The Brooklyn Rail

In Conversation

BRENDON RANDALL-MYERS with Vanessa Ague

Brendon Randall-Myers is a composer and electric guitarist with a multifaceted musical history—from conducting the Glenn Branca Ensemble to performing Bach. His new album, dynamics of vanishing bodies (New Focus Recordings), written for the electric guitar quartet Dither, focuses on the use of psychoacoustic effects to explore the sensations of place and memory.

Tallinn Music Week

By Martin Longley

There was a pivotal juncture shortly before this year’s Tallinn Music Week when fortitude bloomed and the organizers threw themselves into realizing 2020’s already postponed conference-cum-festival—the Estonian government giving permission to operate at a reduced venue capacity—across the city’s broad range of indoor and outdoor stages. Braving a steady domino-fall of cancellations by visiting international acts, as red-patches proliferated, TMW understandably placed the emphasis on indigenous artists, covering most styles, including rock, jazz, folk, hip hop, electronica, ambient, pop, and modern classical.

The 83rd, Figure of Noise

By S. David

While perhaps telling, The 83rd's coded use of “culture” is just as instructive as his near-militant posture of independence. As the founder of the multi-pronged media organization Sermon 3 Recordings, through which he self-releases his music via Bandcamp, The 83rd’s sui generis trajectory seeks the kind of valanced heat that the real and art worlds seem to so rarely offer to self-styled enfants terrible.

In Conversation

CATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX with Marcus Boon, Part 2

By Marcus Boon

This is the second in a two-part conversation with Swedish mathematician/poet/composer/musician Catherine Christer Hennix. In the September issue we talked about the ontology of music and the significance of drone-based sounds, and Hennix introduced the idea of the sonic shrine.

Listening In: Olivier Conan, The Soul of Barbès

By Scott Gutterman

I’ve sometimes puzzled over what people mean when they say, “be fully present.” But my nights at Barbès often provided a natural version of that phrase. It was like a literal expression of that beautiful Rumi line, “I have fallen into the place where everything is music.”