z Kostelanetz, Richard – Conversing With Cage, 2nd ed (2003)
cage, 83
I’m on the side of keeping things mysterious, and I have never enjoyed
understanding things. If I understand something, I have no further use for it. So I try to make a
music which I don’t understand and which will be difficult for other people to understand, too.
cage, 85
I like art to remain mysterious. I find that as long as a book or a painting or a piece of music is
not understood by me that I can use it. I mean use it in order to employ my faculties. If I
understand something I can put it on a shelf and leave it there. In the past I thought it had to do
with the feeling in Europe of a tradition or the history, whereas we here in America have very
little sense of history.
!!! cage, 72
I have from time to time, either for myself or for others, made statements that are like manifestos.
You know this is popular in the field of the arts—to say in a manifesto-style statement what
distinguishes the contemporary or modern thing from what isn’t. The first time I was asked to do
it, I did it with regard to painting.
I said that a painting was modern if it was not interrupted by
the effect of its environment—so that if shadows or spots or so forth fell on a painting and spoilt
it, then it was not a modern painting, but if they fell on it and, so to speak, were fluent with it,
then it was a modern painting.
Then, of course, I have said the same thing about music. If the music can accept ambient sounds
and not be interrupted thereby, it’s a modern piece of music. If, as with a composition of
Beethoven, a baby crying, or someone in the audience coughing, interrupts the music, then we
know that it isn’t modern. I think that the present way of deciding whether something is useful as
art is to ask whether it is interrupted by the actions of others, or whether it is fluent with the
actions of others.
What I have been saying is an extension of these notions out of the field of the
material of the arts into what you might call the material of society. If, for instance, you made a
structure of society that would be interrupted by the actions of people who were not in it, then it
would not be the proper structure.
^ aliens, my art, open work, participative, ….theory building
cage, 77
I think the history of art is simply a history of getting rid of the ugly by entering into it, and using
it. After all, the notion of something outside of us being ugly is not outside of us but inside of us.
And that’s why I keep reiterating that we’re working with our minds. What we’re trying to do is
to get them open so that we don’t see things as being ugly, or beautiful, but we see them just as
they are.
cage, 66
Formerly, one was accustomed to thinking of art as something better organized than life that
could be used as an escape from life. The changes that have taken place in this century, however,
are such that art is not an escape from life, but rather an introduction to it.
cage, 1978 – on improvised jazz
Aside from the question of rhythmic regularity, one of the reasons for my reticence regarding
jazz has to do with its conception and use of improvisation. This matter of improvisation has
always greatly concerned me. What I have never appreciated in improvisation is the return to
memory or to taste: the return of things that have been learned or to which one has become
accustomed—sometimes consciously, deliberately, sometimes insidiously. Phrases thought to be
original are only articulations heard a long time ago. In improvisation, when you think you are
following your own direction, most of the time you are following someone else’s line. At the
most, that is not what bothers me so much as the desire for uniqueness that appears in the act of
improvising. Once you realize the number of obstacles and of more or less deliberate references
that the improviser is struggling with, you can only smile at the claim to originality. The desire
for originality seems to be one of the great myths of jazz (and of a good part of contemporary
music in the classic tradition as well, for that matter). And it seems that not even “free jazz”
escapes this. I am bothered by these disproportionate assertions of the ego when I hear them. For
my own part, I do not look for originality. Whether or not my music is original does not concern
me. I would prefer to find a music separate from my memory and my tastes, which would in
some way be a discovery for me, and that has nothing to do with originality, because intention is
not involved. (Originality is always an effort, a state of tension. ) With an open-mindedness
toward the unintentional sound, I want not to control sound events but simply at most to write
instructions. That is why I’m against improvisation as it is usually understood (even if I
sometimes use it, because nothing should be prohibited!). [..]
