ihatemusic

Just noticed this in the future release section. I'm guessing Schnee is gonna be a new album?

What are the plans for the pop-section?

Nice to see so much releases planned btw!

"London in the 1970s was a strange place for jazz music. The influence of Derek Bailey (Britain's premier improviser) was gigantic, but somehow London developed a surreal and almost self-parodistic take on the whole "creative" scene. The works of some of the most austere improvisers were actually British humour at its best. Lol Coxhill, a saxophonist of the Canterbury school of progressive-rock (a member of Kevin Ayers's group) penned Ear Of The Beholder (1971), a chaotic mosaic of fragments in the British tradition of the nonsense, inspired by the musichall, nursery rhymes, dancehalls as well as free-jazz. An even more explicit tribute to street music, Welfare State (1975), was his political and aesthetic manifesto: avantgarde music for ordinary people. Coxhill's humane and poetic approach surfaced even in his most reckless improvisations: the Duet For Soprano Saxophone And Guitar off Fleas In Custard (1975), Wakefield Capers off Joy Of Paranoia (1978), 11/5/78 off Digswell Duets (1979). Steve Beresford debuted with The Bath Of Surprise (1977), which included pieces scored for toy instruments, bath water, whistles, tubes, euphonium and ukelele (besides piano, guitar and trumpet), and delivered the atonal duets of Double Indemnity (1980) with cellist Triston Honsinger. The British improvisers of this generation often flirted with folk, pop and rock music, emphasizing irony at the same time that they were embracing the most hostile techniques."

where is this citation from darko? [edit, thanks]

the only thing i'm ill at ease with is the word "irony" since i dont think it applies in many of these cases and it tends to generalise a musician's intentions when incorporating such elements [but oh, have we been thru this path before..]


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surprised to see the magic i.d. released on erstwhile jon
& i'm also curious to listen to the next schnee album, see what it sounds like

no, I don't think there's irony at work in Kurzmann's case, Mattin's case, Fennesz's case or anyone else's. For whatever reasons these people seem to enjoy re-introducing popular music into improvised music. I think, though, that there is different single reason behind decisions of the mentioned musicians, though they're bounded by common intention.
Maybe one important remark to be made is that, I think, levels of understanding differ; for example, on one hand, Mattin introduces pop elements in order to "break the boundaries of how we do perceive improvised music". He's a fierce anti-elitist and he enjoys to "shock" people ocassionally with something that you usually don't expect from average experimental musician. but I think that this motive is pretty thin and naive, really. It's pretty plastic understanding of the experimental musician's inclinations and position in our culture. I even think Mattin's motives are, in some part, shared by Kurzmann's work also, if we have in mind previous ideas of his Orchester 33 1/3.
On the other hand, Fennesz (for example) has no particular "conceptual" idea behind almost obligatory introducing of glitch melancholia into the context of improvised music, he does it because he thinks it's so good it just can't be bad and because he sees no fundamental difference between his work on "Live at the Lu" or "Cloud" - I suppose it's all same to him.
Possibly, latter reasons would stand for more than few players brought up in Vienna during the '90s, like Stangl (slightly), Siewert or Brandlmayr. Brandlmayr is in this group by far the most eager for introducing the pop elements, I'd add. I already exposed my opinion about the peculiarities of the Vienna scene, peculiarities that result in music that ranges from mild disasters to very good, consistent pieces.
Maybe the most recent "reinforcements" in this field could be consisted of Swiss players, who are by now deeply affected by goals and methods of lowercase electronica and all features of the genre(s) outside of the improvised music's notions and goals. People like Mueller or Kahn these days have more in common with musicians like Bernhard Gunther and Steve Roden than with any other improvising musician. And those influences have even touched the British islands, with the +minus group and Halliwell's album from 2006 whose name I forgot.

yeah, there's absolutely nothing ironic about 'the magic I.D.', or 'schnee_live' or 'First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' for that matter. any irony heard there is with the listener, not the musicians.



it's not on erstwhile, it's on erstpop. it's a fantastic record, I haven't been able to stop playing it for the last 3-4 months. eventually I decided I liked it so much (and somehow no other label jumped at it), that I started a new imprint for it (and for the next schnee).



me too!

to answer the earlier question, this will be a new studio recording (their first since 1999), planned for release in january or february 2008.

as for future plans, I don't have any past these two. I'd still like to do most of my releases on erstwhile (six of the nine releases planned are on erstwhile, two on erstpop, and keith's erstsolo), but these new imprints give me more options, although I don't expect to use them very often.

I'm almost as wary as darko about mixing 'pop' forms with EAI, to be honest, and I do think this leads to dull and failed music quite a bit of the time. but where he's always missed the point on this is in closing off these possibilities entirely, because occasionally they can be incredibly successful (obviously IMO). he's under the impression that any introduction of any kind of 'pop' influence is necessarily a step back historically, and I disagree. but now that he's made his opinions clear at length here, maybe he can let some other people chime in a bit.

anyone interested in hearing some of the music for themselves, 3 of the tracks on the magic I.D. disc are here, 14 of the 54 minutes that will be on the release (scheduled for june, if all goes well):

myspace.com/themagicID

I don't see why people can't just make the music they want to without people jumping on them and writing essays about it...

