EAI in 2007

[sound plague]

Don't just talk about it, do it! Discuss away.

Do you think the issues raised in 2006 were resolved and how has the music in 2007 taken this on board? I haven't heard enough from 2007 yet to really get into this. I'm interested whether or not anyone has noticed any development.

[Dohol]

The year is too young to say.





But I'm a hermit. What do I know?

[user_4541]

hmm maybe y'all should listen to audition radio as well as martian gardens. That way you'll be able to hear what DJs are currently playing to get a sense of what new and exciting releases there are out there. Ersquake this year is off the hook. Hopefully Philadelphia will have the sleepover campaign in time!

[sound plague]

Perhaps I'll begin. The recent Mitsuhiro Yoshimura disc "And So On" has been quite a popular one around here so perhaps a few people can chime in.

I think Brian Olewnick raised an interesting point in his recent review on Bagatellen when he says:

"Since Yoshimura does perform this work in live situations, several questions are raised, especially if he does almost nothing but turn on his machine."

Also take into consideration the upcoming MIMEO disc on Cathnor where none of the contributors are in control of the final product. I find this relinquishing of control quite interesting and find myself wondering if this "trend" will continue to be explored in any detail.

I found the Yoshimura disc to be very rewarding and one of the best cd's I've heard in a while. Of course it's hard to say exactly how much control was relinquished during these performances but it does indicate a potentially interesting avenue of exploration.

Is it still peformance? Is it rewarding?

[jon abbey]

I don't know about new trends in the eight months since that other thread, but here are a handful of developments since then that I'm personally excited about:

the Yoshimura disc cited above, along with some collaborations he sent me. he's playing a duo show with Toshi in Tokyo next month, curious how that duo develops.

the series of duo discs by Axel D?rner/Lucio Capece/Toshi Nakamura. the Axel/Lucio one has just come out on l'innomable, the Toshi/Lucio is due on Formed in May, and the Axel/Toshi one is due on Ftarri in April.

the Magic ID, who recorded their record in Vienna in November, which I've been listening to way way way more than anything else in the last four months, and which will be ErstPop 001 in September.

Keith Rowe's duo with Norwegian visual artist Kjell Bj?rgeengen, this is based solely on Keith's talking about it, hopefully I'll get a chance to see them before too long.

I'm sure there are others, those were the first to come to mind.

[bryan]

I'ma snag this from the potlatch disc's thread....

If EAI has become a formula, and I think it has - it's very easy to put a group together in the understanding that we're all going to follow the same rules (NO quotations, NO references to other musics, NO common chords, NO regular rhythms, NO confrontation, NO discernible concern with pitch as a valid parameter for musical expression etc etc) - maybe we should ask ourselves why it has.

I've come to think of placing a melodic line into a field of sound as the same thing as painting a figure on top of a field of color. The ear/eye is immediately focused onto the figurative/representational element which now dominates the space.

I do like confrontation, however, and "rules" are meant to be broken.

Although I think art should stand on its own, for it to grow maybe it's more helpful to focus on the reasons that are behind the initial creative impulse rather than the surface qualities. How the material is used vs. what the material is. In that way, all material should be fair game - some just has more extra baggage than others - like pop

[franz bieberkopf]

I've come to think of placing a melodic line into a field of sound as the same thing as painting a figure on top of a field of color. The ear/eye is immediately focused onto the figurative/representational element which now dominates the space.

but once you've trained yourself to do otherwise there's no reason why you can't come to appreciate the same textural/abstract/material elements in a "melodic line" that you would in a less conventional sound.
assuming that it takes any training at all, which maybe it doesn't. maybe rehabilitation is a better word.

reminds me of a nice line from Metaphors on Vision by Stan Brakhage: "How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of 'Green'?"

which leads me to agree more with the second thing you said: all material should be fair game.

[Cornelis]

[quote] Abbey wrote:
curious to know more precisely what Cor means, though, whether his comment refers to just that concert, to the entire scene from his perspective, or to quite a bit of the scene from his perspective (I'm guessing the third of those.) [quote/]

indeed, the third option

I was just dissapointed about that concert, and have seen too many like that lately. It starts and you already know how it will go on. The same soup with the same ingredients. Nice, but the recipe is known and made by others (which I find an important point).
Let?s say, the first time a person plays one sine tone for the whole concert, you can be still exited about it, because you feel al the time something COULD happen.
Then another musician thinks, o, I can do that too. That concert will be boring, because you can feel the concept/formula from the beginning and that it will not be open for change. So 2 the same concerts, but not!
It?s a problem when things become too conceptual. It would be better to just write them down, hand it over to the audience and go home.
I guess it comes down to musicality/musicianship/vision, and the willingness to fail, to risk.

