AnTi-MuSiC

[jon abbey]

I should have lists of what I played both years, but I'm having trouble finding them.

the best ones last year were Fela's Coffin For Head Of State before Joe Colley's solo set, which doubled as my own subtle political commentary and unbelievable pump music for Joe, who was really digging this, sitting in the front of the venue and bobbing his head back and forth violently, and Tilbury's Cage prepared piano stuff, which was a last minute substitution to go before the Keith/Toshi set (I remembered just before that Toshi had told me the night before he didn't like the disc I had planned to play there, coincidentally). this juxtaposition is a little too obvious for my tastes, but it was cool to hear the recording when Keith starts before the Tlbury is turned off, and there was a minute or so overlapping them.

one thing I did find is another thread I started along similar lines to this one, from a couple of years ago:

http://ihatemusic.bagatellen.com/viewtopic.php?p=8223" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

[jon abbey]

here we go, this is my list for the first Quake:

first night:

before Margarida/Barry: Super Ape-Lee Perry
before Keith solo: Taku Sugimoto-Opposite
before Greg/Jason: Walter Marchetti-Nei Mari Del Sud...
before Keith/Sean: Tetuzi Akiyama-Relator

second night:

before Dion: Patterns in a Chromatic Field-Morton Feldman (hat art one)
before Tim/Jason: Masahiko Togashi-Rings
before Greg/Sean/David: A View From The Window
before Tim/Keith: Mikrophonie 1-Stockhausen

===============================

Greg thought the selection of View from a Window was dumb, and he was right in retrospect, too close to what was going on. live and learn, hopefully I keep getting better at this part of things...

[jon abbey]

and here's last year's plan, sorry for the thread tangent. this year didn't work very well because since the venue was so full, we had to run the air conditioner full blast between sets, and it largely drowned out the music. so I may have changed some of these on the fly, I don't remember exactly:

Before Mark/Tim: dr. john-walk on guilded splinters, keith hudson-playing it cool
Before Julien/Dion: points and slashes
Before Keith/Toshi: tilbury-cage
Before Joe solo: fela-coffin for head of state
Before Tomas/Tim: jeph jerman-the second attention
Before Keith/Julien: i.s.o. live
Before Greg/David/Sean: dave phillips-insect
Before Unami/Margarida: un peu de neige salle
Before Toshi/Mark/Tim: raku sugifatti

[jon abbey]

and to add something more on topic here, I bought the new double CD Marchetti, and listened to it once through so far. the first disc is nice, overlaid recordings of piano and a field recording of a storm, maybe a bit long at 70 minutes (around 50 or 55 would have worked better for me), but very nice. the second disc I think just basically plays the first one backwards, which I can't say I got much out of. but "anti-music" isn't really an area I'm especially into, so I didn't have such high expectations coming in.

[moesgaard]

those two seem to me to be just ploughing away in the safe, tired old ground of "conceptual sound art." Migone did a few of those records too (microphones in mouths, etc.), and they're just awful.

Love St Onge and Migone, and i really think some of their records are as interesting as any leif ellgren stuff (which i also like a lot).

Here's a little list of ones i like:
Alexandre St Onge: Quasi-Naigo (squint fucker press)
Alexandre St Onge and Christophe Migone: Un sperme qui meurt de froid (...) (squint fucker press)
Christophe Migone: Crackers (Locust)
Et Sans - L'autre (Locust)(Alex. St Onge and Roger Tellier-Craig - one of my favorites, a lot more musical but beautiful)

[vonbingen]

What IS anti-music? From what I know, "4"33'" was actually furthering the spectrum of music rather than going "against" it.

[horaflora]

Just checked this thread out, and feel compelled to say what I thought was meant by "anti-music" was any media purposefully made to self destruct, eg; vinyl that is cut in such a way as to ruin the needle, CDs that get stuck in the drive, and tapes that unspool at the slightest provocation.... I certainly don't own any of these trinkets, but know of their existence, and could probably look some up, were anybody interested... Byron coley's 'size matters' section used to be full of 'em in the 90's.....

[jkudler]

i don't think that is exactly what is meant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-art

"The term Anti-art refers to art which presents a challenge to the currently existing definition of art." you could probably replace "art" with "music" in that article. i thought this thread was about music that challenges ontological notions of music, has some kind of conceptual basis, etc., but results in sound that explicitly challenges, usurps, or disappointments conventional aesthetic requirements. marchetti seems to be a good, classic example. also, leif elggren, cm von hausswolf, etc.

