My first gallery job at Greene Naftali Gallery was awesome but overwhelming as a full-time grad student and having only been in NYC for less than 6 months. My first month on the job I had to help plan a private Armory Show party, major gallery artist Paul Chan was on the cover of the New York Times for the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Dakis Joannou kept calling and I’m pretty sure Carol Greene was  selling a crazy expensive Marcel Broodthaers piece on the secondary market.  Highlight: B-Lo Art Star Tony Conrad stable-a-fying with the gallery and his pickled film jars included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial!

Paul Chan's "1st Light" (2005)

Interestingly enough, I did a fab. final project on Paul Chan for my Contemporary Art History course with Dr. Steven Zucker AND got to hang out with Tony Conrad again at a Symposium: Beyond/In Western New York 2010 at the AKAG in early 2009.  And now, I’m really looking forward to Dakis Joannou’s New Museum of Contemporary Art showcase of his vast collection with Jeff Koons, as the guest curator in 2010!

From left, Lietta Joannou, Jeff Koons, Dakis Joannou and Justine Koons in a 2003 photograph. Mr. Joannou has been collecting Mr. Koons's art since before Mr. Koons was an art star.

Tony Conrad: Cycles of 3s and 7s (Excerpt) on Video Data Bank

Media Study professor Tony Conrad’s multi-media installation Brunelleschi opens this Friday at the Burchfield Penney Art Center

Opening Celebration August 14, 2009
On View from August 14 to January 3, 2010 in the Project Space

Here’s a recent interview with Tony on Frieze.

I have been reading Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy by Thomas E. Wartenberg lately, a book that I pulled off the shelves of the library at Esplanade. It is a very informative and accessible read, although the writer’s fervor at putting up a well-qualified and detailed defence of the view that film can philosophise does result in verbosity at times. One particular chapter that captured my interest involved the analysis of Andy Warhol’s Empire and Tony Conrad’s The Flicker with regard to their contribution towards the philosophical meta-discourse on the nature of film.

Warhol’s Empire and Conrad’s The Flicker are paradigmatic works of experimental film characteristic of the avant-garde structural film movement in the 1960s. Like many films of the movement, the works of Warhol and Conrad are similar in their self-reflexive examination of the nature and structure of film.

For most people, Empire would be impossible to watch. It is eight hours and five minutes in length and features nothing but a footage of the Empire State Building, shot by a static camera. Wartenberg argues that the work serves as a philosophical counterexample towards the prevailing argument that the ability to show moving objects was an essential property of film, an argument put forth by prominent theorist, Rudolf Arnheim. Evidently, Empire refutes Arnheim’s argument by the complete lack of motion in its footage. Motion is apparently not a defining feature of film. In fact, the static persistence of the image of the Empire State Building reveals that film can not only show motion, but also the much understated process of stillness!

The question is: while it is intellectually fulfilling to delve into a heavy discussion on what would constitute a “pure film”, or what essential features a work needs to possess in order to qualify as “film”, which a further discussion of The Flicker would definitely lead to, how will such a discourse aid in the development of the art of film? Well, perhaps it will help in a classificatory process, to help us discern between which latest avant-garde film should be inducted into this grand tradition of the cinematic art and which should remain in your home video collection. It may even help in creating an evaluative model – the formulation of an objective rubric sheet for assessing cinematic excellence. But in reality, it is impossible to derive such an an objective classificatory or evaluative standard. There exists far too many competing theories for even a consensus to be reached.

The wider field of art is much more afflicted by such intellectual quandaries and will thus merit much more examination. Numerous theories have been spun with regards to what should count as art, but till now, there is still no consensus reached within the art world. Despite the seeming impossibility of the task at hand, why are there still so many intellectuals and thinkers who continue in this endless quest of miraculously discovering such an objective standard?

A personal observation that I have made is that even the most established theories of art are deeply problematic as they lack the kind of objectivity that most of them are seeking. The many definitions of art proposed are in fact profoundly subjective interpretations that is often the result of the writer’s personal prejudices and biases.

The act of defining is a highly political activity. In championing for a certain definition, what we are doing is effectively drawing a distinctive and impenetrable boundary within the chaos of an unregulated, boundless universe. In the defining of what is art, works that the writer deems should be called art are inducted into the celebrated pantheon where luminaries like Picasso and Van Gogh reside in. Those lying outside the periphery are excluded and banished. It appears that in deciding where such a boundary be drawn, more often than not, one will begin by contemplating the various famous and seminal pieces of art in the entire of art history and attempting to identify an underlying essential similarity. However, one will be careful not to include all of such works – because the crucial step at securing a definition is the critical process of exclusion. Only via exclusion, does the boundary emerge. After all, to put it bluntly, if something is everything, it is essentially nothing.

The problem of such an approach is its reverse chronology. In beginning by attempting to identify the single thread that runs through this repository of groundbreaking, eminent art works, we are beginning with the assumption that most of the works examined are already potential candidates to be designated the label of “art”. From the beginning, we are also operating within an ideological framework that accepts it as indisputable that certain works must count as art since they have already been so deeply embedded in popular consciousness as so. Dogmatically, we would accept it as unquestionable that Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon, along with Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde and Matisse’s fauvist visual cacophonies are art. Even the more audacious and initially polarising works by Duchamp, Warhol or Beuys have earned such a status in the contemporary art world, not by the virtue of any hard rule that bestows it upon them, but by a tacit and monolithic social agreement that arise from their “significance” in pushing the boundaries of art.

But, does an attempt at pushing the boundaries of art necessarily qualify the work as “art”? I can take long walks in a national park, dissect my neighbour’s dog and display its organs or transport my sordid bed into a national gallery. I can wrap an entire coast in fabric and suffocate a few animals. Or I could crucify myself on the back of a Volkswagon, all in the name of “pushing boundaries”. But does that make me an artist?

Some would nod their heads in agreement. Warhol would repeat his dictum that anyone can be an artist. Some would scoff at the banality, vulgarity and tastelessness of such works. But no one would would say with certitude that the big, cheeky culprit of art’s existential dilemma, Duchamp’s The Fountain is not art. Because it is the de rigueur to see it as such today. Based on such a misguided premise, we proceed to identify the great, essential similarity that unifies all the seminal, revolutionary pieces of work under the banner of “art”.

The similarities that can exist among the works are numerous. And the question of which particular commonality to choose over another to be designated as the essential feature of art is one with no definite answers. Each philosopher’s answer to the enquiry is most of the time formulated based on his personal tastes and interests. It seems to me that while some select the similarity that best defends the works of art they have a personal preference for, others choose the similarity that would exclude what they deem to be tasteless art, which is actually completely based on one’s personal bias. And such motivations are often detectable in the writings of various art theories.

English art critic, Clive Bell’s theory of formalism believes the common denominator of all art lies in its inherent power to produce “aesthetic emotion” in viewers who see “significant form”. The perplexing thing is that what constitutes “aesthetic emotion” and “significant form” are never really made clear. In fact, Bell defines one in terms of each other, creating a frustrating circular loop. Apparently, one experiences “aesthetic emotion” when he sees “significant form” and “significant form” is something that creates “aesthetic emotion”. It was later suggested in Nigel Warburton’s The Art Question, that Bell’s entire intention in formulating the theory was really to defend the legitimacy of Paul Cezanne’s Impressionist art. Bell notably commented that individuals who cannot appreciate aesthetic emotion in the presence of art are like “deaf men at a concert”. What seems to be really happening is that Bell was trying to create an entire philosophical argument to support his personal emotional experience. Such is not exclusive to Bell and is actually evidently in most theoretical musings, except in less evident ways.

In another instance, R.G. Collingwood’s theory of emotional expression believes that art is the imaginative expression of emotion, where the process clarifies the initial vague feeling or intention. The crux of this definition is its latter segment, where the word “clarifies” emerges. Collingwood argues that art must include this process of “clarification”. This is Collingwood’s essential step of exclusion. With this, Collingwood excludes craft, such as that of the ironsmith from the sacred realm of art. He also excludes forgeries, which naturally defy the moral sensibilities of most people. But the question that emerges is, why shouldn’t works of “craft” or forgeries count as art?

The same question applies for other regions of ambiguity in art, like that of outsider art, appropriationist art, interventionist art, net art, machinima and other intermedia art. Our personal answer to such a question is usually reliant on each of our subjective experience of the art world and the kind of exposures that have moulded our understanding of art. Someone who emerge from a computing background would perhaps be more sympathetic to the designation of net art as art just as how a psychologist working at a facility for patients with mental illnesses would feel strongly for the legitimacy of outsider art. “Art” is a label that is hardly pejorative, even as it faces constant castigation and backlash from a minority of dissenting voices. It confers a certain privileged, exclusive status which many would delight to be associated with. Which is why the act of defining art is naturally so political.

