12. Alvin CurranDead Beats
The name of this record is kind of what you get. It sounds like a title that somebody like the artist Bruce Nauman would come up with – a light play on words that somewhat describes what’s going on. He is just an amazing virtuosic piano player and composer, and this one is just fucking crazy, it’s just nuts. He’s made other rhythmic records – including one that’s his version of sampling. He’s an American living in Rome, and he obviously keeps his ears attuned to what’s going on in jazz and hip hop and soul and other African-American milieus. Not that that’s necessarily what’s going on here.
For anyone who hasn’t heard his music for piano, I would say listen to either his solo works, or Inner Cities, a six-hour set of compositions for piano. With this one, my friend Martin Arnold would use the word ‘bloody-minded’, it’s just incessant, and yet somehow not irritating, I don’t know how. Then there are things like Maritime Rites, an unbelievable record of him interviewing people like Pauline Oliveros and John Cage, talking about foghorns or lighthouses. I’m most attracted to his solo works where he uses a lot of different techniques. He just sounds like somebody who fucking loves the piano. And this one is shocking; you’re shocked. Even people who have every record, when they heard this for the first time they were like ‘whoa’. But at the same time, it makes sense.
