The early bird, I mean minimalist catches, I mean gets the worm, I mean word in edgewise–or actually a lot of words in every direction–all over the lengthy liner notes of the numerous LPs and CDs we will look at below. Tony Conrad is one such large, flightless bird. From 1962 to 1965, he played violin in minimalist music founder La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music group, also known as the Dream Syndicate, which included La Monte and Marian Zazeela on drone vocals, John Cale on viola and Angus MacLise on percussion. Since La Monte’s been keeping the tapes “safe” in storage since the mid ’60s–for the most part denying access and copies to the other group members and the public at large–very few people outside of the original small audiences have ever heard what must have surely been the most searing, transporting drone music of all time. Practicing regularly, the group developed into the most awesome unit of 4:00 a.m. hover power. Perfect pitch, just intonation, long durations and massive amplification of the vocals, viola and percussion to tympanic membrane-cutting levels were some of the ingredients of this galaxy hub-bound stew.
Rumor has it that the album Bedlam by the Crazy People was actually the brainchild of one person: American jazz trumpeter, producer, and musical entrepreneur Johnny Kitchen (real name Jack Millman), who assembled it in 1968. Kitchen’s modus operandi was to cook up a well-seasoned sonic stew by combining discarded recordings from unreleased and / or obscure bands, combining them with other random bits and bobs that he found on tossed tape reels. What it all amounts to is a wacky, zany combo of 1960s pop, naïve song poem music and sound collage. The whole shebang includes but is not limited to: light, organ-led ‘60s pop with awkward starting and stopping shot through with accapella singing, really strange echoes, wailing voices in the background, a horn fanfare, a rooster crowing, a motorcycle’s racket, fuzz guitar, sudden explosions, chirping birds, snippets of classical music, a tinkling music box, bubblegum pop, sirens over
Minnesota son Michael Yonkers started rocking in the early 1960s and, despite a seriously debilitating back injury incurred in 1971, continued on for decades. After a mid-’60s stint with his first, more traditional rock ‘n’ roll outfit, Michael and the Mumbles, the much more exploratory Michael Yonkers Band was born. Their first album, Microminiature Love was recorded in 1968 and due for release on Sire, but the deal went South and the tapes joined the ever-growing collection of psych obscurities that languished for decades in dusty boxes inside attics and basements around the globe.
Recorded in 1964, Inventions by the American folk musician Sandy Bull (1941-2001) is simply one of my all-time favorite albums of instrumental string music. On this first CD edition released in 1995, the first section consists of three songs on which Sandy plays solo along with overdubs of himself. “Gavotte” based on “Cello Suite No. 5” by J.S. Bach, progresses from a short intro into a fine example of a slow, stately classical acoustic guitar style. “Manha de Carnival” by Luiz Bonfa benefits from being recorded during the early days of overdubbing as Sandy plucks some mellow melodies on the oud over a sprightly strummed guitar tethered with electric bass. “Triple Ballade” was written in the 14th century by Guillaume de Machout, who had no idea that someone would reinterpret it 600 years later as a “haunting sound of the Gothic age” on oud, banjo and guitar.
Exploding out of West Berlin, Germany in 1980, Einsturzende Neubauten’s unique approach to apocalyptic noise made them one of the most important and impressive industrial bands of the 1980s. In contrast to their forebears, like ’70s British group Throbbing Gristle, who worked with a lot of electronics, Einsturzende Neubauten’s sound realm employed more real-world objects. Starting out very crude and cacophonous, their music gradually became somewhat more melodic and palatable as the decade wore on.
Heaved up from a filthy gutter inside the incredibly fertile New York City art and music scene of the 1970s, the Theoretical Girls–one of the best-named outfits ever–hurt the feelings of at least a few hundred eardrums from 1977-’79. Ostensibly of no wave origins, their efforts also spilled over into punk rock proper. Oddly enough, the band, formed by Jeffrey Lohn and Glenn Branca, only released one single in their lifetime, leaving the entirety of their rehearsal and live material unreleased until 1996 and 2003, when it appeared on two different CDs–the first divided up into songs by Branca and the second by Lohn.
Let’s say your head has been buried deep between two pillows since 1977, and the only nutrients you’ve been given to sustain yourself are a few crumbs of bread, a glass of water and a tiny transistor radio blaring Billboard’s Top 40. You have no idea there’s an underground, much less a king of it. For a quarter of a century–from 1978 to 2003–a mysterious recording entity called Jandek released over 30 albums of very personal, dissonant folk blues that mostly emanated from a monotonous mouth and a strangely tuned guitar.
Noise. Do you consider it music? If not, can it at least be part of music? No? Then does noise have your permission to even exist? Stop shaking your head. Just kidding. Noise doesn’t give a hoot what you think anyway. It’s been around a lot longer than you, flirting with music for over a century now. Among the first to tap its unruly characteristics were two Italian gents named Luigi Russolo and Antonio Russolo, who had close ties to the Italian Futurist movement. Around 1916, they built custom sound boxes called intonarumori that blatted out a ruckus of myriad sounds during concerts that greatly upset the general public. A decade later, Edgar Varese composed very dissonant symphonic works employing an unusually large battery of percussion, sirens and even a lion’s roar (a big rope pulled through a metal tub) that proved far too much for the gentile classical audiences of the day.
Rhys Chatham is best-known as a composer of electric guitar symphonies. He started out in the early 1970s under the tutelage of minimal music founder La Monte Young, with whom he studied the radically altered tunings of just intonation. After woodshedding with Young-inspired pieces like the metallic wash of “Two Gongs” (1971), Chatham had an epiphany during a Ramones show in 1976: mix minimalism with punk rock! An idea of pure genius that was just waiting to happen resulted in Chatham’s first major work, “Guitar Trio” (1977). With the axes all tuned to E, the piece builds from a quiet single string strum and gradually coalesces into a shimmering bliss field of drone rock perfection completely unlike anything that existed before. This sperm-filled work inspired ensemble member Glenn Branca to sire a similar guitar orchestra of his very own, and Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth to alter their tunings. Indeed, Branca and Sonic Youth practically owe their entire careers to Rhys Chatham.
Formed in 1973 when the German experimental electronic music duo Cluster (Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius) joined forces with Michael Rother from the krautrock band Neu!, Harmonia released two albums on the Brain label in the mid 1970s that have since been widely discussed in drawing rooms worldwide. Peppering their sonic soup with organ, synthesizer, piano, percussion and, less obviously, guitar, they proceeded to produce unprecedented electro-pop of an order taller than a giraffe. Thank you.
Tony Conrad is one such large, flightless bird. From 1962 to 1965, he played violin in minimalist music founder La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music group, also known as the Dream Syndicate, which included La Monte and Marian Zazeela on drone vocals, John Cale on viola and Angus MacLise on percussion. Since La Monte’s been keeping the tapes “safe” in storage since the mid ’60s–for the most part denying access and copies to the other group members and the public at large–very few people outside of the original small audiences have ever heard what must have surely been the most searing, transporting drone music of all time. Practicing regularly, the group developed into the most awesome unit of 4:00 a.m. hover power. Perfect pitch, just intonation, long durations and massive amplification of the vocals, viola and percussion to tympanic membrane-cutting levels were some of the ingredients of this galaxy hub-bound stew.
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