Where (1960) by Morris Louis

Theory, in a sense, is problematic for it politicises. The many zealous attempts at attaining an objective standard on a definition of art are more often than not covert or unconscious campaigns at elevating a personal taste into a universal prescription. And indeed, theory does at times become more about prescription than description. Modernist theory in the sixties notably sent the art world in a frenzy to embrace Clement Greenberg’s ideal of flatness. One particular obsessive, Morris Louis applied Magna paint in extremely diluted amounts simply to ensure that the paint soaks right into the canvas and leaves a completely flat canvas surface. As Tom Wolfe, writer of the seminal The Painted Word, would quip, it simply was impossible to see a painting without a theory in the sixties. And even today, it is difficult to look at a painting without being conscious of the huge theoretical baggage that it lugs with it. And this is a fate that would hopefully not befall upon other artistic media.

But despite the many problems and the seeming impossibility of arriving at an objective definition of art, art theory, as well as any other form of meta-discourse, remains important and relevant for a very fundamental reason – it stimulates dialogue. And it is this lively tradition of dialogue that keeps the arts scene invigorated with intellectual activity. It compels us to contemplate and discuss the ideas and sentiments that underpin our personal understanding of aesthetics. And this exchange of each individual subjective perspective broadens each of our own worldview. Such intellectual activity is essential to the cultural maturation of any community. While being fully conscious of the possible trappings of theory, we must continue to sustain the conversation, by not only participating in the discourse of theory but also critically examine the development of theory itself.

Professor Tony Conrad featured in and performs at the 53rd Venice Biennale, June 3 to November 22, 2009.

June 3rd, 2009, 6:00 to 7:30PM, Teatro Piccolo
Tony Conrad performs Snapping the drone, followed by a conversation with Klaus Biesenbach

More info at the Venice Biennale website and blog.

ira cohen, angus maclise mylar beauty early 60s

and then melody laughter  came into my mind

then I fell asleep again thinking about

shiny shiny boots of leather I really need to put some new ones on mine are thrashed or someone duct tape me up? like permanently? maybe better this way?

but i couldn’t sleep so the night went on, i am tired, I am weary I could sleep for  thousand years a thousand dreams that would awake me different colors made of tears kiss the boot of shiny shiny leather shiny leather in the dark good night my darlings.

taste the whip in love not given lightly now bleeed for me

oh and last night I was literally here in SF at SFAI no faust alas but tony conrad me stoney and jean, drinking cobras in the near back row tony conrad behind a sheet mesmerizing, shadows of entrancement, I shed a tear maybe two.  I gave them to jean to hold for me.  It was too intense. I had too much on my mind and it was like a dream come true, so I tried to tell tony conrad later in the evening and he tried to shake my hand and I’m like no sorry use the other this one is broken and he was like well I might break the other, but i said please, so he shook by hand, cloaked in white robes, i told him he made me shed a tear or two for beauty and then we wandered off into the night love not given lightly. wandered off alone into the night somehow its  6am wandering the streets trying to find my way home, too much on my mind too many places n people n feeling n failings. then i fall into some deep slumber and have these aforementioned dreams.

tony conrad dans “dreaMinimalist” son portrait cinématographique par marie losier
(y compris quelques images du sulfureux “flaming creatures” de jack smith dont conrad composa la musique)

portraits cinématographiques de (e.a.)
tony conrad, genesis p-orridge, guy maddin…
par marie losier (fra-usa)
lundi 16 février – 20h30 – bozar (studio)
23 rue ravenstein – 1000 bruxelles – 5 eur

> lien 1 [site marie losier]
> lien 2 [extrait de 5 minutes de "tony conrad: dreaminimalist" de m. losier]

======
======
1- joshua burkett – [pas de titre visible] – lp “yellowbeard” (enr. 1990-94 – lp: ultra eczema, 2009)
2- joshua burkett – or a constant maze – “where is my hat?” (enr. 2002-06 – time-lag, 2008)
======
3- tony conrad + faust – from the side of the machines – “outside the dream syndicate” (caroline, 1972 – réédit.: table of the elements, 1993 & 2002)
======
4- patton – love boat #1 – “love boat” (prohibited, 1998)
5- patton – la charge – “jr for jaune rouge” (prohibited, 2000)
6- patton – macarons montgolfières ballons – “hellénique chevaleresque récital” (matamore / prohibited, 2009)
7- k-branding – nieu-latyn – “facial” (humpty dumpty, 2009)
======
8- pescado rabioso (avec e.a. luis alberto spinetta) – cantata de puentes amarillos – “artaud” (1973 – reedit. cd sony, 1996 & 2008)
======
9- pandit kamalesh maitra & trilok gurtu – raag bilash khani todi – “tabla tarang – melody on drums” (smithsonian / folkways, 1996)
10- brij bhushan kabra & sakir hussain – raga bihag – 10″ “brij bhushan kabra & sakir hussain” (decca, 1964 / réédit. topic, 1999)

==
==

MU
“deux heures de contrastes en musiques mutines et mutantes”
est l’émission radio que j’anime presque tous les dimanches de 20.30 à 22.30
sur radio campus bruxelles (92.1 mhz à bruxelles ou en streaming)
avec david menessier (arlequin, dj rupert pupkin) et david zabala jarrin

With other events dominating this year I didn’t see quite as much live music as last year. A smaller pool may statistically account for why I didn’t see quite as much that really blew me away either, or maybe I was more cynical than in 2007. Anyway, here are five I rated in 08, in chronological order:

Messiaen: Vingt régards sur l’enfant-Jésus. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, QEH, 13 January

The first of several ‘event’ concerts this year. I don’t appear to have any notes from this night, but it was fantastic. I don’t usually care much about performers, more about what they’re playing, but P-LA is an exception. Missing his Vingts régards in London a few years ago was a long-held regret of mine, finally put to rest here.

Nono: Promoteo, RFH, 9 and 10 May

Another major ‘event’. The hype may have threatened to obscure the music, but Nono’s Tragedy of Listening didn’t disappoint. Listening a second time around, in a supposedly less acoustically perfect part of the hall, was a revelation.

What I said then:

Prometeo, which begins strongly with intensely detailed waves of material but raises its game with each movement until the seventh, ‘Three Voices (a)’. This three-layered slab of solo voices, thunderous brass rumbles and a high violin drone that was slowly passed around the auditorium is a shattering experience: and on first encounter a jaw-dropping shock.

Having pushed through the spiritually cleansing rigours of the earlier movements, at this stage I was hearing Nono’s music with an acuity I have rarely experienced. It was as though layers of my received listening habits had been progressively peeled away to expose the raw, subjective core of my listening being. Nono’s musical reward for his listeners who have reached this far is this overwhelming and exhilarating 12-minute blast of sound.

EXAUDI, Shoreditch Church, Spitalfields Festival, 13 June

The smothered intricacy of Evan Johnson’s Colophons still haunts me, as does its startling central gesture. No one else sings Ferneyhough’s Missa brevis (or any Ferneyhough) like EXAUDI; and the juxtaposition of Tudor works by Sheppard and Taverner was absolutely convincing without pandering to lazy new-ageism. Looking back this was both the best programme and most revealing performance I heard all year.

What I said then:

This concert, combining Tudor motets with Anglo-American modernism, was profoundly satisfying not only because of smart and sincere programming, but also because of EXAUDI’s sensitivity to the musical lessons to be learnt from both eras. Their core repertoire of late modernism makes pretty uncompromising demands upon its performers, but the group’s great strength is in not letting standards drop for the apparently easier Renaissance repertory. Mater Christi, the first of two Marian Antiphons by John Taverner that opened the concert, was a beautiful illustration. The control, precision and balance of the 12 voices was remarkable in itself, but most breathtaking were the final bars. Many performances of Renaissance polyphony reveal a series of climaxes rolling into one another, a sort of permanent ecstatic state that cancels out any specific musical structure and leaves the listener in an anonymous state of bliss; EXAUDI, however, kept a tight lid on their dynamics until the very end when a sudden crescendo into the closing cadence made the heart leap into the throat. A thrilling and revelatory moment made possible by technique and interpretative skills honed on avant-garde repertoire.

Tony Conrad, Tate Modern, 14 June

Hugely enjoyable, profoundly troubling, got to do it once. My ears still ring just thinking about it.

What I said then:

Moving around the hall was physically oppressive, especially as you walked in and out of range of the various speakers. The first section, with TC’s shadow (with his hat) looming like a maniac with a drill, was terrifying.Rainforests, glaciers and Xenakis are awesome; Conrad is frightening, like climate change. On my way home I was physically discomfited – not just ringing ears, but ringing skin. I had to wash the sound off me before I could sleep.

