The New Sound of Music (BBC Documentary 1979)

A one-off documentary highlighting the extraordinary story of musical pioneering, which took the audience into the world of White-Noise, Saw-Tooth, Square-Wave and Digital Sequencers, as well as other highly melodious sounds created by a variety of novel instruments never imagined before.

The Los Angeles Free Music Society 1972-2012

 

In 2012 The Box, a downtown Los Angeles art gallery, ran a six-week exhibition celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS). Entitled "Beneath the Valley of the Lowest Form of Music: The Los Angeles Free Music Society ‘1972-2012,’" the exhibit showcased nearly 40 years of LAFMS artwork, self-made musical instruments, recordings, ephemera, film/video, and installations, and included a schedule of live performances and artist’s talks. 

From the exhibition description:

The LAFMS have created a huge collection of homemade musical instruments throughout their history. A large selection of these objects will be on display in the space, exposing their playful and ingenious approach to sound. The selection on display includes both historical and new instruments made by Rick Potts, Tom Recchion, Joe Potts, Joseph Hammer and others. Rick Potts’ Hinge Neck Guitars, Tom Recchion’s “Strunagaphone” and Spring Boards, Joe Potts’ Chopped Optigan, and Paul McCarthy’s Sonotubes will be among the plethora of functional sculptural objects included. Films by John Duncan, Michael Intriere, Doug Henry, Tom Recchion, Rick Potts, Jonathon Rosen, Janie Geiser and more will be screened. A “record store” ala Poo-Bah Records, a scene of the early development of the LAFMS, will offer CDs, Vinyl, Cassettes and other objects for sale. A non-linier, historical, wall-sized collage of flyers, drawings, notes, correspondence, photos and other ephemera will also be on display.

Another focal point of the exhibition will be a major collection of photographs taken by Fredrik Nilsen. Nilsen, now a well-known exhibition and art photographer, will show prints documenting the LAFMS between 1972 and 1981. These images that have been printed especially for this exhibition, portray the beginning of this pivotal movement. Photographs documenting this vast scene by Tom Recchion, Kevin Laffey, Dennis Duck, and others will also be shown.

Brief History-

The foundation of the Los Angeles Free Music Society goes back to 1973 when Rick Potts, Joe Potts, and Chip Chapman—began making tape experiments and improvised music mixed from TV cartoons and material appropriated from Chapman’s eccentric record collection. A year later, with Tom Potts and Susan Farthing- Chapman they formed Le Forte Four. In Pasadena they became acquainted with Tom Recchion who worked at Poo-Bah Records and kept locals informed of new experimental and avant-garde records. Concurrently at Poo-Bah’s, late night improvised music experiments were taking place in the back room, with Tom and customers-now friends Dennis Duck, the Ace of Space, The Professor, Fredrik Nilsen, Juan Gomez and Harold Schroeder. Out of those sessions Tom and Harold formed The Two Who Do Duets, and went on to form the Doo-Dooettes with the inclusion of Fredrik, Juan and Dennis. It was only a short while later that the factions joined forces under the LAFMS moniker when it became obvious that there was a symbiosis to their approach and aesthetics, as well as strength in numbers. Ace Farren Ford, also affiliated with Poo-Bah, was part of Ace and Duce, also joined the ranks and the first LAFMS concert was produced in 1975 featuring Le Forte Four, the Doo-Dooettes and Ace and Duce, billed as The Los Angeles Free Music Society. Members of the avant-rock group Smegma, who had already been in existence since 1973, also developed out of and beyond the Poo-Bah Records scene before moving to Portland, Oregon in 1975. John Duncan, another Poo-Bah customer and subsequent acquaintance of Tom’s became part of the collective, releasing several of his earliest recordings as part of the LAFMS canon. AIRWAY, Joe Potts’s project and one of the first “noise” bands, emerged spurring on the development of “noise as art” aesthetic, becoming a global influential force and the idea of “maxmimalism.” Influenced by everything from Zappa/Beefheart to Cage, Terry Riley and One String Sam, they were ahead of the curve and their DIY aesthetic presaged Punk Rock, releasing their own efforts and self-produced concerts.

This was only the beginning. As years went on many groups and affiliations began to spring up and each member of the LAFMS began to emerge as solo artist in both visual arts and musical fields as well as collaborate and join other groups.

LAFMS’s work and performances have been pivotal figures in L.A.’s history of experimental art and sound and have had a global impact with international recognition. They are not simply a NOISE group, but embrace all forms of music and have demonstrated an adept capacity for tonal, improvised music, sound art, rock, musique- concrete, “turntablism”, humor, drone, minimalism, etc.

Since 1975, the LAFMS has released over 25 recordings on their own label and participants have released or have appeared on hundreds of releases from labels around the world. A merchandise store with some of these releases will operate throughout the exhibition, where visitors can find in-print and rare out-of-print items available for purchase including a new 2012 edition of “Lightbulb”, an occasional magazine published between 1977—1981 by the LAFMS.

A few infamous quotes about LAFMS

“Free ears and minds are one thing, but what about aesthetics?”—Hal Clark, Electronic Music Festival Hovikkoden, Norway (1974) 

“For decades, [the LAFMS] has influenced literally dozens of free-improv weirdos and avant-garde musician/non-musician types—who in turn have influenced thousands of others.”—LA Weekly (2011)

“A bunch of Hoodlums!”--- Director of Pilot Theatre, LA 1977 (upon canceling a show by AIRWAY and the Doo-Dooettes) 

Nothing Can Turn Into A Void – An Art Apart: People Like Us

Nothing Can Turn Into A Void – An Art Apart: People Like Us from Vicki WFMU on Vimeo.

British artist Vicki Bennett takes you on a roller coaster-ride with her art project People Like Us. In performances, videos, collages and music, her amazing editing techniques and sense of humor leave you flabbergasted and enthusiastic at the same time. People Like Us is like free-zone where appropriation meets alchemy, humor meets social critique and the boundless imagination meets reality (so called).

With BRION GYSIN in Paris - from Genesis P-Orridge's lost UK-archive

Brion Gysin (19 January 1916 – 13 July 1986) was an english painter, sound poet, and writer of the Beat generation who lived right across Museum Pompidou, in Paris, when UK-Avantgarde artist and Industrial music founder Genesis P-Orridge visited his mentor.

Gysin is best known for his discovery of the 'Cut-up'-technique, used by his friend and collegue, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville Gysin invented the Dreamachine - a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed - as a proto-type of modern, electronic mind- or brain-machines.

In this raw documentary Genesis and Gysin talk about the alchemy of making a good tea, the rhizomatic character of their music and art … while listening to Throbbing Gristle and testing and filming the Dreamachine.

Source/Archive: 

Genesis P-Orridge by courtesy of Boris Hiesserer (c) Pyromania Arts Foundation 

BBC Arena | Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes

Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And Legendary Tapes is an experimental documentary about the composer, mathematician and Radiophonic Workshop pioneer. Directed by and starring Caroline Catz, the film traces Derbyshire's life and work through a combination of archive footage and dramatisation, interspersed with Cosey Fanni Tutti's new interpretations of Derbyshire's archive material (the 'Legendary Tapes' of the title).

The Alchemists of Sound (2003)

This BBC documentary is a good introduction to the people responsible for creating some of the most memorable television and radio music in British popular culture.

The BBC's Radiophonic Workshop was set up in 1958, born out of a desire to create 'new kinds of sounds'. This documentary looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake's Seven and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.

There are interviews with composers from the Workshop, as well as musicians and writers who have been inspired by the output. Great archive footage of the Workshop and its machinery is accompanied by excerpts of the, now cult, TV programmes that featured these sounds.

More information:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0963155/

Directed by Roger Pomphrey. Narrated by Oliver Postgate. Interviews/appearances by Roger Limb, Mark Ayres, Brian Hodgson, Desmond Briscoe, Maddalena Fagandini, Dick Mills, Adrian Utley, David Cain, Delia Derbyshire, Malcolm Clarke, Peter Kember, John Baker, Milton Babbitt, Huw Wheldon, Robert Popper, Peter Serafinowicz, Wendy Carlos, Peter Howell, Paddy Kingsland and Elizabeth Parker.

Genesis P-Orridge Lecture - Sound and Life

Seminal alternative artist and musician Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was born Neil Andrew Megson in 1950 in the United Kingdom and reborn as a gender-erasing pandrogyne with her partner, Lady Jaye, in 1993.

S/he rose to notability as founder of the confrontational COUM Transmissions artistic collective, which operated in Britain from 1969 to 1975, and gained widespread notoriety for their Prostitution Show at London’s ICA in 1976, after which they were vilified as “wreckers of civilization” in the tabloid press.

P-Orridge went on to front Throbbing Gristle from 1975 to 1981, the legendary band that created the industrial music genre, before forming the equally influential band Psychic TV (1981–99).

P-Orridge is also a published poet and author with a long-standing interest in the occult. S/he was a founding member of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, an informal occult order established in 1981, which had a critical influence on 1980s culture, popularizing tattooing, body piercing, acid-house raves, and other cultic flirtations and investigations.

About CCA's 2014-15 Graduate Lecture Series
Entitled Sound & Vision, the 2014–15 Graduate Studies Lecture Series, examines the rich landscape of contemporary music and sound art. In performances, audio lectures, and conversations an international roster of some of today’s most compelling and innovative practitioners and thinkers will present projects and discuss ideas and histories of interest in the aural field.

Generous support for CCA public programs in San Francisco has been provided by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.

Gen is currently unwell. You can help by donating here.

Julius Eastman (1940-1990): Creation (1973)

"Eastman's experimentalism shared some tropes with Cage's, particularly the juxtaposition of disparate sonic materials, amplification, electronics, and tape music. 'Creation' (ca. 1973) is exemplary in this regard. Eastman composed it for the S.E.M. Ensemble, and it was played by Kotik, Eastman, and Williams on their European tour in the summer of 1973. The piece is, like 'Tripod' and 'Thruway', bifurcated into a prerecorded sound collage and a live acoustic component. Eastman's tape collage brings together wildly divergent sounds—vocal drones on an open fifth, sounds of screaming, laughing, crying, and electronic feedback. On the recording Eastman, Williams, and Kotik quote popular songs ('Danny Boy' and 'The Girl from Ipanema' stand out). Gay signifiers emerge periodically as well on the tape. Eastman and his fellow performers affect a lisping comic tone of voice while discussing subjects more expected in a John Waters film than in a classical music concert. This tape accompanies live sounds of percussion, flute, and piano that blend repetition, improvisation, and virtuosic displays from the performers. Eastman's inclusion of queerly surreal material is in line with a long tradition of avant-garde shock techniques in which abject subject matter is joined to an equally disruptive musical surface or formal conceit." - Ryan Dohoney, "John Cage, Julius Eastman, and the Homosexual Ego", in: Benjamin Piekut (ed.), "Tomorrow is the Question. New Directions in Experimental Music Studies", Ann Arbor MI 2014, pp. 39-62, here p. 43

"Creation" for flute, piano, percussion, and recorded sounds (1973)

played by Petr Kotík, Julius Eastman & Jan Williams (S.E.M. Ensemble)

photo (by R. Nemo Hill): Julius Eastman with a charming lady named Bill Paradise

An interview and vocal recital from 1984 by Julian Eastman can be heard here.

The Language Of The New Music - Documentary about Wittgenstein and Schoenberg, 1985

This is a film about Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arnold Schonberg; two men whose lives and ideas run parallel in the development of Viennese radicalism. Both men emerged from the turmoil of the Habsburg Empire in its closing days with the idea of analyzing language and purging it with critical intent, believing that in the analysis and purification of language lies the greatest hope that we have. They never met and might never have fully understood one another, because while the nature of their genius they found themselves alone breaking new ground of the very frontiers of their respective disciplines. But their work springs from the same soil and shares a common ethical purpose, so that their ideas and methods echo and illuminate those of each other to a remarkable degree.

The New Sound of Music (BBC Documentary 1979)

The New Sound of Music is a fascinating BBC historical documentary from the year 1979. It charts the development of recorded music from the first barrel organs, pianolas, the phonograph, the magnetic tape recorder and onto the concepts of musique concrete and electronic music development with voltage-controlled oscillators making up the analogue synthesizers of the day. EMS Synthesizers and equipment are a heavily featured technology resource in this film, with the show's host, Michael Rodd, demonstrating the EMS VCS3 synthesizer and it's waveform output. Other EMS products include the incredible Synthi 100 modular console system, the EMS AKS, the Poly Synthi and the EMS Vocoder. Most of the location shots are filmed within the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop studios as they were in 1979. Malcolm Clarke demonstrates the Synthi 100, also known as the "Delaware", Michael Rodd demonstrates musique concrete by tape splicing and manipulation and Paddy Kingsland demonstrates tape recorder delay techniques (also known as "Frippertronics"). The Yamaha CS-80 analogue synthesizer is demonstrated by both Peter Howell and Roger Limb. The EMS Vocoder is also expertly put to use by Peter Howell on his classic "Greenwich Chorus" for the television series "The Body in Question". Dick Mills works on sound effects for Doctor Who using a VCS3 unit, and Elizabeth Parker uses bubble sounds to create music for an academic film on particle physics. Peter Zinovieff is featured using his computer music studio and DEC PDP8 computer to produce electronic variations on classic vintage scores. David Vorhaus is featured using his invention, the MANIAC (Multiphasic ANalog Inter-Active Chromataphonic (sequencer)), and playing his other invention, the Kaleidophon -- which uses lengths of magnetic tape as velocity-sensitive ribbon controllers. The New Sound of Music is a fascinating insight into the birth of the world of recorded and electronic music and features some very classic British analogue synthesizers creating the electronic sounds in this film. The prime location for these demonstrations is the BBC Radiophonic Workshop where much creativity and invention took place during the period the workshop was in operation in the latter part of the twentieth century. Electronic music today is used everywhere, and many musicians gain inspiration from the past, as well as delving into the realms of sonic structures and theories made possible by the widespread use of computers to manipulate sounds for the creation of all kinds of musical forms.

The Delian Mode (Kara Blake, 2009)

The Delian Mode (Kara Blake, 2009) is a a short experimental documentary revolving around the life and work of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire (5 May 1937 – 3 July 2001), best known for her groundbreaking sound treatment of the Doctor Who theme music. A collage of sound and image created in the spirit of Derbyshire’s unique approach to audio creation and manipulation, this film illuminates such soundscapes onscreen while paying tribute to a woman whose work has influenced electronic musicians for decades.

"A documentary on Delia Derbyshire who created the theme song for “Doctor Who”. Musical pioneer Delia Derbyshire didn’t just create the Doctor Who theme music; she invented every sound it comprised. Her history, and the history of a BBC department that helped launch electronic music, is told in an innovative, idiosyncratic style." —Telluride Film Festival

People Who Do Noise

People Who Do Noise is a film about the experimental music of Portland, Oregon. Extensive interviews and intimate performance footage provide an intense portrait of the motivations, emotions, and ideas that go into this uncompromising, sometimes brutal musical form. Unwavering in its focus, the film brings to light an art form unfathomable to many, with only the words of the musicians themselves providing any explanation for the pulsating sonic chaos they create.
most inaccessible of genres.

Featuring performance footage and interviews with :
Smegma
Daniel Menche
Pulse Emitter
Yellow Swans
Honed Bastion
Oscillating Innards
GOD (bryan eubanks and leif sundstrom)
Kitty Midwife
Josh Hydeman
Soup Purse
Sisprum Vish
Argumentix
Redglaer
With Caro

Incapacitants - Live In Tajima, Fukushima, 25. AUG, 1991

Classic Japanese noise. Beautiful.

Rock Arena: John Cale 1986

Interview with John Cale by Suzanne Dowling, Ep 63. Broadcast 16th September 1986.

Sound in Context (Full Film)

Sound in Context (Full Film) from Sound and Music on Vimeo.

Sound in Context is a short documentary exploring the unique practice of sound within the visual arts world. Through conversations with a number of key art institutions/galleries, artists and curators working with sound in the UK, Sound in Context allows practitioners to discuss some of the issues of presenting and exhibiting sound in the gallery and contemporary art domain.

Sound as a medium is time-based and is sensitive to space, perception/experience and environment, and has become intertwined with disciplines of sculpture, architecture, installation, film and media art. The ephemeral, invisible nature of sound poses a number of challenges within cultural practice and presentation. Situated between practices of music and art, sound overflows boundaries of the gallery, disrupts line between stage and audience, moves beyond categorizations, and merges models of economy and culture industry. Sound in Context explores the place and future of sound within an expanded arts milieu, while opening up reflections for sound artists engaging in the art world, and visual artists engaging with sound in their work.

Interviews with:

Seth Cluett (artist), Benedict Drew (artist/curator), Barry Esson (director, Arika), Anne Hilde Neset (deputy editor, The Wire), Hans Ulrich Obrist (co-director, Serpentine Gallery), Mike Stubbs (director, FACT), David Toop (writer/curator), Richard Whitelaw (programme director, Sonic Arts Network)

Produced by: Jonathan Web and Ashley Wong
Thanks to: The Jerwood Space, Goldsmiths' University of London, Sonic Arts Network, Nicolas Sauret, Arika, FACT Liverpool, Serpentine Gallery, The Wire

Sound and Music is an arts organisation that supports innovative practice in contemporary music and sound. From sharing information at our website, to a full programme of live events and commissioned activity, we raise the profile of contemporary music and sound in its cultural context, to build support and audiences for new work in the UK.

The Theatre of Eternal Music

Terry Riley - Repetitive Music Godfather (French TV)


Terry Riley - A Rainbow in a curved air - 1969


Tony Conrad - Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain


"The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" (1969)


Trance #2
Choreography: Dorian Nuskind-Oder
Performance: Alison Clancy, Dorian Nuskind-Oder
Music: Angus MacLise, Tony Conrad, and John Cale


The Theatre of Eternal Music:Dream House78'17 / La Monte Young　Marian Zazeela

The Theatre of Eternal Music, sometimes later known as The Dream Syndicate, was a mid-sixties musical group formed by LaMonte Young that focused on experimental drone music. It featured the performances of La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise, Terry Jennings, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Billy Name, Jon Hassell, Alex Dea and others. The group is stylistically tied to the Neo-Dada aesthetics of Fluxus and the post-John Cage noise music continuum.

The Theatre of Eternal Music gave performances on the East Coast of the United States as well as in Western Europe that consisted of long periods of sensory inundation with combinations of harmonic relationships, which moved slowly from one to the next by means of "laws" laid out by LaMonte Young regarding "allowable" sequences and simultinaeities.

In 1964 the ensemble contained Young and Marian Zazeela, voices; Tony Conrad and John Cale, strings; and sometimes Terry Riley, voice. The Theater of Eternal Music's discordant sustained notes and loud amplification influenced John Cale's subsequent contribution to the Velvet Underground in his use of both discordance and feedback. John Cale and Tony Conrad have released noise music recordings they made during the mid-sixties, such as Cale's Inside the Dream Syndicate series (The Dream Syndicate being the alternative name given by Cale and Conrad to their collective work with LaMonte Young).

Most of the pieces performed by The Theatre of Eternal Music have long titles, such as The Tortoise Recalling the Drone of the Holy Numbers as they were Revealed in the Dreams of the Whirlwind and the Obsidian Gong, Illuminated by the Sawmill, the Green Sawtooth Ocelot and the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. Likewise, the works are often of extreme length, many pieces having no beginning and no end, existing before and after a particular performance. The Theatre of Eternal Music ensemble’s masterwork, begun in 1964, is titled The Tortoise His Dreams and Journeys and is divided into several sections, of which Map of 49’s Dream: The Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Light-Years Tracery, is the only one of which a fragment can be found on disc (forty minutes, with Jon Hassell on trumpet, Garret List on trombone, Zazeela on voice and Young on electronics). [5] The longest "Dream House" performance was that given at the Harrison Street gallery in New York, which lasted uninterruptedly for six years, from 1979-1985.

Video interview with Terry Riley (1975)

La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela at the Dream House
Video segments of a presentation by Young and Zazeela.

"When music becomes a spiritual experience, it goes beyond the concept of "I have the fixed composition right here which is a certain duration." And this process was beginning as I was learning how to improvise. But by the time I had put together my group The Theatre of Eternal Music, I was creating music in which I had sustained drones. I asked Tony Conrad and John Cale and Marian Zazeela to sustain tones while I played saxophone..."

terracid @ the booknook 29.11.08

Part one


Part Two

Welcome to 2009...its going to be great!

Karl Bartos

Just listened to a long interview with Karl Bartos:

Karl Bartos (born 31 May 1952 in Berchtesgaden, Germany) was, between 1975 and 1991, along with Wolfgang Flür an electronic percussionist in the Electronic music group Kraftwerk. He was originally recruited to play on their US "Autobahn" tour. In addition to his percussion playing, Bartos was credited with songwriting on the Man-Machine, Computerworld and Electric Café albums, and sang one lead vocal on the latter. He left the group in 1991, reportedly frustrated at the slow progress in the group's activities due to the increasingly perfectionist attitude of founding members Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.

In 1992 Bartos founded Elektric Music, performing a style somewhat similar to Kraftwerk. This new project released Esperanto in 1993 and then Electric Music in 1998. In between the two albums, Bartos collaborated with Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr on Electronic's 1996 album Raise the Pressure, and co-wrote material with Andy McCluskey which appeared on both Esperanto and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's Universal album. In 1998, he also produced an album by former synthpop Swedish band The Mobile Homes, much in the style of his work with Electronic; guitar-pop with very slight synthetic references. It was received as a great disappointment to synthpop fans, but sold more than any of their previous albums, and was used in TV advertisements for an airline to moderate success.

In 2003 he released the synthpop album Communication, featuring such songs as "I'm the Message", "Camera" and "Ultraviolet".

Karl Bartos announced in early 2008 that he had opened the first edition of the audio-visual exhibition "Crosstalk" for public viewing at the white cube section on the official Karl Bartos website. The program holds 21 films, remixes, cover versions, mash ups from Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom, USA and Japan.

Bartos made a lot of sense and spoke of interesting ideas during the program. Bartos is Professor of Sound Art at the Berlin Art Academy. The program is online for the next 30 days.