Floatinghead's ramblings about music and music-related themes interspersed with various interludes and home of Cabeza de Vaca radio show on Scanner FM, Barcelona.
A new Cabeza de Vaca show already at Scanner FM!!! This
week a short interview backstage of BeCool with Scott Monteith aka Deadbeat and
Danuel Tate aka Danuel Tate. The focus on the interview is on playing live and
a little at the end on being Canadian since the rest of the show is some newish
Canadian music and also the show was to celebrate the new Micro Mutek line-up
which is partially announced. More details can be found at the Official Mutek Site.
Click here
for a partial transcript of the interview.
Some points
of discussion arose from several things that appeared on Resident Advisor
recently. Scott mentions the Blawan interviewand was aghast in particular at the
following answer from Blawan:
“Q: You
made the move from using a laptop at first on this project, then on to a
completely analogue set-up, right? Why? What is the appeal?
A: We were
so frustrated by the writing process on a computer, I think I was coming to the
limits of what I could do with a computer because I felt like, not in a
big-headed way, but that I knew the software that I was using, Ableton, well
enough that I could do anything. I didn't really like that.”
I also
mention a few comments from the recent Critics Round Table podcast with guest Kirk Degiorgio who mentions something that Scott interprets
to be Alexkid’s Insta-Haus a Max for Ableton device while one of the other
journalists enthuses over the recent set of Bass Clef at The Wire Magazine’s
recent Rewired night at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
There are
several contradictions here, rightly pointed out by Scottt and Danuel all to do
with the technology fetish. Bass Clef plays without a computer and it is
credited as amazing when many groups made electronic music for many years with
no computers. Similarly, Blawan’s comments come across as somewhat extreme too,
ditching the computer for lack of creative potential when it is likely that it
is his use of the computer that has become static. However, the other side of
this is that the analogue machines these people use are essentially “stupid
computers” as Scott says. So what is the difference? Alexkid shows here how his
Insta-Haus set up for Ableton works and indeed it seems quite a simple set-up
but one could easily find limiting creativity at a certain point.
However, it
may be that Kirk Degiorgio was also talking about something like this Vintage House Construction Kit
which has helped all the Rush Hour et al. artists to sound the way they do. I am
most definitely not familiar enough with the technology to know its limitations
and how it really works, but having thought more about it in the interview, it
does seem true that the man vs machine debate is far from over, but it nonetheless
has been a hot topic in 2012 especially after Deadmau5’s comments earlier in
the year in Rolling Stone about pressing play.
Scott and
Danuel also talk about the Pure Data (PD)visual
programming language developed by Miller Puckette for making music.
Peter
Brinkmann has also been credited with bringing PD to Android devices that I
also do not fully understand, but it is perhaps these kind of things that Scott
was saying that Mathias Aguayo was using?
Latest Cabeza de Vaca show is up at Scanner FMfeaturing a lot of atmospheric
techno and a special on the Prologue label. Not much else to say except please enjoy
and share!
To make the later slightly easier I have
started a Facebook page as loathe as I am to do so. The address and link is
here: http://www.facebook.com/Cabezadevacaradio.
Please like, shae, and all those other silly Facebook things. It is still a bit primitive as I am not a fan of social media and haven’t much
time, but I will add all the program links and more as we go, though here the
blog should be the main port of call.
The Scanner FM
website will also undergo a massive overhaul in the next week or two as well,
but more on that when it becomes available.
Next show will
either be some industrial and noise flavoured techno or another special
program, but I will not spoil the surprise.
“The absolute arts are a sad modern
impertinence. Everything is falling apart. There is no organization to foster
all the arts together as Art”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
(quoted from Simon
Shaw-Millers book “Visible deeds of music”)
The annual Störung Festival of isolationist
and ambient music and digital art kicked off one of the best ten day periods of
music I can remember, that took in also the L.E.V Festival in Gijon as well as
a superb DJ set from DJ Qu. More on those later when time permits, but
meanwhile, my official roundup of Störung can be found at Resident Advisor.
But to highlight and discuss some more details.
