Carnality in improvisation

[negative potential]

whereas I'm sure that Tetuzi Akiyama and Taku Unami (to name two) swear by Link Wray.

I saw Tetuzi Akiyama at that concert series at Ausland awhile back, the one with unusual duo combinations like Vandermark/Nakamura.

Anyway, Akiyama was, to my pleasant surprise, a very active player, much more active than I would expect from guitar players working in CPM. People who don't like active players might say it was "busy"; I liked it, so it was "active".

Hey, isn't David Keenan the guy who wrote a whole book on the World Serpent artists? Yeah, I could Google this, but a) somebody will confirm if this is the case anyway and b) I'm pretty sure it is the case.

[jon abbey]

Hey, isn't David Keenan the guy who wrote a whole book on the World Serpent artists? Yeah, I could Google this, but a) somebody will confirm if this is the case anyway and b) I'm pretty sure it is the case.

yep:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keenan

[negative potential]

I rather like the aloofness and reserve associated with this music

FWIW, I fucking hate any music in which aloofness and reserve are considered as virtues. My god, I don't even think most of the people working in CPM consider "aloofness" a quality worth striving for, do they?

Is Live in Allentown "aloof" or "reserved"? I think it's downright visceral.

[negative potential]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Keenan

Gaaah:

His most frequently cited article is a cover story that appeared in the August 2003 issue entitled New Weird America, where Keenan coined the phrase 'Free Folk', later bastardised to include 'Freak Folk' and 'Wyrd Folk' and used to describe everyone from Jack Rose and Charalambides through Devendra Banhart.

I hate when "folk" is used as a lazy pseudonym for "music played on acoustic instruments", as opposed to like, actual folk music.

[faster]

I hate when "folk" is used as a lazy pseudonym for "music played on acoustic instruments", as opposed to like, actual folk music.

Hear, hear.

[billygomberg]

I hate when "folk" is used as a lazy pseudonym for "music played on acoustic instruments", as opposed to like, actual folk music.

Hear, hear.

cha-ching

-----------------

otherwise, as for the article in question, I think the general, ah, thrust of his criticism is potentially valid but couched in some really awful rhetoric, and a really broad approach that doesn't do justice to the music he is criticizing, or the music he is holding up as an example of something better. OK, I'm sure there are listeners who will find these discs to be "more of the same" EAI-or-whatever, and that is a fine angle for a critical review. but this is basically a showpiece to rustle up some discontent and get a lil attention, by my read.

I think it is fine to take a genre to task for anything approaching the inertia that Keenan sees in these albums' "restraint," but man alive if he doesn't make a mess of it here. There is no dialectic to his argument...it's pretty much "this is bad, stale, and how can anyone dig this boring, repetitive scene."

like others in this thread, I like my music sensual, physical - even if the means of communication are "reductive" or "minimal" or "restrained" or "what-have-you."

I have never found anything I've heard by Keith Rowe, for one, to lack this kind of "visceral" expression.

fair notice: I haven't heard these albums, and maybe they do deserve a critical writeup of this nature, but ugh not this writeup.

[Dan Warburton]

Zappa fanboy Ben Watson used to write in similar terms when he was still a Wire contributor.

Yes, I was thinking that, too. Since Ben left, there's been a shortage of that kind of piss-'em-off-and-be-damned writing in The Wire. Tony Herrington does it well, and so does Nick Cain, but neither of them contribute as much as they used to.

AT does not represent the current state of improvised music in the world, AT represents AT.

Not that it's central to the discussion here, but would you say the same of your label?

Cue that guy Warburton published in PT a few years back, who raised howls assailing Gustaffson et al for their testosterone-poisoned free-jazz cock rock tendencies.

John Gill. http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magaz ... ext.html#3

Peter Brotzmann knows as much about fiery free improv as anyone, but that doesn't mean he should be reviewing Radu Malfatti or Taku Unami records

Why not? I'm all in favour of a confrontational point of view, providing that it's well argued. Not sure if that was the case in the Gill piece I linked to above, but it was certainly why I commissioned it.

there are some good issues to be discussed here, but I kind of doubt we'll get to them

Maybe not without pissing off some of our friends, no.

[jon abbey]

Dan, maybe you should make actual statements here, not just poke holes in what other people have to say.

I'm a little hesitant to use this word, because I think it might have implications for some people that maybe I don't mean. but I think there's definitely a puritanical streak running through at least some of the different London-based improv strains/crews over the years. this page of Martin Davidson talking about his own habits, for instance:

http://www.emanemdisc.com/addenda/habits.html

I've also been told that the AMM guys never once smoked pot, despite their surroundings in the sixties and onward. I personally don't get the divide there between pot and alcohol, but maybe that's just me.

[William Hutson]

perhaps keenan doesn't hear sex in improvised music because his notion of sex is so embarrassingly limited to conservative heteronormative/phallocentric expressions of it.

[faster]

Indeed

[Dan Warburton]

Dan, maybe you should make actual statements here, not just poke holes in what other people have to say.

