Night After Night

Playlist. (National Sawdust Log, Oct. 25, 2016)

An occasional tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears lately.

Linda Catlin Smith - Memory Forms (Artifact Music; 2001)
> Among the Tarnished Stars - The Burdocks; Through the Low Hills - Andrew Smith, Stephen Clarke; Knotted Silk - Stephen Clarke, Arraymusic/Henry Kucharzyk; With Their Shadows Long - Marc Sabat, Stephen Clarke; Memory Forms - CBC Radio Orchestra/Owen Underhill; Moi qui tremblais - Mark Fewer, Richard Sacks, Arraymusic/Henry Kucharzyk

Michael Pisaro - asleep, desert, choir, agnes - University of South Carolina Experimental Music Workshop/Greg Stuart (Soundcloud; 2016)

Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep of Reason (Nuclear Blast; 2016)

Olivia Block - "Dissolution B" (from Dissolution) (Glistening Examples; due Nov. 11, 2016)

XTC - Skylarking (Ape; 1986/2016)

Graham Lambkin - Community (KYE/ErstSolo; 2016)

Jóhann Jóhansson - Orphée (Deutsche Grammophon; 2016)

Ian William Craig - Centres (130701/Fat Cat)

The Caretaker - Everywhere at the end of time (History Always Favours the Winners; 2016)

Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes (New Albion; 1984/1994)
> Fog Tropes - San Francisco New Music Ensemble/John Adams; Gradual Requiem - Foster Reed, Ingram Marshall; Gambuh 1 - Ingram Marshall

Carl Stone - Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties (Unseen Worlds; 2016)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - EARS (Western Vinyl; 2016)

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic (DGM/Panegyric; 1972/2012)

Ghédalia Tazartès - Repas Froid (PAN; 2011)

Ocean Viva Silver - Echolalia (self-released; 2014)

Stephan Mathieu - Before Nostromo (Schwebung; 2015)

King Crimson - Palais Des Sports, Besancon, France, March 25, 1974 (from Starless) (DGM/Panegyric; 1973/2014)

Sarah Hennies - Orienting Response - Cristián Alvear (mappa; 2016)

Günter Schlienz - Autumn (Zoharum; 2016)

Meredith Monk - On Behalf of Nature - Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (ECM New Series; 2016)

HOLOVR - Anterior Space (Further; due Dec. 2, 2016)

Archived from National Sawdust Log

Playlist. (National Sawdust Log, Oct. 25, 2016)

An occasional tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears lately.

Linda Catlin Smith - Memory Forms (Artifact Music; 2001)
> Among the Tarnished Stars - The Burdocks; Through the Low Hills - Andrew Smith, Stephen Clarke; Knotted Silk - Stephen Clarke, Arraymusic/Henry Kucharzyk; With Their Shadows Long - Marc Sabat, Stephen Clarke; Memory Forms - CBC Radio Orchestra/Owen Underhill; Moi qui tremblais - Mark Fewer, Richard Sacks, Arraymusic/Henry Kucharzyk

Michael Pisaro - asleep, desert, choir, agnes - University of South Carolina Experimental Music Workshop/Greg Stuart (Soundcloud; 2016)

Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep of Reason (Nuclear Blast; 2016)

Olivia Block - "Dissolution B" (from Dissolution) (Glistening Examples; due Nov. 11, 2016)

XTC - Skylarking (Ape; 1986/2016)

Graham Lambkin - Community (KYE/ErstSolo; 2016)

Jóhann Jóhansson - Orphée (Deutsche Grammophon; 2016)

Ian William Craig - Centres (130701/Fat Cat; 2016)

The Caretaker - Everywhere at the end of time (History Always Favours the Winners; 2016)

Ingram Marshall - Fog Tropes (New Albion; 1984/1994)
> Fog Tropes - San Francisco New Music Ensemble/John Adams; Gradual Requiem - Foster Reed, Ingram Marshall; Gambuh 1 - Ingram Marshall

Carl Stone - Electronic Music from the Seventies and Eighties (Unseen Worlds; 2016)

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - EARS (Western Vinyl; 2016)

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic (DGM/Panegyric; 1972/2012)

Ghédalia Tazartès - Repas Froid (PAN; 2011)

Ocean Viva Silver - Echolalia (self-released; 2014)

Stephan Mathieu - Before Nostromo (Schwebung; 2015)

King Crimson - Palais Des Sports, Besancon, France, March 25, 1974 (from Starless) (DGM/Panegyric; 1973/2014)

Sarah Hennies - Orienting Response - Cristián Alvear (mappa; 2016)

Günter Schlienz - Autumn (Zoharum; 2016)

Meredith Monk - On Behalf of Nature - Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble (ECM New Series; 2016)

HOLOVR - Anterior Space (Further; due Dec. 2, 2016)

Playlist. (National Sawdust Log, Oct. 18, 2016)

An occasional tally of memorable things Steve Smith has stuck in his ears lately.

