Brian Eno-Lantern Marsh

Sounds like the call of animal in the piercing thought the dark, it echoes and fades back into the forest. Silence, a response from a distance, a more high pitched and vibrating call. The calls continue, bouncing back and for all different, yet similar in nature. Beneath this is a constant ambient fluctuation, sounds flowing at a constant speed. The two layers have merged together in a melodic humming of electronic pulses. What are there animals in the forest, is it just something synthesized or organic?

Cameron

Aphex Twin’s ‘Acrid Avid Jam Shred’

Aphex Twin’s ‘Acrid Avid Jam Shred’* begins with a heavy bass-bomb sequence; as sonic layers pile in and interact they engender a percussive phenomenology of ecstasis, or undecidability of the overall dominance amongst many layers of rhythm and harmonics. This ‘dominance’ reveals itself as the ephemeral focus of my attention-structure on a particular layer or mixture (the dynamic experience of ‘groove’). Gradually, ‘Acrid’s’ seven or eight layers reach crescendo, followed by various deconstructions, solos, and inter-mixes of polyrhythm. It might seem that each percussive ‘track’ is phenomenologically a kind of rail involving speed and motion, because of the pleasurable dips being felt in my spine each time grooves do oscillate. When I realize that groove has switched rails, it is not only a rhythm track; my very attention structure has switched focus, perhaps onto melodic counterpoints or the slower bass-bomb patterns. Is there some existential meaning of this strange poignance when a strictly rhythmic motif infuses with the trope of ecstasis – an entirely new, vast space-time designed by the Mind accustomed to postmodern economies of speed, while utterly transcendent of any conventional ‘dance’ beat psychology?

(*07:38, I Care If You Do, 1995)

Oval - You are here, here 0.9 B

An organic strumming is attacked by chopped distortion. A constant pulsing of the base grounds the piece structurally. The low end becomes equally pronounced quickly. Everything skips out and halts. The computer begins thinking again. Its thoughts culminate with the familiar base and new high orbits. Volume is quickly pushed on me. Final melodic notes end the static's frustration. Why didn't the computer pan or alter its stage width?

Charles N.

Pauline Oliveros - Bye Bye Butterfly

The dull, high-pitched sound of an oscillator is quickly penetrated by its own sharper staccato inflections. These waves rumble on out of phase, complicated by layers of their own repeating echoes. The sounds then merge into a low drone that is allowed to dissipate until the high-pitched wave dominates again. An operatic human voice suddenly cuts into the mix along with a string section, but these too echo and taper off before becoming indistinguishable in the mix, only to be repeated again. Here the drone returns, longer this time, like a cocoon diverting the brightness around it. All the while the atonality of the voices is enhanced by the grating whine of the oscillators, which remain always at a higher volume. Can any tone become a comfort by becoming familiar?

Response:The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel

The steadiness about this piece comes from its reliability on instability. Within a matter of seconds the listener is taken into different musical worlds that are blended together through the power of Grandmaster Flash’s imagination. The record scratches quickly mocks and compete with the music created by instruments and voices. One can hear the needle being moved back and forth on the record so meticulously that it prepares and trains the listener to welcome the change that comes along with every movement on the turntables. The bass line to Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” is chosen to grant a sense familiarity. Suddenly a new music sensation hits the ear then quickly falls in line to the beat of the track. Every scratch, rhythm change and mash-up takes the listener to a party created through sound. With an upbeat rhythm the song transports the listener throughout the room catching clips of voices and sounds that connect to the overall tone of the piece. No certain voice or genre defines this expression of work since each sound is timed to align with one another. Voices of males, females, even children paired with the rock, rap, dance and disco are creating a sense of unity and commonalty. With the clear musical entity Grandmaster Flash has established through the works of others, it begs one to ask a question often debated in psychology concerning identity. Is identity inwardly self-constructed or a reflection of influences of our surroundings?

Review: Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team's Buffalo Gals

Sounds like a hiss pop whine of the tape containing phonic vowel emphasis: EAH, AE, OO, I, OO, EH, EAH, AH, OO, EH, AH, AH, AH. The brass thickens with a tinny soft chorus trading melodic weaving around a set of tones. The DJ’s stuck on buh buh buh, bah, hiss pop whine primal yell build supplanted with hard-soft-fade bass, compression of scratching punctuated by the chorus, just a bit higher than before. Back to the stuttering men, words cut off to patterns of quick rise, leading us into hollow rising drums. These buffalo gals and boys are really building me up as they round the outside of the vynil at high speed. Do-si-do with the low bass texture and decrescendo of low tight frequency pounding at our chorus and twang swing pitch man competing with melodic fat density to a flow of predictable patterned language. Will this caller ever get the square dance to rock a party?

Gesang der Jünglinge

Ten seconds of silence. Watery synthesized modulations burst through the quiet. Then the sharp attack of high-pitched tinkles gives way to the sounds of singing human voices - women or young children. Voices begin to rise up in the mix. The singing voices modulate and blend with the resonances of the synthesized sounds. As piece rises into sonorous cacophony, I struggle to differentiate the sounds of human voices from the artificial oscillations of the synthesized tones. The cacophony subsides and breaks begin to occur between the bursts of sound. The voices become shorter and the synthesized tones become long and smooth. Short bursts of noise punctuate occasionally as the piece nears the end. What does my inability to understand the language of the voices contribute to my perception of the musicality of this piece?

