this is the post-minimalist thread or whatever you want to call it

I think there's an obvious connection between Bach/18th Century music and 20th Century music in that they both rely on Formalism rather than the empathy imagined by Romanticism. In other words, Kraftwerk is better than Tangerine Dream because the fornmer recognises the abstraction of music and the latter think it's a Symbolist slide show.

Tbere's no inherent emotion in music, which is why composers who accept that make more emotional music than those who don't.

I'm pretty sure Glass's operas pre-dates Adams. Einstein, Akhnaten and Satragraha all pre-date Nixon in China, which Allmusic has down as 1987.

check again

x-post

you've mentioned a lot of great records. though I really can't stand Adams.

and I'm being a snob about Adams, he may be a populist but I don't think he's pandering or anything.

milton, riley and young deserve seperate threads, I was hoping for this to be a larger all-encompassing thread for stuff that came after the biggees.

I guess that systems music or whatever you want to call it ended up influencing loads of ambient / trance / techno stuff, often via Tangerine Dream or Eno but clearly traceable back to LaMonte Young, Reich, Glass etc. Speaking of Young, has anybody ever actually heard the man properly, or is it all just some sort of myth? A double cd-r thing turned up in a few shops last year but I'm worried it'll sound like that Table Of The Elements release.

"I think there's an obvious connection between Bach/18th Century music and 20th Century music in that they both rely on Formalism..."

Definitely.

"...rather than the empathy imagined by Romanticism."

It's not as though all Romanticism is about empathy (and so we should scoff at it).

"Tbere's no inherent emotion in music, which is why composers who accept that make more emotional music than those who don't."

First part of your sentence strikes me as a red herring. No "inherent" emotion, OK, but that doesn't mean that Brahms' German Requiem isn't going to strike me in a way that's perhaps quite similar to how it strikes others.

"In other words, Kraftwerk is better than Tangerine Dream because the fornmer recognises the abstraction of music and the latter think it's a Symbolist slide show."

What you're saying here is that Kraftwerk were better because they were Modernist (and hence more contemporary) while Tangerine Dream were Romantic (and hence less contemporary). I agree with you, but maybe only because Kraftwerk happened to be so GOOD and because it was the '70s and the Modernist revolution was more vital at that point.

The thing is, all electronic popular music is Modernist! Rock and roll is inherently Modernist! So, while Tangerine Dream were Romantic, they were also Modernist!

And postmodernism now allows people to do what they want. When the Can reissues came out in the early '90s or whenever, the liner notes to Tago Mago--in which Irmin Schmidt's keyboard playing is lauded partly because he avoids the Romantic aspects of Rick Wright's playing or Keith Emerson--seemed very potent to me. But now what seems more Modern, some indie rocker saying he likes Can or someone bravely, instinctually buying old E.L.P. albums and realizing that their instrumental music was great proto-no wave?

ii) Tim: Are you being sincere about the ELP/no wave thing? What ELP do you recommend in this vein? I've only ever heard the two big hits.

iii) Grrr, yes, I've heard and liked lots of La Monte Young. Look for Well-Tuned Piano. I agree with you about Day of the Niagara though.

iv) What does everyone think of Glass' 1995 La Belle et la Bete? I actually enjoyed it, kind of.

ii) I was gonna make a joke about asking Weasel Walter what he thought of Tim's idea that ELP is proto No-wave, but that just reminded me that I think he's one of the people I never got around to sending CD to. Is that so? But I am curious, I can see drawing a line to sort of math-y and chopsy stuff like Lightning Bolt and Orthrelm, but most of the ny no-wave I think about is the opposite of that, except for the stuff I've reissued, of course...

iv) I have that somewhere and should listen to it again.

It's a Meltzer-inspired ramble from back in the day! I'm just going through the albums. Maybe it could inspire people to hear some of that stuff on the first few albums, though. I'm a bit too tolerant of the Greg Lake songs in it; the only E.L.P. music I really want to listen to now is the instrumental stuff.

And I don't think, in retrospect, that I really make my case very clearly for it being no wave. I think the main points that I wanted to make were that:

1) It's "robotic" music that (like no wave) is more harsh than new wave manifestations of the robotic.