The problem that jazz raises for me, at the level of rhythm, I repeat, is that I am bothered by its
regularity. I prefer the rhythm of what I call silence where sound can be born at any time.
cage, 1979 – silence & there’s always sound
I made a decision in the early fifties to accept the sounds that are in the world. Before that I had
actually been naive enough to think there was such a thing as silence. But I went into an
anechoic chamber in Cambridge, at Harvard University, and in this room I heard two sounds. I
thought there was something wrong with the room, and I told the engineer that there were two
sounds. He said describe them, and I did. “Well, ” he said, “the high one was your nervous
system in operation and the low one was your blood circulating. ” So that means that there is
music, or there is sound, whether I intend it or not.
cage, 1979 – silence & composing
What silence is is the change of my mind. It’s an acceptance of the sounds that exist rather than a
desire to choose and impose one’s own music. That has been at the center of my work ever since
then. I try when I make a new piece of music to make it in such a way that it doesn’t essentially
disturb the silence which already exists.
Father told me that if someone says “can’t” that shows you what to do.
Mother: “..you know perfectly well I’ve never enjoyed having a good time.”
I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book.
Fischinger: “Everything in the world has its own spirit which can be released by setting it into vibration.”
I was given a job at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was there that I discovered what I called micro-macrocosmic rhythmic structure. The large parts of a composition had the same proportion as the phrases of a single unit.
I could not accept the academic idea that the purpose of music was communication, because I noticed that when I conscientiously wrote something sad, people and critics were often apt to laugh.
I found this answer from Gira Sarabhai, an Indian singer and tabla player: The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences. I also found in the writings of Ananda K. Coomaraswammy that the responsibility of the artist is to imitate nature in her manner of operation.
I have never practiced sitting cross-legged nor do I meditate. My work is what I do and always involves writing materials, chairs, and tables. Before I get to it, I do some exercises for my back and I water the plants, of which I have around two hundred.
In the late forties I found out by experiment (I went into the anechoic chamber at Harvard University) that silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around. I devoted my music to it. My work became an exploration of non-intention. To carry it out faithfully I have developed a complicated composing means using I Ching chance operations, making my responsibility that of asking questions instead of making choices.
The Buddhist texts to which I often return are the Huang-Po Doctrine of Universal Mind (in Chu Ch’an’s first translation, published by the London Buddhist Society in 1947), Neti Neti by L. C. Beckett of which (as I say in the introduction to my Norton Lectures at Harvard) my life could be described as an illustration, and the Ten Oxherding Pictures (in the version that ends with the return to the village bearing gifts of a smiling and somewhat heavy monk, one who had experienced Nothingness). Apart from Buddhism and earlier I had read the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna it was who said all religions are the same, like a lake to which people who are thirsty come from different directions, calling its water by different names. Furthermore this water has many different tastes. The taste of Zen for me comes from the admixture of humor, intransigence, and detachment. It makes me think of Marcel Duchamp, though for him we would have to add the erotic.
That summer Fuller put up his first dome, which immediately collapsed. He was delighted. “I only learn what to do when I have failures.”
It was at Black Mountain College that I made what is sometimes said to be the first happening. The audience was seated in four isometric triangular sections, the apexes of which touched a small square performance area that they faced and that led through the aisles between them to the large performance area that surrounded them. Disparate activities, dancing by Merce Cunningham, the exhibition of paintings and the playing of a Victrola by Robert Rauschenberg, the reading of his poetry by Charles Olsen or hers by M. C. Richards from the top of a ladder outside the audience, the piano playing of David Tudor, my own reading of a lecture that included silences from the top of another ladder outside the audience, all took place within chance-determined periods of time within the over-all time of my lecture.
I was to move from structure to process, from music as an object having parts, to music without beginning, middle, or end, music as weather. In our collaborations Merce Cunningham’s choreographies are not supported by my musical accompaniments. Music and dance are independent but coexistant.
My favorite music is the music I haven’t yet heard. I don’t hear the music I write. I write in order to hear the music I haven’t yet heard.
