Despite its history and charm, Asheville, North Carolina isn’t widely known as a destination for music and culture. Many associate the town with the Blue Ridge Parkway, hippie drumming, and maybe Black Mountain College, a progressive institution that closed in 1957 but once was a center for artists like Merce Cunningham and John Cage. But look deeper and you’ll also find a contemporary music scene, classy bars, and a population of locals that are culturally aware and proud of their town.
And they’re nice — like deep-South nice. Maybe that’s why Robert Moog decided to spend the last 25 years of his life there.
DJ Rob Swift is one of the premier turntablists scratching and mixing today. His most recent album, The Architect, explores a distinctly classical sound — a genre totally foreign to Swift until recently. After his girlfriend turned him onto Frédéric Chopin, Swift immersed himself in the culture of classical music, and he soon found himself bridging the gap between the centuries-old compositions and his modern-day craft. Swift penned this piece for ALARM explaining the intersections of classical and hip hop in his own music.
My Introduction to Classical Music
by Rob Swift
The genre of classical music has helped me reinvent my approach to making turntable music! I know it sounds sort of odd coming from a hip-hop DJ, but it’s true. When you think about it, we all have some sort of connection to classical music, whether it was learning about it in music class as a child or listening to it in movies and commercials. At one point or another, you’ve been touched by classical compositions from the likes of Frédéic Chopin, Ludwig Van Beethoven, or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, my personal favorite composers!
An interactive and progressive gallery space in Memphis, Tennessee, Odessa is slowly gaining attention as a unique underground arts and music space in the South. It’s situated in the Broad Avenue Arts District of the Binghamton community in Memphis, a neighborhood that originally was on the railway line between Tennessee and North Carolina. Eventually, the suburban area was annexed by the city of Memphis. Although the neighborhood remains underdeveloped, it boasts a strong sense of community and is gradually emerging as an important addition to the city’s aspiring arts scene.
Experimental duo The Books recently brought its meticulous audiovisual production to the Vic in Chicago. Touring in support of its July album, The Way Out (Temporary Residence), Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong played to a rapt, seated audience, with their trademark found-video mash-ups and cut-and-paste audio collages seamlessly synced. ALARM contributing photographer Samantha Hunter was on hand to capture the show.
Moses Avalon is one of the nation’s leading music-business consultants and artists’-rights advocates and is the author of a top-selling music business reference, Confessions of a Record Producer. More of his articles can be found at www.mosesavalon.com.
Is there no limit to this guy’s narcissism? The old saying goes, “When three people tell you you’re drunk, maybe you should sit down.” When the US Supreme Court says, “You are a thief who stole from millions of artists,” and when the Attorney General investigates you for 400 million counts of computer trespass, and then, finally, when Hollywood casts you as the villain in the hottest movie of the season, maybe it’s time you take a look at your values.
With Limewire now due for permanent shutdown, the blogs are lit up with opinions on the fallout. Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster, thinks all this will do is create more heads of the hydra — in other words, more P2P will spawn from the death of Limewire, thus validating his 2001 position that the labels are fighting a losing battle against piracy and should just give up. Clearly, the tech-heads agree with their icon, even if the statistics tell a different story: piracy is passé, the lawsuits worked, and the “free music” generation is growing up and opting in.
The Rival Mob: “Hardcore for Hardcore” [audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/01-Hardcore-for-Hardcore.mp3|titles=The Rival Mob – Hardcore for Hardcore]
The Rival Mob has collected all sorts of praise with its approach to the New York hardcore sound of the late ’80s, and it doesn’t hurt that vocalist Brendan Radigan splits time playing drums in niche-loved Mind Eraser. Although everyone knows not to judge an album by its cover, the lush, conflict-laden painting adorning Hardcore for Hardcore, the band’s new six-song seven-inch, primes the listener adequately for what lies within.
United by a mutual appreciation of hip hop, Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel combined as Phantogram to make layered, starry-eyed pop with shadowy undertones.
With My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, songwriter Michael Gira and his influential, experimental Swans emerge as elemental and potent from 13 years in the grave.
A profound understanding of past worlds and global traditions are required to make music like Copal does. The New York City-based music collective specializes in old-world sounds with careful modern flourishes, drawing influences from a wide variety of ancient societies. Copal’s debut album, Into the Shadow Garden, has a meditative sophistication; it’s a string- and percussion-driven album that recalls a time when these instruments alone were used to express a musical ambiance and atmosphere.
