Poetronics: Vanessa Daou's "One Thing I'm Missing" | PopMatters review

Downtempo maven Vanessa Daou offers
a sampling from her upcoming release.

By Imran Khan

A New York Times review of Chinese writer Can Xue's work asserted that reading the author’s fiction is like "running downhill in the dark; you’ve got momentum, but you don’t know where you’re headed."  Such a sentiment could be said of Vanessa Daou’s newest work; much of her recent explorations with club culture incite the chancy, dangerous thrill of experiment. Daou has already made a name for herself with her astonishing mix of spoken word and electronic beats on her six previous albums. Her voice, an eerie, peculiar sigh which brings a yielding and sensual warmth to her sultry grooves, is equally noted for its unbridled femininity. 
 
Not exactly an official single, "One Thing I’m Missing" is a taster for Daou’s upcoming release, Light, Sweet, Crude, an album that will delve into the further reaches of hip-hop and electronica after the heavily jazz-leaning offering of 2008’s Joe Sent Me. “One Thing I’m Missing” still trades on the downbeat tempos of her last album but fully engages in the atmospherics of digital paranoia, with icy sheets of synths layered upon a druggy, languid groove. Daou’s vocal, a strange, twisted call resounding from some Promethean netherworld, is essentially the hinge of which producer André Baum builds his rhythms upon, the cadence of his groove flowing with the awkward, elegant grace of a frozen river thawing. Sinuous, ghostly and poetic, this number heralds a return to Daou’s previous flirtations with DJ culture. 

Read original review @ PopMatters

Ylvis: What Does the Fox Say? (((and it's not what you think)))

Every generation re-writes the past. We see this in fiction, in film, and in music. The changes that occur are more-often-than-not hidden and difficult to unravel.

The changes that are happening in the landscape of music are in many ways invisible. We've moved past the conversation about the merits and pitfalls of releasing digitally - legal or not - into a conversation about MEANING.

A song is, after all, a message. For a while now, the focus has been on the visuals (eg, Miley's 'Wrecking Ball'), and perhaps the dominance of YouTube as a conversation starter has lead musicians down a path of the visual as opposed to verbal. But, as in nature, the strongest forces are the invisible ones, the ones that can't be measured or monetized. Words are the one things we can all hold on to and make our own (ENTER Lorde).

Sometimes, rarely, a song comes along that both invites and defies understanding. Ylvis' 'What Does the Fox Say' is one of those songs whose message is so wrapped in irony and The Absurd, that it leaves all in its wake, befuddingly knackered.

I've always believed that resonance only takes place when the many layers are hidden and hard to decipher. 'What Does the Fox Say' is not (only) a song about the sounds various animals make. It is a re-invention, a new imagining of a post-modern fairy tale. It is a re-telling, a re-tooling, a neoteric fictive landscape which is at once freakish, fantasic and frightening.

It is a song that recruits manifold layers of sonic textures and tonalities to help tell its tale, reminding us that sound — in-and-of-itself — is a conveyor of 'MESSAGE' (eg, M-O--O-O-R-S-E code) as much as words. And let's not forget how important a role Dance & physical gestures play in the making of that message, how in synch each movement is with each moment of music, how impeccably & perfectly it conveys intention. (for more on this, visit my blog/lecture 'Dance as Analysis: Degrees of Freedom' at SVA)

Questions that are addressed are: Where is the mystery in a world where everything is known? How much can we understand when useless prattle and blather holds sway? How do we eschew Political divisions and blaze our own future/s? How do we express that ancient fear that is embedded in the human condition? How can we escape the confines of our own expectations?

'What Does the Fox Say' is not (only) about all of the things it seems to be on its surface. In many ways, it is that ever-deceptive Sheep wrapped in a Wolf's - or in this case, a Fox's - clothing. The song - words & music - go to our collective abstraction from the wild ( a must-read, Jack Turner's 'The Abstract Wild'), and speaks to a primal, pagan-like connectivity - an admixture of magic, mystery, and the sublime - that we still feel with nature: an enduring continuity that we carry in our voices, bodies and minds.

A ZIPLESS Anniversary: Erica Jong's 'Fear of Flying' turns 40

It was the only book my mother would read with the cover folded back, and the only one she carried away when she finished reading. 

Being a writer herself, she devoured books until their covers were creased and tattered, until the pages were folded and torn, bindings nearly bifurcated. 

This one particular book, having consumed it so completely, at some point it split right down the middle. She reconnected the two parts with multiple layers of Scotch tape: that's how I knew how to find it once she tucked it away in the 'J' section of the umpteen books she had alphabetized on her shelves. Of course I read the back cover, but it wasn't until my Senior year at Barnard, - coincidentally Jong's alma mater - that I read 'Fear of Flying' with my mother's same voraciousness. 

