From Sean Cooper Sent Thu, Sep 16th 1999, 04:22
From Sean Cooper Sent Thu, Sep 16th 1999, 04:22
after some thought on the subject, i find that, for the most part, i am no longer very interested in music per se. instead, i am interested in what might be described as organizations of sound that seem on their way to becoming music, but that never quite get there. i suspect this shift may have happened some time ago, but that i was not quite ready to engage it fully. here are a few recent examples of the sort of thing i'm talking about: - Mika Vainio, Ydin (Wavetrap) - Nosei Sakata and Richard Chartier, *0/r (12k) - Hecker, Xackpy Breakpoint (Or) - Ryoji Ikeda, Time/Space (Staalplaat) - Bernard Parmegiani, Rouge-Mort (Ina-GRM) - Rehberg & Bauer, ballt. (Touch) etc. i recall buying freeform's skam 12-inch many years back simply on the strength of the fact that it didn't "make sense" to me upon hearing it in the store. (this was not an aesthetic determination.) a couple of weeks later, i retired the record to my archive since i had managed to make sense of it after a finite number of repetitions, and because it only seemed to carry value insofar as it was inexplicable. (that is to say, my interest in the record was exhausted in the process by which it was made manageable from the standpoint of sense.) i don't think i managed to "learn" from this experience until relatively recently, and that what i'm looking for now is music that "lacks sense," either because it is absent altogether, or because it resists the imposition thereof. i don't mean "nonsense music" in the sense of music that is exceptionally goofy or humorous, but music which in a very rigorous sense resists attempts by the listener to "make it manageable." in terms used by the freeform example, i find that music of the sort listed above remains inexplicable regardless of the number of repetitions, and that it is precisely in this remaining inexplicable that its value is to be found. (it, of course, remains to be seen whether this doesn't constitute the final debasement of music, but i guess therein may lie a portion of my interest.) at any rate, i wish to maximize the instances of such "music" in my collection, the demonstration of the inexplicable, i find, being one of the few worthwhile concerns practiced among musicians. any recommendations appreciated, sc