Last act on the first night was the Finnish duo Pink Twins
formed of brothers Juha and Vesa Vehviläinen who are both visual and audio
artists. Their set was accompanied by some extraordinary computer generated
art, in particular the opening piece “Miracle” which can be found under the
video links on their official website(no sharing sadly). The music was
different on the night, being denser and less comprehensible (in a good way)
and sounds like it was largely derived from their recent collaboration with the
Defunensemble. In this collaboration the duo recorded and processed different
instrumentation to make 50 locked grooves on one side of a 10” record from
which an art installation and several tracks were also derived (a megamix is
available for free on their official website). Details of the release including
some stills from the video are shown here:
Having been stimulated by this, and by thoughts
of the upcoming L.E.V. Festival which bears many similarities to Störung, only
on a larger scale, I wrote to the editor at RA and suggested that maybe there
could be a semi-regular text and video feature focusing on the interaction of
musicians with digital/video art. I mentioned Pink Twins as maybe too weird for
RA readers (true), but mentioned plenty of other more commercial examples.
For example, Deadbeat collaborated with
Lillevan, presenting the premiere of an audio-visual work at the 2011 issue of
Canada’s Mutek Festival and they plan to continue the collaboration. The
following video more or less totally encapsulates what I had in mind: and
interview and a focus on not just the audio and neither just the video, but it also
uses the video medium in itself which is a unique and powerful feature of
internet-based journalism. I am also told that people don’t read things on the
net, so perhaps they will watch videos instead?
In emphasising the growing importance of
visual art in electronic music Deadbeat says in the interview:
“Things definitely had to progress away
from a bunch of white dudes staring at their laptops on stage”
Deadbeat also mentions some of the other
examples I offered in place of Pink Twins, especially Amon Tobin who’s ISAM
live tour has become one of the most talked about shows in the last year.
As we shall see in an upcoming post, the
L.E.V. Festival is also a fertile ground for such new visual technology
initiatives in relation to electronic music.
But the sad conclusion to this was a curt
and rather blunt email saying “no” with a rally against my proposed experimentalism.
I will interpret this as a misunderstanding of what I was proposing and nothing
else as it seems a little bit silly not to be considering this aspect of
electronic music when other people are already doing it. I do, however, accept
the relative technical limitations of putting stuff like this on the web. Some
of the Pink Twins videos shown above are almost impotent when viewed on a
computer compared to their sheer power on the big screen. But here also lies
the dichotomy: the journalism is not meant as a replacement of the (live)
experience, but an enhancement of it and also a way of respecting the arts, but
is the technology up to it or not? In any case, a little bit of stimulation
could go a long way and by that I also mean broader acknowledgement of visual
artists.
One of the other aspects of the festival
that became apparent was this need to have a more suitable space for listening to
ambient music. This is for two reasons: one is the seemingly greater prevalence
of ambient music in recent years and secondly, there is no architectural space
that is suitable for it to create a comfortable and immersive environment.
Standing in a noisy club is obviously unacceptable for quieter ambient music, whereas
although the small amphitheatre where Störung is held is sufficient, it lacks a
greater potential and is perhaps too orientated towards the stage, whereas the
music essentially comes from all around, especially in Francisco López’s
extraordinary set.
My idea is to create a new type of concert
hall for ambient music and one that would also serve the community for general
purposes. In this sense a model would be La Monte Young’s Mela Foundation Dream house in
New York, where people could enter off the street, almost as if they were going
to church to pray, and escape the noise, intensity and slavery to time by entering a
floating realm of meditative sound.
Sound engineers would know better, but I
would propose a circular structure with at least four doors one on each side to
take away the orientation once inside the listening room. Obviously there would
be a bias for entering the complex via one direction in particular, via a main
entrance for example, but this is almost unavoidable. There will be no windows.
The stage would be circular and in the centre of the room and speakers would be
placed at the periphery facing inwards so that the performer would hear the
same as the audience. Instead of seats there would be soft matting (vinyl
covered mattresses for example) in several concentric layers descending to the
stage so that the audience could sit or lie comfortably.
It would be mandatory to have no shoes and
no possessions inside except clothes, with all objects (especially phones etc) being
left in lockers at the entrance. The interior would be white walls, ceiling and
floor lit only by fluctuating but dim magenta and blue lights. The white walls
could also act as screens with a number of projectors firing outwards from the
centre above the centre stage.
When no specific performance was being
held, ambient or drone music could be channelled into the room. Visitors could
come and stay for as long as they like and meditative practises could be
encouraged.
Ironically I was talking about similar
ideas to a Basque architect in the L.E.V. Festival. He was resident in Berlin
now but a huge fan of Greek composer and architect Iannis Xenaxis and he was
promising me that sound mapping technology was the future. Maybe one day the Roman-styled
theatres we are used to will be for traditional concerts and theatre, but that
specialist places for ambient and audio-visual music will one day exist? So to
conclude by returning to Nietzsche’s quote, we will at last have a more total
approximation of Art rather than the divisions that now exist.
Finally, should also show some love to Glacial Movements label boss Alessandro Tadeschi aka Netherworld who put in a lovely "classical" ambient set with some captivating scenes of the north pole and frozen tundra.
Rene Löwe aka Vainqeuer closed with a long set that was so gentle, uplifting and captivating. It was also a wonderful experience to hear a long beatless set of dub "techno" to really emphasise the textures and the potential of the music. Many thanks to all.
My official
round up of the action at this year’s Micro Mutek festival can be found here at Resident Advisor,
but to complement it a little, some extra ideas and some audio-visual cues.
First up is
the last: the end of the world. Something in the air lately has given me this
overwhelming Armageddon feeling. A lot has to do with global politics,
economics and unemployment, but there is something else. I am sure there is
some fall out from seeing Lars von Trier's confusing film ”Melancholia” last
year and its extraordinary climax (warning: spoiler in video).
And I know
2012 is supposed to bring the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar
and Roland Emmerich’s film, but I don’t believe that (though it might be nice to think it will be the end for some people in particular).
Coincidentally,
days before the festival I saw for the first time one of Emmerich’s other
films, the environmental disaster blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow” which
also left an impression. Perhaps this was more to do with having spent the
previous two days in the south of France where the Mistral of Marseille and the
Provence region drove deep the chill of temperatures that were maxing out at
midday around -1ºC. Flurries of hail engulfed the car at certain points of the
Pyrenees mountains on the way there and by Sunday afternoon the south west
corner was engulfed in snowfall. Arriving back at home in time for the movie, I
found the flat which had been left unheated for two days was impossible to warm
again. In this atmosphere I watched Emmerich’s film and went to and from the
Mutek festival and it wasn’t until after Theo Parrish closed proceedings that I
found it possible to get warm again.
Apart from
the weather, it was funny how this theme seemed to pass through the festival .
The first night we had two eco-disaster movies with more than a hint of the end
of the world about them. The first was Werner Herzog’s “Lessons in darkness”, a
1992 poetic documentary about the Iraqi’s setting fire to the oil wells to
prevent the Americans getting them in the First Gulf War.
The film
mythologises the workers attempts to extinguish the flames and their lust for
fire. Lucrecia Dalt’s live soundtrack performance was one of the best of the festival,
being unexpected, sympathetic to the movie, dramatic and technically proficient.
Apparently an album is coming out soon and maybe an interview if I am lucky. The
post punk sprawl of her music was in marked contrast to the films classical and
operatic drama.
Vladislav
Delay also played against the backdrop of Michael Madsen’s “Into Eternity”
about the vain attempt to build a labyrinth of tunnels and sinkholes to store
and hide radioactive waste for 100 000 years, away from nature, people and
those who might exploit it.
One of the
themes of the film was again work, at least in the sense of showing the miners
digging the tunnels, just like Herzog’s film gets in close to the oil tanned
faces of the fire-fighters. Ripatti gave the interviewees of the film, usually
the “decision makers”, a hard time with abrasive patterns and machine noise,
but allowed the workers to do their thing in more peaceful tones. The class
stratification is noticeable visually too, with the actions of work often
slowed to a dream, just as the forest, the tunnels and the diagrams are
rendered in slow motion. It is only people who react and communicate in real
(immediate) time as if rushing to eternity.
The last
day saw two other groups of artists extend the theme. Argentinian ambient/IDM
producer Why with VJ AV-K mixed lights and geometric patterns with newsreel
images of war, skulls, conflict and faces, whereas the last group Ragul and
Blowshe presented a work called “Frio” (cold) which was a kind of live edited
fairy tale set to an icy backdrop. Later that evening it snowed, a rarity for
Barcelona. It’s a shame there is no media for some of these shows, especially
Ragul and Blowshe as their show really was charming. The combination of youth
and curiosity was simply over whelming and it was great to see them get a chance
to do such a big show.
Regardless,
here is a little footage of Ragul playing in the Miscelanea gallery last year:
Some more on
some of the other acts: on Thursday night I caught Argentinian DJ Dilo at Moog.
He only played for an hour, but he crammed a lot into a short set, singing over
the top of some tracks and generally playing at break neck speed with a
decadent air. This track is a little minimal (he has also worked with M-nus’s
Argentinian producer Barem) and there is some other live footage of him playing
a slower, housier set, but nothing quite like the Mutek show.
I hate giving
negative reviews, but Venezuelan DJ Moreon got a little stick from me in the
above RA review. I think to be fair it just wasn’t his night in the end, maybe
two and a half hours was just too long for him with the wrong crowd as he was
playing some nice tech-house at the beginning. His summer image was also maybe
somehow against the grain of the unexpected theme.
I was
looking forward to Shackelton a lot on Friday night, but in the end he didn’t quite
do it for me. Last year at Sonar it had been a buzzing and tribal performance,
but at Mutek he had troubles with the sound system which didn’t help create
intimacy or immersion, whereas he also seems to have verged a little bit towards
noise over spaciousness and atomic details. Perhaps it is a consequence of his
collaboration with Pinch from last year or an artefact of the sound system? In
any case, maybe Shackleton is at a certain cross roads now as he sound is so
distinct (just look how he dominated the collaboration last year) and has been
for so long it is harder to evolve?
Falty DL
had given a live interview earlier in the day on Friday where he had
demonstrated a lot of eccentricity and charisma, but buried within all this was
a really clear headed ambition. A snippet of interview:
But he
almost blew his gig a little, train wrecking the start of his set amid the bad
sound of the system, but he pulled it together nicely. In a kind of contrast
with Moreon above, he had a really clear set design he wanted to follow that
worked well, giving a lot of variation, different beat styles as well as a
chance to show off some skills during the slightly hasty IDM finish. Indeed,
one of the things that surprised me about the whole festival was how IDM a lot
of it was. Part of the surprise was that I should be surprised, but sometimes
it does seem that IDM is a past music, rather than a present one, though there
are many labels and release who would disagree, like Planet Mu and particularly
Stroboscopic Artefacts from last year. Ragul for instance was wearing an Aphex
Twin shirt while Falty DL also name dropped him during the interview.
In the live
interview with Deadbeat I asked him about the Reggae sample he used in several recent
tracks (see also this previous post). Even though I said it was not necessarily fitting in his track to put the
whole quote as it would have undermined the vampire impression of the “speaker”,
he nonetheless seemed a little annoyed when I suggested there should be more politics
in dance music. Sure, as he refuted, the crowd is drug addled revellers and not
thinking people, at least in the club, but this is also not the point. Is there
not a dangerous decadence at play here with longer-than-ever parties in the
rich enclaves of Berlin and Germany while the rest of Europe sinks into
financial oblivion, slowly unable to afford a night out at the disco or a new
album? I am reminded of David Bowie’s track “Aladdin Sane” based on the 1930 Evelyn
Waugh novel “Vile Bodies” about the “passionate bright young things”
who live a decadent life despite a realization of the oncoming threat of war. It
is important to point out the obvious which is that night club shows are not
called “concerts”, but “parties” just as say, the Communist Party or the Tea
Party. Not many have seemed interested in these issues since Achim Szepanski’s (as
opposed to the recreated) Mille Plateau label folded:
“The point
is that music or sound design not only takes place on the level of
symbolisation and signification, but that significant material, i.e. non-coded
forms of expression and elements, as well play a role in the production of
sound. Then, ´Machinisation´ means that, in the production process, in the
combination of music and composition, things have to be considered, circumstances
which concern the artist but also exceed him, e.g. all the social-political implications
in which music and electricity are made available.”