Plus Minus, The Warehouse, BMIC Cutting Edge, 23 October

Videos from this concert (which mercifully don’t show the balding pate of yours truly) may be found here.

The last Cutting Edge series run by the BMIC before they are absorbed into the new Sound and Music organisation was high quality stuff (honourable mentions to both Libra Duo and Asamisimasa Duo), but + – just pip it for a) the most consistently interesting programme (including fine pieces by Laurence Crane, Matthew Shlomowitz and Markus Trunk) and b) introducing London to the very strange music of Peter Ablinger.

Last year’s list.

The many sounds of upstate

MGMT

I grew up in central New York, and I can confirm that anyone who grows up in upstate who wants to do something interesting or awesome usually winds up doing it somewhere else — New York City being the obvious default. Mercury Rev, in largely remaining an upstate band, have put themselves in with an odd assortment of like-minded travelers and musical visionaries who have called the Empire State home. Here’s a few of their psych forebears, contemporaries, and protûgûs.

TONY CONRAD | A pivotal figure in the late-’60s avant-garde, Conrad (who has for several decades headed Media Studies at SUNY-Buffalo) introduced the concept of “eternal music,” experimenting with amplification, duration, and pitch. He’s probably best known as a member of the Dream Syndicate (not to be confused with the Steve Wynn band, and also known as the Theater of Eternal Music), a late-’60s collective that included La Monte Young and John Cale. Conrad has continued to be a mainstay in the international world of experimental music and film.

TEO MACERO | Beginning his association with Miles Davis on 1959’s beyond-classicKind of Blue, this Glens Falls native and composer went on to produce the experimental “jazz-rock” albums that followed, from 1969’s In A Silent Way to Bitches Brew and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Working with long takes of collective improv, Macero wielded a heavy hand in the editing process, fashioning the endless jams into stunning through-composed final tracks. His influence on modern producers, from Brian Eno to Mercury Rev’s own Dave Fridmann, is enormous.

THE DARELYCKS | This short-lived group from Fairport, a suburb of Rochester, accidentally came up with the perfect soundtrack for a bummer: 1966’s “Bad Trip.” Breaking up soon after to go to college and war, they at least left this killer 45, whose sputtering jangle and moan keeps getting interrupted by a sireny guitar that sounds like Godzilla dragging a police car along the pavement.

BRASS BUTTONS | Hailing from Rochester, the Brass Buttons rode a friendship with Rascals guitarist Gene Cornish into a record deal that spawned at least one early-psych classic. A pastiche of Rubber Soul, droning and pulsing guitar bounce, and then-fashionable “evil woman” lyrical tropes, “Hell Will Take Care of Her” could be a Spinal-Tap-from-the-’60s outtake.

THE WALLMEN | Legendary in Syracuse for bringing insane and inane Butthole Surfers–esque mayhem to an otherwise placid and hair-metally ’80s upstate scene, the Wallmen released a torrent of cassettes until they caught the attention of Mercury Rev–er Dave Fridmann, who produced a number of their mind-bending platters, starting with 1994’s Bar-None release Not Too Long Time Sound.

MGMT | Although they formed at Wesleyan University and blew up as a Brooklyn band, this currently hip pop-psych duo have two important upstate connections: Ben Goldwasser is from Westport, a far-north town near Plattsburgh and not much else, and their current album, Oracular Spectacular, was given much of its magical shimmer by producer Dave Fridmann at his Buffalo studio. You can take the kid out of upstate but you can’t take the upstate out of the kid!

After winning a bid for a 20 year, rent-free lease in downtown Brooklyn, ISSUE Project Room celebrated its victory last night with a benefit at Santos’ Party House in Chinatown. A crowd of electronic music connoisseurs took in the sounds of David Linton, Alex Waterman, Charles Cohen, Fair Use Trio, Moby plus many others.  The evening was hosted by  all-round genius artist and avant-garde pioneer, Tony Conrad.

Benefit for ISSUE Project Room

Since 2003 Project Room has provided a leading-edge performance art space dedicated to experimental music, filmmaking, reading, and sound installation.  Currently located at The Can Factory in Gowanus, it will soon take over a stunning 4800 square foot landmark theatre at 110 Livingston Street.

Moby performs last night

ISSUE will need about six-hundred thousand dollars in order for the new locale to reach full potential. Donations will go towards architectural renovation and construction.  As well as to sound-proofing, system installation, lighting, heating, ventilation, etc.  But most of all, donations will help continue the Project Room’s dedication to innovation.  Click here for more and celebrate the arts in Brooklyn.

Noise* is a fairly regular night which celebrates either a particular genre, label or period in the history of music. Each time, as well as being able to listen to a DJed retrospective of the music, there are also free CDs and a brief history given to anyone who attends. Previous retrospectives have included  New York No Wave, Italo Disco, Krautrock, Detroit Techno and Stones Throw Records – future ones may include Dubstep, Black Metal or Free Jazz.

The guys from Noise* were kind enough to let me joint curate their exploration of Minimalism a few months ago, where I both wrote the brief history (concentrating mainly on the contemporary classical side of things rather than the techno side of things) and played a few tracks. It was an enjoyable night, and well attended – the mixing of Shackleton’s Blood On My Hands with Reich’s Piano Phase was particularly affecting. Without any further ado, here is the short history I wrote for i, designed to be printed on two sides of A4 and wrapped around the double CD I put together – sufficently persuasive comments might encourage me to upload it somewhere so you can all have a listen. This post was inspired because I saw Reich’s Four Organs performed last night to spectacular effect.

Noise* presents Minimalism

First emerging in the late 1950s, minimalism as contemporary classical music focuses on a steady rhythmic pulse or drone, repetition of phrases, motifs or groups of notes and (sometime very) slow development and harmonies that often rely of psycho-acoustic effects. Minimalism is in origin a broadly American cultural artifact. One can trace the origins of minimalism well by understanding the mutual influence of a series of American composers upon one another: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass. Although other minimalist composers were important for the genre’s origin and development, these composers produced both the most critical turns in it, its best examples, and arguably its greatest works.

Minimalist technique arose in part as a reaction against the orthodoxes prominent in the academy during the 1950s and 60s. One one hand, minimalism was a negative reaction against the complex and atonal compositional techniques of serialism, first codified by Arnold Schönberg. All of the prominent minimalist composers had learnt serialist technique during their college years, but all had eventually come to reject it as unnecessarily complicated and overly cerebral. Minimalism, by contrast, was perceived by many in the academy as simple music for equally simple minds, leading to a severe lack of coverage for its early experiments. On the other hand one had the aletorical experiments of John Cage and his contemporaries, that emphasised chance as an element in composition: Cage’s (in)famous 4.33 leaving everything to open chance. Minimalism sought a middle way between the two avant-garde forms: to be open to the interpretation by the performers (as in Riley’s In C) yet written along specific simple rules and patterns of notes, a move that can be seen only natural after a period of introspective and often austere complexity.

Early minimalists also sought more positive influence from what is badly termed ‘world music’ and  jazz, as well the French impressionists (such as Claude Debussey and Olivier Messiaen), early electronic composers like Edgard Varèse and repetitious works of the orthodox classical canon such as those of J.S. Bach. Young was influenced by Indian classical music. Both he and Riley studied with Hindu classical singer Pandit Pran Nath. All have spoke of there love for gamelan and african drums. It is interesting to note that all these musical forms come from specifically ritual and spiritual contexts. They are an intensely human form of music, that it was felt needed to be recovered, in contrast to the serialists and modernists. In these non-European musics, constant repetition is intended to induce a state of trance in the listener. All were also influenced by the burgeoning modal jazz scene and in particular John Coltrane.

The first recognisably minimalist piece was a series by Young in 1962 entitled Compositions 1960. Composition #7 in particular instructed to play B and F# ‘for a long time’, to create an effect that caused time to be disorientated. In Young established The Theater of Eternal Music with John Cale, Terry Riley and Tony Conrad future to realise his project of creating music that ran, for 24 hours, or potentially, forever – his Dream House. Each member went on to pursue their own minimalist directions.

After a falling under the spell of Young at the University of California, Berkeley and being a vocalist in the Theater, Terry Riley began experimented with tape loops in his parent’s garage. Leaving the US after university to play piano in US military bars in France, he became more exposed to techniques used in radio production such as the use of feedback loops. On his return to the US, Riley began working at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. It is here in November 1964 that the first all Riley programme was performed which included a number of tape pieces including Music for the Gifts, using a looped piece of trumpet solo, but at its conclusion the seminal piece for 13 musicians In C – considered by some to be the most significant piece of classical music since Stravinsky’s Right Of Spring. Each musician played at their discretion a series of 56 extremely short musical “loops”, all in C, with a (‘played by a pretty girl’ instruct the score – the influence of Young’s often bizarre musical direction is certainly felt) piano keeping time. The technique Riley used in this piece and has continued to use with variations throughout his career represents the blueprint for minimalist music.

