Violet Noise: 07
Steamroom turns 50, Taylor Swift drops title track from new album R Plus Seven, and more!
“You don’t need to be a musician to make a tape.” - Don Buchla
Hi everyone. My name is Sam Tornow. Welcome to the seventh edition of Violet Noise, a bi-weekly newsletter/gathering place for all things experimental music, focusing on curation rather than criticism.
It’s great to be writing an issue of Violet Noise again after a refreshing week off. Apologies in advance, this one contains multiple references to The San Francisco Tape Music Center and its members. I just finished reading David W. Berstein’s The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde, which I cannot recommend enough. Who knows, maybe there’s an SFTMC-themed issue in the future.
For now, though, below is your bi-weekly platter of experimental music videos, new and old music, and some relevant music writing. Speaking of which, if you enjoy Violet Noise, you might enjoy two recent Bandcamp pieces I wrote: “The Wall-Shaking Delights of Stockholm’s Experimental Drone Scene,” and “How 311’s Nick Hexum and George Clanton Soundtracked 2020’s Lost Summer.”
If you haven’t yet, I recommend following @VioletNoiseNews on Twitter to stay 100% up to date on new issues, scheduling changes, experimental music tweets, etc.
Lastly, feel free to invite any friends or enemies to subscribe. I’m happy to do this for any amount of readers, however, part of the reason for Violet Noise’s existence is to shine one more light, no matter how small, on the artists who are often snubbed by Spotify and YouTube algorithms and the mainstream music press.
Let’s get into it.
The Media Lab
A legendary debut
One week after The Rolling Stones made their SNL debut, a small, relatively unknown group of hazmat suit-wearing art school guys from Akron, Ohio, showed up on the same program and covered the British Invaders’ most famous song. They had one question for the families gathered around their televisions: Are We Not Men?
They are Devo!
Sender’s Smile
In 1962, composer and co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center Ramon Sender first performed “The Tropical Fish Orchestra,” a semi-generative piece for four instruments. In it, musicians decide what to play, and how to play it, based on the movements of fish inside the tank. While not a complete performance, here’s a nicely shot snippet of a performance from members of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, with a smiling Sender in attendance. If you’re interested in the specifics, here are the directions for the piece.
For Mort Garson and the People Who Love Him
Mort Garson’s widely-loved 1976 record Plantasia, originally recorded on the Moog Modular System, has gained a massive legion of plant-loving fans thanks in part to a recent reissue. Adding fuel to the fan fire, Moog has released footage of its tribute to Garson at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden last year, paired with a serene video featuring the sounds of the electronic musician Patricia.
“New” music
“New” Doesn’t Stop at The Next #NewMusicFriday
steamroom 50 by Jim O’Rourke
Dear Jim,
Thank you, and congratulations on 50 installments of the steamroom series. Thank you for sharing these intimate, unceremonial recordings with us for the past seven years. And, although I know you’d shy away from the pomp and circumstance, I think 50 installments of any series deserves a simple congratulations. 50, with its signature steamroom structureless form and floating sounds from your serge synths, is one of your finest yet.
Here’s to another 50.
FFO: Taylor Deupree, Sawako, Early Oval, Brian McBride, Claire Rousay, More Eaze, C. Lavender, Long Walks, Doing Things Because You Like Doing Them
Listen to/purchase steamroom 50 on Bandcamp here.
Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) by Jon Hassel
Few artists have created a large body of work with as much sonic cohesion as Jon Hassel. The trumpeter and electronic musician has gained fame with his fourth world music and collaborations with David Byrne, Brian Eno, and more. Seeing Through Sound is the follow-up to 2018’s Listening to Pictures, a reined in the record that continued to build on the genre Hassel has become known for championing. Sonically, Seeing Through Sound doesn’t stray far from past Hassell records, but, as most of his works do, it continues to flesh out what Fourth World — a genre tag that’s often used aesthetically with no real connection to or effort put into the ideology behind it — sounds like.
FFO: Brian Eno, David Byrne, Robert Fripp, Visible Cloaks, Laraaji, Harold Budd, Susumu Yokota
Listen to/purchase Seeing Through Sound (Pentimento Volume Two) on Bandcamp here.
RADIOS by Casey Anderson (A Wave Press)
A step in-line with what John cage accomplished with Imaginary Landscape no. 4, RADIOS is a collection of semi-generative of material from the avant-garde composer Casey Anderson. For the RADIOS performances, the musicians have no score and one direction: all tune to the same frequency that’s half static, half music. When that happens, the piece ends. Performers can take as much time as they want to search the radio waves. They may not even move a dial.
Throughout the four tracks of RADIOS, pop music and static intermingle and create a truly difficult, albeit rewarding listening experience. Identifying what’s happening at a given time feels as much a game as it does attentive listening.
FFO: John Cage, Il Gruppo Di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Splice Girls, The Residents, Noah Creshevsky, Luigi Nono, Getting Angry While Thinking About Girl Talk
Listen to/purchase Radios on Bandcamp here.
Old Data in a New Machine Vol. 1 by Vein.FM (Closed Casket Activities)
Any metal record with chopped up amen breaks in it is good by me, and Vein.FM has been sharpening up those slicing skills for years. While Old Data in a New Machine Vol. 1 is a collection of demos and remixes from the Boston-based, hardcore punk band, it’s difficult to predict that based purely on sound. Data has some of the best Vein.FM cuts, and that’s high praise for a band that’s put out records such as Errorzone, Self-Destruct, and Terrors Realm.
As good as the originals are, though, the Crooked Jaw remix of “doomtech” (starts at 13:35 in the above video) stands alone as the star, front, and center, with a fury that rivals the Metalheadz and junglists of yore.
