Image by Adam Bielaws­ki, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

This is the kind of thing we usu­al­ly just men­tion on our Twit­ter stream. But per­haps you’re not fol­low­ing us there, and we did­n’t want you to miss this.…

In 2003, David Bowie rum­maged through his col­lec­tion of 2500 vinyl LPs and cre­at­ed a list of his 25 favorite albums for Van­i­ty Fair. The list came pref­aced by these (and oth­er) words:

If you can pos­si­bly get your hands on any of these, I guar­an­tee you evenings of lis­ten­ing plea­sure, and you will encour­age a new high-mind­ed cir­cle of friends, although one or two choic­es will lead some of your old pals to think you com­plete­ly barmy. So, with­out chronol­o­gy, genre, or rea­son, here­with, in no par­tic­u­lar order, 25 albums that could change your rep­u­ta­tion.

Just as eclec­tic as you might expect, the list rec­om­mends every­thing from blues tunes by John Lee Hook­er, min­i­mal­ist com­po­si­tions by Steve Reich, avant garde rock by The Vel­vet Under­ground, elec­tron­ic music by The Elec­trosoniks, psy­che­del­ic folk music by The Incred­i­ble String Band, and the last works of Richard Strauss. You can view a copy of Bowie’s list here (and per­haps cou­ple it with his list of 100 Favorite Books).

And despite his con­cerns about find­ing these albums in sup­ply, you can stream most of his favorite albums for free on Spo­ti­fy using the playlist above. (Yes, we got a lit­tle inspired and pulled it togeth­er.) If you need the soft­ware, down­load it here.

via @stevesilberman

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

Kurt Cobain Lists His 50 Favorite Albums: Fea­tures LPs by David Bowie, Pub­lic Ene­my & More

We’re mov­ing back in time, before the mp3 play­er and the CD. We’re going back to the ana­log age, a moment when the shel­lac (and lat­er vinyl) record reigned supreme. The month is June 1937. And the short film you’re watch­ing is “Record Mak­ing with Duke Elling­ton and His Orches­tra.”  How the film came into being was described in the July 1937 edi­tion of Melody News:

Last month, a crew of cam­era­men, elec­tri­cians and tech­ni­cians from the Para­mount film com­pa­ny set up their para­pher­na­lia in the record­ing stu­dios of Mas­ter Records, Inc. for the pur­pose of gath­er­ing ‘loca­tion’ scenes for a movie short, now in pro­duc­tion, show­ing how phono­graph records are pro­duced and man­u­fac­tured. Duke Elling­ton and his orches­tra was employed for the stu­dio scenes, with Ivie Ander­son doing the vocals.

Nar­rat­ed by Alois Havril­la, a pio­neer radio announc­er, the film shows you how records were actu­al­ly record­ed, plat­ed and pressed. It’s a great rel­ic from the shellac/vinyl era, which you will want to cou­ple with this 1956 vinyl tuto­r­i­al from RCA Vic­tor.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

How Film Was Made in 1958: A Kodak Nos­tal­gia Moment

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Where did mod­ern elec­tron­ic music come from? What­ev­er the genre markers—EDM, house, glitch, dub­step, ambient—any dis­cus­sion of the his­to­ry will inevitably pay homage to a few found­ing names: Bri­an Eno, Kraftwerk, Afri­ka Bam­baataa, syn­the­siz­er inven­tor Robert Moog, Daft Punk’s per­son­al hero Gior­gio Moroder, super­star DJs Lar­ry Lev­an and Frankie Knuck­les… the list could go on. In most main­stream dis­cus­sions, it will often leave out the name Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. And yet, though he decid­ed­ly did not make dance music, no his­to­ry of elec­tron­i­ca writ large is com­plete with­out him, some­thing film­mak­er Iara Lee rec­og­nized when she fea­tured him promi­nent­ly in her 1999 elec­tron­i­ca doc­u­men­tary Mod­u­la­tions.

In an intro­duc­tion to Lee’s tran­scribed inter­view with Stock­hausen, James Wes­ley John­son describes the exper­i­men­tal Ger­man elec­tron­ic com­pos­er and the­o­rist as “his own best spokesman,” for the way he “describes the the­o­ret­i­cal under­pin­nings of his work with a sim­ple clar­i­ty which belies its com­plex­i­ty.”

Try­ing to describe Stock­hausen’s work proves dif­fi­cult, since “he’s always exper­i­ment­ing.” Any­one who thinks they “ ‘know’ what to expect from him,” John­son remarks, is “des­tined to be sur­prised by fur­ther muta­tions.”

Stock­hausen, who died in 2007, began his career as a stu­dent in the 1950s, study­ing under influ­en­tial French com­pos­er Olivi­er Mes­si­aen while devel­op­ing his own con­cept of musi­cal spa­tial­iza­tion. Through­out the fifties and six­ties, he pio­neered live per­for­mance and record­ed com­po­si­tions with tape recorders, micro­phones, ring mod­u­la­tors, Ham­mond Organ, and oth­er ana­log elec­tron­ic devices, along with tra­di­tion­al instru­ments, voice, and musique con­crete tech­niques.