Steve Reich (among other minimalists like Jon Gibson and Pauline Oliveros) was present at this performance and had been at the centre to escape the stuffiness of New York academia since 1963. He and Riley had become friends since Riley had stormed out of a performance of Reich’s group who unsuccessfully attempted to combine serialism and jazz. On returning to New York in 1965, Reich, inspired, began developing his own techniques, also using tape loops. The technique for his first recognisably minimalist piece, 1965’s It’s Gonna Rain, was discovered quite by accident. Reich had been dubbing a recording of Brother Walter, an apocalyptic preacher, and had accidently played two records of the same loop at slightly different speeds. Rather than correcting the mistake, Reich was intrigued by the interaction between the two recordings and their phasing, and the new and different sounds made by combining the same sound with very slight difference. Reich also enjoyed using an essentially inhuman process, tape playing, to bring out the subtities in the preacher’s voice and intonations – hence the phrase ‘process music’. After using a similar method for his civil rights piece, Come Out (as sampled by MF Doom and Madlib in the introduction to their Madvillainy track America’s Most Blunted)  Reich moved to use the same ideas on live musicians, in pieces such Piano Phase and Violin Phase where one instrument remains static, playing a series of notes and the other instruments (or recordings of those instruments) play the same series of notes at different speeds, faster or slower, creating a marked phasing effect. Reich’s 1972 piece Clapping Music demonstrates this technique at its most simple, requiring only two performers and their hands to work. His piece Four Organs, featuring the titular electric organs and a two maracas keeping time, explores all the contours of a dominant eleven chord (D E F# G# A B with an E in the bass) by having the performers slowly augment the chord, increasing its duration, in something that in spirit recalls Young’s earliest experiments (and is directly influenced by the church music of Pérotin that so influences the sacred minimalists below).

After a 1971 trip to Ghana to study African drums and to Seattle to study gamelan, Reich produced the pieces that are seminal in his career and for the what most people would recognise at the minimalist sound: Drumming (1971) and Music For Eighteen Musicians (1974-6). At this point, inspired by jazz instrumentalists and his inability to get his pieces played inside the academy, Reich established his own ensemble. Moving away from his early process orientated work, these pieces utilised large ensembles of percussionists, vocalists and flutists to create more complex pieces that were based around slow moving additions and subtractions from the music, with many cyclical loops. Reich’s later career is marked by a combination of these techniques and a deepening of subject matter and sound sources. For example, 1988’s Different Trains is a highly personal peace concerning his own Jewish identity and its relation to the holocaust. It uses loops of interviews of his family and holocaust survivors, where the instruments anticipate or repeat the intonation of the phrases, to incredibly emotional effect.

Returning from a trip to France where he studied classical composition and indian music in 1967, Phillip Glass watched Reich’s performances at the Park Price Gallery. While it is a point on contention as to how much he was there inspired, Glass began developing similarly cyclic, rhymical pieces, for example Music In Twelve Parts. His work tended towards the larger canvas than the others had, his Portrait Trilogy of operas, Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten painted with broader brush-stroke, while maintaining a vital minimalist insistence on repetition. His collected Glass Works contains some on the most breath-takingly simple meditations for piano ever created and his work continues to be used for film, most notably in the soundtrack for The Hours. His masterpiece in this regard is his contribution to the ethical-political-ecological Qatsi film trilogy, where a thunderous minimalist soundtrack is married to complex, often time lapsed images speeding up and slowing down with regard to the score – a technique recently revisited in an advertisement for the computer game Grand Theft Auto IV.

Worldwide, an intriguing phenomena is the creation of so-called ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ minimalism (a misnomer in part due to the sacred contexts from the East that initially influenced the minimalists and has remained influential throughout, as well as the later development of many of the composers, including Reich, to consider religious themes), by Arvo Pärt an Estonian, the Polish Henryk Górecki and the English John Tavener. Here the simplicity and repetition of the American pioneers is combined with the also unobstructed (particularly sung) music of the churches of the East and overtly religious themes of Russian Orthodoxy (and in Górecki’s case Catholicism), not to mention (like Young) the mystics of this tradition. Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 is a terrifyingly subtle and evocative requiem for the love of mothers and their losses of war, mothers both cosmic and human. Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa moves at gorgeous, glacial pace, while his Te Deum waits in almost silence ruminating on space, time and God – a minimalist prayer. His Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten is an absolutely fitting tribute, as the composer says, like light passing through a prism.

John Adam’s in his opera’s Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer combines minimalism with a traditional libretto and a political theme. Phil Niblock takes Young’s challenge to a natural conclusion, spinning out single notes digitally to create hours of music via digital processing. Charlemagne Palestine turned definitively way from the commercialism he perceives in the work of the ‘big four’ with his. His Strumming Music is primitive, physically demanding and intense: two notes expanding out to full thick chords for 52 minutes, causing the piano itself to detune and the strings snap. Tony Conrad’s post-Theater work cannot be under-appreciated. Four Violins is 18 minutes of blissful ur-drone, his collaboration with Faust is a masterful combination of classical and popular avant-gardes. Glenn Branca and others similarly combined the poles of the avant-gardes in his “guitar symphonies”, his has been producing since the 1980s.

The influence of minimalism on genres outside contemporary classical music is large-scale, in particular upon electronic music and drone. Minimal techno, in particular that of the German Kompakt label can be seen as an excellent example. The recent acclaimed album by The Field operates on soundly minimalist principles, a single loop being allowed to gradually unwind through time. Both Brian Eno and Aphex Twin have spoken of their debt to the minimalists. The recent Battles and Panda Bear albums could not have occurred without the work of Reich. There is little doubt the influence on music will only continue to grow.

Track Listing

1. Tony Conrad – Four Violins
2. Terry Riley – In C
3. Steve Reich – Piano Phase
4. Phill Niblock – Didjeridoos and Don’ts
5. Richard Youngs – Part I
6. Arvo Pärt – Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten
7. Charlemagne Palestine – One + Two + Three Fifths in the Rhythm Three Against Two For Bösen

Publié par l’excellent éditeur new-yorkais Zone Books, cette étude fait le point sur l’oeuvre de Tony Conrad, sa position dans l’histoire de la musique et du cinéma, et ses contributions à la scène expérimentale depuis les années 60. On y croise La Monte Young, Le Velvet Underground, Faust, Mike Kelley, Henry Flynt, etc.

I published this post, a review of the Angus MacLise 2cd set The Cloud Doctrine on Sub Rosa, back in 2003. Instead of burying it in the archives, I thought I’d re-post it at the top with a link to download the out-of-print release at the bottom. So please enjoy.

This is a two-disc set released by Sub Rosa that has a buncha until-now unreleased Angus MacLise madness for ya dome. In the past couple of years, possibly beginning with that Peel Slowly and See Velvet Underground box set thing (that I still don’t have, dammit), there’s been a steady flow of Angus MacLise material appearing on the marketplace, in legal-or-otherwise forms. For the past decade or so I’ve been pretty obsessed by all manner of stuff that emanated from the Lower East Side of New York during the early-mid 1960s (the Velvet Underground being my earliest and most immediate exposure to what soon became a much more rich and complex world of eccentric characters from those Fluxus freaks to La Monte Young to whatever), and it’s become increasingly clear, with each archival MacLise release (hey that rhymes sorta!), that the most viscerally exciting, most connected-with-the-spirit-world stuff that sprung from those gutters was done by the guy with the least care for ‘leaving a legacy’ or some such bullshit. Fortunately we are now getting to hear this music, to hear the poetry read by its author; we just as easily could’ve been deprived of it, had a tape’s decay been even more extensive, or a ledger not been saved, or whatever.

