| rrr |
. |
Neue
Kraft Neues Werk
"SPOKEN WORDS"
: Chris Korda Ð Terre Thaemlitz
Thaemlitz and korda talk about
Music, activism and the social impact of sound. =====================================================
ACADEMISM / ACTIVISM / DJING / COMPOSING =====================================================
Chris Korda Yes I did study musical theory. [
...]. In general my music has come from a completely
different approach than is conventional in this electronic
music world. Most people who make electronic music nowadays
come from a tradition of being DJ's, as opposed to being
classical composers and so forth as was customary in
the 1960's. So they bring to their work the sense of
fashion, of pop culture, mixing records in a party spirit.
There's a trashy tone to it, that's mostly sample based.
They sample other people's work so it's quite a decadent
culture, artistically. I bring a much more formal approach.
My background is either straight composition, voice
leading, traditional harmony and then many years of
study of jazz theory. I actually taught guitar for a
while and played in various jazz fusion bands and so
forth. I played in a psychedelic rock band and so I
have a very deep sense of harmony and chord music theory,
which I think influences my music quite a bit more than,
for example, pop culture or listening to other people's
records and so forth.Terre
Thaemlitz In 1986 I moved from Missouri to
New York to attend art studies at the Cooper Union School
of Art in New York City. and You know when I first moved
out I had these great aspirations of being a painter
and all this kind of Modernist bullshit. But the context
of the school itself was like really regressive and
I did end up studying a lot of cultural studies there
and cultural theory but the school itself was really
resistant to it. I finished my degree basically by just
turning in placards and tshirts and other things that
were designed in relation to activist work that I was
doing with my roommate at the time. It was around that
same time when I started Djing Deep House as part of
a benefits for Act Up New York and stuff like this...
and then ultimately in some of the Midtown transsexual
clubs and stuff. For me it wasn't about connecting that
music to my art studies or the cultural theory in fact
it was kind of the opposite, it was like I wanted something
that was totally getting away from academia. Terre Thaemlitz
The Queer community was very involved in House culture
and a lot of what was going on in New York's House scene
at that time was coming out of the Latina and African
American Queer community [ ...] the way that I actually
began producing music came out a weird collapse of all
these factors at the same time I had a collapse in my
interest in what was going on in my studies. I was living
in the East Village where a lot of the stuff was coming
from and I kind of had my own issues of disfranchisement
from the main caucauses of Act Up which were very gay
white male dominated. I had this kind of activist burn
out stuff going on with the HIV Aids activism and the
Womens Health Care ...so all of these things just led
me to this point where I felt like my life was too divided
. I was too fractured between different kind of political
communities and in some way I just wanted to do something
that was just totally stupid and masturbatory and you
know... what what could be more masturbatory than just
turning to my Kraftwerk records or something you know
? Terre Thaemlitz I don't know, you know how art school
always seems to trace this linage, this linear history
of Modern Art right and it makes art students kind of
go through from Realism, to Impressionism to Abstraction
and you have to kind of live this art history and then
get to the 20th Century where then that's your chance
to to shine or some bullshit. When everybody was kind
of doing Cubism I got diverted into Constructivism and
I really got into a lot of the writing around it and
which was of course was very political oriented and
social oriented and so for me that was really like a
big break with my interest in in art. =====================================================
LABELS / DISTRIBUTION =====================================================
Chris Korda Every time the sampling technology
or the synthesizing technology changes everyone immediately
adopts the new sound. And so we get this phenomenon
in music that I call; flavour of the month. I had great
difficulty selling my music in the UNITED STATES because
people would just tell me plainly that they couldn't
sell it because it wasn't the flavour of the month.
It wasn't what the kids were listening to right now.
I think that's very frightening. This is very sick.
Terre Thaemlitz I started
my label Comatonse Recordings in 1993 and the name is
a kind of play on on the word 'comatose' and 'tones'
. Each release can be a totally different genre from
Electroacoustic to Deep House to Jazz and I think that
distributors are lazy ultimately and they want a label
to have a solid identity that they can just plug into
certain stores, they don't want to have to really listen
to each release and figure out where it's going to fit
if it doesn't fit into the the machinery of their spreadsheets.
