Amritsar, which was quite large by the beginning of the 20th century, suffered greatly from the massacre with the British colonial forces in 1919, in 1947 the city found itself on the border of India and Pakistan, and today this is an important center of Sikhism, whose hotels attract not only tourists, but also pilgrims.
Vacation in Amritsar is packed with loads of attractions ranging from spirituality, cool ambience, enchanting traditions and yummy food. The place has many things to see and do that are sure to kee…
Things happen that are like questions. A minute passes, or years, and then life responds. Life is too short to waste it in fulfilling the dreams of others. • • • 🌿 🏞 🏞 🏔 👫 😄 📿 #nature #live #laugh #love #theoutdoor #nature_lovers #nature_brilliance #naturephotography #natureshots #outdoors #nature_good #getoutside #earthgallery #tree_magic #tree #colors #couple #life #fun #funny #dreams #instagood #igers #party #chill #happy #cute #photooftheday #live #happydays #truestory https://www.instagram.com/p/BpmVE_WA21E/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=dywhdjcqqmy2
The Out Door’s weekly series “200 Words” is done for the year - we featured 50 records in 2016, and loved them all! To read all these great artists talking about their great records, you can scroll through all the entries here, or jump to a specific entry in the list below (after the jump). Happy New Year and thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week...
ALAN LICHT - Currents LP (VSDQ)
M. GEDDES GENGRAS - Two Variations cassette (Umor Rex)
PETE NOLAN - Easy LP (Arbitrary Signs)
KRAUS – Golden Treasury cassette (Oma333)
ISOLDE TOUCH – Secretary of Sensation CD (Entr’acte)
DAVEY HARMS – Cables cassette (Hausu Mountain)
GATE – Saturday Night Fever LP (MIE Music) / cassette (Ba Da Bing)
RICARDO DONOSO – Symmetry 4xLP / 3xCD Box Set (Denovali)
MAXWELL AUGUST CROY – Kaniza cassette (Psychic Troubles)
KATE CARR – It Was A Time Of Laboured Metaphors cassette (Helen Scardscale)
IPEK GORGUN – Aphelion CD (self-released)
DANNY OXENBERG AND BEAR GALVIN – Late Superimpositions LP (three:four)
LEA BERTUCCI – Axis/Atlas cassette (Clandestine Compositions)
COUNTRY FLORIST – CF-3 cassette (Drawing Room)
DAN MELCHIOR – Plays ‘The Greys’ LP (Ever/Never)
JACKIE McDOWELL – New Blood Medicine CD (Wild Silence)
NICKOLAS MOHANNA – Mantis cassette (Preservation)
MATTHEWDAVID’S MINDFLIGHT – Trust the Guide and Glide 2LP (Leaving)
DAVID FIRST – Same Animal, Different Cages Vol. 1 LP (Fabrica)
WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS & JAMES JACKSON TOTH – Under Stars and Smoke LP (Blackest Rainbow)
ALTO! – LP3 LP (Trouble in Mind)
JEPH JERMAN & TIM BARNES - Versatile Ambience LP (Idea Intermedia)
MACHINE LISTENER - Endless Coil LP (Tusco/Embassy Press)
BROMP TREB - Concession Themes LP (Feeding Tube)
POREST – Modern Journal of Popular Savagery LP (Nashazphone)
SCROLL DOWNERS – Hot Winter LP (Ehse)
MARISA ANDERSON – Into the Light LP (Chaos Kitchen)
ROB MAZUREK & EMMETT KELLY – Alien Flower Sutra LP (International Anthem)
EKIN FIL - Being Near LP(The Helen Scarsdale Agency)
MIKE SHIFLET - Abstracting Grace cassette (Scioto)
BRETT NAUCKE - Executable Dreamtime cassette (Umor Rex)
WEASEL WALTER - Curses CD (ugEXPLODE)
EILBACHER / MOSKOS / MOORE - SEF III LP (Ehse)
JOHN CHANTLER - Which Way to Leave? LP (Room 40)
FOREST MANAGEMENT - Reinforcement DL (self-released)
LXV - Clear LP (Anòmia)
SARAH DAVACHI - All My Circles Run LP (Students of Decay)
JEAN-SÉBASTIEN TRUCHY - Transmission In an Expanse of Firelight, Hear Me! LP (Root Strata)
JEMH CIRCS - Jemh Circs LP (Cellule 75)
AARON LEITKO - Wasatch Mecha cassette (Atlantic Rhythms)
MRDOUGDOUG - SOS Forks AI REM cassette (Hausu Mountain)
TASHI DORJI & TYLER DAMON - Both Will Escape LP (Family Vineyard)
TED BYRNES & WILLIAM HUTSON - 01 (self-released)
BILLY GOMBERG - Slight At That Contact (Students of Decay)
LOU BARLOW - Apocalypse Fetish EP (Joyful Noise)
