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Post by jk on May 17, 2020 9:34:42 GMT -5
In early December 2014, I fell victim to an aggressive telephone scam that took me months to shake off. During that unpleasant time, I consoled myself with music I would never have indulged in otherwise. The principal examples were Double's "The Captain Of Her Heart", which I played incessantly; the complete officially released compositions of Adam Marsland ( here), which I highly recommend along with the accompanying stories; and a new music topic at the now-long-lost predecessor of my "hobby forum". Having become acquainted with some preposterously long pieces by Bull of Heaven (Neil Keener and the appropriately named Clayton Counts), I decided to devote my new topic to that extreme genre in those extreme times. Looking for a new topic to launch in the present extreme times, this one seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Here are Bull of Heaven to launch the proceedings with Even to the Edge of Doom. Lasting 24 hours, it's the perfect track for if you don't know what to do with your day. Their discography is a must-read.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_of_Heaven_(band)
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Post by kds on May 18, 2020 8:11:41 GMT -5
24 hours?
Wow, makes Supper's Ready seem like Little Deuce Coupe
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Post by jk on May 18, 2020 8:29:14 GMT -5
24 hours? Wow, makes Supper's Ready seem like Little Deuce Coupe I think you'll find a lot more happens in the much shorter "Supper's Ready" than in those 24 hours! So much of BoH's stuff seems to be about length rather than substance. They won't be returning to this topic. (R.I.P. Clayton Counts.)
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Post by Al S on May 18, 2020 17:58:34 GMT -5
Wow - did they record it to tape?
If so, must have been the mother of all reels!
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Post by jk on May 19, 2020 8:33:34 GMT -5
Wow - did they record it to tape? If so, must have been the mother of all reels! I suspect their 2014 opus 310: ΩΣPx0(2^18×5^18)p*k*k*k holds that record. According to Wikipedia, it lasts for 3,343,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years!
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Post by sneakypete77 on May 20, 2020 3:50:54 GMT -5
Jeebers H Christ John, how the hell did you find this outfit? Having checked out their discography they don’t seem to have had enough time on their hands to eat, sleep, shit or do much else for the entire duration. Does this signify complete dedication to their work, or does anyone think that maybe the pair of them were just taking the piss?
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Post by jk on May 20, 2020 6:21:18 GMT -5
Jeebers H Christ John, how the hell did you find this outfit? Having checked out their discography they don’t seem to have had enough time on their hands to eat, sleep, shit or do much else for the entire duration. Does this signify complete dedication to their work, or does anyone think that maybe the pair of them were just taking the piss? I found them in sheer desperation, as half-explained in the OP. To be quite honest, Peter, I think both--complete dedication and taking the piss. The two can co-exist quite comfortably--they do in my world, anyway. I've rediscovered other long stuff (including another 24-hour track) and discovered a few new ones, so stay tuned!
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Post by jk on May 22, 2020 7:36:21 GMT -5
Yesterday I listened to this night-long work by Max Richter while assembling a build-it-yourself chest of drawers. Despite being called Sleep, it really did help to keep me focused. Regrettably if understandably, it is divided up into 204 brief sections on YouTube, which makes for a very disjointed listening experience. This is what it sounds like at the half-way mark, about four hours in: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_(album)
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Post by John Manning on May 25, 2020 2:36:20 GMT -5
I have some excessively long versions of Gavin Bryars’ jesu’s Love Never Failed Me - very meditative … nothing on this score though! Thick as a Brick immediately came to mind but even that’s nowt by comparison.
