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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Marnie Stern and Eyvind Kang.
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Listed: Marnie Stern + Eyvind Kang
Marnie Stern
Shit hot guitarist/singer Marnie Stern may is not your run of the mill guitar hero. The New York-based Stern recently released her debut, In Advance of the Broken Arm on Kill Rock Stars Records, is half Yeah Yeah Yeahs, half Van Halen, and pretty much entirely awesome. It must be pretty good, as it's one of the few albums ever to earn anyone a slot on Kill Rock Stars via unsolicited demo. Even more unbelievably, Stern wasn't exposed to "good" music until she turned 23, after which time she took up the guitar and practiced fastidiously until she reached the impressive skill level that she possesses today.
1. Lightning Bolt - "Crown Of Storms"
This song is in the back of my mind every time I sit down to work on a song. It makes me feel like I'm on top of the world. I picture myself running in the Olympics nearing the finish line when i hear this song...or like I'm Forrest Gump being chased by hooligans and my legs break free of those damn braces and I speed ahead..."Run Forrest, Run!!"
2. Hella - Every Song on Every Record
My idols, icons, favorite and most inspirational band of all time. Practice DOES make PERFECT.
3. Ex Models - "Chrome Panthers-Chrome Hearts"
This song's the real fucking deal. I don't care if I look like one of those fucking assholes who bobs their head up and down like a fucking fool when I hear it. Don't fuck with me when I'm listening to this song or I'll fucking throw down. This song makes me want to say fuck a lot.
4. Rocky 4 Soundtrack - "There's No Easy Way Out"
I've seen Rocky 4 over 500 times. Rocky Balboa is my hero. This song plays in the montage scene in Rocky 4 when Rock gets in his Lamborghini and drives around conflicted about whether or not to fight Ivan Drago after Apollo Creed's death. This is one of my favorite songs of all time. The lyrics are inspiring. I don't know the name of the band and I don't care. I just know that I am where I am today because of this song.
5. Flying Luttenbachers - "Infektion And Decline: Infektion"
This song used to scare my dogs but now a strange Pavlov experience is happening. They've grown to like it because I play it so much. When it comes on, they come a callin'. Technically I think this song is AMAZING.
6. Ocrilim - "Anoint"
Anoint 3 HERO!!!!!!!!! What can you say? He's just too good. I love his dynamics especially in this song. I've never met Mick before but if I had a list of who I wanted to meet, he'd be on my Top 5.
7. Yoko Ono & Ono Plastic Band - "Open Your Box"
First of all that band is sick. Ono has been an important influence of mine because she always embarrasses me so much. I mean that in a good way. She doesn't give a fuck. Or maybe she does, but who cares..To me, she just seems like suck a risk taker and i think you have to take tons of risks with yourself and embarrass yourself in order to create anything worthwhile or else you're just always living on the surface of things.
8. Steve Vai - The Elusive Light And Sound Volume 1/ "Air Guitar Hell"
I'm not kidding..Just that song, though. Check it out.
9. Patti Smith - Horses
This got me thinking more about ideas and concepts and individuality and possibility. It's raw and powerful but complex at the same time. Bleeding concepts..Rimbaud, Glenn Gould, Philosophies, Possibility, entertaining language and sound perceptions, the idea of no boundries. Moreover POSSIBILITY. This song made me realize EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.
10. Bruce Springsteen - "Born To Run"
A TERRIFICALLY written song. sincere without being phony. A great story teller. My school girl crush. His dedication to his music amazes me. This song has meant everything to me for almost my entire life and what I get from it changes as I change, but it always has just as much imapct...Oh the sax solo in the middle..truth be told, I think this will remain my favorite song of all time for the
Eyvind Kang
Eyvind Kang (b. Corvallis, Oregon, United States, around 1972 (Enotes Biography)) is an American composer, violinist, tuba, and erhu player. He was raised in Canada and the United States, and has since lived and worked in countries ranging from Italy to Iceland. Kang's work is difficult to classify, but can broadly be seen as a classical approach to jazz music with punk, ambient, and traditional folk influences. However, each of his solo efforts is almost in a different genre. Kang has also worked with musicians including Mike Patton, John Zorn, Trey Spruance, Tim Young, Marc Ribot and Beck, supporting the latter during a 2000 tour of Japan. (Wikipedia)
1. Gerard Grisey - "Les Espaces Acoustiques"
Like a dream of music that one is surprised to encounter in real life. Beautiful, and very thought provoking. The sounds of birds Lately I have gravitated to the sounds, particularly of ducks and geese; one learns a lot by listening to their hocketing. A lot of geese fly around while honking away, so there are all kinds of vectors, fascinating in and of themselves, that add to the intense microtones. Musicians have listened to it for a very long time- since the beginning!
