Earlabs: Early Japanese musique concrete

From: X. Y. Zedd (xyzedd@yahoo.com )
Subject: Family resemblances
View: Original Format
Newsgroups: alt.fan.momus
Date: 2004-04-21 09:26:48 PST

'Recently I've spelunked far enough into the World Wide Web to discover the
Dutch EARLabs (www.earlabs.org ), a sort of little orphaned cousin to the
ubiquitous ubu.com. Beyond all the usual glitchy micromusic, there are some surprising mp3 archives of early electronic and experimental music which I thought I'd never hear or would never even hear about. Mimaroglu, Artaud, and the original old-fashioned Futurists are well-represented--but my favorites so far are the selections of the very first Japanese musique concrete, live in concert in 1956, no less. Toshiro Mayuzumi's "Works for musique concrete X. Y. Z" (no relation), especially, gives one the impression that here is the great-granduncle of Oskar's "spooky kabuki," with its whispers of Japanese theater and haunting echoes of ancient Asian instruments.

Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete X (5 mins 20, 7.3MB)
Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete Y (4 mins 38, 6.4MB)
Toshiro Mayuzumi - Works for Musique Concrete Z (3 mins 53, 5.3MB)
More...

Now that "Oskar... Naked" has finally been released, it might be more interesting than ever to mentally conflate these two suites in one's mind. Also of likely interest, though I haven't listened to it yet, is Yoshio Hasegawa's horspiel, "The World in a Jar." [Momus notes: It's great, very melodramatic. More conventional than Mayuzumi, though.]

Dominiki and those others lucky enough to have "Summerisle" by now--I am so envious! Those of us in the hinterlands look to the skies and wait.



But I do finally, finally have "Travels with a Donkey," which I find ineffably charming, a mix of that mystery known to Varese's "Poem Electronique" and that innocence of early spring. It should be more widely available.'

Virtue in Vice

Yeah, yeah, so the cynics will say that the reason Anne and I get 10 in Vice and Devendra Banhart only gets 8 is that I write for Vice and Dev doesn't. But I like to think it's because Dev's record could have been made in 1970, whereas ours really could only have been made now. It's the difference between pastiche and originality, between the timeless and the timely, between the classical and the contemporary. It matters, at least twenty percentile points-worth. Vice are right to point it out. Oh, they didn't. In that case, can I suggest that we got the two extra points for our unremitting European paganism, and that Dev lost his for the sickly Christian imagery. 'Rejoicing in the Hands' indeed! 'Young God Records' indeed! Harumph! Will Devendra's next album be called Ready for Rapture?



Amongst the Japanese people diverted here by Yahoo Japan the other day was an Osaka musician called Electron. I really love his mash-up of Eleanor Rigby.