Intertwining jazz and rock is not itself a novel idea. From Miles Davis to Weather Report to Last Exit to the Bad Plus, it has been going on for more than 40 years. But artists are constantly finding new ways to bring elements of rock into the folds of jazz.
Sidony Box - saxophonist Elie Dalibert, guitarist Manuel Adnot, and drummer Arthur Narcy - refers to itself as a power jazz trio. Posed on the jacket of their new album in hooded sweatshirts and unshaven faces like the Beastie Boys, they are clearly aiming for a young audience. Their music, which blends shoegaze and modern prog-rock with jazz improvisation, feels expansive. “Pink Paradise’’ (Naive Records) pleads to be popped in a car stereo and played at high volume on the open road.
With droning guitar and undulating waves of rhythm, the music is textured and layered, so much so that it sounds like a few more than three musicians. Dalibert’s alto sax is alternately melancholy and aggressive on tunes like “Suédois.’’ Despite the instrumentation, the trio draws on the aesthetics of certain rock bands - Radiohead, Tortoise, and Sonic Youth, in particular - as it constructs songs. (And these are structured songs, not aimless jams.) Sidony Box’s ethos crystallizes on the 10-minute drone “Léman’’ and on “Ultimate Pop Song,’’ a tune with a gorgeous hook that evokes both the melodicism and the expansive sound of Sigur Rós.
Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer has forged his identity by bridging the worlds of jazz and electronic music. And it is the best of both: Molvaer pits the warmth and freedom of improvisation against the intense drama of ambient, electronica, and trip-hop. Indeed, he turns the cold, unwavering structure of that world on its head.
It is easy to imagine Davis, if he were still alive, making the kind of music one hears on “Baboon Moon’’ (Thirsty Ear). Molvaer, guitarist Stian Westerhus, and drummer Erland Dahlen construct barren, dark, and dirty audio-scenes that draw direct lineage to bands like Massive Attack. Molvaer blows in a stark, detached manner over the dystopian backdrop of “Mercury Heart,’’ a faint kick drum acting as a heartbeat. Westerhus’s harsh guitar - which also manages to provide the bass line - fuels the rocker “Recoil.’’ In between the abrasives, rhythmless ambient soundscapes like “A Small Realm’’ and “Prince of Calm’’ offer much-needed buffer zones.
Brian Landrus - who plays baritone saxophone, bass clarinet, and bass flute on “Capsule’’ (BlueLand Records) - creates a very special kind of music with his band The Landrus Kaleidoscope. It is modern and contemporary - indeed, pop oriented - but it doesn’t give in to the artificial-sweetener trappings of smooth jazz. No, this quintet, which includes pianist Michael Cain (mostly on Fender Rhodes), guitar Nir Felder, bassist Matthew Parish, and drummer Rudy Royston, makes an organic fusion that ignores the boundaries that supposedly separate jazz, rock, pop, and R&B.
Forget that the music has a backbeat. It’s bona fide jazz, and the openness of tunes such as the driving “Striped Phrase’’ and the reggae-based “Like the Wind’’ provide ample space for wise improvisation. He doesn’t swing like Gene Krupa, but Royston’s drumming is crisp and smart; on “Striped Phase’’ he lapses into an alternative time signature for a few bars while the rest of the band keeps stride. Landrus’s bass clarinet wraps phrases, vinelike, around the skittering drums and airy electric piano chords of “Beauty.’’ The buildup of the soft R&B number “I Promise’’ is so patient and romantic that you half expect Barry White to start singing, but there is no need: Landrus’s clarinet is every bit as sultry. “Capsule’’ achieves a rare feat: It’s easy on the ears and nourishing for the brain.
2012年1月15日星期日
2011年12月6日星期二
One artist puts crude oil to creative use to explore the material's history
A whitewashed gallery in an achingly cool part of London might not seem like the most obvious place to be discussing the sweat, grime and struggle that characterised the early oil industry. But as the artist Piers Secunda shows me around his new exhibition, it makes perfect sense. On the Tube one day, the 35-year-old was reading The Prize, the Pulitzer-winning history of oil by Daniel Yergin. Inspiration struck. Secunda wouldn't just attempt to chronicle the discovery of oil - and therefore some of the most important developments in our time - through art. He would actually paint in crude oil itself.