2. Z.M. Dagar - "Raga Yaman/Raga Shuddha Todi"
Essential ragas played in the Dhrupad genre, in the famous Dagarvani gharana, but with the rudra vina rather than the usual vocal. Everything about his performance is deep, the vina is in the bass register, the phrases are like in slow motion, somehow it's like a reflection of another dimension.
3. Tanburi Cemil Bey
It's hard to believe there were so many old 78s of Turkish taqsim sung, or played solo on tanbur, violin, cello, by the great maestro. I also love the "shepherd" songs where taqsim is interwoven with unpitched sounds representing wolves, winds, etc....
4. Sigmund Freud - The Uncanny
The strange and layered essay which begins by digging into the word "heimlich" (homely), proceeds to "unheimlich", in the manner of showing what is most familiar can become the most eerie, "uncanny", and also, punctuated with readings from a bizarre macabre tale from E.T.A. Hoffman, and if you can believe this, some peculiar episodes of travel.....no one would think of writing something like this.
5. Susan Howe - Pierce Arrow
It's wonderful what she does here, a sort of biography of Charles Pierce, including selected pages from his notebooks, and then reverting to her "frame structures" type of poems, but mixing up different idioms and narratives sort of like a good composer ought to be able to do, but, this is somehow more up to date than music, to my ear.
6. Keith Critchlow - Islamic Patterns
The beautiful book of geometry which is great to look at every day...he shows all kinds of patterns from Islamic architecture, tiles, rugs, etc, analysed by their rudiments -with a few simple lessons, you learn to see the tetractus, etc, in the patterns. I also find with these things, one's mind is filled with musical thoughts when staring at the patterns, ineffable, you wouldn't want to pin it down exactly, even if that were possible.
8. Mohamed Khaznadji - Nouba du Mode Hsine
I never heard of this kind of music until I saw it on tv in Morocco, and was quite surprised to hear the long, winding melodies, asked some friends what is this? The answer, this is Nawbah, sometimes known as Andalucian music. Since then I've gotten into Ziryab, the great man who moved from Bhagdad to Cordoba, Spain back in the medieval era, opened up a music school, taught a kind of music, presumably related to the Nawbah of today. I love this music! Here is one of my favorite pieces, from Algeria.
9. Joseph Hadyn - The Seven Last Words of Christ
Interesting, he wrote this thing for the cathedral in Cadiz, Spain- a strange type of piece, seven slow movements, around 10 minutes each, with little sermons in between. I had sort of forgotten about Hadyn, until I saw Transfiguration play this as a string quartet last year in New York- devastating. And it was great having the talks in between movements-the first talk was a take on "father forgive them for they know not what they do", and it went on from there. For some reason, there is also an 8th movement called "terremoto", which goes to the more aggressive, one could say, violent.
10. Bill Viola - The Greeting
I saw this in Vancouver a few months ago: there are two women standing around in an Italian street. Then, a third woman walks into the frame, whispers something into the ear of one of the women. There's a low rumble going on. The thing is, the whole interaction is put so slowly, like a 44 second interaction is put to 10 minutes. But, then, you get the sense of another time dimension in its own scale, and in fact, nothing is going slower at all. There is just a lot that goes on-at first, I didn't even realize it was slowed down. Then again, the whole thing is put into the context like a painting, so you are swept up in the story, the ambience of the painted, but sort of technicolor, and it is very pleasing to stay in there for a long period of time, watch it over and over.
By Dusted Magazine
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