Music of Sound

This made me laugh! Watch your speakers/playback level!
(unless you are into such things in which case TURN IT UP!)

Its almost the end of another year, time to reflect on the past..
& project into the future..

My Top Ten Albums of 2007
Akira Kosemura + Haruka Nakamura – Afterglow
Boxcutter – Glyphic
Cappablack – Facades & Skeletons
Cepia – Natura Morta
Deepchord Presents : Echospace – The Coldest Season
Ethan Rose – Ceiling Songs
Moskitoo – Drape
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Sawako – Madoromi
The Cinematic Orchestra – Ma Fleur

My Top Ten Movies of 2007
Inland Empire by David Lynch trailer
Manufactured Landscapes by Jennifer Baichwal trailer
No Country For Old Men by the Coen Brothers trailer
Paranoid Park by Gus Van Sant trailer
Retribution by Kurosawa Kiyoshi trailer
Tekkonkinkreet by Michael Arias trailer
Paris, je t’aime by 18 Directors trailer
Sicko by Michael Moore trailer
Rataouille by Brad Bird & Jan Pinkavatrailer
The Simpsons Movie by David Silvermantrailer

My Top Ten Sounds (I heard with my own ears) of 2007
The first cicada of summer: Butterfly Creek, Eastbourne, Wellington, NZ
Interior wind turbine during a strong Northly: Brooklyn, Wellington, NZ
Trains passing directly overhead: Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Ancient water dripping in the Taya Caverns: Ofuna, Japan
Broom flowers popping in the sun: Maupuia walkway, Wellington, NZ
My heart pounding in my ears: James Turrell Art House: Naoshima, Japan
Slurping ramen in a tiny shop directly under the subway: Kobe, Japan
A Buddhist fire ceremony: Shodoshima, japan
Onboard a 125 horsepower 1300cc racing Mini: Paraparaumu, NZ
The gentle slithery hiss when I leave my Space Echo running…

My Top Twelve Music Websites of 2007
ableton live forum
bleep
boomkat
create digital music
disquiet
emusic
film sound daily
KVR
matrixsynth
music thing
new music box
unidentified sound object

My Top Ten Websites of 2007
arts & letters daily
boing boing
del.icio.us
IMDB
meta critic
meta filter
reblog
stuff
youtube

My Top Twenty Eye/Brain Candy Websites of 2007
10 x 10
cloud appreciation society
data is nature
ektopia
film wasters
ffffound
found
future feeder
little people
modern mechanix
pixel sumo
ping mag
post secret
strange beautiful
world of kane
visual complexity
vvork
we make money not art
wooster collective

The Wizard of Oz was one of the first films I ever saw at the cinema. I used to go & stay with Granmother, Irene, during school holidays & god bless her over the course of three or four years she took me to all the coolest kids films – Willie Wonka, Doctor Doolittle…. but The Wizard of Oz was the first & I can still vividly remember being thrilled & terrified by it! So for a bit of nosalgia, here is a 17 year old Judy Garland singing the classic “Somewhere over the rainbow” – hey theres Toto!!!

Here she is as an adult singing the same song:

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Despite having an intense loathing of christmas carols, here she is in 1963 singing a beautiful xmas song – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

While hunting for those previous video clips little did I know the conspiracys that exist about The Wizard of Oz, first the Pink Floyd conspiracy: The Dark Side of Oz

Then the one about the Munchkin committing suicide on set!?

And if you can believe this documentary, it would seem Judy never really found her yellow brick road – alcohol & barbituates were the substitute that killed her…

hmmmmmm… way to trash my childhood memorys youtube!

no, seriously!

The cinematic world owes a huge debt to Sergio Leone & his composer Ennio Morricone but they also borrow from those who went before them eg just try watching A Fistful of Dollars followed by Akira Kurosawa’s film Yojimbo and you will see what i mean, literally…. but before you do, check out this great tribute to them both, in the form of a promo for Sky Cinema Classics…

Here is a link to the official site for Ennio Morricone, plus a great interview in the Guardian and I will borrow a lovely quote from it:

“I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds,” he explains, “so I used real sounds partly to give a kind of nostalgia that the film had to convey. I also used these realistic sounds in a psychological way. With The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I used animal sounds – as you say, the coyote sound – so the sound of the animal became the main theme of the movie. I don’t know how I had this idea. It’s just according to your experiences, and following the musical avant-garde.”

and another pearl of wisdom:

“The music in a film must enter politely, very slowly, like an uninvited guest at a party.”