Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 February 2005 17:52:56
Finally I caught up with Howie B's 'Turn off the Dark' CD. I've known about Howie B for years but for some reason never heard a whole CD of his, though I have a couple of his 12's. There's some really clever stuff going on here. Basically what he does is take a pile of old records into the studio, samples bits off them and pieces the disconnected fragments into a whole. Sounds simple but there's something really intelligent about this because he isn't just throwing together random sounds he's also bringing the cultural asociations which we link to those sounds together. And I think there's something very profound in that. I guess it's a diversity and unity thing. And some people still think that music and politics are totally seperate.....
I think I've finally worked out a good way to play live without being burried under a rats nest pile of cables (been there done that!) or simply being a passive observer who presses start on a laptop and has a beer, which is too common amongst live electronic music performers. Basically you want to have enough gear to interact with and have the flexibility to be able to go off in different directions, lengthening one song if it's going down well, cutting short another, keeping that percussion break rolling for however long you want etc, whilst keeping things technically as simple as possible and travelling light. I guess there's a life-analogy here. Perhaps something like this: If you have too many attachments the weight of them compromises your ability to improvise with the structural fabric of your life, too few attachments and your ability to interact creatively with the world is compromised. Wow....I never realised designing live performance midi/audio systems was such a philosophically rich activity!
This weeks reading: Clavia Nord Modular instruction manual, v1.24.