Thursday, April 07, 2005
non/pop
Watching the Kronos Quartet last night is a reason to get people off the roof. As in, keep the heart looping. Almost two hours of scuffy NASA images--scratchy, grainy, fuzzy--and cerebral vibrato. They played a Terry Riley piece that went nowhere sometimes, but in pockets reached heights that few of us could see inside. Like a quieter shoegazer group, Kronos left emotion at the entrance and internalized all feeling for a brainy interpretation of horselipped compositions. Symbols (Hebrew Kabbalah? Alphabet soup? A dyslexic's view of a Chester Himes novel?) spilled onto the ceiling during certain pieces, flashes of empty ghosts slid across the huge screen behind them like whispery glitches.
Afterwards, I spoke to David Harrington (far left). I talked to him about his collabo with Cafe Tacuba and if they were going to do any other stuff with DJ's in the future (they worked with Christian Marclay in the 80's)--which he answered yes. Matmos is writing something for them next year and Amon Tobin is involved in a remix project as well. Matmos and the Kronos Quartet: the very idea makes the heart loop faster. I'm supposed to interview him for Signal to Noise later this year--makes me want to build instruments out of paperclips and watch old episodes of (insert program about a hispanic at MIT) genre: fantasy.
thumpthump.
