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Kraftwerk and my new (outdated) obsession

I giddily attended the final concert of Kraftwerk’s week-long residency at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which kicked off the Minimalist Jukebox (a giant celebration/exploration of minimalism hosted by the LA Phil). Classical KUSC posted my review on their blog.

I’ve recently developed a rather insatiable thirst for both orchestral minimalism (à la Philip Glass) and European synthpop, and Kraftwerk is at the hip heart of the twain. It all started, basically, when I interviewed Hans Zimmer about Man of Steel last summer, where he mentioned how much his music (his “rock and roll” scores) is influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, et al. Since I really like Zimmer in general, his comment sent me on a quest to discover the music of his influencers, and I’ve come across a few bands and albums that—with their retro ’80s synth effects and very of-their-era style—at an earlier point in my life I would have absolutely abhorred, and in the light of current day seem like they should be caveated as silly, guilty pleasures. But for some reason I am really tuned to the frequency of the signature sounds and beats of the decade of my birth (maybe that is the reason), and I’m gobbling up music by Giorgio Moroder, Alphaville, The Buggles, Pet Shop Boys, Vangelis, and of course Kraftwerk. (TRANS…EUROPE…EXPRESS.)

Bassoon-WeaponI don’t consider myself a composer. There was a time when I thought I could make a pass at it—even applying to the composition program at the University of Pittsburgh. But after two years of college music theory and scoring several of my best friend’s student projects, I’m honest enough with myself to know I’m just not a composer. I can conjure up material in my head, and have the rudimentary know-how to translate that material into very simple music on paper—and I admit that as a film music fanatic I get a huge kick out of writing music to picture—but it shall ever remain nothing more than a cute little hobby.

Marvin

Marvin

I’m embarrassed to admit that, before I interviewed him in 2009, I had no idea who Marvin Hamlisch was. I did my homework, of course, and learned all about his Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony, Golden Globe, and Pulitzer in anticipation of our phone conversation about the score he wrote for Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant!. The 65-year-old composer treated me like a pro, and gave me one of my earliest—and one of my best—interviews for Film Score Monthly Online.

Why I listen to music

Why I listen to music

I’ve just finished reading Aaron Copland’s brilliant little book, What to Listen for in Music, which breaks down this amorphous, elusive art form into something chewable. It’s essentially a textbook of basic music theory condensed into a very succinct, breezy paperback, with doses of humble commentary by the great American composer. A passage that especially sparked thoughts for me was the following:

Why is it that the typical music lover of our day is seemingly so reluctant to consider a musical composition as, possibly, a challenging experience?…Most people seem to resent the controversial in music; they don’t want their listening habits disturbed. They use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be used as a soporific…It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you—it may even exhaust you.
The music that makes fools

An informal litmus test for my favorite pieces and moments of music is whether the music bypasses my inhibitions, and liberates me to act like an utter fool while enjoying it. A representative picture of this would be of me driving in my car, suddenly compelled to turn the music up to a deafening volume, crank up the air conditioning to the wind tunnel setting (for a physical rush that matches the emotional), and beat upon my steering wheel in rhythm with the song like a violent primate. Picture me doing this while singing along with abandon at my voice’s loudest register, eyes closed in euphoric bliss (but not enough to endanger myself or other drivers).