Bienvenidos, Bloggerinos!
Following Sam's suggestion I've started a blog of some of the new music I've been getting. I'll try to update it at least once a week, and hopefully have some kind of theme for each blog.
Since this blog is going to focus on mostly the experimental side of music, I thought I would start off with some of the forefathers and pioneers of the avant-garde. The files for each of the artists is a mediafire link under each paragraph
So I guess, going chronologically, I'll start with Erik Satie (1866-1925).
Considered part of the Impressionism movement, he laid the groundwork for much experimental music to come. After reading his allmusic profile, he seems like a pretty eccentric guy. He wrote an autobiography detailing his daily activities down to the minute, and was found dead in his apartment surrounded by dozens and dozens of umbrellas. His stated goal with his pieces was to create "wallpaper music", meant to be completely ignored by its audience. Although this sounds like a silly goal for music, it comes amazingly close to the ambient music refined by Brian Eno almost a century later.The song I posted is called "Trois Gymnopedies" and was composed in 1888. It's slow and simple, but its pleasant, airy chords are very reminiscent of the minimalism, sound scape and ambient music of the 20th Century. This piece is an especially pretty one of his, which I'm pretty sure has been used in at least one soundtrack for a movie.
Erik Satie - "Trois Gymnopedies"
Next up is Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), a French composer who founded the technique of Musique Concrète. This technique came
along with the advent of the tape recorder, and basically takes found sounds, or other traditionally unmusical or unharmonious noises, and collages them into a song. This method is considered by many to be the birth of electronic music, albeit primitive compared to today's works. His influence on music in the last century can't be overstated. He introduced the idea that absolutely any sound or noise could be composed into a musical piece, opening doors for all types of experimentation. He also gives the first example of sampling music, taking sounds not directly created by him and incorporating them into a song. Musique Concrete has been used by countless artists, from Henri Chopin, to Pink Floyd, Steve Reich, and the Beatles.He founded the RTF electronic studio in 1948, and eventually brought over students Pierre Henry and Karlheinz Stockhausen as his pupils (who will be coming up later in the blog).
The first song (Etude aux Chemins de Fer 1948) is somewhat outdated by today's standards, but I included it because it's his first piece, and so the very first example of this hugely significant genre.
The other song I posted is called Etude Pathetique (1948). This one is much more enjoyable just on its own terms, disregarding its historical significance. The samples fit together beautifully, creating an evocative and ethereal soundscape. Some people consider the repeated sampling of voices over the song as a precursor to DJing and scratching in hip hop, but I'm not sure if I buy that. Either way it's a very pretty song.
Pierre Schaeffer - "Etude aux Chemins de Fer", "Etude Pathetique"
This next artist, Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), was a pupil of Pierre S
chaeffer and took Musique Concrète and electronic music to a higher level of experimentation. However, besides his historical significance, as both a musician and teacher, I don't find him too interesting. So, if you don't really care about this background, feel free to skip to the next artist.During the 1950's he became head of the influential Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music. This school was attended by myriad avant-garde artists, specifically specializing in "serial music", a confusing term (to me) which I think refers to repeating sets of variation in music which include elements other than just pitch. Anyway, some of his better known students and collaborators include John Cage, as well as Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay, founding members of the 1970's krautrock band called Can.
!!FUN FACT!! Stockhausen was one of the people featured on the cover of "Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"!
The track I put up is called "Kontakte, Struktur I" and is off a compilation called "Stockhausen 3: Electronic Music 1952-1960"
Karlheinz Stockhausen - "Kontakte, Struktur I"
Continuing on Pierre Schaeffer's sprawling path of influences we c
ome to Pierre Henry(1927-), the first artist so far that's still alive! He and Pierre Schaeffer worked together on various albums at Schaeffer's RTF studios, and helped broaden the scope of Musique Concrète as well as bring it to a wider public audience. The album I posted, "Messe Pour Le Temps Présent", is considered his seminal work, and it's easy to see why. This album is a spectacular blend of psych rock and electronic buzzes and bleeps. I can't think of too many other albums that are both this unique and innovative, but still enjoyable on its own terms. The first half is definitely much more accessible than some of the other artists I've posted, so if you find the other posts a bit too historical or conceptual, this album should be a nice palette cleanser for the ears.!!!FUN FACT!!! The second track of the album "Psyché Rock" is the inspiration for the theme song for Futurama!