So, of to the shop to pick up some potentiometers to control electromagnetic waves, caused by a radio, and send them in the pianostrings. Very different from an ebow. Very exited.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

[cleanzero]

Abbey wrote:
curious to know more precisely what Cor means, though, whether his comment refers to just that concert, to the entire scene from his perspective, or to quite a bit of the scene from his perspective (I'm guessing the third of those.)

[quote/]

indeed, the third option

Nice, but the recipe is known and made by others (which I find an important point).
Let?s say, the first time a person plays one sine tone for the whole concert, you can be still exited about it, because you feel al the time something COULD happen.
Then another musician thinks, o, I can do that too. That concert will be boring, because you can feel the concept/formula from the beginning and that it will not be open for change.

It's like a watching a painting by Fontana saying "wow", but once his idea is there it's too easy to replicate. And nobody would like to watch at too many Fontana-like paintings.

[user_3091]

"Since Yoshimura does perform this work in live situations, several questions are raised, especially if he does almost nothing but turn on his machine."

I get quite exasperated reading about the methodology/set-up of musicians. To keep to the spirit of this thread, I think it'd be great if 2007 could be a year in which musicians started leaving this stuff out of their bios and liner notes. 2007 ? year of the blind listen. I mean, people have been raising these questions for decades in a line stretching from process and systems music through Cage to any artist using feedback to things like Eddie Prevost's 'Entelechy'. It doesn't really do Yoshimura any favours and doesn't have much to do with the actual sounds he produces. Essentially his set-up is much the same as Mattin's ? it's digital feedback. His music and aesthetic however, is totally different.

"How the material is used vs. what the material is. In that way, all material should be fair game - some just has more extra baggage than others - like pop"
I've wondered about this, listening to many of the recent Malfattis. What would they be like if, instead of those brief, cloudy sotto voce tones, those intimidating expanses of silence were interrupted by something as 'vulgar' as pop, or a 'bad' synthesizer preset? (The latter thought was prompted partly by Richard Pinnell's emphatic pronunciation of Malfatti as Mal-farty several times during last Sunday's Audition show)

[user_4655]

2007 - Year of the Blind Listen! Yes, I like that idea: focus entirely on the music. Trouble is, descriptions of the music mostly bore me, same with descriptions of paintings, or movies. It's almost as bad as literary critics outlining the plot of a novel and characterisations therein, though interviews in which novelists are asked to talk about the characters and their 'motivations' plumb the depths (what isn't in the book is irrelevant; read the book, make up your own mind, why should the author have to elaborate or embellish on his work). So, reviewing, a veritable minefield . . .

By the way, I have it on good authority that Richard Pinnell's pronunciation of Malfatti as Malfarty is a remnant of the once distinctive Oxfordshire dialect, which has been in his family since the late 13th century when the squires Pinnell owned much of Oxfordshire and the neighbouring counties and could afford to pronounce as they saw fit.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

By the way, I have it on good authority that Richard Pinnell's pronunciation of Malfatti as Malfarty is a remnant of the once distinctive Oxfordshire dialect, which has been in his family since the late 13th century when the squires Pinnell owned much of Oxfordshire and the neighbouring counties and could afford to pronounce as they saw fit.

this made at least the first half of my day!

[fearandpanic]

It's like a watching a painting by Fontana saying "wow", but once his idea is there it's too easy to replicate. And nobody would like to watch at too many Fontana-like paintings.

Thankfully music is about music as well, not just ideas. I agree with you if what you're referring to is a kind of conceptual music (I think some of Malfatti's recent music is along those lines), but you can't extend that to improv more generally. So who do you have in mind specifically? I like the "Strom" quartet on CD that Cor hated live.