As it sometimes happens, it sounded great in theory.
"Actually getting hold of the crude oil was quite a challenge," he says with a smile. "You can go on to a website and buy 100,000 barrels of the stuff, but of course you never actually see it. It's not delivered to your door. But there are tiny specimen samples and novelty bottles from museums if you look hard enough. I spent a lot of time on eBay. A lot of time. "
It would have been easy enough, having obtained the oil and made it function as paint, to produce abstract artworks. Instead, Secunda found old photographs from the pioneering age of oil exploration, of wells and fields, and transferred them on to a silkscreen printed with crude. They're hugely effective as nostalgic records of a bygone age, reminders of oil's immense importance and, in their fragmented, almost ghostly appearance, as art. And one depicts a significant development in the history of the Middle East.
"This one is called Dammam No.7 Blowing In," he says. "It shows the moment in 1937 when the first oil blew out of this tiny little well head in Saudi Arabia. And this is the point at which global politics, economics and the history of energy shifts in a colossal way. It was the beginning of something completely new in the Middle East."
To Secunda's immense credit, he didn't just search some archives, find important photographs and dash off a silkscreen using any old crude oil. The work had to have an authenticity - which meant Secunda waited until he actually found oil from that exact well, Dammam No.7, before he made the work. He waited a long time.
"Two years," he laughs. "And then I found a corporate paperweight on eBay with the oil on the inside, marked Dammam No.7. You might think that a bit obsessive, but I really wanted the story of that specific well to be portrayed through its medium."
Such attention to detail - all of the work in the room, whether it depicts a Texan, Canadian or Californian oilfield, is painted using the oil from the correct well - is refreshing. As is his refusal to make any political statements about the provenance of oil, even though that might be a fashionable discussion to have among the chattering classes of London.
"It's an inherently political material, I realise that, but I genuinely don't think I'm in a position to say oil is bad," he says. "The incredible thing about crude oil is that it's absolutely and totally inseparable from everything we do. It facilitates everything - if you remove it, you'd have mayhem. At the same time, it's strangely politically incorrect in Europe to say that crude oil is good. I don't take a position because I want this to be a record of an amazingly important time. You have the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, and the petrochemical age will be acknowledged in the same way. I think it can't not be - it's too significant."
Such interest in recording seismic moments continues in the next, unrelated room of his exhibition, where a series of friezes are shattered by bullet holes. And specifically, Taliban bullet holes from suicide bomb-attack sites. Like his work with crude oil, Secunda's attention to detail is miraculous; he actually went to Kabul with a suitcase of silicone putty, got a police chief to take him to a house that had been the scene of an atrocity, and cast the holes.
The results have a solemn majesty, but I wonder why Secunda felt compelled to make the work in the first place.
As it sometimes happens, it sounded great in theory.
"Actually getting hold of the crude oil was quite a challenge," he says with a smile. "You can go on to a website and buy 100,000 barrels of the stuff, but of course you never actually see it. It's not delivered to your door. But there are tiny specimen samples and novelty bottles from museums if you look hard enough. I spent a lot of time on eBay. A lot of time. "
It would have been easy enough, having obtained the oil and made it function as paint, to produce abstract artworks. Instead, Secunda found old photographs from the pioneering age of oil exploration, of wells and fields, and transferred them on to a silkscreen printed with crude. They're hugely effective as nostalgic records of a bygone age, reminders of oil's immense importance and, in their fragmented, almost ghostly appearance, as art. And one depicts a significant development in the history of the Middle East.
"This one is called Dammam No.7 Blowing In," he says. "It shows the moment in 1937 when the first oil blew out of this tiny little well head in Saudi Arabia. And this is the point at which global politics, economics and the history of energy shifts in a colossal way. It was the beginning of something completely new in the Middle East."
