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Re: [microsound] globe & mail article



Again as I stated earlier I thini russel smith is a pompous dork whos 
educated writitng should be religated to that of the same pages as the ann 
landers coloum... that article acctually pissed me off and I wrote a 
responce to to editor telling then next time the should find someone who 
knows some thing about it befor making them and the writer look like an 
ass hole...
neil..


On Sun, 9 Jun 2002, Michael Greenwood wrote:
> man should choose.  What does Neil (naw) think of all this?  Should I
> applaud.  Are records flying off the shelves?
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Michael Greenwood (bad mood day)
> 
> Kerry Uchida wrote:
> 
> > >From globeandmail.com, Saturday, June  8, 2002
> >
> > >From high art to the music of liposuction
> >
> > RUSSELL SMITH
> >
> >  A California group called Matmos makes pieces of music entirely out of
> > the
> > recorded sounds of plastic surgery being performed. A British technician
> >
> > called Matthew Herbert makes dance music entirely out of the sound of a
> > McDonald's meal being unwrapped and consumed. They are both part of a
> > trend
> > sometimes known as "glitch," which is music made without any
> > instruments,
> > entirely of found sounds, which are then arranged into musical patterns.
> >
> > Glitch is primarily about what fun can be had with samplers and
> > computer-editing programs, but it is also about bridging the gap between
> > pop
> > music and conceptual art.
> >
> > Matmos, a nerdy white male duo from San Francisco, has released a number
> > of
> > albums of jangling, moody tunes, made from sounds like those of a
> > balloon
> > being stroked and twisted, or of a needle hitting the run-out groove of
> > a
> > vinyl record (clever, that one, eh?). Their last album, A Chance to Cut
> > Is a
> > Chance to Cure, is, variously, the music of real liposuction, laser eye
> > surgery, a rat's cage being plucked and bowed. One track is "composed
> > entirely from sounds generated while measuring the galvanic response of
> > Martin's skin to a constant flow of electricity."
> >
> > Matthew Herbert, who has gone by the names Radioboy and Doctor Rockit,
> > has
> > released an album called The Mechanics of Destruction, which has more
> > conventional rhythms, but is even more conceptual: His is a
> > Marxist-antiglobalist music that recycles the sounds of corporate
> > products.
> > Each track (which can be heard at
> > http://www.themechanicsofdestruction.org)
> > comes with a little essay explaining the wrongdoings of its originators:
> > the
> > music made of Kraft cheese slices is about GM Food's assault on the
> > developing world; the piece made of an Air Max shoebox is about Nike
> > sweatshops; the pieces sampled entirely from Henry Kissinger's speeches
> > need
> > little explanation. Herbert adds, in one of his many polemics: "I also
> > derived great pleasure from consuming these omnipotent products in ways
> > that
> > they weren't designed for. I didn't drink the Coke, watch the TV or eat
> > the
> > Big Mac. In part then, it's a chance to reclaim these products that have
> >
> > filled the world's landfill sites with non-biodegradable plastics and
> > people's stomachs with less than healthy food. It's also a journey of
> > rubbish, turning shit into music, the temporary into permanence, and the
> >
> > identical into the unique."
> >
> > It's important, in the work of Matmos and Herbert, and in that of all
> > the
> > similar practitioners (there are lots out there right now: Find links to
> >
> > several on Herbert's sites), that the original sounds have been made
> > unrecognizable. You have to read the notes to tell what they are. In
> > this,
> > the work resembles gallery conceptual art, which is utterly
> > uninteresting in
> > itself: It is only interesting when its process or its genesis is
> > explained.
> > This is what most people find so problematic about conceptual art, and
> > yet
> > it's precisely the point: All you need to appreciate it is to read the
> > artist's statement tacked to the gallery wall.
> >
> > Hence the manifestoes and essays behind every one of Herbert's Web
> > sites. He
> > explains the use of unrecognizable "real" sounds with this problematic
> > but
> > interesting assertion: "Music has usually been about representation but
> > in
> > the age of the sampler we can capture the actuality of that which
> > indicates
> > existence: noise."
> >
> > Both of these bands come out of dance-club culture; both groups have
> > worked
> > as DJs making conventional dance music. And there have been several
> > pop-culture precursors to current glitch music, industrial bands like
> > Einsturzende Neubauten who turned the noise of pre-electronic machinery
> > into
> > tunes. This band, which was popular in the 1980s, once famously attached
> >
> > microphones to one band member's body and then beat him; the resulting
> > recording provided the percussion track on one song.
> >
> > But I think, interestingly, the most important root of this trend comes
> > from
> > high art. Herbert admits his debt to the grandfather of all such
> > found-music
> > experiments, John Cage, who was trying to record the noise around him as
> >
> > early as the 1930s. (In 1939, Cage wrote, "Percussion music is
> > revolution.
> > Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to 19th-century music.
> > Today
> > we are fighting for emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our
> >
> > ears, we will hear freedom.")
> >
> > Herbert's manifestoes also refer to the Cage-influenced musique concrcte
> >
> > practitioners of the 1950s, the intellectual orchestral school that
> > included
> > Varese and Stockhausen. They were the first to include the taped sounds
> > of
> > factory noise in orchestral concerts. Herbert also refers to the Marxian
> >
> > French intellectual Jacques Attali, whose seminal 1976 tract Noise: The
> > Political Economy of Music first linked the use of random noise (in
> > experimental "free jazz") to an ideological stance.
> >
> > Matmos's obsession with plastic surgery also echoes the work of the
> > French
> > artist Orlan, who has had her face reconstructed several times as live
> > art,
> > and who was in turn influenced by the self-mutilating performance
> > artists of
> > the 1970s such as Chris Burden.
> >
> > These were once arcane avant-gardisms; they are still used by
> > conservatives
> > as examples of how loony and out of touch modern art is. Now pop music
> > has
> > exactly the same intellectual preoccupations, and they make sense to a
> > dancing crowd.
> >
> > That highbrow influence on youthful dance-club culture -- 25 or even 50
> > years later -- is evidence that the fringe of art always eventually
> > becomes
> > commonplace. Which is more evidence that we should take it seriously.
> >
> > --
> >
> > Kerry Uchida
> > Vancouver,Canada
> >
> > "Sounds don't belong to human beings,
> > in the same way as nature itself does
> > not belong to them.  Sound Ambience is
> > part of nature, and the composer only
> > needs to make listening to it possible." -John Cage
> >
> > Now Playing:
> >
> > DJ Aural---- http://www.mp3.com/DJAural
> >
> > Coming Soon:
> >
> > Technomorph-- http://www.technomorph.com
> > Morpheus Project- http://www.morpheusproject.tv
> >
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> 
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