Computer Love :: Balanescu Quartet

I'm a little obsessed with this song lately. I heard it first during Jane Hawley's Contact Improvisation class. She is Exhibit No. 1 for the theory in my head about getting great music from people who dance for a living.

I wrote down "Balanescu Quartet - Computer Love" in my journal, but then forgot about it until I saw the CD cover again on the fabulous CD table in the kitchen of Matthew, Parker and Co. I call the table fabulous because though it is only a tiny end table, it has a habit of housing CDs by nifty, amazing and eccentric artists (most of which I'd never heard before) and of filling the dear family's kitchen with wonderful music. This might sound sappy, but I LOVE their CD table! It's like a little alter that we bow to operate and offer plastic discs to and in exchange, it blesses the kitchen with tasty grooves.

So there was "Balanescu Quartet: Possessed" on top of the CD stack and I said, "Oh! I know this." Parker chimed in and we gushed and waxed about it while we listened. When I'd heard it in the dance studio, it was after class had finished and no one was really listening to the music - they were dancing, or putting on their shoes and talking to each other. But in the kitchen we wanted the music to be part of the evening, so we listened. I was so hypnotized by it that I don't remember helping with dinner (I hope I did). But I do remember being very moved by the experience and by the fact that I had such wonderful company to share it with. We put the song on repeat and it flavored our dinner and our conversation and I went to sleep humming the music that night.



The whole album is made up of Kraftwerk songs that Balanescu and his cohorts reworked for friggin' string quartet!

I wonder what it would be like to do arrange it for bells, so the sound would be metalic, or a choral arrangement - so that the sounds would be living. Hmmm. I'm gonna go make dinner and dance around MY kitchen some more.