Philip Glass vs. Hiphop
Boingboing.net reports: "A collection of old skool hip-hop tracks smushed together with the compositions of Philip Glass."
Philip Glass writes opera music which resembles bizarre performance art, such as the emotionless voices chanting "1, 2, 3, 4" in Einstein on the Beach, and the cold sythesizer and piano in Ankhnaten. It can make you feel like you are in an ivory tower, staring into the angsty depths of your vacant and dessicated soul; lost in thought -- spiraling into a hypnotic vortex in your own navel... crying out, what is the greater purpose? Is this why I exist? To suffer? Will I ever escape this endless loop of the same two seconds of sound? Will the higher purpose of this music become clear in the end? And then you realize, as Goethe said, "Man must strive, and in striving he must err."
Hearing this overlaid with vulgar, mysoginistic thugs using the "n" word and talking about cops, whores and record deals on the streets is disturbing. Yet each of them are energized and dramatized by the other. The pathos of Glass actually makes the rappers not seem superficial and thoughtless anymore. The gritty realism brings the opera down to earth. It would have been oddly fitting for the movie version of I, Robot had Will Smith done this. You're probably not going to save this to disk for the future, but it would be worth a listen. Try "Crystal Glass" specifically.
Comments
zifferent on Jul. 22, 2005 6:06 PM — Phillip Glass
Have you seen Koyaanisqatsi?
It's a pretty awesome flick and like nothing else you've probably ever seen (Unless you've seen any of the other Qatsi films.)
Phillip Glass does the music for it and it's absolutely mesmerizing.
Anonymous on Jul. 22, 2005 6:20 PM — Re: Phillip Glass
I haven't seen it, but I'd like to. From the website it seems quite trippy.
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