DEREK BAILEY & EVAN PARKER LIVE INCUS FESTIVAL 22.04.1985

Year: 1985

Time: 48 mins

Music: Derek Bailey & Evan Parker

Eye of Sound: To conclude our Incus '85 concert series, Evan Parker takes a seat with Derek Bailey for an extended duo session. A dialogue in which both interlocutors listen to each other and a rare opportunity to see these two gentlemen play together.

DEREK BAILEY & EVAN PARKER 1985

GEORGE CRUMB MAKROKOSMOS I & II: SCORES (2004)

Year: 1973/2004

Time: 63 mins

Music:

George Crumb

Margaret Leng Tan

Alex Nowitz

Eye of Sound: Notation naturally underwent the same ruptures that its signified did throughout the 20th century, not only in the attempt to find technically suitable illustrations for unprecedented forms of sonic expression, but also, as it was often the case, as a deliberate attack on the conventions of the graphic representation of sound. In the process, scores became increasingly idiosyncratic, more conscious about their arbitrary (i.e. semiotic) nature, and concomitantly assumed the status of art objects in themselves. Crumb once said that he tries to make scores "as simple and conventional as possible", pointing out that economy and clarity are vital to the performer's understanding of the composer's work; and, when asked to comment on his well-known penchant for elaborate notation designs, the composer simply justified them as "flights of whimsy". There is much more than whimsy to his scores, however, and besides their immense beauty and obvious symbolic import, they are complex enough to have inspired several research essays by well-known musicologists and art historians, not to mention modern mystics of different sorts. As a companion to Leng Tan's performance of George Crumb's zodiacal Makrokosmos I & II, we are lucky enough to be offered the possibility of watching the piece's original scores unfold as the music progresses, allowing us a few glimpses of the composer's aural graphism as well as insights into his verbal understandings of his own compositions ("as if suspended in time" in Agnus Dei/Capricorn, "like a cosmic clockwork" in Magic Circle/Leo); precise indications ("depress white keys silently" in Prophecy/Aries); corrections; dedications (for David Burge and Robert Miller); and humorous remarks ("excellent first piece!" in Primeval/Cancer). A beautiful and enlightening experience in the art of augenmusik, as fascinating as watching Tan and Nowitz play.

MAKROKOSMOS SCORE

GEORGE CRUMB MAKROKOSMOS I & II (2004)

Director: Evans Chan

Year: 2004

Time: 63 mins

Music: 

George Crumb

Margaret Leng Tan

Alex Nowitz

Eye of Sound: Perhaps downplaying their obvious esoteric dimension, Crumb once commented on his two Makrokosmos "books" as an attempt to survey and catalogue all playing techniques and possibilities for the piano. And while no single work can claim to exhaust possibilities in any given domain, Makrokosmos undoubtedly stands out as an impressive survey of the acoustic capabilities of the instrument and the myriad approaches a player can resort to when trying to go beyond conventional playing techniques. Crumb's most notorious compositional trait, his concern with timbral dynamics, is perhaps nowhere else as evident as here; by combining amplification and pedals, Makrokosmos ranges from the barely audible to the dangerously loud, perhaps evoking the creational dynamics implicit in its zodiac-like score design. This chromatic palette is widened by the introduction of foreign objects and the extension of the playing arena: metal chains, drum brushes, paper sheets or simple whistle blows are thrown into the piano to further expand and pervert the instrument's conventional possibilities. Margaret Tan, one of Cage's most renowned performers, delivers the piece with a combination of musical rigour and theatrical performance which seems appropriate for Crumb's choreographic leanings. Finally, Alex Nowitz's contribution is mostly centred on a powerful whistling technique. Despite its apparent freedom and de-structuredness, Makrokosmos is  a work of tight compositional design whose immense rigour surfaces only after repeated listenings, and the fact that Tan's performance is the only one that can boast of having been supervised by Crumb himself has lead critics to consider it  definitive. Otherworldly, radiating with vitality, at times nocturnal and quasi-lyrical, it is a tapestry of intricate modes and colours as diverse and contradictory as life itself.

