Metal (the material not the genre)

[ReverendLove]

Einstürzende Neubauten - Kollaps (IIRC it was on Zig Zag)

[A Consumer]

Great subject.
I started off as an industrial drummer banging on air-con ducts, pipes, car parts etc. so I have a long standing love for the sounds of metal.
I second the Z'ev and E.N. (huge influences).
Former E.N. member F.M. Einheit does some great solo stuff especially using a large sheet of metal as a "sound table" for smashing bricks and such.
http://www.fmeinheit.org
Le Quan Ninh uses large china cymbals to great effect rubbing them against his bass drum and getting monster drones.
Which you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skiLDE_AMlg
I could go on and on but I have to catch a bus. Will keep my internet eyes on this subject.

[Herb Levy]

Rhys Chatham's really great hour-long Two Gongs, formerly only available as part of the boxset An Angel Moves Too Fast to See has, I think, just been re-issued as a single CD by Table of the Elements.

[kcorcoran]

Metals definitely encompass a major focus for me in music, great topic to bring up.

Kenichi Kanazawa is a sculptor who works with cracked iron plates, mostly very large ones, using mallets to strike and rub them. His releases are priced ridiculously ($40 cd-r, anyone?), but I recommend his work if you can get your hands on it. In a way reminiscent of but starker than Bertoia for the most part (from what I've heard, which is not a great deal unfortunately).

Toshiya Tsunoda is worth mentioning, obvious would be the record "Vibrational Movements of Metal Plates," but many of his releases feature intimate vibrational recordings of metal fences, anchors, signs and wires.

Toshiyuki Tsuchitori put out a series of releases focusing on ancient percussion music, one of which is "Dotaku," all bronze bells from Yayoi period Japan.

Yuri Kalendarev "Sound Sculptures" is another good release with some Bertoia similarities.

Masayoshi Urabe's use of chains and metal joints to break up his sax solos is especially bleak in a way that works so well to my ears.

I think it's fair to mention piano preparations - I love the Tilbury recording of Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes" and Magda Mayas' "Heartland."

Christina Kubisch's "Diapason" for tuning forks and "Twelve Signals" for miner's bells are both very good.

The group Bowed Metal Music have a tape on Semata which I like a lot, which also brings to mind early Andrew Chalk under the guise Ferial Confine, which also brings to mind the Organum lp "Horii."

And I definitely want to second the very powerful presence of metals in the playing of Tatsuya Nakatani, Le Quan Ninh and Sean Meehan, the vibraphone and glockenspiel punctuation in Feldman, Pisaro's "Hearing Metal I", as well as the mention of gamelan music in general.

So much more I'm sure.

[J.F.]

Toshiya Tsunoda is worth mentioning, obvious would be the record "Vibrational Movements of Metal Plates," but many of his releases feature intimate vibrational recordings of metal fences, anchors, signs and wires.

Does this mean what I believe?

I recently came up with the thought of having a metal plate brought into automatic permanent vibration via some machine-device. Two free hands would open up so many possibilities to work with the resulting "sound system".

I should stop with all this old-school free jazz-drumming and do more "sound art".

[Daniel Jones]

Does Alvin Lucier's 'Music on a Long Thin Wire' count? I like that one!

Also, I'm rather fond of 'Come Crimson Rays' by Mark Wastell, which is all tam-tam based... Oceans of Silver & Blood too.

Another vote for 'Hearing Metal' by Michael Pisaro as well which at times sounds like some kind of massive symphony to me - way more expansive than the sum of its parts (but then I don't have much experience of the instrument so perhaps I should shut up!).

That Shellac guitar is hella kewl too !

[mshiflet]

The noise works of Aube, particularly those from the mid-to-late 90's, feature a lot of metal source material. His MO for those unfamiliar is/was all about manipulating single sound sources for releases. Some metal-related works off the top of my head: Parametalizest, Métal De Métal, Chain (re) Action.

Here's his Discogs page: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Aube

Interesting topic. Should there be threads for all materials (wood, glass, water, fire) or are any of these as diverse as metal as a sound-making source?

And there are several releases with each of those in the Aube discography as well.

[flies]

jakob kirkegaard has a few recordings of bridges over rivers excited by wind:
http://www.fonik.dk/works/dvina.html
http://www.fonik.dk/works/eisenwind.html
also very apropos: http://www.fonik.dk/works/phonurgia.html

[A Consumer]

I should stop with all this old-school free jazz-drumming and do more "sound art".

I know I did.
Can't believe I forgot Karen Stackpole. She works mostly with gongs. I also remember reading about her laying cymbals on dry ice (they vibrate like crazy).

[Jesse]

John Hudak ~ Brooklyn Bridge

[Joda]

Can't believe I forgot Karen Stackpole. She works mostly with gongs. I also remember reading about her laying cymbals on dry ice (they vibrate like crazy).

Neat stuff, I'm listening to her myspace tracks presently. I am reminded that Catherine Pancake plays dry ice with cymbals in the group Trockeneis (which neans dry ice in German). I've not seen this method in action, but it sounds pretty wild.

