MUSIC FOR 6 DRUMMERS

Here is the brilliant 2001 Swedish short Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers. The Six Drummers are a group of artists who "want to challenge the preconceptions of music and explore the boundaries between sound, music and image." Their work is a genius cocktail of performance art, music, and filmmaking. Apartment was nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes and the group followed up with a feature film, Sound of Noise, in 2010. The female lead in both films is actress/musician Sanna Persson. Enjoy!

DAVID BOWIE

Happy Birthday to David Bowie! Like many teenagers in early 1960s England, Bowie was inspired by American blues and R&B. He took up the saxophone and guitar and formed a string of bands that played blues and rock covers for parties and local entertainment. As a keen student of graphic design, art, and mime (!), his Mod beginnings transformed over the years as he explored areas of musical and theatrical production that we can now recognize as genre-defining outings (1960s Mod, folk-poet, 1970s glam, soul, experimental avant-garde, electronic, dance, 1980s pop, cyber punk, jungle, etc). If an artist is always in the state of becoming, Bowie has spent a lifetime pioneering the outer limits and sending back transmissions of things to come.

David Bowie stayed in the fast lane for forty years, releasing albums and pursuing his acting career, until a heart attack on stage in 2004 made him take stock. There was a nine-year hiatus with few appearances, and it looked like the limelight had been traded for quality time as a stay-at-home dad. He surprised everyone in 2013, however, with an outstanding new album called The Next Day, which was released during a flurry of Bowie-related art shows and a massive retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The V&A exhibit celebrating his career in music, fashion, graphic arts, fine art, and set design was captured in the illustrated book David Bowie Is. Now Bowie is 68- many happy returns! If his health is up to it, I hope to see him back on stage and recording new material. Collage illustration below by IFAN BATES.

Essential Current Video from The Next Day:

Related post on my Spy Vibe blog: Bowie Spies Berlin. My Bowie-Art image archive on Pinterest here. Essential Bowie: 

Movies: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Hunger (1983), Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), Labyrinth (1986), Basquait (1996), The Hunger (tv/1999-2000), The Prestige (2006).

Concerts/Videos/Docs: The Best of Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, Reality Tour, Storytellers, Under Review 1976-1979 The Berlin Trilogy, David Bowie Is Happening Now.

Albums: Hunky Dory (1971), Ziggy Stardust (1972), Diamond Dogs (1974), Young Americans (1975), Station to Station (1976), Low (1977), Heroes (1977), Lodger (1979), Scary Monsters (1980), Baal (1981), Outside (1995), Earthling (1997), VH1 Storytellers (2001), The Next Day (2013), Nothing Has Changed (career compilation/2014).

LAURIE ANDERSON: MACH 20

Laurie Anderson performs "Mach 20" from United States Live (1984) on a short-lived program called The New Show. Her ability to use science as societal lens and story-generator is endlessly fascinating. Her performance art has often used science as form, kind of proto-Ted Talks about nature, behavior, anxieties, and life-changing experiences. Like cartoonists Roz Chast and Gary Larson, who also have scientific and sociological interests, Anderson's observations can be insightful, hilarious, but also haunting. Enjoy!

MEMORY

Laurie Anderson's The Beginning of Memory, from the album Homeland (2010). I recently saw her perform the piece in an intimate theater designed like the interior of a Japanese temple. She covered the stage with small candles and the low-light against wood really brought me back to the years I lived in northern Japan. Anderson's story held such a mythological quality that, combined with the atmosphere of the room, created a mesmerizing, almost ecstatic experience. It felt like I was listening to a creation tale told around a primal campfire. Homeland was produced by Anderson, Lou Reed, and Roma Baran, and featured contributions by Lou Reed, Omar Hakim, John Zorn, Eyvind Kang, and others. Enjoy!