[174.3] MORE BLOGGING MUSOS

As the blogosphere expands, so does the coverage of ‘ad-extra music’ (as somebody curiously described NFE’s range of interests the other day). The following are trailed by the very readable and playable persona of Ben Wolfson… whose waste.typepad is about to go into my permanent links.

First off, there's Mike Borella's Avant Music News: suitably electic updates on "music that is challenging, interesting, different, progressive, introspective, or just plain weird." Amen to that little list...

Next up, an excellent comment-and-analysis journal from Greg Sandow, "critic, composer, and, for lack of a better word, consultant; I also teach at The Juilliard..." Its focus is 'the future of classical music', explored in a series of bite-sized shards of open-hearted wisdom.

The host site, by the way, is ArtsJournal.Com, a daily digest of culture and ideas. It has seven other in-house writers, all of fine pedigree. A new one, I'm pleased to report, is erudite controversialist Kyle Gann, who pitches in with PostClassic: music after the fact. Essential reading.

AJMusic is here, too...

Then there's New Music Box, referenced by NFE some time ago, and an essential corner of the internet for those of us who care. Gann and Wolfson read it, naturally.

One I hadn't come across before is the graphics intensive ProgressiveEars, which covers that decidedly mixed bag of goodies (and a few baddies) known as prog rock. Not a genre -- or a visual style -- which automatically presses my buttons, I have to say. But it is well archived here, and I can't claim to be wholly innocent, counting (as I do) early Yes and all things King Crimson among my favoured listening experiences.

(Sorry Kyle, I also love Boulez's 'Le Marteau sans maitre' and Carter's 'Double Concerto', too.)

And lest you think that NFE is only or mainly focussed on the London catchment area, here's the encyclopaedic Chicago scene... not far from my in-laws, as it happens.