Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The BBC Radiophonic Workshop


For over a year I've been craving music made by electronic means which doesn't fit into the "electronica" (Varese->Kraftwerk->Bambaataa->Phuture->etc) lineage. Something not reliant on pseudo-futurism. Something which sounds like it was made with hands but put out of reach of our imagination's tendency to picture musicians when listening to music. This is partly why the Books have gotten a lot of play in my apartment this year. But I recently saw this documentary on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop which did the trick. My favorite thing about this film is that it tells a story of electronic music (musique concrete, to be specific) which climaxes in the late '60's and falls with the rise in popularity of the Moog synthesizer. Imagine that: the Moog 'killing' electronic music (or a certain tradition of)! Now we're surveying the landscape! Ladies and gentleman ... let us proceed from here!

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Peter Sis recommends Saul Steinberg


This interview with Peter Sis, the extraordinary illustrator, makes glowing mention of the late Saul Steinberg. The New Yorker, where Steinberg gained his reputation from the 1940's on, hosts a large online gallery of his covers.

Emilogue gets an agenda


I've been on hiatus with this blog as the pace of my activity picked up around the beginning of the summer. After a few weeks of deepening confusion of priorities, including two false starts at new articles, it re-occured to me what this blog was set up to do in the first place and what its user (I/me) has recently been lacking. Emilogue helps me sort out pieces of information or ideas which attract my attention before I seriously consider them as subjects to take on for potential articles. I want to extend this use to take on subjects in micro form that I'm sure I won't have the actual time or inclination to follow through with outside a hundred word or so blurb. So there it is - Emilogue has an agenda.