Maybe they hope to exist in some kind of relationship with music (and with culture more generally) other than either blind consumption or rejection of what's offered?

As for the mixing of improv and pop elements, generally speaking I don't see (or have ever heard) the musical appeal of this kind of fusion, so I won't be going out of my way to hear any of it.

that's fine and dandy, but ErstPop doesn't encompass all possible relationships between pop forms and improv forms, as of now it consists of two very specific projects. so maybe we could keep the overarching theorizing to a minimum on this thread, and focus on the actual topic.

and the label name is designed in part to move past this same endless discussion, about whether there's any place for pop forms in improvised music. if you don't think there is, then you don't have to pay any attention to this release or this label, it's very clearly labelled right there for you.

I was responding to Gaendaal's (repeated) objections of that sort on this board, in case that wasn't clear.


From what I gather, none of the recordings of the actual topic are out yet, so it's a tall order to form any opinion whatsoever of ErstPop specifically, other than from audio clips on Myspace. (I know you didn't start the topic, which is obviously premature).


I don't think there's much chance of that happening. Everyone knows what Erstwhile has specialised in up to now, so a slight re-branding isn't going to eliminate people making that basic connection. And, unless I'm mistaken, isn't there a hint of something "subversive" in the back of your mind about this venture? I'm sure I recall you saying something along those lines.

fair enough !

Before more people chime in, I'd just like to say few things;
I surely don't want to be tagged by majority of people as "fascist" or "totalitarian" etc, but I really don't understand such moves. What's open for debate is whether we do like or do not like those tries and why, what is not so easily debatable is whether those tries are "steps in wrong direction" - which, in my head, they undoubtdedly are.
People enjoy listening these, I don't, all good. Naturally, not everyone has a same sense for these "directions" I'm talking about. I really don't think they're contributing anything significant to the overall development of contemporary improvisation, I only see them as a temporary rest points which musicians and listeners alike could ocassionally enjoy while travelling long distances.
Of course, someone with significantly different value system would say: "You asshole, these are great records, look at the craft and ability these musicians show to create such complex merging of two worlds !" - but I won't, as much as I won't say that for "Dark Rags", OYNJO's "Out to Lunch", "SYRs", or Evan Parker's EAE.
To be precise, "Schnee" is one thing, and "Dark Rags" and Parker's EAE are another, but the problem of inherent musical incompatibility remains.
The second point, maybe more developed, would be that, in this way, experimental musicians show their ability to "challenge our established views about certain things". They're mixing "unmixable" and are making us "rethink" our own positions on music, which experimental music does. But I don't think this is point with any value, because experimental music can not develop itself with elements it once surpassed. I mean, I am interested in how improvised music could be developed further with regards to what it gained until now, to accomplishments made by that very moment, not in ways how improvised music could be mixed with certain formal determinants just for the hell of it.
If this is one of the criterias for viewing upon experimental music, John Zorn (and the myriads of similar-minded) must be one of the most revolutionary musicians in avant-garde music.

eh, i think fear answered the wrong question. but he wasn't attempting to theorize overarchingly, i don't think.

but anyway. personally, i don't think we're looking at 'integrating pop music into eai'. we're looking at pop musicians willingly drawing from a pallete of sounds extended by the existance of eai music. the fact that the musicians involved happen to produce eai themselves in a separate context is nearly coincidental.

i'm pretty excited about these, particularly after hearing the magic I.D. stuff.

m

well I'm excited. between this magic I.D. album (listening to the myspace samples now and it sounds great) and the kai fagaschinski / burkhard stangl record, that's a bunch of clarinet. being a clarinetist myself, I'm happy to see more "exposure" for the instrument.


edit: I also don't give a damn about the "musicological" aspects of it. if the musicians are doing something they're enjoying and others are benefiting from it by having more music to listen to that they enjoy, fantastic.

Fair enough, but I think that it's as parasitic a relationship as "blind consumption" ever was. Anyhoo, as you say, these are repeated arguments so no sense bashing on about it.

I find the idea of these ErstPop release more intriguing than trad-EAI, at the moment, as I always tend to enjoy bastardized music. Some people might think that "pop" is anathema but, personally, it's as valid (or invalid, depending on the quality) as any other form of music.

hah!

great, so why are you in this thread exactly?

now that we've gotten to hear some remarkably predictable opinions from the usual suspects, here's burkhard stangl's reaction to my letting him know I was forming this new imprint:

"oh, erstwhile seems to go "pop"! what great surprise! it's good for everybody. i'm looking forward to the erstpop-series --- and the discussion within the impro-scene. erstwhile is as well as unpredictable as improvisation itself. what a statement!"