2) There's an element of deconstruction of the rock band ensemble in their arrangements. I think a big thing in no wave aesthetics is deconstruction of the rock band ensemble--D.N.A., Red Transistor, Y Pants, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks: they were all MISSING SOMETHING. E.L.P. was just keyboards, bass, and drums (though, yes, there's guitar overdubbed at times).

Prog/no wave connection specifics! Roxy Music with Eno on synth noise: Roxy Music was a prog band! Mars were influenced by Roxy Music. Eno produced No New York. Robert Fripp played with Walter Steding.

If Flying Luttenbachers are no wave (which they are, of course), then surely a lot of E.L.P.'s early instrumental music is, too. Albums I'd recommend (only cheap copies!--they're too common) are the first, Tarkus, and maybe Trilogy.

gala concert for the kitchen

April 27 (Tue) 8pm $100-$1,200
Location: Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, NYC
For information on Gala tickets and activities: 212-255-5793 x11
For performance tickets: 212-307-7171 or in person at Townhall after April 6

Featuring Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich.

Curated by Stephen Vitiello

When The Kitchen launched the New Music, New York festival in 1979, it created a "genuine landmark in the evolution of a genre" (The Village Voice), and spawned the legendary New Music America. The Kitchen celebrates the 25 anniversary of that event with a gala concert that re-unites an all-star line up from the original New Music, New York. An extraordinary opportunity to hear two compositions premiered at the 1979 concerts— Steve Reich's Drumming, Part 1 and Meredith Monk's Dolmen Music— Robert Ashley's 1987 song, Love is a Good Example (with performers Joan La Barbara, Thomas Buckner and Tom Hamilton), a solo accordion Pauline Oliveros and new works by Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass.

>Glass' 1995 La Belle et la Bete?

not as bad as some others but still kind of on autopilot. haven't seen it with the film but by binding the sung melodies to the film's spoken dialog he does get some interesting rhythms over the pulse instead of the same old unbroken cycling.

Rhys Chatham - 'Die Donnergotter' yes sir
Gusto Pio - Motor Immobile

speaking of mainstream signs of minimalist influence, there are those pesky Mike Oldfield records, Incantations and the outright disco 'North Star' cover on Platinum.

(side 4 of Incantations, I still love.)

I agree with what you say about Post-Modernism. I think it was roughly when OK Computer made Prog respectable again that the proof was made that everything can become cutting edge given time and perspective. With the probable exception of Limp Bizkit.

I'm not sure that I agree that all Rock and Roll is inherently Modernist though. Surely Yes are 19th Century compared to Can's 20th Century-ness.

Florid=Romantic // Minimal=Modernist ??

I'm really into the Days of Heaven soundtrack as well. Ennio Morricone fading in and out of Leo Kottke guitar pickin'.

It's like taking a road trip, suppose you're leaving from the city and driving into the mountains. You can either pay close attention as the urban landscape morphs slowly into rural area and then into the mountains, or you could be yapping away in the car and eating potato chips, and then it's all "hey, we're in the mountains now"!

Wagner wrote, pretty much, heavy metal songs.

Since then I've gotten Michael Nyman's book and read the final chapters where he lays out Minimalism and disucusses the differences between the initial American branch and the UK branch, and it's pretty informative, and I've been trying to get my hands on more Obscure releases.

Recently I've also wanted to chart certain composers that apply minimalist means/strategies/structures/processes/sounds or even superficial aesthethic similarities to a more accessible pop/rock context, though this has been discussed here and elsewhere, don't know if it deserves a new thread but here goes:

A few nights ago I played a La Monte Young/Theater of Eternal Music piece from the early 60s for my girlfriend, followed immediately by the Velvet's Venus in Furs, then played some Reich piano pieces followed by All Tomorrow's Parties, which is a bit of a lie since ATP came first. I've heard Cage prepared piano pieces(of which I'm not too familiar) that are probably more of a precedent to Cale's rhythmic/minimalist piano on that song.