MAKROKOSMOS I & II

THE OUTSIDER: THE STORY OF HARRY PARTCH (2002)

Director: Darren Chesworth

Year: 2002

Time: 59 mins

Music: Harry Partch

Eye of Sound: His obsession with the subjective human voice and the musicality of speech; his partly relativistic deconstruction of the twelve-note scale as an arbitrary straitjacket; his ethnographic sensibility towards different modes of conceiving language, tuning and existence; his need to create channels suited for his new microtonal chromatic universe; his expansion into convergent fields of expression such as film, theatre and dance; and his desire to capture the vernacular as a locus for the textures of being - all these probably make Partch's the most encompassing of modern creative utopias. Such an overarching  project of existence and creation, obviously, could hardly be comprised in an one-hour documentary, and it would take a considerable amount of creativity and an unflinching focus to cast a shadow of justice over Partch's vision in such a short time. One aspect that could have been jettisoned is, as usual, the biographic mode, the linear movement from A to Z that suggests apparently logic explanations and connections for processes and objects that are far from logical and linear, supported by an invisible voice-over narration that simulates contextualization and sequence. Narrative becomes a form of containment and disambiguation: Partch's struggle with devitalized modes of composition and the 12-tone octave is all of a sudden brought into light by the reading of one single book, On the Sensation of Tone by H. Helmholtz, and his "discovery" of the arbitrary nature of the Western scale smoothly harmonised with his several inner and outer "deviances", sexuality included; inversely, Partch's long-celebrated and romanticised decision to follow a hobo trail for almost a decade is simply glossed as a reaction to the Great Depression and left strangely disconnected from the surrounding acts. There are the usual statements by friends, patrons and composers, such as Lou Harrison, Gavin Bryars, John Schneider, Phillip Blackburn, and Phillip Glass, adding very little to our understanding of Partch's universe, and it is from biographers and archivists that the most illuminating comments stem from. While the focus on the apparent eccentricity of the man seems to be a fruitless compromise with the conventions of current personality cults - including a minor polemic with Cage to boot -, it is not surprising that the most rewarding sections focus on the technical aspects of his work, microtonality being efficiently summarised bur perhaps not fully explored in its symbolic reach. The eclipse of "the truth of just intonation" was seen by Partch as a conspiracy in which "pure" musical structures had been corrupted and dilluted by a powerful but stifling hierarchical model, one that curtailed freedom and fostered forms of conformism. This supposedly pure tuning of ancient Greek tradition, which Partch tried to build into his microtonal edifice, and its promises of a wider access to the the truth that is supposed to inhere in the human voice, holds some of the keys for the composer's universe: a romantic search for a temps perdu, thought to be found both in ancient traditions and non-Western contemporary societies, guided, as ever, by a subversive desire to implode homeland strictures.  

THE OUTSIDER

DEREK BAILEY PLAYING FOR FRIENDS ON 5th STREET (2004)

Director: Robert O'Haire

Year: 2004 

Time: 50 mins

Music: Derek Bailey

Eye of Sound: The camera's movements are casual, and the post-production efforts meagre. But that is just part of the narrative strategy to convey the sense of intimacy implicit in the title: a small friendly circle of amicable ears and eyes, casually enjoying the music of someone who just happens to be the most celebrated guitar player in the history of adventurous music, but who behaves as if he were just playing a few chords while waiting for his dinner to cook. In between, a few funny stories about the man's past as a guitar teacher in London, some interactions with the "public", and even Django-like interludes and a Penthouse Serenade quote to boot. Both the performance and film-production were designed as an intimate portrait: of Bailey and his music, of course, but also of the DMG (Downtown Music Gallery) store in Downtown NY, where several such performances by avant and not-so-avant musicians have been hosted before. The camera effects used to spice up the film are absolutely superfluous and risible, but the sound capture is close to optimal: Bailey's surgical attacks on the strings sound as clear as in any other good recording you may have, and probably as close to the listening experience you'd have there as possible. Bailey's performance is unsurprisingly entrancing: twisting notions of tonal and atonal, at times hectic but also placid and meditative, his acoustic guitar playing covers the sometimes irreconcilable values of emotionality and artistic adventurousness. Of course, one may legitimately ask how free these improvisations actually are, given the unmistakeable "baileyness" of the performance; but I'd say that in view of this 2001 performance's impressive technique, passion and inventiveness, such issues sound like mere theoretical trifles. 

PLAYING FOR FRIENDS ON 5TH STREET

EDWARD QUIST / PAN SONIC KUVAPUTKI (2008)

Director: Edward Quist

Year: 2008

Time: 3 X 38 mins

Music: Pan Sonic

Eye of Sound: Still known as Panasonic among old friends, Vainio and Väisänen are known to produce some of the most intensely cold music since the glorious days of NDW. Their blend of glacial pulse-beat aggression (inherited from their early weirdo-techno experiences), white-noise static and hi-fi aural spatialisation (closer to "avant-garde" concerns)  has given the Finnish duo some notoriety both in the experimental music circuit and among the ultimately conservative electronica crowd, creating a rather heterodox support basis for the band. Inspired in the imagery of the cathode (something which seems to be acquiring some currency in the past years), american artist Edward Quist offers a "multi-angle" reading of Panasonic's music by drawing on a 1999 live performance in New York (these "angles" being here divided in separate files). The screen space is mercilessly invaded by violent graphics designed to translate, or respond to, Panasonic's static washes and often brutal pulses, its unembellished black and white compositions aptly reflecting the band's bleak soundworld. Its strobing punctuations, though obviously inspired by the obsolete tradition of techno videography, can be physically deranging and mentally exhausting, miles away from the flat landscapes offered by those standardised forms of mindless pseudo-psychedelism that are still served as a visual accompaniment to beat-oriented music. In fact, Quist's sinister waveform designs are systematically distorted and pushed to their own figurative limits, aiming, much like the duo's aural excitement, to implode rather than to contain source materials and to afflict rather than soothe the viewer. Strangely enough, the duo's excursions into the radiances of the body electric are often labeled as "minimalist" or other adjectives that seem designed to spare readers and writers further thought instead of trying to expand our understanding of Panasonic's vision. Indeed, despite their typically self-restrained management of their materials and far from rich chromatic palette, Panasonic's audio design is one of excess, hyperbole and exaggeration of microscopic events, rendering the "minimalist" description absolutely absurd. Perhaps guilty of an excessively literal and predictable rendering of Panasonic's analog soundscapes, Quist's Kuvaputki videos can nevertheless, in their fruitful tension between stasis and implosion, boast of faithfully documenting both the duo's aural vision and their live performances by the end of the century, making this a rather unique "tour doc".

This post is a collaboration between SOE and Double Avenue.

The "angles" are here rendered as separate files.

KUVAPUTKI

CATHODE RAY TUBE

SET

RYOJI IKEDA / SHIRO TAKATANI FORMULA (2002)

Video: Shiro Takatani 

Year: 2002

Time: 65 mins

Music: Ryoji Ikeda

Eye of Sound: By the mid-90s Ikeda offered the audio world a violent, but quiet, revolution. Others would follow his trail and get all the credit, Ikeda being left with only a few crumbles of the goldmine he had located for the (often uninspired) laptop generation. Of course, the test-tone/high-pitched frequency turn in electronic music could perhaps have happened anywhere else at the time: all revolutions seem, a posteriori, to have been bound to happen, just waiting for someone to pull the first trigger. But it's probably a good thing that Ikeda was the one who first stepped in into this relatively unknown island, since his clarity, simplicity and almost eugenic approach to his materials left us with an almost complete topography of this newly-found territory, leaving copycats the burden of sheer emulation or trivialisation and forcing creative artists to push forward in new directions. Formula documents concerts and installations recorded between 1998 and 2002. The first section includes audio installations recorded in Europe and Tokyo, featuring excerpts from albums like 0º or Matrix over a dark screen. The second section comprises a 2001 Tokyo concert in which Ikeda's gelid pulses and frequencies are synched against video-patterns designed by Dumb Type's Shiro Takatani, revisiting material from the 1996 classic +/- and other works. In their stark strobo-geometry and perception-bending force, Takatani's designs are probably the most accurate visual renditions of Ikeda's music. No matter how large your tv-set is or how clean and powerful your speakers are, this can't replace or come close to the unique experience of actually attending Ikeda performances. But if you hadn't had the chance to see and hear them in loco, the Formula collection and a bit of imagination may take you somewhere near. 

