This Review of Lem's Machines by Dr. Patrick Gleeson Is Where Modern Music Was Conceived

http://home.comcast.net/~redhousejazz/weblog_images/hancock.jpg

http://www.cyndustries.com/synapse/synapse.cfm?pc=55&folder=nov1977&pic=13

After comparing the plight of electronic musicians in the seventies to black musicians of the thirties, the onetime Herbie Hancock synthesist concludes his manifesto thusly:

"My proposal is that we assume our niggerish stance with a little black pride and go where the rockers don't dare go, into the intensity of elaborate sequential rhythms, which our new digital machines are quite capable of delivering when programmed, ahem, with a little knowledge which we have and they don't. And that we begin to develop compositional matrices--the structures into which the music goes--from the perspective of our ability to freely associate these rhythms in ways that will screw up even the fastest cop among live bass players...Our digital sequencers are repetitive devices, they can be set in motion simultaneously and independently and will slide against each other with mysterious and intriguing rhythmic implications."

Prove to me that review this isn't where techno began. Thanks.

Patrick Gleeson rules. He's written some reviews of the Herbie albums he's involved with on the Amazon user comments section. Thanks for sharing this.

Dude had some really interesting stuff to say -- in fairness, it's probably more interesting than his music. Here's another piece from Synapse, an interview:

http://www.cyndustries.com/synapse/synapse.cfm?pc=48&folder=summer79&pic=28

Apparently Gleeson released a couple of solo albums in the late 70s, has anyone heard them? I wonder if they're worth tracking down... I have the duo album he did in 1998 with Bennie Maupin, where Maupin plays reeds on top of Gleeson's electronic rhythms. It's suprisingly good, though not mindblowing or anything.

It's interesting to speculate what would've happened if Herbie and Gleeson had continued their collaboration from where it ended on Sextant, instead of Herbie forming the Headhunters. Maybe Herbie's sensibility for funk rhythms and Gleeson's electronic experimentalism could've lead them to techno? "Rain Dance" is pretty much proto-techno already, all it needs is an added drum machine beat.

I think the key idea was not using synthesizers to try and sound like music that was created with other instruments, but instead to try and realize the potential of synthesizers (and sequencers) to produce music that can't be played on other instruments. This impulse may have eventually led to techno - but it seems like Gleeson hadn't quite figured out what this new music would sound like yet, since he mentions ideas like overlaying irregular meters on top of each other ("Seventeen bars of a snappy 19/7 followed by 2 bars of 2/2 followed by 19/7 against 4/4") which is not perhaps the best description of what eventually happened in techno - techno is usually a very steady 4/4 rhythm, but played faster and with more intricate fills and flourishes than could be played by a human drummer.

Perhaps Gleeson's manifesto anticipates late-period techno, or drill-and-bass Aphex Twin, but not first-wave techno.

Ha, yeah the bit about the bass players makes me think that the thing it most accurately predicts is "crowds of ravers being aggravated by Squarepusher"

I really love Patrick Gleeson's album "Rainbow Delta" on Passport from 1980, weird record, odd melange of new age trippiness and some smoove jazz-isms and new music gestures. The song title "unacceptable dance styles" kind of hints at the stroppy vibe in that manifesto above. I have noticed that while I enjoy this record a lot, when I put it on other people around me kind of wince and want to know what the point is.

Rainbow Delta isn't bad.

One of the things I find kind of amusing about the whole 70's synthesist scene is that for all their posturing and theorizing, the music a lot of these guys made--Gleeson, Larry Fast, etc.--sounded kind of the same, even though there wasn't really a "style" yet. In fact, I would defy all but the most experienced listeners on this board to tell any of the records these guys made apart -- it seems they all put out versions of Star Wars and Holst's Planets and made rather odd music of their own.

Basically, what you had is a lot of brainy guys who knew a lot about electronics and a few things about modern composition, which collectively put them in high demand to offer technical advice to or play on the records of more popular artists while giving them enough of a platform to put out a record of their own now and again that virtually no one bought unless it was super commercial (see above).

So, it's not entirely surprising that a guy like Gleeson would be this kind of bitter, unloved genius -- I suspect they all were.

u know my website http://www.robotsinheat.com was named after that Lem album? http://www.discogs.com/Lem-Machines/release/1158819

well, a song on it

Awesome! That Lem album is pretty good.

I should that somebody like Tomita (who Gleeson apparently hated) was the exception to this. Yes, he basically made the same kind of music -- synth renditions of classical and sort of offbeat original stuff. But his orchestration skills and technique absolutely blow the rest of these guys out of the water. And I think part of what guys like Gleeson didn't like about him (despite the fact they BOTH did The Planets and Star Wars) was the slightly conservative aesthetic at work, rendering popular classics in an easily accessible style.

Our digital sequencers are repetitive devices, they can be set in motion simultaneously and independently and will slide against each other with mysterious and intriguing rhythmic implications.

Reminds me of this...

We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter-sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp;
we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire.
We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times and, as it were, tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came; some shriller, and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distance

wow that review. he used the word "cosmophiliac"

That review is genius, the more I read it.