Then w/ another friend I sat and listened to all the Henry Flynt stuff I have. Here's a guy in the 60s informed by rock, minimalism, bluegrass, raga, folk etc, he's got a rock band that, I think, like the velvets has a bit of repeition and raga sound, or am i giving him too much credit at this point? Is the Insurrections Record more akin to the Fugs/Godz then some sort of high-concept minimalist garage rock? One man's minimalist repetition is simply another man's rock and roll groove!

ANYWAY-minimalist informed rock and pop-C/D discuss, etc: some ideas:

Theoretical Girls-U.S. Millie
most Theoretical Girls and the Static stuff

Other No Wave bands? Anyone ever hear Rhys Chathams No Wave bands?

Wharton Tiers was in a band called A Band, a song on Homework vol 6 called No Love is definately minimalist rock.

Polyrock, produced by Glass and his co-horts.

And I'm not really looking for electronic artists.

To be quick about this: I think you need to hear/consider stuff from the cold blue label, this lable seems to represent minimalism from the west coast. I finally tracked some down, in specific the box set that collects those 10 inch eps. The wide-eyed prettiness is something that can annoy but I'm totally won over by Peter Garland Matachin Dances, its minimalism, but not in the reich/glass sense of maddening repetition, the themes seem more buried and somehow stranger. Elsehwere, Chas Smith is an instrument builder churning out ear beding resonances on '75 scircura but he also works at ry cooder type gtr sounds.

Other things I've been tracking down: Piero Milesi is almost like the minimalist historian - his 'Mode no2' (from '82) is every riff you've (mis)heard collaged together. The slowest riffs give way to quicker ones with a before getting back to a sudden slow down just before the end. This is actually pretty masterful.

Finally John Luther Adams (I guess the Luther distinguishes from the other, more famous, Adams) but anyway the diff on this one chamber disc I'm working is how the rhythms seem to be more submerged.

I may get bored of much of this (I'm even bored stuff by Riley and I think Young is something else, Nancarrow had that rhythmic push-and-pull but he's so much more entertaining than the mainstream ppl) but many of you may enjoy this.

Angus Maclise- Not a minimalist per se, much more interested in improvisation (addressed in Nyman). He recorded the Niagara concert with Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young and John Cale, but all the recordings of the event have essentially been disavowed by Conrad and Young. Anyway, Maclise was a goddamn genius, particularly on the "Brain Damage in Oklahoma City" album re-released a few years ago by Quakebasket/Siltbreeze.

Finally, Dan, while I'm sort of unsure as to why you mentioned Greenaway (other than his music endeavours), I was surprised that you didn't list his 'Dante's Inferno' among his best-liked work. If you haven't seen it, get your hands on a copy-- it is totally mindblowing.

i've been listening to heavy doses of this type of thing lately, stumbled upon this thread, and wanted to revive in hopes of finding more of the accessible/pop-styled post-minimal stuff.

the diet has included lots of laurie anderson, meredith monk, wim mertens (who i definitely prefer to nyman, and was unfairly dismissed early in this thread imo), penguin cafe orchestra, the durutti column, and other things that haven't been touched on much yet in this context-

elodie lauten / peter zummo - a lot of the nyc minimal stuff arthur russell played on could fit here. even some parts of 'world of echo', maybe. but yea, zummo and lauten are great regardless of the russell cameos, i've been trying to find more than just 'zummo with an x' and 'the death of don juan' but i've heard good things.

virginia astley, 'from gardens where we feel secure' - probably not news to many ilxors, but this is a great, accessible (if sorta twee) post-minimalist record. i like her other albums and eps too, but those are really more synth-pop than anything.

the lost jockey / man jumping - the lost jockey are perfect for this thread, the s/t album in particular. some of their older stuff is somewhat formalist, but eventually they got tired of that baggage and formed the more fusion-y, electronic-based (and also excellent) band 'man jumping' later in the 80s. everything i've heard so far from both incarnations has been fuckn excellent.

birdsongs of the mesozoic - maybe the perfect melding of rock and post-classical influences. kind of like if penguin cafe decided to rock out a little more, which is basically what tortoise became on certain records (and so did a lot of other post rock bands, i guess). they even used to be in a band with members of mission of burma (?!)

mark isham - i might be veering heavily towards the new age-side of the spectrum with this choice, but isham had some awesome post-minimal pop jams on 'vapour drawings' and some nice moody post-classical soundtrack pieces available on 'film music'. definitely worth checking out, but it does help if you embrace the new age-iness.

