Re: [microsound] some thoughts on lo-fi improvisation

[Joshua Maremont <thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>entirely impossible a generation earlier.  But what happens when
>electronic music is removed from the context of the high-tech and placed
>in the realm of the lo-fi?  When electronic signals, originating from a

What happens?  One moves from one musical ghetto to another.  The
lo-fi/lo-tech approach you have described - and here I mean not to
discourage your new efforts but rather to suggest that you are not
entirely alone in considering them - is in evidence in little pockets of
musical marginalia, but it seems to occur below the radar of most
hype-generating structures and to be created by people who neither make
music nor communicate on line.  Nevertheless, the music you have described
does exist over just our ghetto wall, and much of it has found its way
into my favorites of the last few years.  To rattle off a few likely
suspects:  Maeror Tri, Tesendalo, Klangwart, Mika Vainio, Stars of the
Lid, Troum, Klood, Dual, Omit, Multer, earlier Zoviet-France, and the 7"
vinyl label Drone.  There are also the older examples, such as Kluster 
and Taj-Mahal Travellers.  Much of this music is released on cassette,
vinyl, and CD-R, and as it co-opts neither rave-flyer graphics nor studied
academic austerity it will generally be consigned to the experimental or
industrial sections of the record shop, if not simply to complete
obscurity.  But there are online catalogs - Anomalous and Manifold in US,
Staalplaat in Nederland - and shops (for example Rioux's, Aquarius, or
Amoeba) as well as the always informative "Vital" published by our list
member Frans.  Please put the ideas you have posted to use, and add to
this little world of strange sound.  Softsynths and fast computers are
fine, after all, but there is more to life - and to experimental music -
than the choice between Reaktor and MSP.  That said, I will admit that I
cannot wait for my new version of of the former to arrive.

np - "Peace, Love & Poetry:  Asian Psychedelic Music"

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