Van der Graaf Generator - Do Not Disturb (Esoteric Antenna; 2016)

Eli Keszler - Last Signs of Speed (Empty Editions; due Nov. 17, 2016)

Linda Catlin Smith - Dirt Road - Mira Benjamin, Simon Limbrick (Another Timbre; 2016)

Joseph Kudirka - Beauty and Industry - Apartment House (Another Timbre; 2015)

Tod Dockstader - From the Archives (Starkland; due Nov. 18, 2016)

Sarah Davachi - Vergers (Important; 2016)

Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans (Panegyric; 1973/2016)

Ocean Viva Silver - The Sleep in Opera (Sublunar Society; 2016)

Centipede - Septober Energy (BGO Records; 1971/2000)

Tom Jackson/Ashley-John Long/Benedict Taylor/Keith Tippett - Four Quartets (Confront; 2016)

Taku Sugimoto - Mada - Ryoko Akama, Cristián Alvear, Cyril Bondi, D'Incise (Caduc; 2016)

John Edwards/Mark Sanders/John Tilbury - A field perpetually at the edge of disorder (Fataka; 2014)

Nate Wooley - Polychoral - Peter Evans (Mnóad; 2016)

Bent Knee - Leak Water EP (self-released, limited edition; 2016)

Richard Wagner - Tristan und Isolde - Astrid Varnay, Ramón Vinay, Ira Malaniuk, Gustav Niedlinger, Ludwig Weber, Bayreuth Festival Chorus and Orchestra/Eugen Jochum (Archipel; 1953/2004)

Death - Scream Bloody Gore (Relapse; 1987/2016)

Laraaji - Essence/Universe (All Saints; 1987/2013)

Kansas - The Prelude Implicit (Inside Out Music; 2016)

Steve Flato - Harm Reduction (Studious Avoidance; 2015)

Vanessa Rossetto - The Way You Make Me Feel (Unfathomless; 2016)

The Orb - COW/Chill Out World! (Kompakt; 2016)

Archived from National Sawdust Log

Goodbye, hello.

A bit of news to report, and rather than waxing loquacious I'm simply going to state it plainly: This is, for the foreseeable future, the last post I'll be writing for Night After Night, the blog I've operated on Typepad since October 2005.

That's not to say I'm packing it in, just that I've decided to take my name and idea – my "brand," you might say – along with me to the blog I'll be maintaining for The Log Journal, the new music and arts e-zine we launched on October 5 at National Sawdust. The goal is a return to regular blogging activity, something that eluded me for much of my time with The New York Times, and essentially disappeared during my stint with the Boston Globe.

Thank you to everyone who's spent time here, and to those who've continued to stick around when there's been not much more happening than a steady trickle of lists of things I've stuck into my ears. I'll continue to maintain this site as an archive, and perhaps I'll even find some time to properly catalog my past work, both the stuff that's online presently and the stuff that isn't. (Don't hold your breath, but the intent is sincere.)

I hope that you'll join me over on the new Night After Night.

Best regards,

Steve Smith

Playlist.

Mary Halvorson Octet - Away With You (Firehouse 12; due Oct. 28)

Claude Debussy - Images; Jeux; Nocturnes; La Mer; Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune; Marche écossaise sur un theme populaire; Printemps; Two movements from L’Infant Prodigue; Berceuse héroïque - Women of the RSNO Chorus, Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Stéphane Denève (Chandos)

Eric Wubbels - Duos with Piano: Book I - Wet Ink Ensemble (Carrier)
> Shiverer - Erin Lesser, Eric Wubbels; "the children of fire come looking for fire" - Josh Modney, Eric Wubbels; doxa - Ian Antonio, Eric Wubbels; This is This is This is - Alex Mincek, Eliot Gattegno, Eric Wubbels

Joda Clément - Sea Songs (Caduc)

Robert Rich - Morphology (Anodize)

Michael Pisaro - the earth and the sky - Reinier van Houdt (ErstClass; due Oct. 17)
> half-sleep beings; Akasa; distance (1); the earth and the sky; pi (920-994); pi (2352-2420); Fade; Les Jours, Mon Aubépine; fields have ears (2); C. Wolff; green hour, grey future