Disc One begins with a series of three solo electronic suites from 1965 all with the title ‘Tunnel Music,’ and what that sounds like is cracked electronics weirdness. #1 ends with sweet swooping dive bomber sounds, #2 sounds like a march of army ants across a bouncing rubber floor while an inept adept named Aleph repeatedly drops a gong, what my yoga instructor calls extended technique. Then the Rubber Band Man comes to sweep up, helped out by the friendly robot Bleep Bleep. And still, during ‘Tunnel Music #3′ that danged gong keeps dropping, it’s so slippery! Aleph must’ve anointed it with the holy walnut oil of the gods or something. ‘The First Subtle Cabinet’ does a whole ‘nother thing entirely, with Angus playing the cimbalum, joined by super-friends Tony Conrad and Piero Heliczer on additional instruments. What results is a rather long (read: 26 minutes, dang!) excerpt mini-stoned-soul-freakout, mango chutney flavor. A bit of scraping and touching and wheedling and it’s all very nice. The beginning of this gigantic improvisatory treat is great stuff for floating away over the ocean on a grey puffy cloud outlined with tinges of orange light as the sun sets in the West. As things progress and unfold, more percussion is utilized, but never in a heavy-handed, stomp-your-brains-out way. What begins in the clouds becomes rooted in the earth, but never leaden or lumpen. Then, moving ahead over a decade, we get a reading of ‘Description of a Mandala’ from a performance in 1976. Most, if not all, of the archival MacLise releases haven’t had actual poetry readings from the man, so this is a nice treat (Disc Two also has a nearly-twenty minute reading from his ‘Universal Solar Calendar’ which of course provided the basis for the titles of ‘works’ by the Theatre of Eternal Music). ‘Thunder Cut’ ends the disc, a swell 32 minute load of nonsense (in a good way) as Angus, Tony Conrad and Beverly Grant Conrad give us the spiritual business with lots of scraping, scribbling, swooping, stomping and shingy-shing-shing-ing.

Disc Two is a bit more varied, with ten total tracks, and again only two super-long pieces, one of them the afore-mentioned reading. The four minute ‘Chumlum’ soundtrack begins the disc with cimbalum and drum scrapeage, kinda like a condensed version of the longer cuts on Disc One. Next, the four ‘Trance’ pieces are recordings of Tony Conrad, John Cale and Angus MacLise playing together in 1965, so they’re probably the closest we’ll ever get to an approximation of the unreleased Theatre of Eternal Music tapes. They begin with some furied bow-scraping/drumming, then move into a gorgeous repetitive figure, kind of like hearing a shorter version of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of The Titanic played at the bottom of the ocean interrupted with pinging sonar. The ‘Two Speed Trance’ and ‘Four Speed Trance’ sections are a little more sparse in some ways, but no less enchanting. At a point during the former, MacLise’s rapid-fire drumming is so swift that it takes on an electronic quality then Conrad and Cale come in on guitar and violin, and the whole thing goes off in a sorta rockin’ direction (not a bad thing). The latter does it double-speed, kinda crazy like. ‘Shortwave Piece’ and ‘Electronic Mix for “Expanded Cinema”‘ are probably my favorite things on the entire set, maybe, well at least I think that right now as they play and envelop my room with punctured crystalline shards and midrange squeals and deep sine waves from the blackest coldest parts of space (and all that other good stuff that early electronic music can sound like). ‘Organ & Drum,’ ‘Universal Solar Calendar,’ and ‘Tambura Drone + Sine Wave Generator’ finish the disc with a little bit more flavor of the earlier swami-of-the-L.E.S. vibe that I’ve come to love.

Overall, the two discs are of exceptional quality considering the source material. The murkiness at times actually adds to the feeling that you’re hearing primordial music, something not nearly as ephemeral as most of what passes for ‘Western’ culture (esp. of the ‘pop’ variety). It may take the ‘average’ listener a lot of patience to get through all of this, but for the MacLise fanatic it’s a sure thing.

Sub-Rosa: http://www.subrosa.net/
Angus MacLise discography: http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/angusmaclise/angusmaclise.html
Angus MacLise chronology: http://melafoundation.org/am01.htm
A really good piece on Angus MacLise from Blastitude: http://www.blastitude.com/13/ETERNITY/angus_maclise.htm

Download The Cloud Doctrine here.

Today is our co-founder and CEO, Tony Conrad’s, birthday. Tony is 38 today. Several famous athletes have been born on March 3 – Rick Mirer, Ben Roethlisberger, Herschel Walker, Jackie Joyner-Kersee; a few musicians – Dave Amato of REO Speedwagon and Jeff’s favorite, Tone Loc; plus at least one braniac, Alexander Graham Bell. Not surprising company considering Tony was a college athlete, all-around groover, and well….our CEO. Happy Birthday Tony!!

Insomnia-filled nights get me to thinkin’ about all sorts of random things. Tonight’s few hours of attempted-but-failed sleep got me on a nostalgic kick, thinking back to days of high school when my best buddy Jesse LeBus and I published a short-lived scandal sheet called The Recidivist (named for a Bastro song, natch). It only really lasted maybe one issue, and I vaguely recall it being a broadside against our high school administration’s perceived hypocracies — nevermind the fact that we were using the school’s computers to edit and publish the dang thing. Ah, the folly of youth. We got in some minor trouble (if that? I don’t recall much), and the whole thing blew over. Maybe if we had stuck with it, or had developed a sense of tact, we could’ve made it into a school paper-y thing, complete with stories and cultural reportage of the day (perhaps an essay or two on how Pearl Jam blows, dude?). But we never were ones for sticking with anything.

At some point in the early morning hours, as the birds started a-chirpin’, I started thinking of another, more worthy snapshot of a place and time even longer gone, that of Mr. Tom Johnson’s excellent book, The Voice of New Music, a collection of his music criticism that was originally published in the Village Voice from 1972 to 1982 (you can download the whole shebang here — ain’t the internet wonderful?). I read this worthy tome when an undergrad, workin’ on some Tony Conrad stuff, and this book was an incredible resource not only on the specifics of the changes that were taking place in the downtown NYC snooty music scene, but also of a general cultural context that’s sorta disappeared (even if I’d bet more people listen to weird music now more than they did back then).

Big whoop, sez you. All right, all right, so here’s the point: instead of trying to recreate some old feelings about music and cultural what-have-you that would just about be impossible, I thought I’d start a new thing on this blog dedicated to looking back at some music I probably haven’t listened to in a long time, and in the process I hope to share some ideas about the music, the time in which I first experienced it (and how), and just whatever other random stuff may bubble up to the surface. So here goes, episode one of Recidivist…

Autechre, Chiastic Slide (Warp)
Thomas Brinkmann, Klick (max.E.)

Funnily enough, I’ll begin the first installment with two records that have nothing to do with either my high school or college years, unlike the reminiscences that inspired this series. Though I certainly knew of and enjoyed many records on the esteemed Warp label through my college years, it probably wasn’t until I picked up Autechre’s Chiastic Slide sometime in the summer of 1998 (though it was released in 1997) that everything started to, uh, click (no pun intended). I was a fan of their previous records Amber and Tri Repetae, but Chiastic Slide was the one, maaaaan. Listening to it again last night while reading Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, I was struck by how structurally this record fit with Kundera’s idea of the novel as an exploration of variations. That is, his novel consists of seemingly unrelated episodes which form a coherent summation of his once-an-insider, now-an-outsider-looking-in perspective on the totalitarian regimes of Central Europe in the 1970s.

Now, this connection isn’t explicit by any means. There’s nothing in Autechre’s music that suggests anything similar, thematically, to Kundera. There’s no politics, no laughter, nothing really even that “human.” What I mean is that Chiastic Slide takes some pretty distinct elements and fuses them into studied variations. And like Kundera is compelling to read (I finished The Book of Laughter and Forgetting pretty quickly, granted it’s short), Autechre hit upon what I think was the beginning of an incredible run of densely packed, seemingly-random-yet-not albums filled with intense variation. As Kundera writes about his father’s love of Beethoven’s later variations (Kundera’s father was a composer and teacher who studied with Janacek, btw), I couldn’t help but make the connection to what I was hearing while I was reading.

So Chiastic Slide: it’s a killer album, packed with crunchy, distorted tempos; the detritus of their soon-to-be-abandoned rote-techno melodies (which were generally more off-kilter than a lot of their IDM contemporaries anyway); and a lot of variation. Take one theme, expand on it until it’s worn down to a nub, then add something else in. It’s brilliant, and at the time it sounded FANTASTIC booming out of my car stereo (and it’d prompt some pretty funny looks, too). By the time I finally got to see Autechre (with Russell Haswell and Kevin Drumm!) at the Metro in 2001 (see photo below, swiped from Warp), I’d already moved on to more minimal moves…

At some point in 2000 or 2001, I can’t remember which, Jim Magas opened the long-gone (and sorely missed) Weekend Records and Soap in Wicker Park, a short walk from my pad down Division. I’d gotten increasingly into the more minimalist stuff coming out of Berlin and Koln (how, I don’t really recall, though I’m sure the less-austere Warp scene was somewhat of a gateway drug), and the location of Jim’s shop meant I could find stuff easily without having to run over to the always-annoying Clark Street corridor of Lincoln Park. Again, I don’t really recall, but I somehow got wind of what Thomas Brinkmann was doing, perhaps because it was similar — though different — from a lot of the other Profan/Studio 1/Kompakt axis (er…) around Mike Ink.

