In This issue #8 we highlight 4 artists and some significant works

weezer

In contrast to the band’s eponymous debut album, Pinkerton was self-produced, featuring a rougher, more abrasive sound, intending to better capture the band’s live sound. The initial mixed reviews of the album “Pinkerton” were replaced in retrospective analysis over the years which saw the critical standing continue to rise, and it came to be considered among Weezer’s best work by fans and critics. Cuomo’s lyrics written from a more direct and personal perspective feature self-deprecating humour in writing of his dysfunctional relationships, sexual frustration, and struggles with identity. The results were so honest and gruesome that Cuomo sent a note to the Weezer fan club before it even came out, warning them “Pinkerton” would explore his “dark side.” Some listeners were perturbed by the sexual nature of the lyrics. Melody Maker’s Jennifer Nine praised the music, but advised listeners “to ignore the lyrics entirely”.

 

Paul Motian

 I Have the Room Above Her is an album recorded for ECM and released on January 24, 2005. After a string of quintet albums, Motian took guitarist Bill Frisell and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, arguably the two key sidemen in Motian’s quintet, into the studio to record a trio album. It is known for its intimate, atmospheric sound and “chamber jazz” style. Peter Marsh of the BBC wrote: “this is incomparably lovely music, made by one of the most empathic units of recent times. Essential stuff.”  The trio doubtlessly had plenty of confidence in their own playing, but manage not to play over or seemingly try to outdo each other while interpreting Motian’s tunes. The title track is considered one of Motian’s most famous compositions and has been featured on several career retrospectives. The album remains highly regarded in contemporary jazz. 

olivier Messiaen 

                                                                

 

Quartet for the End of Time (Quatuor pour la fin du Temps) is a landmark of 20th-century chamber music, composed while he was a prisoner of war in 1940–1941. The work is scored for the instruments available in the camp: clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. The quartet is structured in eight movements, a number chosen to symbolize the six days of creation, the seventh day of rest, and the eighth day of eternity. These movements, such as “Liturgie de cristal” and “Abîme des oiseaux,” reflect biblical themes and the context of the work’s creation.  Messiaen included transcriptions of birdsong. The nearly eight-minute-long clarinet solo movement “Abîme des oiseaux” (“Abyss of the Birds”) is a tour-de-force in which nature and spirituality are joined.. The quartet’s fury unfolds in whirling rhythms, but alongside them a vision of eternity sings beautifully in passages of ethereal calm. Messiaen’s synesthesia, linking sounds and colours, influenced the composition. .

The Turangalîla-Symphonie is a massive, ten-movement orchestral masterpiece composed between 1946 and 1948. It is widely regarded as one of the most significant and colourful works of 20th-century classical music. He described it simultaneously as a “love song,” “hymn to joy,” and “a reflection on life and death”. The orchestra for this vast ten-movement work is appropriately immense, with a spectacular array of percussion, including Glockenspiel, Celesta and Vibraphone.

 

 

employed to create what has been referred to as a gamelan effect (Indonesian, “soft-percussion” music), a hugely demanding solo piano part – written for Yvonne Loriod, who would become the composer’s wife – and the eerie sound of the ondes martenot, an electronic instrument played either with a keyboard and/or by moving a ring along a metal ribbon to produce long sustained notes and otherworldly glissandos.

 

oneohtrix PointNever

R Plus Seven is the sixth studio album, released on September 30, 2013, as his debut album on Warp Records. The Brooklyn-based artist has always deftly balanced the experimental with the accessible. The album’s musical palette draws heavily on the synthetic sounds of MIDI instruments, 1980s synth presets, and “plugins” or add-ons that bring sounds (virtual instruments) and audio processing (effects) into your main music software. However, his Warp Records debut is a major departure from his previous work. Lopatin’s experimental inclinations lurk behind the scenes – in the concepts and procedures

he adopted to create the tracks – while the music itself comes as close as Lopatin has ever gotten to anything resembling traditional song structure.

 

 

Classical Album

olivier messiaen

Quatuor pour la fin du Temps I Liturgie de cristal
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps II Vocalise, pour l’ange qui annonce la fin du temps
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps III Abîme des oiseaux
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps IV Intermède
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps V Louange à l’éternité de Jésus
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps VI Danse de la fureur, pour les sept trompettes
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps VII Fouillis d’arcs-en-ciel, pour l’ange qui annonce…
Quatuor pour la fin du Temps VIII Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus
Turangalîla-symphonie – I Introduction
Turangalîla-symphonie – II Chant d’amour 1
Turangalîla-symphonie – III Turangalîla 1
Turangalîla-symphonie – IV Chant d’amour 2
Turangalîla-symphonie – V Joie du sang des étoiles
Turangalîla-symphonie – VI Jardin du sommeil d’amour
Turangalîla-symphonie – VII Turangalîla 2
Turangalîla-symphonie – VIII Développement de l’amour
Turangalîla-symphonie -IX Turangalîla 3
Turangalîla-symphonie -X Final

