Musique Concrete: S/D

that maxfield/marxfield/whatever thing about butterflies over the ocean, which i suspect i will like if i ever hear it

dripsody is maybe overrated, but then again i haven't heard it as a warm up to a bjork show (see amateurist thread somewhere)

clipse - grindin

Stockhausen's "Gesang Der Jÿnglinge" is canonical and still pretty cool.

Pierre Henry's "Le Livre des Morts egyptiens" is a marvellously creepy and ritualistic-sounding album in this genre as well.

And, overlooked as an example of musique concrete but still worthwhile, The Beatles' "Revolution Nine", which is so catchy that you can hum parts of it.

Und so weiter/Music Promenade (Wergo, WER 60046) LP
Presque Rien No. 1 (Deutsche Grammophon) LP
Presque Rien no 2/Promenade Symphonique a Travers un Paysage Musical (INA-GRM, HM 38) LP

there's a Presque Rien CD that's great, too.

Stockhausen's stuff isn't really musique concrete, although they may have elements of m.c.

I still like the expansive quality of "Hymnen", I guess it's the first time Stockhausen put together a piece of really epic proportions that actually coheres (closer to a good experimental novel / radio play than anything else Cologne modernism produced). And his gradualism is in full effect, esp. on parts like the Soviet anthem.

Blue Chopsticks, David Grubbs' boutique label via Drag City, have put out a cpl of other Ferrari CDs, not his most MC pieces, more Feldmanesque-orchestral type stuff, but still v. tasty

I don't have it anymore, but I seem to remember that there's lot of good MC-type stuff on that 'Ohm' box set.

There's an interesting review in the new Wire of a recent Bernard Parmegiani event in Australia: "Parmegiani talked of the contrast between concrete and abstract music. He preferred the label 'acousmatic' to 'musique concrete', he said, and the GRM composers were committed to 'acousmatic listening', which ignored the source in order to concentrate on the sound itself." Parmegiani's appearance at ATP in Camber Sands this year was a bit special.

I'd say some of Stockhausen't electronic music is concrete. 'hymnen' and 'gesang' are among those (and Etude too as i recall, where the sound source is a 78 rpm record).

"I Am Sitting..." takes an organic sound source (the voice) and then plays it back through speakers, recording the playback as it sounds in the room where the speakers are situated. The manipulation of the sound occurs organically through all of the acoustical effects of the space itself (eg: certain overtones enhanced/mitigated) as opposed to via electronic devices. However, the electronics (for the playback) are necessary to alter the organic sound source. Musique concrete? I'm not sure.

How would one classify the early Steve Reich tape pieces, where an acoustic sound is played back on tape and allowed to go out of phase? If those are considered concrete works, I would guess that the Lucier would be as well.

ferrari - _danses organiques_, _acousmatrix_, _tautologos_
pierre henry - _le voyage_, _symphonie pour un homme seule_
ilhan mimaroglu - _wings of the delirious demon_ (and most others)

i love all of the early compendiums of electronic/concrete stuff (_panorama de musique concrete_ with schaeffer/henry's early stuff, _musique experimentale_, the limelight ones with the excellent covers).

feeling less alone now thanks

.... but but, I like it!

woo-hoo, one person creating a single thread of gushing personal enthusiasm for LeCaine that instantaneously sinks out of sight now equals 'overrated'. this is a powerful list, huh? (unless you travel in circles of LeCaine-worship that I've missed out on entirely, I do live in a cave...)

I was initially a bit on the 'oh that's cute' side with 'dripsody' until I discovered it was realized in a single night on his hotrod multitrack. hearing him as an early improviser in the concrete world (not unlike Schaeffer's turntable-with-octave-keyboard-control & Ussachevsky's jamming-with-tape-feedback) is the way in to hearing his stuff.

Ferrari's got most of the concrete pieces that I actually throw on for repeated listening. Really impatient for the Mimaroglu reissues, I heard the infinite rising scream at the end of 'to kill a sunrise' once in 1991 and 12 years later I'm still waiting to hear it again... the two CD compilations that are in print don't even begin to hint at those earlier pieces.

Dadaismus: You did not imagine Mimaroglu's Agony;
it's on an album with Cage's Fontana Mix called [get this]
Electronic Music (Turnabout Records). Luciano Berio's
Visage is the other track.

& Maxfield's 'Sine Music (Swarm of Butterflies over the Ocean)' is great, it's on disc one of the 'Ohm' compilation... also search 'Night Music' & that split release with Harold Budd that came out on New World a few years ago.

yeah, i think it's an 'impression after arshile gorky' or some such. he also did the excellent _coucou bazar_ lp after a piece by jean dubuffet - mimaroglu also had the great taste to release an LP or two of dubuffet's music.

Yeah, I've got this album somewhere, that's why I remember it. Is it just me (again) or did Nurse With Wound lift the entire end section of "Visage" for one of their pieces (the same piece that includes large chunks of John Cage's "Credo In Us")? Can't remember the name of the NWW track.

I only have the 'Radio Programme No. 1' disc by Henry Jacobs. It's also great. KPFA FM has always been a prime breeding ground for the Audio Collage. A lot of freeform mixing, and several sections of tape loops made from scrubbing the reels during recording for that squirky timbre = very strange sounds. The best parts are the fake interviews though; this must have been top radio, weirder than Firesign even. The character Shorty Peterstein makes an appearence, the same jazz coolio character Lenny Bruce would do on occasion. There was a later, more widely circulated, equally strange record called 'The Weird, Wide World of Shorty Peterstein', almost no information on line about it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Jacobs had a hand in that as well.

