EAI in 2007

[Jared McKinley]

I find that, for example, what someone like Sean Meehan is doing, is totally unrelated to what Toshi Nakamura is doing. But somehow we got them intimately involved in the same scene (now watch, someone is going to tell me that they are going to play together or that they already have). Regardless of the fact they might someday play together, their intents are very different, and I don't think these artists think of belonging to a genre more than just interacting when they play together.

yeah, that's not the best example, they've toured together more than once, have a CD out on quakebasket, played in trio with taku unami in erstquake 2, and are playing as a duo in the philly quake in september. you could go maybe with something like pita and taku sugimoto, that might work better.

Ha! I knew it. Sounds like an interesting duo. I will check out the recordings.

[flies]

Improv is an approach, not a style.

ok i am convinced of that much...

i think a lot of my remarks still stand up despite the fact that the conclusion was rightly put down. One of the points i was attempting to make is that 'free improv' is in fact highly prescriptive, and i wonder how this jives with the "philosophical origins" that have been mentioned but never explained satisfactorily.

I think fear's quote from page 3 explains these origins some:

"The practice of free improvisation, not as a form nor a style, but as an evacuation of the will of making music to get closer to sound. From the poetical necessity to put in action egalitarian relations in sound" -- from a workshop last year.

as far as 'egalitarian relations' - on the one hand it might mean serialism/cage-esque 'no sound is more musical' or is it more political, egalitarianism between people?

That's really beside the point, however.

The important thing is that free-improv does not have a monopoly on 'will-evacuating', 'close to sound' music. Hardly. I'd say musics with less choices involved, eg african drumming (at least some of the varieties i'm aware of), are more 'will-evacuating', and are as 'close to sound' as your sensibilities permit. Tetuzi akiyama has a boogie-style song which is just one chord played over and over for like 10 minutes, different overtones being emphasized by the tube-overdrive. Having heard it live, i can say that it is as will-evacuating and close-to-sound as anything i've ever heard, and it is far from free improv.

Ego-less actions are the goal of a whole horde of different disciplines while 'closeness to sound' is really possible in a wide variety of music. DSP/micro-timbral IDM is really close to sound IMO, eg autechre's lp5, tho that is not ego-less.

'will-evacuation' and 'closeness to sound' are both desirable attributes, and i don't think free improv is in any danger of losing access to them...

[will]

The important thing is that free-improv does not have a monopoly on 'will-evacuating', 'close to sound' music. Hardly. I'd say musics with less choices involved, eg african drumming (at least some of the varieties i'm aware of), are more 'will-evacuating', and are as 'close to sound' as your sensibilities permit. Tetuzi akiyama has a boogie-style song which is just one chord played over and over for like 10 minutes, different overtones being emphasized by the tube-overdrive. Having heard it live, i can say that it is as will-evacuating and close-to-sound as anything i've ever heard, and it is far from free improv.

Ego-less actions are the goal of a whole horde of different disciplines while 'closeness to sound' is really possible in a wide variety of music. DSP/micro-timbral IDM is really close to sound IMO, eg autechre's lp5, tho that is not ego-less.

'will-evacuation' and 'closeness to sound' are both desirable attributes, and i don't think free improv is in any danger of losing access to them...

yeah, I made this point sometime last year in another, similarly themed thread here. I think that it's risky business to argue that any particular music is "freer" than another.
the experience of freedom is based on the way that the music, to say nothing of "freedom" as an abstract concept, is understood, not in the content of the music itself.
Eye of the beholder / player.

[rainey]

This is what I'd say the last ten years of "eai"-style improv (if I may generalise wildly) set as its goal, opposing itself in its glorifcation of restraint, concentration and silence to the free flurry of notes that characterised the "old school." I'm not sure I've ever read a review of improv of this kind that doesn't use the word "restrained." (Equating restraint with beauty and anything more active with a kind of unthinking self-indulgence.)

because i've seen this particular idea about restraint repeated several times on several threads, in similarly disparaging ways, i thought i might try to address it...

surely there are players out there who are willfully adopting restraint as a strategy, and certainly there are listeners who see restraint as a kind of ethos of some current form of improvisation. that said, i have personally found that restraint, and asking others to restrain themselves (i.e., when working with a large ensemble of improvisers), does very little, if anything, to help music making. the problem, as i see it, is the emphasis on the instrument: restraint, in this narrow sense, essentially means not playing your instrument very much (or "only when necessary", as if it were any more necessary to play an instrument now and then vs. all the time). and this emphasis on the instrument (over other musical parameters), i believe, is a huge part of the reassessment of freely improvised music that has led us to this discussion. rather than restraining the urge to make music, improvisers may wish to expand their role in music making from instrumentalist to orchestrator, context-creator, rupture-purveryor, memory-enhancer, etc. in this sense, a person's contribution to the music can always be active, creative, positive, even when her/his instrumental contribution is silent or hopelessly vague.

to say that this idea is new is to do a disservice to generations of improvisers. but to ignore the fact that current improvisers may be exploring this terrain in a different, perhaps more specific, way puts one in danger of only hearing restraint, pathos, and a fetishization of the lowest of volumes in the their music.