That's also something that's been a big part of my own
work which's been on the one hand insisting on releasing
music in the marketplace as opposed to through academia
or ... through you know grants or government funding
this sort of thing. At the same time almost all of my
projects incorporate some critique of the electronica
marketplace and of the music marketplace in general
so... you know that kind of 'biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you'
sense of critique Comatonse Recordings kind of operates
as a larger umbrella for everything I do I mean basically
my work through ÒMille PlateauxÓ and other labels is
licensed through Comatonse Recordings and I also do
like um... different design projects like samriot.com
which is my kind of like my Hello Kitty inspired portraits
of Karl Marx and this sort of thing and also you know
my video work and things like this they all kind of
fall under the umbrella of Comatonse Recordings [ ...]
My idea in calling it Comatonse was to make a reference
to a comatonse state as a kind of passive-aggressive
form of um... you know kind of imposed relaxation in
a way its kind of the trapped body in a state of paralysis
in a way and also that reference of paralysis is also
a joke about Modernity and the paralysis of say Sartonian
logic and this sort of thing. Chris Korda If
you turn on the radio, on any station, you always hear
this pah, pah, pah, pah and there's no reason for it.
If you listen to the music of other countries you don't
even hear it. I could name 3 or 4 countries easily where
there's no tradition of the backbeat at all. INDIA is,
of course, the best example. It's totally normal for
them to play in 15 and a 1/2 or some crazy timing. It
doesn't seem strange to them. I think it's something
that needs to be encouraged. This is how I like to work
and the same in live music as well, when we have music
back in BOSTON, I play music with people, and I'm always
trying to get them to play odd rhythms. Everybody always
4, 4, 4. In fact I've made a vow to try not to make
any more music that has a backbeat. I really hate this.
It gets on my nerves. I'm very interested in especially
prime number based music. For example, the second track
on the CD 'SIX BILLION HUMANS' is called 'BUY'. And
this track is typical of the special software tools
that I have evolved in order to make this type of music,
where the main rhythm is in 5, then the secodary rhythm
is in 11 and then in addition there's a percussion rhythm
of...Let's see, there's 5 and there's 11 and then there's
7 on top of that. So now we have the inter-relation
of three different prime numbers. If you do the math
it comes out that it really only wraps around very rarely.
Plus on top of that we have 4, the regular 4 beat. ...
That means you actually design the entire form of the
composition, as in where the big changes will be, around
the crossing of these different prime number or odd
based rhythms. This is really good. This is what I really
like. I found that conventional sequencers and so forth
were simply not capable of doing this in many cases.
For example, with something like CUBASE or whatever
you can't even make the links of the loops different.
You're choice is either to have all the loops loop at
the same point or to have to construct the entire song
beforehand as if you were sculpting it out of stone.
I can't work this way. It's not acceptable. Instead
we evolved special tools over a period of several years
so that it was possible to have all the loops running
in all different time signatures and then compose with
them in real time. =====================================================
AMBIENT MUSIC =====================================================
Terre Thaemlitz Brian Eno described his ambient
music through hindsight as creating a type of harmony
within an environment but actually I'm kind of more
intersted in how his take on ambient music started more
from a traditional Modernist association to paralysis
and nausea and this sort of thing. His story about coming
up with his idea for 'Discret Music' while he was hospitalised
with a broken leg I believe, and basically he was unable
to um ...to raise the volume on a radio that was left
in the room and so... he just had to endure for hours
or you know, let's imagine it was weeks with this borderline
volume that really inverted the figure-ground relationship
between music and environment ... Chris Korda
For me, the concept that was interesting that came from
that whole period is the notion of (a) slow organic
development in music. Instead of there being sharp edged
changes, there's a kind of slow undulating change. After
five minutes you think, okay is it changing? Yes it's
definitely changing but you're not exactly sure when
it changed. Terre Thaemlitz
For me the big shift in ambient music came in the early
80s when Hosono published ÒGlobualÓ along with the first
release of his dual label of nonstandard music and nomad
music. Basically within the the introductory text to
Globual [ ...] he talks about taking Brian Eno's concept
of ambient music and applying it to the global dancefloor
he uses this kind of term 'global dancefloor' and this
was like eight years before the Orb and so for me that
is a really interesting gesture to take this type of
music that has rather isolationist tendencies if anything,
and apply that to a sense of community a sense of society.