Jazz Album

Paul motian

Osmosis Part III
Sketches
Odd Man Out
Shadows
I Have The Room Above Her
Osmosis Part I
Dance
Harmony
The Riot Act
The Bag Man
One In Three
Dreamland

 

woman with bright neon make up and her eyes closed under blue light holding headset

electronic Album

oneohtrix point never

Boring Angel
Americans
He She
Inside World
zebra
Along
Problem Areas
Cryo
Still Life
Chrome Country

 

Rock Album

weezer

Tired Of Sex
Getchoo
No Other One
Why Bother?
Across The Sea
The Good Life
El Scorcho
Pink Triangle
Falling For You
Butterfly

 

To The Forum
Return to Blog

in further issues we will continue to Bring you the music of Popular genres to listen, review and evaluate. issue #9 (coming soon) features joy Division, holly Herndon, Wadada Leo Smith and Paul Hindemith

NOTES

Sound quality is important and some streaming services will offer superior sound quality. We do encourage you to purchase albums from good online record stores. alternatively, stream the music of favoured artists from those better online streaming services.

olivier Messiaen – Quartet for the End of Time / Turangalîla-Symphonie – Label : Warner Classics

paul Motian – I Have the Room Above Her – Label : ECM

Oneohtrix Point Never – R Plus Seven – Label : Warp Records

Weezer – Pinkerton – Label : Geffen Records

 

It is helpful to research the artist, using sources like Wikipedia , Music Magazine Reviews (Pitchfork, Rolling stone, NME etc.,) Artist Websites, etc…

A synopsis of the life and music of this Issue’s featured artists appears below.

This Week’s Artists

Stephen Paul Motian (March 25, 1931 – November 22, 2011) was an American jazz drummer, percussionist, and composer .

Paul Motian

Motian was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He was of armenian descent. After playing guitar in his childhood, Motian began playing the drums at age 12, eventually touring New England in a swing band. During the Korean War he joined the Navy and attended the United States Naval School of Music in Washington, D.C. until 1954. He also attended the Manhattan School of Music.

Motian first came to prominence in the late 1950s in the piano trio of Bill Evans and later was a regular in pianist Keith Jarrett’s band for about a decade (c. 1967–1976). The drummer began his career as a bandleader in the early 1970s. Perhaps his two most notable groups were a longstanding trio with guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano. Despite his important associations with pianists, Motian’s work as a leader since the 1970s rarely included a pianist in his ensembles and relied heavily on guitarists.

 

Motian’s first instrument was the guitar, and he retained an affinity for the instrument: in addition to his groups with Frisell, his first two solo albums on ECM featured Sam Brown, and his Electric Bebop Band featured two and occasionally three electric guitars. The group was founded in the early 1990s, and featured a variety of young guitar and saxophone players. He played an important role in freeing jazz drummers from strict time-keeping duties. Motian was a pioneer of “broken time,” a style where the drummer provides texture and colour rather than a continuous, driving beat. His original pieces are often described as terse, mysterious, and lyrical. His career spanned over 60 years, during which he evolved from a tasteful sideman into a visionary bandleader and composer. 

Oneohtrix Point Never (OPN) is the alias of Daniel Lopatin (born 1982), a highly influential American electronic musician, composer, and producer known for his experimental and genre-defining soundscapes.

Oneohtrix Point Never

Lopatin was born and raised in Massachusetts, and is the son of Russian-Jewish emigrants both with musical backgrounds. Some of his first experiments with electronic music were inspired by his father’s music collection and his Roland Juno-60 synthesizer, an instrument that Lopatin would inherit and go on to use extensively in his own music. During his high school years, Lopatin played synthesizer in groups with friends and future collaborator Joel Ford. Later, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to attend graduate school at Pratt Institute, studying archival science; the field of study would go on to influence aspects of his music and artistic practice. During that time, he also became interested and involved in Brooklyn’s Underground noise music scene. Lopatin initially released music under a number of aliases, before adopting the pseudonym Oneohtrix Point Never, a verbal play on the name of the Boston FM radio station Magic 106.7.

