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Zorn List Digest       Tuesday, August 17 1999       Volume 02 : Number 741



In this issue:
-
       Re: recent goodies (otomo edition) - long
       Re: recent goodies (otomo edition) - sorry, one more.
       Re: recent goodies (otomo edition) - long
       Computer music
       Checkmate, Non Zorn Content, but Still Cool
       bailey rec
       ?s & As

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 04:27:13 -0400
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: recent goodies (otomo edition) - long

(The following was written way before i read many postings under this
thread, and was to be sent to zorn-list. however, i felt i wrote too
long... so, sent only to jon asking him to trim down if he thinks it's
worthy of going to list... however, he replied that i should rather sent
entire contents of it... + he seems to have something to say re: my
comment on ikeda! o.k. encouraged... here it is. - if you're not into
this thread, simply skip! - pt)
***********************************************************************
> well, I was hoping other people would chime in on this thread, but no such
> luck yet.

o.k. sorry... i was also hoping somebody else's response. (being a
typical silent reader. bad attitude. sorry again!)
however, your reply was excellent to describe experimental electronic
music fans listen all those live shows.

you wrote:
> I'm not sure why a recognizable "sound" or style for a musician is
> necessarily such a good thing. I think the quality level of the records
> produced and the concerts given is the important thing, whether or not
> outside observers can link them all together or not.

right!
maybe it'd make a really rude statement in this particular list... but
have any of you ever thought that many people who haven't used to listen
'free jazz music' in general, would not identify &/or recognize
distinctive styles on many excellent jazz-based musicians, either??
they would say 'it sounds all the same!' as you'd say the same thing
towards the electronic music genre...
knowledge tells you something. but it's not all. however, identifying
artists in electronic music genre is very possible if you're into the
music. i know many friends who are simply good at it.
2 seconds or so will give them enough info to say which is which... (but
again, i should say it's not so important.)
in live electronic show situation though, it'd be different esp. if
you're listening to as jon pointed out - jim o'rourke jamming w/
somebody else, jim's sound would change according to the other
musician's input. even pita (peter rehberg)'s sound was very much
different. (i'm comparing his performance w/ jim & christian fennesz,
then duo w/ jim, and solos.)
their approach to improvisation w/ others is more of 'collaboration',
less of 'counter-attacking'. it's similar to make a painting together.
so... in a way, it's not very important that i cannot identify which
sounds are made by jim & which are by pita. the result of
picture/composition is more important. and good accumulation/development
in the composition shows extreme talent very obviously.
(i agree jon said 'pita's solo performance @tonic' was one of the top
performances in recent past. it was a great improvised composition!)

many electronic music artists are really good improvisors since they
really listen to others & carefully filling in to make more interesting
picture. i myself came from the 'old school'(in a good meaning!) of
zorn's improvisation circle listener, but recent 5 yrs or so, i've been
also (& now more) into those electronic undergrounds. they wouldn't need
the rule of the game to do improvisation. (in a way, i used to think
that the games were good creation especially for free jazz based
improvisors... since some of them tend to play too long! - waiting for
some climaxes. the rules can tell them to reach the climaxes in a
second! - another rude statement;)
yes. they might be creating the similar sounds from the similar programs
of the similar computers.. but if they're really talented, the painting
they come up would be really different & significant.
i'd say it's also a very good thing to abondon the religious thought
about 'technique'. (yeah. i know. technique is _not_ the top element in
any other forms of music either. but it's still highly regarded in most
of traditional instrumental music genre...)
you should be aware how many teenagers at home start making extremely
interesting music. most of them would never go to music school or learn
music theory... still some of them will make superb pieces.

there was one notable statement made by a friend, umezu kazutoki:
"i think that i'm improvising in quite a diffrent way nowadays compared
with one in the past. and i think it was partly because i encountered &
worked with some electronic artists - samplers etc., these days. their
way of improvising must've put some effect on me. it's more of a
collaboration. i like that... not like the way many of us used to do..."
(this statement was made after an excellent improv. show with anthony
coleman, david kraukauer, and eyvind kang. i love him since he'd say
things like this w/o a hesitation. as a jazz improvisor, he's a rare
personality... i think.)

