Dead Birds Fly Again (for J)

8-17 April 2009

“Once he was showing me a book of twentieth-century art he liked, and there was a picture of an automated sculpture called Dead Birds Fly Again, a thing that whirled real dead birds around and around on a string, and he smiled and nodded, and I could see he felt the artist was a spiritual ancestor of some kind.” —William Gibson, “The Winter Market”

(The cover art is by Joseph Cornell, another artist, albeit a real one, who figures in Gibson’s fiction.)

If your heart breaks, whirl it around till the dizziness convinces it it’s alive…

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Track List

  1. 00:00 Gabriela Friðriksdóttir — “Tetralógia”
  2. 03:44 Zoe Keating — “Legions (War)”
  3. 09:40 Victoire — “A Door Into the Dark”
  4. 14:28 Alan Morse Davies [after Claude Debussy] — “Claire de Lune [Hotel Commodore Ensemble, 1927; remixed]”
  5. 20:13 Aram Khachaturian — “Gayane Ballet Suite, Adagio”
  6. 25:06 Arvo Pärt — “Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten”
  7. 29:18 Kalter — “Svalbard”
  8. 30:35 Murcof — “Ulysses”
  9. 33:32 Kyle Gabler — “Jelly [from the "World Of Goo" soundtrack]”
  10. 36:06 Philip Glass — “Pruit Igoe”
  11. 41:48 Victoire — “A Song For Arthur Russell”
  12. 47:13 Terry Riley — “Half-Wolf Dances Mad In Moonlight”
  13. 55:17 Marsen Jules — “Brouillard”
  14. 60:15 Eluder — “Moon Plea”
  15. 64:44 Gas — “Oktember”
  16. 68:54 Âme — “Rej [A Hundred Birds Mix]”