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OUT JUNE 28 2024

I’ve been listening to a lot of music by John Adams lately. He is unfairly grouped with a lot of the early minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass but I feel like the musical language he uses is much more complex harmonically. He’s had a long career and is probably most well known for the operas he’s written but my favorite pieces are simpler works for the piano (this Adams song was used beautifully in the opening credits for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name). I found this short interview clip really interesting as Adams discusses the dilemma of modern composers and how there aren’t many creative templates to work from these days - and how important it is for a creative to find their own individual voice. Other piano works to check out are Phrygian Gates and China Gates.

Selection of throwback jazz music. Perfect for a small dinner party.

Donald Judd has become a recent favorite of mine. His work was very innovative (particularly in terms of the need for art not to be confined to museums or galleries) but I find a lot of inspiration in his personal life as well. After some early success, he made a decision to move from NYC to a small west Texas town where he slowly started creating a new life for himself designing buildings, furniture, and artworks in a holistic curatorial approach to living. This documentary (shot after he passed away) discusses this lifestyle change and his relationship to the small town of Maria, Texas.

This book by musician and writer David Toop is quite odd. The main emphasis is on tracing the development of ambient music - starting with Debussy, on through Eno and more recently in genres like ambient techno (the book was written in 1995). However, the way he goes about telling this history is quite scattered, focusing on random vignettes over any linear progression. It’s not my favorite approach but it is full of really interesting anecdotes and there are even Spotify and Youtube playlists for every song he mentions in the book.

Isamu Noguchi is one of my favorite artists. Not only do I love his style, but I greatly appreciate all of the various disciplines that he worked within - from furniture design, set design, sculpture, ceramics, architecture - the list goes on and on. For anyone in the NYC area, I greatly recommend the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City. Originally, the space was the artist’s working studio but later in his life he started transitioning it into a museum for his pieces. The garden area is especially well put together with subtle nods to Japanese garden aesthetics.

The video montage includes a really poignant interview with Noguchi about his creative process.

Another themed playlist. This one focuses on more Rock and subtle Country elements. A favorite being outside around sunset or early campfire evenings.

Anyone familiar with this newsletter will know I’m a big fan of the “Artist Bio” film. This doc about Geoff McFetridge just came out this week and it’s highly recommended. Not only is his work really special, but I love hearing about his struggle with supporting a family and about how hard it is to balance pure artistic exploration with more real-world commercial responsibilities.

I’ve loved ee cummings poetry for a long time. His work has an amazing balance of touching sentimentality and avant garde obtuseness. His love poems are especially good but this excerpt from a talk he gave to writing students back in 1955 (released only on a rare vinyl record) sums up the struggle of the creative process so succinctly. Any creative should take the time to listen. This is my favorite line.

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting…”

I had intended on incorporating a lot of graphic design ideas in NFAQL that were influenced by the Concrete Poetry movement outlined above. However, after discovering this book designed by Paul Sahre I gave up the idea as it is so well executed. Sahre used an IBM Electric III typewriter to put together the intricate text layouts which meant that everything was done by hand. This interview with Paul outlines some of the process.

Another playlist. This one is slightly more upbeat with a hazy atmosphere.

Gonzalo Fonseca was an artist and sculptor originally from Uruguay, but spent most of his life in NYC. He’s not widely known but I discovered him through an exhibition showcasing his work at the Noguchi Museum. His work shares similarities to Noguchi with a focus on working with a stone - often incorporating archetypal architectural elements. This documentary about his life is highly recommended.

DUANE MICHALS →

Duane Michals is a photographer I’ve been particularly fascinated with over the last few years. He has a very distinct style that incorporates a lot of clever uses of techniques like double exposure and elaborate photo-sequences to do his story-telling. His photos are often quite surreal while having a minimal, conceptual feeling about them. Check out this documentary about his life and work.

This unofficial documentary compiles a bunch of rare interviews with Harold Budd and Brian Eno and pairs them with atmospheric visuals and music from the albums they made together. The result lands somewhere between a documentary and a well researched podcast - but the result is super interesting. I love hearing details about the recording session and how they were practically stumbling into creating a lot of the touchstones of ambient music.

Even though I studied literature in college, I’d never heard of Fernando Pessoa until fairly recently. I discovered his book “The Book of Disquiet” through this short youtube film - which gives background on the writer and outlines a lot of the themes surrounding the book. What makes Pessoa so interesting was that he did most of his writing through pseudonyms which each have their own interesting backstory and stylistic voice. He referred to them as heteronyms as he felt like the name pseudonym didn’t capture how distinct each voice was. The Book of Disquiet is a story told in vignettes that often have no clear relationship to one another and definitely has no clear linear story progression; however, it outlines a particular form of introspection that I identify with a lot.

