This project (finished just in time for the end of the gay semester, which is very short, for a class called "Hi NRG Diva Synthesis 201") began as a conceptual response to the Grammys about "good" and "bad" music, and how "good" and "bad" music is produced, and how "divas" are treated, and what "good" and "bad" music could possibly mean-but, naturally, then became mostly about defining what is the variety of music you really should take crystal to, because that's what I learned from the gays that music is totally all about.

Please note: play very loud, preferably in a cavernous dance club with people roller skating. Or at least while cleaning house. More importantly, also note: you most likely shouldn't play this at any volume. It's not actually, like, good. ("Good.")

Mp3 download: Gay Dance Party Awl Radio Nightmare. [MP3, 16MB]

Have a great gay weekend, you gays!

(PS SOON I'LL HAVE MY DIPLOMA AND WILL BE LEGAL TO DO WEDDINGS IN IOWA AND CONNECTICUT! I DO REQUESTS!)

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All of which is to say: damn, girl. You might just be the story of my eye for this whole frighteningly exhilarating decade.

So when BAM told us that Huppert would star in their staging of the Heiner Müller play Quartett-itself fitfully derived from the 18th-century French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses-I was basically guaranteed to go. And look, I'm already mad at life because director Robert Wilson's sole New York staging of the Philip Glass opera Einstein On the Beach happened before I was born-so the fact that he would be directing Huppert amounted to a ridiculous buttercream icing on top.

Still, I was afraid that I'd see Quartett and love it for the evanescent fumes of its participants' past successes, even if the production itself blew. But it didn't. It really didn't. You can fault Wilson for having stock moves: deep reds and blues on the lighting tip, "surprise" non-diegetic sounds amplified at ear-splitting volume, or his ritualized, glacially-paced blocking. But then there's also the if-it-ain't-broke argument: these theatrical gestures are all still powerful in performance, just like David Lynch's grab-bag of tricks retains the power to spook after all these years. (Yes, it's a dark room, and yes, it sounds like the electricity is going out. Hide under your seat anyway.)

Müller's text (I was previously unfamiliar, BTW), is constructed from jaw-droppingly heavy bricks of Eros-writing, which Wilson-in minimalist fashion-has Huppert split up and repeat in these hypnotic, cellular breakdowns. It's like looking at the same photograph in a series of bracketed exposures. Each time she runs her tongue over the line, it brightens or darkens.

Even if you find Wilson's approach familiar, his tics at least put Huppert's artful voice front and center. The effect is akin to watching an artisan construction worker blast a brilliant, perfect cube into thousands of also-brilliant smaller creations, and employing a jackhammer to perform all that division. It doesn't even matter if you're not familiar with the Dangerous Liaisons original. (All you need to know is that these former lovers are torturing each other, in old age, with their respective tales of past conquests.) It's straight fire like this (in French, with English subs projected above the stage):

MERTEUIL: Did you find the way back into your own hide, Valmont. There is no man whose member won't stiffen at the thought of his dear flesh departing, fear makes philosophers. Welcome to sin and forget the poor box before piety overpowers you and you forget your one true vocation. What else have you learned but to maneuver your cock into a cunt resembling the one you once fell out of, always with the same more or less pleasant result, and always deluded that the applause of those alien mucous membranes is meant for you, and only you, that those screams of lust are addressed to you, while you are nothing but a barren vehicle, indifferent and totally interchangeable, for the lust of the woman who is using you, the power drunk fool of her creation. You know well enough that every man is one man too few for a woman. You also know, Valmont: soon enough fate will catch up with you and you won't even be that anymore, a man too few. Even the gravedigger will enjoy himself with us.



VALMONT: I am bored with the bestiality of our conversation. Every word rips a gash, every smile bares a fang. We should let tigers play our parts. Another bite, please, another strike of the paw. The stage craft of wild beasts.

A pair of dancers stand in for the pair during these conversations-slipping one another into nooses, leather straps and whatnot-all behind a scrim. A fifth character, an old man, is added to this quartet with no explanation. He performs a funky dance in between set changes that I could've done without, but no matter: his interludes at least gave (a lot of) people the opportunity to bail on the performance without interrupting any of the talky parts.

