03.29.07
Naptown Music, Sing This Song…
Calling all Hoosiers… For a good time Indy-style (yeah, kind of an oxymoron), stop by amongst the cornrows…Naptown!, posted at the Curved Air blog.
It includes various articles and some music downloads of ’70s-ish Indy music-ness: mostly jazz (e.g. The Naptown Afro-Jazz Quintet), funk and soul. But it even offers that rarest of beasts: some electronic somethings by a talented IU student Bloomingtonian named Steve Birchall. Bizarrely enough, that release is currently available on CD from Mimaroglu Music Sales. This is bizarre because I only just now Googled up this fact, yet the post I wrote mere moments ago happened to be about the Turkish electronic composer, Ilhan Mimaroglu. (Back in my Indy days, me and my friends called this a “toing,” sorta like synchronicity on acid and involving quantum physics and hootenannies. Long story.)
One fine discovery via that post is the Indiana 45s site — “a resource dedicated to the documentation and preservation of music and the history of Hoosier artists.” In other words, a really pretty thorough discography. Being good Hoosiers, it also includes some LPs, site name be damned.
Update: The aforementioned Steve Birchall electronic music album, Reality Gates (1973) recorded at the venerable Gilfoy Sound, proves to be really pretty good and well recommendable. Engaging and somewhat adventurous, and not as austere and stiff as many electronic works of that academic era. Highly recommended.
Alas, so far I can find precious little online about Mr. Birchall — or at least little I can be sure is actually about the electronic composer. It appears he had a stint as a writer editor for Digital Audio magazine back in the ’80s, which published his widely-linked interview with Frank Zappa in 1984. I’d love to know more about this (sorry) forgotten figure in Indiana experimental music — so if you know anything at all, please do post a comment.
Steve Birchall said,
June 5, 2008 at 11:39 am
The Steve Birchall who was Editor-in-Chief of Digital Audio also was the composer of Reality Gates. I have no connections with IU, though.