Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Rosenwinkel's note on "Grant," the best (catchiest, most danceable) tune on Enemies: "Grant is an upbeat tour through several different sections. It is a very linear tune compositionally and features everyone well."

An upbeat tour through several different sections. I find this formulation absolutely intoxicating. (It's brilliant as instructions for listening (to anything): imagine you are going on a tour of several different sections.) It almost sounds like a joke Don and Walt would make sitting at the mixing board in a video interview: fake formal language that totally fails to meet the music, a parody of the critic puffing himself up with empty abstractions. But coming from Rosenwinkel the remark is quite full.

In support of a robust reading of several different sections:
During the time we recorded Under It All my room was just covered wall-to-wall with architectural drawings. I didn't know what any of the symbols meant—I couldn't interpret them literally—but to me the specificity of all of the blueprints was inspiring to me, and yet was totally abstract because I didn't know how to interpret them; but I loved the idea of specificity and abstractness.

1 comment:

gd said...

i watched a couple of video interviews with KR on youtube and he was rather inarticulate about his music. i was suprised. maybe he was distracted or not into the interview or just has a hard time talking about music (which is understandable)....