Listening Limits: Music For Merce

Given the sorry under-played status of most of my boxsets, in both physical and digital formats, and my ongoing disenchantment with digital listening, I’ve decided to introduce a listening project of sorts: listening to the entirety of a digital box set, closely and carefully, before listening to anything else. This only applies to headphones with the portable digital device, but I may try and do something similar with CD boxsets, as there are plenty of those lying about under-appreciated.

So, prompted by rereading - and thoroughly enjoying - a review by Ian Penman of the 10 CD Music For Merce boxset, and given I'm presently reading two John Cage biographies, I'm going to listen to all of Music For Merce. I'll do so chronologically, as presented, from CD1 through to 10 1952 – 2009, but having started and already failed to listen only to Music For Merce, I'll enjoy it slowly, alongside other things but not removing it from the player until it's all properly digested.

And so far so good. I'm up to CD3, and the following have been highlights:

Earle Brown: For Magnetic Tape – Interesting, pockets of primitive electronic tones, surrounded by much silence. First ever electronic dance piece apparently
Earle Brown: For Piano I – Heard just after some Sun Ra it sounded remarkably similar, but slower, with more space, and not as enjoyable.
Morton Feldman: Ixion - a chamber work realised here with two pianos, the restricted tonal palette - all sparse high notes - is welcome after such chanced all-over scatter.
Gordon Mumma: Mesa - David Tudor on bandoneon processed to sound like electric guitar feedback
David Behrman – …For Nearly An Hour… [Excerpt] - Beautifully enunciated female voices reading from Duchamp's writing on his The Large Glass
Pauline Oliveros – In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer - confusing, flute tones heard throughout an auditorium beside granular electronics, but overshadowed by Tudor and flautist Jean Rigg conversing over how and where such interjections should take place
Christian Wolff: For 1, 2, Or 3 People [Excerpt] - featuring Tudor on baroque organ, processing it into spat bursts of drone

The 'multi-media' approach I've taken to this - listening alongside reading the Cage books and the liner notes (and Penman's review) - I'm finding really helpful, ,as without explanation, much of this can be difficult to penetrate. Perhaps despite Cage's ideals, an understanding of the process and means behind these works' realisations adds much to their reception. Penman is dismissive of the early piano stuff and it is pretty cold and dry, but as historical documents from that ... confused period of composition, furthermore as live performances, there is much to intrigue.

What's missing of course is the dance - aside from those moments when dancers' feet is all we can hear - but Cage and Cunningham were committed to keeping the forms independent. Nonetheless I'm finding myself drawn to youtube for stuff like this:

Contemporary Obfuscation

'Hauntological House: From Sturm to Stott' appeared in radio form on RRR 102.7FM Thursday 2 May, 7.00pm Melbourne time under the title Contemporary Obfuscation:

Despite advances in technology enabling easy manipulation of sonic data in high fidelity audio, a number of contemporary electronic musicians opt to intentionally obscure their music into a dirty, hazy, slowed down moire of low-fi noise. Contemporary Obfuscation looks at the work of a number of contemporary UK artists working in this manner - Burial, Actress, Andy Stott, The Caretaker - tracing their roots back to 1990s glitch. Contemporary Obfuscation examines some of the moods and effects this music evokes and looks at possible motivations behind this approach.

Here's what was played:

Burial - 'Forgive' Burial (Hyperdub 2006)
Pole - 'Berlin' 1 (Kiff SM 1998)
Andy Stott - 'Intermittent' Passed Me By (Modern Love 2011)
Actress - 'I Can't Forgive You' Hazyville (Werk Discs 2008)
Sturm - 'Untitled' Sturm (Mille Plateaux 1999)
Miles - 'Rejoice' Faint Hearted (Modern Love 2013)
Samuel Kerridge - 'Auditory System' Auris Interna (Horizontal Ground 2012)
Lee Gamble - 'M25 Echo' Diversions 1994-1996 (PAN 2012)
Tuff Sherm - 'Claw Worlds' Canal Cloaking (Reckno 2012)
Rechenzentrum - 'Parabolid' The John Peel Session (Kitty Yo 2001)
Anthony Child - 'The Space Between People and Things Part 2 (excerpt)' The Space Between People and Things (NNA Tapes 2013)
The Caretaker - 'Persistent Repetition of Phrases' Persistent Repetition of Phrases (Install 2008)

It can be streamed here.

George Jones

So long George, you were the greatest.

Listening: 24 April 2013

Quickly checked the Krake compilation this morning. Started with Thomas Koner's 'The Weary Seer', originally from 2010 and typical Koner - all amorphous grey mist. Then my first hearing of Dadub so no idea whether the Koner-esque drone of 'Synchronic Pattern' is representative of his sound, imagined he was a techno producer. Pole's 'Wipfel Dub' was the most pleasing, from the first of his Waldgeschichten 12"s on his own Pole label (a rebranding of Scape?), which I'd missed until recently hearing Waldgeschichten 3. These show a real return to original form, crisp and spacious dub patterns which could have come out on Scape 10 years ago but they're unusually well crafted and effortlessly enjoyable:



Given the appearance of Kid606 too, Krake seems a real throwback to the glitch era where compilations like this were rampant. Its status as an accompaniment to a festival reveals modest aims: a take-home souvenir of sorts. However parent label Killekill describe Krake's aim as presenting 'strictly challenging artists, no bullshit, no boredom.' In which case their decision to release as their first product a compilation of many old artists and recent offcuts is problematic.