they could be painfully obvious, but no mention of harold budd or jon hassell seems strange to me. jon hassell might be my favorite artist of the 1980s, i love all of his albums but 'earthquake island' and 'power spot' are general faves. and i'm no harold budd completist but this is the type of thing we should be discussing here, right? not angus maclise/theater of eternal music style minimal, but the 80s pop/soundtrack/eno-championed stuff! i own and love plateau of mirror, but i've only heard snippets of his solo albums (also produced by eno, right?) and haven't been able to track down physical copies.

more recommendations in this vein would be sooo so appreciated (i'm trying to find some david cunningham or erling wold at the moment)

also the williams-fairey brass band needs to be mentioned somewhere on this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LwFiiuNLfw

If I'm grasping the gist of this, I think an interesting group called The Passage might fit the bill.

psychgawspie, I want to mention that in the 00's a kind of melodic chamber post-minimalism has become increasingly audible in film scores (at least for non-action films). This dovetails interestingly with the perennial Bernard Herrmann influence, showing how much of a proto-minimalist Herrmann really was (check out North By Northwest's score to see what I mean).

Here are some film scores of the past decade which I think fit your bill:

Alexandre Desplat:

Most of what he's done-- Desplat is pretty much the exemplar of this trend. But IMO his strongest scores in this mode include The Painted Veil, Girl With A Pearl Earring, Cheri, Inquietudes, and The Ghost Writer.

Danny Elfman:

Milk (the biopic w/Sean Penn), Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris docu), The Wolf Man (heavy herrmannian Gypsy minimalism)

James Newton Howard:

The Village, Lady In The Water

Even John Williams did a P. Glass thing in his score for spielberg's A.I.

I don't remember starting this thread. In any case, I more recently discovered elodie lauten, who is totally awesome, and I got to see her perform with Arthur's Landing at an Arthur Russell night at LPR I DJ'd a year or three ago.

Tonight at the Stone, Nick Hallett and Zach Layton, who also performed that night, as well as Ray Sweeten and Mike Skinner are performing something described as:

Sexual Energies School: Frankfurt
Nick Hallett (vocals, piano, electronics) Zach Layton (guitar) Mike Skinner (drums) Ray Sweeten (electronics)
Hallett convenes a structured melodic improvisation over interlocking layers of electronic arpeggios.

The first three were fellow post-minimalist fans at oberlin. Zach turned me onto Meredith Monk and Nick gave me money to buy him a Michael Nyman t-shirt in Columbus because he couldn't make it to the show!

Harold Budd - The Good Stuff

The Pavillion Of Dreams (1978) - Produced by Eno. Longer, more "composed" pieces, diverse instrumentation (harp, chorus, soprano). Good Sunday morning music.

The Plateaux Of Mirror (1980) / The Pearl (1984) - Credited to Budd & Eno. The quintessential Budd albums. "The Pearl" takes the "Plateaux" sound and places them within deep, shimmering Eno landscapes.

The Moon and the Melodies (1986) - Collaboration with the Cocteau Twins, 4 songs & 4 instrumentals. Sounds like you'd think it would.

Lovely Thunder (1986) / The White Arcades (1988) - Post-Eno. Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie guests.

Music For 3 Pianos EP (1992) - Pianos only, no electronics, in collaboration with Ruben Garcia and Daniel Lentz.

Agua (1995) - Hard-to-find live album, includes some old pieces stretched out and smeared with atmosphere. Worth hearing if only to marvel at how he can conjure up all that sound live and alone.

The Room (2000) - In the spirit of "Plateaux of Mirror."

La Belle Vista (2003) - Solo piano improvisations surreptitiously recorded by Daniel Lanois.

Most of the unnamed '90s albums stray from the sort of atmosphere you usually get. The post-"La Belle Vista" albums, which include pairs of collaborations with guitarists Robin Guthrie and Clive Wright, stick to his strengths but tread familiar ground.

I'm such a Budd geek.