-j.

[will]

That's an interesting approach, Jesse, though I wonder how your definition of anti-music differs from a more general definition of experimental music. I would agree with you if you're heavily weighting the conceptual aspect of your definition, basically arguing that anti-music takes all hitherto existing music as a single object to be negated.
Of course, in an era when many of John Cage's insights are fairly well digested, is it really possible to argue that there's anything to oppose? Wouldn't a bold gesture against music undertaken in the field of music ultimately just expand the definition of music for a subsequent anti-musician?
Of course, if we're talking about a compositional tendency, a drift of arguments through a bunch of performers and composers over the last half-century or so, then sure, field recordings, silence, massive walls of randomly generated noise, extended technique, there have been no shortages of tries at stepping outside of conventional definitions of music.

[jkudler]

That's an interesting approach, Jesse, though I wonder how your definition of anti-music differs from a more general definition of experimental music. I would agree with you if you're heavily weighting the conceptual aspect of your definition, basically arguing that anti-music takes all hitherto existing music as a single object to be negated.
Of course, in an era when many of John Cage's insights are fairly well digested, is it really possible to argue that there's anything to oppose? Wouldn't a bold gesture against music undertaken in the field of music ultimately just expand the definition of music for a subsequent anti-musician?
Of course, if we're talking about a compositional tendency, a drift of arguments through a bunch of performers and composers over the last half-century or so, then sure, field recordings, silence, massive walls of randomly generated noise, extended technique, there have been no shortages of tries at stepping outside of conventional definitions of music.

will - those are fair points, and i think the above wikipedia article was good in mentioning many of these issues and pointing out the lack of agreement on defnitions and also that "An expression of anti-art can take the form of art or not." i would say anti-music differs from "experimental music" in, yes, a much heavier weight on the conceptual side, but also somehow locating the interest outside of the traditional aesthetic concerns of music qua music (maybe the same thing as "conceptual"). i realize that was to some extent cage's project, but i think he's also clear in finding some kind of sensual enjoyment from silence, quiet sounds, radios, etc., etc. i read him as explicitly working to *expand* notions of music, whereas anti-music attempts to do violence to definitions of music. so maybe the distinction is less in the types of material used ("field recordings, silence, massive walls of randomly generated noise, extended technique") then in how they are used, and with what "attitude." but yes, i think you are also right that anti-music ends up existing in a constantly shifting ying/yang-ish relationship with music, where sounds and gestures from anti-music get subsumed by music, being heard aesthetically.

-jesse

[will]

wikipedia article? I probably should have read it before apparently rehearsing it in response to your post. Point well taken about Cage being an expander rather than a rejector. i think we're agreed that anti-music is more an attitude on the part of a music-maker than anything actually in the music (let's say those two things are separable). As such, it seems to be based on a pretty optimistic idea of the clarity of the composer's intent. in other words, it's conceptual art that incorporates sound.

[jkudler]

yeah. . . i guess i see it as a bit distinct from, or maybe a sub-set of "conceptual art that incorporates sound" in that i take anti-music to mean commenting on or attacking the notion of music, making it a kind of meta-music, whereas there's plenty of conceptual art that is about something else but uses sound partially or wholly.

-j.

[jon abbey]

thanks to Brian O's kind book giveaway, I just started Alan Licht's recent book on Sound Art. it's quite pricy (lists for $50), but I'm finding it informative so far and it's at least tangentially relevant to this thead.

[jkudler]

good god, i'm awake.

i saw licht give a talk about the book here in town, but yeah, it was too pricey to pick up. curious to hear your reports, jon. it seemed like it didn't have a lot of new info, but i only browsed quickly.

-j.

[nhennies]

What IS anti-music? From what I know, "4"33'" was actually furthering the spectrum of music rather than going "against" it.

A bit late to the game on this thread but, I was going to say something similar.

In Michael Pisaro's recent excellent Wandelweiser retrospected on erstwords he says something about how the Wandelweiser people heard 4'33" not as a political statement or parlor trick, but as *music*. It's not like this idea is unique to Wandelweiser, but I'd like to think Cage, too thought of it as an opening up rather than an endpoint.

[Damon_Smith]

http://www.ubu.com/sound/index.html