Zen Sounds 063: John Cage's rare mushrooms & truffles

Some personal news and what I'm listening to over the summer

Stephan Kunze

Jul 22, 2023

Prologue

In a recent Lex Fridman podcast, he asked Yuval Noah Harari about the meaning of life. Harari replied that we usually expect a story as an answer to that question, but stories lead us away from experiencing reality as it is, mindfully perceiving every moment as it unfolds, which is what life is actually about.

We’re currently trying to stay outside as much as possible – cooking, showering and even sleeping in the garden, where we have a tent, a propane gas stove, a little fireplace and a rainwater shower. We’re swimming in nearby lakes and recently drove to Poland for a few days, eating pierogi and walking on the beach. I’m spending time with the Earthsea saga, an iconic series of six high fantasy novels by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s my main reading project for the summer.

I hope you are enjoying the season as much as I do, and not spending too much time inside staring at screens. We won’t be looking back at the end of our lives thinking about the great time we had watching Instagram reels or arguing with strangers over LinkedIn posts. But I’ll definitely remember witnessing that stunning sundown with the family, all feet and paws in the wet sand, after a long day of hiking along the Polish seashore.

Musically, I’ve been all over the place. One of my friends compiled a 100-track playlist for me, containing all sorts of contemporary popular music, from afrobeats, amapiano and jungle to dancehall, trap and hip-hop, and I am genuinely enjoying most of it. I also discovered a few (not many) exciting things in my usual realm of experimental, jazz and ambient music. With this newsletter, I’m not going back to my weekly cadence just yet, but I felt like getting some announcements and recommendations out to you.

Everything Jazz

This is more of a professional news: Everything Jazz, a new online record store for jazz music and culture, has launched in June. It’s a project I’ve been working on as a content strategy consultant. On the “Stories” tab, you will find artist profiles, interviews and reviews, basically all sorts of feature articles that you would have found in a music magazine (back when they were still a thing).

I am actually contributing some of the feature content as well; for example, I moderated a nerdy conversation between Joe Harley (the “Tone Poet”) and Darrel Sheinman (of Gearbox) on Blue Note reissues, the analog mixing art of Rudy van Gelder, and the sound of original vinyl vs. master tapes. I’m currently working on some coverage of 1960s avant-garde jazz, which has also been a focus in my listening habits lately (read: Coltrane, Dolphy, Taylor etc.).

(Full disclosure: Everything Jazz is owned and operated by my client Universal Music Group, home to many great jazz labels like Blue Note, Verve, Impulse!, Decca, Capitol, ECM, Concord, and others.)

Interview w/ TRPPN blog

I was asked to share my views and experiences on how artists can increase their visibility – without using social media.

I guess they asked me because I’ve deleted most of my personal social media accounts in 2018 and still managed to successfully publish and promote a book, and reach my audience through this newsletter. Another reason might be that I’ve been working in music journalism and the music industry for over 20 years now, with a good quarter of that time recently spent in the editorial team at Spotify.

While I definitely don’t have a masterplan, I felt inclined to speak about the need for rebuilding alternative infrastructures. Decentralization is key. We need more of that, in every aspect of the business. That’s why I generally support ideas like TRPPN, a community-owned platform for creators and fans to share and discover live music experiences and generate income through subscriptions, tickets, partnerships, bookings, and merchandise.

I spoke a bit about myself as well, about my newsletter Zen Sounds, the positive aspects of self-publishing, what we can learn from the early 1980s experimental scene, what I’m listening to right now, and the current situation of independent music. (Spoiler alert: It’s pretty messed up but not completely hopeless.)

Full interview on TRPPN’s blog

Five things I’m currently listening to

Laurel Halo – “Belleville” (Awe, 2023)

Many years ago I booked Laurel Halo for a live synth set and a club DJ gig in the same night. The US-born artist has always moved between experimental forms of electronic dance music and more ambient, soundtracky stuff, so her recent foray into ambient jazz doesn’t come as a surprise. I always check for her newsletter and her NTS show, and I’ve discovered a ton of great music and books thanks to her impeccable taste.

Halo recently moved from Berlin, where she’d lived since the early 2010s, to Los Angeles. Some weeks ago, she announced her new album “Atlas” on her own independent label Awe, and the first single is called “Belleville”, after the iconic district in the Northeast of Paris. It’s a beautiful, Basinski-esque warped piano tune with weird vocal harmonies – courtesy of Coby Sey – stacked on top of them. Exactly the type of stuff I tend to play on repeat ad nauseam.