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Post by jk on May 25, 2020 4:10:57 GMT -5
I have some excessively long versions of Gavin Bryars’ jesu’s Love Never Failed Me - very meditative … nothing on this score though! Thick as a Brick immediately came to mind but even that’s nowt by comparison. I love the original (on the other side of Bryars' original The Sinking of the Titanic) but the Tom Waits-heavy version doesn't grab me. I used to listen to Thick as a Brick a lot many years ago. Lovely album. Here's another day-long track, once again divided into two. Unlike the 24-hour Bull of Heaven piece, this one by The Flaming Lips actually seems to go somewhere! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Skies_H3
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Post by jk on Jun 5, 2020 6:42:11 GMT -5
Time to resume this thread... For those with a shorter span of attention, The Descent of Man by UK doom metal duo Sabazius is only eleven and a quarter hours long. According to the YouTube blurb, it was "[r]ecorded live to desk in one continuous session at Foel Studios, Wales over the weekend of 24th to 25th November 2012. Produced by Chris Fielding." riffipedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sabazius
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Post by jk on Jun 9, 2020 14:58:56 GMT -5
In terms of length, John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is peanuts compared to some of the Bull of Heaven stuff. Still, 639 years is not to be scoffed at. The piece began on 5 September (the composer's birthday) in 2001 and is scheduled to end on that day in 2640. Please read the linked wiki page before proceeding. This video shows the 11th sound change (impuls12), which took place on 5 August, 2011. There have been two sound changes since then, in 2012 and 2013. The next one is expected this coming September. But don't take my word for it--check the schedule for part one in the Wikipedia entry. The video length of 4:33 (a reference to Cage's famous "silent" piece) is a nice touch. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible
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Post by jk on Jun 15, 2020 4:41:24 GMT -5
Here's another I remember linking in the 2015 topic. Like Max Richter's Sleep, Robert Rich's Somnium can be played while the listener sleeps. As a wide-awake listening experience, it pushes at the frontiers of what one can take at a single sitting. Seven hours is long--the longest performed opera, Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, clocks in at something like four and a half hours of music. And it has a storyline--and two sizeable intermissions to boot. I listened to all of Somnium five years ago but not in one session! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rich_(musician)
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Post by jk on Sept 15, 2020 8:01:22 GMT -5
In terms of length, John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow as Possible) is peanuts compared to some of the Bull of Heaven stuff. Still, 639 years is not to be scoffed at. The piece began on 5 September (the composer's birthday) in 2001 and is scheduled to end on that day in 2640. Please read the linked wiki page before proceeding. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible The latest tonal additions (G♯3, E4) arrived ten days ago. You'll need good equipment (and keen ears) to hear them -- I have neither. (The YouTube comments are illuminating.)
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Post by jasonaustin on Sept 24, 2020 3:53:12 GMT -5
I was going to nominate "Up in Her Room", but now that seems like "Her Majesty" compared to the stuff posted here so far.
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Post by jk on Sept 24, 2020 4:08:02 GMT -5
I was going to nominate "Up in Her Room", but now that seems like "Her Majesty" compared to the stuff posted here so far. Hi Jason. Great to see you (back) in this section of the forum. A lot of what I've posted is about length rather than substance, so shorter, more listenable things like your Seeds track are most welcome! ("Supper's Ready" and Thick as a Brick were earlier suggestions.) Not sure about "Her Majesty" though.
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Post by jk on Nov 30, 2020 6:21:13 GMT -5
I lifted this one from my "hobby forum"... Back in 1966 or '67, I was invited by the influential avant-garde musician John Tilbury to join a group of young musicians at my local school of music for weekly sessions discussing avant-garde music and, eventually, performing works by avant-garde composers, including a piece by Cornelius Cardew called Autumn '60. I backed out after the first session. I'm not sure what it was I wanted in those days but it wasn't this... Curiously, I'm now drawn to examining some of the stuff I rejected at the time. Cornelius Cardew is a fascinating figure (see his wikipage and the Guardian article linked below). This is part of The Great Learning, a project lasting nearly five hours in a recent recording on Bolt Records (see below). The Scratch Orchestra, which performs it here, was instigated for that very purpose: This article is specifically about what is being performed in the video: www.newmusicnewcollege.org/cardew.htmlFor more general information on Cardew's life and controversial death see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelius_CardewSee also www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/dec/17/cornelius-cardew-music-guide and boltrecords.pl/4,extras/39,cornelius-cardew-the-great-learning,en.html (you'll have to cut and paste this one in, thanks to those commas)
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Post by drbeachboy (Dirk) on Nov 30, 2020 9:30:42 GMT -5
Geez, and I thought In a Gadda da Vida and the end chant of Hey Jude were incessantly long.
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Post by jk on Nov 30, 2020 15:28:20 GMT -5
Geez, and I thought In a Gadda da Vida and the end chant of Hey Jude were incessantly long. Haha yes. Well some of these "pieces" are about length, which tends to make them unlistenable. Others work hard to keep up the listener's interest and others still are about slowness, such as the Cage work. Cool to have you drop in, Doc. This isn't the most populated corner of the forum so all visitors are most welcome!