Anyway, this thing plays one more time, on Saturday. It's pretty sold out, but some people were getting in on standby Thursday night, from what I could see. And if you can't make it, well, it's still worth checking out Müller via Amazon or from your local library.

But here's yet another consolation prize (of sorts): a leak of one of the hotter songs from Don't Stop, the long-delayed second album from the Norwegian bubblegum-indie blogstar Annie, which comes out next Tuesday. My Love Is Better plows some of the same ground as Quartett, oddly enough.

The dance-all-night guitar hook was played by the dude from Franz Ferdinand-making perhaps a better argument for Franz Ferdinand's existence than I ever expected was possible. More importantly, the lyric is a come-hither-cum-get-your-ass-away-from-me switchblade: "I'll let you go down if you go away / I need to know you're happy to play / I'll let you touch me every now and then / And if you want some yeah I'll tell you when (when when)," Annie sings toward the end, before diving into her chorus for the last time:

My love is better (Than your love)
My heart is better (Than your heart)
My moves are better (Than your moves)
My shoes smell better
And I'm be-be-be-better
My kiss is wetter (Than your kiss)
My lips are better (Than your tricks)
You know you never (Had my hips)
I'm so much better (So eat this)

Including a "better heart" in the middle of any thorough itemization of advantages one has over an ex-lover carries a useful poetic undercurrent: how much better can that ruthless heart really be, after all? It's a hot contradiction. Could it be that-whether in pop music or in avant-garde theater-this taunting unavailability turns out to be perhaps slightly more than half the fun of coupling? Happy weekend, everyone. Go get some.

Previously: The Pleasure Principle

Seth Colter Walls is a culture reporter at Newsweek. Previously, he wrote about U.S. and Middle East politics for a variety of outlets.

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Oh, wait. Maybe not enough people can IDENTIFY with this opening. Well, don't worry, I found something else for us all to listen to. And probably I should back up and explain my aborted train of thought. But while I do that, go download what is, for my money, the highlight of Sufjan Stevens's BQE project over at the Asthmatic Kitty website, why don't you? The whole suite is worth hearing, but I actually enjoy the mp3 they've posted-"Movement VI-Isorhythmic Night Dance with Interchanges"-more than anything else on that joint, which is why I'd wheedled with them to have it here first, supposedly.

You see, back a couple weeks ago when Glenn Beck was hyperventilating for no good reason about hidden communist propaganda in Rockefeller Plaza and getting an NEA communications officer reassigned for reasons that were pretty baroque in the first instance and which already no one remembers–because, honestly, by now this was 500 disingenuous cable news scandals ago–I maybe had a point to make about how difficult it would be, in practice, for the government to advance a particular social vision by throwing a few grants to ostensibly sympathetic artistes. All the best ones, like Sufjan, have really idiosyncratic ideas about The Big Conceptual Issues, such as the urban planning nightmare and dashed utopian vision that the BQE itself represents (and which Sufjan writes some pretty extensive liner notes about, in the non-leak CD/vinyl versions).

So, if you'll follow me, my idea was that I would post the song and say something about how there's an inexorable slipperiness in a lot of good-to-great art that often prevents us from reaching the government-aestheticized dystopia Glenn Beck is supposedly (but probably not really, in his off-camera life) afraid of–about how when you're Stalin and you think you're commissioning some tru, in-the-cut style Soviet propaganda, Eisenstein is secretly filming an allegory about what a brutal psychopath you are. (God, please no one say "What about Riefenstahl?" in the comments. This point I'm describing–the one I was going to make in the post that never got fully written–was just a general observation built around a hawt mp3.)

But so when the Sufjan exclusive slipped through my fingers, I started thinking that it was kind of a downer column anyways. There are lots of posts dissecting things Glenn Beck says, and even when they're really on-point, you still feel like there's a grimy coat of anti-meaning congealing over your eyeballs when you're done. And who wants that? From a music column, no less!