Light Graffiti from Germany

Thought you all may be intrigued by this...

http://www.purellc.com/content/view/34/30/

Response to Brian Eno's "Lizard Point"

Lizard Point starts with a crescendo of two sustaining tones. Although these medium pitched tones are not dissonant, there is a feeling of aprehension as you realize your body is becoming encapsulated by them. Occasionally there are two more tones added that descend into a temporary resolve. Soon there are higher pitched sounds added that create a pulsing tension. The drone continues to build with the four, now familiar tones while the new sounds on top turn to a temporary beat in the distance. Now that beat liquifies. It is no longer solid. An even higher, tinny drone is added, simultaneously contrasted by a few deep bass beats. A white noise is present now, it feels like air is finally released into this created atmosphere. You take a deep breath of it while you settle into this surrounding drone that has become a comfort now. Suddenly the tinny pitch is back, this time much louder in it's sustain. The swell takes over your body and you catch just a glimpse of a space beyond. You are intriqued but then it quickly fades. It's in the distance again. Now it's gone. You are once again surrounded by this lonely but comfortable drone. Are we stifled by this space in which we have quicky become comfortable? If given another chance, do we want to break through the protective wall Eno has created and venture to the distant realm of these new sounds/space... even at the risk of discomfort or discontent?

Response to "Cosmic Raindance" by Cybotron

Stephen Younger
Blog Response
Cybotron: Cosmic Raindance

As the song begins; I'm feeling as though I need to prepare for something. Then all of a sudden a sound of a theremin appears to signal a warning that something was about to happen. This last for only a few seconds when a synthesizer launches you and from this point on, you feel as though you’re on a ride. It's as though you’re on a real theme park ride, with each of the instruments in the song sounding as though you’re passing them by. The basic beat of a synthesized drum helps you move along from place to place as everything else around you is open space. At one point a synthesized guitar sound starts to engulf you as though you were trying to navigate through an asteroid field, then it fades away for a little bit as though you just passed. All of a sudden you experience the sound of a loud crash and everything just stops. The sound of rain and lightning fill the room with water poring down. The ride feels as though it is never the same and you don’t really know when the song will crash. Can you really chart the path you take, or really understand where it all ends?

History of the Cut-up reaction

“History of the Mash-Up” by Strictly Kev.

It hits me like a collage of all the songs that we hold dear and yet all the songs that we don’t like to listen to. The first mash-up of the Beatles “Sun King” precedes everything else and we are led into other mash-ups that show how many songs and genres we avoid because of their genre are similar to the ones we like. The element of surprise drives this mash-up chronology. Theres another unexpected song that is so familiar and yet not because of the strikingly similar bass rhythm. Country singers are now rappers. Rappers are now disco artists. Hendrix is a pop star instead of a guitar god. The Beatles are electronic artists. The same song changes into a different song. A break in the middle displays an analysis of the cut-up and even the cut-up is cut-up. Then just as he did in the 60’s Ed Sullivan introduces more music and interviews that are cut-up to change the message. All these songs are very different from one another yet pieced together so seamlessly. Are any of these songs really that different from one another?
-Dan'tastic'

Response to "Lantern Marsh" by Brian Eno

Adam Butler
Blog Response
“Lantern Marsh” – Brian Eno

The scene opens with a rumbling low frequency, saturated with swooping, high-pitched wails, engulfing and encompassing the stereo field. Atonal variations of the wails come at you from every angle. Gradually, additional instruments are introduced; but are they instruments? Regardless, they fill this imaginary atmosphere with a slowed down, expanded strings sound that detunes and retunes in waves. The ear and body become immersed in a landscape not visible to the eye, but one fabricated in the mind. A vibrating static enters and leaves the left and right channels at different times, as the high wails continue; they are crying now, but about what? Slowly and gradually, all starts to fade. We are leaving it behind; floating away. Who would have thought that such emotion could be attached to an atmosphere that does not exist but in our own level of imagination?

Exotica Research | Music from Outer Space

Ken Saari's historical survey on space age pop from 1940s through early 1960s is worthwhile, and also includes many higher resolution album cover scans.

From Saari's article:

Nothing represents "space age pop" more literally than music with an explicit outer space theme, or "outer space exotica." Music in this genre, typically of the instrumental variety, was arranged for several LP record albums from the late 1940’s through the early 1960’s. In general, the most successful examples contain adventurous arrangements of music written especially for the album. Often, electronic instruments and other novel effects are present, and these sounds are integrated effectively into the music. The least successful albums typically have some electronically generated sounds, but are otherwise lackluster compositions or mundane, syrupy renditions of popular standards with celestial titles like "Star Dust" and "Out of This World." Whether the music in the record grooves is inspired or dated, the album cover jackets typically feature imaginative period artwork and are collectable in themselves.

http://www.ele-mental.org/~ecc/exo/exotica/osearticle.html

Response to Stockhausen

In Stockhausen's piece "Gegung der Junglinge", created in 1956, he creates feelings in the listener by warping noise and sound from everyday life. In the piece he combined the sound of women's voices singing, a boy's voice, and many windy/ bubbly sounds. He used each sound differently. The would speed up the singing of the women in one section, and slow it down in another. He interrupted the singing with the sound of wind blowing. Towards the end of the piece, a boy was singing alone, with the windy/ bubbly sounds interrupting him. At the beginning, I felt a sense of community and happiness, because of everyone singing together. As the windy breaks became more and more frequent, a feeling of desertion, death, isolation, and loneliness began to set in. As the boy sang alone, I was convinced that he was alone, left by the community. I can only imagine the feelings that Stockhausen was trying to relay using this piece, but I got the same feeling of death in Stockhausen's "Hymnen Region". As it closes, "Hymnen Region" has the sound of heavy bass with high pitched noise, which gave me a feeling of emergency. A man breathing alone, was how Stockhausen finished his piece. Once again, the feeling of death emerges from his work.

Glenn Gould Resurrected

From a story on NPR: New Technology Recaptures Pianists of the Past

Maynard Keenan Interview Excerpts

A couple interesting answers from an interview with Maynard Keenan that highlight some of the industry issues that we talked about in class on Monday. Where is the motivation to produce music, and how do you keep people buying? The interview is from Suicide Girls, which is unfortunate, but it's a good one. It's puzzling to hear him talking about making music for a living and branding for fun in the same breath.

Keenan: I think it’s just the age that we’re in. With the internet the way it is, music is now a soundtrack to some other activity. You can make a living selling songs but you make a better living playing them. If you’re not going to play them you got to figure out what else to sell and I guess that comes down to t-shirts and key chains.

Keenan: If the entire world turned into something where there is no money involved. If there was no money involved it would be easy to do this but as soon as the money comes into play, everybody gets weird. It has an affect on everybody. It doesn't matter who they are but as soon as there's money involved people get fucking goofy. When you don't have money to lose you don't have to worry about somebody taking the money. All that bullshit aside I'm trying to prove that I can just make music and make my living doing that and selling shirts for fun.

SG: That was back when the Tool albums were more stripped down, would you ever go back to a more stripped down Tool?
Keenan: No, because we have your attention. If you want someone’s attention you have to scream from the back of the room to be heard. Once you have everybody’s attention you have to whisper to keep it.

the history of the album + more from

Our reading from Strange Sounds made me think of this video from Save the Album. Tim Harrington (vocalist for Les Savy Fav) gives a nice little talk about how the term album came about and where he thinks album is going. The style is a riot.

DJ Food: Raiding the 20th Century

UBUWEB's coverage of the expanded version of DJ Food's history of the cut-up is priceless, with both a good descriptor of the project and comprehensive track-listing. This piece is required listening; it covers so much, it's amazingly well-sequenced, it's witty, it rocks, and it's not only a compendium of many of THE classic voices conceptualizing the impact of recording technology on music, Paul Morley's more recent writings are smart and insightful without being overly dense.

It strikes me that this project could very well be an essential model of what we might aspire to do in terms of our output in this class. Regardless, here's your recipe before next Monday's class. Take one hour, put on your headphones, pick your best seat, and check out this amazing sonic documentary that touches on virtually everything we've discussed and read in class so far. This program will continue to inform our critical discussions and practices both conceptually and practically.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/dj_food.html

musique concrete

I thought this project (Musique Concrete) by Simon Morris was a nice mix of psychogeography, performance, and interactivity. The skateboard adds a really interesting performative element, merging musical and sports live performance in a way I haven't really seen before. I'd really like to have this for my daily commute.



Urb festival 2006 Kiasma Museum

radioLab

an interesting radio program exploring the concept of music and our perception of it:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21
What is music? How does it work? Why does it move us? Why are some people better at it than others? In this hour, we examine the line between language and music, how the brain processes sound, and we meet a composer who uses computers to capture the musical DNA of dead composers in order to create new work. We also re-imagine the disastrous 1913 debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring…through the lens of modern neurology.

Classic Stockhausen cover

Priceless Deutsche Grammophone album cover, 1971.

Björk Meets Karlheinz Stockhausen

A nice little follow-up to our previous set of readings, that at last fulfills something of a desire to have these two generations of electronic musicians actually talk together, at least in the context of interview if not full-on discussion. This interview is from "Dazed and Confused" (#23 1996), and it's called "Compose Yourself," Introduction and Interview by Björk.

http://home.concepts.nl/~sinned/d23.htm

"Stockhausen vs. the Technocrats"

Here is our primary article, Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Advice to clever children," an article from The Wire, November 1995.

Music videos and performance footage for works by Stockhausen, Aphex Twin, Plastikman, and Scanner, plus lectures and interviews with the artists.



To jump to individual chapters of the video program, here's a direct link to the playlist.