The penguinremixed.co.uk contest continues apace, with farflung, computer-enabled correspondents uploading remixed (more to the point, song-ified) edits of samples from Penguin audiobooks. Among the better recent ones is “Left Right Left,” credited to Quixotic (link). Despite the musician’s name, this is not a Cervantes megamix, it’s a segment of Jules Verne‘s Around the World in 80 Days, specifically the author’s obsessive-compulsive counting of steps and keeping track of the passage of time, set against a rattling drum’n’bass score.
Month: June 2005
Folk Minimalist MP3
Charlie Schmidt‘s album Xanthe Terra, released this week on the Strange Attractors label, is very much in the mode of the late John Fahey, who was reportedly Schmidt’s friend and mentor. (Their close association reportedly resulted in some of the student’s recordings being misattributed to the teacher.) Schmidt, like Fahey, plays a disarmingly lilting brand of acoustic guitar, his emphasis, if that word’s even appropriate to music this soft, less on the lead or the rhythm than on the churning cloud of string formations in between. Strange Attractors has made one of the album’s tracks, “Acidalia Planitia,” available for free download (MP3). It’s a hypnotic piece, kept aloft by Schmidt’s silken playing, with clear echoes of why Fahey, for all his primitivism, remains a minimalist touchstone for some many ambient-minded futurists, from Jim O’Rourke to Greg Davis to Joseph Hammer. More info at strange-attractors.com.
Visual Music @ MOCA, L.A.
The Museum of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles ended its Visual Music exhibit on May 23, 2005, closing the same weekend that George Lucas debuted his latest Star Wars film, The Revenge of the Sith. It’s unfortunate that MOCA couldn’t have extended the exhibit, and not only because it was a fascinating display of sounds and images, loaded with information about the artists who inhabit the realm between the two.
MOCA could have capitalized on the curiousity of Sith-goers intrigued by the movie’s so-called “opera” sequence, which Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, aptly described as “a cross between Cirque de Soleil and an ultrasound scan of an unborn baby.” In the Lucas movie, members of the Imperial Senate are seen entering a grand hall, sort of like Lincoln Center expanded to the dimensions of Madison Square Garden (or, in Los Angeles terms, the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall, which sits just a block down the steet from MOCA, enlarged to fit the footprint of the Staples Center). Lucas’ Sith opera (that is, the CGI opera within his CGI space opera) looks like some enormous blob rippling in time with the music, a three-story-high, three-dimensional screen saver.
Attendees of MOCA’s Visual Music exhibit came to understand that such audio-visual synaesthetic art (that is, art that confuses or conflates various senses) has been created in a galaxy much closer to home, and that in technological terms such experiments were underway a surprisingly long, long time ago. MOCA displayed early-20th-century filmmakers’ efforts to explore what sound “looked like,” including that of Los Angeles natives John and James Whitney (born 1917 and 1921, respectively), who worked both with raw footage and, later, with computer-generated material. Also prominent in Visual Music is German artist Oskar Fischinger, born in 1900, whose abstract shorts prefigured Walt Disney’s Fantasia, on which he worked. Fischinger’s visual filigrees, swooping curves and darting lines, all precisely timed to various classical music pieces, also oddly resemble the contorted shapes of Gehry’s nearby concert hall.
I had the opportunity to visit the exhibit twice at MOCA: once with a friend, to get the lay of the land, and a second time alone, during which I watched all the movies and read the text I’d missed the first time around. It really didn’t feel like revisiting a temporary show so much as going back to a permanent exhibit. MOCA’s Visual Music, which next moves to Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, doesn’t just validate synaesthesia as a substantial subject; it suggests itself as a prototype for a museum, like the Exploratorium with adults, rather than children, as its intended audience. As sound art becomes a more common fixture in galleries and museums, curators will no doubt refer back to Visual Music as a role model, in particular for how it balances a wide range of media and ably sums up complex ideas in plain language, thus celebrating the idea rather than the complexity.
Moving images occupied much of the MOCA exhibit. There were several hours’ worth playing simultaneously in various rooms (not counting, of course, the numerous works that took the form of short, infinite loops). There were many still images, both paintings and photographs, though anyone who’s been distracted by a television in a bar knows that familiar works by Kandinsky, Man Ray, Klee and Stieglitz aren’t going to hold your attention for long when the astounding “color organs” of Thomas Wilfred (born 1889) are nearby, projecting milky visions that move like dreams.
