Haven’t done one of these in a while. In light of the “Geek-off” this week, I made a playlist out of what I think of as my “geekier” music, and let ITunes assemble a random list from that playlist.
\n1. **Elizabeth and the Catapult, “Waiting for the Kill”**. E&tC is a NYC band that plays what they call “baroque pop”; pop music, with heavy jazz and classical influence. I heard them interviewed on the local NPR station, and immediately grabbed their first album – isn’t just an EP, but it’s fantastic. This is the best track.
\n2. **Flook, “The Tortoise and the Hare”**. The worlds greatest trad Irish flute-based band. Flook is really unbelievable: so full of energy, it’s impossible to *not* like them.
\n3. **Frank Zappa, “Drowning Witch”**. Old stuff from Zappa; incredibly goofy, and yet pretty darn cool musically.
\n4. **Genesis, “Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist”**. A very strange track off of Genesis’ masterpiece from their Peter Gabriel days, “The Lamb Lays Down on Broadway”.
\n5. **Gordian Knot, “Komm Susser Tod, Kom Sel’ge”**. Bach, performed on the electric touch bass guitar.
\n6. **Mogwai, “Acid Food”**. Another one of those “Post-Rock Ensembles” that I’m so fascinated by. Mogwai is simply amazing; a bit more loud than the Clogs or the Dirty Three, but brilliant.
\n7. **Moxy Fruvous, “King of Spain”**. My wife’s favorite MF song. MF is a Canadian band that specializes in goofy a-capella. “Once I was the king of spain, Now I eat humble pie, I’m telling you I was the king of the Spain, Now I vaccum the turf at Skydome”.
\n8. **Steve Reich & Maya Beiser, “Cello Counterpoint”**. An amazing composition by Steve Reich. It’s all performed by Maya Beiser on cello – there are *16* tracks of Maya, all overlaid. Unbelievable. She performs it live with a recording of 15 of them, and plays the 16th live.
\n9. **Thinking Plague, “Blown Apart”**. Another post-rock ensemble. By far the strangest of the PREs that I listen to. Thinking Plague often goes totally atonal; and even when they don’t, they have a strange sound. One fascinating thing about them is that the vocalist treats her voice as just another instrument in the band. She’s in no way a “lead vocalist” like you’d find in a traditional band; she’s just another instrument in the mix. Her voice is as likely to be part of the background rhythm supporting the guitarist as it is to be singing a melody.
\n10. **Philip Glass, “Train 1” from “Einstein on the Beach”**. A small piece of Glass’s strange but brilliant opera. The opera is about four hours long, with no intermission. This section is formed from arpeggios played by saxaphone and keyboard, plus a chorus singing a pulsing counterpoint. Other parts of the opera consist of the voices chanting numbers. It’s strange, and not the easiest thing to listen to, but it’s worth it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Haven’t done one of these in a while. In light of the “Geek-off” this week, I made a playlist out of what I think of as my “geekier” music, and let ITunes assemble a random list from that playlist. 1. **Elizabeth and the Catapult, “Waiting for the Kill”**. E&tC is a NYC band that plays […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-2o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}