This is Max Neuhaus, quoted posthumously in a New York Times obituary this week by Bruce Weber, on his installation “New Work (Underground) 1978.”In the Times’s description, “it consisted of a perpetual throbbing growl arising from a loudspeaker beneath a grate in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan”:
The sound creates a space for itself with definite boundaries. You can only hear it within a few feet. But the main audible effect is not so much hearing it as hearing what it does to everything around it. It kind of slices up the sounds of that fountain splashing over there, for instance.
Read the full obituary at nytimes.com.
There are many songs and compositions and full-length recordings that serve as major precursors to electronic music’s full flowering in recent decades, and strong among them is “Games Without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel. Its thick yet restrained synth chords, super-minimal beat, and futurist lyrics stood out in 1980, when it appeared on Gabriel’s third solo album, for their technological rigor, and in retrospect suggest themselves easily for later remixing. That is now not only possible, but encouraged, as Gabriel has provided 36 individual parts, from guitar intros to Kate Bush‘s backing vocal to the whistling bridge to the wombling bass line, as part of Real World Remixed, which opens up the archives of Gabriel’s Real World studios for amateur noodling. As with past such projects, like the one Brian Eno (who worked on Gabriel’s final album as a member of Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) and David Byrne did for the anniversary of their My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the parts are often just as listenable as the whole, especially the Africa-tinged rhythm, and a special remixed drum track by Lord Jamar that was put together for a recent X Games promotion. Participants can upload their renditions as part of a competition.