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Post by jk on Dec 1, 2020 9:09:45 GMT -5
I'd read much about the music of the American composer Morton Feldman (1926–1987) but the first time I actually heard it was, I have good reason to believe, in the early to mid 1980s, when he visited the Netherlands. In the interview he gave on Dutch radio he came across as a warm person with an infectious sense of humour. I believe the work broadcast after the interview, Crippled Symmetry for flute, percussion and piano (1983), was getting its first European performance. Unlike his I Ching-happy confrère John Cage, Feldman's one self-confessed debt to Oriental culture was Chinese food! A large man, he was prone to falling asleep at odd moments. Sadly, he only lived to be 61. His String Quartet II (also from 1983), which takes between four and (allegedly) six hours to perform, is illustrative of his later predilection for music of a very slow developmental pace. Here are the first two parts played by the Ives Ensemble: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton_Feldman
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Post by jk on Feb 17, 2021 17:00:57 GMT -5
I've come across the name Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji on numerous occasions over the years, mostly in connection with a massive work of his for solo piano called Opus clavicembalisticum. Poking around YouTube earlier this evening, I came across another piano work of his that's almost twice as long. To quote at length from the splendid YouTube blurb, Sequentia Cyclica is an "eight-hour cycle of 27 variations based on the 'Dies Irae' and Requiem Mass plainchants, performed by one of the composer's most dedicated modern exponents." The pianist Jonathan Powell "is uniquely equipped to undertake the mammoth task of learning one of Sorabji's most ambitious scores, having already given several public performances of the five-hour Opus clavicembalisticum which is, by comparison, almost a repertoire work, at least for dedicated followers of this most eccentric, quixotic, withdrawn and yet visionary of 20th-century composers." It was regarded by its composer as "the climax and crown of his work for the piano. ... Sorabji does not pretend to make the performer's life easy, writing across six staves at some points, and leaving much of the expression to be intuited by the pianist." The wiki page linked below makes fascinating reading. Sorabji for all his extravagances deserves to be far better known. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaikhosru_Shapurji_Sorabji
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Post by jk on Feb 22, 2021 9:38:03 GMT -5
Now here's one that made it into the original topic of this name back at my old "hobby" forum but that I'd forgotten all about until last night, when I spent some time looking around for potential very very long pieces of music. Longplayer is certainly well-named. With a planned duration of 1000 years, this "self-extending composition" is the brainchild of Jem Finer, a founding member of Celtic punk band The Pogues. The wiki page provides all the information you'll need. The video shows part of a 1000-minute live version performed in London's famous Roundhouse in September 2009. I once attended an 11-hour "Implosion" of pop music there in early 1972. I had just left home and was enjoying my new-found freedom. I'm afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself, leaping around like a lunatic. I guess we've all been there... Some of us? OK, just me then. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longplayer
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Post by Al S on Feb 22, 2021 16:43:04 GMT -5
Now here's one that made it into the original topic of this name back at my old "hobby" forum but that I'd forgotten all about until last night, when I spent some time looking around for potential very very long pieces of music. Longplayer is certainly well-named. With a planned duration of 1000 years, this "self-extending composition" is the brainchild of Jem Finer, a founding member of Celtic punk band The Pogues. The wiki page provides all the information you'll need. The video shows part of a 1000-minute live version performed in London's famous Roundhouse in September 2009. I once attended an 11-hour "Implosion" of pop music there in early 1972. I had just left home and was enjoying my new-found freedom. I'm afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself, leaping around like a lunatic. I guess we've all been there... Some of us? OK, just me then. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LongplayerImagine some rabid fanboy blogger, in the year 3000 or so, clearing their calendar so they can listen to the whole thing from start to finish.
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Post by jk on Feb 23, 2021 4:33:53 GMT -5
Longplayer is certainly well-named. With a planned duration of 1000 years, this "self-extending composition" is the brainchild of Jem Finer, a founding member of Celtic punk band The Pogues. The wiki page provides all the information you'll need. The video shows part of a 1000-minute live version performed in London's famous Roundhouse in September 2009. Imagine some rabid fanboy blogger, in the year 3000 or so, clearing their calendar so they can listen to the whole thing from start to finish. Ha, yes. Some of this stuff makes one swallow hard -- the year 2999, for goodness' sake! Edit: While I'm here to iron out some dodgy grammar, I'll take the opportunity to repost the video of Robert Rich's Somnium, which has done a runner from the original post ( here):
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Post by jk on Mar 22, 2021 17:50:53 GMT -5
Folks, you are hereby invited to dip into The History of Photography in Sound (1995–2001) by the English composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (born 1946). Lasting five and a half hours, it's said to be the second-longest piano work ever written (and the longest online). And Finnissy has written much, much more (see the jaw-dropping list of compositions linked on his wiki page). According to the YT blurb, THoPiS was recorded live at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (London) and performed as part of the New Lights Festival 2019. I like Tariq Khan's lone comment: "amazing performance. I was at the complete performance. Long and challenging day." It must have been challenging, not least for the pianist (and uploader), Annie Li. It makes almost superhuman demands on performer and listener alike: 1. Le demon de l'analogie 0:00 2. Le réveil de l'intraitable réalité 27:20 3. North American Spirituals 52:00 4. My parents' generation thought War meant something 1:17:02 5. Alkan - Paganini 1:53:04 6. Seventeen Immortal Homosexual Poets 2:06:56 7. Eadweard Muybridge - Edvard Munch 2:44:47 8. Kapitalistisch Realisme (met Sizilianische Männerakte en Bachsche Nachdichtungen) 3:10:06 9. Wachtend op de volgende uitbarsting van repressie en censuur 4:17:47 10. Unsere Afrikareise 4:32:43 11. Etched bright with sunlight 5:03:00 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Finnissy
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