Moods 48: Detroit Bureau of Sound
Moods continues in its middle age with entry number 48 by Detroit-based musician Detroit Bureau of Sound (@detroitbureauofsound) who takes us on a crushing journey through rock, lasers, guitars, and percussion threaded between John Cage poems. Check the tracklist, QnA, and more below.
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Tracklist
John Cage anecdote about a mushroom haiku
Pauline Oliveros - Alien Bog (Music from Mills)
Hideous Gomphidius - Wrath of the Fungal Ones
Iannis Xenakis - Diamorphoses
Laurie Anderson - O Superman
Arca - Big Science remix
Iannis Xenakis - Concrete ph
Björk - All Is Full Of Love (Guy Sigsworth mix / DBS edit)
Matmos - Semen Song
Geotic - Beaming Husband
Ryoji Ikeda - Luxus 1-3
Diamanda Galas - Free Among The Dead
John Cage - Lecture on Nothing (excerpt)
George Crumb - Vox Balaenae
Suzanne Ciani - Concert at Phil Niblock’s Loft
Steve Reich - Sextet (perf. by Amadinda)
Nigel Westlake - Omphalo Centric Lecture (perf. Melbourne Guitar Quartet)
Uakti+Philip Glass - Aguas da Amazonia: Amazon River
Phurpa - Bon Ngo (part 2)
Plastikman - Ask Yourself
Hawtin/Xenakis (remixed by Xavier Garcia/Guy Villerd) - Bureau A
Hawtin/Xenakis (remixed by Xavier Garcia/Guy Villerd) - Bureau B
Xenakis - Rebonds b (perf. Steve Schick)
SOPHIE - Faceshopping (Lipstick Gel remix)
Dan Deacon/Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
Julius Eastman - Feminine
Slipknot - Iowa
Boris/Merzbow - Klatter 1
Sunn O))) - Hunting & Gathering
Dan Trueman/So Percussion - Feedback (in which a Bach prelude becomes ill-tempered)
Rocky Horror Picture Show - Don’t Dream It Be It
Dir en Grey - Ain’t Afraid to Die (live)
Alabama Shakes - You Ain’t Alone
Liner Notes
I was a classical music kid who kept quiet about my love for techno. Growing up in a culturally bountiful place like Dearborn, on the western border of Detroit, I found out about a world’s worth of music - it really felt like growing up in many places at once. Around age 10, techno music came into the picture via the older siblings of my childhood friends, all while I was immersed in my nerdy little classical music world of piano, and then percussion in high school (“you can’t march with a piano” they said).
Percussion is paradoxical… it is, by far, humankind’s oldest form of communication/music, but percussion as a solo artform really got going in the mid 1900’s, around the same time as the birth of electronic music. More and more the traditions of percussion and electronic music seem to intertwine so closely that they couldn’t be separate. Now I see techno music as an inevitable outcome of thousands of years human communication through sound.
This mix is a distillation of everything I feel connected to in music. I promise it could have been much weirder; I tried to gather more palatable sounds that inform my personal taste in music while still staking territory firmly in the realm of strangeness. I love extreme music, aggressive sounds and delicate sounds alike. I love experimentalism, when the composer clearly feels the need to be other and different. There’s post-war avant grade percussion, experimental electronics, a little bit of brutal noise, free jazz, a few flavors of minimalism, and of course there’s strong queer representation throughout.
Art
We've paired Detroit Bureau of Sound's mix with a sculpture by Cady Noland, one of the most incisive artists who skewers American politics, borders, and identity. We at Moods have been waiting for years to find the right mix to pair Cady—and the home has been found.
To read more about Cady Noland: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cady_Noland
To follow more from Detroit Bureau of Sound: www.instagram.com/detroitbureauofsound/