What does music look like?

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Anybody who knows me would understand I am fascinated by Synesthesia

Interesting article from the NY Times.

“Like a 3-D take on Jackson Pollock, the latest work by the artist Martin Klimas begins with splatters of paint in fuchsia, teal and lime green, positioned on a scrim over the diaphragm of a speaker. Then the volume is turned up. For each image, Klimas selects music — typically something dynamic and percussive, like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Miles Davis or Kraftwerk — and the vibration of the speaker sends the paint aloft in patterns that reveal themselves through the lens of his Hasselblad. Klimas rose to prominence in the art world four years ago for a series of photos that captured porcelain figurines just as they shattered. For this series, Klimas spent six months and about 1,000 shots to produce the final images from his studio in Düsseldorf, Germany. In addition to the obvious debt owed to abstract expressionism, Klimas says his major influence was Hans Jenny, the father of cymatics, the study of wave phenomena. The resulting images are Klimas’s attempt to answer the question “What does music look like?”

Julie Bosman

Review: Canyons Keep your Dreams

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Canyons

Keep your Dreams

Modular

In a world overflowing with achingly trendy LCD copyists, a moody mix of disco, indie and psychedelica seems to be the default soundtrack of those once referred to as ‘hipsters’.

However, precocious Sydney (via Perth) duo Canyons have picked these staples and run with them. This is a finely crafted long player that references the best of the past three decades oozing a playfulness and class so missing from the scene.

Opener Circadia, is a breathy instrumental evoking Kraftwerk in a Turkish bazaar, before Under a Blue Sky takes it firmly back to the dancefloor with a rigid four to the floor groove peppered with a light touch of atmospherics and bizarre French vocals.

Album highlight See Blind Through is perhaps the most straightforward dance track here, and an obvious single. A Washing Machine era Mr Fingers bassline underpinning spaced out sythns mixed a darkly disturbing but strangely evocative vocal turn.

When Canyons are great, ’When I See You Again, Tonight’, Keep your Dreams is the aural equivalent of taking a tour through Harlem’s great lost record store of the 70’s, a solid collection of groovy jams and hippie wanderings. Only the dub journey of ‘Blue Snakes’ and the Eno house of ‘Land in Between’ seem slightly gratuitous, sitting somewhere between classic chill-out and stoner rock leaving out any redeeming features from either.

Keep your Dreams is an ambitious album, taking in the best of the euphoria of contemporary dance music, mixing it with the posturing melancholy of the best indie. Based on the quality of their debut, Canyons have a vast future ahead of them. Whether they can maintain the momentum to move beyond the more style conscious punter remains to be seen, but this is one of the most solid debuts in any genre in recent years.

Toby Hemming

Review: Odd Future Enmore Theatre 24/01/12

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Review for Pages Digital:

Too hip for the hip-hoppers and insufficiently bling for the R’nB crowd, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA, or just plain Odd Future) are an uncompromising force in new music. Disowning traditional record company marketing plans to build a grass roots following through the internet, OFWGTA arguably represent as closely as anyone the sound of the streets in 2012.

Wednesday’s Enmore show certainly demonstrated that they are pulling all the right moves to get the kids fired up. The enthusiastic (and very young) crowd was snaking round the block in a blur of Vans and New Era caps.

By 8:30 the place was packed, buzzing with a high anticipation of the arrival of the heroes of the night as a tsunami of noise soundtracked the expectation with the incessant chant of ‘WOLF GANG, WOLF GANG!’

First up was the stage-managed entry of the ultra dextrous DJ Sampology, spinning a heady mix of beats and bass. This alone was enough for the assembled crowd to erupt into a sea of bodies, punctuated by an occasional fist or foot momentarily rising above the throng.

The level of energy in the room by this point was extraordinary, boding well for the arrival of the rest of the crew. Hitting the stage hard and fast like an adolescent Wu Tang, the gang took no prisoners breaking straight into ‘Sandwiches’ and in the process unleashing a whirlwind of self-imposed destruction from the crowd.

Seemingly not stopping to catch a breath, Odd Future are a force best seen to be believed. Whilst never steering too far from the template, the performance was pure white knuckle power – at times more reminiscent of a hard rock show than the funk-fuelled vibes of a traditional hip hop gig.

Three songs in, and security were working overtime as superstar-in-the-waiting and face of the group Tyler the Creator taunted the crowd, causing the seemingly possessed throng to attempt to storm the stage. With the temperature at boiling point and five emcees working together with precision timing, it seemed there was nowhere left to go. Cue the opening bars of global blogger hit ‘Yonkers’ and even this crowd managed to exceed itself, creating a crescendo of energy practically visible from the floor.

Over-hyped – maybe, but Odd Future brought the future to town with a rush of adolescent energy so vitally needed to give the music scene a real kick up the arse. Loud, rude, uncompromising and fun – your mother definitely wouldn’t approve.