Listen to the music of Martin Arnold, Rudolf Komorous, Archie Shepp, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Nightjars. Martin is a brilliant thinker on the wonderful and the psychedelic, and he is a beautifully careful listener. “All music is dance music,” says Arnold, which feels right when we listen to his work and his favourite things to listen to. It’s not that they have a beat necessarily, but that they begin with an experienced encounter with materials rather than with narrative.
Topics include the medieval conception of wonder, the Prague avant garde, seriousness, triviality, “messing with people’s grasp of what they are hearing,” hearing the composer’s intentions or not, the unknowable. And British folk music, ballads, adult contemporary pop, continuousness, detail, broken consorts, special effects, noise, col legno tratto and battuto, pizzicato, natural harmonics. And the coming together of chamber music with pop, folk, experimental music, composed polyphony with improvisation. Also Georges Bataille’s formlessness, stains…
This is episode one of Unusual Music Exchange on CJTR. Part of a series of programming surrounding the release of Josh Thorpe’s Love & Weather.
Notes: Martin Arnold’s music on Soundcloud
Rat-Drifting on Bandcamp (including Nightjars)
