re: [microsound] critical - close open close - question

[stephan mathieu <sssst@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> Along these lines I would like to mention another recent acquisition, 
> Heroin by Stephan Mathieu and Ekkehard Ehlers. Parts of this are 
> great, but I do not find the "covers" or treated versions of Guaraldi 
> and others very interesting... in fact I find them kind of annoying. 
> I think I understand the suggestion of memory, the haze of 
> recollection and distortion of time and reproduction... and I am 
> quite intrigued by the idea in doing "covers" of 
> performances/recordings, even experimented with it myself... but 
> those here seem a little flat to me. One thing I've observed about 
> this sort of processing is that if I am familiar with the originals I 
> tend to not enjoy the treatment as much, but if I am not familiar 
> with the source material I can find it more engaging (i.e. Ehlers' 
> invalidObject EP, which I love!). I guess, for me, it has been much 
> the same with samples... when I recognize the source I often feel it 
> was used poorly (though, of course, sometimes it DOES work!). Again, 
> my primary aim is not to criticize directly, I am very curious about 
> other folks thoughts on this.
> 
> Can anyone (Stephen?) offer me some insight into/thoughts on this issue?

hi
sorry for this answer took me awhile -
the tracks on heroin you mentioned and the whole material on frequencyLib 
is very much about 'not doing', not taking too much control of the 
material. instead i wanted 
to leave the songs alone with the software i was using (mainly argeiphontes 
lyre and soundhack) and in most cases i took the results 'as is'. for 
frequencyLib i was working with samples in the classical (james brown) 
sense of the word for the first time. its an hommage to the music in the 
back of my head and i was looking for a way to process the original 
material in a way that doesnt go too far away from the sources. when ekki 
and me met to record heroin i was just involved in this process of feeding 
my laptop with top 500 hits. i gave some of my results to him, asking if he 
wanted to finish them but ekki said that they where already finished.
they are no cover versions but music about music.
hope this helped
 - stephan