Pierre Henry - "Messe Pour Le Temps Présent"
An important contemporary of Schaeffer, Henry, and Stockhausen i
s a Californian named Morton Subotnick (1933-). In 1960 Subotnick co-founded the San Francisco Tape Music Center with composer Ramon Sender as a "nonprofit cultural and educational corporation, the aim of which was to present concerts and offer a place to learn about work within the tape music medium". Some of the members of this organization include the influential Terry Riley and Steve Reich. His seminal (as well as first) album, "Silver Apples of the Moon", was made in 1967 and clocks in at 31 minutes, making it the longest electronic piece ever recorded at that time. In my eyes, he falls short of the works of Terry Riley and Steve Reich, with somewhat less intricate and certainly less pretty works of art. Nonetheless it's worth a look.Morton Subotnick - "Silver Apples of the Moon"
Alright, now that I've gotten Stockhausen and Subotnick out of the way, the rest of the posts will be both influential and highly pleasing to the ear!
Mentioned above as part of Subotnick's Tape Music Center, Terry R
iley (1935-) is another great minimalist composer, specializing in tape loops and delay systems. The album I posted, "A Rainbow in Curved Air", was recorded in 1967, and is a great showcase for a minimalist work that somehow takes ambient repetition out of it's usual passive role in the background and makes it dynamic and engaging. As the song evolves different layers become emphasized or diminished letting you probe and absorb the song as a whole. This song also anticipates the ambient music of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, among others, that officially cements ambiance as a musical genre.!!!FUN FACT!!! This song was recently featured in the soundtrack for GTA IV
Terry Riley - "A Rainbow in Curved Air"
In my mind this next album is second only to Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" as the best work of minimalism/ambiance. Alongside Riley as a member of Subotnick's Tape Music Center, Steve Reich (1936-) is another god of minimalism and tape loops. He's definitely an influential artist, but I'm just going to go right into the album I posted and forgo the background. The album, called "Music for 18 Musicians, for 4 female voices & 16 instruments", is a gorgeous work of repetitious ambiance, recorded in one take spanning exactly one hour. Like Riley's piece, it's minimal and repetitious, while still intricate and engrossing, like some kind of baroque ambiance. The work is ornate, engaging, catchy and hypnotic. Each instrument comes in a pair, and throughout the song seamlessly trade off melody. If you listen to nothing else in this blog, listen to this.The file was really big so I had to split it up into three parts: Steve Reich - "Music for 18 Musicians, for 4 female voices & 16 instruments" Part 1; part 2; part 3.
Well, I thought I was done, but then I remembered someone else w
ho I want to put in, but doesn't really fit neatly into this time line. Nonetheless, it's one of my favorite works of sound art and if I don't put it in now I might forget. His name is Alvin Lucier (1931-). One of the founders of the Sonic Art Union, and pioneer of conceptual sound art, and in my mind, and perhaps unintentionally, of noise/drone coming decades later. To explain the piece I'll simply quote his paragraph repeated throughout the piece:"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."
The end product of this experiment stands on its own even without the interesting concepts behind it. His voice is converted into pure sound, and comes out as an ensemble of tinny trilling treble, swelling and rolling bass and some extra, almost aquatic sounding noise. It comes out as a beautiful work of organic, physical noise and drone. Five Spoons!
Alvin Lucier - "I Am Sitting In A Room"
Alright, well its 6 in the morning and I'm pretty fucking zonked. Thanks for reading blogkiteers!