What I heard of Brinkmann was compelling, hard yet super-minimal techno of a sort that (at the time) wouldn’t have gone over at Chicago’s dance clubs AT ALL (indeed, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink nights that Brandon Goodall, Greg Davis and occasionally Kevin Drumm and I’d do around town weren’t well received — and we were far more accessible despite eclecticism than the minimalist stuff), and I was intrigued. Jim would stock EVERYTHING in Weekend, and within the limits of what I could spend, I’d buy pretty much all of it. So imagine my surprise when, after far more straightforward “first-name” 12″s and Studio One releases, Brinkmann releases the Klick 12″ (to be fair he also released more abstract-y Esther Brinkmann stuff, but that was harder to find), followed by the Klick full-length. The methodology behind this new phase was simply described:

10 tracks made with two decks, an isolator, a mixer and some with a tc multieffect. About 15 endless groves, cut with a knife in the last groove of vinyl records, some voices from records as well, and feedbacks are the sound sources. The loops are cut between 1978 and 2000 like the one on Suppose 08 (Feran Loop).

But what I’m hearing is a crazy amount of variation (that word again) on the theme of music-as-recording, a sort of meta-statement about the seeming finality of vinyl being a starting point for a new music. Yeah, yeah, sampling has been a part of music long before Brinkmann (even John Cage fooled around with turntables), but there was something about this record, coming from the context of the Berlin techno scene, that really was something special. And it’s also fun to guess a little bit as to where and what specific contexts it comes from. That is, the rhythms of these pieces get stuck in your brain almost like “regular” pop music (indeed, for some reason the sixth track “0110″ reminds me of Can’s “I Want More”).

Download Klick here for a limited time.

Also, please send comments to hstencil at yahoo dot com, these comment boxes are busted.

Plus de 30 ans après ses débuts – 30 ans d’expérimentation, de déformation, reformations et de mutations -, le groupe le plus barjot et libre de la scène Krautrock allemande poursuit inlassablement sa quête païenne et inachevée à grand renfort d’explorations soniques, de bétonneuses musicales, et de machines cracheuses de copeaux à l’odeur de chaussette. Des membres originaux, il ne reste que Jean-Hervé Péron et Zappi Diermaier pour maintenir le Feu Sacré, secondés à la scène par Amaury Cambuzat d’Ulan Bator.
Petit quizz matinal trilingue à l’hôtel Cosmos (si, si, c’est vrai), au lendemain d’un concert parisien aux allures de rituel du Marteau dans un Larzac post-nucléaire.

FRANK ZAPPA «G Spot Tornado» (extrait de Jazz From Hell, 1986)
Jean-Hervé Péron : J’ai le sentiment que je connais, mais je n’arrive pas à mettre un nom dessus. Ça n’est ni Kraftwerk, ni Tangerine Dream, ça serait beaucoup plus chargé que ça…
C’est un Américain.
J.H.P : Je ne sais pas.
Zappa. Un morceau de 1986.
J.H.P : Ha oui ? Nom de Dieu, tu m’en bouches un coin !
Zappi Diermaier : C’est la vitesse normale ?
Oui ! Dans le livre d’Andy Wilson Faust – Stretch Out Of Time 1970-75 qui vient de paraître, il y a, je crois, un chapitre entier sur l’influence de Zappa sur Faust…
J.H.P : Oui. Je pense que dans ce livre, que je n’ai pas encore lu mais dont je connais très bien l’auteur – c’est un copain -, il s’agit plutôt d’une analyse sur Zappa qui comporte quelques remarques sur l’influence qu’il a eue sur de nombreux musiciens, dont Faust. Andy Wilson n’est pas un fan de Faust dans le sens de «fanatique», mais plutôt un amateur éclairé qui ne reste pas bloqué exclusivement sur notre musique.

Et Zappa, c’est un musicien que vous écoutiez beaucoup à l’époque de la formation de Faust ?
Z.D : Je l’ai écouté à partir de 1968, et ce qui m’a le plus frappé, c’est la diversité de sa musique. C’est de là que vient mon surnom. À l’origine, on m’appelait Zappa. J’avais l’habitude d’aller au Grünspan, un Beat-Club de Hambourg où les Beatles ont fait leurs premiers concerts. J’arrivais avec ma collection de vinyles de Zappa et je demandais au disc-jockey qu’il les passe. Il a commencé à m’appeler Zappa. Puis ça s’est transformé en Zappi.
J.H.P : Zappa a eu une grande influence sur nous. Sur Zappi, c’est certain, mais aussi sur Rudolf Sosna, aujourd’hui décédé, qui était l’élément génial de Faust. Il était très impressionné par Franck Zappa.

Et Beefheart ?
J.H.P : Ha ! Captain Beefheart me plaisait encore plus. Il était nettement plus sale.

ART BEARS «Collapse» (extrait de Hopes & Fears, 1978)
J.H.P (reconnaissant immédiatement la voix féminine) : C’est Dagmar Krause

Bravo. C’est un morceau d’Art Bears.
J.H.P : Oui, j’ai reconnu la voix tout de suite. Cette voix… c’est comme si elle me montrait sa carte d’identité. Attends… (il tend l’oreille) Je vais te dire pour la batterie… mais il faudrait que le rythme change un peu… C’est Chris Cutler, n’est-ce pas ? (Ndlr : Chris Cutler a fondé Henry Cow, était batteur dans Art Bears aux côtés de Fred Frith, et fut également l’un des chefs de file du mouvement Rock In Opposition)

Oui. Je crois que vous avez des liens étroits avec lui ?
J.H.P : Chris Cutler a réédité trois de nos albums sur son label Recommended Records à la fin des années 70. Il nous a surtout permis de réactiver la machine Faust à un moment où on avait complètement disparu de la circulation à la fin des années 80, en sortant Munich. Et puis, il est aussi venu jouer à mon Festival d’Avant-Garde, à Schiphorst en Allemagne. Malheureusement, nos relations se sont un peu dégradées. Zappi a des petits problèmes de communication avec lui. Il faut dire que Chris Cutler est bien plus un artiste qu’un businessman, et le fait d’être sur son label a parfois été problématique.

Est-ce que vous vous reconnaissiez dans la grande liberté artistique de toute la constellation de musiciens apparentés au mouvement Rock In Opposition (Ndlr : Univers Zero, Fred Frith, Etron Fou Leloublan, Albert Marcoeur, Chris Culter…) ?
J.H.P : Dans un sens oui, la liberté a toujours été un élément primordial dans la musique de Faust.

Paradoxalement, on a beaucoup parlé de Faust comme d’un groupe «monté de toutes pièces» par le producteur Uwe Nettlbeck et Polydor au début des années 70. Est-ce que c’est vrai ?
J.H.P : Cette idée est complètement fausse ! Nous n’étions pas et nous n’avons jamais été une sorte de Boys Band, et je voudrais que cela soit bien clair ! Nous faisions tous de la musique avant Faust. Faust est né de la réunion de deux groupes : le mien, avec Rudolf Sosna et Gunther Wüsthoff, qui n’avait pas vraiment de nom, mais que j’appelais Nukleus, le «noyau», et Campylognatus Citelli, c’est à dire le groupe de Zappi, avec Hans Joachim Irmler et Arnulf Meifert. On s’est rencontré chez Zappi, et c’est là que nous avons décidé de fusionner les deux groupes. La vérité, c’est qu’Uwe Nettlbeck et Polydor nous ont permis d’aller plus loin et d’expérimenter en nous donnant les moyens d’investir le studio à Wumme. Les gens sont très influencés et impressionnés par ce que disent les médias. Aujourd’hui, on recherche la star, on prend des gens comme ça, on les met à la télé, alors qu’à notre époque – ça fait vieux schnock de dire «à notre époque» – ça ne marchait absolument pas comme ça.

THIS HEAT «24-Track Loop» (extrait de This Heat, 1978)
Encore une histoire de batteur…
J.H.P : Ça n’est pas un morceau récent de Robert Wyatt ?

Non, c’est un groupe anglais qui n’existe plus aujourd’hui, mais dont le batteur fait encore des concerts en solo.
J.H.P : This Heat !
Z.D : Charles Hayward ! (Ndlr : le batteur de This Heat). J’aime tout ce qu’il a fait.

C’est une vieille histoire entre vous ?
Z.D : Je ne le connais personnellement que depuis le dernier festival d’Avant-Garde de Schiphorst. J’éprouve une grande sympathie pour lui et j’aime plus particulièrement quand il joue en solo. Il vient d’intégrer un nouveau groupe et ça me plaît un peu moins.
J.H.P : J’ai fait venir Charles Haywards deux fois à Schiphorst, et il a été l’un des personnages les plus marquants de tout le festival. Quand il a quitté les lieux le matin – tout le monde était dehors autour du feu pour le petit-déjeuner – il a eu le droit à une véritable standing ovation complètement spontanée, tant sa prestation musicale avait été magique.

