Comments on: New Bedroom Stuff

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:13:57 +0000

Nico,
How I enjoy reading your posts, even if they are about things I don’t understand. I’d love to hear you in a one man play someday.
Mike

By: PETER JOHN BOYLE

PETER JOHN BOYLE — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:36:51 +0000

yeah king lears fear of vagina was a surprise, I never know if Im reading these notes right because one minute
you complaining about you sweaty twat in a cramped ny club and the next your obsessing on bathroom design, then you soar to a place only the most erudite and musical can follow. I was wondering if you had seen the TEMPLE GRANDIN
movie yet. Ive lived with a high functioning autistic for 25 years and theres so damn much to understand. But the reason I mention it is that you wrote a while back about movie music being either derivative of Glass or Thomas newman and in the temple grandin film they used very glass-ish music whenever they were in (cinematically) her head.

By: ian goh

ian goh — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:22:45 +0000

The joke that’s crying out to be made, of course, is some kind of reference to ‘Tea: a drink with jam and bread’ (the same number of syllables as the Tan Dun title!). Now there’s alterity for all: d’oh, d’oh, d’oh.

By: charles sullivan

charles sullivan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:09:18 +0000

king lear, no less.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:54:41 +0000

Just downloaded and listened to the new albums and later today I will listen again. They are wonderful on first hearing, and I suspect that they will get deeper with subsequent hearings. Is there any way of getting the liner notes? Or of putting them on iTunes?

By: PETER JOHN BOYLE

PETER JOHN BOYLE — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:58:37 +0000

when are you gonna write more about what you do0 with the cap of the shampoo?

By: Bedroom Community

Bedroom Community — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:38:17 +0000

Patrick: it’s all on iTunes.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:38:06 +0000

I love what I streamed of the Bjarnason CD off the website, but I’ve been looking around for an affordable way to actually own the music. I hate to complain because the reason I’m frustrated is that I love everything the label has put out, but is there any plan to make the CDs (or even the downloads) from Bedroom Community available at a reasonable price for North Americans? $14CDN seems a bit steep for a “pay what you want” download. I’ve gotten most of the labels music off eMusic, but this CD doesn’t seem to be available there.

By: GW

GW — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:53:19 +0000

Isn’t this just the farcical end of the whole orientalism discourse: unintended self-parody by western-trained artists of Asian origin taking cover under subalternity?

By: Thom

Thom — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 08:58:52 +0000

Dropping of articles and shifters (I, We, etc.) could be useful for effect, but I think it gets weird if there is not reason for it.
Wozzeck has all of those fragments of text that get obsessed over “Ein Augenblick, Ein Augenblick!”, but it is the music that gives effect there.

By: Andrew Lee

Andrew Lee — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 04:46:55 +0000

I don’t think your opinion is uninformed. Personally, if the libretto is going to be in English, then it should be grammatically correct. It is indeed otherwise distracting. Personally I find Mr Dun’s music very colonial in the sense that I think he makes exotic the “oriental” aspects of his work in a way that an ethnic asian should take for granted. Consequently, the libretto you wrote about is consistent with this in that the pidgin english serves to make the “orientalism” of the opera exotic, as if some Victorian explorer had written it in order to express the atmosphere of the mysterious east, so to speak. It probably would have served the opera better to have had it sung in Mandarin.

By: Chris Thompson

Chris Thompson — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:26:56 +0000

[...] at Le Poisson Rouge upon returning from LA. Bjarnason has an album out on Bedroom Community, which Nico posted on earlier today; this composer is incredibly talented across different types of instrumentation and is just as [...]

By: pp

pp — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:24:35 +0000

I just read an interesting article explaining that most Asian languages do not have indefinite or definite articles, so perhaps that has something to do with the lack of them in Tan Dunâ€™s libretto, or maybe he and Xu Ying were trying to be poetic; either way it seems to have affected your enjoyment of the opera. In ‘making art’ should we strive for perfection?