(one can easily see beckett as a bleak writer. but anyone willing to spend multiple pages outlining how a committee can consistently fail to exchange glances (Watt) is neither restrained nor humorless.)

i welcome fear's critiques of pervasive melancholia in this music, and the challenge to find beauty outside the realms of the dark sublime. but i believe it is perhaps a blanket that covers too much. silence and softness do not always express death, asceticism, or a mystical bent.

[Dohol]

Very well said.

[fearandpanic]

Yes, interesting and nicely put. All of what you say is what continues to draw me to the improv of recent years. Hopefully holding something up to scrutiny (as much as anyone is able) isn't mistaken for blanket condemnation.

[brinybrush]

honestly, I don't think you kids (future/brain) could be more mistaken about your perspective on that. cor wrote a few pages back:

it's the vision I think from the person that makes (improvises, composes, developes etc) that is decisive.

now this is dead on. you guys seem to believe that every free improviser has something interesting to say, and sadly that just isn't the case.

this is not what i said. what i meant was that the "vision" can't come out of the mentioned motives.

[brinybrush]

Exactly, somehow I missed this point - exactly.
This weak points in contemporary improvisation are direct manifestation of the desire to make enjoyable sonic objects, made out of "weird sounds" that easily find place one near the other - language is going thru the "firm consolidation" because musicians are playing on that card which reads "end result - enjoyable sound object" - and that's where the problem comes from.

i'm not sure we mean the same thing, anyway, a wish to "stand out", to be original at all cost and/or reastraining one's expression for this reason isn't (necessarily) tied up with the desire to make "enjoyable sound objects"

[Cornelis]

As listeners, unless you are a critic, or massively obsessive purchaser of music with a lot of time on your hands

which, incidentally, could probably be said for a lot of people speaking their mind in this thread.
which is not to say that the original question doesn't seem incredibly futile.


on what has been said more generally, i think i can sympathize with the impulse to call for more composition and perhaps intention, because that's something i've been craving/looking for in music in general of late. but i guess the critique of that which jumps to mind for me is that this privileges "single-mindedness". in conventional artspeak, you might shorthand it as championing the "individual creative genius", but maybe that's a bit of an impoverishment of what Sexes (for example) is saying. Nonetheless, even in a more collaborative compositional process, i don't think it's unreasonable to find a similar aim toward some sort of singular coherence. perhaps it is a more *social* thing that comes of this process but that hardly means it will be better (could very well end up being the sort of compromise that effaces the more risky choices of the individuals involved).

i certainly appreciate enough music created in this way that i would never knock it as a method, but what seems to make improvisation (as process rather than any specific genre) interesting is its capacity to stage the sort of exciting accidents that don't arise in the aforementioned more hermetic form of creation. two (or more) minds (and hopefully not just minds!) *never truly coming together* seem to be just as likely to stumble across something beautiful and new for those of us who experience it from within a cultural milieu that is still very much embroiled in the aforementioned "individual vision".

this privileging of "vision" even seems to leak through the rebuttal to this call for composition, via Cornelis, for example. on a semantic level at least.

but i figure the "vision" that a "successful" improvisor has is of a different sort. less of an idea about how things are to sound, instead simply an awareness of how to communicate with one's collaborators in a way that hopefully enables things one doesn't already know or expect to happen.
obviously you can't knowingly create the unknown. but i think you can have a sense of what strategies might *push yourself* up against it.

if such instances seem to be more rare in the proverbial swamp today, i don't necessarily see how returning to composition helps. i mean it could never hurt to have more composed music, because the form isn't exhausted by any stretch.
but it seems like if improvisations aren't successful, then maybe people aren't *improvising enough*.

anyhow that's enough blather from me.

edit: slight edit upstairs but mostly i just want to mention that i don't actually know shit about EAI in 2007, as i've heard next to none of it.

I am aware that we have some freaky listeners here. At times I am one of them. But what I meant was more the ability to hear almost everything, see all the shows, be involved with recordings, etc...which even people who are dedicated to the music their whole day are incapable of doing, especially with this music where the musicians involved are spanned out throughout the globe.

I respect people's opinion here on this forum more than any other. But I am also queezy at attempts to gauge a music "scene", particularly of this sort of improvised/abstract music.

