Re: [microsound] pop music

[david turgeon <david.t@xxxxxxxx>]

> I am curious about the other Ritornell discs... can anyone tell me about
> the Stillupsteypa, Achim Wollscheid, and Autopoieses releases?

if you liked the roberts album, you should like wollscheid's.  on the
whole it's harsher & lyric-less :) but the palette is similar.  from the
notes i gather it's actually a 'mix cd' though a mix of what, i'm not
sure.  someone told me they heard some pansonic in the mix, wouldn't
know myself...  i believe wollschied simply layers tons of stuff
together at the same time & probably fucks around the sound a bit while
he's at it.  still, on the whole it's as varied (more so than roberts'
cd) & solid as anything you'd expect from someone related to the
selektion stable.

the stillupsteypa i'll have to check out again; my initial impression
was a bit mild; but since then i have heard their track on clicks+cuts
which made me a lot more curious about their work.  this one seemed to
play in the usual super-minimal buzzes & glitches playground.  &
autopoieses, well, i haven't even seen that release anywhere on the
shelves.  the mille plateaux cd 'la vie à noir' is amazing though; raw
samplings, minimal layering & dsp, & a big focus on process-as-music (an
interesting variation from the frequent process-obscured-into-music &
the dreaded (to me) music-irrelevant-were-it-not-for-process).  it's
also very jazz, & very warm.  a great, comfortable listen.

anyway, regarding my original question about pop & microsound.  i
appreciate the answers, but i'm surprised that there have been so few, &
that i have heard (or heard of) most of them.  also, they are not quite
what i'm looking for.  dean roberts' vocals are still fairly abstract if
we except the brian eno cover.  fennesz' _plays_ is nice but what it
really does is obfuscate pop music, not poppify obfuscated music; if you
catch my drift.  same (i suppose) with lb, though i haven't heard the
album.  as for dat politics, i haven't heard it yet but i suppose that
may be closer to what i have in mind.  what i _would_ like to see is a
band like pram, but with microsonic instrumentation.  listening to the
new (& excellent, btw) sonic youth cd _nyc ghosts & flowers_ tells me
that there is possibility for minimal tonality progression in vocals &
melodies (thus, compatible with microsonic concerns) in a fairly, well,
pop/songy universe.  so both worlds aren't that far apart, i just get
the feeling that they haven't been connected yet.

david