Story Archives of 'Experimental Music'

"When I want to hear music, I open a window.” That quote, commonly attributed to avant-garde composer John Cage, sums up the musical quality of urban life. Car brakes screeching, sirens blaring, church bells ringing, music blasting from inside apartments, children shouting on the sidewalk.

Every place I’ve lived has sounded different, from the clanging of early-morning beer keg deliveries at the Brooklyn brewery to the jazz and hip-hop stations of New Orleans, to the market sounds of west Africa. Now I live in a somewhat more rural part of New Hampshire, where the sounds of crickets prevail.

Geoff Manaugh, who speculates on the future of architecture and landscapes at BLDGBLOG, imagines what it would be like if we picked our travel destinations based on their sounds. In his new BLDGBLOG Book, he writes about the “acoustic side of space,” where music and architectural design go hand in hand. He joins us now from the Argot Network in New York.

We’re also joined by Jace Clayton, who performs under the name DJ /Rupture and writes the blog Mudd Up!. He recently moved back to New York after seven years in Barcelona, and has just released the album Solar Life Raft with Matt Shadetek.

(Photo courtesy ZSasaki via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Composer Tyondai Braxton is perhaps best known for playing keyboard and guitar with the experimental group Battles, and creating strange voice samples that sound more alien than human.

Last month Braxton released Central Market, a sweeping, orchestral album that veers from Technicolor-era cartoon themes to controlled chaos. Influences range from 19th-century European classical music to the no-wave music of the early 1980’s.

Tyondai Braxton joins us from the NPR studios in New York.

Fader: At Home With Tyondai Braxton

Billboard: Tyondai Braxton Takes Break From Battles With Central Market

Tiny Mix Tapes reviews Central Market

Hartford Courant: The Technology of Tyondai Braxton's Central Market

WNYC's Spinning On Air: Tyondai Braxton

Wired: Battles Frontman Enlists an Army of Melodic Machines

Listen to "Platinum Rows," the centerpiece of Tyondai Braxton's new album, Central Market.

(Photo courtesy shaylasaurus via Flickr/Creative Commons)

As anyone who lives near a bridge will tell you, they make noise. But listen to the sound of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge, often called the Mid-Hudson River Bridge in Poughkeepsie, New York. Composer and musician Joseph Bertolozzi embarked on an audacious plan to turn the monumental bridge into the world’s largest percussive instrument.

With the help of the New York State Bridge Authority, sound engineers, mallets, steel shot, and a herd of true believers, he recorded hundreds of sounds on the bridge’s surface to make "bridge music."

The ten-movement suite is available on CD, and a sound installation launched over the weekend to mark the 400th anniversary of Hendryk Hudson’s voyage up the river that is now his namesake. There are listening stations surrounding the bridge and a dedicated radio frequency for the public to hear tracks like "Bridge Funk." And Joseph Bertolozzi is on the line to tell us about what we’re hearing.

(Photo by Spencer Ainsley for The Poughkeepsie Journal)