Walter Zimmermann’s Desert Plants: Conversations with Twenty-Three American Musicians
German composer Walter Zimmermann once likened American experimental musicians to desert plants. He was not being condescending. On the contrary, he was expressing a deep appreciation of the new music originating from this side of the Atlantic. In 1975, Zimmermann flew across the ocean to meet and interview 23 composers. The resulting material was transcribed and published in a book which Amy C. Beal, in New
The Politics of Noise or Noise: The Political Economy of Music
“A network can be destroyed by noises that attack and transform it, if the codes in place are unable to normalize and repress them. Although the new order is not contained in the structure of the old, it is nonetheless not a product of chance. It is created by the substitution of new differences for the old differences. Noise is the source of these mutations in the structuring codes. For despite the death
Pierre Henry: Noise and Corticalart
Prospective 21e siècle releases generally stand out in record bins thanks to the series’ distinctive (and reflective) metallic cover designs. But the music pressed onto these vinyl records is also deserving of attention.
“Prospective” albums served as a vehicle for the dissemination of experimental electronic music. Pierre Schaeffer, Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari, Edgard Varèse, John Cage and many others contributed material to the series (most of
Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper: Electronic Music with Don Druick
The above Electronic Music by Canadian Composers compilation was released in 1975 on the small-independently-run Melbourne record label. Melbourne’s parent company, Rodeo Records, made its name producing and releasing albums by country and folk music artists. Rodeo established its Melbourne division in the mid-1960s but close to ten years elapsed before the label began releasing compilations dedicated to electronic music.
Volume 2 must have generated
Sing Me A Song Of Songmy: Hubbard Meets Mimaroglu
The late 1960s and early 1970s produced more than a few interesting meetings between jazz and electronic music. From Sun Ra to Archie Shepp and Miles Davis, jazz expended into new territories situated beyond the contours of bebop, hard bop and post-bop. It is not an overstatement to say that Sing Me a Song of Songmy (1971), Freddie Hubbard and Ilhan Mimaroglu’s “fantasy
Shandar’s Intercommunal Music: Free Jazz with Francois Tusques and Sunny Murray
The sixties were a time of change and turmoil when everything seemed possible. In Paris, art and politics merged into a potent critique of the establishment. Free Jazz – before and after May 68 – echoed the voice of the discontented. But the music also offered a means of articulating an alternative to reactionary social orders.
The Parisian art scene welcomed jazz vanguards and offered plenty of
Le chat dans le sac or John Coltrane on Quebec Nationalism
On this day, 46 years ago, John Coltrane entered the Rudy Van Gelder studio to record new material for Gilles Groulx’s first feature length film. Le chat dans le sac was released in August of 1964 to great acclaim both here and abroad. Strangely, Coltrane’s contribution went almost unnoticed when the film was first released but this did not prevent Le chat dans le sac from earning its place in the canon of
Stereo 8 Sun Ra and The Magic City
Ra may have been (…) a self-made myth, but the contours of the myth were shaped by a kind of symbiotic dialogue, an inter-textual relationship, with the main narrative threads of African American history. This myth was not the work of a madman or a con man, but one of the most brilliant and comprehensive acts of self-representation in black culture.” – Graham Lock (in Blutopia)
Sun
Stereo 8 World Galaxy: Alice Coltrane with Strings
DEDICATED TO THAT GREAT COSMIC UNSEEN (World Galaxy liner notes)
On January 12, 2007, Alice Coltrane was reunited in death with her late husband John Coltrane. The two had been married for less than two years when he passed away in 1967. During the four decades that followed, Alice released a stream of stunning albums, many of which paid tribute to the visionary spirit of the
