Saturday, October 25, 2014

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase:
Rashad Becker & Eli Keszler



This week, let's take a look at Rashad Becker and Eli Keszler, two musicians who will be sharing a bill playing separate sets in a concert presented by New Music Circle on Saturday, November 8 at The Luminary.

The German-born Becker is known in the music industry as a mastering and cutting engineer with more than 1,200 albums to his credit. His own music uses real-time synthesis and sampling to realize what Becker calls "traditional music Of notional species."

You can hear an example of one of his solo sets in the first video window up above, recorded in April of this year in Turin, Italy. After the jump, there are two more shows by Becker, from June 2013 at the PAN ACT Festival in Boston, and February 2012 in Bristol, England.

Below that are three videos featuring Keszler, a percussionist who also does sound installations. The first, of a work called "Archway," documents a collaboration between Keszler and So Percussion to create a piece of music using the Manhattan Bridge as both the setting and, by running piano wires from the bridge to the ground, an instrument.

Next, there's another of Keszler's works created for a specific location - in this case, the Helm V&A Museum in London - that combines live performance with electronic manipulation of sound. The final video is a clip of a Keszler solo percussion set recorded in 2012 at the Bruismelk Festival in Antwerp, Belgium.

For more about Rashad Becker, read this interview in BOMB magazine; this review of volume 1 of his Traditional Music of Notional Species; and this interview with him about his engineering and mastering work. You also can hear more of Becker's music on SoundCloud.

For more about Eli Keszler, see this 2012 interview at Tiny Mix Tapes; this review of his 2012 two-disc set Catching Net; and his SoundCloud page.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...









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