Julio's thread on Bruno Maderna yesterday prompted me to dig out his compilation of 50's-60's electronic works last night, and it is excellent.

I've also been dropping way too much money here: http://www.electrocd.com/ the empreintes DIGITALes label is maintaining a very high standard for such a high release rate.

want to check out that herbert brun!

Tempted to add something by Maderna but instead just bringing to this thread to see if anyone can help me see what else I missed.

1. Walter Ruttman - Weekend (excerpt)
2. Pierre Schaeffer - Etude aux Chemins de Fer
3. Schaeffer / Henry - Symphonie Pour un Homme Seul (excerpt)
4. Vladimir Ussachevsky - Sonic Contours
5. Hugh Le Caine - Dripsody
6. John Cage - Williams Mix
7. Karlheinz Stockhausen - Gesang der Jünglinge (excerpt)
8. Edgar Varèse - Poeme Electronique
9. Iannis Xenakis - Concret PH
10. Tod Dockstader - Electronic Piece No. 8 (excerpt)
11. James Tenney - Collage No. 1
12. Pierre Henry - Variations pour Une Porte et un Soupir (excerpt)
13. Luciano Berio - Visage (excerpt)
14. Bernard Parmigiani - Pulsion-Miroir (1st movement of Violostries)
15. Beatles - Revolution No. 9
16. Glenn Gould - The Idea of North (opening)
17. Luc Ferrari - Presque Rien No. 1 (conclusion)
18. Negativland - A Big 10-8 Place Part One (excerpt)

honorable mentions to Luigi Russolo (he should probably be track #1, but I don't know any of his recordings myself -- open to suggestions), Nono, Maderna, Mimaroglu, AMM, MEV, Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Bayle, etc.

defusing one argument in advance: Stockhausen claims 'Gesang der Jünglinge' is 'electronic'; the subtext being that he also claims to have invented electronic music, and technically the piece is a concrète/electronic hybrid. the defining genre-mixing moment, even, so it goes on the list.

the Negativland was included as a postscript to show the belated influences start to surface in indie pop culture but the Ferrari makes such a beautiful ending it could easily be scuttled, also once you bring them up it's weird not to mention NWW, TG, industrial etc.

you're right though, it may be stretching it.

the technical definition of concrète proclaims no sounds sourced from traditional instruments, which rules out more than a few of these pieces, but schaeffer & henry broke the rules often enough themselves so I went for a bigger picture. no electronic music though.

damn, I edited out the 'other' band I was talking about (MEV). it probably is a reach to assume either band was 'directly' influenced by concrète, many other jazz & free elements are just as if not more important.

Anyway yes Zappa for certain. Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny. Residents seem maybe a bit gratuitous, seeing as I didn't even include Faust, two groups that gained round-the-clock access to their own studios. Residents certainly did studio treatments & manipulations but the accent was on pop collage & songwriting, it doesn't sound like concrète had as big an impact on them as other forms of rock music & live performance.

'Canaxis' is more of a collage, should go on the Plunderphonic Rough Guide, which I will leave to some one else, although that one should also have the Tenney piece, as well as Cage's 'Credo In US'.

(i never said it was good)

(dunno abt juelz and this lil wayne fella tho)

And there's this interview with Dan Warburton from 1998: Interview in Paris Transatlantic Magazine

(Both are linked from a page at the Electronic Music Foundation, but the Other Minds link there is broken.)

Other Minds
Warburton

Even if there are two different realizations of the piece (as there are for the Lucier: the original version from the 70's recorded in a living room and the more popular cleaner sounding version recorded in the 90's) I believe it is still musique concrete. Often musique concrete is described as having a "definitive" performance... but if the instructions for recreation are clear enough (as they are, in Lucier's case) we may have many more "performances".

The problem with the Reich phase tape pieces is that they may actually be realized in a "live" setting if two live tape players are set to go out of sync. Have there been performances like this? Even though you are using musique concrete within the piece (via the tape players) the final realization may be accomplished live.

Once more, this Ann MacMillan album is classic (though I'm afraid I don't own a copy):

http://goodnoise.com/album/Ann-McMillan-Gateway-Summer-Sound-Abstracted-Animal-and-Other-MP3-Download/11072867.html

I swear to God I think Pierre Schaeffer's recording a him twanging a ruler has never been bettered in this genre.

I know what you're getting at but I don't know if I'd go that far. However I do think early/mid 50s Pierre Henry is probably the best stuff he ever did - not that he didn't do great things later.

https://images.45worlds.com/f/ab/various-artists-musique-concrete-ab.jpg

Some of this sounds like the navigation screen on Star Trek.

(I'll get my coat)

But sounding like the navigation screen on Star Trek is a good thing obviously?

Oh yeah..

Francois Bayle, Pierre Schaeffer, Bernard Parmegiani

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/600205435/photo/grm-pierre-schaeffer.webp?s=2048x2048&w=gi&k=20&c=259618uI2KKfXLRpF4mZRNIs9xK8qV52auywPzrXy7k=

cool, what's shaeffer doing there? lol

echoing some other comments upthread, de natura sonorum is a 10/10 classic imo. apparently there was a mixtape going round from the autechre guys that had parts of it on that got circulated a lot round the early warp crew back in the day.

I guess a lot of eimert's music isn't considered concrete if yr being strict about it, but I do love this. listen out for the sounds of tape being slowly ripped off a hard floor, super cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jnZpAO1tFA