Before I knew it, Rush Limbaugh was already talking about how that school bus footage of some black kids beating on a white kid was Officially Brought To You By Your Racist Democratic Party Overlords. Next up was l'affaire Yeezy. (Or was the chronology in reverse?) And now we're into this fake czar scandal. So then I asked myself: have the last few weeks have been pretty exhausting and depressing, civil society-wise, or what? Thinking a little bit harder, I realized that what I really needed to do with the music column was tell the people about this one album of delightfully sophisticated yet breezily relaxing music that has, here of late, helped keep my blood pressure underneath the upper boundary of what's medically advisable.

And so ... to complete the longest wind-up in history, I thought you should know that this record is Stefon Harris's "Urbanus"-which the vibes/marimba player recorded with Blackout, his jazz-meets-urban-styles band. There's a trailer for the record on YouTube, which is really just the album art animated over the first minute and a half of "Gone," the first cut.

Now, the thing about this tune? It is a re-working of "Gone Gone Gone" from the Gershwin brothers' "Porgy and Bess." That's right, folks, here we have blacks and whites doing it to death, inter-generationally. (The word "gully" even appears in that video, notice. Plus check that Rawkus-style typeface.) And it's not like this phenomenon is new, either. Here's Miles and Gil Evans (more color-blind collaborative love!) doing their arrangement of the original:

Perhaps I am a sap, but this actually makes me feel a little bit better about things. There's lots of other great stuff on Urbanus, including some vintage, Roger Troutman-style vocoder work that totally takes vocal pitch manipulation back from our contemporary crisis of AutoTune. And because the The Awl is so service-y, here's a full stream of another superb track from the album, titled "Tankified":

Maybe just close your eyes and listen to it for seven minutes. I swear you'll feel better, not least because of that P-funkified coda in the last 90 seconds that features some way hip bass clarinet. Seriously, it's good.

And because I just mentioned P-Funk, here's another colorblind piece of musical genius. It's a version of The Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'," cut by George Clinton's guitar man Eddie Hazel on his 1977 record "Game, Dames and Guitar Thangs" (which coincidentally was also the name of my independent study course in high school, har-har). It's available on this girl's Imeem, for some reason, but the whole album's pretty cool and worth picking up on mp3 FOR ONLY SIX DOLLARS, in case you're the kind of person who's interested in having a good life.

Last but not least, in live music news, Japanese noise-pop psychedelics Yura Yura Teikoku will be playing Williamsburg tonight. And next week, the TALEA ensemble is going to execute a rare NYC performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Kontakte, for piano, percussion, and 4-channel electronic sounds.

Ohhh, you know ... I think everything might actually turn out okay.

Previously: The BBC at the Stone, Newspeak, and Things To Hear This Weekend-Plus Bonus MIA Cover

Seth Colter Walls is a culture reporter at Newsweek. Previously, he wrote about U.S. and Middle East politics for a variety of outlets.

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YES. ANOTHER THEME SONG. Whoo hoo! This one is not by the delightful and bacon-loving Ryan Adams, but by another artist (whose metier is not primarily music) who wishes to remain anonymous. It has a rather glorious punchline. And rather good production values!

Next Friday: your version could be here! Or: if you live here, you'd be recording an mp3 now!

An extra special thanks to all our contributors and, yes, readers this week in these, the doggiest days of August. I told you if we just held hands we could make it-together.

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Oh and for those of you who are staying in your sweaty apartments in your chinos, well, I guess, stay hydrated or whatever.