(1989)
shoegaze (late 80s)
by NME & Melody Maker: musicians stand relatively still during live performances, in a detached, introspective, non-confrontational state, hence the idea that they were gazing at their shoes.
toytronica
ti s mackami, Four Tet (London, M, *77)
Four Tet/Pause/Domino (01)
Four Tet/Pause/Rounds (03)
kapely okolo not fun festu
—
via http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-12-22/music/the-decade-in-music-genre-hype
underground hip-hop (1998-2003)
The Definitive Jux roster, Atmosphere, Blackalicious, Cannibal Ox
glitch (2000-2002)
Also, Tortoise and Björk said it makes you smart and cool and handsome
Kid606, Prefuse 73, Kit Clayton
VA/The Clicks & Cuts 2 (01)
return of the rock (2001-2002)
boring rock
The White Stripes, The Strokes, the Hives, the Vines
electroclash (2001-2003)
Somehow finding the common ground between Fashion Week and college radio, electroclash artists used tinny keyboard blips and hackneyed new wave clichés to help publicize their oversize personalities (and occasionally their music).
Electroclash never really died—it just keeps renaming itself every three years. See the “electropunk” of MU, the “electropop” of the Knife, or the “wonky pop” of La Roux.
Peaches, Miss Kittin & the Hacker, Felix Da Housecat
mash-ups (2001-2004)
Danger Mouse, 2 Many DJs, Freelance Hellraiser ~ 02 @NYT
dance-punk (2002-2005)
early 80s post-punk + early 00s post-punk
The Rapture, Radio 4, !!!
grime (2003-2006)
London garage+hiphop+dancehall
Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Kano ~ 03 @Guardian
Dizzee Rascal/Boy in Da Corner (03)
freak-folk/new weird america (2004-2006)
Joanna Newsom (CA, *82 cp ahau), Devendra Banhart (Houston/TX, *81 ge 10 manik+), CocoRosie (Paris, FF)
CocoRosie/La maison de mon reve/Touch and Go (04)
Devendra Banhart/Oh Me Oh My/Young God (02)
Devendra Banhart/Rejoicing in the Hands/Young God (04)
Devendra Banhart/Nino Rojo/Young God (04)
Joanna Newsom/The Milk-Eyed Mender (04)
CocoRosie/Noah’s Ark (05)
Devendra Banhart/Cripple Crow/XL (05)
Joanna Newsom, Ys/Drag City (06)
CocoRosie/The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn/Touch and Go (07)
Devendra Banhart/Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon/XL (07)
Devendra Banhart/What Will We Be/Reprise (09)
Joanna Newsom, Have One On Me/Drag City (10): Mega-sized Laurie Anderson ambition used to tackle not America, but love and foxes and fish.#6
hipster metal (2004-2007)
Boris (Tokyo, MMF, funguju od 92, striedaju zanre furt), Wolfmother (Sydney, MMM, fung od 00), Dead Meadow (DC, MMMM, fung od 98), Mastodon (Atlanta/Georgia, MMMM, fung od 99) ~ 06 @NYT
Mastodon/Leviathan (04)
Boris/Pink (05)
hyphy (2005-2006)
bay area rap
E-40, Keak Da Sneak, Mistah F.A.B.
blog house (2006-2008)
french nu-electro
Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, Boys Noize
lo-fi/shitgaze/diy noise-punk (2007-2008)
by De Broux of Psychedelic Horseshit told his music was not like the shoegaze that Whitehurst listened to, but rather, it was “shitgaze”.
The same crappily recorded garage-punk tantrums that have been around since the days of Count Five—but now on trendy indie-rock record labels you’ve heard of!
Times New Viking (Columbus/Ohio, MMF, art school studs), No Age (LA, MM, *81 pi 3 muluc & sa 12 chuen*), Jay Reatard (Memphis, M, 80 ta 6 ben-10 cocaine+alcohol, top 10/08, aggr-garage-punk+melodic pop, vela kapiel mal)
Times New Viking/Dig Yourself/Siltbreeze (05)
Times New Viking/Present the Paisley Reich/Siltbreeze (06)
No Age/Weird Rippers/Fat Cat (07)
No Age/Nouns/Sub Pop (5/08) [PF 9.2]
Times New Viking/Rip It Off/Matador (08)
Jay Reatard/Watch Me Fall/Matador (8/09): You can’t go home again, pinhead.#7
No Age/Losing Feeling EP/Sub Pop (9/09): Funkless goons gracefully enter their “Chairs Missing” period.#7
Times New Viking/Born Again Revisited/Matador (9/09): Still learning Vaselines melodies, how to make lo-fi to soothe instead of grate.#6.5
glo-fi/chillwave (2009)
chillwave by blogger Carles (Hipster Runoff)
mushy textures, summery melodies, tape distortion ~ Toro Y Moi (SC, M), Memory Tapes (NJ, M), Neon Indian (Austin/NYC, M+FMM, *89, pitchfork: best new music), Washed Out (SC, M) ~ jj, Pocahaunted, Ducktails ~ 03/10 @WSJ
Memory Tapes/Seek Magic/Sth in Construction (8/09): Chill project wave fi drugs gaze pseudonym summer dream dance art blog hazy 2009 nostalgia bedroom.#4.5
Washed Out/Life Of Leisure/Mexican Summer (9/09): Tears For Fears via Ariel Pink hiss-wave, a too-cold entry into the Nite Jewel sweepstakes.#5
Neon Indian/Psychic Chasms/Lefse (10/09): Hazy gloopcore gets brighter moths, superer rainbows.#6
Toro Y Moi/Causers Of This/Carpark (02/10): Prefuse blues makes them smarter, funkier than drab chillwave peers. But better? #5.5
—
ine:
Owen Hatherley’s term ‘pseudomodernism’
used to describe the seemingly modernist geometries of the recent ‘building as sign’ architectural style nurtured by Norman Foster
http://themeasurestaken.blogspot.com/2008/11/icons-in-fire.html
????!!
Oneida, Swod, Animal Collective, Dan Deacon, Dakota Suite, Peter Broderick (4 Track Songs), Yeasayer, Murcof, Beirut, Daedelus, William
Basinski, hamburg kapela z newnew?, Paul DeMarinis, Andrew WK, Andrew Liles, Bibio (Fi), RiSIL (Non Meters Vol 1),
Cloaks, Terrible Eagle, The XX (XX, 09), Radiohead, Wavves, Astral Social Club, Grouper
Gil-Scott Heron (I’m New Here 10), Bill Callahan, Bon Iver, Cindytalk, Evangelista, Fursaxa,
Felicia Atkinson & Sylvain Chauveau [Roman Anglais], irr. app. (ext.) – kreiselwelle, Karl Blau, judith juillerat-soliloquy, Klimek,
Mi Ami (cosmic disco-punk hedonism), MV & EE, Jon Hopkins
Zola Jesus (Madison/WI, Nika Danilova, F, *89 ar 8 etznab+) crimsonwave & lo-fi goth
Fennesz, Jan Jelinek, Alva Noto
Apparat, Ellen Allien
Vindicatrix/Die Alte Boesen Lieder/Mordant Music (10) (David Aird, London, part of SE EN’s Mentalist Assoc, M)
my tags: dada, german, spaceship, schubert, classical, decay, dubstep, mad scientist, 21st century song
Fisher@Wire: dadaist Big Pop; Schubert’s Winterreise being sung on a decaying space station;
consistency generated from decaying fragments of dubstep, classical music, unhinged crooning and noise;
gibbers like some mad inventor talking to himself
Ben Frost/By The Throat/Bedroom Community (09) (IS, M)
my tags: noise, cinematic, minimalism
positioned between momentous expressionist soundtrack composition – with a strong undertow of Noise and epic minimalism (Wire)
Harappian Night Recordings (Syed Kamran Ali, Sheffield/UK, M)
my tags: impro, shamanic, arabic, sufi, far east, jam, loose, psych
Spicer@Wire: young British man of Asian descent, making musical forgeries from an imagined East, recalling the work of American outsiders,
and released by a label at the heart of the Arabic world
Cluster/Qua/Klangbad-Broken Silence (09) (HJ Roedelius+Dieter Moebius, *34, MM)
King Midas Sound/Waiting For You/Hyperdub (Kevin Martin+Roger Robinson+Hitomi, MMF, Martin: ex-The Bug)
my tags: spectral dub, dub
Barker@Wire: reminiscent of Tricky’s Maxinquaye; themes of fear, isolation and love on the verge of loss; vocals: Roger Robinson;
sounds w/ dulled down drums, mogadon beats, weathered FX and mournful synth counterpoint;
gave dancehall an unexpected reversal, slowing it down until it took on an emotional register of eternal loss
Kuupuu/Lumen Tahden/Time-Lag (Jonna Karanka, FI, F)
Robot Koch/Death Star Droid/Robots Don’t Sleep
my tags: mash-up, soul, r&b, world music, hiphop, psych rock, dubstep
Monolake/Silence/Imbalance Computer Music (09) (Robert Henke, M)
my tags: post-techno, post-dubstep, berghain
Autechre/Oversteps
my tags: dance music
Sharp@Wire: “ilanders” revolves around a languid, cyclical bassline that is subjected to the most exquisite abrasions as surges of
phosphorescent noise obscure and qualify every melodic cadence
Gary War/Horrible Parades (heavy on synths, effects, and lo-fi noise)
Richardson@Wire: “pop for experimental music fans”
Mordan Music/Symptoms/Ghost Box (10/09) (Baron Mordant)
Boomkat: blending FX swamped synthlines and dancefloor-suspicious rhythms with his own vocals
Mordant Music/Dead Air (06)
Mugwump@Quietus: vicious car crash between Saint Etienne and Throbbing Gristle with Sarah Cracknell regenerating into the warm form of Phillip Elsmore.
freak-folk/new weird america (2004-2006)
Joanna Newsom (CA, *82 cp ahau), Devendra Banhart (Houston/TX, *81 ge 10 manik+), CocoRosie (Paris, FF)
CocoRosie/La maison de mon reve/Touch and Go (04)
Devendra Banhart/Oh Me Oh My/Young God (02)
Devendra Banhart/Rejoicing in the Hands/Young God (04)
Bell@Wire: his best ever, haunted ecstasies
Devendra Banhart/Nino Rojo/Young God (04)
Joanna Newsom/The Milk-Eyed Mender (04)
CocoRosie/Noah’s Ark (05)
Devendra Banhart/Cripple Crow/XL (05)
Joanna Newsom/Ys/Drag City (06)
CocoRosie/The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn/Touch and Go (07)
Devendra Banhart/Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon/XL (07)
Devendra Banhart/What Will We Be/Warner Bros (09)
my tags: evening breeze penetration folk
Bell@Wire: ‘Angelika’ is rewrite of Velvet Underground’s I’ll Be Your Mirror;
Goin’ Back = JJ Cale, ‘Rats’ = Jeff Buckley
Joanna Newsom/Have One On Me/Drag City (10): Mega-sized Laurie Anderson ambition used to tackle not America, but love and foxes and fish.#6
noise-rock
Liars (LA+Berlin), Sightings (Brooklyn), Aa (Brooklyn)
Liars/They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top/Gern Blandsten (10/01)
Liars/They Were Wrong, So We Drowned/Mute (2/04)
Liars/Drum’s Not Dead/Mute (2/06)
Liars/Liars/Mute (8/07)
Aa/gaAme/Gigantic (07)
Liars/Sisterworld/Mute (10): Veteran pounders absorb Los Angeles’s contemporary, sunny, yes-wave freak scene by osmosis.#7
drone-rock
Not Not Fun label
Robedoor
dub techno/ambient dub
Deadbeat (CA->Berlin), Anders Ilar, Fenin, Pole
Deadbeat/Something Borrowed, Something Blue (04)
Deadbeat/New World Observer (05)
Deadbeat/Journeyman’s Annual (07)
Anders Ilar/Ludwijka
Fenin/Been Through
dubstep (2005-2008) [London]
2-step garage+house+…, Hyberdub label etc
Mugwump@Quietus: bass-virus mutations of Hyperdub, whose possessed meat-puppet Kode9 still invokes London as the point of infection despite the label’s astonishing international roster of artists
Burial, Shackleton, Kode9, Appleblim, Vex’d (London, MM), Scuba
Vex’d/Degenerate/Planet Mu (05)
Burial/Burial/Hyperdub (06)
Burial/Untrue/Hyperdub (07)
VA/Skull Disco – Soundboy Punishments
Vex’d/Cloud Seed (10)
post-dubstep [London]
these producers infected dubstep with the hyperactive blip’n’fizz of the Sega soundtracks of their formative years (Wire)
Zomby, Rustie, Ikonika, Joker
folk
Marissa Nadler (DC, *81 ta 8 eb*), Jana Hunter (Baltimore), Rio en Medio, Big Blood
Marissa Nadler/The Saga of Mayflower May (7/05)
Jana Hunter/Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom/Gnomonsong (10/05)
Marissa Nadler/Songs III: Bird on the Water (3/07)
Jana Hunter/There’s No Home/Gnomonsong (4/07)
Marissa Nadler/Little Hells (3/09): Folk-dreamer sprouts out. When bleak, loss has a scent; when joyous, 4AD builds a beach house.#7
Big Blood + The Grove
sludge metal
Om, Habsyll (FR)
dream pop
Beach House (Baltimore, FM), Girls
Beach House/Beach House/Carpark (06): PF 8.1
Beach House/Devotion/Carpark (2/08): PF 8.5
Beach House/Teen Dream/Sub Pop (1/10): Sputtering out of the cuddlegaze muck into bold indie rock hooks—luckily they have them.#6.5; PF 9.0
singer-songwriter
DM Stith/Heavy Ghost
Sir Tralala
Patrick Watson/Wooden Arms
White Flight/White Ark
Magic Arm/Make Lists Do Something
Emily Wells/Beautiful Sleepyhead and the Laughing Yaks (06)
Timber Timbre/Timber Timbre (09)
Boduf Songs/Lion Devours the Sun
Ruby Throat
Charlotte Gainsbourg/IRM (09)
David Sylvian/Manafon/Samadhisound (09): a timbrally subtle set of hermit-like song utterances (Wire)
Fink/Sort of Revolution (09)
Hanne Hukkelberg
B Fachada/B Fachada
Jeremy Jay/Slow Dance (09)
Juana Molina
Jose Gonzalez/In Our Nature
Xiu Xiu
Liger – Crash Symbols (2009): xiuxiu.at
Former Ghosts/Fleurs/Upset The Rhythm (Stewart/Xiu Xiu+F Ruppert+Zola Jesus): Richardson@Wire: darkened subverted synth-pop
post-classical/neo-classical/quasi-classical [intl]
Max Richter, Hauschka, Loscil, Elegi, Johann Johannsson, Richard Skelton (Lancashire/UK, aka A Broken Consort, v 04 stratil artist wife),
36, Jacaszek, Sylvain Chauveau, Andrew Chalk (M, zahadny-moc o sebe nedava vediet), On (Chauveau+Hess+Sten; death ambient), Aaron Martin (Kansas)
Max Richter/The Blue Notebooks/Fat Cat (04)
36/Hypersona
Johann Johannsson/Fordlandia/Advance (08)
On/Your naked ghost comes back at night/Type (09)
Jacaszek/Treny/Miasmah (08)
Richard Skelton/Landings/Type (09)
my tags: pärt, site-specific, emotional, post-classical
Moline@Wire: Pärt’s children: Skelton, Richter, Hauschka, Johannsson (user-friendly form of meditative instrumental music homaging 80s+90s
Holy Minimalist style of Part/Tavener/Gorecki);
overdubbing simple, repetitive phrases using bowed guitar, teasing out as many harmonics as possible from the metal strings and
allowing them to clash as the melodies run in and out of sync;
z miest si do studia prinasa kamene, konare, droty, kosti, nenahrava priamo na lokaciach, to evoke the place + inspire the music:
“flint for the memory”;
vysla k nim aj poeticka kniha via blog via dennik projektu
Andrew Chalk/The Cable House/Faraway Press
Loscil/Endless Falls (10)
Aaron Martin/Chautauqua/Preservation
Barnes@Wire: found sound samples; ‘core’ ensemble of organ, banjo and cello; a la Beach Boys’ Cabinessence & The Books
glitch-hop [LA]
Flying Lotus (LA, M), Nosaj Thing (LA, M, *85), Gonjasufi (Las Vegas, M, rapper-singer-yoga teacher), Daddy Kev
Flying Lotus/Los Angeles/Warp (6/08)
Nosaj Thing/Drift/Alpha Pup (6/09): The Tricky to Flying Lotus’s Portishead.#6.5; PF 7.9
Gonjasufi/A Sufi And A Killer/Warp (2/10): desert sufi psychedelia meets lo-fi psych-glitch hop; A demented blast of pitch black hookah smoke that does for Turkish funk what Dilla did for American.#7.5; PF 8.4
Muggs@Wire: slip-sliding manipulation of loose rhythms, fuzzy psychedelic records and instrumental sounds new and old plays powerful games
with experiences of cultural deja vu and false memory, blurring the kitsch with the visceral and the playful with the raw and threatening;
cracked voice
Flying Lotus/Cosmogramma (10)
chillwave/glo-fi (2009) [US]
chillwave by blogger Carles (Hipster Runoff)
mushy textures, summery melodies, tape distortion ~ Toro Y Moi (SC, M), Memory Tapes (NJ, M), Neon Indian (Austin/NYC, M+FMM, *89, PF: best new music), Washed Out (SC, M) ~ jj, Pocahaunted, Ducktails (summery escapism) ~ 03/10 @WSJ
Memory Tapes/Seek Magic/Sth in Construction (8/09): Chill project wave fi drugs gaze pseudonym summer dream dance art blog hazy 2009 nostalgia bedroom.#4.5
Washed Out/Life Of Leisure/Mexican Summer (9/09): Tears For Fears via Ariel Pink hiss-wave, a too-cold entry into the Nite Jewel sweepstakes.#5
Neon Indian/Psychic Chasms/Lefse (10/09): Hazy gloopcore gets brighter moths, superer rainbows.#6
Toro Y Moi/Causers Of This/Carpark (02/10): Prefuse blues makes them smarter, funkier than drab chillwave peers. But better? #5.5
wonky
Adam Harper, Alex Williams (http://splinteringboneashes.blogspot.com/search?q=wonky): hauntology and ‘wonky’ are aesthetic siblings.
hauntology [UK]
by Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds (The Wire 273, *mid-2000s): coined chiefly in response to the music of UK label Ghost Box
Adam Harper@roguesfoam: ‘playback hauntologists’: The Caretaker, Basinski and Indignant Senility
Mugwump@Quietus: the paradoxical retro-futurist real-world mythologies of the Ghost Box label with related (Broadcast) and parallel travellers (Moon Wiring Club, Position Normal)
Belbury Poly/From An Ancient Star/Ghost Box: incorporated shades of disco and dub
Broadcast + The Focus Group/Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age/Warp (09) (Warp’s James Cargill+Trish Keenan & Ghost Box’s Julian House):
a chemical wedding of pop-sike bliss, cut-up weird audio and occult sonics; dark monarchs of hauntology’s expanding kingdom;
untethering slippage and slurring of loops and rhythms, a new approach to sampling that perhaps better represents the way music really
sits in our memory (Wire)
Seeland/Tomorrow Today/Advance (09) (Tim Felton ex-Broadcast, Billy Bainbridge ex-Plone):
marries antique futurist textures to attractive pop songcraft (Wire)
James Kirby (aka The Caretaker, The Stranger and Leyland Kirby)
Moon Wiring Club
Position Normal/Goodly Time/Rum (00) (London, Chris Bailiff and John Cushway, MM?, *93): proto-hauntology
Position Normal/Position Normal/Rum (09)
The Advisory Circle
The Caretaker
Mordant Music
Wooden Veil (Berlin)
hypnagogic pop [US]
by David Keenan (The Wire, *09): US underground’s equivalent strain of hauntology
these artists turned away from the bleak grind of Noise to embrace the fuzzily remembered forms of their childhoods, including soft rock and New Age.
for them, the vague recollection of a zero-budget sci-fi flick watched once during a sleepover takes on a mythic, almost occult quality,
ripe for processing via cheap technology into a sound that oscillates bwn the naggingly familiar and the utterly alien (Wire)
James Ferraro, Pocahaunted, Emeralds, Daniel Lopatin (of Oneohtrix Point Never; of Infinity Window), Inca Ore (Eva Saelens, F, Not Not Fun),
Ducktails, High Wolf
James Ferraro/KFC City 3099 Pt 1: Toxic Spill: lo-definition joyride through the polluted swamps of US cultural half-memory (Wire)
Pocahaunted: scrawled connections between free folk, LA-period Fleetwood Mac and dub with joyous abandon (Wire)
Emeralds & Oneohtrix Point Never: drag the beatless meditations of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream through a prism of 1980s pulp culture,
accumulating layers of ectoplasmic residue which allow their music to glow with an unearthly, greenish-blue beauty (Wire)
Oneohtrix Point Never/Rifts/No Fun Prod (Daniel Lopatin, Brooklyn, M)
my tags: synth, cinematic, timbral, lost in space, spaceship, lo
Wuethrich@Wire: keyboard polysynth; “timbral fascism”;
musical narrative of an astronaut lost in space, his subsequent wanderings on an uninhabited planet and his old-age reflection on that time;
realignment of low-rent pop culture from the 70s+80s, abandoned synth timbres and obsolete consumere electronics
Inca Ore & Ducktails & High Wolf: material resonant with a distressed nostalgia for halcyon days (Wire)
witch house/drag (2010) [US]
taking the familiar dubby beats and haunting, pitch-shifted vocals and adding a more ambient, droney take to it that’s as beautiful as it is bleak + nekriticka laska k reverbu
Salem, Mater Suspiria Vision, White Ring (MF), oOoOO
White Ring, http://www.myspace.com/whytering
oOoOO, http://www.myspace.com/wkwkwkwkwkwkwkwk
piano
last.fm/…
Alva Noto/Ryuichi Sakamoto; William Basinski?; Yann Tiersen+Shannon Wright; Tiago Sousa+Joao Correia; Balmorrhea?; The Dead Texan?; Musette (SW)
Yann Tiersen+Shannon Wright/Pale White
Hauschka/Versions of the prepared piano
Musette/Datum
Magda Mayas/Heartland (10)
gitara
last.fm/…
Bill Orcutt; Christopher Riggs; James Blackshaw; Bill Nace; John Zorn (Film Works); Gabriel Araujo; Ilyas Ahmed; Porto
Gabriel Araujo/st
James Blackshaw/The Glass Bead Game/Young God (09)
Ilyas Ahmed/Goner/Root Strata (09)
Jim O’Rourke/Visitor/Drag City (09): visiting alien struggling to master American AOR: a deceptively sweet confection of blue-sky acoustic guitar, rustic banjo, organ, woodwinds, piano and drums (Wire)
cello
Hildur Gudnadottir/Without Sinking/Touch (09)
Lost in Hildurness/Mount A
jazz
Supersilent; Swami LatePlate; Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble; Kammerflimmer Kollektief; Bohren & Der Club of Gore; The Necks (Sydney)
Supersilent/9 (09)
Beequeen/The Bodyshop
freeform (post-Residents)
No-Neck Blues Band (NYC), ?Vindicatrix, ?Position Normal
obskurne fenomeny?
field recordings
Chris Watson, Alesandro Bosetti, BJ Nilsen, Jez riley French
BJ Nilsen/Invisible City/Touch
mediale musik
(zo zahrobia)
generative music
(aymeric etc)