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

Email Exchange Re. Bristol Duo

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Subject: thoughts on our duo‏
From: David Grundy
Sent: 20 June 2010 14:53:56
To: anthony whiteford
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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.

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Re: thoughts on our duo‏
From: anthony whiteford
Sent: 20 June 2010 19:13:59
To: David Grundy
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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

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Re: thoughts on our duo‏
From: anthony whiteford
Sent: 20 June 2010 20:07:47
To: David Grundy
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(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)

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:

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').