Link removed under DMCA threat

JACQUELINE CAUX & OLIVIER PASCAL PRESQUE RIEN AVEC LUC FERRARI (2005)

Directors: Jacqueline Caux & Olivier Pascal

Year: 2005

Time: 50 mins

Music:

Luc Ferrari

Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain

Elise Caron

Claude Berset

Christof Schlaeger

Erik M

Eye of Sound: The decision to retain the original title of this documentary, instead of following the rule of translating all film names, can be justified by the fact that anyone familiar with Luc Ferrari will recognize the reference to some of the composer's most famous works, the Presque Rien series, and particularly his 1989 piece Presque Rien avec Filles (Almost Nothing with Girls). Much more than a mere music-documentary, Caux's and Pascal's Presque Rien is possibly the definitive Ferrari doc, not only because of the composer's willingness to play along with the directors' playful design but mostly because of their creative assimilation of his artistic and philosophical mischievousness. Although comprising several different sections that use different aesthetical and narrative strategies, Presque Rien almost seamlessly flows between these often contradictory approaches, its multifarious form being in itself an implicit tribute to the chronic deviancy of Ferrari's career. The film's narrative linchpin is a series of autobiographical notes taken from an homonymous book by Caux herself. But the use of these fragments is far from conventional, since Caux and Pascal decide to pull a narrative trick rarely seen outside Chris Marker's works: to subvert the tradition of the "voice of god" documentary voice-over by having an actress, Elise Caron, deliver Ferrari's most intimate confessions and remembrances - perhaps to reinforce the association between the composer and the Filles allegedly lacking in his life but so deeply present in his music, as well as to multiply the myriad personas emerging from his oeuvre. Ferrari also plays himself, but mostly on more "technical" notes (in which, nevertheless, his generosity and inability to take himself too seriously are absolutely transparent). There is the more conventional melange of live and backstage footage, including rehearsals for his Cahier du Soir "opera" with Elise Caron and the Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain, live collaborations with Christof Schlaeger and Erik M (this one using old Ferrari raw materials), and short excerpts from a 2003 Claude Berset performance of the 36 Enfilades piece for piano and magnetophone. Some of the most beautiful moments, however, stem from an audiovisual installation Ferrari produced between 1995 and 2000: entitled Cycle de Souvenirs (Cycle of Remembrances), it was composed of footage captured in key locations of Ferrari's personal and artistic life, supported by a random composition in which six discs comprising recordings of anodinous urban and domestic soundscapes were constantly shuffled and rearranged, bearing the mark of the composer's concern with chance events and the relations between memory and biography. Several other events contribute to the narrative's richness and density: the perhaps surprising election of John Cage as his major aesthetic and philosophical influence (upon whom Ferrari's early escape from serialism and life-time commitment with non-alignment are implicitly predicated), the identification of the soundtrack for Honegger's classic Pacific 231 (soon on SOE) as a decisive moment in his aural formation, or the jocose justification of his early involvement in concrète explorations as the most barbaric possibility available at the time. If forced to choose one single highlight, however, I'd go for Ferrari's hilarious audio stroll through a parisian suburb amusement park: surrounded by excessive chromatic and sonic stimuluses, the composer's posture betrays neither the shyness of the guilt-ridden voyeur nor the blind aggressiveness of the artist ready to devour his source materials at the cost of their dignity; like a child in a candy store, his is a gaze of sheer delight, immersed in the overwhelming and unembellished pleasures of his senses.

fresh link available

PRESQUE RIEN AVEC LUC FERRARI

PHIL HOPKINS AMPLIFIED GESTURE (2009)

Director: Phil Hopkins

Year: 2009

Time: 56 mins

Music: Eddie Prévost, Evan Parker, Fennesz, John Tilbury, Keith Rowe, Michael Moser, David Sylvian, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M,  Toshimaru Nakamura, Werner Dafeldecker.