To Secunda's immense credit, he didn't just search some archives, find important photographs and dash off a silkscreen using any old crude oil. The work had to have an authenticity - which meant Secunda waited until he actually found oil from that exact well, Dammam No.7, before he made the work. He waited a long time.
"Two years," he laughs. "And then I found a corporate paperweight on eBay with the oil on the inside, marked Dammam No.7. You might think that a bit obsessive, but I really wanted the story of that specific well to be portrayed through its medium."
Such attention to detail - all of the work in the room, whether it depicts a Texan, Canadian or Californian oilfield, is painted using the oil from the correct well - is refreshing. As is his refusal to make any political statements about the provenance of oil, even though that might be a fashionable discussion to have among the chattering classes of London.
"It's an inherently political material, I realise that, but I genuinely don't think I'm in a position to say oil is bad," he says. "The incredible thing about crude oil is that it's absolutely and totally inseparable from everything we do. It facilitates everything - if you remove it, you'd have mayhem. At the same time, it's strangely politically incorrect in Europe to say that crude oil is good. I don't take a position because I want this to be a record of an amazingly important time. You have the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age, and the petrochemical age will be acknowledged in the same way. I think it can't not be - it's too significant."
Such interest in recording seismic moments continues in the next, unrelated room of his exhibition, where a series of friezes are shattered by bullet holes. And specifically, Taliban bullet holes from suicide bomb-attack sites. Like his work with crude oil, Secunda's attention to detail is miraculous; he actually went to Kabul with a suitcase of silicone putty, got a police chief to take him to a house that had been the scene of an atrocity, and cast the holes.
The results have a solemn majesty, but I wonder why Secunda felt compelled to make the work in the first place.
2011年9月22日星期四
Art Review: Jan Merta: Liberec III at Topič Salon
After primary school in Liberec, Merta studied at the Václav Hollar Art School in Prague, but his family background prevented him from gaining admission to one of Prague's art academies. He worked at a series of unskilled and manual jobs, and finally in 1981 was accepted at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Memories of the house in Liberec, of family life, school days and of becoming aware of the world from the perspective of a nascent artist are all dealt with in these works.
The centerpiece of the show, a monumental semi-abstract painting that depicts the time and place where Merta's boyhood conception of God coalesced, is titled A Lesson in Pantheism. It recalls the questioning of schoolmates about whether God's omnipresence extended to the gutter urinal of the boys' room or to inside a classmate's mouth, to which the artist answered "Yes." The painting is composed from the perspective of the urinating boys, while an enormous shadowy penis looms over the asphalt-cover wall of the toilets, presumably another signal of God's pervasive presence.
Alongside Merta's developing conceptions about theology and aesthetics, he was exposed to the carnal side of life. Regarding Gallery I-IV, four small canvases featuring female figures in autoerotic poses and one copulating couple, he writes, "I was regarded as a painter already at school. When I was 10, two worldly schoolmates of mine offered one day to take me to a gallery. … We came to a hole in a fence around an open-air cinema … [where] I saw a number of life-size figures. Somebody had drawn them meticulously in soft red brick, with some touches in white chalk. It was pure pornography. I suffered a shock. … I was equally shocked by the perfection of the execution. … It was as if I had seen a Giotto."
Merta has been making paintings reflecting on childhood memories since the 1980s. This is the third exhibition devoted to formative moments of his boyhood in Liberec, and there are plans for further exhibitions to follow. His strong body of work blends large paintings with small, intimate canvases, earth-shaking moments of comprehension with amusing anecdotes and visual snapshots. Whether thematically grand or not, the paintings as a group consistently demonstrate his excellent handling of paint, strong compositional sense and use of color.
The paintings journey back to the time when Merta began to view the world not only as a perceptive and sensitive boy but through the eyes of a budding artist. The best paintings in the show strongly evoke the light-bulb moments that, in retrospect, paved Merta's path to becoming a painter. What did he sense in Rembrandt's gaze that so deeply affected him as a young boy? Perhaps it was a feeling of being "seen" by the seemingly all-knowing eyes of the artist, yet which were also filled with compassion, something akin to his early conception of God.