anyway... like in any other genre, there are some electronic artists
good at improv. and some are not at all improvisors. ryoji ikeda for
instance, is a supreme composer. +/- is a must. & his work for noton's
current series 20/2000 is great too. his live performances are great to
attend. but he most likely, presents a pre-composed piece. i think he
preferrs that way. his pieces are meticulously made... so, he doesn't
want to mess it up. (& why should he?!) it's his way of approach. &
you'd still have great time if you attend a concert by him. (but not
more than once in a short period of time... since there's a great chance
you end up listening to an exactly same set.)
another e.g.: i recently (luckily & finally!) found that alec empire is
a very good improvisor. he is more known to be a king of digital
hardcore. (& i'm not that crazy for it.) however, if you ever get a
chance to attend his solo dj set somewhere, grab it!(better, if it's a
very low key venue... he can be very relaxed & explore personal
favorites... like in nyc, he performed towards 20-30 kids who patiently
waited a really late show)  he'd do all those experimentations w/ wide
range of vinyls from minimal to ambient to more hardcore stuff
interwaving into one beautiful significant piece. he is a great live
composer!
****************************
i can go on more.. but i'm putting an end here. (enough for this time.)
there are lots to be said about dance music too. but another time if i
can.

pt

- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 04:28:38 -0400
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: recent goodies (otomo edition) - sorry, one more.

another long mail. sorry but i read all the exchanges now. i have some
more to say... i hope jon wouldn't mind my 'more rumbling.' - pt

towards other comments on this thread;

(i'm skipping who said what. i think the first comment is by brian
olewnick & second one is by mike chamberlain.)

> > It doesn't bother me at all to watch a musician sitting behind a powe=
rbook, so
> long as
> > they're making interesting music. To me, if the music is interesting,=
 the
> musician
> > will be interesting to watch no matter what they're doing.
>=20
> Can you *really* say that?=A0 Then why is it that we can judge live
> performances as being more or less interesting/entertaining/rewarding,
> if the music in all cases is delivered in much the same way? (I'm
> thinking mainly of more mainstream stuff, but I could include acoustic
> free jazzers.)=A0 Which is which?=A0 Can you pull the music and the
> performance apart?=A0 I think you can to a certain extent. It's not
> something I've totally worked out, obviously.=A0 I guess what bugged me
> about O'Rourke was that both the music and the performance (and I use
> that term very loosely here) were exceedingly uninteresting.=A0 And if =
the
> music had been something I enjoyed, then I might have cut it a bit of
> slack, I suppose, but this....

i haven't attended the particular duo performance by o'rourke & muller.
so... i'm not in the position of saying the music was good or not.
however... the point of argument is at least partly on whether the
performer behind a powerbook motionlessly is worth the money...

i've been very much irritated by the traditional music audience who
wants to sit down in front of performers & gazes at the performance,
lately... esp. in live electronic music show.=20
for instance, when i help putting up some events w/ some friends, we'd
try to make our best effort to put performers everywhere in the space. &
try not to give stage lights kinda stuff. people in this circumstances
are encouraged to walk around, come in any time they want & leave any
time they want.. also, encouraged to lie down on the floor (usually
cushions or pillows provided, or we encourage people to bring their own
pillows w/ them.) they can also chat during the show! - chat _is_ an
element of the space, too.
to us, music is a mere one element of environment. for trying to scatter
single attention towards music performers, we'd put visuals/ 3
dimentional installations (occasionally interactive w/ people), etc. in
a way, victo fest. could have been the worst setting to listen to those
kinda music. (ignore the performers' presense for whatever's sake!)

one more thing to add to this:
ikeda ryoji said once that he's in fact not that interested in
performing in public, mainly because he's quite aware of
'visually-not-so-much-happening' performing style of his. so, he
demanded places he performed (in ny, one was at experimental intermedia,
and another was at columbia univ. cafeteria-look alike small space),
getting rid of lights as much as possible. the one i attended was at
columbia. stuff members took some moments to cover up the ugly cafeteria
bright lights... but it still didn't make the space a complete darkness.
and... tonight, i saw one another underground electronic music
performance by somebody whose name i do not remember, but he was another
powerbook musician who made a massive noise soundscape... his
collaborator passed around blindfolds to audience, so instantly people
can experience the complete darkness! (ikeda should've used the
method!!)
actions are entertaining, sometimes. but actions can be very much
'show-off'. (& macho!)=20
stop looking at those performers. soak yourself w/ sound. some good
performers will provide you w/ great soundscape, live.=20
(no, no! it'd still not be the same as you hear cd! as i said in the
previous mail, good electronic improvisors can perform great live music.
improvised for just that second! well, even ikeda's live performance, is
worth if you haven't seen it yet. because the experience is very
physical. if you'd be able to sit down on the floor during his show, you
feel huge vibration thru the floor. your butt will get great massage:) i
mean he's a master of high end & low end!)