Stock­hausen com­bined—writes Ed Chang at the Stock­hausen blog Sounds in Space—the results of his exper­i­men­ta­tion with the “har­mon­i­cal­ly-lib­er­at­ing meth­ods of the 2nd Vien­nese School (basi­cal­ly Arnold Schön­berg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who explored the chro­mat­ic scale through the use of unique ordered tone rows and inter­vals).” This fusion gave rise to the lec­ture at the top of the post, deliv­ered at the Oxford Union in Eng­land on May 6th, 1972, in which Stock­hausen lays out his “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music.” They are as fol­lows:

1. Uni­fied Time Struc­tur­ing
2. Split­ting of the Sound
3. Mul­ti-Lay­ered Spa­tial Com­po­si­tion
4. Equal­i­ty of Sound and Noise

Chang pro­vides a detailed, tech­ni­cal sum­ma­ry of each point. Much more enter­tain­ing, how­ev­er, is watch­ing the eccen­tric and enthu­si­as­tic Stock­hausen elab­o­rate his the­o­ry. “One might ask,” he says at the open­ing of his lec­ture, “why are [the four cri­te­ria] inter­est­ing, as there is elec­tron­ic music, and every­body can make up his mind about what to think about this music?” His answer is clas­sic Stockhausen—cryptic, ellip­ti­cal, intrigu­ing­ly vague yet self-assured:

New means change the method; new meth­ods change the expe­ri­ence, and new expe­ri­ences change man. When­ev­er we hear the sounds we are changed: we are no longer the same after hear­ing cer­tain sounds, and this is the more the case when we hear orga­nized sounds, sounds orga­nized by anoth­er human being: music.

Thus he launch­es into his fascinating—if not always ful­ly comprehensible—theory of music as “orga­nized sound,” with ani­mat­ed ges­tures and sev­er­al exam­ples from his own com­po­si­tion from the late 50s, Kon­tak­te. “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” is the fifth in a long series of lec­tures Stock­hausen deliv­ered in Lon­don that year. If you have any inter­est in music the­o­ry, avant-garde com­po­si­tion, or in how elec­tron­ic music—and hence how our world—came to sound the way it does, you should not miss these. You can watch them all on Youtube (or below) or at Ubuweb. If you can­not sit in front of the screen and watch Stock­hausen’s strange­ly com­pelling deliv­ery, you can also down­load a PDF of a pub­lished ver­sion of “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” at Mono­skop.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

It’s com­mon to feel like we know our artists, writ­ers, musi­cians, actors… we want so bad­ly to touch their lives in some way, as their lives touch ours. This over­whelm­ing desire is respon­si­ble for a huge mar­ket share of our mass media, from the most taste­less tabloid hit jobs to the most respect­ful long­form essays. Since David Bowie’s pass­ing, we’ve seen no short­age of the lat­ter, and thank­ful­ly lit­tle of the for­mer.

Vul­ture has col­lect­ed some of the best of these online trib­ute arti­cles and obit­u­ar­ies, and one in particular—Judy Berman’s “We Always Knew Who David Bowie Real­ly Was”—has res­onat­ed with me. Berman cuts through “all the clichés about how he was a chameleon or a shape-shifter or opaque or unknow­able” and shows some of the ways Bowie made him­self inti­mate­ly avail­able in his work.

Bowie’s self-rev­e­la­tion by way of the­atrics and cos­tume changes resem­bles the less intel­lec­tu­al, more emo­tion­al, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of his friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor Fred­die Mer­cury. Just as musi­cians around the world cel­e­brate, and mourn, Bowie now, he per­formed a sim­i­lar ser­vice for Mer­cury 24 years ago at Lon­don’s Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um for an audi­ence of 72,000 peo­ple, along with the remain­ing mem­bers of Queen and a full ros­ter of super­stars. Bowie did four songs in total, but the most poignant was cer­tain­ly “Under Pres­sure,” which he’d com­posed with Mer­cury 11 years ear­li­er. The song became, of course, a mas­sive hit (twice over, thanks to Vanil­la Ice’s appro­pri­a­tion). It’s wrench­ing lyrics also gave us yet more insight into Bowie’s per­son­al­i­ty: his fears, his sense, as Berman writes, “of how fleet­ing and insignif­i­cant one human life is in the grand scheme of the uni­verse,” and his defi­ance in the face of that knowl­edge.

In the video at the top of the post, you can see Bowie, Annie Lennox, John Dea­con, Roger Tay­lor, and Bri­an May rehears­ing “Under Pres­sure” for the Mer­cury trib­ute, with an audi­ence of just them­selves and a few crew peo­ple. Bowie has one of his regret­tably ubiq­ui­tous cig­a­rettes in hand and an enor­mous grin on his face as he watch­es Lennox belt out Mer­cury’s parts. The per­for­mance on show day, above, is pow­er­ful and pitch per­fect, but the loose, infor­mal rehearsal footage is more of a treat for those of us eager for as much of the unguard­ed Bowie as we can get. For even more stripped-down, behind-the-scenes Bowie, lis­ten to an a cap­pel­la ver­sion of “Under Pres­sure” with Mer­cury, and learn all about how that song came to be.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

The Mak­ing of Queen and David Bowie’s 1981 Hit “Under Pres­sure”: Demos, Stu­dio Ses­sions & More

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness