Mister Saturday Night

As has become tradition, Eamon and I attempt to wrap a bow around the musical year that was with our Best Of lists. As usual, I had a hard time limiting my list to things that came out in 2013, or even limiting it to just music; that Turrell piece made me feel like I’d just heard a symphony, and Herbie Hancock’s use of the vocoder on Sunlight is still yet to be matched. (No matter how hard Daft Punk tried this year.)

Dirg Gerner’s Dirg Gerner EP on Eglo
I can’t say enough about this record. Beautiful melody after beautiful melody, warm production, amazing songs. I played it and played it, but it never got old.

James Turrell’s Aten Reign at the Guggenheim
Last year I waxed on about Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach. At the time Wilson said, “You don’t have to understand anything. It’s a work where you can go and get lost. That’s the idea.”

Aten Reign, James Turrell’s all-encompassing light installation inside the Guggenheim rotunda, was the visual art equivalent. There was no focal point, which is kind of like having an opera with no plot. It was beautiful and impossible to capture in photo, video or anything else – nothing but experience. A total inspiration in terms of what I want for our parties.

A little note: This show is over, but Turrell has a career retrospective at the LACMA until early April, and here’s a map of all of his installations around the world.
. . . Read on