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Crystal Castles: “Air War”
From the album Crystal Castles (2008)
Here’s a fun little exercise in the infinite cultural recursion of the information age: In 1922, Irish modernist author James Joyce writes the novel Ulysses, a radically experimental work that plays with the musical potential of “nonsense” speech. In 1958, Italian composer Luciano Berio, one of the foremost members of the international musical avant-garde and co-founder of the Studio di Fonologia in Milan, creates a piece for magnetic tape entitled Thema (Ommagio a Joyce), based on a recording of renowned vocalist Cathy Berberian (to whom Berio was married at the time) reading from the “Sirens” chapter of Ulysses. In 2008, the Toronto-based electro-rock band Crystal Castles releases their eponymous debut studio album, including the track “Air War,” which samples Thema at length, turning Berio’s music (and Joyce’s prose) into an estranged psychedelic sound-layer atop the band’s catchy lo-fi electronic dance grooves.
Played 91 time(s).
October 14, 2009, 4:43pm
