how selfish, my cousin has to get engaged the week i'm supposed to be seeing zeitkratzer's first performance in the UK

Engagement parties are held just like that? That's a bit quick!

you think that's a bit quick, she visited me in June and said NOTHING about any boyfriend, and she's only been living in this country since september 2003... I'm quite sure that no matter how quiet she would have kept things, she can't have been dating him for more than a year...

I barely know her to be perfectly honest, but it started out that when i could (cos I didn't live in the UK the first year she was here) I'd try and see her, because I knew it was hard to come here from a completely different and farway place and you need support... and it's lucky that we got on/ i liked her

so I know i should be there today/tomorrow... but I'm so gutted that it has to be september 16th I was really looking forward to this zeitkratzer business... the last performance i caught in the serpentine... MIMEO two years ago was quite memorable... so i'm worried that this one will be too

and i have no one to give my ticket to...

Delighted when I found out about this - come to think of it, MIMEO and zeitkratzer aren't so far apart in terms of where the ppl involved come from and how they work those things off - whether its purely improvised or composed it doesn't matter.

Compared to MIMEO this wasn't as memorable. First off, the bitterly cold weather: the pavillon is closed on top but open at the sides. During the perf ppl watching dropped off like flies. Secondly, the music did sound great on it but that wz another problem - the scheme for this piece was far too simplistic (I think it was written on the day 'as a response to the space' sorta thing) - a piece that started quiet and gradually got louder and louder until it was very loud. A really long tune. Having said all of that it was a thrill to get a look at long winded amplified instr concrete. you couldn't fault the convinction behind it.

The first 45 mins of that MIMEO perf were akin to 'improvised persepolis' at points. this was one for the lachenmann fans.

(zeitkratzer started in '99, i think, and from what i've heard [the electroniX disc] I feel there is room for improvement. I felt that they could have been 10x better than this, that they still could make zeitkratzer music, somehow, but i'll have to listen to lots more from them)

During the perf ppl watching dropped off like flies.

haha... this reminds me of a performance of a la monte young cello sonata I went to hear where lots of people dropped off, and one guy even started snoring quite loudly about halfway through... i got distracted at that point- too taken up with a strong desire to kick the poor man.

a piece that started quiet and gradually got louder and louder until it was very loud. A really long tune.

this was my intial (and major) grievance with godspeed you black emperor and other such bands, I coud never believe how every piece I heard them play started slowly and quietly and just got louder and faster... i found the predicatability infuriating... and still do actually... it just always seems to me to be such a simple response... I don't know though, I wasn't there...

(I think it was written on the day 'as a response to the space' sorta thing)

so kind of like MIMEO but it didn't quite hit the mark???

in fact, I can't even say specifically why I enjoyed the MIMEO event, it lasted about three hours too so it's not as though I could quantify the whole experience, and talk about the whole thing as being something wholly coherent because it's impossible for me to follow the thread that long and twelve different improvisers... and obviously you're not supposed to, they expect you to be wandering in and out and around and buying a drink and catching bits of it and missing others, it seemed to shift shapes so much that i can't quite put my finger on why i thought it worked, probably because of the constant shape-shifting as opposed to something that just goes from quiet to loud no matter how stealthily...

I still would've liked to witness it though, especially if their conviction, as you said 'couldn't be faulted'... that makes it worth going if only to see an experiment not live up whatever hypothesis they started out with...

soundwise they weren't like MIMEO or anything - mostly acoustic vs purely electronic, xcept zeit work their instruments to extract concrete-like sounds. but no zeit weren't as memorable in terms of event. partly its bcz of the weather - its mid-september but it wz well into october weather.

as to the structure I'd say it was the whole mogwai/godspeed stuff but I suspect the thing wz sketched out in one day.