To download
full article by Andreas Buscheclick here.
Brandt
Brauer Frick tread a fine line between artistry and thievery. Dressed in
Kraftwerk-esque salaryman clothes and jamming out fast minimal house based on
Steve Reich patterns you could be excused for dismissing them as derivative.
But results in the end speak louder than images and the group can pull it off
with energy, enthusiasm and craft, with special praise for the drummer for
commitment and endurance.
Theo Parrish’s
musical philosophy can best be described by a line from the following track:
“Black
music: when yesterday becomes tomorrow”
Parrish’s
set, and by extension his music and elegant edits, continues a tradition of
Afrofuturism in 20th Century music, from Sun Ra and the Association
for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in jazz to Drexciya and
Underground Resistance in electronica, and more. Perhaps the principle
difference is Parrish’s lesser reliance on technology to represent the future.
Instead, his music conjures up the image of the future and hope as seen from
the past and that has sustained in the music throughout generations. There is a
real sense that Parrish is telling a story, bringing the past into the present
and using the moment to launch into an unknown future. What was particularly
impressive about his performance was the amount of design and thought behind it
and yet the natural, spontaneous unravelling of the pieces. Parrish used volume
control, long overlays and a winding road through black musical styles to reach
the end. But more than anything else, he maintained the music with a continuous
flow of vocals and breath-based instruments as if the literal voice was
speaking through the music.
Finally, as mentioned, there were also a couple of live interviews
with the Luomo/Vladislav Delay, Deadbeat, Falty DL, Guillamino and San Proper at
the local Bar 33/45 run by the guys at Struments Radios that can be seen in
video format by clicking here.
Thanks again to Nerone, Carles, Bianca de Vilar for photos (take more next year please!), Laura, the Struments guys for the carajillo at 33/45.
Two labels that have been looking for some sort of return to form of late are Berlin’s Mojuba and Cologne’s Kompakt.
Kompakt’s troubles have been slow to manifest since the label has been home to some of the better electronic albums of the last few years: Superpitcher's “Kilimanjaro”, Thomas Fehlmann’s “Gute Luft”, The Field’s “Yesterday and Today”. The loss in form has also been difficult to pinpoint due to the label’s scope. But these two facets perhaps also highlight where the problems have been. In chasing the more indie-orientated sounds of Walls, Rainbow Arabia and WhoMadeWho, the label’s dancefloor side has largely remained stuck in the confines of Kompakt’s signature sound, mercurial and slow, and built comfortably close to the indie-electronic divide so as not to alienate the vacillating crowd. Alternatively, whereas the albums have generally been praised, they have also deflected criticism away from the less strong showing of the label’s singles and lack of club direction. There are still too many novelty tracks coming out of the label, like Matias Aguayo’s “I don’t smoke” for example, even Wolfgang Voight’s “Kafkatrax” to a point, which feel like an in-jokes that, when out on the floor, don’t always make you feel like dancing or laughing.
The barometer of Kompakt’s success has always been the annual Pop Ambient and, even more so, the Total series. Both had slowly been heading for stagnancy before "Pop Ambient 2009" looked to inject some interest by opening the door to new names such as multi instrumentalist Marsen Jules, Sylvain Chauveau and, in 2010, Brock van Wey aka Bvdub, who has now become a welcome staple there. The fall of the Total series has been more disasterous, with last years "Total 11" being one of the labels lowest points. One of the included tracks was Superpitcher’s “Lap dance” another novelty in-joke track that epitomised what was going wrong.
