Three duos between David Grundy (electronics) and Daniel Larwood (acoustic guitar). Home recordings, Swindon, 2nd and 3rd November 2010.
Duo One
Duo Two
Duo Three
Recorded in a room with an oblivious sleeping dog.
(See also: Preparatory Email Dialogue)
Friday, 12 November 2010
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
From an Email Exchange (Re: Cheltenham Duo)
Words/Speech
MW: i begin to have concerns about the amount of words I’m using. i fear that too many words tend to dominate and hide the music??? maybe i want to return to a more pointilist approach for periods of time and keep the words out.
DG: I think these long afternoons of improv are enabling us to get into some really interesting spaces, for the music to open up to all sorts of theatrical and performance-based possibilities. Some important things have been emerging about communication, shared experiences, memories, music as a space that's at once both social (sharing) and able to capture something of individual 'innerness' (things deeply personal that remain hidden much of the time in interactions with others).You mentioned that you think you're using the voice too much, that it perhaps 'distracts' from the music - I'd say, why do these category distinctions matter so much in the first place? Music, after all, didn't start off as a sealed-off discipline - it was part of ritual, of language, connected to movement, ceremony, speech, poetry. (We can't hope to 'return' to these origins, in part because the evidence is so vague about how music actually originated (Derek Bailey's claim that man's first musical performance can't have been anything but a free improvisation remains unverifiable because it refers to a time before written record, a stretch of time even that contained within collective memory, would have allowed it to pass into myth)). But nonetheless, dissolving the boundaries between things is something that seems very valuable, and is not actually done that much - at least, within music, even within free improvisation. Is it theatre? is it poetry? is it music? is it ‘just talking’? I'm reminded a bit of the way Roland Barthes etc wanted to replace the category of 'literature' (the sacred, privileged canon, somehow 'removed' from everyday life and its messy entanglements) with the category of 'text' (a much more elastic term). For me, 'text' was always problematic as well, because it fits into the privileging of logos, of the written, over the spoken, the act of speaking – a silencing of the word in favour of marks on page, in favour of internalised thought (the argument made by Adriana Cavarero in 'For More Than One Voice'). Which is why incorporating all these spoken elements into music feels valuable; it's to do above all else with *orality* - a key concern which I hope to explore if I ever manage to work academically on Cecil Taylor's poetry. But in any case, there's less talking than you imagine, perhaps - after all, the pieces we make tend to be very long. And in the latest duo, the voices are more like ghost echoes, fragments on the edge of perception, eerie snatches of shout, of song, of lament; buzzings, aural flickerings from the damaged tv set, the detuned radio, murmurings from the white noise thicket.
And yet, even 'random' bits of speech connect - perhaps because they're responding to the environment (such as when I read out bits of texts on fire escape doors) and to the other person (a kind of dialogue which sits alongside the musical dialogue, complements it, as well as perhaps contrasting to it). For instance, in the duo, there are some phrases linked by the opening "as if": "as if they fell from the sky" (which for me went well with the 'alien' nature of the music, something enhanced by the pronounced echo of the space we were performing in); "as if the door was alarmed" (making the ordinary strange - the sign on the fire escape, written in official language, that which is familiar - 'this door is alarmed' - is twisted to mean something different, to become part of a potential narrative, or maybe a fragment like a zen koan or a haiku); "as if the box was a gift" (which is a lot more ambiguous and seems somehow incomplete, to have floated into the music from somewhere else, not to 'belong' in this new place in which it has found itself).
MW: yes the words 'as if'' often come up in the music. i think anthony [jimmy juniper (a poet who we’ve both worked with)] maybe uses those words often too? for me when we go into the musicspace it is a shamanic trance journey. often dreams i've completely 'forgotten' jump back into my memory. and i feel the world we enter is one of majikal blurrings and make believe. so the words 'as if' are so completely in keeping with where we are going here/there. so much of what we do in the soundspace is an approximation, a lostness, a hallucination, so it is so so often as if and only as if with reality suspended for those precious moments in the hidden world which is still one foot in the real world too with thoughts actions buildings feeding their line into the imagined world as if we were 2 3 4 people making music in a university building. as if we really were musicians and as if we really were in a cavernous studio space not in a dense woven world thicket of sound. i have no idea if what i've just written ends or repeats or says what i mean to say or to allude to. and i wont look back at it either [as if that would prove anything.]
so why the question the binary thinking [the doubts about using too many words]? i guess i'm thinking a lot about interaction/society and i am wary or mindful at least of the words specially when read or even repeated can veer away from being interactive in the way a saxophone solo might or a melody might – what i like about fragments of melody is that they seem to be able to bend and fit somehow. there was a strange moment when i returned to a particular simple melody on soprano and even though there'd only been speech pretty much during the intervening period the melody was out of key!!
i probably do say too much and yet i often feel others say too little so we're all in one cage or another eh? wearing hearing aids has had a profound effect on my relationship to my own voice. the aids also effect the way i speak too, there being a certain timbre texture mode present when i'm plugged in that's absent when i'm not. and of course the way i hear myself is disturbingly effected though i've learned to play with this as if i'm involved in an ongoing sound piece which is merely me speaking
but yes i think something in here for me is the way words represent something or not equally according to interpretation. so i can find ways to speak/sing of my current life and emotional landscape perhaps in a way more open honest and sincere than a saxophone solo. and the jumps from one 'reality' [such as a sudden memory of my grandmother, as i sat down feeling like her and remembering her words {her use of platitudes} which i can then speak and give vent to; expressing a very deep emotion, feeling her to move into me/inhabit me for that moment, imagining if she had such an outlet as this what her life might have become] to other immediate reflections noticing what you say or how you move, and even experiencing immediate dialogue as you spoke a platitude that my grandmother would have used. time shifting layers of reality fuzzing. and yes, is good to recall the adrianna cavarero book, cos i was very struck by the power of the argument she makes that patriarchy stripped words away from the sirens in order to render her less potent/knowledgeable and it seems we are reclaiming the story, specially in moments when i was wailing in voice and words yesterday, but also when we narrate stories, very simple ones or snippets of vast complex ones. indeed yes i love the way we can speak and such multiple meanings can occur, maybe also a range of emotions are afforded each participant musing in their own dream on the words we each hear? as when belinda was [i think] using the word walking, which seemed to hold some meaning/emotional weight for her [or so i imagine] and then i too took it away to some place of my own, this word being spoken far away over the room, a compatriot on some journey, maybe [for all i know] launched into this reverie by a word you or i had spoken earlier. a spiral of meanings and layers of experience all in the room at once. and you in another room with your alarmed door and your experiences coming over the dividing wall in your sound which i hear/register understand/or not. what beauty.
fuck yes, words eh? aren't they deep and layered and full of emotion/images/imagined things/lives/experiences; so full they're as abstract [or maybe even more so than] abstract sounds or patterns.
Emotional Expression?
DG: In all three trios now, the voice (whether 'live' or in recordings) has been an important element: Xaviere Gauthier's text in the first one, the Delia Derbyshire interview that comes in towards the end of the second, and, this time, a mixture of speaking and singing. In the earlier sections of this latest performance, there also seems to be an element of (sung) lament in there a lot stronger than in our previous two duos - the music has a definite emotional element to it (though hopefully not overstated).
MW: absolutely – i think partly what i'm railing against [and maybe need to write into the text we're running] is that our music is supposedly about free expression [though maybe this is less so in free improv than jazz] including emotional expression but as soon as anyone deals with anything real/personal and emotive everyone runs for the hills so it's free expression of who knows what. it's risky expressing this stuff, but yes i absolutely feel we're venturing into expression of our inner and emotive worlds in a literally descriptive way. but as you also say, in a way that creates art not simply diary pages spoken out loud.
DG: I have been wary in the past (and am still wary now) of saying 'this music is emotional in this way,' because i'm aware that, with something as ambiguous as free improv, what might strike one person, resonate with them in a particular emotional way, might have a completely different 'meaning' for someone else. but perhaps here we're talking about something similar to the way white audiences/players turned jazz from something vital and intimately tied with the politics of liberation to something all about pose, toe-tapping and distanced 'cool' - the process of sterilisation?
MW: i'm not sure where the drive away from emotionality stems from [white male modernism?] i've no idea really. but i certainly feel we're reclaiming/introducing something human and more emotionally/mundanely linked which although abstract to some extent [in that it's still open to interpretation] harks/barks towards emotional/ autobiographical/ emotional environments as lived by performer?
and on some level i am happy to rail against the ubercool armoured male muso who speaks nothing of anything deep within him and insists the music is transcendent. with the words we make transparent the musics rootedness in earthbound human reality which in itself contains magical spirit and soul
i was keening yesterday. lamenting grieving. i've struggled with life for a good year or two, and i've felt as though i'm disapearing, not eating losing weight, stripping away vast swathes of my 'male' identity i've been left empty and scared. and now i also face the threat of losing my sight. so yesterday some of the words and wailing were about all of those things. the words from the jenny diski novel "there comes a point when there's no substance left at all," were heartfelt and searingly relevant to my recent/current reality.
and i often found myself wondering how much sense [or how the sense would be altered] by being blind, so closed my eyes a lot and was in a lot of emotional relief upon discovering/realising that the world we inhabited yesterday with all it's riches wouldnt be massively diminished by a loss of sight. so yes the texts seem to trigger/resonate with so much weight/freight that i found myself staggering at times under the weight of it all.
DG: What else was new about this third duo? Perhaps having the soprano, rather than a broken alto, gives a certain element of melodic clarity (and in terms of timbre it meshes well with the recorder). Listening back to the recording,it seems I was using the whistle quite a bit (though I think a lot of it was sampled and played back). Interesting to me (though I wasn’t really thinking about this when I was playing it, it only springs to my mind as a retrospective enquiry) what associations its sound conjures up: does it sound like the whistle in the school-yard or on the football pitch, the teacher or referee (authority figure) summoning everyone to attention; or like bird-song; electronic; plaintive; or simply that which it is (was) – a dog-whistle? Perhaps for me the whistle is important because it’s something that’s at once both mundane (a ‘found object’, a discarded/defunct family object) and, in context, almost alien (that word again), other. I suppose I’m interested in stripping things of the contexts which lend them meaning, and placing them in new contexts in which they are not so much out of place, as made to take on a different level of significance, made to mean something different.
MW: that whistle haunts me. leaving aside for a moment how or what sounds of, the foremost thing is everytime you play it and i see it in your lips i recall the story you told me [more words] of how you came by it, how it was an unwanted thing in your mother's life and i seem to recall a statement such as she didnt really know how long it had been there or why, but it hadnt been doing anything for a long time. and when you play it i'm struck by this linear family link you have, and the movement of you taking it from this [i imagine] mundane household and transforming it from a dog whistle into an instrument of surrealistic endeavours. and i imagine the love or naturalness of you and your mother. and i'm warmed by this story i've concocted [needing it] of you so young taking these strange steps into a world of weird almost occult activities carrying this talisman from your mother, almost like you could use it to summon guardian dogs if you became too lost in the land of our strange mus[i]ks. i'm often touched when you use the whistle by what seems to me, your beautiful courage/naturalness and innocence. it means a lot to me that someone so young is finding a way into so much of this stuff [culture art literature provocative arts] which i often fear will die out in the new crass dumbass world, so you are a beautiful lifeline of wondrous venturing to my mind. as for it's sound; that varies. yes at times it feels shrill and almost electronic and at times bird like plaintive and at times invisible somehow and then at other times it sounds like a dog whistle and so is a sound from the mundane totally other world and brings to mind my former life married with 2 dogs one a german shepherd and one a border collie; this story representing my fragmented life of discontinuities as opposed to the linear feeling of your mother handing down the dog whistle.
Texture/ melody/ idiomatic references
DG: I'm also intrigued by the moments where the texture seems to thin out, having reached a level of volume and layering almost characteristic of noise music - that particular kind of crushing, or immersive intensity - to something that seems very spacious. Right at the end of the piece, you're singing "there comes a point when there's no substance left at all," which comes closes to that feeling - a sudden falling away - clarity? - a moment (section) of marked contrast to what came before. For instance, about 20 minutes in, we're suddenly reduced to one high-pitched sine wave with echoing intermittent crashing/clanging and wispy soprano. And subsequently the thinning out even more to really simple (and in context, quite beautiful) melodic soprano figures. And then again, to the accordion/singing section - which has this odd and unexpected delicacy to it - even whimsy. (Perhaps that militates against the serious, death-centred male modernist mythology you've mentioned as being one of your bete noirs). I like the way that even in our quite 'uncompromising' performances - full of crashes, clangs, dissonances, loud and piercing noises - there are moments of clear melody, not-quite parodies. Where going 'off-key' and 'left-field' means playing in a (semi-)idiomatic way. Not that this should become a *model* - the intention isn't to deliberately incorporate idiomatic musics - it's just something that emerges organically out of things and comes as a surprise to us, the performers, as much as it might to any audience.
MW: i begin to have concerns about the amount of words I’m using. i fear that too many words tend to dominate and hide the music??? maybe i want to return to a more pointilist approach for periods of time and keep the words out.
DG: I think these long afternoons of improv are enabling us to get into some really interesting spaces, for the music to open up to all sorts of theatrical and performance-based possibilities. Some important things have been emerging about communication, shared experiences, memories, music as a space that's at once both social (sharing) and able to capture something of individual 'innerness' (things deeply personal that remain hidden much of the time in interactions with others).You mentioned that you think you're using the voice too much, that it perhaps 'distracts' from the music - I'd say, why do these category distinctions matter so much in the first place? Music, after all, didn't start off as a sealed-off discipline - it was part of ritual, of language, connected to movement, ceremony, speech, poetry. (We can't hope to 'return' to these origins, in part because the evidence is so vague about how music actually originated (Derek Bailey's claim that man's first musical performance can't have been anything but a free improvisation remains unverifiable because it refers to a time before written record, a stretch of time even that contained within collective memory, would have allowed it to pass into myth)). But nonetheless, dissolving the boundaries between things is something that seems very valuable, and is not actually done that much - at least, within music, even within free improvisation. Is it theatre? is it poetry? is it music? is it ‘just talking’? I'm reminded a bit of the way Roland Barthes etc wanted to replace the category of 'literature' (the sacred, privileged canon, somehow 'removed' from everyday life and its messy entanglements) with the category of 'text' (a much more elastic term). For me, 'text' was always problematic as well, because it fits into the privileging of logos, of the written, over the spoken, the act of speaking – a silencing of the word in favour of marks on page, in favour of internalised thought (the argument made by Adriana Cavarero in 'For More Than One Voice'). Which is why incorporating all these spoken elements into music feels valuable; it's to do above all else with *orality* - a key concern which I hope to explore if I ever manage to work academically on Cecil Taylor's poetry. But in any case, there's less talking than you imagine, perhaps - after all, the pieces we make tend to be very long. And in the latest duo, the voices are more like ghost echoes, fragments on the edge of perception, eerie snatches of shout, of song, of lament; buzzings, aural flickerings from the damaged tv set, the detuned radio, murmurings from the white noise thicket.
And yet, even 'random' bits of speech connect - perhaps because they're responding to the environment (such as when I read out bits of texts on fire escape doors) and to the other person (a kind of dialogue which sits alongside the musical dialogue, complements it, as well as perhaps contrasting to it). For instance, in the duo, there are some phrases linked by the opening "as if": "as if they fell from the sky" (which for me went well with the 'alien' nature of the music, something enhanced by the pronounced echo of the space we were performing in); "as if the door was alarmed" (making the ordinary strange - the sign on the fire escape, written in official language, that which is familiar - 'this door is alarmed' - is twisted to mean something different, to become part of a potential narrative, or maybe a fragment like a zen koan or a haiku); "as if the box was a gift" (which is a lot more ambiguous and seems somehow incomplete, to have floated into the music from somewhere else, not to 'belong' in this new place in which it has found itself).
MW: yes the words 'as if'' often come up in the music. i think anthony [jimmy juniper (a poet who we’ve both worked with)] maybe uses those words often too? for me when we go into the musicspace it is a shamanic trance journey. often dreams i've completely 'forgotten' jump back into my memory. and i feel the world we enter is one of majikal blurrings and make believe. so the words 'as if' are so completely in keeping with where we are going here/there. so much of what we do in the soundspace is an approximation, a lostness, a hallucination, so it is so so often as if and only as if with reality suspended for those precious moments in the hidden world which is still one foot in the real world too with thoughts actions buildings feeding their line into the imagined world as if we were 2 3 4 people making music in a university building. as if we really were musicians and as if we really were in a cavernous studio space not in a dense woven world thicket of sound. i have no idea if what i've just written ends or repeats or says what i mean to say or to allude to. and i wont look back at it either [as if that would prove anything.]
so why the question the binary thinking [the doubts about using too many words]? i guess i'm thinking a lot about interaction/society and i am wary or mindful at least of the words specially when read or even repeated can veer away from being interactive in the way a saxophone solo might or a melody might – what i like about fragments of melody is that they seem to be able to bend and fit somehow. there was a strange moment when i returned to a particular simple melody on soprano and even though there'd only been speech pretty much during the intervening period the melody was out of key!!
i probably do say too much and yet i often feel others say too little so we're all in one cage or another eh? wearing hearing aids has had a profound effect on my relationship to my own voice. the aids also effect the way i speak too, there being a certain timbre texture mode present when i'm plugged in that's absent when i'm not. and of course the way i hear myself is disturbingly effected though i've learned to play with this as if i'm involved in an ongoing sound piece which is merely me speaking
but yes i think something in here for me is the way words represent something or not equally according to interpretation. so i can find ways to speak/sing of my current life and emotional landscape perhaps in a way more open honest and sincere than a saxophone solo. and the jumps from one 'reality' [such as a sudden memory of my grandmother, as i sat down feeling like her and remembering her words {her use of platitudes} which i can then speak and give vent to; expressing a very deep emotion, feeling her to move into me/inhabit me for that moment, imagining if she had such an outlet as this what her life might have become] to other immediate reflections noticing what you say or how you move, and even experiencing immediate dialogue as you spoke a platitude that my grandmother would have used. time shifting layers of reality fuzzing. and yes, is good to recall the adrianna cavarero book, cos i was very struck by the power of the argument she makes that patriarchy stripped words away from the sirens in order to render her less potent/knowledgeable and it seems we are reclaiming the story, specially in moments when i was wailing in voice and words yesterday, but also when we narrate stories, very simple ones or snippets of vast complex ones. indeed yes i love the way we can speak and such multiple meanings can occur, maybe also a range of emotions are afforded each participant musing in their own dream on the words we each hear? as when belinda was [i think] using the word walking, which seemed to hold some meaning/emotional weight for her [or so i imagine] and then i too took it away to some place of my own, this word being spoken far away over the room, a compatriot on some journey, maybe [for all i know] launched into this reverie by a word you or i had spoken earlier. a spiral of meanings and layers of experience all in the room at once. and you in another room with your alarmed door and your experiences coming over the dividing wall in your sound which i hear/register understand/or not. what beauty.
fuck yes, words eh? aren't they deep and layered and full of emotion/images/imagined things/lives/experiences; so full they're as abstract [or maybe even more so than] abstract sounds or patterns.
Emotional Expression?
DG: In all three trios now, the voice (whether 'live' or in recordings) has been an important element: Xaviere Gauthier's text in the first one, the Delia Derbyshire interview that comes in towards the end of the second, and, this time, a mixture of speaking and singing. In the earlier sections of this latest performance, there also seems to be an element of (sung) lament in there a lot stronger than in our previous two duos - the music has a definite emotional element to it (though hopefully not overstated).
MW: absolutely – i think partly what i'm railing against [and maybe need to write into the text we're running] is that our music is supposedly about free expression [though maybe this is less so in free improv than jazz] including emotional expression but as soon as anyone deals with anything real/personal and emotive everyone runs for the hills so it's free expression of who knows what. it's risky expressing this stuff, but yes i absolutely feel we're venturing into expression of our inner and emotive worlds in a literally descriptive way. but as you also say, in a way that creates art not simply diary pages spoken out loud.
DG: I have been wary in the past (and am still wary now) of saying 'this music is emotional in this way,' because i'm aware that, with something as ambiguous as free improv, what might strike one person, resonate with them in a particular emotional way, might have a completely different 'meaning' for someone else. but perhaps here we're talking about something similar to the way white audiences/players turned jazz from something vital and intimately tied with the politics of liberation to something all about pose, toe-tapping and distanced 'cool' - the process of sterilisation?
MW: i'm not sure where the drive away from emotionality stems from [white male modernism?] i've no idea really. but i certainly feel we're reclaiming/introducing something human and more emotionally/mundanely linked which although abstract to some extent [in that it's still open to interpretation] harks/barks towards emotional/ autobiographical/ emotional environments as lived by performer?
and on some level i am happy to rail against the ubercool armoured male muso who speaks nothing of anything deep within him and insists the music is transcendent. with the words we make transparent the musics rootedness in earthbound human reality which in itself contains magical spirit and soul
i was keening yesterday. lamenting grieving. i've struggled with life for a good year or two, and i've felt as though i'm disapearing, not eating losing weight, stripping away vast swathes of my 'male' identity i've been left empty and scared. and now i also face the threat of losing my sight. so yesterday some of the words and wailing were about all of those things. the words from the jenny diski novel "there comes a point when there's no substance left at all," were heartfelt and searingly relevant to my recent/current reality.
and i often found myself wondering how much sense [or how the sense would be altered] by being blind, so closed my eyes a lot and was in a lot of emotional relief upon discovering/realising that the world we inhabited yesterday with all it's riches wouldnt be massively diminished by a loss of sight. so yes the texts seem to trigger/resonate with so much weight/freight that i found myself staggering at times under the weight of it all.
DG: What else was new about this third duo? Perhaps having the soprano, rather than a broken alto, gives a certain element of melodic clarity (and in terms of timbre it meshes well with the recorder). Listening back to the recording,it seems I was using the whistle quite a bit (though I think a lot of it was sampled and played back). Interesting to me (though I wasn’t really thinking about this when I was playing it, it only springs to my mind as a retrospective enquiry) what associations its sound conjures up: does it sound like the whistle in the school-yard or on the football pitch, the teacher or referee (authority figure) summoning everyone to attention; or like bird-song; electronic; plaintive; or simply that which it is (was) – a dog-whistle? Perhaps for me the whistle is important because it’s something that’s at once both mundane (a ‘found object’, a discarded/defunct family object) and, in context, almost alien (that word again), other. I suppose I’m interested in stripping things of the contexts which lend them meaning, and placing them in new contexts in which they are not so much out of place, as made to take on a different level of significance, made to mean something different.
MW: that whistle haunts me. leaving aside for a moment how or what sounds of, the foremost thing is everytime you play it and i see it in your lips i recall the story you told me [more words] of how you came by it, how it was an unwanted thing in your mother's life and i seem to recall a statement such as she didnt really know how long it had been there or why, but it hadnt been doing anything for a long time. and when you play it i'm struck by this linear family link you have, and the movement of you taking it from this [i imagine] mundane household and transforming it from a dog whistle into an instrument of surrealistic endeavours. and i imagine the love or naturalness of you and your mother. and i'm warmed by this story i've concocted [needing it] of you so young taking these strange steps into a world of weird almost occult activities carrying this talisman from your mother, almost like you could use it to summon guardian dogs if you became too lost in the land of our strange mus[i]ks. i'm often touched when you use the whistle by what seems to me, your beautiful courage/naturalness and innocence. it means a lot to me that someone so young is finding a way into so much of this stuff [culture art literature provocative arts] which i often fear will die out in the new crass dumbass world, so you are a beautiful lifeline of wondrous venturing to my mind. as for it's sound; that varies. yes at times it feels shrill and almost electronic and at times bird like plaintive and at times invisible somehow and then at other times it sounds like a dog whistle and so is a sound from the mundane totally other world and brings to mind my former life married with 2 dogs one a german shepherd and one a border collie; this story representing my fragmented life of discontinuities as opposed to the linear feeling of your mother handing down the dog whistle.
Texture/ melody/ idiomatic references
DG: I'm also intrigued by the moments where the texture seems to thin out, having reached a level of volume and layering almost characteristic of noise music - that particular kind of crushing, or immersive intensity - to something that seems very spacious. Right at the end of the piece, you're singing "there comes a point when there's no substance left at all," which comes closes to that feeling - a sudden falling away - clarity? - a moment (section) of marked contrast to what came before. For instance, about 20 minutes in, we're suddenly reduced to one high-pitched sine wave with echoing intermittent crashing/clanging and wispy soprano. And subsequently the thinning out even more to really simple (and in context, quite beautiful) melodic soprano figures. And then again, to the accordion/singing section - which has this odd and unexpected delicacy to it - even whimsy. (Perhaps that militates against the serious, death-centred male modernist mythology you've mentioned as being one of your bete noirs). I like the way that even in our quite 'uncompromising' performances - full of crashes, clangs, dissonances, loud and piercing noises - there are moments of clear melody, not-quite parodies. Where going 'off-key' and 'left-field' means playing in a (semi-)idiomatic way. Not that this should become a *model* - the intention isn't to deliberately incorporate idiomatic musics - it's just something that emerges organically out of things and comes as a surprise to us, the performers, as much as it might to any audience.
Monday, 12 July 2010
CHELTENHAM DUO, 10/07/2010
Third Sine Language Duo between David Grundy and Mark Anthony Whiteford. Pitville Studios (University of Gloucestershire), Cheltenham, 10th July 2010.
01 ‘from the white noise thicket’ (19:41)
02 ‘as if we fell from the sky’ (13:10 )
03 ‘when there’s no substance left at all’ (13:47)
This was the first section in an afternoon of group improvisation, which built up from duo to trio to quartet (and, subsequently, to a session with twenty-or-so members of the Cheltenham Improvisers’ Orchestra). Sections bled into one another, so it’s hard to pin-point when exactly one ‘piece’ ended and when another began – for instance, at the end of the duo, a third improviser turned up and started setting up (though not yet playing any music). In addition, the use of live-sampling means that fragments of different sections may turn up half an hour later, in a changed context (they may not even be recognizable from their origin) – so there’s a sense of continuity to things.
The duo took place in a much larger room than previously, and one with a big, echoing acoustic, which has some impact on the way it sounds. Once again voices, texts, play a role, particularly in the final part, where accordion and singing could be said to provide a marked contrast to the electronics – though they seem to me to emerge from the same territory, strange as that might seem.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
BRISTOL DUO, 04/07/2010
Second Sine Language Duo between David Grundy and Mark Anthony Whiteford. Guide Hut (Jack Brimble Hall), St Werburghs, Bristol, 4th July 2010.
01 'independence day' (35:44)
melting: saxophone into electronics/ electronics into saxophone.
moulding: electronics shape saxophone/ saxophone shapes electronics.
bleeding: saxophone into electronics/ electronics into saxophone
feeding (into/back): electronics/ saxophone. voice/ percussion. stasis/ activity.
curtains – shut. light – a pink, filtered glow. live sampling, layer on layer, obscuring, blurring the lines – what is played when and by whom. at times, it's almost as if just one instrument is playing; moments when the origin of the sound you've just heard becomes blurred. where did that sound come from? who made that sound? perhaps it was you yourself.
(sample towards the end of the track - delia derbyshire, interviewed for bbc radio scotland in 1997.)
01 'independence day' (35:44)
melting: saxophone into electronics/ electronics into saxophone.
moulding: electronics shape saxophone/ saxophone shapes electronics.
bleeding: saxophone into electronics/ electronics into saxophone
feeding (into/back): electronics/ saxophone. voice/ percussion. stasis/ activity.
curtains – shut. light – a pink, filtered glow. live sampling, layer on layer, obscuring, blurring the lines – what is played when and by whom. at times, it's almost as if just one instrument is playing; moments when the origin of the sound you've just heard becomes blurred. where did that sound come from? who made that sound? perhaps it was you yourself.
(sample towards the end of the track - delia derbyshire, interviewed for bbc radio scotland in 1997.)
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Some Thoughts Re. Cambridge Duo
I enjoyed the performance, overall – I think. Maybe enjoy is not the right word. I tend to find it quite hard to collect my thoughts after doing a live performance, as opposed to a private session – and doing a ‘post-mortem’ of something that only existed when it existed, that is now ‘not there’, in a sense, might be a tad unhelpful. That said, part of the rationale behind the whole ‘sine language’ project is to provide some sort of framework for examining certain things I’m interested in with regards to performance, improvisation, the context in which music is presented – so I’d consider the ‘post-mortem’, the pre- and post-performance writing, to be part of the project as well, rather than simply as an ‘added extra’. (Which is why I liked JH’s idea of reading read something out before we performed – or, I suppose I should say, reading something out as a preparatory part of the performance.)
There were a few moments when I felt that my own contribution possibly put JH out on a limb in a way that was a little unfair. Someone said afterwards that there seemed to be an element of playing God to it, in the deployment of sudden loud sounds and samples; or the throwing of objects onto the ‘stage’. I guess this was dialogue though, feeding back on itself. My throwing of the objects (which, initially, I wasn’t sure that I was even going to use, or thought that I might occasionally use as percussion instruments) perhaps arose from a sense of the theatricality of the occasion; a desire to move across from being ‘just a musician’, doing ‘musician things’, to some involvement, however peripheral, with the ‘acting’ side of things. Did the throwing possess a certain violence to it at all? (That’s probably imparting too much ‘narrative’ to things, too much connotative force that, while it can’t be said *not* to be there, isn’t really very important or conscious for either of us). So maybe the throwing could be conceived more in spatial terms – objects thrown in a diagonal line – like a kind of live sculpture.
If the whole performance was in some senses a ‘dialogue’, it was also an occasional *parody* of dialogue: my bashing out a rhythm, on the floor, with a drumstick, followed by a pause, followed by JH’s ‘delayed reaction’ response – shouting “Achtung!” – followed by “Heil!”. This wasn’t, though, parody in a programmatic, illustrative, facile way – not “this is us showing that dialogue is impossible” – just a different mode of dialogue. Perhaps dialogue is not the right word to use, anyway, as it implies speech - it could be replaced by ‘language’ (as per the project’s title) – but even that doesn’t feel quite right – it could be replaced by ‘communication’ (or its failure). ‘Commune’ does suggest a certain togetherness, and also a bringing into contact with something else – ‘communing with the spirits’ – which is what sampling a recording (like the shamanic birdsong imitation I used) *is*, I suppose – a technologically-enabled version of what the shaman does in the first place: channelling something they don’t claim to ‘originate’, or ‘create’ as such. That’s not to say that one is simply tapping into pre-existent forces, because *reaction* is an element here; as you pointed out, *liveness* is crucial.
In itself, that’s actually a bit odd, given that this was the first time I’ve performed the ‘sine music’ in a live situation (my previous use of electronics at gigs has tended to be more ‘reactive’; what Derek Bailey would call an “instrumental” approach to the music). It was also only the second time that I’ve played it in a duo situation, the first being just a few days before, and, just like on that occasion, unexpected things happened – which is what I was hoping for. Perhaps the fact that we weren’t able to use the initial plan provided the element of risk I mentioned in the ‘programme note’. (This plan, which we’d developed in brief conversation before the performance, was for JH to fall, very slowly, until his head was submerged in a tank of water, while dropping things out of his pockets – stretching an action which would normally take, say, 2 minutes, to 15 or more. As things turned out, no water tank was available, and the fall had actually been completed about half-way through, and so the ‘second half’ of the performance found JH on the floor (almost a ‘second action’, I guess, though not separable from the first, that of falling)). In any case, I’m glad to have made the first forays with this project, both private (Bristol) and public (Cambridge). As for what’s to come, who knows?
A Brief Note on The Sine Language Project (Introduction to Cambridge Performance, 20/06/2010)
Duo Between Jeremy Hardingham & David Grundy: Drama Studio, English Faculty, Cambridge, 20th June 2010 (as part of ‘Wrecking Balls’ evening)
The following text was read out by JH to introduce the performance.
This duo is part of something called the ‘Sine Language Project’; this is a provisional title to cover a proposed series of collaborations between myself on electronics, and various other musicians, actors, and other artists. Sine waves are electronic tones which offer ‘pure’, unwavering pitches, not subject to the imperfections of an instrumentalist trying to sustain a pitch. The ‘Sine Language’ title is therefore a fairly crass pun: I’m interested, with regards to this particular ‘project’, in exploring sine-tones, or sine-like tones, generated from a laptop, and this might be said to comprise some sort of ‘language’, or effort at ‘communication’. On the other hand, the music’s possible ‘blankness’ and lack of event might be said to indicate an unwillingness to be ‘emotional’ or ‘communicative’, by some. In any case, there are paradoxes and questions that unfold themselves on the prompting of the title.
The idea behind the ‘project’ is it to collaborate with performers who’ll add something different and unpredictable – even seemingly incompatible – providing new perspectives and forcing new accommodations and meanings within the ‘sine system’. This involves an element of risk, and perhaps of failure: indeed, one might argue that failure, and its risk, is that which makes the work *matter* more than polish or 'success' could.
Some have argued (particularly in relation to theatre) that failure is a necessary condition of the work – that it is bound to fail. On the blog ‘crow: instigated’, one finds the following statement: “theatre communicates the failure to communicate. which is theatre and what theater necessarily fails at in the same instance.” Here, in theory, some intriguing connections spring up between experimental music of the kind which I perform, and experimental theatre, of the kind made by Jeremy. The hope is that this might translate from theory into practice – and that is what we will now attempt to do. DG
The following text was read out by JH to introduce the performance.
This duo is part of something called the ‘Sine Language Project’; this is a provisional title to cover a proposed series of collaborations between myself on electronics, and various other musicians, actors, and other artists. Sine waves are electronic tones which offer ‘pure’, unwavering pitches, not subject to the imperfections of an instrumentalist trying to sustain a pitch. The ‘Sine Language’ title is therefore a fairly crass pun: I’m interested, with regards to this particular ‘project’, in exploring sine-tones, or sine-like tones, generated from a laptop, and this might be said to comprise some sort of ‘language’, or effort at ‘communication’. On the other hand, the music’s possible ‘blankness’ and lack of event might be said to indicate an unwillingness to be ‘emotional’ or ‘communicative’, by some. In any case, there are paradoxes and questions that unfold themselves on the prompting of the title.
The idea behind the ‘project’ is it to collaborate with performers who’ll add something different and unpredictable – even seemingly incompatible – providing new perspectives and forcing new accommodations and meanings within the ‘sine system’. This involves an element of risk, and perhaps of failure: indeed, one might argue that failure, and its risk, is that which makes the work *matter* more than polish or 'success' could.
Some have argued (particularly in relation to theatre) that failure is a necessary condition of the work – that it is bound to fail. On the blog ‘crow: instigated’, one finds the following statement: “theatre communicates the failure to communicate. which is theatre and what theater necessarily fails at in the same instance.” Here, in theory, some intriguing connections spring up between experimental music of the kind which I perform, and experimental theatre, of the kind made by Jeremy. The hope is that this might translate from theory into practice – and that is what we will now attempt to do. DG
Email Exchange Re. Bristol Duo
--------------------------------------
Subject: thoughts on our duo
From: David Grundy
Sent: 20 June 2010 14:53:56
To: anthony whiteford
--------------------------------------
The Sine Language Project: Collaboration
I’d thought of doing a duo as part of the ‘Sine Language Project’ (provisional title to cover a proposed series of collaborations, with me on sine-wavey-style electronics.) The idea behind the ‘project’ is it to collaborate with performers who’ll add something different and unpredictable – even seemingly incompatible – providing new perspectives and forcing new accommodations and meanings to the ‘sine system’. (This ‘system’ is a kind of constant, I suppose – a static, stark, ‘pure’ constant – which will of course be modified by what goes on around it.) I’m also interested in working with people interested in expanding or altering the clichés of concert format/ perhaps with movement, spatial perception (I might try to work with some dancers)/ with actors/ with musicians interested in theatricality, self-reflexivity, the notion of *performance* rather than just sitting there and playing some music.
Flow and counter-flow
What I liked about your playing in the duo last Wednesday was the way you simultaneously went ‘with a flow’ – as in the bits where we had vocals working with the drone, the sax and recorder meshing with the electronics too, hovering around, roundabouts a single pitch (in the second part of ‘Witches’)– and did things which were potentially disruptive – cut-up, musique concrete, anti-flow; speech fragments, often self-reflexive, referring to what’s going on and the thoughts and reasons behind musical actions (“I plan at some point in the future to knock over the other bell. Can this really be improvisation?”); readings from feminists texts; bursts of radio – often classical music, during this session – miscellaneous percussion. This is tied up, I suppose, with your refusal to be a conventional instrumentalist, tied to one instrument – it’s not saxophone + misc percussion, the saxophone is on the same level as the voice and the percussion and the radio – just another element in the mix. Was it 45 minutes before you even touched it? At certain points the radio seemed to ‘distract’ from the sine stuff – but the nature of the sine stuff is to fade in and out of background and foreground, after all – and this is free improv! Radio is simply a different element (& used differently from the usual Keith Rowe method as well). And it’s intriguing to have a clash between reactive and unreactive things – the way the electronics often don’t change in reaction to radio etc, and the way that radio doesn’t change in relation to other things.
Witches’ Dance
But *of course* there is interaction, communication. Not as polite ‘exchange’ but as swarming crawling overlapping frequencies, textures, bursts, drones, voices, voicings. “They howl, they gasp, they babble, they shout, they sigh…unable to speak straightforwardly, logically, geometrically, in strict conformity…” The Xaviere Gauthier text you were reading set off some strands in relation to this – notions of shamanic ecstasy (the bits with drumming, vocals + a few times I sampled shamanic ceremonies, glossolalia recordings); the use of technology/electronics to create an experience related to far more archaic forms of thought – ceremonial, ritual function. But *not* in some bullshit nostalgic way; not as regression. And if at times I hear the music as shamanic ceremony, at other times it’s radio crackle, white noise, interference, the hum of machines, of technology; leaves and twigs, grit spurting up from the road, burned out car tyres, nuts and bolts, factory engines, the hum of the computer hub.
Music and environment
The way you play could be described as self-critical/ self-reflexive, but not through hang-ups, through guilt, or through facile post-modernism. Indeed, the self-reflexivity occurs in a *relaxed* way (not sure if that’s the right word), where environment is truly accepted and brought into the music, in a really organic way – nothing is ‘wrong’, nothing is resented, nothing ‘intrudes’ – or if it does at first, it is incorporated into the flow of things. Music is not something which has to be put in a glass case, away from what happens around it, but reacts to it, impinges on it and is impinged on by it. But there is also a real focus, a real inward tone, when the saxophone eventually does come in – a sense (even) of emotion, fragments of delicacy and melody which are in no way sentimental or, in the clichéd sense, ‘oases of calm’, but which *do* possess a lovely simplicity.
Collaboration Once Again
What the session showed me was the ‘sine language project’ might end with a series of wildly diverse collaborations – will almost be a thought experiment for me, a means of, amongst other things: demonstrating and analysing free improv’s adaptability; the nature of personal and musical interaction; inter-disciplinary crossings/sharings; the role of environment. This is all stuff I’m interested in and think about with regards to free improv anyway, but the ‘project’ puts it through a prism which makes the issues stand out clearly, in a way that can be analysed – not systematically, theory abstracted from practice, but nonetheless with some sort of comparative structure built into things.
--------------------------------------
Re: thoughts on our duo
From: anthony whiteford
Sent: 20 June 2010 19:13:59
To: David Grundy
--------------------------------------
hiya david see below for my quick kneejerk response
yes indeed. thanks for your thoughts/text on the music of the other day. i am instantly embarrassed to be reminded that you had some kind of preordained experiment in mind, a follow on from some previous activities which i conveniently forgot, so attended the session with a clean slate and thought we were just making duos. i have a keen ability to lose all focus on thoughts or preordained ideas discussions once the music ensues. i'm sure this is a good thing for ensuring unconscious in the moment improvised music. although i recognise it's also a potentially annoying trait for others to deal with. it was one of those sessions when i almost never thought 'what's david doing? or what's going on? in that case i need to bring in such and such a thing.' i was mostly on a very unconscious wave of activity quite oblivious to the meld or sharp contrast of things i might create alongside your creations. i'm not sure i was that conscious that you were using sine wave. when i picked up the book i immediately thought of the text ‘why witches’ without really knowing if it was a direct response to the sounds already ensuing. but i seem to recall the text 'why witches' came in almost immediately or very early on and seemed to suggest something eerie or telling under the electronic sound you were making. i was probably quite aware that the text was speaking of sentiments seemingly far removed from sine waves and yet at the same time i'm very aware of how the likes of Sachiko M have reinvented/ reinstated the female wail with the cry of fucked machines and i'm very much reminded of other high tech associated witch wailers such as Amy Yoshida. and it occurs to me that the sine wave and electronic sounds are voices that have lost the ability to communicate logically or properly and instead hum or stutter beyond the supposed/mythic intelligibility of words. the bit where we both start stuttering in response to the text was magical and emotional i thought, and at the time seemed in sharp contrast to the electronics and yet now i see that electronics are broken communications too.
yes. lots of strongly contrasting radio/tape sounds. and lots of classical. somehow i just felt to let things come in randomly and also felt to leave them there however starkly contrasting or insistent they were. sooner or later even dominant aspects break down in the sound don’t you think?
and now i suddenly recall how in our original sine wave and response musics there was almost exclusively saxophone. how embarrassing. no i don’t think of myself as a saxophonist when i'm improvising. picking up the saxophone is like picking up a bell or radio only more limiting and demanding than either of those two. it comes in or not when it happens. i was really not thinking much at all during that first piece. i was bunging things into the mix like a baby throwing things out of a cot only with no intention or desire. i was in the sound of things falling and happy throughout the entire peice. relieved to be outside my fucked up head for and hour or so.
thanks for your comments regards the voice commentary thing. i like what you said. i dunno when it started to happen, but i guess in response to the still ongoing mystification of so much improvised performance wherein musicians create sounds as if in some magic inexplicable realm – so speaking out loud what is happening and what i'm thinking feels like a very very natural element to add to the sounds. and often my ongoing life creeps in too. at one point i recited/hollered my maternal grandmother and my maternal great aunts names prompted by gauthier's text and by recent decision to drop my father's surname and adopt my matriarchal grandmother's name instead. the reading of texts is so weird cos it's fixed, it's on the page and yet what we read and where/how is so utterly improvisational isn’t it?
i need to reread your text now. as this was simply a knee jerk reaction to one quick read.
thanks for the music on wednesday. you saved my life again, lifting me from ongoingly bleak mind terrains. i also thank you for being you and being so unerringly there and up for it and committed to the art, you give me hope in an otherwise hope-drained landscape. thanks
--------------------------------------
Re: thoughts on our duo
From: anthony whiteford
Sent: 20 June 2010 20:07:47
To: David Grundy
--------------------------------------
(I might try to work with some dancers)/ with actors/ with musicians interested in theatricality, self-reflexivity, the notion of *performance* rather than just sitting there and playing some music.LOVE THIS statement: "Rather than just sitting there and playing some music." we need to make this an album title for the future.
the use of technology/electronics to create an experience related to far more archaic forms of thought – ceremonial, ritual function.YES electricity/static subliminal activity audio {buried voices ghost sounds warped life sounds reinstigated from beyond the grave of the day on which they occured and died} and visual are all part of shamanic ritual in my experience. electronics and technology have the shaman's ability to shapeshift sounds, or if you prefer = soundshift!!!!
Music is not something which has to be put in a glass case, away from what happens around it, but reacts to it, impinges on it and is impinged on by it.
YES i agree. i think this says more eloquently what i was trying to say about transparency as opposed to mystification. and yes i like the idea of magic/sacred/ritual being actually merely constructed from what is, which is for me as sacred as it gets anyways? so yes things impinge. or we are forced to impinge upon things in our environment that we didn’t create [other musicians / guide leaders!!!!!] questions such as when does it start or end so valuable to critique challenge open up improvisational process as opposed to performance in the tradition of 'good evening ladies and gentlemen it's 8pm and we are on stage so it starts just after i stop speaking and we put our instruments to our mouths hands'
BRISTOL DUO, 16/06/2010
The first 'Sine Language' duo between David Grundy and Mark Anthony Whiteford. Private peformance at the Guide Hut (Jack Brimble Hall), St Werburghs, Bristol, 16th June 2010.
01 'Witches' (part 1) (36:29)
02 'Witches' (part 2) (30:36)
a continous piece, just over one hour long, broken down here into 2 parts. voice spoken word shouting and singing wailing/ poetry. reading from books. electronics. samples.archive sounds/music concrete. radio.percussion.tapes. alto saxophone. and maybe other things. (text - 'why witches' by xaviere gauthier)
03 'dedicated to bill dixon' (10:56)
a vocal piece made in the guide hut by david and mark. we discovered afterwards that bill dixon had died.
04 final piece (8:44)
a short vocal and percussion piece replete with girl guide lady interuption
(track descriptions by mark anthony whiteford)
01 'Witches' (part 1) (36:29)
02 'Witches' (part 2) (30:36)
a continous piece, just over one hour long, broken down here into 2 parts. voice spoken word shouting and singing wailing/ poetry. reading from books. electronics. samples.archive sounds/music concrete. radio.percussion.tapes. alto saxophone. and maybe other things. (text - 'why witches' by xaviere gauthier)
03 'dedicated to bill dixon' (10:56)
a vocal piece made in the guide hut by david and mark. we discovered afterwards that bill dixon had died.
04 final piece (8:44)
a short vocal and percussion piece replete with girl guide lady interuption
(track descriptions by mark anthony whiteford)
THE SINE LANGAUGE PROJECT: INTRODUCTION
Sine waves are ‘pure’ pitches (the sound of a single frequency, with no harmonics), which are not subject to the imperfections of an instrumentalist trying to sustain a note. The title above is a fairly crass pun: I’m interested, with regards to this particular ‘project’, in exploring sine-tones, or sine-like tones, generated from a laptop, and this might be said to comprise some sort of ‘language’, or effort at ‘communication’. On the other hand, the music’s possible ‘blankness’ and lack of event might be said to indicate an unwillingness to be ‘emotional’ or ‘communicative’, by some. In any case, there are paradoxes and questions that unfold themselves on the prompting of the title.
This ‘project’ so far doesn’t really ‘exist’ as such: the ‘idea’ for it comes from some solo, improvised electronic pieces that I have made over the past few years. I suppose one could call these a ‘series’, or see them as in some way connected, though they weren’t created with that sort of connection in mind, necessarily. These pieces, as I say, were exclusively solo, and were all created in private: I’ve never ‘performed’ anything like them in public (partly because I don’t really like performing solo), though certain aspects may have emerged in group performances. Recently, however, I’ve come to think that some interesting developments could emerge from treating this kind of material in collaborative fashion: with other musicians, and with artists from other disciplines, in small, intense groups (duos perhaps being the ideal setting, though things could conceivably broaden into larger configurations).
The kind of material ‘developed’ (or left in stasis) in the aforementioned solo electronic pieces is characterised by the fact that the music doesn't change that much over time. In that sense it's quite different to the perhaps more frequently-found model of 'reactive', 'responsive' group improv - quick-fire, always changing, never resting, never predictable. This, on the other hand, is more like 'drone music' - there may be very little *actual* difference between the sounds you are hearing ten minutes in and those you are hearing one minute in. But difference is a factor, nonetheless, in a *perceptual* sense: the psychological/ physiological effect of being in a particular space and hearing particular sounds; the creation of a total, immersive experience, of a particular (head?)space. My ‘version’ of this kind of ‘drone music’ is perhaps more informed by an 'improv sensibility' (whatever that is), in that there are a few more changes and 'events' than in the most extreme kinds of drone. (As opposed to a piece like Sachiko M's 'Bar Sachiko.' [1]) Nonetheless, it could still be counted as fairly ‘minimal’ in terms of the frequency of changes and events.
As 'influences' in this regard, count composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue [2]: their dedication to exploring a particular, seemingly very narrow area of sound with almost fanatical, obsessional devotion and detail, proves inspirational. About this, the cellist Charles Curtis, who has worked with both Young and Radigue, has some interesting things to say in a recent interview with Paris Transatlantic Magazine [3]. On La Monte Young first of all:
And on Eliane Radigue:
Perhaps there's something here about the music and the performer becoming entwined, in a loss of ego, that relates to the solo electronic ‘sine language’ project - the music is 'yours' because you play, but on the other hand it's achieved (in the case of solo electronic work) by pressing a key and holding a drone which the machine does for you (rather than having to circular breathe, hold a breath). Is that a dangerous loss of the human, the physical element in music? I would argue that it is not, for the music still has an impact that is above all else physical - loud electronic sounds have a particular impact on the ear and on the body that is even greater than acoustic sounds. For example, at concerts by the experimental metal/noise band Sunn O))), people's teeth have been caused to rattle and the vibrations of the music can be felt in their whole body [5].
This is perhaps the ultimate example of music as *vibration*, bringing to mind the work of free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, one of whose albums was entitled 'Vibrations'. Thus, even if the kind of contemplation or 'atmosphere' evoked by this kind of 'minimalistic' electronic drone music might seem very different to the ecstasy generated from free jazz's frenzy of simultaneous activity, both reach for the same place. Intriguingly, this could be posited as both a transcendent moment and one that is profoundly rooted in an awareness of one's physical situation, of one's body, of the space one is in.
In the interview quoted above, Charles Curtis argues that La Monte Young's apparently very simple, 'minimal' music is an exploration of fantastically complex minute details, probably inaudible to the casual listener. It thus calls for a certain kind of virtuosity – but this is a virtuosity very different from the flashy, show-off sense that word has accrued. I don't mean to disparage the usual notion of 'virtuoso' (though the dangers of all flash and no substance are evident) - far from it, it is uniquely thrilling. The Paganini/ Jimi Hendrix/ Marc-Andre Hamelin/Cecil Taylor school of virtuosity achieves its ecstasy through near-total connection between brain and fingers, the body as almost machine-like in its accuracy and capacity to translate intention into action (indeed, intention and action become simultaneous). However, the virtuosity involved in performing a piece by La Monte Young or Eliane Radigue is no less impressive. It might better be called 'dedication', a desire to become so involved with the minutiae of every sound that you make that you almost seem to *become* the sound. Writing about this has pitfalls of seeming vaguely mystical, but, as argued above, this type of music is something profoundly physical, and, if words don't suffice, the evidence of your own ears, your own mental and physical concentration, should prove sufficient.
I'm not claiming to possess this second type of virtuosity myself. I have certainly not spent the years of dedicated, intense, lengthy artistic immersion that Young and Radigue have. Nonetheless, though I might not be as musically clued up as them, there are issues surrounding variations in space, presentation, audience, dynamics (and resultant emotional impact) which offer a lot of potential for future, in-depth exploration within this ‘sine language’ project.
I suppose the 'problem' – or the potential problem, which perhaps rears its head in all improvised music contexts – is of falling back on the clichés, the safety nets. There may in fact be little perceivable difference between a performance which pushes things out, which takes risks, which is imparted with a real sense of urgency and importance, and one which takes the superficial aspects of a particular mode of enquiry and plays it safe with them – satisfactory, even apparently 'adequate', but in some crucial way dishonest. As J.H. Prynne puts it, “nearly too much is, well, nowhere near enough” (Down Where Changed (1979). This can have anything to do with any number of factors – which of course I can’t predict here (we’re talking about *improvised* music, after all). Hypothetically, though, there might be an unresponsive audience, mental tiredness on the part of the performer, or some intangible combination of factors that means the performance just doesn't work. But then failure, and its risk, is that which makes the work *matter* more than polish or 'success' could. Some have argued (particularly in relation to theatre) that failure is a necessary condition of the work - that it is bound to fail. Beckett is the usual citation here – “fail again, fail better” – but I might also quote a blog post from crow: instigated, the home page of some important young theatre-makers working in Cambridge and Berlin and involved with, among other things, the antigone project: "theatre communicates the failure to communicate. which is theatre and what theater necessarily fails at in the same instance." [6] Here, in theory, some intriguing connections spring up between experimental music of the kind I have been discussing, and experimental theatre, of the kind made by the ‘bloggers’ I have just quoted. And perhaps in practice too, a *live,* collaborative exploration of these issues, more could be discovered, created, explored.
NOTES / LINKS
[1] A review and discussion of 'Bar Sachiko' can be found at Bagatellen.
[2] Information on La Monte Young; Eliane Radigue.
[3] Full Interview available at Paris Transatlantic.
[4] The piece under discussion is ‘Naldjorlak’, Radigue’s first acoustic instrumental piece (all her previous work was for synthesizer). Further information can be found here.
[5] See here for a further discussion of Sunn 0))). The physical effect of their music is something that can only be experienced by seeing the band live.
[6] ‘theater (noun): the failure to not express oneself’ (blog post by Lisa Jeshke & Lucy Benyon at 'crow: instigated').
This ‘project’ so far doesn’t really ‘exist’ as such: the ‘idea’ for it comes from some solo, improvised electronic pieces that I have made over the past few years. I suppose one could call these a ‘series’, or see them as in some way connected, though they weren’t created with that sort of connection in mind, necessarily. These pieces, as I say, were exclusively solo, and were all created in private: I’ve never ‘performed’ anything like them in public (partly because I don’t really like performing solo), though certain aspects may have emerged in group performances. Recently, however, I’ve come to think that some interesting developments could emerge from treating this kind of material in collaborative fashion: with other musicians, and with artists from other disciplines, in small, intense groups (duos perhaps being the ideal setting, though things could conceivably broaden into larger configurations).
The kind of material ‘developed’ (or left in stasis) in the aforementioned solo electronic pieces is characterised by the fact that the music doesn't change that much over time. In that sense it's quite different to the perhaps more frequently-found model of 'reactive', 'responsive' group improv - quick-fire, always changing, never resting, never predictable. This, on the other hand, is more like 'drone music' - there may be very little *actual* difference between the sounds you are hearing ten minutes in and those you are hearing one minute in. But difference is a factor, nonetheless, in a *perceptual* sense: the psychological/ physiological effect of being in a particular space and hearing particular sounds; the creation of a total, immersive experience, of a particular (head?)space. My ‘version’ of this kind of ‘drone music’ is perhaps more informed by an 'improv sensibility' (whatever that is), in that there are a few more changes and 'events' than in the most extreme kinds of drone. (As opposed to a piece like Sachiko M's 'Bar Sachiko.' [1]) Nonetheless, it could still be counted as fairly ‘minimal’ in terms of the frequency of changes and events.
As 'influences' in this regard, count composers La Monte Young and Eliane Radigue [2]: their dedication to exploring a particular, seemingly very narrow area of sound with almost fanatical, obsessional devotion and detail, proves inspirational. About this, the cellist Charles Curtis, who has worked with both Young and Radigue, has some interesting things to say in a recent interview with Paris Transatlantic Magazine [3]. On La Monte Young first of all:
He himself says that all of his works constitute one composition, one single work. He sees his body of work as one work of art. And that work of art, needless to say, if it encompasses all of these individual pieces from 50-some years of activity, is a work in process. It's open-ended, and still evolving, not only in the sense that new works are being added all the time, but the whole thing exists in the present. The whole body of work exists as a singular moment. Even earlier pieces are moving forward into this work, through a sort of reflection back on those works, via the later works. It's almost an example of this spiritual idea of "now-time", the eternal moment that's always present. It's a view of time that's not linear or successive, but rather a kind of a prophetic notion. In the church, the term is nunc stans, or the standing now. It's a monastic idea, and obviously it's very closely bound up with him and I think his music exemplifies that in a very concrete way.
And on Eliane Radigue:
"The first time we met, she made a little drawing, which was meant to graph the overall shape of the piece [4]. But it was nothing like a score. Later she said to me, in fact, all of my pieces are the same piece. Now doesn't that sound familiar? (laughs) Not in the way that each piece is part of one work, but essentially, she said, with each piece I follow the same shape, the same trajectory. I just use the sounds that I'm working with at the time, and follow them, but the overall shape of the piece is always the same. She was totally upfront about that.
Q: Would you describe that as a uniquely modern approach to composition?
I mean, it sounds not modern, because one of the basic tenets of the avant garde is that it has to be new every time. It has to be different, you have to surprise and shock people. And here she is, saying, no, I do the same things every time, just maybe with different sounds. So sure enough, here comes the cello piece and she has this little drawing and she says, essentially, all of my pieces are like this. Also that acknowledgement that she's not interested in variety or staking out new territory, I think that's very contrary to a certain modernist viewpoint. It has more to do with repetition and observation and studying something rather than asserting something. Eliane seems to have no concerns whatsoever about what anybody expects her to create. In a way, her career has almost been free of ambition."
Perhaps there's something here about the music and the performer becoming entwined, in a loss of ego, that relates to the solo electronic ‘sine language’ project - the music is 'yours' because you play, but on the other hand it's achieved (in the case of solo electronic work) by pressing a key and holding a drone which the machine does for you (rather than having to circular breathe, hold a breath). Is that a dangerous loss of the human, the physical element in music? I would argue that it is not, for the music still has an impact that is above all else physical - loud electronic sounds have a particular impact on the ear and on the body that is even greater than acoustic sounds. For example, at concerts by the experimental metal/noise band Sunn O))), people's teeth have been caused to rattle and the vibrations of the music can be felt in their whole body [5].
This is perhaps the ultimate example of music as *vibration*, bringing to mind the work of free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, one of whose albums was entitled 'Vibrations'. Thus, even if the kind of contemplation or 'atmosphere' evoked by this kind of 'minimalistic' electronic drone music might seem very different to the ecstasy generated from free jazz's frenzy of simultaneous activity, both reach for the same place. Intriguingly, this could be posited as both a transcendent moment and one that is profoundly rooted in an awareness of one's physical situation, of one's body, of the space one is in.
In the interview quoted above, Charles Curtis argues that La Monte Young's apparently very simple, 'minimal' music is an exploration of fantastically complex minute details, probably inaudible to the casual listener. It thus calls for a certain kind of virtuosity – but this is a virtuosity very different from the flashy, show-off sense that word has accrued. I don't mean to disparage the usual notion of 'virtuoso' (though the dangers of all flash and no substance are evident) - far from it, it is uniquely thrilling. The Paganini/ Jimi Hendrix/ Marc-Andre Hamelin/Cecil Taylor school of virtuosity achieves its ecstasy through near-total connection between brain and fingers, the body as almost machine-like in its accuracy and capacity to translate intention into action (indeed, intention and action become simultaneous). However, the virtuosity involved in performing a piece by La Monte Young or Eliane Radigue is no less impressive. It might better be called 'dedication', a desire to become so involved with the minutiae of every sound that you make that you almost seem to *become* the sound. Writing about this has pitfalls of seeming vaguely mystical, but, as argued above, this type of music is something profoundly physical, and, if words don't suffice, the evidence of your own ears, your own mental and physical concentration, should prove sufficient.
I'm not claiming to possess this second type of virtuosity myself. I have certainly not spent the years of dedicated, intense, lengthy artistic immersion that Young and Radigue have. Nonetheless, though I might not be as musically clued up as them, there are issues surrounding variations in space, presentation, audience, dynamics (and resultant emotional impact) which offer a lot of potential for future, in-depth exploration within this ‘sine language’ project.
I suppose the 'problem' – or the potential problem, which perhaps rears its head in all improvised music contexts – is of falling back on the clichés, the safety nets. There may in fact be little perceivable difference between a performance which pushes things out, which takes risks, which is imparted with a real sense of urgency and importance, and one which takes the superficial aspects of a particular mode of enquiry and plays it safe with them – satisfactory, even apparently 'adequate', but in some crucial way dishonest. As J.H. Prynne puts it, “nearly too much is, well, nowhere near enough” (Down Where Changed (1979). This can have anything to do with any number of factors – which of course I can’t predict here (we’re talking about *improvised* music, after all). Hypothetically, though, there might be an unresponsive audience, mental tiredness on the part of the performer, or some intangible combination of factors that means the performance just doesn't work. But then failure, and its risk, is that which makes the work *matter* more than polish or 'success' could. Some have argued (particularly in relation to theatre) that failure is a necessary condition of the work - that it is bound to fail. Beckett is the usual citation here – “fail again, fail better” – but I might also quote a blog post from crow: instigated, the home page of some important young theatre-makers working in Cambridge and Berlin and involved with, among other things, the antigone project: "theatre communicates the failure to communicate. which is theatre and what theater necessarily fails at in the same instance." [6] Here, in theory, some intriguing connections spring up between experimental music of the kind I have been discussing, and experimental theatre, of the kind made by the ‘bloggers’ I have just quoted. And perhaps in practice too, a *live,* collaborative exploration of these issues, more could be discovered, created, explored.
NOTES / LINKS
[1] A review and discussion of 'Bar Sachiko' can be found at Bagatellen.
[2] Information on La Monte Young; Eliane Radigue.
[3] Full Interview available at Paris Transatlantic.
[4] The piece under discussion is ‘Naldjorlak’, Radigue’s first acoustic instrumental piece (all her previous work was for synthesizer). Further information can be found here.
[5] See here for a further discussion of Sunn 0))). The physical effect of their music is something that can only be experienced by seeing the band live.
[6] ‘theater (noun): the failure to not express oneself’ (blog post by Lisa Jeshke & Lucy Benyon at 'crow: instigated').
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