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Reports From The Road by Sam Amidon (802 Tour, Day Thirteen, 8/26) - August 26, 2008
Hello from Montreal! We are having some fun because TODAY is nico's birthday wohoo!! yay yay yay. we got to spend some time in beautiful vermont, wow it was so nice there. we have no actual vermont show for our vermont 802 tour, but we had a beautiful vermont DAY, and for us that was very nice. in the van we have a few activities: dan and nadia are learning chinese; nico and thomas are working through the complete discography of r. kelly and the-dream and cee-lo (not gnarls barkley, cee-lo's solo records - cee-lo is a BETTER producer/dj than danger mouse! cee-lo is a genius!), and oren and i have watched two movies on my laptop in the way back of the van: "pickpocket" (bresson), and woody allen's "stardust memories," which totally blew our minds and you should go watch it right now. okay bye.
-sam
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Nico Muhly "Takes Aim" at Atom Heart, Gets Interviewed by Gothamist and Reviewed in LA Weekly - August 25, 2008
To music journalists, Nico Muhly is many things - clever, engaging, smoking hot. One thing he hasn't been, however, is a warrior.
Until now. In a recent post on PasteMagazine.com, Andy Whitman analyzes the "Breakfast Wars," writing that Nico has "thrown down the gauntlet, taking direct aim at [Pink Floyd's] Atom Heart Mother" in attempt to become "the undisputed champion of breakfast sound effects." Will Nico's butter scrapes top Floyd's bacon sizzles to conquer the breakfast sounds subgenre? Read for yourself to find out.
In more substantial news, Gothamist interviewed Nico about The 802 Tour, New Yorker music critics, and "only in New York" moments. The questions are different than the standard Q&A fare, making for a good, New York interview.
The 802 Tour is nearing its end, and the press has been good. LA Weekly was there for the August 19th show and posted a glowing review as well as some great pictures. If you happen to live in Montreal, Toronto, or Chicago, click here for a list of the remaining 802 Tour dates and venue locations.
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Reports From The Road by Nico Muhly (802 Tour, Day Six, 8/20) - August 22, 2008
On this tour, we have been variously staying in hotels and with friends - one of my favorite things about staying with people is when they have a dog. We have been very lucky on this trip: our hosts in Sebastopol, CA have a border collie/Australian cattle dog, Ace; our hosts in Portland have a frisky Weimaraner called Castle with googly eyes, and finally, our hosts Eddie and Willie (is there anything more fabulous than gay couples with matching names? I know a Nora and Laura in LA, too) have an eager pitbull, Rider. There is no better thing than being woken up by an eager dog's snout snuffling on one's person; I have been promised "big" dogs at our hosts' house in D.C. tonight and am very excited to see what that means. A Newfoundland, I hope! The tour was off to an auspicious start because Thomas's little sister came over to our rehearsals with her dog, Katrina Bartlett (see left).
We are all six of us hurtling from LAX to Washington, DC on Virgin America; I am stuck in one of those Rules and Regulations emotional disasters where my seat won't recline because it is directly in front of an empty exit row and the famous power outlets are on the fritz; I can't move to the empty exit row because the Nice Lady pursed her lips in a particular way and said that she "just couldn't let me sit there." I need to track down the exact quote, but I remember Gayatri Spivak once speaking (or writing?) about a ticket agent saying "I can't let you on board;" she wrote that a better way to phrase it would be "the regulations are against it, thus, we are both victims." Actually, here is the original.
Quite so: in a situation like this, I can either a) stage an Episode and make a scene or b) sit back (theoretically, rather than actually, as this seat doesn't recline) and pretend it's not happening or c) try to befriend the Nice Lady and hope that she will turn the other way as I claim one of the empty seats. Is there any merit to any of this circular thought? Am I going to end up poisoned by stress? Should I just order a canister of Pringles and a glass of white wine and shut my pie hole? All this has reminded me of is that I wish Gayatri would just blog; she is so wonderful when she deals with the anecdotal, the Barthesian Mythology rendered severely Marxist and Feminist. The para-psychological peripatetic shuttling of the aboriginal subcontinent is the kind of stuff that she and Terry Eagleton can fight out in the academy; I want her to blog about Heathrow and the Subway and Yoga Pants and shit. Maximum length, 450 words. 1,2,3 - go.
-Nico
(This entry was excerpted from Nico's blog. You can read the post in its entirety here.)
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Owen Pallett, Drew Daniel, and The Washington Post Discuss Mothertongue - August 21, 2008
Following Pitchfork Media's rather tepid review of Mothertongue, Nico Muhly received praise on an I Love Music discussion thread from, among others, Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy and Drew Daniel of Matmos.
Pallett initiated the thread, lauding Nico's "way of writing score-paper-music in a way that sounds completely improvised, with every sound imaginable colliding up against each other in accidentally beautiful and hideous ways." Daniel then called attention to the album, writing that "the details that the reviewer holds up as weak points (whale fat, buttered toast) actually sound like positives anyway...surely I'm not the only person who wants to know what whale fat sounds like as a musical instrument!" Indeed, Mr. Daniel, you're not. The Washington Post published a profile in anticipation of The 802 Tour's DC show, describing the album as "liberated...exuberantly weird."
In other news, Owen Pallett will perform with Nico (as well as Sam Amidon and Doveman) on August 27th when The 802 Tour stops through Toronto.
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Reports from the Road by Sam Amidon (802 Tour, Day Five, 8/19) - August 20, 2008
Life is wild. That is what we learned when we passed "Casa de Fruit," which turned out to be a sequence of stores to the right of the highway between san francisco and LA, the rest of which were called "Casa de Wine," "Casa de Diesel," and our favorite, "Casa de Restaurant." LA is wild. We played in Hollywood tonight, a lovely show at a tucked away little place near Amoeba records. I bought two DVDs at Amoeba records: "F for Fake" by Orson Welles, and "It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles" by some nice people including some of the remaining footage from said unfinished film. Okay watch this:
that's part two of three. (part one can be viewed in the post below.) watch them all. Tomorrow we fly to DC.
-sam
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