It's presumptuous to call a halt to a particular area of musical investigation and say, okay, there's nothing more to be mined here, time to give up. Not that it doesn't happen after decades or centuries maybe, where certain aesthetic sensibilities start to feel inappropriate to the age, but more often than that I'd say your "how many of these do we need" is a case of generalised listening of the "all jazz sounds the same" variety. Or all Derek Bailey sounds the same. Or all improv of the last ten years sounds the same. It only does if you're listening at the level of ideas (something encouraged by the bios and notes Matt mentioned) and not at the level of musical detail.

[jon abbey]

I get quite exasperated reading about the methodology/set-up of musicians. To keep to the spirit of this thread, I think it'd be great if 2007 could be a year in which musicians started leaving this stuff out of their bios and liner notes.

this is more common than not already, 'good morning good night' didn't even credit the musicians with the instruments they played (by their request). FWIW, I didn't read much of the accompanying text to the yoshimura disc (still haven't), and simply listened to the music, which is very impressive in and of itself, regardless of how it's created.

t's presumptuous to call a halt to a particular area of musical investigation and say, okay, there's nothing more to be mined here, time to give up. Not that it doesn't happen after decades or centuries maybe, where certain aesthetic sensibilities start to feel inappropriate to the age, but more often than that I'd say your "how many of these do we need" is a case of generalised listening of the "all jazz sounds the same" variety. Or all Derek Bailey sounds the same. Or all improv of the last ten years sounds the same. It only does if you're listening at the level of ideas (something encouraged by the bios and notes Matt mentioned) and not at the level of musical detail.

right, but the flip side to this is that it becomes increasingly difficult to find exciting and new territory within an area after it's been explored for a while. clearly all jazz doesn't sound the same, but most of it sounds like what's come before it, playing in a style for the sake of playing in that style and not because you have anything new to add to the tradition.

along the lines of cor's general point, I had a very similar discussion with keith yesterday morning. it's depressing to put on two or three new releases in a row, releases you have some kind of positive expectations for, and have them all be in this "safe" area cor references: competent, but signifying nothing more than a bunch of pretty sounds.

this was the precise mindset that pushed me into starting the 'EAI in 2006' thread, which is why I wanted to bump it as a prelude to this one. I'm personally a lot more optimistic about the current state of affairs in EAI than I was last summer, partly for reasons listed above and partly because I have a whole slew of projects I'm working on that I'm excited about.

back to 'trends', one guiding idea that I'm trying to keep in mind as I figure out future releases is that I'm trying to work with duos who are geographically close. I think that far-flung combos were important in the more formative years of this music (otomo/voice crack, workman/ottavi, yoshida/kurzmann, dorner/drumm), to help create a more worldwide community, but clearly it's very difficult for combos like that to play many shows.

so I'm trying to focus on building new connections within a specific scene with many of my upcoming releases, toshi/ami, rowe/guthrie, a few I haven't announced yet. this is a bit of a nod to prevost's idea of 'communitarianism'. while I do think he missed the main idea with that (meaning the community of EAI does exist, it's simply developed in its initial stages as much more of a worldwide one than as one in one specific area, the way that most genres in the past developed), there obviously is something to be said for geographic proximity for projects, and that's something I'm personally interested in focusing more on going forward.

[faster]

this is more common than not already, 'good morning good night' didn't even credit the musicians with the instruments they played (by their request).

Yeah, I'm in agreement with that, and have avoided instrument credits for a couple years, more or less. I don't want to hide what I do (handkerchief over trumpet valves, anyone?), but I don't want it to precede the music.

...there obviously is something to be said for geographic proximity for projects, and that's something I'm personally interested in focusing more on going forward.

Wow, surprised to hear this, and glad. I agree almost entirely: what exists "globally" is a sort of community, but proximity and relationships can create a different sort of community. I'm tempted to add "and a more complete one," but it's only my intuition (& experience) and I'm not completely convinced yet.

[user_333]

Do you think the issues raised in 2006 were resolved and how has the music in 2007 taken this on board?

This reads like part of a job performance evaluation.

