ChordStrike

Stile Antico: Media Vita

In a few days, the wait is over for fans of Stile Antico, the phenomenal vocal ensemble who specialize in Tudor and Renaissance choral music (and high-profile side projects with Sting.)  They release "Media Vita," a selection of works by the sixteenth century composer John Sheppard. 

Less well-known than Thomas Tallis, Sheppard's fame has spread slowly, because his compositions only made it to the twentieth century in manuscript form and many of them are incomplete.  What survives bears all the hallmarks of greatness.  This recording provides ample evidence of his bold, rich and individual harmony, as well as an inspired knack for compositional passion, while still adhering to Archbishop Cranmer's protestant tastes for concise word setting.

The performance captured here is at the same lofty standard that Stile Antico's earlier recordings attained - almost perfect.  This group engages the listener like no other, with the purpose of soloists, the tonal evenness of an ensemble, and with a clarity that is ground-breaking.  On a few listenings, though, this perfection is itself the disc's undoing.  I don't expect my thoughts to be received well, but I'm left willing the performance to move me more than it does.

If I'm honest, I miss children in this music.   Children don't sing as well as the sopranos in Stile Antico, plain and simple.  They are slavishly subservient to the choir director in front of them, the absence of which is one of the inspired features of this group.  They also think about football while they sing and who might get the carol service solo instead of them, but when they get it right, for me, there is an experience beyond the finesse on this album.

If you doubt me, and live within a reasonable distance of New York, duck into St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, during a sung service and judge for yourself.  Profound utterances, from the young, barely conscious of what they say, have a power that was understood by Britten, Walton, Boyce, Greene, Purcell, by all the great composers of liturgical choral music, all the way back to Sheppard.  In the hands of a child, these notes and words come from a different sphere, literally.  A sphere that the rest of us have had to leave behind. -- Hugo Munday

Lou's Metal Machine Hits The Road

Lou Reed has always gone against the grain. During 1967's so-called summer of love, his band The Velvet Underground released a debut album about prostitution and heroin addiction. Then, when the hippy revolution turned sour, the VU released their happy, trippy pop album, Loaded, starting with the decidedly hippyish "Who Loves The Sun."

But most contrary of all was Reed's 1975 solo album, Metal Machine Music (1975), four sides of unlistenable noise which divided fans: 99% hated it, while 1% considered it a challenging but worthwhile work of conceptual art. Last year a Rolling Stone reviewer described it live as "a continuous blaring fog that rose and decreased in its deafening intensity, marked by shrill electronic shrieks, long demented sax solos and Reed’s occasional yelling voice."

Warning: This video should not be listened to by anyone

Great news (!) - Lou Reed is taking his blaring fog, shrill shrieking and demented soloing on tour! So far only European dates have been announced, but the April shows will coincide with a full reissue program which will include Metal Machine Music on Blu-Ray for the first time. Perhaps a marginal improvement in audio clarity will make it an easier listen? Probably not.

April dates:

17 Cambridge, England - The Cambridge Junction
18 Oxford, England - O2 Academy
19 London, England - Royal Festival Hall
21 Paris, France - La Cigale
22 Brussels, Belgium - A/B (Domino Festival)
24 Copenhagen, Denmark - DR Koncerthuset
26 Oslo, Norway - Sentrum Scene
27 Bergen, Norway - Ole Bull Scene (Bergen Festival)
30 Mallorca, Spain - Teatre Principal de Palma

--Ally @ SoundUnwound

SoundUnwound's editorial team write about the latest big music news and quirky stories which catch the eye. We also post a selection of these news stories on Chordstrike; for much, much more, visit SoundUnwound.com, the new music site from IMDb and Amazon. Follow us at twitter.com/soundunwound.

Joanna Newsom: Have Three On Me

Criticizing an album before anyone's ever heard it would be a bizarre thing to do. Bizarrely, I think I'm going do just that.

Y'see, I'm just a little concerned about one of my favorite artists.

Joanna Newsom's Ys was one of my favorite albums of the last ten years, but she's announced her follow up, Have One On Me, is going to be a triple. There's no track listing yet, but whatever it is will be released on 3xCDs, or 3xLPs.

Is there actually such a thing as a great triple album? Serious question, I'd like to know. There must be a few, but even still - wouldn't they be improved by having a few lesser tracks chopped off to make it a more manageable double album? In fact, wouldn't the vast majority of double albums be improved by being edited down to a single?

I tend to feel that 35-50 minutes is the best length for an album, because shorter than that feels a little too short, but longer is kinda tiring. But how tiring a record is depends on what kind of music it is, too.

Aphex Twin's triple LP (or double CD) Selected Ambient Works II is over two-and-a-half hours of featureless ambiance. Even though that's a long time to do anything (a long time to have headphones on, say), it's easy to let it wash through you and only pick up on the broad movements of mood. On the other hand, Tupac's double-disc All Eyez On Me is 132 minutes --  nearly two-and-a-quarter hours -- and it's exhausting, because you have to listen much closer to hip-hop, to follow the lyrics. That kind of concentration is tough to keep up!

Joanna Newsom is not exactly easy to listen to in the first place. Her voice is polarizing, but even for those of us who like it, Ys, at 55 minutes long, was quite long enough, because her lyrics are so densely arranged that you really have to focus to keep up with them. We don't yet know how long Have One On Me will be, but if it's roughly three hours then that's surely too long to digest in one sitting. And if it's not meant for one sitting, why release it at all together under one name?

Joanna Newsom's music always seems very deliberate: every syllable is carefully measured, every flourish and flair under complete control. You can be sure that there's an explanation for the placing of every antique and animal figure on that cover, above, so the length of the album itself is no half-thought or accident. I imagine she must have some complex conceptual justification, I just can't imagine what it is!

Do you agree that triple albums are a bad idea? Or are you happier to get more songs from longer albums?

Have One On Me will be released on February 23rd. A new song, "Good Intentions Paving Company," is already streaming from her label Drag City's website.