Music in utopia

Settling back in after travelling involves finding various pieces of life and picking them up again. One of these pieces is John Tilbury's Cardew biography, which I've mentioned before. Needless to say, this wasn't a vacation book because of the FAA's continued enforcement of luggage weight restrictions. So this past week I've picked it up again, reading about the Scratch Orchestra, a

Dark economics

Brian Pyle's solo spinoff from the Starving Weirdos, aptly-named Ensemble Economique since Pyle played everything himself, released its third album this past summer, a gorgeous vinyl package in Amish Records' Required Wreckers series. Standing Still, Facing Forward moves away from the Ensemble's more industrial earlier releases, with a sound built up from bowed strings, winds and environmental

Canadian reminiscences

Back in the spring I reviewed a two-CD set by Brooklyn dronemeister Kyle Bobby Dunn purporting to be an introduction to his music, but if someone really wanted to approach Dunn's music from out of the blue, his more recent limited edition Rural Route No. 2 might be a better place to start. Dunn is originally from Canada, and this release is from an unusual source, a print shop and publishing