I discovered Dutch musician Eelco Topper’s project Felbm a few years ago via the Spotify Algorithm. His “Tape” series was really great (this song is particular is my favorite) and I’ve really fallen in love with his “Elements of Nature” release as it uses a lot of metal and wood percussion instruments (which I’m really fond of as well). This film by Pierre Zylstra does a good job of showcasing Felbm’s unique workflow and creative process.

I understand that the “Self-Help” genre is not for everyone as it’s sometimes hard to distinguish good, educated advice from something that might be closer to a sensationalized ploy to sell books. And taken a step further, I realize that any books that might reference eastern philosophy might also not be for everyone. But I first saw a documentary that features Thich Nhat Hanh about the benefits of mindfulness and it was very helpful for me to understand how my priorities and focus on productivity was unsustainable and ultimately very unhealthy. Peace Is Every Step was the first book of his that I read and I treated it like a daily devotional - reading short passages every day. A lot of the ideas in the book connect well to some of the other poetry I’ve shared as it stresses the importance of being present and aware of what’s around you. Hanh would say that its only during these moments that you are truly living.

My personal listening taste has become a lot more utilitarian over the last few years. Often I’m just looking for a song that makes me feel relaxed or that creates a nice atmosphere. The Sam Wilkes and Jacob Mann’s collaborative album is great but I was particularly drawn to the live performances of the songs they posted on Youtube. The song “Soft Landing” is particularly good IMO as it showcases their minimalist approach and great playing skills. Be sure and check out the rest of the videos as well.

This might only be interesting to graphic design nerds, but the typeface used for this album has a rich and interesting history. I found it after a brief obsession with the Fluxus art movement. The movement is hard to summarize as it’s quite varied but it was very experimental and collaborative with some of the playfulness of Dada and often incorporating an element of chance.

I kept seeing the same typeface on an IG account I follow that collects random work from the era, and I thought it had a nice balance that was formal but also a bit quirky - which fit with some of my conceptual ideas about the art for the album. Luckily, someone did an amazing job scanning old textpages and building Fluxisch Else - which has some great imperfections like floating baselines and erratic kerning.

I discovered this book a few years ago and was blown away with its originality. It feels like a forgotten text from some ancient civilization. In fact, it was made by an Italian illustrator and designer over the course of 2.5 years back in the late 70’s. Full of whimsy, he even invented a made-up language and alphabet. This video is a great introduction.

I guess the theme for this week is super original, “alien” art, as this album sounds like nothing else I’ve heard before. It is certainly not for everyone, but it blew my mind and inspired a yet-to-be-released experimental album that I made a couple of years ago. The album was made in 1988 using only a primitive sampler - see this short article about some basic background. If you can make it through the atonal sections, there are beautiful moments of melody that appear quickly and then disappear.

I thought this short blog post was interesting and the idea of “glimmers” that it describes is very similar to the awareness I was attempting to cultivate throughout the album making process.

There was a quick shot in the NFAQL doc that showcased a stack of books. One of them was called “The Peace of Wild Things” - which I found very inspiring during the making of the album.

Berry is an extremely prolific writer and activist who’s written in almost every sub-genre possible. However, his book of poems mentioned above is my favorite. Not only do the poems discuss the rejuvenating properties of nature, they often also make light of a type of awareness that if we just pay attention in the present moment there is so much beauty and meaning around us. That practice of mindfulness was an important step for me throughout the making of the album and it has enriched my life tremendously. My favorite poetry inspires this sensation. Check out this short animation of one of Berry’s most popular poems.

I felt burnt out from making music right before starting work on NFAQL and I took about 3 months in early 2022 just making really simple, improvised music. It was the first time in a long time that I wrote just for the fun of it instead of being focused on being productive towards a commercial project. I started playing piano a lot and simply capturing the performances via rough iPhone recordings. When it came time to add “score” music to the documentary it seemed like an obvious place to start. So Kristian picked out a bunch of snippets from my archive. He insisted that we use them “as-is” and not re-record so you can hear a lot of mistakes (as well as background noises like my young son Owen). Here are the recordings that made it in the score.

Kristian and I both are big film fans and have a special love for nonfiction documentary based story-telling. We spent a lot of time sharing inspiration back and forth. These are a few documentaries that we both really liked and that shared some similarity to the NFAQL story.

I’ve enjoyed reading Mary Oliver over the last couple of years.  Not only does she capture beautiful images, but she sheds light on beautiful moments that might otherwise be taken for granted.  I’ve tried to practice this sort of mindfulness and inquisitiveness in my own life. This essay by Maria Popova does a great job of describing the magic of her work.