GRAHAM LAMBKIN - Community 2CD (Erstwhile)
INSECT FACTORY - Work LP (Insect Fields)
CHRISTIAN MIRANDE - Trying To Remember A House CD (Glistening Examples)
ROSS WALLACE CHAIT - Rocking & Rollin’ cassette (A Giant Fern)
ANGELA SAWYER - On The Pedestrian Side LP (Weird Ear/Feeding Tube)
In the latest edition of The Out Door, which runs at Pitchfork later today, we hear some thoughts from Joshua Abrams about his amazing new double album, Magnetoception. The following is the full transcript of our conversation, which happened before a recent show by his band, Natural Information Society, in Washington, D.C. The interview was conducted by Marc Masters.
The Out Door: Was the idea to do a longer album with longer pieces something that Michael Ehlers of Eremite suggested?
Joshua Abrams: Yeah, it was almost like a challenge. It was almost like a dare.
The Out Door: Some songs on previous albums feel like they could’ve gone on longer.
JA: Yeah, Eremite put out CDs of the first two and on there are some live bonus tracks, and they are longer. One of them, “Sound Talisman,” is a half hour long. But yeah, the idea was to use the space of a double album, and think about extending material.
The Out Door: Did you have to change your process at all to do that?
JA: A little bit, to just take time and get more familiar with the pieces. Some of it is just trying to find ways to get myself to be patient and hopefully share that with the others as well. Move slowly, take our time. Let it be felt more than moving more soloistically.
The Out Door: Your music is so minimal that the momentum happens without clear rises and falls. So I’d imagine it was tempting to use those kind of changes in longer pieces.
JA: Yeah, you want it to be interesting, you want events to happen, but at the same time try to maintain that evenness. I mean, we can talk about it theoretically, but that’s not necessarily the way we do it. It’s also intuitive.
The Out Door: Each piece takes control of itself eventually?
JA: Eventually, yeah. It’s interesting because we recorded the record early in that material’s life. Now we’ve been playing it much more so it goes different directions. Some bands go out on the road and let the material grow and then record it, but we did it the other way around this time.
The Out Door: Do you have to make yourself pull back sometimes?
JA: Yeah, sometimes. There were a couple pieces that didn’t quite fit into the flow of the record, and there were a few edits where it felt like, maybe this tipped over too much to something else. So there is a restraint, but it’s mysterious. It’s more just by ear. Hamid is one of the great virtuosos of his instrument, as is Jeff, but hopefully the feeling of the record isn’t one of displaying that. It’s hopefully more one of nuance and just a vibe you can hook into and notice the details and how they intertwine. And I’m not even against things being pumped up, but it has to maintain a balance and fit in.
The Out Door: Do you still find the Giumbri to be a rich instrument to use?
JA: Oh, yeah, it still is. On one hand you can see it as a simple folk instrument, and in a way it is. But it’s also a very sophisticated instrument for centering the mind, for centering tension. That’s how it’s used traditionally, and even though I’m not using it traditionally, that still finds its way in. In writing the first song, “By Way of Odessa” i was able to come up with a new scale for it, and it became these two kind of disparate things that somehow fit together and still maintained the nature of the instrument.
The Out Door: You play the clarinet on this record. How long have you been playing that instrument?
JA: A couple years. I’m very much an amatuer but it seemed to fit. The feeling I had when I recorded that was it caught something. It didn’t necessarily catch great clarinet playing, but it just caught a vibe. And that seemed to fit within the context of the record.
The Out Door: Is there a story behind the album title?
JA: It’s magnetic sensitivity, more in animals, but some humans have that too. One thing that’s always interesting thing to me is, what is this energy transfer in music? It’s like the name Natural Information - two very obvious words that weren’t normally put together. The idea is, what could that space become? What could that environment be? Those are always the general quetsions I’m interested in.
The Out Door: Does it work that way with song titles too?
JA: Sometimes. “By Way of Odessa,” that refers to my grandfather who was born on Odessa, but he had to leave Europe before World War II. He happened to be born in Odessa sort of by chance, but because he was there, he was able to leave where lots of other people weren’t able to. I don’t know exactly how it all worked, but at one point that title came to me and it sort of fit that song. There’s a certain somber thing about the record. Not trying to be morbid, but there had been people passing during that time that informed things. But it’s never like I’m trying to write about one thing, it’s never totally literal. It’s just that there were maybe more quiet, meditative moments because of that.
The Out Door: Are there social or political aspects to your music? Did creating the score for The Interrupters affect those aspects at all?
JA: I guess I always think of the music more in terms of a vessel that you can transfer energy with. It’s interesting doing the film work, because then it has to serve the film, and particularly with documentary, you’re trying to help tell other people’s stories. With The Interrupters, the stories are so intense and the stakes are so high that, working on it, it did matter to me what the subjects thought of the music. I really wanted them to see their story and not be frustrated by the sound of the music.
I just think if the listener is in a space where they are ready to have a profound experience, they probably will. You could have that listening to anything. That’s what art is for. Sometimes when I hear things that directly replicate what’s been done, whether they realize it or not, sometimes that can drain some energy from it. Sometimes not, it’s not a rule. But to me I find that the most energy comes from when you find something, a new discovery, so I try to make these situations and environments where we can find new things. That’s how the band will create energy, and if that works for the listener, that’s the ideal loop. Often singers and songwriters say it’s about creating an attitude. I think it’s more about creating an environment, but maybe there’s an attitude in that.
The Out Door: How did that compare to creating the music for the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself?
JA: That was an amazing experience, a real honor. Big stakes in a different way. He was very inspiring too. I didn’t get to meet him, but I got to know him through working on the film and seeing how he dealt with death. The acceptance of death and of it being part of living, and wanting people to see that, wanting you to see this process of dying, in a society that sort of denies death.
The Out Door: People say there isn’t much political music now, but music without words can be political in ways that aren’t always obvious.
JA: Music works on so many levels. It can be really good for carrying a literal message. But a literal message also gets very easily co-opted. I think if our music’s political, it’s because it offers the possiblity of slowing down. The possibilty of listening. We live in the age of attention and availability, and I’m not saying this is Luddite protest music, but it is offering a certain level of experience, and it operates in slightly different ways. At the end of the day how you live your life is political, so maybe it’s something like that.
The Out Door: Your music is kind of in between genres. It doesn’t sound like you’re trying to break rules but also doesn’t sound like you’re adhering to any particular ones.
JA: Maybe it’s more about experiencing the spirit of something. Maybe it’s the idea of just through experience you find your identity, you find your sound. Genre can be something not so much that you fit yourself into but that you use. What does it mean to access it? What does it mean to put weight in one position and put a counterweight in another position, compositionally? Ok, this might fit over here, but then something has its place over here, and something else goes in to triangulate it. That’s very different than if I want to illustrate a certain genre. It’s about putting us in a situation where we can find things and find that sort of energy. That’s really what it’s about more than falling into genres.
The Out Door: You can come up with your own genre, but then you have to make sure not to get locked into it.
JA: I’m not trying to just throw away what we’ve made, and I’m not trying to jump to another genre. I think there’s room within it. I trust my own sensibilities that it will continue. If found one of these records interesting, there are probably things in all of them that you will find interesting. Maybe one person will take one over the other.
We’re taking a week off for summer break, but will be back next week for another edition of 200 Words. In the meantime please enjoy our archives from the past year-plus of our weekly feature. Thanks!