Perhaps as a direct response to this, this year’s edition "Total 12" stripped the collection back to its original two vinyl and one CD size with stronger results. While not all tracks are mind blowing, an acceptable premise for a compilation, there isn’t much here that feels like filler. The labels indie and electronic sides get a decent showing and some of the tracks almost feel like it could be the days of old, especially Wolfgang Voigt’s tender “Frieden” and Michael Mayer’s daring “That’s what I told Sanchez”. But Mathias Aguayo’s “I don’t smoke” is still there for those who still need the humour.
One of the most important artists of the Kompakt canon is The Field aka Axel Willner who is just about to release his third album “A looping state of mind” with similar artwork and largely similar palette to his former two albums. The lack of an extensive step in a new direction for Willner is frustrating for Field fans and the label looking for regeneration, but nonetheless, it is a solid release and maintains Kompakt's strength in albums. Plenty of jagged, skipping loops, washes of drone and most prominently on this album, even more emphasis on the pop form of the tracks, which is no mean feat for their extended duration.
Gui Boratto’s imminent album “III” is also another healthy sign from Kompakt. Gutsy, catchy and rugged at times, although overall slippery and dizzying, it has all of the Brazilians trade mark qualities. As with the excellent “Chromophobia”, tracks segue together well and the blend of post punk and dance floor is kept in healthy balance to reward the club and home stereo. Sadly “The Drill” is the lead single and not necessarily one of the better tracks, but, ironically, one of the more Kompakt sounding tracks from the album.
Another label to disappoint of late has been Mojuba. After an impeccable and ground breaking run of 12”s from 2005 the label started to come undone with the release of Ken Sumitani aka Stereociti’s “Early light” ep in 2009. The opening track “Untitled” was a decent enough smoky lounge house hit, but wounded the more avante garde philosophy of the label with its rather mundane vocal “What is house music?” diatribe partly lifted from Eddie Amadour’s “House music”
“Not everyone understands house music
It's a spiritual thing
It's a body thing
It's a soul thing.
House music is not yours
House music is not for sale
Please just get out of here now”
Or the legendary Chuck Roberts sermon from 1987
As if sensing the problem, Mojuba later re-released “Untitled” as “Cosmoride” slowed down and without the infringing vocal sample, but hardly a statement of confidence.
The scattering of releases around the two Stereociti singles also failed to improve the labels stock. The legendary Oracy received faint praise for “Bass mood”, but in the end there was a certain clumsiness to the sound, viscous heavy bass, gloopy acid, slowed mumbling vocals and incongruous jazzy snare hits were hardly the stuff of the future. Nick Solé kept things consitent with two solid releases, whereas the normally bankable Sven Weissemann hit a purple patch with a same-old sounding ep that failed to move on from his seductive deep house sound. Indeed, Weissemann’s piano-driven album “Xine” for the label was endearing, but somehow fractured and unrepairable. While it was Sterociti who inadvertently ushered in the dark times, it seemed that his recent “Kawasaki” album might have pulled them out, but not quite. A promising, atmospheric beginning did not however, come to an overwhelmingly satisfying climax, despite a handful of decent tracks, and like Kompakt, Mojuba waits for another key stone release to turn the corner again.
The track “Klass” on the “Kawasaki” album is one of the standouts for its dubby vibe alongside the moody “Expanses”.
An interesting feature of “Klass” is its inclusion of a sample by Count Ossie & Mystic Revelation of Rastafari from the 1973 album “Grounation” similar to this poem (no audio available for The Wee Hours).
The sample was also used by Scott Monteith aka Deadbeat on his single “Vampire” for Echocord last year, which cleverly pulled out the references to dawn as if spoken by a vampire, but at the expense of the important political sentiment
“The light became morning,
The morning became day - speaking for myself
I wish the darkness had stayed”
“Vampire” was also remodelled into “Third Quarter (Vampire of Mumbai)” from the recent “Drawn and Quartered” album, while Monteith’s previous album “Roots and wire” also contained a track called “Grounation (Berghain drum jack)” in honor of Count Ossie’s album.
Frank Sinatra also has a similarly titled, but totally unrelated track, from what is considered one of the first concept albums.