[user_826]

Again, I can't say I understand these constant objections to the contemporary improvisation being "genrefied" when those are coming from the side that gentlemen Fuhler and Warburton are on.
It's pretty unclear position: whether they are speaking as a fans of contemporary improv or "concerned citizens" ? Dan W. once took contemporary improv in defence on Bagatellen from severe and incredibly backward attacks of mr. Hill, but he himself seems prone to let a few poisoned darts once in a while. Why is that so, mr. Warburton ?
Being dedicated listener, I myself have objections to certain things inside this music, but I always knew that in certain point there would have to be 'split' inside the scene, as history of various artistic movements show us, there's nothing odd there. I said this also earlier, centrifugal and centripetal forces at work, there's nothing to be sad or concerned about, it's the dynamic of development. As one guy cleverly noted on Bagatellen, regarding new Korber/Halliwell album:
"[...] my strictly personal opinion would be that decent portion of recent "lowercase eai" (which I heard) tends to meet up the expectations regarding "electroacoustic fragrance", certain feel of "weird acoustic cosiness", that, I think, requisits from the clash and grit this music should indulge, as improvised music.".
Yes, this is bad, but is expected, more or less.
Indeed, there's this (still) discreet tendency inside contemporary improvisation to make it all about "pleasant, yet weird aural experience", a tendency one of my neighbours explained like this, regarding certain Mattin's opinions and writings:
"When Mattin talks about a very clear direction he fears the music is going in, I can only presume he's referring to its continuing gentrification, until he ends up as a subset of lowercase electronica, drony electronica, or conceptual composition. I suppose he's rightly concerned that the idea of improvisation central to it is being eroded. Since ifs formation in the 60s, improv has remained on the edges; it's simply to dangerous to handle. With the blurring of improv with trendy electronica (of most varied kinds), I suppose it hopes to capture some of the crossover with he kinds of music covered in the Wire magazine. That, after being "uncool" for so long, improv can finally be trendy, and just become one among many possible styles. With this regression, the reasons for improvising in the first place, its philosophical origins, can be quietly swept under the carpet."

Is this possibly the question you're aiming at, gentlemen, or is it something else ?

It's presumptuous to call a halt to a particular area of musical investigation and say, okay, there's nothing more to be mined here, time to give up. Not that it doesn't happen after decades or centuries maybe, where certain aesthetic sensibilities start to feel inappropriate to the age, but more often than that I'd say your "how many of these do we need" is a case of generalised listening of the "all jazz sounds the same" variety. Or all Derek Bailey sounds the same. Or all improv of the last ten years sounds the same. It only does if you're listening at the level of ideas (something encouraged by the bios and notes Matt mentioned) and not at the level of musical detail.

Exactly like this; one artistic expression is becoming "obsolete" only once when it's coming in strong clash with the historical conditions, cultural climate, i.e. - "when certain aesthetic sensibilities start to feel inappropriate to the age", like we have seen in past 50 years.
But do you possibly have in mind a direction in modern music which would do better justice to the historical moment we're in ? I think contemporary improvisation is doing pretty well (in any case, by far the best) and that's why I'd keep listening to it, propagate it and defend it, by any means necessary

[jon abbey]

Wow, surprised to hear this, and glad. I agree almost entirely: what exists "globally" is a sort of community, but proximity and relationships can create a different sort of community. I'm tempted to add "and a more complete one," but it's only my intuition (& experience) and I'm not completely convinced yet.

I think it depends a bit: taku sugimoto/radu malfatti and keith rowe/toshi nakamura are two cases where the musicians found their ideal working partner halfway around the world. even your "main" project is with bonnie, you guys can't exactly hook up on weekends.

but like I said, I think enough of those connections have been made for now, and I'm more interested right now in developing local ones.

[Dan Warburton]

Dan W. once took contemporary improv in defence on Bagatellen from severe and incredibly backward attacks of mr. Hill, but he himself seems prone to let a few poisoned darts once in a while. Why is that so, mr. Warburton ?:

Perhaps you could remind of which poisoned darts I threw, and at whom. I'm afraid I don't have time to search through several hundred of my reviews to find out.
My criticisms, fwiw, seem to have been voiced perfectly well by Cor above.

[jon abbey]

As one guy cleverly noted on Bagatellen, regarding new Korber/Halliwell album:
"[...] my strictly personal opinion would be that decent portion of recent "lowercase eai" (which I heard) tends to meet up the expectations regarding "electroacoustic fragrance", certain feel of "weird acoustic cosiness", that, I think, requisits from the clash and grit this music should indulge, as improvised music.".

I assumed this was you, are you now quoting yourself? pretty silly if so.