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Anyway, to cut to the chase, The BBC-a pick-up trio of all-star improv folks-tore up the set I attended, the first of two on the evening. Nels Cline was dropping some rock-improv science on his guitar, alongside downtown jazz powerhouse Tim Berne on the alto sax. Berne's a very talented master of hard-grooving experimental jam ceremonies-and here's a damn good Amazon mp3 value, by the way-though the half-hour marathons he curates don't always have as much structure as you might like. Last night, however, the drummer in the trio, Jim Black, shaded the rise and fall of the different movements with impressive drama. Maybe he was suffering from heatstroke, who knows? Meantime, Cline had a neat trick wherein he looped a watery guitar part through his electronic setup, and then used an octave pedal to get a distorted bass sound out of his guitar that he proceeded to play live over the loop. At other times, he went from solo line noodling to crunchy, unpredictable time-signature riffing that still kept heads bobbin'. There was flow there. Occasionally he had a scratch palette like Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, but instead of Bomb Squad-style guitar turntablism, it was spazzy like Christian Marclay. Meantime, Berne mostly kept to a subtle supporting role, coming out front most nakedly during the quiet interludes of the hour-long piece. Hopefully someone recorded this beast of a thing.

My point is it ruled. And despite the fact that the house was turning people away before the set started (and that there was a long line for the second set when I exited), I was sorta depressed like I always am when I realize that it's just a lot of the same people I've seen at shows like this before. An awful lot of musicians, for example. Also there's that one guy who owns Downtown Music Gallery, who's always on point at these things. And good for him. But the cultural activist in me would like to see this scene blow up a little bit more, bring in some more lay people. However I may have screwed up this review with obscure references-but click on the links! it's good stuff!-you'll have to take my word for it that this music is totally able to be enjoyed without having an advanced music degree. (I sure don't.) I mean, it's complicated-perhaps "difficult"-but it's not emotionally or physically remote. Plus: while this can be a wild scene, sonically speaking, the upside of an aesthetic upgrade on the classiness index is that you won't be at risk of 16 year-olds pouring beers on your head and punching you in the face, like at the dear departed Shank.

Despite all this, new music movements in both the jazz and classical worlds suffer from lackluster PR inroads when it comes to the non-specialized, young creative class. Before a sorta silly Q&A I conducted with the Fiery Furnaces at my paying gig (heh), I talked to Matthew Friedberger about this phenomenon. When the Furnaces played NYC recently, they had Newspeak, an alt-classical act, open for them. It was clear to me that the proper indie crowd that showed up for the Furnaces had a hard time determining whether Newspeak was cool or not. (They are.) This is because the instrumental exactitude that these kids carry over from their conservatory training is rather observable on stage. They don't look at all casual about playing their instruments. They look totally involved in a way that might be interpreted as embarrassing, depending on your poseur-related baggage. From where I stood in the crowd, I got the feeling their music-a brave mix of chamber pop, math-rock/metal riffing and more-wasn't really being heard. I told Matthew there had been some tension in the crowd's reaction to Newspeak, to which he replied: "good." He clarified, saying that he didn't want a hostile reaction, but he did hope to shake up the Furnaces' fanbase a little bit-to take them outside the indie blogosphere's comfort zone.

In that spirit, let me recommend a couple shows this weekend by players who merge instrumental prowess with sufficiently youthful brio. On Saturday, Talibam! is playing a record release party at Brooklyn's Market Hotel, during an event hosted by the new and interesting-looking music blog Visitation Rites. The group's latest record, Boogie In The Breeze Blocks, is a scuzzed-out pleasure boasting humor and heart. It actually reminded me of Chocolate Synthesizer-era Boredoms, except with lots more chops (and English nonsense skits, as opposed to Japanese ones). Then on Sunday, you've got a set by Mostly Other People Do The Killing, over at 269 E Houston. They're more straight-ahead as an outfit, but the group also has a usefully antagonistic relationship with jazz's legacy-both goofing on as well as revering a classic Ornette Coleman disc on the cover and title of their latest, This Is Our Moosic. Maybe give 'em a chance if you can't get into the Deerhunter/No Age/Dan Deacon pool party.

Wow, did you read all this? Here's your reward: a stream of an MIA cover by a jazz trio–just to make my point one more time. No, seriously, "Galang" works like this. It's from Vijay Iyer's Historicity, which is due in October, but is totally done already (and very good). I'll probably say more about this record later. But for now, please dig this one cut.

Seth Colter Walls is a culture reporter at Newsweek. Previously, he wrote about U.S. and Middle East politics for a variety of outlets.

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