AnTi-MuSiC

[Cornelis]

check out the very underrated Dick Raaijmakers (1930)

http://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/ ... denr-65629" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

there's some videos as well on there

[Gaendaal]

Like a few others, I'm having a problem with what "Anti-Music" actually is. My only concept of anti-music would be absolute silence...

Maybe it's just me (I do, after all, sometimes find myself rocking out to the "schunk schunk" of the escalators in Waterstones...), but all organised sound is music.

Maybe something like Abruptum? Even Francisco Lopez, in my view, is disintegrating ideas of music and sound.

Some folk have mentioned Steve Reich. I'm quite interested in getting some of his stuff since hearing it in DJ Food/Paul Morley's "Raiding the 20th Century" (70MB download, beware) mix-set/lecture. What would be a good starting point?

[user_257]

my suggestions:

the new blockaders: gesamtnichtwerk. pretty intense + amazing stuff.

also on the anton bruhin tip, check out in/out: amazing recordings made with just the pause button of a portable cassette recorder.

also, i've somehow acquired mp3s for a brion gysin recording called 'pool k III'. apparently, recordings made inside an abandoned pool, though i have no way to verify that. either way, it's pretty awesome.

hmmmm, i'll go think of some more later today. i love this sorta stuff!

[user_865]

Isn't anti-music what's playing on the radio ??!!

No seriously, if Cage brought us to the point where even silence is music, then I guess I don't know what anti-music would be. Perhaps the inability to hear altogether! (would bludgeoning someone in the ears be anti-music?)

[fearandpanic]

No seriously, if Cage brought us to the point where even silence is music, then I guess I don't know what anti-music would be. Perhaps the inability to hear altogether! (would bludgeoning someone in the ears be anti-music?)

Mr. Harmonic did post a link to an article that was slightly more specific, though it does a poor job of tying together its disparate threads. Is part of the idea that the pieces show a certain antagonism to the audience? But Lucier's and LaMonte Young's pieces don't do that, or Reich's, etc. (far from it).

As you (S.H) mentioned "recorded works of some historical significance", Kurt Schwitters's Ursonate is probably the best recorded document of Dadaism. I'd steer clear of all those piss-poor Fluxus records (Philip Corner, etc.—a watered-down version of the previous generation's avant garde). The article you posted seems keen on the idea of an oppositional stance (to some unspecified fixed point), but I'd suggest the (now) totally non-oppositional stance of "noise". It's worth noting how quickly and how easily Throbbing Gristle's imagined opposition was taken up by pseudo-fascists and sensationalist idiots. http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/white.htm" onclick= "window.open(this.href);return false;

And in fact all of the classical-leaning recordings mentioned so far (Cage & co.) should be exlcuded from any real consideration of anti-music, being so dependent on the official cultural apparatus.

Gil Wolman, Henri Chopin, Bob Cobbing and Isidore Isou, to name a few, managed (as much as is possible) to operate outside of the commerical and the "art" worlds. Cardew too, for a while.

[user_257]

as for the nomenclature, i think it's true that the term "anti-music" doesn't really hold up to a whole lot of scrutiny: as others have pointed out, if you define music as "organized sound" then there's not a whole lot of things that include sound that don't on some level fall into that category.

but to me, "anti-music" is a useful term not as a rigid definition but more as a sort of conceptual rubric through which a bunch of varied but related music/art activities can be understood: sort of a historical lens through which you could trace commonalities that tie together a certain strain of artistic activity. and so "anti-music" comes to signify a group of quote-unquote "musical" activities that have no interest whatsoever in the musical qualities of said activity, if you see what i mean. it's the difference between, say, derek bailey, who many would regard as pretty unlistenable and unmusical, and guitar drag: derek bailey's work may be atonal but he's still interested in musicality, in expanding the vocabulary and syntax of the guitar, whereas christian marclay in "guitar drag" has no interest whatsoever in the musical qualities of the guitar, but rather in the symbolic/iconic/conceptual weight of the guitar and its phenomenological qualities of object-ness.

whoa, dude: this is bringing out the philosophy major in me....

one suggestion for this stuff is ubu.com. their mp3 archive has a lot of this sorta thing, especially audio by visual artists, and includes some of the anton bruhin.