And so for me ... having that kind of social connection
within ambient music is really important [ ...] =====================================================
SPOKEN WORD / SOUND IS THE MESSAGE =====================================================
Terre Thaemlitz All of my projects
my Electroacoustic projects do incorporate some sort
of spoken word. I do try an include within the sounds
then very specific audio sources. For example ÒLove
for SaleÓ (mille Plateaux) starts with a track ÒTaking
Stock in Our PrideÓ which is a montage of sound bites
of product placement from a telecast of the San Fransico
Gay Lesbian and Transgendered Pride Parade and basically
since that project ÒLove for SaleÓ deals with the commodification
of of gay and lesbian sexualities, um to the exclusion
of other variations and to the exclusion of Queerness
and to the exclusion of gender multiplicity ,I wanted
to open that album with something that was just very
clear-cut and basically put the issue out there in a
very clear way. I mean I have never met anybody who
couldn't then instantly get the most fundamental association
between a commercial marketplace you know the Òpink
economyÓ and the commodification of Gay and Lesbian
sexuality... Ater that point the album becomes much
more abstract and starts to focus on on what I think
... a kind of self-eviserating sound and um which I
associate with Queer identity in terms of um the moment
one identity around gender or sexuality comes into play
there is always something else to kind of undermine
it or betray it. You know the music itself can have
both like can use abstract and vaguery and at the same
time it can use something that is very direct, and I
think that playing these two different aspects off of
each other is what helps to develop content. ===================================
MANIPULATION OF SOUND / SOUND OF MANIPULATION ====================================
Terre Thaemlitz
This is a really important relationship for myself and
I know also for Ultra Red and other people that are
interested in the importance between direct social action
cultural process, and sound manipulation. Chris Korda
I always worry that somehow I'm going to give people
the impression that my music is just somehow like a
carrier signal, and that it's only a medium for propoganda
and this is a gross over-simplification. I believe that,
for example, television is propoganda no matter what
the content is. The function of television specifically,
and media in general, is to give people an image of
how to live. It's an expression of an ideal, that people
turn on the TV and they're reassured and they say, 'Okay,
this is how we will be. We're going to take showers
and drive to work and here's some people eating in restaurant
or watching TV'. Or whatever. It's self-reflexive and
self-perpetuating. I can't change this. Inevitably if
I'm going to create media then I'm also going to be
part of this in some way. I'm also going to be disseminating
propoganda. But I've striven in my work to take control
of this. Instead of saying, 'No no no, my work is not
propoganda', to say, 'Yes, my work is propoganda and
I'm going to be responsible for the content of this
propoganda. So I've striven to put out certain messages
and I think I've been very effective in doing that.
But that's not to say that I don't also create music
which is not political.... It's not like my music is
only a tool to communicate a certain message. There's
a part of me that's also very interested purely in music,
just for human reasons. I'm not a machine either, I'm
also human and so some part of me is not even interested
in politics. There's part of me that's just living for
the here and now, for pleasure and to make beautiful
music. This part of me also, I hope, is represented
in my work. I think more and more now I'm making music
that has no political message at all. ... I think in
the future we'll be looking for music that is perhaps
more musical, less in your face and more concerned with
harmony and with balance, something like this. =====================================================
POP MUSIC / OFF CENTER ==============================
Terre Thaemlitz I don't
have a real resistance per se to lyrics I mean I think
that a lot of times they are really cheap and cheesy
and you know if that's kind of the ingredient you need
in a song then use it. But obviously, you know with
my kind of House oriented and dance oriented things
the're almost always instrumental ... The're just a
very few exceptions like 'Kill all who call me China
doll' with Cho Fan Chan, and 'Sometimes a girl loves
a boy' with Honio and I'm working on a project with
Hoko from 'After Dinner' that will also have lyrics
and follow more kind of a Pop song strategy. I think
that it's just because I missed out on some kind of
fundamental relationship to the love song or something
I kind of take it upon myself to be an emulationalist
of different styles but it seems that I really have
better luck emulating kind of off-centre styles. I kind
of always like to play games for example with the Rubato
Series making these kind of Avantgarde piano solos and
the fag jazz things kind of being about improversational
jazz of course Electroacoustic music with this reference
to an academic history and music concrete. Chris
Korda For this album, 'SIX BILLION HUMANS CAN'T
BE WRONG', I invented a particular vocal technique which
is demonstrated best on 'VICTIM OF LEISURE'. Many people
have asked me how we did this and since so many people
asked me I decided to be obstinate and I tell them,
'You have to figure it out yourself. It's a secret'.