Also, Phillip Corner has a lot of compositions/recordings involving metal or gamelean type instruments, of which what I've heard is amazing. His 'Metal Meditations' LP is described as "the culmination of many years' experience and experimentation with the properties of resonant metal objects."

[mpisaro]

Do bracelets count? If so, I'd have to nominate Xenakis' "Bohor" in this category.

[Jesse]

Do bracelets count? If so, I'd have to nominate Xenakis' "Bohor" in this category.

I thought this, should have said this.
I still have a crappy cassette dub from a crappy library record of this from my youth.
Bracelets with crotals for eight channels!

[nhennies]

Alvin Lucier's piece for solo triangle "Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra" is still fascinating to me even though it's been over a year since I first played it. The available recordings don't really capture what the piece is fully capable of, mostly because if you choose a really good instrument that's rich in overtones then the things that happen when you hear it live can't be fully captured with the typical recording techniques used on "classical" (sic) CDs, which to my ears, is how the few recordings out there were made.

Anyway, if you can afford to get a decent, large triangle then I'd recommend playing it. It doesn't require a lot of "skill" as a percussionist and it's really a rich and complex piece of music with a very simple, straightforward presentation.

I also really love the vibraphone in Malfatti's düsseldorf vielfaches. I'd be especially interested in directions towards recordings that use the vibraphone, an instrument that exploits metal's vast timbral spectrum, yet tries to limit it at the same time by tuning its bars to a fundamental and keeping overtones in check.

I'm doing a lot with this instrument right now (specifically, the "normal" sound of the instrument and what it's capable of just through traditional playing techniques) and would be happy to share some recordings if you PM me.

[kcorcoran]

Toshiya Tsunoda is worth mentioning, obvious would be the record "Vibrational Movements of Metal Plates," but many of his releases feature intimate vibrational recordings of metal fences, anchors, signs and wires.

Does this mean what I believe?

I recently came up with the thought of having a metal plate brought into automatic permanent vibration via some machine-device. Two free hands would open up so many possibilities to work with the resulting "sound system".

I should stop with all this old-school free jazz-drumming and do more "sound art".

that piece in particular is metal plates suspended between loud speakers producing sine tones (between 23-142 Hz) which vibrate the various metals he uses, so yes, you'd have free hands, but kind of an elaborate setup to haul around alongside a drum kit!

the dry ice - cymbal vibration idea is interesting, hadn't come across that before.

[jpeatt]

Toshiyuki Tsuchitori put out a series of releases focusing on ancient percussion music, one of which is "Dotaku," all bronze bells from Yayoi period Japan.

Are these available anywhere other than as downloads?
The one I've heard was awesome.

[some guy]

Pretty sure the CD I was forgetting was Z'ev, or had Z'ev on it.

But I still haven't found that to confirm it. So I just bought another Z'ev, because I could. Symphony #2. Wow. Good metallic fun, for sure.

[Voltaic Pile]

Definitely Robert Rutman and Baschet Brothers as others have mentioned. Also check out the work of Jean Tinguely, Swiss-French kinetic sculptor. There's also a Minneapolis-based sound sculptor Jack F.X. Pavlik who has done some incredible work with mechanically automated moving strips of metal struck with metal bars.

As far as instrumentalists, you may also want to check out Jon Rose. He's an Australian violinist who builds weird string instruments and plays on fences. I think Chop Shop from NY uses metal things and built speaker systems. Vultures, from the UK, do things with bowed and struck metal. When I played with them in Berlin, Will played a bicycle, and it sounded amazing, believe it or not. I have a friend Mat Kubo who, among other things, has performed with a huge steel plate on a frame and a small plate on a frame, each with with a very slow motor with a pin attached that would hit the plates periodically at different rates.

The composers I can think of are Iancu Dumitrescu, first of all, who is a Romanian spectral composer. He's done amazing things with tam-tam, cymbals and small metal objects. James Tenney has a piece called "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion," which is one long swell from extremely soft to extremely loud and back again, usually performed on tam-tam. You've never really heard a tam-tam until you've heard this piece.

If you're interested, I do a lot of steel sound sculpture and DIY instruments, and you can look and listen to some of my work in Shield Your Eyes: http://shieldyoureyesprayfordeath.com .

Cheers,

Schuyler

[benjamin]

Just a quick reply to say thanks to everyone who has responded so far. As I expected, there are a ton of interesting comments and exciting recommendations. I have many hours of listening ahead of me. If only my wallet could keep up with my ear!

[Min Boyce]

Len Lye is certainly worth a mention - although best known for his films, he also made kinetic art. Atoll put out a CD of recordings of his 'machines' as Composing Motion. Samples on Brainwashed

Might be stretching the initial request a bit, but Project Dark have also used metal in unconventional (gimmicky) ways, releasing 7" circular saw blades, copper discs and grinding tools as limited edition singles. Catalogue here. I haven't listened to them yet, but you can download some loops from Radical Matters. There are a couple of metal/saw blade pieces there in amongst the biscuits, logs and human hair.