Robert Ashley

dualtrack.blogspot - Robert Ashley - Private Parts (The Record)


Recommended.

NYU Hits The Big Time!

Yes, finally I see what the big deal about Lady Gaga is.

Among other things, I like this. The beat kind of reminds me of that one Moby song (i.e. "Everybody come back sometime..."), which is cool.

Hello friend!

The Ballad of Mick Fleetwood

I just discovered that I like Fleetwood Mac, something I once vowed never to say. But a caveat to would-be Mac converts: you can't like it all. Roadblocks will arise. Enjoy the guacamole, but remember that every avocado has its black spots.

Cool:



Cool. 0:42. Unreasonable amounts of cocaine involved here:



Less cool:



Resistant to interpretation:

Recording update

This album is going to be our Tusk, and I plan on becoming BOFSF's Christine McVie.

1/6/10 Pics

Thanks Margot!

Live Songs

Here are two tracks from the acoustic show we did at Goodbye Blue Monday a few weeks back. Hope you enjoy them.

(Click the play button to stream the song, or click the link to download it.)

Anchor

Wolf Cry

Also, a wonderful piece of art drawn by our friend Goda:

New Album

We started recording last week. Should be done sometime this spring, but don't hold me to that. If you've seen us since this summer, you've heard some of the songs that will be on the album, but not all of them. It's still early in the process, but we're planning on this record being our triumphant return to vocals.

Recent Listening

Christian Marclay started playing turntables before the DJ culture in hip-hop had entered the mainstream. His music developed completely independently of that culture and with totally different intentions. He loved hip-hop, though, and preferred to perform with DJs rather than the no-wave and musique concrete types with whom he was usually billed. In the same way that John Cage "prepared" pianos by shoving them full of nails and sandpaper, Marclay "prepared" records by cut and pasting shards of different LPs together. He was a virtuoso at a type of performance which he completely invented. The compilation "Records," which this piece is on, is a must-have.



Gerard Grisey is a French "spectralist" composer. This is my favorite piece by him, a chamber work from the mid '90s. It plays with how the listener's sense of musical time contracts when an unexpected or jarring event occurs. Repetitions of his primary motive become mere fragments of their source material. This kind of diminution really does create the feeling of a vortex or whirlpool or something. I like this technique because by gradually developing his motive, Grisey can eventually associate two phrases as restatements of the same idea even though they sound hardly anything like one another.



Always a badass, always inconceivably bizarre. This song is from 1977's Death of a Ladies' Man, but by 1979 he was doing all of his songs with this sleazy electric big band. As a result the feel of the song is strangely upbeat and twisted by a cornball swing feel to awesome effect.



A lot of Residents being played in the BOFSF house. This is the Residents' dance jam, as you can see from the video. A lot different from the album version (from The Tunes of Two Cities). According to Residents mythology, this song is written by the alien race the Chubs, whose oeuvre sounds for the most part like fucked-up swing band music played on weird analog synths. However, this live version has more of a Texas two-step backbeat to it.


"ONE" by Yeasayer, etc.

SHOW: Wednesday, January 27 @ Union Hall 7:30pm

Hi!
Ball of Flame Shoot Fire will be playing our first show at Union Hall since our show with The Spinto Band on Wednesday, January 27th. The bill is:

Wild Yaks
Steel Phantoms
I'm In You
BOFSF

Wild Yaks:



Steel Phantoms:

Free Williamsburg interview




I'm In You:



Union Hall:

2010!

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!