It's really not so hard. It's just a different way of
using a sampler and it creates a unique effect, definitely.
I think it heighten's the meaning of the song. It makes
it seem somehow more emotional. In most cases IÕm working
not so much with modifying the voices. Which is what
people are mostly doing now using Vocoders and so forth.
We're mostly working more with placement. I think of
myself as someone who would have been happy, maybe,
making mosaics in the Roman Empire. I tend to be very
detail oriented and I like to work with placing small
things in a complex relationship. So, for example, in
the original version of 'FLESH DANCE', the vocals actually
form an incredibly complex tapestry. The whole song
is really the relationship of the vocals to one another.
Another example of this would be, on the 'SEX IS GOOD'
EP and the 'GIGILO' EP there's is a track called 'WORLD
OF HURT' which is made entirely of vocals. There's no
other instrument. They form this kind of chord, each
one on it's own note. It's the timing and the flowing
relationship of the words that makes the music. I'm
interested in this technique, definitely. =====================================================
ACADEMISM / DISCOURSE / MEANING OF SOUND =====================================================
Terre Thaemlitz
Speaking of discourse I always have my little texts
that go along with the projects and ... the main reason
why I use kind of academic language in the Electroacoustic
projects is to kind of draw .a relationship to academia
into the commercial marketplace where my cds are sold.
Electroacoustic music and the electronic music community
has a lot of the same problems around definitions of
artistry, male dominance that in some ways parrallel
the visual arts community. When it comes to looking
at the canon of producers we have to look at who follow
this history of music concrete through electroacoustic
into contemporary electronic music today, we don't really
have much inspiration in terms of queer visibility or
transgendered visibility. Although someone like John
Cage is noted as being you know a a an influential electronic
gay composer, his greater influence is probably more
around his silence around issues of sexuality than actually
discussing it openly and of course that element of silence
plays into a lot of his music but for me it is a disempowering
thing .. so you know we're just left with a dry playing
field in terms of how sexuality has moulded this genre
and that's maybe one of my drives for including rather
flatout texts that just say it and get it over, as opposed
to leaving everything up to the realm of ambiguity which
has been the tradition so far so... One of the main
reasons why I incoporate rather elaborate texts describing
the intentions behind my productions is because I don't
rely on sound having some sort of inherent quality to
convey some sort of specific feeling or whatever I mean
the standard musician believes in some sort of universal
vaguery about music related to a genric human condition
this sort of thing. For me that concept of a human condition
a kind of singular homongenising state is also the product
of social learning and it's not really universal. I
mean if you really talk to people about what their interpretation
of music is really about, then you start getting conflicts
so I think that's why a lot of musicians stay away from
talking about their music. I think that it's also important
for producers to be able to talk about their own work.
I think that leaving it up to the press or leaving it
up to critics is really kind of like a coward's way
out . So I don't rely on the sounds having some sort
of inherent meaning. I think that meaning is associative
and in a way that the kind of specific types of music
that I do I mean for example Electroacoustic music is
such a very kind of small specialised field that you
already have parameters set up around discourse and
expectations and this sort of thing.. I try to apply
a transgendered critique to something that is traditionally
very ... male-oriented and also and just conventionally
patriachially academic it is part of my larger interest
in Queer theory which is about recontextualisation and
reappropriation of signifiers instead of trying to set
out to do something totally new.
|
