There’s finally a new CD of Office-R, Recording the Grain, published by the Norwegian label +3db. Office-R is pretty much my favorite band, my favorite music…
Reviews here, or via here (mostly Dutch):
http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/office-r-6/recording-the-grain
http://www.goddeau.com/content/view/5329
http://www.hardhatarea.com/hatlog/2008/11/officer_new_cd.html
Office-R: http://www.n-collective.com/etc
Just adding to my reading list… John Tillbury’s Cardew biogaphy and a Cardew anthology:
http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/cardew-reader
and:
http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/cornelius-cardew-life-unfinished
… if only’d find the time I would write a short text on Tetuzi Akiyama, Liberty Ellmann, steel string guitar and approaches to (dis)harmony. Heard Akiyama on monday with Martin Taxt, Eivind Lønning (amazing trumpet player) and Espen Reinertsen. Beautiful. Heard Liberty Ellmann with Henry Threadgill’s Zooid on wednesday. Also (great).
But I have to get the fish out of the oven…
At the moment my blog is only recording my bike rides. Excuses? No.
But do check out this: The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton, published by Mosaic, 8 cedees, classic stuff: http://destination-out.com/?p=205.
Gonzo Circus (http://www.gonzocircus.com) will publish my 700 words review of George Lewis’s A Power Stronger than Itself – a history of the AACM: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/etc. Nice!
Meanwhile I find excellent stuff at Steve Coleman’s new (?) M-Base site, uhm, all music available for free…: http://m-base.com/. That’ll keep me listening to his work for while. Also check out his blog-posts: http://mbase.wordpress.com/. That is, if you’d like a thorough explanation of his musical theories.
This friday, May 30th: We Love STEIM Party at the Mediamatic Garagebox. With performances of DJ Sniff, Toktek, music played by your DNK-deejays Andre, Harm and Koen, and much more: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-38024-en.html. Come and party to show how much we love STEIM.
This is especially for those of you who enjoy new music and are interested in innovative electronic art: the famous laboratory STEIM in Amsterdam is in great danger. The advice of the most important national public funding body is to give STEIM zero euro’s. Yes: nothing.
For all of us who are interested in new and innovative art and music this is hard to understand.
To help you can send a letter of support:
Was at DNK yesterday night – where I heard some wonderful music again. The talks during the break touched on the topic of subsidy and money, maybe it was because it was on my mind, but it was on Robert van Heumen’s mind too, I guess (as he’s from STEIM), and I can imagine Thomas Peutz’ (of Smart) thoughts were going in that direction too (although I did not talk to him). (Btw: the subsidizing of V2_ – where I works 3 days a week – by the city of Rotterdam is part of a dirty political game between the town council and the advising committee).
The evening started with a composition by the young Spanish composer Angel Arranz, for cello and electronics – wonderfully played by Jan Willem Troost (cello) and the composer himself: Punto Intenso contra Remisso. The program text quotes Derrida on the pharmakon – probably because of the relationship between the electronic sounds and the acoustic cello. What I heard was a piece with a very good, clear, almost traditional compositional quality and with many well-stated musical ideas, and a smart interaction between the cello and the electronics. 23 minutes long, and not one dull moment. They received a well-deserved long applause.
After the break the duo of Keir Neuringer and Carlos Iturralde played 3 improvised pieces. The first was for alto saxophone and electric guitar, both ‘amplified’ with electronics as is usual nowadays. Hitting pretty much common and well-known ground, that is, if you know this type of music, they did play an enticing piece. After that both took place behind the knobs of assorted pedals, controllers and a small mixing deck for a well-structured, concentrated dialogue in noise. I don’ think it is necessary to state that they did not fall into the trap of just increasing the volume and go-go-go, as it’s normal to compose on the spot with different layers of noise, and they did it well. Only the last piece was a bit of a let-down. Keir Neuringer again was turning the knobs, Carlos Iturralde was triggering and playing with images (photographs of dictators: Hitler, Stalin, Sadam Hoessein), and not only where the images and the image-processing very clicheed, he seemed to struggle with it too. Musically the last piece did not come off the ground. In fact, that third piece was just bad. But well, that can happen (and I’ve seen worse elsewhere, in bigger venues).
Just ordered George Lewis’ history of the AACM, A Power Stronger Than Itself
The AACM and American Experimental Music. Seems to be out, though Amazon still lists it as ‘not yet published’. I have been listening a lot to music from that scene the past year, so I’m craving for some ‘deeper’ information. Also curious what George Lewis has to say. The very first concert of free improv music that I witnessed was George Lewis + Gerry Hemingway and I love his sound on the trombone. Though I am sometimes put off by his writings, he can be heavy-handed (?) when he does theory. Here’s an excerpt: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/476957.html
The DNK-concert yesterday was a fitting goodbye to the OT301-space. DNK moves next week to the new concert space of the Smart Project Space a little further on in Amsterdam-West, a little more luxurious, and larger: it seats 120 people.
As a goodbye sound artist Mark Bain made the whole building vibrate: using seismic sensors to detect the natural resonance of the building, he played that frequency back into the building. The result is amazing, you hear and feel the vibrations, your muscles and organs are massaged (depending a bit on how you’re build, it seems to work much better with other people than with me). And it creates a happening in the space: the audience sits, stands, experiences in silence, there is nothing to look at (no musical performance), only something to hear and feel. One concentrates on the sound and one’s own body. It is a ‘heavy’ contemplative experience, and a enjoyable one too.
Before that, we already had had much time to listen to all the sounds in the building and to the space itself. Four compositions of the very young composers Taylan Susam and Joseph Kudirka (two each), brought together under the banner of Boredom and Danger, left more space for silence than for musical events. (Which is not completely correct, as the silence can also be a musical event). It is very interesting to see how deeply these young composers (and performers) have been influenced by the Wandelweiser-group. Isolating sounds, small sounds, almost inaudible sounds, and creating space to make sure that we can listen to those sounds. (Apart from the first piece in which someone in the audience got the giggles, there was abolutely no sound from the audience, no coughing, or whatever). There are simply many more minutes of silence, in which you become aware of your own listening attitude, that moments with sound. (Although ‘silence’ is never silent). You become aware of the space (the building and its acoustic situation), of each and every sound – there is not any bit of the sound which is less important than any other bit. You hear everything, Everything counts. In that sense this minimalism is an absolute maximalism: every tiny change in the sound, in the breath, in the hairs on the bow of the cello, is equally important.
On the other hand there is also a conceptualist tendency going in their work. It was maybe strongest in the first two pieces. Seven Minutes or Trombonist by Kubirka simply consisted of a repeating of the same tone, held for about 10 seconds, followed by a much longer silence. The quite high tone was played in different positions each time, which made it a pretty virtuoso piece, though it didn’t nor looked virtuoso at all. Rather the opposite.
schoorel by Taylan Susam is a piece for one speaker, who over a period of a few minutes speakes the following words: It. Was. The. Most. Was. and then 3 words that I do not remember.
The high point for me was Solidarity by Joe Kudirka, subtitled ‘A Quilt for Christian Wolff’ – of all the four pieces this was the one with the most musical events. I think it was a score that could go in different directions, interpreted by clarinet (Taylan), ukulele (Kudirka), cello (Nia Hitz) and trombone (Daniel Ploeger), but also using tapping with the foot, whistling, and hand clapping.
Finally Taylan’s piece for anthony fiumara (2006) was again on the brink of audibility, and very very silent.
The total seriousness of these pieces makes them radical, and amazing, I find – though one might say that not all of them worked equally well. Maybe it still is the mark of really good ‘new’ art that it is at first difficult to accept, difficult to get, because it seems nothing, or too easy to do. The seriousness convinces me. And it makes you listen in a different way. It creates its own world, in which everything is relevant – that is a statement in itself, also ‘against’ the world. I would almost say that such music states “This is Our Music” (after Ornette Coleman).
Maybe I am reading too much in it. Who knows. Nevertheless, more than a hundred listeners came out on a monday night to experience it.
Next week DNK continues at the Smart Project Space.
http://www.myspace.com/taylansusam