Even in his most abstract paintings, Merta links back to direct human experience, such as in Oil Wainscoting III, which recalls the smell of paint being mixed by his father to complete a passage of illusory wainscoting in their Liberec home.
The centerpiece of the show, a monumental semi-abstract painting that depicts the time and place where Merta's boyhood conception of God coalesced, is titled A Lesson in Pantheism. It recalls the questioning of schoolmates about whether God's omnipresence extended to the gutter urinal of the boys' room or to inside a classmate's mouth, to which the artist answered "Yes." The painting is composed from the perspective of the urinating boys, while an enormous shadowy penis looms over the asphalt-cover wall of the toilets, presumably another signal of God's pervasive presence.
Alongside Merta's developing conceptions about theology and aesthetics, he was exposed to the carnal side of life. Regarding Gallery I-IV, four small canvases featuring female figures in autoerotic poses and one copulating couple, he writes, "I was regarded as a painter already at school. When I was 10, two worldly schoolmates of mine offered one day to take me to a gallery. … We came to a hole in a fence around an open-air cinema … [where] I saw a number of life-size figures. Somebody had drawn them meticulously in soft red brick, with some touches in white chalk. It was pure pornography. I suffered a shock. … I was equally shocked by the perfection of the execution. … It was as if I had seen a Giotto."
Merta has been making paintings reflecting on childhood memories since the 1980s. This is the third exhibition devoted to formative moments of his boyhood in Liberec, and there are plans for further exhibitions to follow. His strong body of work blends large paintings with small, intimate canvases, earth-shaking moments of comprehension with amusing anecdotes and visual snapshots. Whether thematically grand or not, the paintings as a group consistently demonstrate his excellent handling of paint, strong compositional sense and use of color.
The paintings journey back to the time when Merta began to view the world not only as a perceptive and sensitive boy but through the eyes of a budding artist. The best paintings in the show strongly evoke the light-bulb moments that, in retrospect, paved Merta's path to becoming a painter. What did he sense in Rembrandt's gaze that so deeply affected him as a young boy? Perhaps it was a feeling of being "seen" by the seemingly all-knowing eyes of the artist, yet which were also filled with compassion, something akin to his early conception of God.
Even in his most abstract paintings, Merta links back to direct human experience, such as in Oil Wainscoting III, which recalls the smell of paint being mixed by his father to complete a passage of illusory wainscoting in their Liberec home.
2011年5月25日星期三
A Few Things to Know About Solar
Thinking of saving electricity by investing in a solar photovoltaic (PV) system? Here are a few good things to know, pulled from a recent Greenbiz.com webinar on Solar Powered Buildings: Worth Another Look as Prices Fall.
Powerhouse Solar Shingles
Federal tax credits— The 30 percent residential renewable energy tax credit is good through 2016. This gives you up to a 30 percent credit for the cost and installation of a solar PV, solar thermal, wind, geothermal heat pump and fuel cells. There is no ceiling, and excess credit can generally be rolled forward to the next tax year. So if you’re interested in solar technology, it’s a good idea to start pricing and planning now. You can find federal and local incentives at dsire.com
Micro-inverters— The traditional solar PV setup includes an inverter that converts the DC energy created at the solar panel to AC for your home’s use. But one inverter for an entire array can pose limitations on how much energy you realize from your PV system. It’s complicated, but by using one inverter, a solar panel that’s shaded or not performing well can lower a centralized inverter’s maximum power point, and thus the amount of electricity you receive from the system. So in some smaller systems, a micro-inverter is used for each panel. These cost more, but your system may perform better. Some reports indicate that micro-inverters can boost energy harvesting in residential systems up to 15 percent.
DC optimizers—< Also called power boosters, these can be placed on every panel and used with a central inverter to maximize the power coming from the panels and eliminate issues such as shading on one of more panels.