FWIW, my own views on the "carnality" question were aired in the article I linked to in the other thread, this one
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magaz ... ext.html#4
and my remarks on the "cat among the pigeons" idea were made on page one of this thread. I would add though that I don't think DK spent much time listening to these albums before committing pen(is) to paper, but given the way Wire reviewers are asked to submit their pieces at very short notice, I can understand that, to a point.

[simon reynell]

Well I wake up on my birthday morning and look what’s been going off….

I’m not going to say much, except that I agree with all those who picked up on the rather creepy phallocentric ideas that David Keenan has about sex. It seems that our perspectives there are as different as our tastes in music. But everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and I don’t really have a grudge against him. I am browned off with The Wire for commissioning him to do the review – presumably just to create a stir – when there are plenty of other reviewers there who respect improvised music and could have written a far more substantial piece.

The only other bone I have to pick is with Jon, when he said:

“Simon R’s………interest is more in making small, enjoyable records which mix approaches from EFI and EAI and modern classical, somewhat in the lineage of Emanem.”

Isn't this a little patronising? AT discs are the same size as those on Erstwhile and almost all other labels. It’s true that I don’t tend to make pretentious or grandiose claims for the label, but as a description of what AT’s doing I much prefer the way Nick Cain put it recently, ironically also in The Wire:

“It’s hard to think of another imprint that has chronicled so astutely recent developments in post-Reductionist era Improv, in particular the electro-acoustic strain’s ever-evolving relationships with both the genre’s historical legacy and modern compositional idioms.”

Now I’m off for a walk with my partner all day in the Peak District, so there’s no way that I’m going to be drawn into another on-line argument. G’day all.

[jkudler]

i am hesitant to say too much, because this article gives off the strong sense of it having been written specifically to spark this kind of discussion and get some attention and notice for its author, BUT. . . having no read it, i think it'd be a mistake to dismiss it entirely out-of-hand. keenan had a few potentially interesting things to say, but like jon said, he either takes them to extremes or uses possibly-interesting observations to extrapolate out into unexamined aesthetic biases that he treats as gospel. and yeah. . . keenan's take on sex is like a guy who always wants his girlfriend to wear short skirts and slutty tops. either way. . it's really hard to take seriously any insights on 'music today' from a dude who thinks the skaters are really what's happening now.

happy birthday, simon!

-jesse

[jon abbey]

Simon, I have no interest in arguing either, but you must know that you took that Nick Cain quote out of context, the previous sentence (which I just got from your site) is:

"Another Timbre has only been operating for a couple of years, but its blend of prolific output and stringent quality control have quickly propelled it to the front rank of UK Improv labels."

so pretty clearly there's an implicit "among UK improv labels" when he wrote the next sentence you quoted.

and happy birthday also...

[jpeatt]

I'm amazed anyone's paying attention to a word this guy writes after the whole New weird america & hypnogogic pop episodes.

I also think WH hits the nail on the head re: Keenan's ideas on audio sex.

[Wombatz]

Playing the drums is inherently sadistic. If you’re not man enough to beat the shit out of that kit, but feyly tiptoe around it with bows and dowel rods and (urgh) bare fingers, you’re really dissing the submissive nature of the instrument.

[bedouin]

"its [the guitar's] phallic character"

wow! what a terrible article.
has this guy ever heard a brazilian playing the guitar?

even a passing interest on Akiyama, Yoshihide, Stangl, Siewert, the emerging scandinavian crowd and numerous other improvising guitarists can of course point to the opposite of what Keenan is describing, and sound nothing like Bailey.

terrible, terrible article. and so uk-centric (what does nick drake have to do with this article?) and hurtful if you play the guitar, pro or non pro. I haven't picked up a copy of the Wire since the late 80's (when it was small format), and it is unlikely i've been starting again now.

[faster]

Playing the drums is inherently sadistic. If you’re not man enough to beat the shit out of that kit, but feyly tiptoe around it with bows and dowel rods and (urgh) bare fingers, you’re really dissing the submissive nature of the instrument.

When the masochist says "hit me," the true sadist says "no."

[Charon]

keenan had a few potentially interesting things to say

I read it more as he took a few tidbit points from potentially worthwhile arguments that had been made by others previously from other sources and then inserted them into his own self-important, attention-seeking, childishly inflammatory opinion piece without developing them into anything even remotely resembling coherent criticism.

Quite honestly I don't think the article is worth wasting any more of our words on, and it makes me angry that such a plainly stupid piece of writing could be published about this (overall fairly under-represented, writing-wise) area of music in a source of some prominence like the Wire (prominence in terms of numbers).

Like I said it makes me angry, and after reading that article the only thing I could think of that I really wanted to say was this: Speaking as an improvisor, (and as a fan of the carefully and deliberately-chosen expletive), David Keenan can go and get fucked.

[leroysghost]

Playing the drums is inherently sadistic. If you’re not man enough to beat the shit out of that kit, but feyly tiptoe around it with bows and dowel rods and (urgh) bare fingers, you’re really dissing the submissive nature of the instrument.

When the masochist says "hit me," the true sadist says "no."

i was about to say the very same thing! now all i got left is a sub par crack about Keenan needing the musical form of sildenafil...