"Shake That Shit" Shawnna, featuring Ludacris, single
It's been a while since we've heard anything from hit-maker supreme Timbaland -- the producer-as-auteur/supergenius talk has been focusing on Kanye -- but last week saw the release of two new Timbaland-produced singles: Brandy's "Turn It Up" and Shawnna's "Shake That Shit." "Turn It Up" doesn't work particularly well - -it's built around a bass line hummed by a male voice, which sounds very cool at the opening of the song, but becomes a muddy distraction once Brandy starts singing. But "Shake That Shit" is a classic, brilliant Timbaland track. All on one chord, as usual, it centers on a four-note riff played on a resonant, nylon-string guitar with juicy, flamenco-style vibrato. The sound is simultaneously rich and (it's a nylon-string guitar, after all) a little wimpy, and it plays off beautifully against Timbaland's thumping, sub-bass heavy style. Up-and-coming female emcee Shawnna and Ludacris rap in a swaggering, rhythmically repetitive style, their voices merging with the beat in a hypnotic, bumping minimalism. (iTunes, RealPlayer, MusicMatch)
"Harmonics," Arnold Dreyblatt and the Orchestra of Excited Strings, Live in Berlin, 1986
Speaking of minimalism, I was thrilled to discover that the composer Arnold Dreyblatt maintains a Web page with an extensive selection of free MP3s available for download. Dreyblatt is a fascinating musician, but he is not particularly well-known, even though he composes "minimalist" music, which remains a hot ticket in the classical music world. Philip Glass and Steve Reich are the most widely recognized living composers (despite Glass' increasingly snooze-inducing, color-by-numbers output), and Terry Riley and LaMonte Young (Dreyblatt's one-time teacher) maintain immense cultish fame, even though neither of them has done much of interest in decades. As a composer, Dreyblatt displays little interest in form, focusing almost entirely on sound, specifically overtones. He performs on a bass strung with unwound steel wire, beating the strings with his bow to get a percussive sound, ringing with overtones. His Orchestra of Excited Strings includes a number of other similarly beaten string instruments and some occasionally very raucous percussion. The slowly unfolding, sonically pristine "Harmonics" is a perfect introduction to his music. If you like what you hear, there's a lot more here to choose from, including the beautiful drone piece, "High Life," which sounds like a less abrasive version of Tony Conrad's music. There are also some tracks with clarinetist Andy Statman soloing, a few more with the astonishing extended-technique vocalist Shelley Hirsch, and "Nodal Excitation," with Dreyblatt performing solo on the bass. Free Download: Harmonics
Next page: Rising above the glut of strumming singer-songwriters