A Look at my CD Collection, part 2 - John Hudak

I downloaded two releases (legally) by John Hudak with -1348- from The Internet Archive some time ago.  The Internet Archive is a great source for all kinds of things, especially music.  If you are a Dead Head -- and I am not -- you should definitely check it out.

I am really interested in musical experiments, and I am fond of minimalism, drones, and repetition.   That's not to say that I don't enjoy a fine melody, because I do.  There is something about extended drawn-out soundscapes that contain very little in the way of variation.  Of course, this reminds me of a dinner party I had at my house once for an association of which I was president.  I put on Steve Reich's Music for Eighteen Musicians, thinking that it would be a pleasing accompaniment to dinner and conversation.  About 15 minutes into the piece, someone (perhaps the secretary or the treasurer) complained that the music was giving her a headache.  Good thing I hadn't put on Gavin Bryars' Jesus Blood!

Reich's piece has much more going on in it that I require.  There have been times when the drone of a piece of machinery has struck me as the perfect piece of music.  I also like symmetrical structures.  If you add these two together, it says a lot about what I like photograph, normally. Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon is a fine example of ambient minimalism.  It's 61 minutes of perfect music, and not just for Thursday afternoons.  I also like noise, or music from the avant-garde that employs dissonance and atonality. There are lots of examples of this genre, of course, but to give you some examples, I would suggest the music of John Cale and Tony Conrad from the Inside the Dream Syndicate years, as well as the music of Lamonte Young right through to Sonic Youth and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.

I think I am getting sidetracked.

Since I really do not like listening to music on a computer, I burned the two John Hudak releases to CD.  They are:

-1348- and John Hudak - Tacitus Journey
-1348- and John Hudak - The Idiot

These releases contain hints at some of the things I mentioned above. You might not like it, but you just might.  Hudak's discography is quite long and he has made appearances on many other recordings, if you care about that.

Three more days of work, and then I am off until January 4th :-)