pt

- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 06:05:26 -0400
From: eric ong <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: recent goodies (otomo edition) - long

Greetings list,

this is an interesting meditation starting up here. sometimes
it's hard to know what to make of a transgressional electronic group. and
as such,
i thought i might just post the following excerpt from a jon wozencroft
[touch/fuse/aer] interview Sean Cooper did just after the fuse conference many
months back in san francisco, where farmer's manual-related side
project SKOT gave their mind-scrambling debut performance. i don't think
this interview ever really saw light, so i thought i may as well just throw
it
in here where it might stick.

- -----------

sc: How do you suppose somebody like, say, Farmers Manual fits into that?
Earlier you were talking about getting caught up in techniques and at that
point all you're expressing is technology. From one perspective, it's
possible to listen to Farmers Manual and say that that's what they're
doing. That they're merely expressing the limits of the technology that
they're using.

jw: There are certain exceptions to the rule, which you can never explain
or anticipate. But people suddenly and intuitively find a tool or an
instrument that they are so connected with and able to use in a particular
way: Farmers Manual to me are doing a kind of punk with the computer, and
they have an undertanding of the computer that my generation had an
undertanding of the tape recorder and an understanding of the tape machine.
I could never do what Farmers Manual do. They are able to rewire, literally
rewire, the kind of aesthetics of the circuitry, the kinds of sounds that
you get out of Pro Tools and all these Mac-based hard-disk editing
programs. They...they're difficult, Farmers Manual.

sc: But are they doing more than that. Are they doing more than expressing
technology?

jw: Oh yeah, I think so. I think that if I was to get
intellectual/theoretical/explanatory about Farmers Manual, that I would say
they were taking what Lyotard and Baudrillard talked of as being
micronarratives, and they're taking something that in 1971 would
have been a two-hour piece and doing it in two minutes. And in Farmers
Manual you'll have a sequence of sounds that might last 10 seconds, but
that 10 seconds could, if you wanted it to be looped, it could go on for
five or ten minutes. So a lot of what Farmers Manual are doing is also
talking about time compression, and about how you relate the creation of
space and the marking out of space by doing something that is very -- well,
they would use the word brutal -- that's very...resistent.
They're, I think, trying to create new forms, and in doing so challenging
all of the conventional relationships between a musician and a studio, a
musician and a song, a musician and a particular format -- which we're all
brought up with, which is the three-minute pop song -- and they're doing,
like, 10 songs in three minutes, or even 50 songs in three minutes. And so
you get one of their CDs and it's got 60 or 70 indexes on it. To me, that's
all talking about micronarratives, talking about the kind of fragmentation
of experience. They're taking all of these fragments and editing them
together so that they create this kind of completely self-combusting
chemical reaction. People often think, and they've accused me of it, that
these things are improvised, that these things are just thrown together
because we liked the noises. No, no. These things are constructed in the
way anyone would use color or the way anyone would use words in a text.
They're finding sounds that they find interesing or unique, and they're
editing them together. You can think of it as strips of film, you can think
of it as a lattice, like a hypertext kind of thing, and it's also forcing
you, the listener, to rethink your relationship to intervals, harmonies,
progressions: how much of something do you need to feel a relationship to
it. I love music that, initially, makes me think, "I'm not sure about
this," that I have to listen to a few times. It's a challenge, and you want
these things to push you forward. You don't want always to have things that
tell you where you already are. What's the point?

- ---------

Are they doing more than expressing technology? Yet another response.

i realize this doesn't really address whether or not electronic live improv
is interesting to watch, but i think it touches upon the heart of what many
of you supporters/defenders of the genre have been stating in one form or
another: electronic music challenges conventional relationships etc etc.
Not that we all did not already know this before the thread started. But
putting it in practice is a different matter I guess.


- -eric.



- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 07:04:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Jason J Tar" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Computer music

> One requires real-time virtuosity, the ability to listen and respond.
> One does not.  Guess which is which.
> I attended some of those FIMAV shows also.  I don't
> know much about electro-acoustic music but it seems
> like it doesn't lend itself to performance.
> Just an idea.  O'Rourke by the way
> had a personal best in Tetris during the performance.

I think the "problem" is that many people percieve a person sitting quietly
behind a computer as just pretty much pushing "play" and leaving it at that.
Not true.  There are many programs which can be worked with in real time (Audio
Mulch is an example).  Too many people see sitting behind a powerbook as the
equivalent as pushing play on a DAT.  (Possibly the same people who scoff at
artists like David Shea for using a sampler instead of a "Real Instrument"?).
I think if people were to use some of the software, or view a backdrop screen
of it at work, perhaps then their misconceptions and negative stereotypes would
be allieved.
JJTar.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 06:02:28 -0700
From: dennis summers <[e-mail]>
Subject: Checkmate, Non Zorn Content, but Still Cool

>>>"This essay has been stimulated by a book rather than an exhibition. But
the *Large Glass* is on permanent view in the Arensberg Collection at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, where it is surrounded by ready-mades. It is
worth a pilgrimage. While you stand in front of the *Glass,* trying to
remember which is the Sex cylinder and which the Reservoir of love
gasoline, you are certain to hear whoops and shrieks nearby.<<<<

Not sure why this was posted to the list, but since it was... I recently
finished creating a 2 minute 3d computer generated animation of "The Large
Glass" or "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even," which *explains*
how the glass came to be cracked. If anyone is interested, I'll send you one
at cost, which should be roughly $5.00 including postage. Sorry for the
self-promotion and the non-zorn content, but I didn't start it.

yours in zornocity --ds
***Quantum Dance Works***
****http://members.home.net/dennisqdw****


- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 11:10:05 -0400
From: David Keffer <[e-mail]>
Subject: bailey rec

About a month ago, a couple folks on the list
(maybe Steve S. and Stefan V.) were talking about a record
with a track where Derek Bailey was playing straight.
Would one of you remind me what this was?  I think
you all said it was on Emanem but I could be wrong
and I can't seem to find it searching through the
back issues of the digest...

I see three DB solo records on emanem.  Is it one of these?

Domestic & Public Pieces
Lace
Fairly Early Derek Bailey With Postscripts

Thanks.

David K.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 17 Aug 99 11:08:12 -0500
From: [e-mail]
Subject: ?s & As

Just got back to work with a billion messages, and plenty of questions prompted.
Sorry to tie a buncha threads into one knot (and sorry I missed out on the "why
are we sick" before Rizzi unplugged it -- lemme just say, uranus muckiness, as a
working journalist, that if someone says the went on a shooting spree as a wake-
up call, my job is to report it, simple as that).

So, somebody please, answer me these, and take all of my comments to heart:

The Cassiber remix isn't a good starter, but is it good? I have the other
(routinely available, anyway) GZeros, but have held off because of the price tag
on this one.

Melt Banana best recording is Scratch or Stitch on Skin Graft, predates Charly.

God Mountain is Japanese -- the French imprint on Les Disques Du Soleil Et De
L'Acier God Mountain Europe (France) seems a seperate distributor or something.
I've seen a couple titles like this. Cover art/tracks/etc. are all identical
(from what I've seen), except the compiliation "Neue Konservative," which loses
the lobster for a plain gray cover. (Why that would be I'll die not knowing.)
Hoppy told me the entire GMountain catalog should be back in print, but I
haven't seen them showing up in the stores again.

On watching O'Rourke: yeah, there's not much to look at. But remember, this is
music, not theater. You _listen_, not look. (and I'm a JO'R fan, for what it's
worth).
I actually find the focus on watching pretty distressing. If the reason it's
better to see Zorn live than buy a CD (assuming we agree it is) is so you can go
"Hey, he's wearing camouflage pants again, and remember when his hair was
short?", then I'm not sure you even get the power of improv, whether it be
blowing a horn or fast thinking on a laptop -- both of which can involve "real
time virtuosity" (sorry to call you out, mike, but really...) There's an energy
to people reacting to each other in real time that doesn't translate onto disc,
and it's not something that you can see. It's about being in the room.

Oh, and Patrick Brown, thanks. Henry Threadgill should be heralded here and on
all listservs at least once a week.

My boss, I imagine, would like me to work now.

kg



- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #741
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