Joseph Ghosn’s La Monte Young: Minimalism and After
No style of late twentieth-century music has provoked as much controversy as minimalism. To its supporters, its directness and accessibility restores the severed link between composer and audience. To its detractors, it is maddeningly simple-minded, no better than pop music masquerading as art. And to its creator, the term itself is burdened with pejorative connotations.
– K. Robert Schwarz (Minimalists)
Speak too loudly about minimalist music and you will risk becoming the object of derision. It does
Coleman, Hebert and the NFB on Population Explosion
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) was created in 1939 following a series of recommendations made by noted British documentarist John Grierson. From its inception, the NFB had as its mandate to “interpret Canada to Canadians and other nations.” But the NFB was not strictly about propaganda and didactic exercises. It was also the site where Canadians filmmakers were given liberties to experiment and explore the medium of cinema.
In 1956, the NFB moved
Popol Vuh: Herzog’s Aguirre and the Wrath of God
Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a troubling tale of delusion and failure. The film tells the story of Spanish conquistadors traveling down the Amazon River in search of riches and power. Klaus Kinski offers a powerful performance as he embodies – and subjects himself to – the wrath of god (his megalomanic yet pathetic character acts as the driving force of
The Malcolm Mooney Years: Can and the Monster Movie
Anyone familiar with CAN would be terribly upset to put on Monster Movie and not hear a nervous hi-hat and the rhythmic throbbing associated with the opening segment of “Father Cannot Yell”. Stereo 8 enthusiasts, however, have learned that CAN’s debut album is nothing but a collection of mind-blowing compositions and improvisations. The song sequence, in this specific case, perhaps does not
Ambrose Bierce on Noise
Noise, n. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
- The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
The Devil’s Dictionary was begun in a weekly paper in 1881, and was continued in a desultory way at long intervals until 1906. Seven years later, at the age of 71 Amrbose Bierce left for Mexico “with a pretty definite purpose, which, however, is not a present disclosable.”
Italian Industrial Drone Music: The Art of Duration and Resonance
The Art of Duration and Resonance is Philippe Blache’s self-published celebration of a small, yet highly prolific, Italian industrial drone music scene that traces its roots back to the abrasive industrial noise of Maurizio Bianchi and beyond.
In this book, Blache accords considerable importance to the symbiosis between chaos and order but only as a means to shed light on the sound sculptures Bianchi and other contemporary Italian artists defiantly insist on erecting. Blache’s
Last Year In Marienbad on 45 RPM
Cette voix parle de façon continue, mais, bien que la musique ait cessé tout à fait, on ne comprend pas encore les paroles (ou on les comprends en tout cas très mal) à cause d’une forte réverbération ou quelque effet du même genre (deux bandes sonores identiques décalées se rejoignant progressivement jusqu’à devenir une voix normale). – Alain Robbe-Grillet dans L’année dernière à Marienbad (ciné-roman)
Last Year in Marienbad is a masterpiece born out of the
Quad-8 Lou Reed and the Metal Machine Music
My week beats your year. – Lou Reed
Metal Machine Music is certainly an unusual musical statement for an established rock artist – even for someone like Lou Reed with credentials in the avant-garde and the deep underground of New York’s art scene. Was Reed fulfilling contractual obligations? Was the album meant as an art manifesto? Was it an attempt to reconnect with the drone-based sound