Thirty three and a third

[imomus]

I unreservedly recommend Alvin Lucier live on Resonance FM's Unst. The veteran composer (do we call him "a member of the Darmstadt School"?) made a completely new, live-in-the-studio version of "I Am Sitting in a Room", in which recordings of recordings of his speaking voice are played back until all that remains are the resonant frequencies of the room. Speech thus turns, before our very ears, into music. It's an exemplary piece, and justly famous. The new version has a different text and uses digital technology and Resonance's own room, so there's a sharp, whistly texture as the speech decays, not the more organic woolly sound of analogue tape. It's also interesting to hear in the interview sections that Lucier has a suppressed stammer, making the kind of ordinary consecutive speech he does in his most famous piece seem somewhat miraculous.

Other than the live performance, Lucier plays a couple of his more recent compositions off CD, a lovely piece for piano and slow-sweep pure wave oscillators dating from 1992, "Still Lives", and "Exploring the House", seven phrases selected from a Beethoven symphony and run through a Max filter which apes the "sitting in a room" effect. The piano pieces, musical studies of sunlight entering a room, floor tiles and ferns, made me think of the photographs of Rinko Kawauchi. The Beethoven piece brought to mind my own piece "The Artist Overwhelmed", which fatigues classical music chords in a similar way, to similar effect. I wondered again why The Wire simply refuses to review my records, when, quite independently, I'm doing stuff that parallels what Lucier's doing, and they love and cover him.

Yesterday I received a package from Continuum Books in New York, containing four titles from their series 33/3: Hugo Wilcken's book on David Bowie's "Low" (excellent, I've already devoured half of it), Joe Pernice's book on "Meat Is Murder", "Dusty In Memphis" by Warren Zanes, and "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society" by my old friend Andy Miller. Observant readers of Click Opera will have noticed that last week Wendy from Continuum left a comment asking me to pitch a book-about-a-record for the series. I sent a rather grumpy letter from Venice saying I resist the culture of canons and classics and would probably pick ultra-obscure, prickly, "failed" records like Colin Newman's A-Z or Palais Schaumburg's first album. But then I decided that it would be fun to write a book about Laurie Anderson's "Big Science", and made a serious pitch to series editor David Barker to that effect. David seemed moderately enthusiastic (although I think he's more of a guitar bands man) and will pick a handful of books to commission from dozens of pitches early next month.

(NB skimmers and visual culture people: The book on the right does not exist and may never exist. The cover is a mock-up.)

Comments

[ericrseguy.livejournal.com]

EDIT: Oh, damn. You should definitely write a book on Big Science, though. Both your records and your quirky presence on ILM make me think you would be well-suited to it.

[ericrseguy.livejournal.com]

And please don't excite me like that again. I'm weak-of-heart.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

I dearly love Big Science.

The nice thing about canons is that each generation (especially as it concerns pop) gets to tear down the old one and rebuild.

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

I've always loved that Alvin Lucier piece. He's a strong concept man - that whole idea of 'conceiving ' a piece and being generous and open with the concept. I've always liked composers who like to reveal their process as part of the experience and that becomes as important as the end result.

Lucier's stammer

[(Anonymous)]

Upon first hearing "I Am Sitting In A Room" a few years ago, Lucier's stammer is the first thing that leaped out at me. That colors the way that I read the intention behind the piece; it's hard for me to hear it as purely experimental, as being about turning speech, any speech, into music. I hear it as a much more personal piece, therapeutic even--as a piece about Alvin Lucier's relationship with his own voice, his frustration with it, and using recording technology to sort of symbolically obliterate it.

Jack (http://jackfear.blogspot.com)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying my "Low" book. And I do hope that the Laurie Anderson album isn't too obscure for David, I'd love to hear what you have to say about it. As for myself, I originally pitched Scott Walker's "Tilt" as well as "Low", secretly wanting to do "Tilt" but knowing it'd be too obscure and that my best shot was "Low". I'm really pleased I ended up doing "Low" now - obviously it's an album you can say a lot of interesting things about and crucially there's real psycho-drama there too, starting with Bowie's crack-up in the New World. It would have been so much harder to stretch "Tilt" into a book, fine album though it is.

Hugo W.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Excellent decision, Hugo.

[piratehead.livejournal.com]

Oh Momus, I wish I was sufficiently time-rich that I didn't need to skim.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

AHhh sorry to skim I have a quiz in Lucier's intro to experimental music class in half an hour!

Are you talking to me, or are you just practicing for one of those performances of yours?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

A book on Big Science would be a marvelous thing.

Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Nick
I bought that Palais Schaumburg album back in 1981 on spec, back in the days when I would take chances on records I'd never heard. I'd be interested to hear what your thoughts would be on the LP. It is both irritating and great at the same time. The PS album was produced by David Cunningham who has been doing installations with the ambient sounds of spaces like Lucier and I think is less literary and more textural.
http://www.stalk.net/piano/asindex.htm

I think it was Cunningham's production that made the Palais Schaumburg record as distinctive as it was along with Holger Hiller's major presence.

The Wire people pass on you for reasons of "authenticity" as the magazine is really no different then a purist folk music publication. As you question those notions through parody, your ambivalence is seen as less serious then the magazine would like. On a related tangent I urge you to catch the excellent Scorsese Bob Dylan doc. The same type of purist attitudes were evident in both the folk music scene when Dylan went electric as well as the public displays of anger on his '66 UK tour. The film also made the Dylan and Devoto connections clearer to me.

My choice for a "failed" record would be This Heat's first LP.

Richard

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Wire people pass on you for reasons of "authenticity" as the magazine is really no different then a purist folk music publication. As you question those notions through parody, your ambivalence is seen as less serious then the magazine would like.

Didn't they have a "Music So Funny It Would Make A Dog Laugh" issue recently, with a picture of a falling grand piano on the cover? You'd think they could have at least squeezed me into that one.

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

On a related tangent I urge you to catch the excellent Scorsese Bob Dylan doc.

My, that was an excellent documentary. It left me thinking about Robert Zimmerman for days afterward and it provided much "open territory" to provide over-ripe inspiration for personal introspection.

[bopscotch.livejournal.com]

I'll admit, I'd read a book on Big Science even though I only appreciate "O Superman." Maybe it's because I'm such a non-performance artist type. Though that's because I honestly don't understand it, not because I think it's silly or stupid.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was just a mock up cover. I'd definitely buy a copy.

Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer's version of I Want You But I Don't Need You brought the house down at her Edinburgh gig.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Maybe I'm the Daniel Johnston to their Nirvana!

[shadowblue.livejournal.com]

I must find that somewhere.

text as sound

[(Anonymous)]

this is interesting, like toog i am taking a new approach breaking bruno schultz down to little bits of sound sort of text to sound intead of speech to sound, hey nick need to send you sean and my collaboration, email me eh?

lucier vs darmstadt

[(Anonymous)]

lucier as part of the darmstadt school? that's a connection i don't see at all. if anything his ideas were far and away completely opposed to the ideas coming out of darmstadt. or am i missing a joke?

Re: lucier vs darmstadt

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Lucier mentions spending time at Darmstadt in the interview I link. But he also mentions abandoning the attempt to sound European, which is why I put the Darmstadt thing as a question. Darmstadt was a laboratory for New Music, a place where Stockhausen and Messaien could rub shoulders with Cageites and Fluxus people (like poet Emmett Williams, who I met last year). Like any lab, it contained a lot of brainstorming and divergence, and of course history has ended up separating its meaning from the styles of the people who passed though it, or reacted against it.

Re: lucier vs darmstadt

[(Anonymous)]

right, maybe lucier wouldn't be lucier if he hadn't had darmstadt to react against. an interesting and highly recommended book detailing a kind of european/american split around that time is the boulez-cage correspondence. it still seems relevant in today's europe-america duality. forgot to sign before... -roddy

[anglerfish96.livejournal.com]

I love humming in the bathroom in low tones searching for the resonant frequency of the stalls, then improvising around that point using the frequency as a sort of rhythmic emphasis. It passes the time well.

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[mafism.livejournal.com]

Not only I have often wondered why your records are never reviewed in The Wire, its also troubled me that in the dozen or so years of copies of the magazine I have I've rarely even witnessed your art being remotely cited at all. Related to this are my vain attempts to jog the minds of the presenters/producers of Radio 3's, otherwise wonderful, Mixing It programme to the world of Momus. Irked isn't the half of it!!

ever

maf

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Hi Maf! Actually, I have had the imprimatur of a play on Mixing It, as this soundfile (http://www.imomus.com/mixingit.mp3) attests. And, to be honest, I haven't personally sent any records to The Wire or solicited press from them. I leave that to the Cherry Red press department, who tend to come back with "Okay, Nick, we haven't had much success with the music press, but Record Collector is doing a piece... oh, and Modern Painters wants to give you four pages!"

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

Four pages? I guess it's not really a review, right?

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It was a big feature in Modern Painters, Summer 2003. It was... it was... well, read it yourself (http://www.imomus.com/modernpainters2003lo.jpg).

Re: Palais Schaumburg and other digressions

[intergalactim.livejournal.com]

i haven't read it myself,
but the (unofficial) "wire magazine index" mentions something about Timelord in issue 121.

http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/bin/wire?q=momus&c=t

not exactly current i admit... i couldn't find it on the appropriate reviews page on imomus.com though.

anyone got that issue?
you should definately be in there more though, they really aren't as purist or obscure as people pretend...

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

" I wondered again why The Wire simply refuses to review my records, when, quite independently, I'm doing stuff that parallels what Lucier's doing, and they love and cover him."

Have they given you their reasons for not reviewing your records?

My guess is that they simply aren't much into paralleling musicians with eachother. Why did they even cover him? Was it an article? Review? Interview? History? Importance of music history? Is it so that Alvin Lucier has been topical in the music world lately?

Alot of parameters I guess plays a big role. Or what do you say?

Ooo, but isn't this interesting....

[(Anonymous)]

Music is now LITERALLY everywhere...
http://www.viktoria.se/fal/projects/soniccity/

Re: Ooo, but isn't this interesting....

[(Anonymous)]

This looks really cool. Is MAx/MSP involved?-Jed

[arwyn.livejournal.com]

A friend just directed me here and I added you out of pure curiousity, hope you don't mind!