After this played all of Lubomyr Melnyk's Corollaries. Melnyk's been around since the 1970s and is famed for his 'continuous music', ceaseless arpeggios and rapid flurries played by human hands. Given the reviews and blurbs I'd expected something more jaw-droppingly frenetic a la Nancarrow, Mazulis or even Charlemagne Palestine but it's rather subdued, bucolic even, certainly more 'musical':



Most pieces spring from Glass/Reich like patterns before branching out into lush emotional vistas. In this sense Melnyk seems more influenced by Franz Liszt and the virtuosic romantic tradition.

Listening: Sandwell District Fabric 69

I don't listen to much Techno these days but the Sandwell District Fabric mix is hugely enjoyable. Played in near entirety on the commute to work (still have the closing minutes to hear), with the listening situation - in motion on public transport, Autumn sun intermittently peering through the windows, listening crisply on headphones to which techno is well suited - worked in its favour. Not too much of the dull grey Berghain-post-Basic Channel sound - which tends to bore me - but it's definitely represented, and well, with strong linear chug from Mary Velo, JPLS (sounding very Basic Channel), Rrose and Markus Suckut.





But these work best due to timbral detours via Untold, Mark Ernestus doing BBC, and Plastikman, these strung together beautifully.



I can't help but find far more time for Rrose than others of their ilk due solely to the name. It retains enough 'concept' to provide faceless Techno with a hint of face, and it being Duchamp's, it's a cheeky, playful one.


But one needs an 'in', anything, to make choices in today's music marketplace.





And Rrose's work with Bob Ostertag provides further interest:

Listening: 13 April 2013 - Mille Plateaux

I came of age with Mille Plateaux, discovering it as a recently converted former electrophobe, turned on through the usual club means, but craving an exploratory angle I'd missed through the indie-alt-country twee I'd hitherto enjoyed and the banging UK Hard House I'd been introduced to (and didn't much care for). Mille Plateaux, and their functional brethren Force Inc and Force Tracks, did the trick, bringing invention, rhetoric and experimentalism to the - for me - new field of electronic and dance music.


I was going to write more on this but no time, so will stick to what I've recently revisited. None of this fueled by a specific nostalgia, but somehow was curious to hear how Random Inc's Walking In Jerusalem sounded. It was one of the late Mille Plateaux releases I never properly heard, also coincidentally among the first records I bought through the internet. Could be a factor, lacking the in-person connection of buying in real shops (a petty plug for Saturday's Record Store Day). Anyways, its patchy now but by no means irrevocably dated, couple of pretty good tracks which could work in today's deep house environment. Walking In Jerusalem was released in two versions, I got the more rhythmic vinyl but there was the more abstract CD release (which I've never heard), with some cross over but generally distinct tracks and agenda. (This multiple versions-multiple aims release strategy seems to be quite unique, and doesn't happen much today.)

Only audio link to it I could find available is this, using a track I can only assume is CD only as I don't have it, for a video I know nothing about:



The vinyl release comprises mixes of sorts, each track titled 'Random Inc meets...' so and so '... in ...', location in Jerusalem, based around wherever Random Inc's Sebastien Meissner did the field recording. Collaborators are mostly the glitch-Microhouse artists of the day, of which the 'Random_Inc Meets Anton Kubikov @ Moscovia' track is pretty good, a glitched up version of Kubikov's 'Erusalem' off his Move Your Body Boogie' EP on the forgotten Freizeitglaubben label.



That track is now credited to SCSI-9:



Also great is 'Random_Inc Meets Greenhouse Fx @ King David', but of Greenhouse FX there is nada.

So it's an internet void for listening to Walking in Jerusalem aside from unhelpful Last FM links, like much of the lesser glitch bulk of the day. Random Inc's Sebastian Meissner does more as Klimek these days but not since 2009's Movies is Magic (which was magic).

Also DLed and listened to Vladislav Delay's Entain. I'd only had it on a copied Mini Disk before but its worth hearing again; like all V Delay's work it holds up. Mournful dubby trails with trademark bass pulses. Youtube is kind:



Something of Slowdive's Souvlaki in this:


Now have a hankering to hear Tim Hecker's Jetone album again, something I dig out more often than most Mille Plateaux releases. I've spoken before of my boredom with Hecker's own-name work, even the acclaimed Ravedeath and Piano Drop were mere updates on a decade-old sound, good as that is. Now he's touring with Oneohtrix Point Never which would be fun...:


... But I'd like to hear him revisit rhythms:

Thatcher

What needs addressing as a matter of absolute urgency right now, however, is that Thatcher 's legacy is one of gross, almost comically staggering inequality. We are not all in this together. We are heading down shit creek while a tiny few of "them" are up on the clifftop holding all the paddles. Inequality, inequality, inequality, stupid. If there's good to come from her death, beyond a few street parties, it's that we realise that Thatcherism never died, was never truly even un-elected. It's time to shake ourselves, and others, out of the daze into which we were collectively not so much handbagged as headbutted back in the early 80s. Thatcherism was the worst thing to happen to this country since the Second World War and it'll carry on happening to us unless we do something about it.



"There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."



Here's DJ Sprinkles, Mark Fell and Arthur Scargill:

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