Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Scott Walker Shall Go to the Advanced Ball

A friend of mine sent me a link to this story about Radiohead's collaboration with children, which could certainly wind up interesting (especially if they are doing a cover of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part Two"), but the story below it is what really grabbed my attention:
Wait, another Scott Walker album? So soon?

Yep, so soon. It's not exactly The Drift II, but on September 24 in the UK, 4AD will release Scott Walker's And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And What Shall Go to the Ball? in a very limited, never-to-be-pressed again edition. Despite a mouthful of a title, ...the Ball? is a 25-minute-long, four-movement instrumental suite. It emerged out of Walker's score for a dance piece by choreographer Rafael Bonachela's dance company CandoCo. CandoCo, comprised of both able-bodied and physically disabled dancers, debuted the piece at Manchester, England's Contact Theatre in April.

Walker said of the music and its relationship to the unique troupe: "Apart from a slow movement given over to solitude, the music is full of edgy and staccato shapes or cuts, reflecting how we cut up the world around us as a consequence of the shape of our bodies. How much of a body does an intelligence need to be potentially socialised in an age of ever-developing AI [artificial intelligence]? This is but one of many questions that informed the approach to the project."
Worrying about AI is Advanced, and please not the picture.

No comments: