EMUSIC-L Digest Volume 34, Issue 11 This issue's topics: Electronic Music Sources and Availability Artifact (4 messages) Elect Mus History/Discography (9 messages) Your EMUSIC-L Digest moderator is Joe McMahon . You may subscribe to EMUSIC-L by sending mail to listserv@american.edu with the line "SUB EMUSIC-L your name" as the text. The EMUSIC-L archive is a service of SunSite (sunsite.unc.edu) at the University of North Carolina. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1991 16:05:08 CST From: Gregory Taylor Subject: Re: Artifact I'm the one who put the Artifact listing into the computer music discography for the masses of late, and I just wanted to point out that, in their own quiet way, Artifact is doing what lots of other large recording labels are only vaguely trying to pull off: To assemble a coherent catalog of recordings connected together [as the collectivistic impulse of the label's organization would suggest] by a common sensibility that one just doesn't see a lot of. In the case of Artifact, it's the urge in contemporary music to work actively with the idea that the technology one uses to realize new music has or might have an *active* role of changing the nature of the music itself. That's combined with a really refreshing "appropriate technology" approach to the actual technology used [since Mills isn't exactly wall-to-wall Samson Boxes or Synclaviers, you get a lot of - gasp - MIDI work on a small scale by persons with big ideas]. Now, perhaps a caveat is in order - I'm talking about working explicitly in the territory of the avant-garde, so [with a couple of exceptions on Chris Brown's, Larry Polansky's and Brian Reinbolt's discs] if your area of interest in electronic music involves German sequencer work [or even the soundtrack to "Birdy", for that matter], you may not be crazy about what's on Artifact. I've come round to their point of view, I think [I play 'em all on my show, and judiciously salted among either skewed popular music or acoustic/improv stuff of similar form, they work quite well in the playlist], and I'm not at all shy about recommending the work. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1991 12:40:47 -0800 From: Chris Brown Subject: Artifact Hello ! Saw the reference to our electronic music label called Artifact Recordings and wanted to correct the reference for anyone who is interested. Distribution is through North Country Distributors, The Cadence Bldg., Redwood, NY 13679-9612 tel. 315-287-2852. We have currently 6 releases including Chris Brown, The Hub, John Bischoff/Tim Perkis, Larry Polansky, Brian Reinbolt, and Rotodoti, and will next year be issuing the early computer music pieces of James Tenney. If you just want a brochure or to be on our mailing list send us a line at ARTIFACT RECORDINGS, 1374 Francisco St., Berkeley, CA 94702 Chris Brown Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1991 10:36:32 +0000 From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: Artifact >Now, perhaps a caveat is in order - I'm >talking about working explicitly in the territory of the avant-garde, Explicit territory of the avant-garde? Isn't that a bit contradictory? Or do I just misunderstand what avant-garde means? >if your area of interest in electronic music >involves German sequencer work [or even the soundtrack to "Birdy", for >that matter], you may not be crazy about what's on Artifact. Erm, right, anybody who likes Garbiel's BIRDY soundtrack is obviously stuck into the commercial mind-set and isn't at all interested in anything not in the same vein. Tell me: are fans in the "explicit territory" of the avant-garde allowed or expected to listen to and appreciate BIRDY, or will that get their membership terminated? Just FYI, I have BIRDY, PASSION, several inches of German sequencer stuff, and Brian Reinbolt's CD. I like them all, and I don't put Brian's CD on a pedestal or in a special presentation case (it's between Julee Cruise's album and the latest from Enya). Greg's message seems to be giving me the impression that avant-garde emusic is somehow exclusive, clever, and not for people who enjoy more commercial stuff (as well). This is the mind-set that organises concerts where the performers outnumber the audience. Nick. P.S. OK OK, so I'm being provocative. I'm bored. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1991 00:35:00 CST From: Gregory Taylor Subject: Re: Artifact Not to play apologist for pedestals at all, Nick - and I didn't mean to leave that general impression. It's just that after that last posting on the Wergo and Neuma stuff, I got a letter from a sort of irate E-music listener who seems to have gone out and bought some of the stuff I mentioned/recommended ["wasted good money on" was the exact term, I think] and was rather irate with me for getting him to buy some records that sucked as bad as Vangelis' Beaubourg and Invisible Connections [my two favorites of his, incidentally....]. I was worried about offending persons like that and not you, Nick. I trust that you all recognize that the world is large enough to accomodate all that kind of work, from the tried and true Neue Deutsche Welle to "Artifacts" of all kinds. I'm merely speaking about the work I program most often and seeking to avoid the possibility that some souls out there seem to think of Tangerine Dream as "out there" music. I made the mistake of using discriptive language that seems to have missed at least one irate reader/buyer. I went off trying to avoid the same mistake twice, since recordings *are* expensive. But I do confess here - I've rather tuned out of the Tangerine Dream school of late - the sequenced electronic world in general. The last disc that really struck me as interesting was Rob Mounsey and the flying Monkey Orchestra and the new Maggi Payne disc on Lovely. Are there any recommendations from the floor on some really interesting electronic music of the more ah.... "accessible" variety? ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 15:12:00 CDT From: BOBPRIEZ@SLU.BITNET Subject: Elect Mus History/Discography re: Bryan Basham's request for history of electronic music via recordings Try to find a copy (out of print now) of Herbert Russcol's book "The Liberation of Sound", published in early '70's. It had a good chronology of people and events and a very complete (for its day!) listing of *serious* and *pop* recordings. Unfortunately it came out just before most of the current technologies hit the market. I would really like to see it updated and re-released. Bob Priez (Bitnet: BOBPRIEZ@SLU) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 17:37:06 CST From: Gregory Taylor Subject: Recommendations for your collection.... Someone has asked for some pointers to recordings of electronic and/or computer music. I've just finished typing up a list that goes out with the playlist for my weekly radio show, so I'll plunder it here. There's a caveat here: The radio program I do plays very little of the kind of electronic music that winds up in rec.music.newage - I tend to program in the terrain of "hard" computer music, and music that comes a bit more from the margin [old-line cassette electronics people like Jeff Greinke and PGR]. This means that my recommendations to you will be warped accordingly. I'm sure that there are a lot of people here who would be much better at naming good, consonant, sequencer-driven stuff with its roots in the Neue Deutsche Welle of the early 70s than I could possibly do, and I'm sure they'll pick up my slack. I tend to leave that kind of electronic music to the New Age programmers, who're much more interested in it than my audience. I don't think any more or less of that sort of work at all. I just don't listen to it and don't program it [save for David Borden and some solo work from Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider], to speak of. Places to start: There are two current series of CDs of computer music of some interest. One of them [the Wergo Computer Music Currents Series] has been in the cans since about 1988 or so, with the releases trickling out. The other set comes from a consortium of universities with computer music centers. They're referred to as the CDCM [consortium for the distribution of computer music], and there are 9 of them presently available. These discs are on the Centaur record label. For starters, I'd personally suggest the Princeton University disc [work by Paul Lansky, Andy Milburn, Alicyn Warren, Frances White] and the solo disc from David Rosenboom in the series called "Systems of Judgement." My last issue of the computer music journal had a brochure that listed all the recordings and their contents. THe CDCM discs include the work of student or grad student composers working at the studios from time to time. The Wergo series was more or less juried, and then collected into a rough set of collections [music composed by computers, music for the voice, music that includes some form of real-time control, etc.]. Of those recordings, I'd tend to recommend Computer Music Currents III [Johannes Goebel, Richard Karpen, and Francois Bayle] or Computer Music V [Johnathan Harvey, Kaaija Saariaho, Gareth Loy, et. al.]. Wergo has additionally released the computer music series which includes single discs of works by the following composers such as John Chowning, Jean-Claude Risset, Michael Obst, and James Dashow. There's also a "Dinosaur Music" disc which is a collection of work out of Stanford. The Chowning, Stanford, or Risset discs would be the ones I'd recommend for starting points. Both the Wergo and CDCM [on the Centaur label] are distributed in the United States through Harmonia Mundi. You should be able to locate a classical record store in your area that gets their records from them. There are a couple of other interesting little lights on the horizon. A label based from a composer's collective out of the Bay Area called Artifact has released a number of excellent CDs of work by composers who work with smaller, less capitally-intensive systems and are really interested in algorithmic composition. Discs from The Hub, Tim Perkis and John Bischoff, Brian Reinbolt, and Larry Polansky. I think you can perhaps go through somewhere like Wayside Music for them. Real interesting work. Neuma records, a new label based in Massachusetts, has started an electroacoustic Music series with only 2 releases so far. One of them has "historical" electronic performances [Varese's Poeme Electronique, Xenakis, Reynolds, etc.] and one of newer work. A nice start. They're also distributed by Harmonia Mundi, too. Finally, there's a really serious collection of music being done out of the Empreintes Digitales folks in Canada. I've yet to hear a bad release from them. You might want to check EAR magazine for their address. They've got a new Francois Dhomont coming out that I'm really interested in. Also [and this is the recommendation here], there's a compilation of 35 little short computer music "snapshots" from a more or less who's who in Canadian computer music