Philadelphia Sound Forum Blog

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noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:45:00 +0000

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The Sealed Knot

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:13:00 +0000

(photo from paristransatlantic.com)

. . . , the trio of Burkhard Beins, Mark Wastell, and Rhodri Davies, has contributed an insightful and thoughtful discussion to one of the always-interesting "roundtable" features over at Point of Departure. See some great videos of "the Knot" here and here. I'm remiss in still not having acquired their new CD, but some info and audio is here.

Lucre at Hampshire

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 05:28:00 +0000

Nice video has surfaced from the Lucre set at Hampshire College. Enjoy:

Robin Fox & Anthony Pateras live in Geneva

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:51:00 +0000

Robert Ashley on "The Curse of the Recital"

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:24:00 +0000

via Kyle Gann, excerpting a new book of Ashley's writings. I've talked about Ashley here before, right? Hmm, just a passing link? Ashley is a composer making use of the natural cadences of spoken American English and also electronics. Ubu has some sounds (I recommend "The Wolfman" and "In Sara Mencken, Christ and Beethoveen there were men and women"). Wikipedia has a surprisingly long entry.

Meanwhile, I just love this passage, and it's in the vein of things I think about a lot with Philadelphia Sound Forum.

Recitals are a curse. Forget for the moment the history of how they came into being. Recitals are a curse. They make the musician into an entertainer, rated, say, on a scale of ten: Ashley = 1; Michael Jackson = 10. They make the audience into a consumer, requiring the equivalent of a restaurant guide: should I go to hear Ives's songs sung by somebody I have never heard of or should I go to hear an Indonesian gamelan, played by people I don't even know about, or should I go to the Philharmonic and hear some turn-of-the-century Austrian music? Dear me.

The political reaction of 1970 was a return to recitals. That the music was called minimalism or the uptown complications of serialism doesn't matter in the least. The reproach to what had gradually come to be the feeling that music was everywhere, that you were part of it and you were actually in it in your daily life was enforced for some cultural reason I cannot understand. The ONCE Group pieces had come more and more to suggest the idea that you were a character in an opera that was bigger than you could understand. That is why we were [physically] attacked at Brandeis and elsewhere. Because we had stopped giving recitals.

Recitals were a perfect format for so-called "world music." Balinese gamelan, no problem. Bong bong bong. How cute. That the gamelan was part of a larger ceremony of cremating the body, drinking the pig's blood and not sleeping for a week didn't enter the picture. Bong bong bong. How cute.

"World music" has been a disaster for America. It doesn't kill people, like AIDS, but it has made us all into consumers, because we are not from Indonesia or South America or China or wherever, and so can only sit there listening to the sounds, wondering where we will eat after the concert, hoping the baby-sitter is behaving and, all in all, wishing we were at home. So we are at the mercy of the "distributor," who makes all things available, but takes the music out of our hands. The distributor, in this case, is the music school and its patrons, who - certainly without understanding what they are doing, what is happening - turn us all into either entertainers or consumers.

That palpable but invisible wall between the entertainer and the audience is a fact of the recital. As a member of the audience you are a consumer and a consumer only. Take your seat. The musicians come on stage. Two or three pieces. Intermission. Two or three pieces. End. You are back out on the street having had an experience, which in most cases lasts only as long as the experience itself. This is a recital. It could have been juggling or a live porno act. Whatever it is, you are not part of it. You have been a watcher. The recitalist hopes that you have been entertained. But you have not been included. You have simply been distracted from what is outside. You do not have more of a musical life. Your life is not more musical.

This is our situation today. And it's not much fun. Because the composer does not have the idea of including the people who come while the music is being enacted. We have lost the idea of the rituals that remind the people who come that what is happening is only a small part, a "surfacing" of the continuing musicality of everyday life.

Actually, those rituals do not exist, except in television and probably in sports events. Everybody plays baseball or football or basketball or soccer or hockey (or wishes they did or thinks they do) so the game is only a "version" of what is part of your life. You are emotionally in it. That is what I mean by ritual. Everybody does not go around singing Mahler or Ives or Feldman or Palestrina. The music is foreign to you. Interesting, maybe, but foreign, like the gamelan. You are not in it. Mostly music students go to recitals. This is true, maybe more so, even if the music is all by living composers. Not that we should expect huge audiences for recitals. But we should expect that the audience is a part of the music, and this is not true, even if the audience is entirely music students. This is the dilemma of contemporary music. The ritual has disappeared. The event is hollow. ["Speech as Music: A Musical Autobiography," pp. 54/56]

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:13:00 +0000

This appears to be the full version of the Eliane Radigue film we posted about back in August. This time with subtitles!

A Portrait of Eliane Radigue (2009) from Maxime Guitton on Vimeo.

NEVERS - soundcheck!

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:55:00 +0000

Nevers is Jean Philippe-Gross (acoustic-electro-acoustic) and Clare Cooper(Guhzeng). You can find more info/ music at their myspace.

More great Ubu additions

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:02:00 +0000

Taku Sugimoto - Myshkin Musicu (for electric guitar)
early-ish work from this sometimes brilliant clean-tone guitar improviser (and lately, composer of brutally sparse works), including an improvisation with Kevin Drumm, Atsuko Ono, Michael Hartman, Michael Colligan, Brent Gutzeit, and Tetuzi Akiyama.

Eliane Radigue - "Geelriandre" and "Arthesis" (1972) and "Kyema, Intermediate States"
hard-to-find work from this French drone master
[edit - Ubu has now added the utterly stunning "Adnos I-III"]

Lionel Marchetti & Jerome Noetinger

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:36:00 +0000

LIONEL MARCHETTI & JEROME NOETINGER
Uploaded by Ornitoto. - Independent web videos.

Keith Rowe & Toshimaru Nakamura - Live in St Louis February 2003

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:30:00 +0000

Keith Rowe & Toshimaru Nakamura live in ST.Louis Feb 02-03 from joseph raglani on Vimeo.

Lionel Marchetti and Yoko Higashi

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:14:00 +0000

New Label, with free web releases

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:35:00 +0000

Our friend and recent Philadelphia Sound Forum presentee Richard Garet has founded a new label, Contour Editions. In edition to physical releases, he's hosting some free online releases for download and an intriguing "screening" project, showing audio-visual works.

New Kevin Drumm album for free download

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 20:21:00 +0000

The brilliant Kevin Drumm has offered a new recording for free download. Haven't heard it yet, but I suspect it RIPS.

Here.

A couple Drumm tracks for streaming at a fan myspace page.

CM von HAUSSWOLFF live @ ZONE Part 9, Secession, Vienna

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Video Interview :: Dieb 13 & Billy Roisz

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:53:00 +0000

RIAM #06, Interview Dieb 13 & Billy Roisz from Cédric richard on Vimeo.

More UBU: long out-of-print Kevin Drumm tape

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:19:00 +0000

Ubuweb has added Kevin Drumm's "Horror of Birth" cassette to their archives. Enjoy!

New Aesthetics in Computer Music : Online Archive

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:20:00 +0000

While searching around the internet recently I stumbled upon some excellent interviews on the website for the Music Research Centre of the University of York (UK). Their New Aesthetics in Computer Music program conducts "research into experimental electronic music with an emphasis on independent and oppositional practices and aesthetics". A big part of this program is their artist in residencies, which brings in today's leading performers of experimental electronic music to work with the students in various projects.

Here are some of our highlighted interviews but there is more to be found on their website.

Peter Rehberg
Yasunao Tone
Olaf Bender (Byetone, Raster-Noton)
Roc Jiménez de Cisneros (EVOL)

Gert-Jan Prins and Synchronator

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:50:00 +0000

We've been checking out some recent work from radio feedback and occasional tympani player Gert-Jan Prins. His duo Synchronator works with audio-video processing (and even sells their own namesake device!). Great, noisy stuff. Listen at his myspace page.

And for French speakers, this seems interesting:

EDIT - Ian has kindly posted a translation in the comments.

MIMEO live in Poland 14.11.2009.

ian.fraserr@gmail.com (IMF) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:48:00 +0000

MIMEO: MUSIC IN MOVEMENT ELECTRONIC ORCHESTRA

Thomas Lehn
Keith Rowe
Phil Durrant
Gert-Jan Prins
Christian Fennesz
Cor Fuhler
Kaffe Matthews
Peter Rehberg
Marcus Schmickler
Rafael Toral

Live in Poland November 14, 2009.

Resources page update

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:54:00 +0000

Over at the resources page, we'd added a bunch of new online places for more free listening:

Live Constructions Archive, WKRC 89.9 FM NY - Although no longer updated, plenty of great sets from eRikm, Francisco Lopez, Gen Ken Montgomery, Phil Niblock, Zbigniew Karkowski, Yasunao Tone, John Duncan, Steve Roden, Mountains and more.

Free Music Archive - Curated by WFMU, WEXP, Issue Project Room, Dub Lab, etc. Tons of stuff all over the map.

Abient Editions - Joda Clement's's very slowly growing archive of live improvised sets from Toronto.

Calculations - Jason Brogan's series for contemporary composition.

Wandelweiser Radio (direct link to audio stream - you may need to install the VLC player) - streaming web radio for this composer collective working largely with space and silence. Playlist is here.

Check it here.

Sons of God on the radio

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:03:00 +0000

A few days before their Philly show, Sons of God performed live on the fantastic Boston radio show (and website - well worth checking out for sundry reviews and interviews) Rare Frequency.

The Sons of God, relying heavily on performance and visual images when they perform live, necessarily had to do something a bit different, and what we get is burbling, windy ambience; low drones; and echo-y spoken text. Listen here.

Robin Hayward Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:19:00 +0000

I've just read an interesting interview with the British tuba player Robin Hayward (resident in Berlin since 1998). Unfortunately, it's in a rather cumbersome format: you have to click on each page to read as a separate jpeg. Still, worth the nine clicks. Hayward discusses his relationship to the tuba, his move to Berlin, some of his regular groups, his compositions, and the development of his approach to improvisation. Good stuff. It's the first article here.

There's also a separate website with some video from Hayward and audio of Annette Krebs [UPDATE: these are both in, uh, German. Still, some tuba technique is demonstrated]. Here's the somewhat-clunky-but-not-too-bad google translated page. I assume "Krebs" must mean "cancer" in German?

Nmperign interview

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:38:00 +0000

Over at Foxy Digitalis, Howard Martin interviews our old pals Nmperign, occasioned by the release of their new disc, the first to be recorded in a studio by the duo.

RIP Maryanne Amacher

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:22:00 +0000

The highly-regarded, if under-documented, sound artist Maryanne Amacher has passed away, at age 71. The NYT graced her with several hundred words. Amacher was known for intensely physical work that utilized psycho-acoustic phenomena and high volume. Sundry memories have popped up around the internet: from Bill Brovold, Seth Nehil, Kyle Gann (with a lengthy comment from archivist and friend Micah Silver), and sundry more.

The Wire magazine has published online an article from 1999. New Music Box spoke to Amacher in 2004. And here's a series of videos of Amacher and Thurston Moore.

RIP.

Henri Chopin at age 83

noreply@blogger.com (Jesse) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:45:00 +0000

just rockin' out:

(from ubuweb)

more chopin on ubu: sound, film, papers, and text.