[bryan]

as for the nomenclature, i think it's true that the term "anti-music" doesn't really hold up to a whole lot of scrutiny: as others have pointed out, if you define music as "organized sound" then there's not a whole lot of things that include sound that don't on some level fall into that category.

exactamundo

I'm more interested in a consensus on stuff to check out in this vein rather than to try and define it myself. I think there's some historically related stuff via the futurists (noise as material), dada (absurdity), Cage (chance processes) and fluxus (creation-destruction) - not all of it is going to fit, but if it's related, then cool.

... I was thinking of The New Blockaders specifically because they make a clear/unclear anti-art (or anti- anti-art) stance in their manifesto.

That said, though plenty of stuff in this vein just treats the sounds as a result of the process/concept, I dig the sounds of certain recordings and the puzzlement it brings.

Stumbled onto 2 interviews with both Andrew Chalk and Merzbow where they seperately say that they like THe New Blockaders' sounds. THough on the surface there's an opposition to art and an interest in destruction-as-creation, it's still FUN and it can ROCK (disclaimer: yet be NO FUN and not rock at the same time). heh

[fearandpanic]

Stumbled onto 2 interviews with both Andrew Chalk and Merzbow where they seperately say that they like THe New Blockaders' sounds.

Chalk & Merzbow worked with the New Blockaders on the Mixed Band Philanthropist project ("The Impossible Humane")—a sort of Sylvie & Babs style cut-up collage in the Dada spirit. Might fit the bill.

[bryan]

Stumbled onto 2 interviews with both Andrew Chalk and Merzbow where they seperately say that they like THe New Blockaders' sounds.

Chalk & Merzbow worked with the New Blockaders on the Mixed Band Philanthropist project ("The Impossible Humane")—a sort of Sylvie & Babs style cut-up collage in the Dada spirit. Might fit the bill.

Oh, I know... that's why I mentioned them. Haven't heard that project though, thanks. I'll have to check for it.

I've got a Merzbow/TNB disc (recently c/o of Intransitive.. Howie where are ya on this subject?), and Chalk also records and collaborates with TNB under his Ferial Confine alias.

[MRS]

Here's an extended blurb on the new Marchetti I just ordered:

"Music: the foundation of that presence in which we find ourselves shows itself as pure negative. Everything is founded on a demonstration of its own negativity: as awareness of its being negative, and does not look for an escape into a future presence, that is an objective future. But, accepting its negativity, makes of this self-negation the real act, the true reality -- the true foundation, the real and actual continuity: this is music's sense. Utopia Andata e Ritorno is the title of the new composition by Walter Marchetti, recorded in Milano in 2005. It has two parts, each one CD long. The first part, 'L'Andata,' puts together two former recordings of Marchetti. The recording of a real storm and a recital for solo piano. This is not the first time that Marchetti mixes a piano solo recital with the recording of a natural live event, thus creating a 'piano concert'. The second CD, 'Il ritorno', reverses the direction of the first record and literally destroys itself. In the first part of this work, Marchetti puts music successfully in the place it has to have today: on the road to renewal in contact with reality, a reality that is a synonym for vacuity, that is the interdependence of phenomena, music, reality, technology. There is nothing mimetic or anecdotal in this work. The storm is a real storm and the solo piano recital is a modern work of pure music, without the excesses that the society expects of a piano recital from composer and virtuoso player. Pure music, in the best sense of the word. 'L'Andata' is one of the great works of music of our time, or, as José Luis Castillejo remarked, 'it may be the best modern piano concert since Brahms.' In the second part, 'Il Ritorno,' sound waves are deformed when one tries a reverse hearing and the turn around trip becomes an aural nightmare. Of course, avant-gardism has made us accustomed to noises and silences and to the arbitrary idea that anything is music. 'Il Ritorno' announces the end of musical avant-gardism and its technocratic aspirations. It points to the end of music avant-gardism because it exposes the technological manipulation not only of technology beyond its powers, but also the manipulation of both music and sound. 'Il Ritorno' is such a problematic work also because its subject is failure and impossibility. Three-folded digipack 2CD edition. It includes a 32-page booklet with essays by Water Marchetti, Gabriele Bonomo and José Luis Castillejo. First edition limited to 500 copies."

[jon abbey]

I posted that here yesterday, knucklehead. get it fixed!