called "Electro-Clips" that is really a nice collection of all kinds of work. I hope this is of some help. Gregory Taylor _____________________________________________________________________________ The leveling weight of music and weather/closes the stores, drives the people underground/into cool rooms under ducts and water pipes./There are ways to prove the logic of whatever happens./In a movie, the darkness between each frame proves it./Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI/608-828-3385 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 15:04:31 TZONE From: Bryan Basham Subject: EM Roots (was: Anyone in it for the art?) Hi Gang, I'm a computer programmer, who is in love with all kinds of music. In college I study Electronic Music as a means for me to express my musical talents through a computer, since I'm not very good with my hands. I have two questions for the group: (1) I am looking for a good book (or electronic archive) that discusses Electronic Music history, with a focus around actual recordings. My problem is that my EMusic collection is very limited -- a little Eno, W. Carlos, some Riech. I want the classics: Schaffer, Henry, Verase (SP?), Luening, Ussachevsky (ouch, I butchered that one), etc. (2) Given the context of question (1), is there a more reasonable "List" to be on rather than EMUSIC-L? Also, is there a general Musicology List? -Bryan PS - > When I first subscribed to the list I thought I had found a clone > of SYNTH-L. Over time, there have been some "music" postings. I agree, I trash a lot of EMUSIC-L messages because I am not a keyboardist. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 15:54:42 EST From: "Joseph D. McMahon" Subject: Re: EM Roots Let's try that again, without the mailer screwup. Artists who you have not listed that I recommend: Karlheinz Stockhausen - "Kontakte" (the all-electronic version) and "Gesange der Junglinge" (German readers, pardon the spelling!). These are seminal pieces of pure electronics. Microphonie is another fascinating piece, consisting only sounds producible using a tam-tam and various microphone manuipulations. Charles Dodge - the oldest thing I know of by him is "Speech Songs". A wonderful and funny set of pieces; I believe he is still working with processed voices (comments? corrections?) Morton Subotnick - He has several pieces available on CD; I believe his earlier stuff has not been rereleased yet. Look for "Sidewinder", among others. Paul Lansky has been getting reviews in the CMJ that make me want to run right out and get his CDs. I'm having trouble finding them though. Milton Babbitt did some really great stuff on the old Columbia-Princeton synthesizer. Some of the only pure serial music I've ever really liked. There are dozens of other artists you should try as well. Most are hard to find, if not impossible. Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros's older stuff, ... I'd appreciate recommendations from others as well. I don't know of any really good histories of pure electronic music. Allen Strange's textbook on the subject has a lot of references, most out of print now (and it's out of print as well...). --- Joe M. (unreconstructed blip-squork-and-bleep lover) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 17:20:00 EST From: rg8 Subject: Re: Re: EM Roots >Paul Lansky has been getting reviews in the CMJ that make me want to >run right out and get his CDs. I'm having trouble finding them though. Try Tower Records in Rockville or downtown near GWU. He's on several CDs released by Wergo in their computer music series. Kaija Saariaho is doing some interesting things with tape and instruments. Her stuff is also on Wergo and Finlandia, including a recent release devoted entirely to her work. Bob ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Nov 1991 17:44:24 EST From: ronin Subject: em info sources as far as the 'classic' emusic composers go, there really has never been much critical analysis of their work except among their own community. for the music, the library is often an useful source. much of this material either hasn't been transferred, or is difficult to get ahold of. at the same time, the lps are hanging out all over the place in public and university libraries. for discussion of their work, again, you mostly need to stick with the composers themselves. both xenakis and stockhausen have been fairly prolific and articulate writers, and have written at length about both the techniques and philosophy of their music. cage, as well, particularly in his 'silence', provides a definable musical programme. also, there are many works available on aleatoric, serial, and other compositional processes, which are the foundations of many of these composers' ideas. further, i can recommend three particular items: first, any book by david cope. he has a wide-ranging musical imagination, and has produced several works on ideas and applications of new music. second, a book by erhard karkoschka called 'notation in new music'. it provides an interesting collection of approaches to the expression of unconventional sonic events. third, a collection of articles form 'keyboard' magazine under the title 'the art of electronic music.' it covers quite a nice bit of history, and contains interviews with 70's and 80's period artists, most of which are quite cogent. you've got to keep in mind, though, that most of these things *do* lean toward descriptive, as opposed to philosophical, discussion. oh... but you might read some