Costs— According to Greg Sheppard, chief research officer for IHS iSuppli, residential solar costs continue to fall, from about $2.50 per watt per module (or panel) in 2009 to about $1.50 per watt today, and costs are expected to drop to almost $1 per watt (or about $200 per panel) in 2015. Though these are panel costs, not installation costs. According to the Open PV Project from NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab), the average cost for solar panel installation in the United States was $6.94 per watt in 2010. Manufacturing costs will certainly continue to decline. “Manufacturing is a lot more efficient,” Sheppard says. “A lot of [assembly of solar panels] was done by hand up to a couple of years ago.”
Thin Films are Coming— Most solar panels today are made with crystalline silicon, though expect to see more flexible, thin panels that use technologies like CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide), Cadmium Telluride (CdTe), and amorphous silicon, though for now the efficiencies of crystalline silicon are better. The best efficiencies in available high-end monocrystalline silicon panels are about 19 percent, according to Sheppard. Look for thin-film technologies in BIPV (built-in photovoltaic) systems like roofing shingles. This year Dow Chemical will introduce its Powerhouse Solar roofing shingles, with the solar panels provided by Global Solar. The flexible CIGS panels are built right into asphalt shingles.
Energy Monitoring— Good energy monitoring systems exist for solar arrays, and are recommended to properly measure a PV system’s performance. An inverter, for example, will display the output of electricity but not what goes into it. So an improperly working inverter may go unnoticed without energy monitoring. Systems that can monitor a solar array’s energy production include eMonitor, EcoDog and Agilewaves.
Powerhouse Solar Shingles
Federal tax credits— The 30 percent residential renewable energy tax credit is good through 2016. This gives you up to a 30 percent credit for the cost and installation of a solar PV, solar thermal, wind, geothermal heat pump and fuel cells. There is no ceiling, and excess credit can generally be rolled forward to the next tax year. So if you’re interested in solar technology, it’s a good idea to start pricing and planning now. You can find federal and local incentives at dsire.com
Micro-inverters— The traditional solar PV setup includes an inverter that converts the DC energy created at the solar panel to AC for your home’s use. But one inverter for an entire array can pose limitations on how much energy you realize from your PV system. It’s complicated, but by using one inverter, a solar panel that’s shaded or not performing well can lower a centralized inverter’s maximum power point, and thus the amount of electricity you receive from the system. So in some smaller systems, a micro-inverter is used for each panel. These cost more, but your system may perform better. Some reports indicate that micro-inverters can boost energy harvesting in residential systems up to 15 percent.
DC optimizers—< Also called power boosters, these can be placed on every panel and used with a central inverter to maximize the power coming from the panels and eliminate issues such as shading on one of more panels.
Costs— According to Greg Sheppard, chief research officer for IHS iSuppli, residential solar costs continue to fall, from about $2.50 per watt per module (or panel) in 2009 to about $1.50 per watt today, and costs are expected to drop to almost $1 per watt (or about $200 per panel) in 2015. Though these are panel costs, not installation costs. According to the Open PV Project from NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab), the average cost for solar panel installation in the United States was $6.94 per watt in 2010. Manufacturing costs will certainly continue to decline. “Manufacturing is a lot more efficient,” Sheppard says. “A lot of [assembly of solar panels] was done by hand up to a couple of years ago.”
Thin Films are Coming— Most solar panels today are made with crystalline silicon, though expect to see more flexible, thin panels that use technologies like CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide), Cadmium Telluride (CdTe), and amorphous silicon, though for now the efficiencies of crystalline silicon are better. The best efficiencies in available high-end monocrystalline silicon panels are about 19 percent, according to Sheppard. Look for thin-film technologies in BIPV (built-in photovoltaic) systems like roofing shingles. This year Dow Chemical will introduce its Powerhouse Solar roofing shingles, with the solar panels provided by Global Solar. The flexible CIGS panels are built right into asphalt shingles.
Energy Monitoring— Good energy monitoring systems exist for solar arrays, and are recommended to properly measure a PV system’s performance. An inverter, for example, will display the output of electricity but not what goes into it. So an improperly working inverter may go unnoticed without energy monitoring. Systems that can monitor a solar array’s energy production include eMonitor, EcoDog and Agilewaves.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)