Re: [microsound] the black, the white, and the Mutek @ Stylus

[dbuchwald <dagmar.buchwald@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nicolas,

interesting mail.  Partly I agree, but then again ...

Nicolas Grenier wrote:

>
>
> What I don't like about techno is it's rythmical previsibility. I think it
> kills the vigor of the listener's mind in order impose him a sonic universe.

I think that depends very much on what sort of techno we are talking about.  I
was referring to tracks by Christian Vogel, Neil Landstrumm, Robert Hood etc.  I
danced to music -- which is basicly repetitive but builds complexities on this
basis of repetition, modulates it.

If you think about african drum rhythms -- there is repetition of course, but on
the other hand, there are polyrhythms overlaying, moiré phenomena of rhythm.  As
I said, sometimes I felt quite lucky to have two hands, arms, two feet, a head
and hips -- because I needed them all to follow the track into its different
directions.

>
> To me, repetitive music seems like a drug, a drug that kills our imagination
> by imprisonning it in a tiny time space (a space in time created by a loop).
> This is not an uninteresting effect at all, I've had 'mystical' rave
> experience too, this feeling is undeniably interesting and can bind people
> together. But what is even more interesting, is to create a complex time
> space (or space time maybe?... in french it's 'espace temps') which exceed
> our comprehension in the immediate; you feel the order, you can't understand
> it now, it defy your judgement and makes the order greater than you. This is
> why I love experimental music, deconstructed music, because the rhythm is
> there, the order is there, but it's complexity exceed your faculties during
> the moment you listen to it and you can only feel it; I love to feel a
> complex rythmical organisation. This is a little bit like a religious
> experience; god is the order that you feel but that you cannont grasp, the
> feeling that there's an order that includes you but that you cannot be
> aware. There is an order exceeding us, our counsciousness cannot assimilate
> everything; feeling this order is a humbling experience that makes us aware
> that there is so much more out for us to make thinkable. Experimental music
> is a way to push the limits of the thinkable, to look deeper into chaos and
> give it a meaning.

I fully agree with you here, I would only add that I had the same experience
with techno (but the techno I danced to was labelled 'experimental techno,'
maybe that's why). And it was the DJ who syncopated the beats, who brought
several tracks into dialogue, overlayed them with each other.  Very complex.  It
was no difference to dance to that sound stream and then go home and listen to
-- let's say -- Autechre.  I would even say that being trained through this
experience of dancing I became more acutely aware of structures, my ears opened;
I had the strong feeling that parts of my brain became involved which had been
dormant for a long time.  And that new awareness helped in listening to
experimental music at home.

Many techno tracks are tools for the DJ, in the same way a pre-composed pattern
on the laptop is a tool for a live set.  If you only listen to one track at
home, of course, it's not very complex.  The complexity builds up through what
the DJ does with it in the live set.  And that's very unique, happens only once.

>
>
> Fascism, authoritarianism, this is mind control by a body of people who lack
> humility, who desperatly want to set rules to the life of people.

I fully agree.  But my experience with the 'grooves' and 'waves' made me more
humble and at the same time instilled me with a certain awe for something
greater than myself.  Precisely because I couldn't control it, but it couldn't
control me either.  As I mentioned in my other mail: it's like a surfer riding a
wave in the ocean: he cannot control it.  He needs a certain respect for the
element, he needs to know it.  The ocean could drown him; he needs to learn how
to negotiate with it, to play with it in a way.

I was very respectful after the first experiences with the musical wave forming
in dancing; it's something special, doesn't happen automatically or all the
time.  It's not like the dumb marching of soldiers; every idiot can march to a
four to the floor beat. They also form a collective body but they just stump
along, all do the same.  That's not what I am talking about at all.  In dancing
everyone did his or her own style and sometimes those styles began to
correspond, to talk with each other, to co-organize; but no one gave up his
style or simply mimicked what the person next to him was doing.  And the balance
was very delicate.  Sometimes it was enough that one person was leaving the
floor and the whole wave dissolved ... back again to individuals moving in their
own worlds.

> Music
> should be the ennemy of this arrogance that grows in us, it should
> extinguish it because it is unjustified and lead to self-destruction. Music
> should make us aware of how unsignificant we really are in the universe and
> by that encourage us to invent a signification for our existence.

Yes, that's what I think too.

>
>
> This is why I'm cautious with repetitive music, I think it can become a
> pathology, a dangerous addiction leading to a kind of psychosis that makes
> us anthropocentric.

I don't understand your conclusion.  Isn't it precisely repetitive music -- for
instance darvishes dancing -- which stimulates religious experiences?  Most
religions use repetitive music in order to stimulate trances and religious
experiences, and these experiences are not anthropocentric but --- theocentric
(or whatever you may call it).

What do you think about early pieces of Steve Reich such as "Music for eighteen
musicians" or "drumming"?  They are highly repetitive.  But aren't they
complex?  I would think they are not all anthropocentric, they make us aware of
durée, of time flowing, take us away from the ego.  So I don't really understand
what you mean with the above said.

> But I hope you understand that I don't hold my views for
> absolute, I respect people who like repetive music and I don't consider them
> like 'sonic junkies', now I just try to be cautious toward music that's too
> repetitive because of the reasons I've tried to explain.
>

Yes, I understood that.  I like both.  I love loops, they give a certain
grounding for me which sets other parts of me free.  You only describe the
limiting of freedom through loops.  But it works two ways.  While the loop
establishes a pattern, a routine, and sets certain parts of me 'at rest', the
other parts can become more free, more active.  (Am I talking nonsense=  I hope
you understand what I mean).

Best,

Dagmar

>
> Cheers,
> Nicolas Grenier
>
> aka Dynamite Bob
> http://www.besonic.com/dnb
>
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