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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Liz Janes and People.
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Listed: Liz Janes + People
Liz Janes
As a recording artist on Sufjan Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label, Liz Janes has, implicitly, a pretty influential fan cutting her checks. It's no sweetheart deal, though - Liz Janes recording history is as diverse as it is impressive. After working with Sufjan Stevens and Rafter Roberts on her first two full-length albums, Virginia native Liz Janes' latest record finds her collaborating with LA-based free jazz ensemble Create(!) to "open the American songbook and write up their own chapter." Their new record, which is self-titled, is now available.
Art that makes me love art again. My list for Dusted.
1. American Astronaut
The ultimate western to ever take place in outerspace. A film produced by The Billy Nayer Show. It’s a musical, it’s a western, it’s a space odyssey. It’s absurdity from heaven. (billynayer.com)
2. My Brightest Diamond – Avant Classical Pop Rock
My latest favorite. Shara Worden, has been playing guitar and singing first-chair harmony for Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois tour this summer. Shara is just finishing up her debut record that is bound to turn heads and knock socks off. I’m a fortunate one to have heard the near-finished product, and the woman is simply an unparalleled talent. The only question now, is which lucky label will get to put this record out? (sharaworden.com)
3. Herc.
Two guys playing toy drum kit and accordion, mid-set they run behind a home-made cardboard back drop and reappear with ski-masks on, only to perform a mini-set as their own arch enemies. But the good guys prevail! Just discovered one of these guys has grown into ‘Lord of the Yum Yum ‘ - Can’t wait to check him out. (Lordoftheyumyum.com)
4. Joanna Newsom
Best Songwriter of our Generation. Urchin from another planet. National treasure.
5. Andrew Bird
Saw him perform live in Bloomington, IN – I think I was changed for life. This is the kind of transcendent experience we’re all desperately seeking each time we go to see art or music of any kind. Time and space blur into little moments where lyrics and melody come together in such a way as to make all the depravity of the human condition seem beautiful and necessary. Just man and violin (and looping device).
6. The Curtains
A real sweetheart of a band. I love the Curtains! (curtains.suchfun.net)
7. Danielson Famile
Just saw them at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC and was reminded that they are my favorite band ever. Pace setters as far as avant rock performance. Makes you want to kiss a stranger. They got the Joy Joy Joy Joy…. (p.s.-got a sneak peek of the Danielson/Deerhoof stuff. Whoa. YES! The new record is a whole new animal)
8. The Farm Hands
What happens when 3 baseball geeks/ actual geniuses make a raw basement pop rock record. A song for each of baseball’s 30 teams. Need I say more? www.thefarmhands.com
9. Nate Janes
My brother has yet to record an album of his own stuff. Tragically lazy? Busy family man? Needs encouragement? What, I don’t know. Every song he’s ever written has made me love art again. (And no, I’m not partial just cause he’s my brother, jeez)
10. Women in the History of Chicago Blues
A small but great exhibit currently at the Chicago Public Library. Amazing old film footage of ladies singing and playing in the streets of Chicago, and in some huge marketplace. These women were singing and playing with an urgency that I can never understand. Even though I am very influenced by early jazz and blues, and people say I’m some kind of blues singer, I felt very unworthy to be considered an heiress to this tradition. An impressive collection to be seen, heard, and borrowed. Viva la woman!
People
People have just released a debut cd/lp on I&Ear records. This guitar/drum duo's debut is a collection of tightly crafted pop songs, played with such spontaneity and intensity it secures them a seat in the highest council of the avant-garde. It's a hybrid of carefully composed classical arrangements set atop tough rock rhythms. Engineered by Rusty Santos (Animal Collective). Mary Halvorson (guitar and singing) plays with Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant, Anthony Braxton, Jessica Pavone, and Kevin Shea (the drummer/singist who plays with Coptic Light, Storm and Stress, Sexy Thoughts, and Mary Halvorson).
KEVIN'S HIT PICKS:
1. Dave Holland Trio - "Take the Coltrane" from Triplicate
Foucault investigates the relationship between what is true and what scientists make true.
2. Myanmar: Music By The Hsaing Waing Orchestra
Truth is the method of the epoch of the time -- an indifferent, aperiodic continuum.
3. Alfred Schnittke - The Complete String Quartets (Kronos Quartet)
Knowledge is relativistic, and there is no such thing as knowledge that is not subject to power (knowledge is determined by power).
4. Micah Gaugh - forthcoming cd on Accidental Records.
The structure of language inhibits language.
5. Andrew d'Angelo Trio - Marthana With Pride
Nietzsche seems to be saying that we know only by our will to power over an object, and this depends on what perspective we are looking at something.
MARY'S HOT PICKS:
1. Melt-Banana - Cell-Scape (A-Zap Records)
Track 4: "Lost parts stinging me so vold". Foucault seems to want the perpetual differentiation of power so that we not attach ourselves to any one-power superstructure for too long - power is a transient, dynamic system.
2. Julius Hemphill - Reflections (Freedom)
The "punishment of rules" has been deeply fused into daily living and thus citizens are likely to be unaware of these powers in that they have adopted many of its principles by default in living within a specific community.
3. Deerhoof - Milkman & The Runners Four (5RC)
Foucault illustrates how the only way to control a differentiated population is to adopt differentiated forces of power.
4. Scriabin - Piano Music (EMI)
The panopticon illustrates a united dualism of "docility" and utility, or efficiency and productivity - a "house of certainty."
5. Cecil Taylor - Trance (Black Lion)
Track 2- "Call." Nietzsche said: "Power is knowledge, knowledge is power." Foucault echoes this, "Power produces knowledge - power and knowledge directly imply one another."
By Dusted Magazine
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