When I was just out of college, I met Erica, and felt an immediate, electric kind of connection, as I had with Isadora Wing. And as my mother had done, I would carry "Fear of Flying' with me for months, with the binding creased hard down the middle, my black inky notes scrawled in the margins. 

I would soon dive headlong into Erica's poetry, 'Half Lives', 'Fruits & Vegetables', 'Loveroot'. It was with 'Becoming Light', a collection of Jong's poetry released by Harper Collins in 1992, that I began to dig more thoroughly and fervidly into Jong's verses. I found myself within those pages.

'Zipless' was the fruit borne from that experience, an album which focused my thinking on the fact of my femininity, of my gender and sexuality, of the relationship between pen and paper, the synergies and differences between a Poem and a Song. That process of reflecting, revising, and reconstructing Erica's poems into song was a kind of rite-of-passage for me artistically. I approached the task with a zeal and exuberance that has never left me.

I think everyone who has read 'Fear of Flying' comes out of the experience changed somehow: feeling either self-affirmation — that an intuited, hidden truth has been uncloaked — or transformed — that some new truth has been uncovered. In either and both cases, the change is permanent: the world stands still, but you keep moving, and there's no returning once you've boarded that Zipless train.

SLANT MAGAZINE | House Playlist: Lorde, Phantogram, Glasser, & Vanessa Daou

House Playlist: Lorde, Phantogram, Glasser, & Vanessa Daou

Vanessa Daou, "One Thing I’m Missing": Best known for a string of ’90s club hits including “Near the Black Forest” (from her 1995 opus Zipless, which appeared on our list of the Best Albums of the 1990s), singer Vanessa Daou has dropped a trippy slice of chill-out called “One Thing I’m Missing,” from producer André Baum’s new compilation People People Volume 1, out now.

Fearlessly Understanding | The new guard @ Sibling Rivalry Press

"I am a stenographer of my mind. I write down what  passes through it, not whats going around me. I am a poet." — Allen Ginsberg

"I do not understand poetry", a mantra so often intoned. I used to think this had to do with the oblique lens through which poets see the world, but I'm beginning to see that this has more to do with time, the gap of years during which a new generation of Poets acquire that particular voice which 'speaks' to their generation.

When this occurs, when a new 'voice' enters the conversation, it causes a rift among the status quo: a rip, a tearing of the old fabric which clings, unrelentingly, to tradition. When a new guard of Poets take hold, they sound an alarm; theirs is a celebration, a battle cry and a warning — a call to arms for those who've been searching for words that both agitate and assuage, waiting for those voices to rise & shake up complacency and re-adjust their own world view - the way Ginsberg and Anne Sexton and Dickinson and Yeats and Neruda did .....

In poetry today, we're seeing a shift from the static & academic to the fluid & intrinsic. It's happening in other art forms such as Dance. (a great piece by Gia Kourlas @ NYT "The Margins of a Form Are, Increasingly, Not Where They Used to Be") For those who say they don't "get" poetry, I say, poetry is all around us. It's not something that needs to be learned. You know it when you hear it.

Sibling Rivalry Press

Today's voices of Poets that are resonating come from Sibling Rivalry Press - its stated mission "is to publish work that disturbs and enraptures." And that, it does. I challenge anyone to come out of the experience of reading Collin Kelley's 'Render', DGilson's 'BritLit', Joanna Hoffman's 'Running for Trap Doors', 

Stephen S. Mills' 'He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices', or SRP Founder & Publisher's Bryan Borland's 'My Life as Adam' and say they don't understand. These are Poets who have no fear of diving headlong & hedonistically into their raging, rapturous sea of words. Any reader who lives and thinks breaths in the world today will find themselves reading on, fearlessly understanding.

Render: Poems by Collin Kelley - book trailer 

CD vs Digital: It's (probably) not what you think

I've always believed that part of the power of music to communicate its message is rooted in its tangibility. We not only hear music, we - literally - 'feel' it. Part of the sensation of 'feeling' in wrapped up in touch: when we are moved by something, for instance, we say that we are 'touched'. To be 'moved' by something is to be 'touched' by it.

Paul Resnikoff's article '40 Years of Music Industry Change, In 40 Seconds or Less...' is a must-read. I was stunned while watching the featured & fascinating time-lapse pie chart showing the fluctuation in CD sales since 1973. 

That CDs are still enjoying healthy sales will no doubt come as a surprise to most. This graph demonstrates that it's not a 'this OR that' scenario for listeners; it's more about choosing this AND that. With multiple options, listeners do not have to choose sides.

