Strangely, the Doctor Atomic album on lala I blogged about yesterday is no longer playable (and the MP3s no longer purchasable). I can continue to stream the one track I paid .10 for, Guide to Strange Places.
When one lives in an abundant streaming world with millions of tracks, one doesn't get concerned about the permanence or lackthereof for a select few. Maybe this is a cue to listen to some Nico Muhly works instead...
Posted at 08:51 PM in adams, john :: guide to strange places | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
My reaction after listening for the first time is that this album should definitely not be considered twee. I say this because it was five long blog-years ago that I linked to someone who accused the composer of twee-ism.
Joshua Kosman calls the work "darkly idiosyncratic." Geoff Brown cites its lack of melodic interest but I think the positives he describes outweigh that concern:
There’s the unceasing nervous activity — only after ten minutes do the jiggling notes in the Guide reach a pause. Scurrying strings head nowhere fast. Rhythms hiccup, like Stravinsky gone disco. However expansive Adams’s vocabulary grows, the old minimalist habits remain.
This album also puts me at the crossroads of my changing habits towards media delivery and playback. While I have all but given up on physical books and DVDs (my recent purchase of the Doctor Atomic DVD notwithstanding) in preference for the downloadable and the streamable, I'm also a John Adams CD collector. I own every US-released CD and every other import I've encountered, minus a couple of obscure ones. But with this new recording, I've already bought lala streaming rights for Guide to Strange Places (I'm still ambivalent about the whole Doctor Atomic experience, though) and it would be a simple matter to buy the MP3s. Do I end my completist ways now and or view my collection as "virtual?" Dunno what this consumer will do.
I'm also past the six-year mark for aworks. Blogging is still fun for me and hopefully occasionally interesting for others so it will continue. But I wonder if six years from now, blogs will be obsolete or archaic or otherwise the "old thing." I also wonder if I can ever decide in that time frame what I think of Doctor Atomic.
Ok, as always, thanks for reading; please enjoy your return back to the mainstream statusphere.
Update: lala may have temporarily removed these tracks from streaming.
Posted at 08:13 PM in adams, john :: guide to strange places | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