[MRS]

I know. . .hence the "extended blurb". De Musicorum Infelicitate I find a tricky one having listened for the past few months, reminds me of the music played in Firefox when Clint's SR-71 goes into an uncontrollable dive. I like it, let that be known, it just lacks the earth-ending power of Nei Mari Del Sud, the one with the picture of a deserted island on front, because it's going to my deserted island. It also destroyed one of my speakers a couple years ago.

[jon abbey]

I select music to play in between sets at ErstQuake, and I picked Nei Mari Del Sud to lead into the Kelley/Lescalleet set at the first one. the idea is to both set up the audience a bit and get the musicians pumped, but that one kind of backfired, in that Greg and Jason were so into it that not only did they not think they could follow it, they didn't want to turn it off. then again, once we did stop it, they played an incredible set (complete with Greg's mid-set stroll to the bathroom to purge his food poisoning), so maybe it worked after all.

[stelzer]

hm, when i think of ANTI-music, i think of Mattin, Alexandre St.Onge, and Christoph Migone.

[bryan]

hm, when i think of ANTI-music, i think of Mattin, Alexandre St.Onge, and Christoph Migone.

cool, thanks... I was looking up Alexandre and came up with this description of his Une machôire et deux trous CD:

"The source material for this record consists of various field recordings of my mouth, as well as audio documentation of having a microphone in my mouth while sleeping in front of my apartment building."

nice..haha. these "anti-"music related descriptions...gotta love 'em.

[fearandpanic]

hm, when i think of ANTI-music, i think of Mattin, Alexandre St.Onge, and Christoph Migone.

Mattin excluded, 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.

Mattin does appear more concerned than most with not falling into a fixed role, but, other than piercing high volumes and novelty albums of poorly recorded pub singalongs, he's not much different to any other improviser's attitude to music.

The Swedes C.M. Von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren base their recordings on absurdist concepts much more successfully; usually, unlike Migone, providing something worth listening to. There's voices of the dead ("Operations of Spirit Communication"); mystical architecture ("A lecture on disturbanes..."); the inner workings of latrines ("Latrine"); sounds recorded inside wombs with teeth ("Extraction"); the vibrations of long-dead monarchs ("Talking to a Dead Queen"); fictional countries, and so on.

[fearandpanic]

I was looking up Alexandre and came up with this description of his Une machôire et deux trous CD:

"The source material for this record consists of various field recordings of my mouth, as well as audio documentation of having a microphone in my mouth while sleeping in front of my apartment building."

One other way of severing a connection with music is to concentrate on speech and text pieces, with their literary and poetic (rather than musical) allusions. Henri Chopin's Revue OU collection belongs equally to typography, printing and concrete poetry, as does Bernard Heidsieck's "Vaduz."

On the more purely sound side of things there's Sten Hanson's "Text-Sound Gems and Trinkets."

[bryan]

The Alexandre description was more funny to me than anything else.

Elggren seems interesting in idea..

but again I need to check this stuff out for myself - 'cause how does it function as sound?

I missed this recent Perfect Sound Forever article that is apropo here.. it gets into anti-art/music and Duchamp, DAda, Cage, Futurists etc.. but basically the article is about the avant garde being dead and we need to move on... but that would be an entirely different thread that someone else can start (not me). heh.

here's the article:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/avantgarde.html

[flies]

is there any better anti-music than what can be had simply by listening to one's surroundings? if what you really want is sound that defies artistic pedagogy, then you can't do better than that.

edit: i guess this was a bit of a pedantic reply. Anti-music must refer to something other/more specific than simply "sound that defies artistic pedagogy". anyway, anyone who intends to make anti-music cannot really escape artistic pedagogy simply because what they're doing is defined by an absence of musicality, hence the "anti-music" is directly dependant on pedagogy.

"escaping artistic pedagogy" needn't be a requirement for "anti-music" i guess.

i'm rambling, aren't i?

[letchhausen]

Another good reference for music along these lines is the "Broken Music" book. It's mainly discographical and it's oriented towards records made by visual, conceptual art or performance artists. A lot of these records are more about the idea than creating a "musical" performance. As a result some are pretty weak as far as listening goes but a lot is fairly interesting and some is great. It may have a higher miss/hit ratio than music by musicians but some of the really bad stuff sounds good on paper at least......