Re: [microsound] microsound vs. DJ culture

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxx>]

dear c,

These are excellent observations and well spoken ..

Q-- 

Although I am wondering why are you comparing "'mainstream' dj practice"
with Stockhausen et al?

Wouldn't a better example be Janek Schaefer with Stockhausen?
Or, Algorithm with Berio?
How about Q-Bert with Mahler?

For certainly Stockhausen is not a "mainstream composer" -- perhaps the
equivalent to "mainstream dj practice" would be Vivaldi..

Stockhausen's Telemusic with John Oswald's Plunderphonics?

There has to be a fair and accurate example from each genre.. each of which
is not a genre at all, per se, but a conceptual differentiation in the
approach to sound.

The tension you speak of in new music may not exist in dj culture for the
reason that this tension holds less meaning in a music originating from
recorded music. Although even then this tension certainly also exists, say,
in remix culture and where this meets dj culture (say Negativland, John
Oswald, also Kid Koala, DJ Danger Mouse, etc). But this tension is not the
primary affect nor effect of a dj set orientated at ritual gathering, for
example, in which the tension is not over the conceptual understanding of
icon and property, but rather in the purely sonic event (which is more
"musical" than Stockhausen, in a sense).

One a tradition _from_ recorded sound (dj culture); the other, with history
and aesthetic categories developed _before_ recorded sound. Of course both
are intraweaved extensively. But to continue with a categorical separation,
dj culture cannot exist sans recordable media. Thus its aesthetic is
developed from recordable media as its conditions of possibility. New music,
while incorporating recorded media, works with an aesthetic inherited from a
history of music grounded in performance by players of specific
bodily-involved instruments. This is only one aspect of difference in
respect to media and technology; there are also socio-political, cultural
differences in the context in which music is made and produced. Dj culture
very much, I think, engages a culture of carnival, which has its own
histories in both European and other cultures. We could also speak of sonic
territory in the birth of djing in Jamaica, the hip-hop ensemble in NYC, the
shamanistic role of the dj in what Maffesoli and Graham St John call
"neo-tribal" cultures, etc.

And each example also loses its status as such: we would have to do so from
the acquisition of two approaches to two histories of sound (two
singularities that are also differential in theme). Just as we recognise
Stockhausen's individuality (by the criteria you propose), we would have to
recognise Q-Bert's, for example; although perhaps should we not consider
Q-Bert from an aesthetic pertaining to that particular themeatic approach?
Ie, to analyse Q-Bert through the complex narratology he engages in hip-hop
(the same could be done with Dj Shadow, which at one point I likened, to
much chagrin from critics, to Proust), but also to the development of unique
skill (his crab-scratch) and forms of scratch-notation. Likewise, Janek
Schaefer has redesigned the turntable instrument while Martin Tetreault has
deconstructed the turntable as apparatus.

This differentiation thus has to approach the criteria you propose at the
end, namely, 

> viz the inability
> of the contemporary subject (consumer and artist) to break through the
> mirror and establish an individual and / or open relation to the world
> of sound.

--> This criterion, however, must be subject to question from the vantage of
dj culture, insofar as the latter proposes _its own_ aesthetic criteria (and
debates, contradictions, paradoxes, etc., "within" its constitutive
boundaries).

best,

    tobias


> b) dj culture: what does the practice of 'recombining' existing musics
> tell us about our culture, especially when we elevate it to the level
> that dj-ing purports to achieve. using other musics in compositions is
> certainly nothing new. a european approach can be found in Mahler and
> later Berio of course (to mention just them) and an american approach is
> Ives. but the way that composers use "found sounds" including "found
> music" has a tension, either through montage that explicitly reveals the
> facticity of the process or through the shock value (for example
> Stockhausen's Telemusic or Hymnen) because of the way it corodes
> established sound-icons. from the [very] little i know about
> "mainstream" dj practice, it seems to me that the re-use of tracks is
> dangerously close to manifesting a cultural problem, viz the inability
> of the contemporary subject (consumer and artist) to break through the
> mirror and establish an individual and / or open relation to the world
> of sound.


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