Honey For The Bears

Location Scouting: Original Soundtrack by Matthew Asprey

matthewasprey — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:26:44 +0000

In 2003 I wrote and directed four short films. The final film was Location Scouting, shot in black and white digital video, a kind of postmodern response to the Elvis travelogue Fun In Acapulco (1963). I composed a soundtrack for acoustic guitar. Here are two tracks:

“The Drowning” / Download the MP3 (320kbs) HERE

“End Titles” / Download the MP3 (320kbs) HERE

Thornleigh Serenade: Original Music by Matthew Asprey

matthewasprey — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:55:25 +0000

Back to my stockpile of compositions. ‘Thornleigh Serenade’ (2005) is a piece for flute and several acoustic guitars to be strummed Magnificent Ambersons-style below a young maiden’s window. It has an ersatz Middle-Eastern/Spanish vibe, totally incongruous for something composed in the sleepy Sydney suburb of Thornleigh, which I was about to flee for good.

The piece was partially inspired by Don Ellis Orchestra’s 1966 chart ‘33 222 1 222′. That tune is in the time signature of 19/8. My piece is mostly 4/4, but I threw in a couple of 19/8 bars in that same beat division for fun. It’s a pity my old guitar, bestowed on me years earlier by a Presbyterian minister, is a little out-of-tune….

Download the MP3 (320kbs) HERE

Last Walk, Kibble Park: Original Music by Matthew Asprey

matthewasprey — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:33:13 +0000

Another descent into the vault of previously unheard compositions. Here’s my demo, almost a decade old, of an original tune called ‘Last Walk, Kibble Park’. This one is a slow jazz composition with a few 14/4 and 6/4 sections. It’s sketched for piano trio.

Download the MP3 (320kbs) HERE.

[Illustration by Ruth Chew]

New Directions Roundup; Roberto Bolaño; Horacio Castellanos Moya

matthewasprey — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:00:55 +0000

Roberto Bolaño

This year I have been enjoying Spanish and Portugese translations from the New Directions Publishing Corp. That fine indie institution has been publishing Chris Andrews’ translations of the shorter works of Roberto Bolaño. I’m not speaking of the sprawling and wonderful Savage Detectives or the daunting 2666 – both translated by Natasha Wimmer for Farrar, Straus, Giroux – but powerful novellas such as By Night in Chile and Amulet and a less easily categorised fictional encyclopedia called Nazi Literature in the Americas.

I just bought the newly-translated Bolaño novel The Skating Rink, which was originally published in Spanish in 1993. I can hardly keep up: more translated Bolaño is forthcoming from New Directions (Monsieur Pain, Antwerp), and next month Melville House is publishing a book of Bolaño interviews by Marcela Valdes. And meanwhile posthumously published novels continue to appear in Spanish, including El tercer Reich (The Third Reich), which is due in March 2010. Wimmer has said she will probably be the translator of that one. In short, there will be plenty to keep English language readers happy for years to come.

But there are many other fine translated books in the New Directions catalogue. This week I read Guillermo Rosales‘ The Halfway House (transl. Anna Kushner), a bleak short novel about life in a boarding house for mentally ill Cuban exiles in Reagan-era Miami. I also ploughed through Brazillian Luis Fernando Verissimo’s macabre novella The Club of Angels (transl. Margaret Jull Costa), about a gastronomy club that engages in a kind of culinary Russian roulette. A while back I read Javier Marias‘ 1986 novel Man of Feeling (transl. M. Jull Costa) and am slowly moving through a book of his short stories called When I Was Mortal (transl. M. Jull Costa).

The most impressive work I’ve encountered lately is a short political novel called Senselessness (2004) by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver in 2008. Moya is from El Salvador. He now lives in exile, recently in Pittsburgh. Senselessness is a funny, bawdy, horrifying novel about war crimes in an unnamed Latin American country. The narrator is a writer hired to polish the prose of a long report commissioned by the Catholic Church on the atrocities of a military dictatorship. The book has some kinship with Bolaño’s By Night In Chile, which is the confession of a priest who sold out to the Pinochet regime. These works seek to make sense of the senselessness of recent Latin American history. They’re both terrific, important books that deserve a wider readership.

Horacio Castellanos Moya

Moya has written at least nine novels and five short story collections. New Directions have just published The She-Devil in the Mirror, another Katherine Silver translation. Biblioasis have published Dance with Snakes in the translation of Lee Paula Springer.

Words Without Borders has an extract from Senselessness as well as a story called ‘Snatch’ translated by Samantha Schnee.

Here are some interviews with Moya: Bookslut (October 2009); The Quarterly Conversation (Fall 2008); Next American City (17 April 2008); New Directions Blog (October 2009)

Trio Apoplectic

matthewasprey — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:26:47 +0000

A live Youtube video of the fantastic Sydney jazz band. This was filmed at the Sound Lounge in Newtown earlier this year.

Dave Jackson, alto saxophone

Abel Cross, bass

Alex Masso, drums

A track from their latest album, Sofia (Rufus Records), will be featured on the DVD-R component of the forthcoming zine I have edited called Sydney Samizdat.