Zappi, tu as donc déjà joué avec lui ?
Z.D : Oui. Nous étions 5 ou 6 batteurs. Charles jouait un rythme binaire à 4 temps, et je jouais un rythme composé à 5 temps. Toutes les 20 pulsations, nous nous rejoignions. C’était incroyable.
J.H.P : C’était très impressionnant ! Zappi et Charles Hayward construisaient la base géométrique du rythme, tandis que les autres – le percussionniste américain Z’ev, Franck Lantignac, ancien batteur d’Ulan Bator et Sawada du groupe psychédélique japonais Marble Sheep – venaient se greffer sur cette base et faisaient monter la mayonnaise.

BRAIN DONOR «Where Do We Take U?» (extrait de Drain’d Boner, 2006)
J.H.P : J’aime bien ! Mais je ne connais pas.
Z.D : C’est un truc des sixties ou des seventies ?

Non. C’est très récent. C’est le nouvel album de Brain Donor, l’un des groupes de Julian Cope. Vous avez lu son bouquin, Krautrocksampler ?
Z.D : Non.
J.H.P : Moi non plus. J’en ai entendu parler évidemment. Ce qui est clair, c’est que si le phénomène Krautrock est bien né en Allemagne, il a été lancé et conceptualisé par les médias anglo-saxons, et surtout par Julian Cope.

Est-ce que vous aviez conscience d’appartenir à un mouvement commun à l’époque ou est-ce au contraire un phénomène qui n’a pu être souligné qu’a posteriori par les médias ?
J.H.P : Bien sûr, c’est une construction a posteriori. À l’époque, nous étions dispersés. Il y avait l’école Berlinoise, l’école de Cologne, les musiciens du Sud de l’Allemagne, et il y avait Faust. Je nous mets à part volontairement, parce que nous étions vraiment coupés du monde. À Berlin par exemple, ils se réunissaient au Zodiac, un club fondé par Conrad Schnitzler, ils communiquaient, passaient de groupe en groupe. À Munich, c’était la même chose avec la constellation autour d’Amon Düül. Nous, nous étions à Wumme, complètement coupés de tout, et nous n’avions pas le sentiment de faire partie d’un mouvement. Nous étions en plein dedans, une particule de ce mouvement, un arbre dans la forêt. Seuls les gens de l’extérieur avaient le recul nécessaire pour comprendre ce qui se passait.
Z.D : Nous étions souvent seuls, et nous n’avions pas spécialement envie de rentrer en contact avec les autres musiciens. On ne voulait faire partie de rien.
J.H.P : Notre style, c’était de ne pas en avoir. Aujourd’hui, nous payons un peu le prix de cet isolement. Nous ne sommes pas populaires. Faust est apprécié seulement d’une minorité de gens.

Tony Conrad, John Cale, Angus McLise, La Monte Young et Marian Zazeela «Volume 1 : Day Of Niagara» (extrait de Inside The Dream Syndicate, 1965)
J.H.P : Est-ce que c’est du violon que j’entends ?

Oui.
J.H.P : C’est Tony Conrad.

Exact.
J.H.P (en riant, apparemment, le sujet s’annonce vaste) : Zappi, c’est Tony Conrad !
Z.D : C’est Uwe Nettlbeck qui nous avait mis en contact en 1972. Je crois qu’il était en tournée.
J.H.P : Il présentait un film à Berlin.
Z.D : Il est passé dans notre studio à Wumme, nous a dit qu’il faisait de la musique expérimentale, et nous a demandé de jouer avec lui. Il voulait que je joue ce rythme répétitif par dessus un drone de cordes. (Ndlr : le résultat de cette collaboration entre Tony Conrad et Faust est Outside The Dream Syndicate, sorti originellement en 1972 sur Caroline/Virgin)

Oui, le fameux Faust-beat. Ta Ta Ta Ta…
Z.D : À ce moment-là, je ne comprenais pas vraiment où il voulait en venir. On jouait ces rythmes ultra-répétitifs, il jouait une seule note tenue au violon, et ça a duré 6 jours ! Au bout de deux jours d’enregistrement, il nous dit «oh, j’ai fait une fausse note au violon, on va devoir tout recommencer» (rire général). Le septième jour, on n’en pouvait plus !

Donc vous ne le connaissiez pas avant d’enregistrer Outside The Dream Syndicate ?
J.H.P : Non. Cependant, la rencontre avec Conrad a eu un impact très fort sur moi. Pas immédiatement ceci dit. C’était comme une bombe à retardement. Plusieurs années après cette collaboration, j’ai vraiment ressenti le message de sa musique, physiquement et intellectuellement, et j’ai compris combien sa démarche musicale était juste. Tu sais qu’il a eu une grande influence sur le Velvet Underground ?

Avec John Cale, oui. Je me demandais d’ailleurs si ce fameux Faust-beat ne venait pas du morceau «Heroin» du Velvet…
Z.D : En fait, si influence il y a, elle viendrait plutôt des musiques militaires. Mon père était Tambour, et je lui portais ses partitions pendant les défilés.

Vous avez rejoué plusieurs fois avec Tony Conrad par la suite.
J.H.P : Oui, ces rencontres ont été organisées par Jeff Hunt du label Table Of The Elements, dont Tony Conrad est, en quelque sorte, le cheval de trait. Il nous a fait venir aux États-Unis en 1994, et c’est là qu’on a revu Conrad. Depuis notre dernière rencontre à Londres cependant, il semble qu’il n’éprouve plus vraiment le désir de réitérer l’expérience… et je m’en fous pas mal.

C’est à dire ?
J.H.P : On a fait un bout de chemin ensemble, c’est très bien, mais si il n’a plus envie de marcher avec nous, que veux-tu que j’y fasse ? Ce qui est certain, c’est que si nous étions amenés à rejouer avec lui, je n’accepterais plus d’être là uniquement pour l’accompagner. Pendant ces six jours d’enregistrement, je n’ai joué qu’une seule note. Le dernier jour, j’ai essayé de jouer une deuxième note, une fois, la tierce mineure, sans rien changer à la tonalité mais juste pour donner un souffle. Et là, Tony a dit : «Non, non, non! Il ne faut rien changer!» (Rires). Si c’était à refaire, je l’accompagnerais jusqu’à un certain point, mais ensuite, il faudrait aussi que je puisse m’épanouir, qu’il apprécie ou non.

NURSE WITH WOUND «The Six Buttons Of Sex Appeal» (extrait de Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella, 1979)
J.H.P : Ça c’est japonais ! Keiji Haino? Michael Mooney (Ndlr: premier chanteur de Can)?

Non. C’est quelqu’un que vous connaissez personnellement je crois, et sur qui Faust a eu une grande influence.
J.H.P : Nine Inch Nails ? Throbbing Gristle ?

Non. C’est Steven Stapleton, Nurse With Wound.
J.H.P : Ja ! J’adore !

Beaucoup de groupes de musique industrielle se revendiquent de Faust.
J.H.P :C’est vrai. Nous n’avons peut-être pas inventé quoi que ce soit, mais nous avons ouvert un chemin qui n’était pas encore balisé.

Vous avez rencontré Stapleton ?
J.H.P : Je ne l’ai encore jamais vu. Mais je peux te dire que lorsqu’il avait 14 ou 15 ans, il est venu en stop jusqu’à Wumme pour nous voir. Il a frappé à la porte mais nous n’étions pas là. Alors il est reparti. 30 ans plus tard, j’ai enfin essayé de le joindre – d’ailleurs, si tu as le temps, appelle-le, son répondeur vaut le détour, complètement planant! Ça a duré des semaines jusqu’à ce qu’on arrive enfin à se parler.

Vous avez travaillé ensemble ?
J.H.P: Mentalement, oui. On a des projets.

Julien Perrin (Ndlr: Un jeune Français qui prépare en ce moment un documentaire sur Faust) m’a dit qu’il était peut-être question que Stapleton produise votre prochain album ?
J.H.P (son visage s’illumine) : Julien Perrin ! Il faut parler de Julien Perrin (Ndlr: http://nokrautrockstory.blogspot.com). Si ça se trouve, dans 10 ans, il sera devenu quelqu’un de vraiment important, mais ce qui compte vraiment c’est son enthousiasme, sa ténacité, et sa simplicité.

