“Make it New,” Ezra Pound’s modernist call-to-arms, turns 90 this year. Producer and composer Danny L Harle still believes in the crux of the project. Harle’s story is made up of the kind of groupings and vanguards beloved by modernist-inclined histories. He was a key part of PC Music, an influential thing (label/art collective/aesthetic sensibility/lightning […]

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Four years ago, I put on a pair of chunky red headphones and was immediately plunged into an entirely new soundworld. Suddenly, everything was buzzing, clicking and pulsing—yet there was no cable running from my headset, no bluetooth link to a nearby media player. I was in the center of Amsterdam for the city’s biennial […]

The post A Collection of Disappearing Sounds appeared first on VAN Magazine.

A pioneer of modern electronic music, Morton Subotnick not only encouraged technical innovations but defined new sonic paradigms for the creation of electronic music. Approaching his 90th year in April, he remains as energized and dynamic as ever. As a tech geek and extreme music fan during my high school years in the late 1960s, […]

The post Collapsing Time appeared first on VAN Magazine.

In September, the legendary German filmmaker, author, actor, opera director, and skateboarding-opinion-haver Werner Herzog turns 80. Herzog’s use of music in his films is noticeably more eclectic and more surprising than that of most of his director colleagues, according to our contributor Thomas von Steinaecker, who is currently finishing a documentary on the artist.  A […]

The post Metaphysical Relief appeared first on VAN Magazine.

The musical instruments of the concert stage are products of thousands of years of experimentation in sound; the often taken-for-granted results of a long process of tinkering. Keyboard instruments are just one example: From early string instruments to the harpsichord, the pianoforte, and the modern concert grand, the piano has been a long-term, collaborative project. […]

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Svyatoslav Lunyov: “Panta Rhei” (Ukrainian Live Classic) Valentyn Silvestrov: “Requiem for Larissa” (Ukrainian Live Classic) Alla Zahaykevich: “Nord-Ouest” (Ukrainian Live Classic) Over the last week, I’ve jotted down several aphorisms from composer Svyatoslav Lunyov, in slapdash, automated translations from their original Ukrainian. “The artist is like a spider,” he told the Kyiv Daily. “To catch […]

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