and minor. Bird describes the track as "static in the sense that almost every note in the scale is in each loop and there is almost no forward motion, just this swirling mass of sound."
Well, I suppose this post is long enough. So I'm going to post a link to a video (sorry, I couldn't embed it) and another link where you can listen to the whole album. You should all check out Andrew Bird's other albums as well. I would especially recommend Noble Beast, Armchair Apocrypha, and Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs. I might also recommend Oh! The Grandeur by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire if you wanted to hear some swinging gypsy-jazz stuff.
Here's that video:
And the music:
No comments:
Post a Comment