A Look at my CD Collection, part 7: Aidan Baker, including ARC

Several years ago, I picked up a copy of ARC's Feral and was really impressed.  Later, I made sure that I checked them out when they played at C'est What? (on August 19th, 2003).  My CD collection contains:

ARC/Aidan Baker  -  Repercussion (Piehead Records 2002 Series – Volume 1) 

ARC  -  Feral

Aidan Baker  -  Concretion

Aidan Baker  -  Cicatrice

Aidan Baker  -  Within the Final Circle

Aidan Baker  -  Ichneumon

Aidan Baker  -  Tense Surfaces

Aidan Baker  -  Dance of Lonely Molecules

A couple of these were free downloads.  It's Thursday, but it really feels like Friday because I am taking tomorrow off and Monday is Family Day, so I am looking ahead to a four day weekend.  What I am trying to say is that I have not the energy to try to describe the music.  Also, I just got back from an hour of lunchtime yoga, and I feel all bendy and relaxed.  My fingers are not responding well to the task of typing.  But, here is a good review of Feral.

Baker likes to use looping techniques on various instruments, notably the guitar, but also the flute, for example.  If you like this kind of treatment, you might like it, but this is not the kind of music you would sing along to or dance around the bedroom to while putting away laundry.  It's more complex than that.

Oddly, everyone I spoke to at the Ambient Ping that evening assumed that I was a musician.  I am not sure why.  Perhaps ARC is musicians' music or perhaps it's that musicians seem to have more of an open mind when it comes to music than your average iTunes shopper.  It really kills me, as I have often said, that people only want to buy a song or two from a CD.  I have always been an album man.  If there are only one or two good songs on an album, I wouldn't buy it.  I still listen to albums, rather than songs, but I do occasionally put the iPod on shuffle to see what kind of magic might happen.

Why, just yesterday as I was walking with the iPod, I heard European Son by the Velvet Underground followed by Bowie's Queen Bitch and then Bauhaus covering Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.  That was quite the playlist.  Sometimes, the shuffle seems to be possessed and every other song is from the same artist, which is odd.

Baker is a poet too, and has published a few volumes.  I am not familiar with his writing.  He has an extensive discography.  Check out his Wikipedia entry for those details.

Happy Friday and have a good weekend.