Among the more contemporary artists included were Cindy Bernard and Joseph Hammer. Bernard’s warm, slowly shifting color fields were accompanied by Hammer’s music. The piece was dedicated to, and perhaps drew from works by, John Fahey, Ennio Morricone, Bernard Hermann, Mike Watt and others. A long hallway painted by Jim Hodges (the piece is titled “Corridor”) was striped with bright vertical lines of colors, like one of designer Paul Smith’s signature fabrics (a couch in the downstairs MOCA library also has this kind of design, by coincidence); its soundtrack was a montage of song snippets, edited with a similar interest in bright, narrow slices.
The exhibit opens at the Hirshhorn on June 23, and will run there through September 11. The Hirshhorn has several special events scheduled, featuring artists Gary Panter, Lee Pembleton, Leo Villareal, Joshua White and others. (MOCA sponsored a number of events, including musicians Throbbing Gristle, William Basinski, James Elaine, Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider.) There’s also a sizable and richly illustated book, Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900 (Thames and Hudson), with essays by the exhibit’s curators, Kerry Brougher, Jeremy Strick, Ari Wiseman and Judith K. Zilczer, and by musicologist Olivia Mattis. More info here: moca.org, hirshhorn.si.edu.
In Print
Quick note about some things I’ve published recently in print, which means there isn’t much to link to. … (1) I have a piece in the new issue of Make magazine (vol. 02) about these keen “piggyback” audio plugs that double your mixer’s inputs (10 bucks at RadioShack). Make is a great new quarterly magazine about do-it-yourself technology. More info at makezine.com. … (2) The new issue of e|i magazine, where I’m a contributing editor, is out (issue four, spring 2005). I’ve got a fairly good-sized interview with gregarious live-improv electronic-musician Thomas Dimuzio, which includes comments from some of his collaborators: Wobbly (aka Jon Leidecker), Chris Cutler (of Henry Cow) and Mark Hosler (of Negativland, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year). I interviewed Hosler in Dimuzio’s studio while they were recording Hosler’s first ever solo album, Thigmotactic. I also have a small heap of CD reviews in the issue: Aeroc‘s Viscous Solids (Ghostly International), Daedelus‘ Of Snowdonia (Plug Research), Egg‘s Don’t Postpone Joy (Mutek), Fibla‘s Lent (Spark), Freeform‘s Wildcat (Skam), Andrey Kiritchenko‘s Bees & Honey (Zeromoon), Laminar‘s Nozzle (Asphodel), Fabrice LG‘s My 4 Stars (Kanzleramt), Lunchbox‘s Anyways (The Agriculture), Milosh‘s You Make Me Feel (Plug Research), Mindmap‘s Plochy (AFE), Mouse on Mars‘ Radical Connector (Thrill Jockey), Rapoon‘s Dream Circle (X-ZF), Martin Siewert‘s No Need to Be Lonesome (Mosz), V. / Ultra Milkmaids‘ Drone + Unease (Zeromoon) and three various-artists compilations, BBQ Beets 2 (The Agriculture), Difficult Easy Listening (Nonplace) and Station (Ai). In brief, the key picks of that litter are the BBQ Beets 2 compilation of dub-seasoned downtempo, with tracks by David Last, DJ Olive and others; two delectable hodgepodges of fragments, the Freeform and the Daedelus; and the Aeroc, a moody soundscape as scary as any horror score. The least impressive of the batch is Mouse on Mars’ Radical Connector, which trades the group’s once glistening electronica for generic industrial pop. More info at ei-mag.com. All those pieces will eventually find their way onto Disquiet.com, the Dimuzio in an extended version, once the issue of the print magazine has been out long enough to have become fish wrap.
Tangents (post-colonial, Rochberg, Latinate)
Quick Links: (1) Via boingboing.net, using a driving interface as a musical instrument (link). Via gizmodo.com, (2) a photo-sensitive theremin (link) and (3) a touch-sensitive interface from JazzMutant/Cycling ’74 (link). … Good Reads: (1) Alex Ross in the New Yorker (June 6, 2005) on “The Record Effect,” or “How technology has transformed the sound of music.” It’s largely a review of recent books on the subject of the technological mediation of classical music. … (2) Ann Midgette in today’s New York Times (“Play It Again, Vladimir [via Computer]“) on an under-covered direction in computer music: “Today scientists around the world are turning computers on human performance, seeking to quantify an element once thought to be intangible: the expressivity of a human artist.” … (3) Also in today’s Times, “Post-Colonial Electronica,” about the Kinshasa, Congo-based group Konono No. 1, which has been together for 30 years: “To make its traditional trance music heard above the roar of the traffic-choked streets, it amplifies its toylike likembes, or thumb pianos, using pick-up microphones made from the magnets in car alternators and loudspeakers left behind by Belgian colonists in 1960. The squalling feedback this lo-fi system produces is worked into the polyrhythmic drumming and call-and-response chanting to create a brutal, neotraditional genre Kinshasa’s musicians call tradi-moderne.” … (4) Igloomag.com has been running reports from the MUTEK festival in Montreal this weekend: parts 1 and 2.