Sydney Samizdat Issue #1: Story, Jazz, Short Film

matthewasprey — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:05:57 +0000

I am in the closing stages of preparing a limited edition zine that will be distributed freely around the Inner West of Sydney this November. The zine package will contain a 48-page chapbook and a DVD-R. It will be called Sydney Samizdat, in tribute to the courageous underground presses of the Soviet bloc.

Pronunciation: \ˈsä-mēz-ˌdät\
Function: noun
Etymology: Russian, from sam- self- + izdatel’stvo publishing house
Date: 1967
: a system in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and countries within its orbit by which government-suppressed literature was clandestinely printed and distributed; also : such literature

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/samizdat

In the tradition of samizdat publications, the reader is expected to pass on the package after 72 hours. The theme of issue #1 is ‘The Pleasures of Transgression’.

The issue will contain a new long story by myself set in Madrid and Marrakech called Red Hills of Africa, part of a larger story cycle in progress. The DVD-R will feature a jazz clip and a short film. The jazz is from Trio Apoplectic’s recent album Sofia (Rufus, 2009). The 28-minute short film is called Michael and Michelle (2009) and was written and directed by Matt Dibbayawan. I worked as a camera operator on the project earlier this year. It stars Stephen Peacocke and Bianca Bradey. Matt has already put the movie online via Vimeo and Youtube, so here it is:

Music on Gearwheels: Original Music by Matthew Asprey

matthewasprey — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:40:45 +0000

From my brief foray into Reichian minimalism…

Here are two unreleased mixes from a 2001 compositional project I call Music on Gearwheels. The concept was to create loops of slightly different beat lengths. The opening loops are synthesized harps running respectively at sixteen and seventeen beats. Naturally they immediately go out of sync and henceforth self-create a shifting musical texture. I made sure each loop was modally compatible. I lined up a dozen or so loops, including percussion and orchestral samples, and started them off. The composition was in the live mix, experimenting with juxtaposing different loops. Every mix had the potential to be a very different composition.

This is not my normal compositional technique, but merely an experiment in polyrhythm.

The master mix (#1.0):

Download the MP3 (192kbps, 5.9mb)

For purely illustrative purposes, here is another mix (#1.6) focusing exclusively on the harp loops:

Download the MP3 (192kbps, 5.9mb)

Tiger at the Gates: Original Score by Matthew Asprey

matthewasprey — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:13:10 +0000

For a change, here is something from my other life as a composer. I have a backlog of hundreds of musical pieces, some of which I may upload to the blog in coming months.

Back in 2002 I played King Priam in a university production of Jean Giraudoux’s Tiger at the Gates (Christopher Fry’s translation of La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu). I was also able to indulge my temporary aspiration to be the next Miklós Rózsa by composing and recording a score of incidental music for this epic play of the events leading to the Trojan War.

Here is my overture to the play, unheard since the original production. The recording is not of the highest fidelity, and intentionally shrill during the martial introduction. But once the guitar and flute kick in (picture an ancient Trojan temple, indolent beauties in flowing robes, grapes, etc) things are a lot more listenable.

Download the MP3 by right-clicking and saving here

The fiction of Anthony Burgess: The Wanting Seed (1962)

matthewasprey — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:29:30 +0000

Gallery of editions

UK first edition (Heinemann, 1962)

US first edition (Norton, 1963)

UK paperback (Pan, 1965)

US paperback (Ballantine, 1964)

US paperback (Norton, 1976)

US paperback (date and publisher unknown)

UK paperback (Penguin, date unknown)

UK paperback (date and publisher unknown)

Paperback (unknown)

US paperback (Norton, 1996)

Future Imperfect, an edition containing The Wanting Seed and 1985 (1979). UK paperback (Vintage, 1994)

Italian translations (tr. Valentino de Carlo) (date unknown)

Polish translation (2003)

Why Can’t The English? The Decline of UK Book Production (Part II)

matthewasprey — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 06:27:43 +0000

To illustrate my point in the previous post, here is a direct comparison between two original hardcover editions of Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel Barney’s Version. On the left is the UK edition published by Chatto & Windus (GBP£16.99). On the right, the US edition published by Alfred A. Knopf (US$25). Both C&W and Knopf are subsidaries of the Random House juggernaut. The photographs were taken in September 2009.

There are no design credits attributed to either the UK dustjacket (which is based on a music roll supplied by the Cambridge Pianola Company) or the interior design/typesetting. The book was printed and bound by ‘Mackays of Chatham PLC’. It is a first edition.

The US dustjacket was designed by Chip Kidd (using a photograph by John Scully); the interior design (typeset in Janson) is by Dorothy Schmiderer Baker. The book was printed and bound by The Haddon Craftsmen, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. It is a first edition, second printing (from December, 1997, the same month as the first printing).

The UK copyright page states: “Papers used by Random House UK Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests.” This is all very nice for the environment, but it has meant that the paper is not only stiff (it won’t lie flat) and unattractive, but acidic. As a result, in twelve years the UK edition has very drastically browned at the edges:

The funny thing is that in December of 1997, GBP£16.99 was equal to US$28.20 (source: http://www.xe.com/ict/). So the folks in the UK were spending a little bit more for an inferior edition that, just twelve years later, looks antiquarian. The US edition, on the other hand, still looks as if brand new from the printer.