JIM O’ROURKE «Through The Night Softly» (extrait de Eureka, 1999)
Z.D (aux premières notes de piano) : Faust ? (Rires)

Non. Mais ça n’est pas évident. C’est un morceau de Jim O’Rourke.
J.H.P : On pourrait parler de Jim O’Rourke pendant des heures, mais je n’aurais rien de gentil à dire sur lui. Et c’est dommage parce que c’est un grand musicien. Il a fait un énorme travail sur Rien (Ndlr : Rien a été produit par Jim O’Rourke. Publié en 1996 sur Table Of The Elements, cela faisait alors près de 20 ans que Faust n’avait pas sorti de véritable album studio). J’ai fait sa louange partout à l’époque : chapeau, bravo, merci. Par contre, l’attitude qu’il a eue vis à vis de nous après est lamentable. C’est un petit con ! Je l’ai déjà dit à la presse ouvertement et je suis tout à fait d’accord pour que tu l’écrives. À l’époque, il disait : «C’est Rien de Faust», pas au sens de la plaisanterie facile, mais dans le sens «Faust n’a Rien à voir dans ce disque». Il ne nous l’a même pas dit en face, mais par personnes interposées. Je ne l’ai appris que des années après, et je n’ai vraiment pas apprécié. Il prétend aussi qu’on lui doit du fric… Il n’a pas travaillé seul, nous avons travaillé ensemble. On lui a donné notre matériel, et il a fait un disque super. Mais au final, c’est un travail commun ! Faut pas déconner. Tu sais, Faust n’est pas un groupe de perfectionnistes mais de dilettantes. Bref, ce type a des problèmes intérieurs… Il est toujours tout goubliné, comme ça… (Ndlr : il se lance alors dans une imitation comique de Jim O’Rourke, courbé avec tout le poids du monde sur ses épaules). Un petit con!

DÄLEK «Black Smoke Rises» (extrait de From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots, 2002)
C’est vache, j’avoue. Ce morceau n’est pas vraiment représentatif du musicien. C’est Dälek.
Z.D : Oui, ça aurait pu être n’importe quoi ! En fait, on ne s’est rencontré qu’une fois, le temps de la collaboration (Ndlr : Faust vs. Dälek, Nummer 3 en 2003, puis Derbe Respect, Alder en 2004). Dälek était un fan de Faust depuis des années, et il m’a contacté. Ce qui m’intéressait, c’est que le hip-hop est très loin de ce que je fais d’habitude. Le mélange entre nos deux univers était vraiment nouveau. We did it!

Pour finir, j’aimerais savoir comment les deux groupes Faust font (ou ont fait) pour cohabiter?
Z.D : Hans-Johachim Irmler (Ndlr : membre de la formation originale, qui a tenté de monter un groupe Faust parallèlement à celui de Jean-Hervé Peron et Zappi Diermaier) a essayé de faire de la musique sous le nom Faust, en invitant des musiciens qui n’avaient rien à voir avec le groupe. Ça a duré deux ou trois semaines. Il était le seul membre de la formation originale. En 2005, 35 ans après les débuts de Faust, il a tourné en Angleterre en essayant de reprendre des vieux morceaux du groupe. Il était incapable de les jouer et de les reproduire correctement sur scène, même si par ailleurs, c’est un bon musicien. On s’était déjà rendu compte de ça au moment où on s’est reformé dans les années 90. C’est comme s’il ne comprenait plus ces vieux morceaux. Pour moi, ce qu’il a fait à ce moment-là n’était pas du Faust et je crois qu’aujourd’hui, il a compris de lui-même que ça n’était pas le vrai Faust.
J.H.P (toujours à propos de H.J Irmler) : Il me déteste et je le déteste.

À ce point-là ?
J.H.P : Oui. Si l’un de nous deux, Zappi ou moi, allait rejoindre Irmler, alors peut-être que ça deviendrait le vrai Faust, parce qu’à deux, on a toujours plus de matière et plus d’éléments. Le seul Faust est celui qui vit ! Et pour le moment, c’est nous : le trio avec Momo (Ndlr : Amaury Cambuzat). D’ailleurs demain, ça fera précisément 10 ans qu’Amaury a joué avec nous pour la première fois sur scène. C’est un excellent musicien, unique. Il comprend l’esprit de Faust et en même temps, il nous apporte énormément. En plus, il est beau et il sent bon ! (Rires)

Et maintenant, quels sont vos plans ?
Z.D : Nous avons encore plusieurs dates, en France, à Cracovie, et à Londres en décembre. Il y a aussi le livre d’Andy Wilson sur Faust qui vient de sortir. Et puis nous aimerions sortir un nouveau disque l’année prochaine.
J.H.P : Après le concert de Londres, nous arriverons à la fin de l’année 2006. On refermera la page que l’on a ouverte en 2005 – nous avons beaucoup travaillé pendant ces deux ans, entre les concerts et les enregistrements -, pour en rouvrir une nouvelle en début d’année prochaine. Nous avons encore énormément de projets.
Z.D : Nous aimerions monter des concerts très différents de ce que l’on a fait jusqu’à présent. Soit très minimalistes, soit beaucoup plus explosifs, avec des énormes machines. Des hélicoptères par exemple.

Comme Johnny ?
J.H.P : (Rires) Oui, ou plutôt comme Stockhausen ! Il a composé une pièce pour six hélicoptères.
Z.D : Enfin, nous voudrions intégrer des films et de la vidéo à nos concerts de manière interactive. Nous réagissons à la vidéo, et la vidéo réagit à ce que l’on joue.
www.faust-pages.com
Francoise Massacre
Publié dans: VERSUS MAG #10 (Mars 2007)

Новая поисковая машина по блогам, Sphere, запущена несколько дней назад. Также было объявлено о вливании $3.75 миллиона в развитие этой компании. В дополнение к информации о запуски этой поисковой машины стал доступен подкаст с интервью CEO Tony Conrad и с Toni Schneider на TalkCrunch.Сфера, которая хоть и следует по пятам уже существующих поисковых машин по блогам, таким как Feedster, Technorati и IceRocket, а также аналогичным предложениям от Google и Yahoo, делает это немного по-другому, не так как её предшественники (и надо сказать, что изменилась она порядочно с октября предыдущего года).

Дизайн Sphere, кстати, был создан компанией Adaptive Path. Дополнительная информация по этому проекту доступна здесь.

Сайт разделён на три главных сегмента: Результаты поиска по блогам, "Раскручиваемые" блоги и Другие типы поиска.

Результаты поиска по блогам

Результаты поиска на сфере могут быть отфильтрованы по дате, релевантности или же при помощи их комбинации. В отличие от Technorati, который определяет релевантность блога, базируясь на количестве уникальных ссылок на этот блог, Sphere применяет специальные алгоритмы для рассчёта релевантности. "Релевантность" у них базируется на трёх ключевых факторах: количество входящих и исходящих ссылок блога, мета-данные самого блога (средняя длина поста, частота, с которой добавляются записи и др.) и семантический анализ самих блогов. Следует заметить, что релевантность у Sphere вполне приличная. Более подробно мы рассмотрим эту систему и сравним её с другими системами позже.

Другая фича – возможность смены промежутка дат при поиске. Если установить промежуток дат, то можно просмотреть дневную разбивку, в которой показываются результаты, добавленные именно в интересующий нас день и удовлетворяющие критериям поиска.

Каждый результат поиска имеет ссылку на профиль блога и включает базовую информацию о блоге (количество входящих и исходящих ссылок, частота добавления записей и длина постов и дополнительная информация). В будущем будет доступна дополнительная информация, предоставляемая уже авторами блога, например, фотография, почтовый индекс для геотаггинга и тема, которой посвящён блог.

"Раскручиваемые" блоги

Самые релевантные блоги для поисковых условий указаны в блоке “Раскручиваемые блоги”.

Если Вы не можете найти то, что ищете, откройте блог, имеющий самый большой рейтинг, чтобы продолжить поиск уже внутри этого блога.

Другие типы поиска

Недостаточно результатов, предоставляемых в блогах? Откройте ссылку “related media” и можете искать по картинкам, новостям, книгам и подкастам.

Другие инструменты

Хотя эта поисковая платформа уже сама по себе интересна, но самое интересное кроется в разделе Tools. Устанавливаем приложение "Sphere It" и щёлкаем на неё всякий раз когда читая что-либо в инете нужна дополнительная информация. Sphere проанализирует страницу в реальном времени и покажет результаты поиска по блогам, релевантные к данной теме. Важно заметить, что результат поиска будет не просто всеми ссылками, которые ссылаются на данную страницу, а напротив, будут отображены ссылки на свежие блоги, в которых обсудается тема, затрагиваемая на текущей странице.

Остаётся только поздравить команду разработчиков Sphere за то, что всё-таки они запустили этот продукт и продвинули поиск по блогам ещё на один шаг вперёд.

Источник: Techcrunch