While Vinyl still offers the best option in terms of audio quality and album art, as well as a physical immediacy which embodies a more direct connection to the artist, the portability, fuller sonic range and durability of the CD offers the next best thing. Digital downloads offer convenience, economy and speed, 3 essential considerations.

Black & White scenarios make good headlines, but the truth lies somewhere in those intermediate realms which often belie our beliefs. Sometimes, it's worth stopping to consider that our commonly held assumptions are likely to be disrupted by one individual with the imagination and tools to question it.  

I say, Cheers to that!

~ V

Nature is a Dirty Word: The Limits of Language

 

Each of us has a unique perspective and angle, a distinct lens through which we view the world. It's not possible for two people see a thing exactly as another sees it.  While everything is relative, there are certain modes, manners and memes which we adopt, often without question.

 My work has a lot to do with language, how we attempt to approximate how we feel through the words we use, always coming close, but seldom communicating the full range of our emotions.  I'm equally interested in the words we don't use.

Today is Mother Earth Day, and while the idea in principle is a supremely noble one, it's important to remember that Nature has a right to exist separate and apart from ourselves: it has become out moded, out dated, and seemingly, nearly obsolete. While the words 'Environment', 'World', and 'Earth' are commonly used, the word 'Nature', it seems, is a dirty word.

The persistent use of a certain word in favor of another, over time, will often replace it completely. As a result, what is lost is not only the word itself, but the attendant emotional connection previously associated with it. Let us, through language and song, celebrate Nature as much and as often as we do the Earth, the Environment, and the World.

XV  
 

IN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE | Jack White "Mother Nature's Son" | PBS

 

Happy [Post] B-Day Billie Holiday!

"[April 7th] would have marked the 98th birthday of Elanora Fagan aka Billie Holiday. Perhaps no single Jazz vocalist has had the impact on the genre of Jazz music then she did. From her humble beginnings of singing along to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith records as a child to her untimely death at age 44 and the success and hardships she had in between, there is no question that Holiday was (and still is) one of the most well known Jazz performers." Flea Market Funk

Billie Holiday co-wrote few songs, but those she had a hand in penning are amongst the greats:

"Critic John Bush wrote that Holiday "changed the art of American pop vocals forever."[5] She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably "God Bless the Child", "Don't Explain", "Fine and Mellow", and "Lady Sings the Blues"." Wikipedia

Of the 2 songs I've covered, one was Billie Holiday's 'Don't Explain' on 'Slow to Burn'. Stream it on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/vanessadaou/dont-explain

Its terse language and melodic highs and lows communicate its message succinctly & beautifully. Trademarks of a great song......

My acrylic portrait of Billie accompanied 'Don't Explian':

 

Billie not only sang The Blues, she transformed its message - Her singing of 'Strange Fruit' was a socially transformative and immensely radical act ::::

I count Billie the first amongst my earliest influences. My father had a small but selective collection of Jazz records. What were his Billie Holiday LPs soon became mine. The sound of her voice, her intonations, timbre and phrasings were soon embedded in my heart, soul & mind, and have never left:

"Built on piano, synthesizers and Daou's mesmerizing, Billie Holiday-like vocals, Zipless strikes an exquisite balance between pop and jazz by weaving together the strengths of both styles." TIME

Happy B-Day Billie! Here's to your eternal Spirit & infinite Artistry ......

Jennifer Monson, Bird Gerhl

Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

I saw Jennifer Monson at The Kitchen last night perform her "Live Dancing Archive". Rather, I should say; We watched her. We heard her. We, the audience, experienced the sublime angles of her beautiful - at times brutal - angles of her intense physicality. 

Dance is the only art that is rooted in the body, movement being at its core. Whether preplanned or improvised, a dancer does more than 'move'. With each move, there are layers upon layers of meaning, heaped on, in, and around that motion is space. A conglomerate of notion, implication, embodiment, invitation, invocation, Contemporary Dance reminds us that we are alive, living, breathing, sentient, continuously unfolding, searching for meaning and understanding, for (dare I say) a "meaningful" connection to ourselves, to each other, to one another. 

Dance is the one art that brings us back to the fact that while there might be 'intention' on the part of the Artist/Dancer, that 'intent' is always open to our interpretation. And, while a dancer might appear to be still on stage, our minds move around her. Dance is the one art that reminds us that there is no such thing as 'meaning', there is only motion.  

Monson's performance hinges on one question: What does it 'mean', to be a 'Bird'? To embody beauty but live in fear, to be stripped to the core by the sound of a roaring engine; to be at the mercy of live wires, extreme, excruciating frequencies, cataclysmic winds, infiltrated by toxins, covered in crude. A bird is fragility, freedom, fear, flight. A bird is prey, preyed upon, at the mercy of the  environment, exposed to the elements. A bird is a flinching, fertile, being, forgotten in the night.
 