As long as this thread has been revived, I enjoyed this John Luther Adams (not the Nixon in China John Adams) piece recently:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2010/04/treelessness.html

Sounds a bit like Lou Harrison, but more minimalist/post-minimalist than him.

I now see Julio mentioned JLA earlier in the thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRzKAR-gRiw

new piece from mileece!

For the last year or two I've been obsessed with two releases on the Opus One label, Garett List's Your Own Self, which features Frederick Rzewski, Jon Gibson, Jon LaBarbara among others, which I've managed to get a copy of, and Frederic Rzewski's Coming Together/Attica/Les Moutons De Panurge which I've been desperately trying to find on vinyl. It's amazing.

My god Garrett List's Your Own Self is glorious. Sadly scoured the web for a download, I would love to have a physical copy in my hands.

what does it sound like?

it starts out slow and meditative and a bit jazzy and builds and builds and gets more and more intense. I don't really know how to describe it!

Yeah, difficult to describe. It sounds so New York!?! When it calms down at the end again it's beautiful.

i had downloaded it first then found the LP on discogs. But the guy selling it was a store I had just met because they were ordering Acute vinyl so I made a deal outside of discogs.

I've been selling records on Discogs and built up a little balance in paypal and now that I'm also working, I used that money to spend more than I usually like to spend on record to finally get a copy of the Rzewski. Should be in the mail right now.

The Rzewski one you mentioned is on Discogs at a higher price than I could pay. There seems to be a 2003 CD issue of remixes, one by Scanner, which could be great, interesting or awful? I guess I think these should be reissued! Any idea what the other stuff on Opus One is like? I'm only just starting to get into Lovely Music etc..

I haven't heard other Opus One stuff. I can't remember if I've suggested that Unseen Worlds, who've done some amazing Lovely reissues, should reissue those releases, or if I should try myself.

thanks, sounds pertinent to my interests....

Rzewski & List are both AMAZING records.. those ones on Opus One. The Frederic Rzewski one is much more FIERY and DRIVEN, I think, but they are both some of my favorite records.

looks like much of Rzewski's work is available here:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Rzewski,_Frederic

...along with an enormous amount of other interesting looking music (although some of it is just scores/midi files...)

I guess as appropriate here as anywhere, but word is going around via Unseen Worlds that Elodie Lauten has passed. Very sad news.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOByZt9g678

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2014/06/one-of-the-greats-elodie-lauten-1950-2014.html

Wasn't sure if this was the right thread, but I picked up the Balanescu Quartet Maria T album years back based on the cover alone. There was a certain Lynchian menace to it. Anyways opening track is lovely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Z63iwju_M

What is there that sounds like early Michael Nyman? The sound of "Bird Anthem", for example, from the 1981 album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDiLf21N8QY

Parts of "Einstein on the Beach" scratch the same itch – what else is like this? Obvious suggestions welcome.

I'm sure there must be some Icebreaker/Gordon/Lang/Bang On A Can related music that would compare or perhaps some Rhys Chatham?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC5NI6jvJgw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKG8o7Fm_Ao

But to be truthful, that track sounds a lot like the band Cardiacs.

It’s funny, since starting this thread there’s been such an explosion…rediscovery of post Reichian 70s/80s stuff, lots of Italian art music and Japanese new age type stuff…and contemporary composers, both of the music conservatory trained and post-hipster techno cassette Bandcamp scene.

ii) I was gonna make a joke about asking Weasel Walter what he thought of Tim's idea that ELP is proto No-wave

is the joke that WW is actually an ELP fan?

Tim's idea that ELP is proto No-wave

Without having read this thread, I said something similar in 2008:

Revisiting this catalog 35 (!) years later, it’s amazing how little music has “progressed.” Snip 20 random seconds of Emersonian Moog-frenzy from the live album and play it for a Wolf Eyes fan—see if he can tell the difference.

Wolf Eyes isn't no wave.

ok ok that's getting into semantic nit-picking about the definition of "similar" lol

That review does inspire me to listen to more ELP.

Full concert - Terry Riley live at Koerner Hall in Toronto's Royal Conservatory, with Tracy Silverman and his son Gyan. Really good show, based on this: https://livestream.com/accounts/3811338/events/8517853/videos/186015720

(Will post to classical thread as well)