Drawing inspiration from 1970s and 80s synthesizer music, new-age and contemporary developments in noise music. Lopatin released a series of cassette and CD-R projects interspersed with a trilogy of full-length albums.much of this material was eventually collected on the 2009 compilation Rifts, which brought him critical acclaim. Over the past two decades, Lopatin has become one of the most quietly influential figures in modern music. His early Eccojams helped spark the vaporwave movement; albums like R Plus Seven and Garden of Delete redefined ambient and experimental music for the digital age. Beyond his solo work, he has collaborated with The Weeknd, Charli XCX, Iggy Pop, David Byrne and Anohni.

Daniel Lopatin has released other critically acclaimed works, each with their own overarching idea including  Returnal, Replica and his recent releases Again (2023) and Tranquilizer (2025). Lopatin also has an all-consuming obsession with nostalgia and forgotten pop cultural artefacts: he’s made albums based around warped loops of 80s pop hits, preset sounds on obsolete synthesisers and recordings of US radio stations.

changing formats, discarding the musical genres in which they previously specialised in favour of the current vogue. Lopatin has composed scores for several films, notably for the Safdie brothers’ Good Time (2017) and ‘Uncut Gems‘ (2019), the former of which earned him a Soundtrack Award at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

Olivier Eugène Prosper Charles Messiaen (10 December 1908 – 27 April 1992) was a French composer, organist, and ornithologist. One of the major composers of the 20th century, he was also an outstanding teacher of composition and musical analysis.

Olivier Messiaen

Messiaen entered the Conservatoire de Paris at age 11 and studied with Paul Dukas, Maurice Emmanuel, Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré, among others. He was appointed organist at the Église de la Sainte-Trinité, Paris, in 1931, a post he held for 61 years, until his death. He taught at the Schola Cantorum de Paris during the 1930s. After the fall of France in 1940, Messiaen was interned for nine months in the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-A, where he composed his Quatuor pour la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) for the four instruments available in the prison—piano, violin, cello and clarinet.

Messiaen’s music is rhythmically complex (he was interested in rhythms from ancient Greek and from Hindu sources), and is harmonically and melodically based on modes of limited transposition, which were Messiaen’s own innovation. . He travelled widely, and he wrote works inspired by such diverse influences as Japanese music, the landscape of Bryce Canyon in Utah, and the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Much of Messiaen’s music was inspired by Roman Catholic theology, interpreted in a quasi-mystical manner, 1932; Apparition of the Eternal Church, 1943: Visions de l’amen for two pianos, 1944; Twenty Looks upon the Infant Jesus).

.

La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ for orchestra and choir in1969. Among his most important orchestral works is the Turangalîla-Symphonie (1948) in 10 movements—containing a prominent solo piano part and using percussion instruments in the manner of the Indonesian Gamelan orchestra, along with an ondes martenot (an electronic instrument). Also notable is Chronochromie for 18 solo strings, wind, and percussion (1960). (1953; The Awakening of the Birds), (1956; Exotic Birds), and (1959; Catalogue of Birds) incorporate meticulous notations of birdsong. He composed an opera, St. François d’Assise, which premiered at the Paris Opera in 1983. Messiaen found birdsong fascinating; he believed birds to be the greatest musicians and considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer. He notated birdsongs worldwide, and he incorporated birdsong transcriptions into a majority of his music. His innovative use of colour, his personal conception of the relationship between time and music, his use of birdsong, and his intent to express profound religious ideas, all combine to make it almost impossible to mistake a composition by Messiaen for the work of any other western composer

Weezer is an American alternative rock band from Los Angeles, California formed in 1992. Known for their fusion of power pop, geek rock, and emo influences.

Weezer

They began by making clever and often nostalgic music with a contemporary twist: they were sharp but never too “arch.” Despite lineup changes and public fallings-out, notably between Rivers Cuomo and former bassist Matt Sharp, the band has maintained a consistent presence in the music scene. Weezer is known for their hit singles and critical acclaim, balancing mainstream success with their unique musical style. Since 2001, the band has consisted of Rivers Cuomo (lead vocals, guitar, keyboards), Patrick Wilson (drums, backing vocals), Brian Bell (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), and Scott Shriner (bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals). After signing to Geffen Records in 1993, Weezer released their acclaimed self-titled debut album, also known as ‘the Blue Album’.

Weezer’s second Album, ‘Pinkerton’ (1996), featuring a darker, more abrasive sound, was a commercial failure and initially received mixed reviews, but achieved cult status and acclaim years later. Both the Blue Album and Pinkerton are now frequently cited among the best albums of the 1990s.Subsequent albums explored various sounds, including the pop-oriented ‘Green Album’, the hard rock ‘Maladroit’, the mainstream pop ‘Pacific Daydream’, and a return to their 90s rock style in ‘Everything Will Be Alright in the End’ and ‘the White Album’. In 2022, the band released a series of four EPs tied to the seasons (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter), each exploring a different emotion and musical style.