While the word 'Bird' might be defined as:

"any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg"

to be sure, a Bird is more than the sum of those words.
During Monson's full-hour immensely fleshy performance, not a flash, click or ring of cell phone punctuated the performance. Barely a cough or sneeze. We were there to be enlightened, enticed, entranced, intrigued, energized, illuminated, subsumed. One thing was clear, in the age where 'American Idol' and 'So You Think You Can Dance' have equated Dancers and Musicians with Entertainers, I'd wager to bet, no one attending Monson's performance was there to be entertained.

Mid-way through, Monson dons a blonde wig and bright lipstick, and sways to 'Bird Gerhl' by Antony and the Johnsons, reminding us, once again, of that inextricable connection we have with each other, as artists, as audience. Hers is a singular dance, one that we — watching her, BE-ing her — without question, understand the meaning' of.

Monson goes far beyond emulating a bird or evoking 'Bird-ness'. Stripped down to her own impenetrable core, as far and as deep as she can physically and philosophically go, she reminds us - beautifully, brutally - of that invisible, essential, primal connection: empathy.

What has always made Contemporary Dance unique in the (Art) world, is that it eschews the gratuitous spotlight. It prefers, rather, to lurk in the shadows, and linger in the margins — by nature, oblique in its angles, and happy to be so.

_______________________________________

Link to Jennifer Monson @ Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art Nature and Dance

Link to blog created for my SVA lecture: Degrees of Freedom, Gravity & Spontaneous Sculptures @ SVA for Suzanne Anker's Digital Sculpture class

SPEAKEASY | THE MOONSHINE Mixes — 7 weeks @ #1 Electronica on TRAXSOURCE

 VANESSA DAOU Speak/Easy: The Moonshine Mixes (‘Joe Sent Me’ Revisited) held the #1 spot in Electronica Downloads for 7 weeks @ Traxsource

Many thanks to all involved: OUTSIDER MUSIC | KID RECORDINGS & the brilliant produces who spun their magic in the mixes.

Buy @

TRAXSOURCE

iTUNES

& all digital outlets

Speak/Easy: The Moonshine Mixes ['Joe Sent Me' Revisited] featured as one of Traxsource's "What's Hot This Week"

 Endorsed: “Lovely to hear Vanessa Daou back in action. New remix album coming out. If you’re digging this, keep an eye out for @dusk, a new lounge night at Chicago’s Downtown Bar starting in December. ” — Endorse, Not Endorse

Vanessa Daou ‘Speak/Easy: The Moonshine Mixes ['Joe Sent Me' Revisited] is featured as one of Traxsource’s “What’s Hot This Week” in Lounge/Chill Out releases and has several selections in their Essential 20 Lounge tracks and is #3 in their Essential 20 Lounge tracks for the week!

Congrats to all the great producers involved!

XOV

---

ABOUT THE MOONSHINE MIXES:

VANESSA DAOU closes the chapter on her sixth studio album, JOE SENT ME, with the release of the remix companion SPEAK/EASY: THE MOONSHINE MIXES [‘JOE SENT ME’ REVISITED]. The 16 track set assembles a cherry-picked collection of new and previously released mixes culled largely from her string of successful remix single releases – “Consequences”, “Black & White”, “Once And A While” and “Heart Of Wax” – that bring into focus Daou’s intrinsic love of sonic experimentation and diverse musical genres.

Featuring an all-star cast of international, dance and electronic music, innovators including BLANK & JONES, MARK REEDER, CHARLES WEBSTER, TERRY LEE BROWN JR., ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ, JORI HULKKONEN, GANGA, SLEEPTHIEF, RALPH MYERZ and DJ HEN BOOGIE, the release effortlessly flows from smoky nocturnal jazz and pastoral chilled-out grooves to deep, dark and sultry house and radiant synth-pop with a seamless fluidity.

It’s a satisfying soundtrack ideal for clubs, lounges, late-night drives or intimate “back to mine” sessions that will undoubtedly please DJs, as well as, Daou’s legion of loyal fans while introducing a new generation of mature music lovers to the artist’s sophisticated and eclectic pedigree.

'Frankenstorm' Sandy & Climate Change| History Does Not 'Write' Itself

Wondering if 'Frankenstorm' Sandy will generate more than hashtags and RTs, but a substantive & well informed conversation about Climate Change.

Proof, it seems, is in the numbers, and the stark truth is the previously unimaginable is now becoming the norm.A bit of graphing shows it's quite possible discussion will be limited to the billions in damage, Tumblr pics, NY Stock Exchange, Tunnels & Subways closing, and so forth.... 

 

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History does not 'write' itself, it is up to us - We must be guided by those twin forces, Science and common sense. Getting that message across is the challenge and the imperative in times like these.