From: Mike Metlay <metlay@atomiccity.com>Michael Ridderbusch:
On one of the many retrospective collections of music by IMO the most overlooked electronic musician of his era, Gary Numan, is an unassuming track wedged in between a bunch of dance mixes: it's an arrangement of Gary's 1979 hit "Down In The Park" for solo piano. No vocals, no Syndrums, no ARPs, no sequencers, no guitar riffs, nothing. And the transformation is extraordinary: the melody, harmony, and arrangement lift themselves out of the timbres and acquire a life of their own, seemingly without effort. A wonderful experience!Regarding new timbres. No one is tired of the oboe, violin, piano, etc. So why can't taste in electronic timbre be similarly classic and chaste? I think there's too much knob-fiddling to clothe weak musical ideas in new timbres. Either be a mechanic or drive a car. Either be an electronic instrument technician or a composer. Real power is writing a musical line that can be played by, say, a soloist with piano accompaniment, or the piano alone. How about the voice alone?
Michael's (by his own admission deliberately polemical) stance is echoed, I think, in my current wishes and needs. Brian Eno, in one of those ubiquitous and beginning-to-be-annoyingly-overquoted Oblique Strategies cards of his, says 'not building a wall but making a brick', a revelation that could only be stunning to a musician who doesn't work with synthesizers. With synths, it's all about making bricks. And you know what?
I'm tired of making bricks.I've been making bricks for 19 years now, in all shapes and sizes and textures. Since I've started making bricks, I've started and ended a scientific career, worked on a dozen albums by myself and others, started a record company, gotten married, begun work in the music industry, had a child, and begun building my very own studio in my very own house for the first time, and all this time I've been making bricks. I have a big freaking pile of bricks, on floppy discs, stored in RAM and on tape and everywhere, I have notes on making bricks, I have catalogs of other peoples' bricks that I never read, I have bricks, bricks, and more bricks, I have mixers and kilns for making and drying the bricks and I have a whole set of bricklaying tools covered in dust and with the handles rotting away or broken because they're under a big-ass pile of bricks.
Screw it. I want to build a wall or a tower or a dam or a bridge or something and not have to worry about stopping after every layer to make more goddamn bricks. Find that goddamned card in that goddamned deck and pull it out and TEAR IT UP. It is no longer relevant. Write a new one that says, 'not making a brick but building a wall', and put that one in there, preferably more than once.
Walls. Structures. Things of beauty. If you want a pile of bricks, look at photos of Dresden after the Allies got done with it, or go to your local contractor's.
Bricks. BAH!
From: Nick Rothwell <nick@CASSIEL.COM>
I've been trying to formulate a reply to this for the last 24 hours. I'll report back as soon as I have something coherent, but in the meantime, for your edification:
From: Joe Frost <Joe_Frost@mh.blyth.com>
From: Mike Metlay <metlay@atomiccity.com>