If you don’t often enjoy harsh vocals and/or metal in general, this release isn’t for you, and the jungle stylings probably won’t make up for your dislikes. This one is for the hardcore kids.
FFO: Hella, NAH, Machine Girl, Five Star Hotel, Show Me The Body, Jesus Piece, Goldie, The iTunes Interface, Black Hoodies, Owning Multiple Pairs of Vans
Listen to/purchase Old Data in a New Machine Vol. 1 on Bandcamp here.
odra by kmru
Joseph Kamaru, better known as KMRU, a sound artist based in Nairobi, Kenya, is one of the many rising stars of the East African experimental scene. odra, his final release before his full-length, Peel, which came out a less than a month later, is a reminder to all of us to stop ignoring what's going on musically in places that aren't the United States and Western Europe.
Clocking in at barely over 10-minutes, odra feels as impermanent as it sounds. Nondescript synthesizers pass like a gentle wind over field recordings of birds. KMRU's musical prowess comes into play later, as he builds these delicates sounds up, eventually stacking several oscillators on top of each other for the occasional powerful synth swell, giving brief bursts of color to the otherwise gray sonic space. After the build, and you begin to settle in, the EP ends, and you start it over again.
Listen to/purchase odra on Bandcamp here.
FFO: DJ Healer, LF58, Basic Channel, Jay Glass Dubs, Marja Ahti, Metal Preyers
All The Time By Jessy Lanza (Hyperdub)
(I wrote about Jessy Lanza’s wonderful new release in Tone Glow. Check it out here.)
FFO: Laurel Halo, Kate NV, Kelly Lee Owens, DJ Python, Beatrice Dillion, Eris Drew, Putting On Your Own Headphones At The Party, Changing Your Relationship Status To “It’s Complicated”
Listen to/purchase All The Time on Bandcamp here.
Rytme Og Drone III | 節奏與嗡鳴三 by Gong, Gong, Gong (Losesless Digital)
FFO: Earth, Bill Orcutt, The Necks, Sun City Girls, OOIOO, Oren Ambarchi, Supersilent, Found Footage, Smoking a Cigarette In The Saloon Doorway, Poker
Listen to/purchase Rytme Og Drone III | 節奏與嗡鳴三 on Bandcamp here.
Blue Rise by Quicksails (Hausu Mountain)
FFO: Mukqs, Dolphins Into The Future, Steve Hauschildt, Emeralds, Celer, C418, Disasterpeace, The Sample & Hold Feature, Modulargrid.net, Fairy Lore, Drinking From the Fountain of Youth
Listen to/purchase Blue Rise on Bandcamp here.
Species by Bing & Ruth (4AD)
FFO: Stars of the Lid, Claude Debussy, The Dead Texan, Windy and Carl, Biosphere, Early Oneohtrix Point Never, 2 8 1 4, Shuttle358, Chihei Hatakeyama, Kranky Records, Being Kranky
Listen to/purchase Species on Bandcamp here.
HUMAN ERROR CLUB by HUMAN ERROR CLUB
FFO: black midi, Girl Band, Horse Lords, Shellac, Oxbow, Battles, Hella, Melt-banana, Dancing To Rock Songs, MIDI-Trumpet Farts, Sega Games, Crate Digging, LSD, Ken Kesey
Listen to/purchase HUMAN ERROR CLUB on Bandcamp here.
And The Birds Flew Overhead by Mary Lattimore & Elysse Thebner Miller (Three Lobed Recordings)
FFO: Kelly Moran, Sarah Davachi, Bibio, Field Works, Celer, Bjork, Alice, Florist, Emily Sprague, r beny, Amulets, Setting Up Scarecrows, The Sound Of Straw Crunching Under Your Feet While Birds Sing In The Distance
Listen to/purchase And The Birds Flew Overhead on Bandcamp here.
Relevant
“Old” Music
There’s Always More
Glass by Ryuichi Sakamoto & Alva Noto (2018)
In 2017, longtime collaborators Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto teamed up once again for an ode to Phillip Johnson’s Glass House, located in New Canaan, Connecticut, in the form of their record Glass. Made up almost entirely by sounds taken while Sakamoto and Noto “played” the house, the record is a beautiful tribute to minimalism across multi-dimensional art forms. Above is a gorgeous live performance of the duo inside the house, which demonstrates how their techniques for getting sound out the building.
Silver Apples of The Moon by Morton Subotnick (1967)
The release of Morton Subotnick’s Silver Apples Of The Moon is easily one of the most impactful and important events in experimental and synthesizer music history, bar none. Apples is the first electronic record ever to be commissioned by a recording company, and it’s also the first full album to be recorded with the Buchla Model 100, a massive step forward in synthesizer technology, which Subotnick helped design alongside Don Buchla.
Silver Apples of the Moon and Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach (1968) — a record of Bach recordings played on a Moog Synthesizer — also beautifully illustrate the landscape of West Coast vs. East Coast synthesis in the late '60s and early '70s. Bach, is composed completely with the Moog to drum up commercial interest, particularly in rock groups, while Apples, was made with the Buchla and aimed at creating new, experimental sounds showcasing the future potential of the instrument. The chaotic, blippy sounds and washes of noise of the Apples are light years ahead of other records from ‘67. With Subotnick’s help, The Buchla proved it’s near endless capabilities and solidified Don Buchla’s desire for experimentalism rather than commercial success.
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Recommended Reading
Mariana Timony wrote about the future of music journalism (in an actually interesting way) for her Weird Girls newsletter.
Jes Skolnik wrote about gatekeeping, the danger of celebrities, and more for The Parts of a Body.
Miles Bowe wrote about a collection of experimental music for his wonderful Acid Test Bandcamp Daily column.
Peter Margasak let us know all about experimental rock music in Rio De Janeiro for Bandcamp Daily.
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