boulez. -------------------< Cognitive Dissonance is an Art Form >--------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1991 10:45:56 EST From: ronin Subject: em disc & crit there are several things that seem to make the in-depth discussion and crtiticism of electronic music difficult. the first thing that comes to mind is that a great deal of such discussion concerning acoustic music focuses on the subtleties of expressive technique distributed among performers and instruments. glenn gould's preternatural precision, for instance, or yo yo ma's extraordinarily emotive dynamic control. in electronic music, either the skills that produce this kind of techniques tend to be hidden by the complexities of the tones being generated, or the machines themselves simply don't provide the range of control-surface variability and parametric mapping that is inherent in many acoustic instruments. it should not be wondered, perhaps, that a group of people whose main concern is the attempt to make meaningful music with these ornery and dumb boxes should be a bit obsessive about the enabling technology (whether high or low). another thing that occurs to me is that 'classical' music and its descendants have a historical continuity which provides a rich background for comparitive analysis. electronic music, for many years (and perhaps still) in the process of continually reinventing itself, has had no opportunity to develop a mature literature of self-criticism. further, and this is certainly the most speculative of these ideas, electronic music seems to be much more 'removed', if you will, from the normal context of listening and appreciation. it does not tend to draw on, say, folk music in the same manner as does beethoven's music, for instance. each work of electronic music is a more highly personal statement, and does not necessarily (and in fact sometimes actively refuses to) communicate with the experience of the culture at large. which is, perhaps, as it should be, but it does make the formulation of a shared experiential vocabulary somewhat more problematic. make sense? -------------------< Cognitive Dissonance is an Art Form >--------------- Eric Harnden (Ronin) or The American University Physics Dept. Washington, D.C ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1991 15:20:16 +0000 From: Nick Rothwell Subject: Re: em disc & crit >each work of >electronic music is a more highly personal statement, and does not >necessarily (and in fact sometimes actively refuses to) communicate with >the experience of the culture at large. which is, perhaps, as it should be Why is this as it should be, Eric? Care to expound? Nick. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Nov 1991 21:04:24 EST From: Marshall Gilula Subject: Re: em disc & crit >each work of >electronic music is a more highly personal statement, and does not >necessarily (and in fact sometimes actively refuses to) communicate with >the experience of the culture at large. which is, perhaps, as it should be Why is this as it should be, Eric? Care to expound? Nick ------------------------------------------ to me, as a musician, the more highly personal a statement is for and from me, the more the statement tends to communicate with the experience of the culture at large. But then you might quibble with the meaning of "at large," and I would probably quibble as well. -73- Marshall Gilula ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1991 13:37:30 EST From: The Radio Gnome Subject: Mail order sources for EM Hi, Below are some of the places I order/have ordered from along with some short descriptions. Any word of new releases by Georges Boutz or Thom Brennan? Alcazar Heavier emphasis on the folk/newage end of things. Box 429 South Main ST Waterbury, VT 05676 800-541-9904 Wayside Music Lots of rare/unusual stuff as well as some Box 6517 pressings on their own Cuneiform label. Wheaton, MD 20906-0517 Eurock Distribution A one person show (Archie Patterson) Box 13718 Portland, OR 97213 Lotus Records Carried a lot of rarities. Last ordered from them 23 High Street in 1985. Newcastle-under-Lyme Staffordshire ST5 1QZ Great Britain Mirage Music Martin Reeds venture. Used to carry Mark 612 Southmead Road Shreeves early cassette only releases. Filton Also good cassettes by Ian Boddy and Steve Frost. Bristol BS12 7RF Great Britain Backroads Distribution More Newagey type stuff but extensive inventory. 417 Tamal Plaza Also carry New Albion and Erdenklang Labels. Corte Madera, CA 94925 800-825-4848 Generations Unlimited They carry David Prescotts tapes and some 199 Strathmore #5 good stuff by Jorge Thomasios Brighton, MA 02135-5210 The Music Suite Ltd Carry the complete Adrian Wagner Collection. Glanyrafon House Also check out 3 Men Underground. Cenarth - Newcastle Emyln Dyfed SA38 9JN Great Britain Perry Thompson He sent me his cassette Sleeping Giants for 70 Sproul Rd. free. Its very Burmer-esque. Malvern, PA 19355 Charles Cohen Ask about his "Darwin in Chains" cassette and Box 181 the unreleased(?) "Swizzle Stick" Riverton, NJ 08077 George Wallace c/o All three of his releases are MUSTS in Larger than Life Music any EM collection. Start with Communion. 10 Belmont Sq. Doylestown, PA 18901 Jesse Clark His latest, Locked in Heaven is his best, but 710 Eton-Adelphia Rd. earlier releases are also good, especially Freehold, NJ 07728 "CAMELIA" "She has learned that short ideas repeated massage the brain" - Robert Ashley ------------------------------ End of the EMUSIC-L Digest ******************************