aworks :: "new" american classical music

Less Famous than You (2006). Corey Dargel

Home today with lots to do so instead I'm blogging...

Night After Night hints of next year:

Corey Dargel - Less Famous Than You (as yet unreleased, but surely the contemporary-classical-smart-pop breakthrough hit of 2006, mark my words...)

In my household anyway, Dargel's Accutane was the summer hit of 2004. MP3 here. Mark Geelhoed on same.

Accutane (2004). Corey Dargel

Is Accutane novelty or a great art song?  I don't know yet but I find it delightful, with both text and accompaniment clever and refreshing.  Lyrics (from the composer's automatic heartbreak website):

i'm going back on accutane / now that i've had a taste of freedom / i can't go on hiding in my clothes / my lips will be chapped and numb / and my mouth drier with every dose / but i won't complain / i won't complain

MP3 here.  Dargel continues his (legal) pharmacology series with antidepressants (mp3) and little blue pill (mp3) although I prefer this kind of thing in "small doses."

Via Kyle Gann's Listening Page for Arts Journal, where he posts numerous MP3s to demonstrate examples for the Critical Conversation:

I hate having this abstract, general discussion about “today’s composers” when no one seems to know the composers I’m talking about. So I’ve put up a temporary New-Music Listening Page with examples of music by 14 composers. You may like some of it, you may not, but if you get the urge to claim that “today’s composers” are out of touch with popular music, don’t write music with any relevance to social issues, don’t use sampling, don’t capture the spirit of our time, etc., you might want to listen to these before saying so...

Corey Dargel (1977-)

1. Accutane (2004). aworks post.
2. Antidepressants
3. Little Blue Pill

• Composer web site