As listeners, unless you are a critic, or massively obsessive purchaser of music with a lot of time on your hands, I think it is too early to pick up any trends unless you are involved in the scene on the level that someone like Jon is. Even then, even this tiny corner of music is hard for one person to judge.

actually the point that Richard made earlier is relevant here: with this music (still) moving at a reasonably fast pace, CD releases tend to lag behind what's actually happening now by at least a year and sometimes 3-4. (I also am still far from sure that the quality of CD releases does justice to the level of music out there, but we covered that issue pretty well in the 'EAI in 2006' thread).

anyway, without access to seeing a range of these musicians live on at least a semi-regular basis and/or receiving unreleased work-in-progress CD-Rs from them, it's hard to get much of a bead on what's going on right now. I know that right now I have 8-10 projects in the works that I'm excited about, which is as many as I've had at any point since I started Erstwhile.

I personally can only keep up with certain dependable labels, and dependable listeners who have consistently lead me to great albums. I personally am unable to "keep up" with the music in the sense mentioned above since I live in Tucson and am unable to see the music live very often. I would imagine even with our best fans of this music the same is true. Even those living in NY, or Tokyo or wherever it is still somewhat the same. Unless you are intimately involved in the music (playing, producing, etc) understanding the "scene" is a bit difficult.

I have to approach it with my given limitations. And I find that there is often a "fan vibe" that people put out there that comes from a place unrelated to the music itself-not just with this music but any music. And my point is that it is often unverifiable, often even totally some critic's opinion recycled by listeners. And i find it bothersome as a fan of the music because I am just trying to enjoy the music. Case in point: the 5th triple CD erstlive album took me so long to get into because of all the opinions I heard about it (even though i tried to avoid them), and all the reviews. I already had to get over my own expectations of the album which I was very excited about. But I had to also overcome what everyone else said about it. I STILL don't trust my impressions.

I do, however, respect what a lot of people here say, since many of them are involved intimately with the music. I am not so much against record reviews, just reviews of an entire "genre" and where it is going. Really it seems what we lump together into one "genre" is really a multitude of intents that are somewhat unrelated. I find that, for example, what someone like Sean Meehan is doing, is totally unrelated to what Toshi Nakamura is doing. But somehow we got them intimately involved in the same scene (now watch, someone is going to tell me that they are going to play together or that they already have). Regardless of the fact they might someday play together, their intents are very different, and I don't think these artists think of belonging to a genre more than just interacting when they play together.

nice post, thanks

Cor

[user_4599]

...There are too many cd's, cd-r's, cassettes of abstract improvised music for anyone to hear....

So that's the music theme of this forum? Or is this the "signification" of EMI? Sorry for being a little lost!

[mudd]

uh. what?

m

[user_4599]

Yep more clear :
- What means EMI?
- Is This forum has some specialized music theme like "abstract improvised music"?

[jon abbey]

EMI is a major label record company that the Sex Pistols made fun of.

EAI comes from the abbreviation for electroacoustic improvisation, although it's not really a precise overlap.

[flies]

- Is This forum has some specialized music theme like "abstract improvised music"?

sometimes it seems that way but discussion of other music is not uncommon. Some people here seem to think that free improvisation is something like the second coming, however.

[mudd]

and no, the forum has no such theme. just a lot of fans thereof.

m

[user_4599]

EMI is a major label record company that the Sex Pistols made fun of.

EAI comes from the abbreviation for electroacoustic improvisation, although it's not really a precise overlap.

Thanks but where can I hide?

[user_4599]

- Is This forum has some specialized music theme like "abstract improvised music"?

sometimes it seems that way but discussion of other music is not uncommon. Some people here seem to think that free improvisation is something like the second coming, however.

Ha ok I see thanks, it's also probably like many music forums, its life leads to some unofficial specialization.

[user_826]

I didn't know where to post this, so I decided to put it here:

http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/article.php?article=722" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

[Richard Pinnell]

I didn't know where to post this, so I decided to put it here:

http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/article.php?article=722" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

Hmm thanks for posting that. A well written but very out of date article that states the obvious to me. Creating and labelling genres is a silly thing to do, and trying to justify labels is even more silly.
Given that noone in London has used the term New London Silence for about five years (and even back when it was used it was tongue in cheek by about five people) I don't see the relevance of posting that now.

So an old essay that points out that people have made experimental music for years and giving things genre names or calling things 'new' is a bit pointless. OK, great.

[jon abbey]

I thought that piece was kind of interesting, albeit a few years out of date. it is kind of a waste of time to blow holes in genre names, the point is, as Denley agrees, that there is something out there worth naming even if the right name hasn't been stumbled on yet.

back to the topic thread, I don't feel like rereading the whole thread now and don't recall precisely what was said here before, but I think that we're at a time in the music now where quite a few of the "first-generation" practitioners (meaning the ones making strides in let's say the 1998-2001 period) have run into walls on their approach, or have lost interest in focusing on this area. it's easy to focus on some of them and think that this music is in trouble as a whole, but I think that there are arguably just as many newer and equally vital voices emerging over the last few years, so the music is probably as healthy as ever, and the problems are mostly in the ear of the behearer.