31 Days Of Panda, day eight (SO-SO)

I was still moderately sleepy this morning. (Not as moderate as a moderately moderate thing, but still pretty moderate, moderately speaking.) So I took the Skytrain in and walked back. GM Place had something going on - it's always interesting trying to figure out what might be happening, based on the size and shape of the crowds outside. Today it was, frankly, a bit saturated with cougars. Disturbing, but explained by it being "American Idols Live".

We went to Kalypso for the first time in months. George is still there, still serving us extra pita bread and bringing a plateful of desserts once we're full with our main meals. The food there is still delicious, it's just a little too oily compared to The Main. (Also: no Strongbow.) But we had some spare, so tomorrow I dine, or possibly breakfast, on Twiney's unused ribs and pasta. Or she does, either is good.

No more Twines after tomorrow - they fly out in the afternoon. Sarah apparently spent most of today preparing backing tracks and recording Twiney at the microphone. I think there may be some camcorder footage of her singing "Titanic" coming up soon on Youtube - I'll link as necessary.

Today's music was a modern lot:

1) Asian Dub Foundation, "R.A.F.I." - an amazing thing, an ADF album which is occasionally slow and tired-sounding. The reason being, it's the original version of "Rafi's Revenge", which was their breakthrough album in the UK. Most of the tracks were rerecorded or remixed, with the electricity turned up to a million volts, and boy does it make a difference. On the whole I wouldn't recommend this album.

2) Cage, Hiller, Johnston, Salzman, "Cage, Hiller, Johnston, Salzman". This isn't so much an album as a collection of stuff: the full details of it are here. I'm a bit of a fan of the idea of avant-garde music, although I always reserve the right to declare something pretentious claptrap. This, being four tracks from two LPs published in 1970 (somewhat obvious from the artistic ideas on display, to be honest), is one of those cases... the Cage/Hiller compositions are alright, but the Salzman is like listening to that Velvet Underground track with lots of people talking over the guitars, or "Einstein On The Beach", only crap. The Johnston, which was a string quartet, was okay.

3) The Avant Garde Project is a great source of random stuff. Here's something else I got from it: Iancu Dumitrescu's "Medium II" and "Cogito". Dumitrescu, apparently, writes what's known as spectral music, whose fundamental point is to be an interesting sound rather than anything else. Spectralists evidently use frequency analyzers and other such tools to examine their own music and control its timbre. Dumitrescu's pieces here are nothing more than experiments in how interesting you can make a cello sound just in terms of its sound, rather than by playing a tune on it: the fact that he mostly kept my interest for 20-odd minutes each time is notable. I'm not saying you'll like it... in fact I suspect I'm actively recommending that you don't listen to it, as you'll just hate it and hold me responsible. But if you'd like to listen to something you almost certainly haven't heard before, try this one.

4) As opposed to Death Cab For Cutie, "Something About Airplanes", which bored me to tears. Even taking into account its first-album-ness, this was boring: if you're going to be an indie rock band you need to be a lot better than strictly average. In fact, your first album really shouldn't be boring: it's all the songs you've written in your life up to that point, and it should be brimming with originality and verve; it's the second album which falls apart, written on the road while frantically touring under your record label's amused supervision. That I can tolerate; this, not so much. And with such a good band name, too. Oh well.

Now I depart in hope and not in sorrow. Goodnight, my loves, goodnight: Sarah's ultrasounds tomorrow.