Trud s poslušanjem #1

“Premiere of Russell Haswell’s A Horde of Flies Feast on a Rotting Pheasant Carcass and Electroswat. Recordings made in the field (‘near-field’ & ‘direct-contact’ + ‘artificial worldizing’). With installation by Urbanomic. Russell Haswell is an internationally-acclaimed sound artist and recipient of a Prix Arts Electronica Award for Digital Music for his Live Salvage 1997-2000.

"Recorded While It Actually Happened, Cassette only release, ed.200, Tochnit Aleph [Berlin] TA089 March 2009.”

Boring! “Recorded While It Actually Happened”….. as opposed to when exactly gentlemen? Why didn’t they just write “Pretentious People Unite + Date/Time/Location”? A friend of mine called it “music for people who can’t even play instruments badly”. So what divides this form of talentless showboating and dead-end academia from electronic creations like those on An Imaginary Country?

One elemental difference is musicality. Chord changes, however subtle and however buried by hiss, resonant frequencies and drone, are vital to the compositions found here. Without them they would just be textures, a book of carpet samples. Then again, there are probably people out there who collect books of carpet samples. The chord changes introduce imagery, emotion and progression to the densely packed frequencies.

This one is too much for me; the density causes a feeling of panic.

There seems to be a divide between people who call themselves sound artists, and people who call themselves electronic musicians. On the sound art side there seems to be an investment in the idea that one shouldn’t need music to find sound interesting. I feel that this statement instantly falls down. Why would you go to a small room to listen to a field recording when there are interesting, complex and beautiful sounds occurring everywhere on this planet? We can find them for ourselves; we do not require an artist to slightly twist them or claim ownership of them in order to make them exciting.

The writing which surrounds the genre seems to try and create a wall of academia, impervious to accusations that might highlight an ‘Emperors New Clothes’ situation keeping the whole show on the road. I don’t believe my resistance to this music is purely due to unfamiliarity, or my inability to conceive of how the sounds are made.

Put simply: Why do people listen to records like this?"

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Vzeto iz neke recenzije plošče Tima Heckerja - An Imaginary Country (tukaj):

Muzikalíja bo v dveh delih razgrnila namig truda s poslušanjem, le zakaj?

Poslušamo muzike:

NATHAN MCLAUGHLIN: The Refrigirator is Emotional

(Senufo Editions, 2012)

Senufo Editions

RUSSELL HASWELL: Recorded While It Actually Happened 

(Tochnit Aleph, 2009)

Tochnit Aleph

SISSY SPACEK: Grisp

(Gilgongo Records, 2011)

Gilgongo Records