… Not So Good Read: A New York Times review on Friday (link) of the current Tom Phillips art exhibit in Manhattan opens with a broad remark about his various careers (“artist, writer and composer”), but neglects to mention that of teacher. Among his students was Brian Eno, several of whose albums he provided cover art to, including Another Green World (see “How We Met: Brian Eno & Tom Phillips,” here). The review also presents some obnoxious assumptions about the limited potential of collage and of comic books. … New Releases: Among albums due out this week are: (1) Bochum Welt‘s Elan (Fuzzy Box), a collaboration between Gianluigi Di Costanzo and Brian Salter. … (2) Tuba virtuoso Oren Marshall releases Introduction to the Story of Spedy Sponda Part One: In a Silent Room (Slowfoot). … (3) Further evidence that reality has outpaced both Saturday Night Live and Mad magazine, Kraftwerk releases a live album, whatever that means, Minimum Maximum (Astralwerks). … (4) Charlie Schmidt‘s Xanthe Terre (Strange Attractors) is a solo guitar album in the meditative, circular, deeply Zen manner of John Fahey, with whom Schmidt worked (perhaps too closely, as some recordings attributed to Fahey may actually have been Schmidt). … (5) The 4 Women No Cry Vol. 1 compilation (Monika) features Rosario Blefari, Tusia Beridze, Eglantine Gouzy and Catarina Pratter; a 12″ has remixes by B. Fleischmann, Gustavo Lamas, Ark and Post Industrial Boys. … More new-release info at brainwashed.com/releases.
… R.I.P: Composer George Rochberg (b. 1918), avant-garde composer whose catalog includes the collage “Contra Mortem et Tempus” (1965), comprising “fragments from works by Pierre Boulez, Berio, Varese and Ives,” according to the New York Times obituary (link). Also see Kyle Gann‘s PostClassic entry. … Set List: This is what was playing in the lounge at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles during its recent Visual Music exhibit: Alexander Scriabin‘s Piano Sonata no. 7 (White Mass) and Piano Sonata no. 9 (Black Mass); Mikalojus Ciurlionis‘ The Sea; Arnold Schoenberg‘s 5 Orchestral Pieces, op. 16, and Die Gluckliche Hand, op. 18, Sir Arthur Bliss‘ A Colour Symphony, Edgard Varese‘s Arcana, Iannis Xenakis‘ Concret PH, Olivier Messiaen‘s Chronochromie, Michael Torke‘s Ecstatic Orange, Bright Blue Music. More on the exhibit in Disquiet’s field notes (link).
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Black Flag Damaged (Glochids Edit) is a kind of fan fiction remix of Black Flag, 15 of the punk band’s songs whittled down to 6 minutes total. It’s self-released. I picked up my copy at the Alternative Press Expo held earlier this spring in San Francisco. … (2) Keith Fullerton Whitman‘s Multiples (Kranky) is on the minimalist end of the prolific performer-composer’s personal continuum, slow-motion, often drone-oriented work, reportedly put together on the vintage equipment at the studios of Harvard University. Current fave: “Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar and Computer” (aka track 5). … (3) The Jackson 5‘s “I Want You Back (Z-Trip Remix)” off the new Motown Remixed is a pleasant surprise, as is much of the album. This is no big-beat shuffle, no matter of laying heavy of-the-moment dance tracks below hallowed favorites. To the contrary, Z-Trip’s edit sounds considerably less commercial than the original, looser and groovier. … (4) Kampion‘s free download “Routes,” a Latinate bit of computer-hewn instrumental hip-hop (and the subject of the May 30 Disquiet Downstream entry).
… Quote of the Week: “When you say sound artist … it’s … people like me … and Jim Tenney, and certain other people, we are more in the American experimental tradition than the European avant-garde. And the distinction is the avant-garde takes and sort of moves ahead what has already occurred; it’s just a further development of that, whereas experimental music comes from a different source.” That’s composer Alvin Lucier speaking with musician Stephen Vitiello on volume one of The Relay Project, the “magazine you listen to.” Vitiello had asked Lucier whether he distinguished himself as “a composer versus a sound artist.” More information at therelayproject.com.