Ryoko Akama - 2 compositions (Meenna)
> a proposal - four; i.take - Ryoko Akama, Ko Ishikawa, Bruno Duplant

Van der Graaf Generator - Do Not Disturb (Esoteric Antenna)

Eli Keszler - Last Signs of Speed (Empty Editions; due Nov. 17)

Augustus Pablo - This Is Augustus Pablo (VP Music Group)

Augustus Pablo and Friends - 40 Greatest Hits (Alexander Music Group)

King Crimson - "Devil Dogs of Tessellation Row," "The ConstruKction of Light," "The Letters," "Meltdown," "Red," "Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part I" - 2016 European Tour downloads (DGMLive)

Jeffry Astin - Bhsaaveaegi (Elestial Sound)

Paola Prestini and Steve Smith: What Is the Log?

Photograph: Paola Prestini, by Brigitte Lacombe

Originally published by National Sawdust Log on Oct. 3, 2016

When I first met with composer Paola Prestini just over three years ago to discuss her dreams, plans, and goals for the wide-ranging arts venue, incubator, and accelerator that would become National Sawdust, she expressed her conviction that journalism and criticism are fundamental parts of the artistic ecosystem. A few months ago, having overseen National Sawdust’s birth and its widely acclaimed initial season, she returned to thinking about how a journalistic venture might be implemented among National Sawdust’s programs – and our conversation resumed.

Recently, in anticipation of this new initiative making its public debut, Paola and I sat down together once again – this time in the National Sawdust performance space, for a discussion in which we’ve endeavored to lay bare the thinking behind this unconventional pursuit, what we hope to achieve, and what further initiatives we plan to pursue as time goes on.

STEVE SMITH: When we first spoke, you already knew that you were undertaking a huge project, offering much more just than a venue to the artistic community. And from near the start you knew that you wanted to incorporate journalism and criticism into the mix.

PAOLA PRESTINI: Yes. I often plant seeds of ideas, and then it takes a long, long time for them to develop. And I’m really comfortable with that, because I feel that then things happen at the right time. Certainly with this project of National Sawdust, I think I understood the enormity of it, but because it took so long to come to fruition – it took seven years of us thinking through the project, thinking through the mission, really doing everything right, and then trying to fundraise for it – when it finally did happen, I was prepared for it. And so similarly with the idea that we had together, for me, writing in all of its forms has always played a very central part to my own artistic process. As I grew up in New York as an artist, in my early 20s and in my 30s, there was always a fascination with and a fear of criticism. And so, like all things I’m afraid of, I really wanted to understand why, and understand what it is in me that doesn’t allow me to embrace it or understand its relevance or not be afraid of it.

Can you identify what that fear was based in?

I think it’s a very common fear that artists have, which is that the artistic process and creating work in today’s artistic ecology is so difficult. It’s rooted in a very basic fear of acceptance, which every artist has – that is certainly not unique. But I think that more profoundly, what I was reading, in reviews and in general, didn’t really contextualize the scene in a way I felt the reader would, one, want to listen to the music, which was the whole point, I think, of why you write about things: not only to give your perspective, but also to allow the field to thrive. I felt that many of the reviews I was reading, and then eventually I was getting, were kind of shallow, and weren’t really contextualizing work, and weren’t really meant to get audiences to come out and see things and make up their own minds about things, or to report on what was happening, or to have the artist’s voice in it, or to say, “This isn’t for me, but let me tell you a little bit about this artist and what they’re thinking about and what the context is and what’s going on in the scene.” I just didn’t feel like any of that was happening. So all of a sudden, it was like a fear of and a disdain for something that I always had respected, and that always, in its many different forms, had played such a central role to me as an artist.

So, fast-forward - I’m over-generalizing – you start to read certain reviewers who are fantastic, and who really write in a profound way. I started to realize it wasn’t that it didn’t exist, but that it was rare. I started to think, What if the community can be more united? What if the community can be more this place where it’s constructive, and where we work together? And it’s not about receiving “bad press,” because they say that all press is good press, and I certainly understand that now. It’s more about the field feeding itself, wanting to perpetuate, wanting to create a space where writers and musicians and creators can coexist and can feed each other.

I knew I couldn’t roll it out right away – when we first started, we had a staff of three, if you can imagine, to run 350 shows. So slowly, as I built the board and helped them to understand what we were really starting, which wasn’t going to be just a typical club or venue, then I began to get support for the different ideas – and finally got support to make this a reality.