severed heads and you :) (forwarded message)

[Julian Knowles <j.knowles@xxxxxxxxxx>]

taylor deupree <taylor@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> wow, i've been dissed by one of my teenage heroes! :)  (big severed 
> heads fan)... kind of sad he doesn't >understand the genre... 
> especially after releasing some very groundbreaking music back in 
> the day...

taylor,

being a sydney person and having occasional contact with the ex 
severed heads people, i can say this review seems to typify their 
distaste for newer electronic music forms.. its certainly not 
personal!!

some examples..

stephen jones was visibly/audibly impressed by hiaz' nato work with 
farmers manual

Check out this brief for a recent gig curated by Garry Bradbury

> STATIC MUSEUM - Static Museum is an ongoing struggle against utopian 
> technocratic digital hegemony. The events celebrate the variety of 
> technologies available to contemporary sound practitioners, each 
> rich with possibilities and with it's own intrinsic character. 
> Static Museum perpetuates a Revolution of Sound by all available 
> means, by renouncing commonly held notions of redundancy or planned 
> technological obsolescence, ripping the lid off technological 
> elitism. The artists in Static Museum play with a host of musical 
> strategies and generative systems. These are performers obsessed 
> with sonic results, and not just technological processes.

I sense a  strong backlash in here..  'ongoing struggle?, digital 
hegemony?, technological elitism?? WTF? -> perhaps a feeling that 
previous work is being usurped by the new work, which to me is a 
pretty unproductive and pointless concern. I also don't think its 
very 'attractive' for older artists to take these absolute positions. 
That said, i won't deny anyone the right to have a strong position..

i guess what disappoints me is the snide or offhand remarks which are 
made throughout Tom Ellard's review. It seems like most of the 
artists didn't stand a chance... Its pretty childish and to me says 
more about him than the artists he is supposedly reviewing. His 
reference to Eno is rather amusing, particularly as the old boy was 
so prone to nicking ideas himself... The self-conscious and 
egotistical tone of his 'diary' almost made me want to puke...

I was also wondering whether his begrudging ackowledgement of oren 
ambarchi/fennesz/pimmon/rehberg was because 2 of the artists live  in 

the same town! (oren + pimmon)




--
**************************
J u l i a n  K n o w l e s
Lecturer/Co-ordinator Music Technology
Course Co-ordinator Electronic Arts
School of Contemporary Arts (Music), University of Western Sydney
Social Interiors web: http://www.geocities.com/socialinterior