And in the midst of all this frenetic activity I was pushed and pulled by Gary Schyman's score work for Bioshock and Bioshock 2. For those who "aren't into games," the Bioshock games have explored the consequences of an objectivist society according to the precepts of Ayn Rand in the marvelous fictional city of Rapture. While accurate, that description utterly fails in capturing the faded, glorious allure of running through the ghosts of man's aspiration frozen as architecture. Instead of geeking out about his aggressive use of dissonance and atonal composition techniques, I'll simply say that he made some very compelling music.
Apart from my journey under the sea I enjoyed som XTC, Hiromi, and something called The Bird & The Bee. They're a technically-oriented indie pop duo, building up thick vocal harmonies over jazzy chord progressions that consistently twist and bend in ways you're not quite expecting. For the most part their lyrics sucked ass, with pieces that bemused me in their obviousness such as Again & Again and Fucking Boyfriend. However, the music was slick enough that I found myself still humming along, only to curse when I had discovered they had gotten me again. I'll be interested to see where they go, because I think their overall sound is pretty swank.
After that light-hearted frolic, I got slammed by the tandem titans of Jaco Pastorious and Miles Davis. And not just any Miles Davis, but Bitches Brew Miles Davis. The album that, excepting one four and a half minute piece, contains no jams shorter than eleven minutes. Sadly, this project of mine has nudged me begrudgingly toward the direction of not liking jazz as much. I enjoy long form work. If you make something that's a good solid hour of music, I won't condemn it for its length. However, I just can't process that much codified improvisation at once (which is what jazz is - ad lib within a specific contextualization). I did get a quaint little surprise, though:
Music left: 157.36gb
Cheers,
Bodhisvaha
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