End of Week Notes
1: I’m going to see the Brian Eno documentary, Eno, this evening at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre here in San Francisco. As I’ve joked since the movie was announced, I feel like Dieter Rams should have composed the score, since Eno scored the Rams documentary by the same director, Gary Hustwit. Since every showing of Eno is a little different, due to the projection process Hustwit employs, I do plan to see it a second time, but at $40 a pop, I’m going to wait.
2: I’ve been trying to do one audio thing a day, just getting back in the swing of things after spending a way larger percentage of my modest music-making time on guitar practice. This week that included:
reorganizing one of my main modular synthesizer racksgetting my recently obtained Expert Sleepers ES-9 module hooked up with my laptop and iPadsending audio from the iPad to the synth with the ES-9 (in this case, running it through the excellent reverb module Bunker Archaeology)using some Jacklights to identify activity on some modules so technical their functions have eluded me thus farreminding myself how to use my H4N as an audio interface, and learning by chance that this can be done without batteries (the USB transfers sufficient power to it)I’m trying to get into the habit of ABR (“always be recording) but I’m not quite there yet.3: I’m plotting the return of my Disquietude podcast. I sent requests out to artists whose music I want to feature, and I quickly (within an hour or so) heard back from most of them. I only feature music by artists who have themselves approved its inclusion, or whose record label or management provided approval.
4: If you haven’t seen the new Paul Simon documentary, In Restless Dreams, I recommend it so far — by “so far” meaning I’m about halfway through the first two episodes. It mostly takes place in the present (and yes, he is quite old, and yes, he seems to be becoming Mel Brooks — and yes, he can still play and sing, boy can he), as a summary of his recent album, Seven Psalms, but also threads a simple chronology of his life. The director is Alex Gibney (The Inventor, Going Clear, We Steal Secrets, Taxi to the Dark Side). There are some exceptional moments, like a hand-drawn grid of the relative chart movements of the top 20 singles made by Art Garfunkel when he was a teenager, a moment when Simon (off screen) tells us he is crying (“weeping”) after summoning up a simple memory, and an instance when Simon recounts going deaf in one ear in October 2023 and at that moment in the film the audio gets muddy in a way that brings the audience into a semblance of his experience. The effect isn’t subtle, but it’s still quite well done. The Garfunkel chart, by the way, is straight outta the “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” section of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (and the related material in The Candy House).