V/Z – “Suono Assente” (AD 93, 2023)

My favorite album of the summer. V/Z is the duo of Italo-British drummer Valentina Magaletti, who I’m sure my readers will know by now, and Japanese bass player Zongamin. The record manages to transport early 1980s London vibes into the present day, moving farther into instrumental post-punk and experimental dub territory, but leaning much more towards the former (while their Holy Tongue project with Al Wootton would be tipping towards the latter). Oh, and Marta Salogni has done a tremendous job on the mixing again.

Kode9 / Burial – “Infirmary / Unknown Summer” (Fabric Originals, 2023)

I’ve been a Burial fan for 15 years and religiously buying everything he puts out. On this new split 12-inch, he delivers a new tune with some of his key trademarks (melancholic synths, pitch-shifted vocals, flickering lighters), but instead of the beatless ambience of his last releases, rhythmically he goes for a softer, shimmering version of dub techno (think Yagya’s “Rigning” or the recently re-released “Voice From The Lake” album). In the last third of this nine-minute cut, Burial even quotes himself and employs some of the good old video-game garage snares, albeit in a pretty muted way. The Kode9 track on the A-side is a jazzy, sample-based footwork track with some jungle breaks thrown in towards the end. It’s interesting but I found myself mostly going directly for B-side vibes.

Paul Brändle Trio – “Paul, Rick and River” (Squama, 2023)

This album is not going to be released until September. I am not only including it here because, full disclosure, I was commissioned with writing the press bio, but mostly because it’s just a beautiful Modern Jazz guitar trio album in the vein of classic Grant Green, or even early Pat Metheny on ECM (think “Bright Size Life”, a record that Brändle ordered at his local drug store when he was just 14, a young guitar player in rural Bavaria deciding to focus on jazz after eight years of classical training). The vibe fits perfectly with slow summer life out here.

The first single “Awake” is available now to stream and download.

The Alchemist feat. Earl Sweatshirt & billy woods – “RIP Tracy” (ALC, 2023)

I’ve featured him quite a lot and don’t want to bore you with my ongoing praise of The Alchemist, but I just love literally everything he’s produced these past years. When he teams up with two of my absolute favorite rappers, there’s no way I’m not going to at least include this here. The whole “Flying High” EP is strong, but this lead tune is outstanding. These three play in a class of their own.

One more thing

Max Alper, “Lifers, Dayjobbers, and the Independently Wealthy: A Letter to a Former Student” (Klang Mag, 2023)

One night, professor and artist Max Alper (alias Peretsky) received an email from a student announcing the end of their career as an artist. That student, an experimental musician, found it too hard to make a living off their art, and decided that it was not worth the effort. Sounds familiar, anyone?

In his answer, Alper outlines three types of independent artists that will somehow be able to “make it” in the current music industry: The ones that are born into affluence, the ones that hustle seven days a week (and still barely break even), and the ones who get a day job. It’s this last group Alper’s focusing on in his letter, and he finds some interesting examples:

“Philip Glass (…) has gone on record to say ‘I expected to have a day job for the rest of my life’, having worked alongside fellow minimalist Steve Reich and sculptor Richard Serra as a moving company in the 1960s, as well as a cab driver up to (and during) the premiere of Einstein on the Beach in 1976. John Cage never stopped foraging for rare mushrooms and truffles – what was once his primary skill for sustenance during the Great Depression had transformed into his main source of income well into the peak of his career as a composer and public intellectual. Michelin Star restaurants in Manhattan paid top dollar for Cage’s occasional fungal findings upstate, enough to make sure he could spend the majority of his time composing and writing, sometimes with and or about mushrooms themselves. Charles Ives never stopped selling life insurance. Fenriz, of Norwegian Black Metal pioneers Darkthrone, never stopped being a postman and a union member. The list goes on.”

Brian Eno has stated that he’d urge aspiring artists to never get a “real job”, as it tends to eat up all your creativity and resources, and that might as well be true for some. Still, I think Alper has an important point: Getting a day job might feel like a failure to many, but that’s a toxic mindset to begin with. I’d really like to recommend this positive, reaffirming letter to anyone finding themselves complaining about the desolate state of the independent music industry.

Playlist Update

I’ve filled the Spotify playlist with 50 of my favorite tunes of the last 24 months, including some of the more recent discoveries mentioned above.

We’ll be in touch soon. Happy rest of summer!