Eye of Sound: The subtitle for this suspenseful documentary, An Introduction to Free Improvistation: Practicioners and their Philosophy, could perhaps be criticised for being misleading or, at least, for failing to deliver its promise. But it would probably be unfair to blame director Phil Hopkins for all its shortcomings: Amplified Gesture was commissioned as a visual companion to David Syvian's Manafon and, as such, the director was forced to interview all the musicians participating in the project. Strangely enough, improv is not an area in which "practitioners" have developed an acute sense of theoretical and critical creativity: except for Tim Hodgkinson, whose theoretical polemics sometimes draw close to absurdity and fundamentalism, and a few others thinkers, the "scene" seems not to have an articulate spokesmen to explore its mysteries, dilemmas and "philosophy". Nevertheless, there is a clear generational divide in the cast for Amplified Gesture: on the one hand, old-school British giants such as Evan Parker, Eddie Prévost and Keith Rowe; on the other, younger Japanese luminaries and miscigenators like Sachiko M, Otomo Yoshihide and Toshimaru Nakamura. It is perhaps sad to note that the old folks win by a landslide, discussing pertinent issues on the politics and practice of improv, while the kids usually have nothing to say but such platitudes as "I wanted to do my own thing" or "I started playing because I wanted to get a girlfriend". John Butcher rightfully comments on the progressive standardisation and narrowing down of improv musical practices, but also notes that this is concomitant with a more detailed analysis of materials. Prévost discusses the political implications of technique and composition, and briefly alludes to the art of listening in playing as well as to the creative role of audiences and their input on performance. Evan Parker, perhaps the most solid thinker in the cast, explores the dynamic "bio-feedback" relation between musician and instrument, the wills and destinies of the instrument when in charge of the musician, and the need for "estimation" abilities in the context of the ideals of control over the improvised event; he also touches on the humanist dimensions of music communication, and tries to place improv in the context of a continuing resistance to commodification that also extends to other fields of expression. Overall, as an essay on the art of memory and forgetting as condensed in the always expanding field of "free improv", Amplified Gesture falls short of the expectations it creates. Nevertheless, it is a enticing work for anyone interested in improv or the musicians involved.

Just click to watch or left-click to grab

AMPLIFIED GESTURE

JACQUES GOLDSTEIN ERNST REIJSEGER: DO YOU STILL? (2008)

Director: Jacques Goldstein

Year: 2008

Time: 42 mins

Music: 

Ernst Reijseger

Larissa Groeneveld

Frank Van De Laar

Eye of Sound: Some artists choose, or are forced, not to jettison whole portions of their selves in the course of their work, embracing seemingly contradictory strands and sometimes succeeding in integrating them and diluting their apparent contrasts in a continuous spectrum of beauty. Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger stands out as a musician who manages to go down this road the hard way: without resorting to collage, counterpoint or wasted irony. The fact that he's worked with such opposite visions as Derek Bailey's and Yo-Yo Ma's, not to mention his regular excursions into musical fields lazily stringed together as "world" music, is perhaps the best possible description of his music: lyrical but fractured, his work disrespectfully transgresses the borders of jazz, improv, avant-garde, contemporary composition and popular music - all in a single note, with a single stroke. Jacques Goldstein's Do you Still? is a beautiful homage both to Reijseger's music and genre ambiguity. Though based on a trio live performance that focuses mostly on the lyrical side of the musician's soul (from his homonymous 2008 Winter & Winter release), it tries, and mostly manages, to balance the picture by capturing private solo improv sessions, both indoors and outdoors, that display Reijseger's mastery over different colours and tones - with the same astounding technique and soulful commitment. Interspersed with beautiful country- and city-side footage that evokes his ever contemplative music, Do You Still? also features intimate and sometimes bitter-sweet statements by Reijseger on his early years, "career" choices, mannerisms, anxieties and shortcomings. These different approaches, however, are seamlessly integrated into a serene, contemplative whole: neither a live-film nor a bio-doc or a visual essay, but all that and more.

 

http://www.fileserve.com/file/p2raUSn

OR

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KZPO7ON7

IVOR CUTLER LOOKING FOR TRUTH WITH A PIN (2005)

Director: Paul Spencer

Year: 2005

Time: 59 mins

Music: Ivor Cutler

Eye of Sound: Perhaps it is appropriate that a documentary on Ivor Cutler shouldn't focus exclusively on what made him relatively popular: his music. And, in fact, Looking for Truth with a Pin does not pay particular attention to any of the other fields through which Cutler mischievously exorcised his inner demons and dreams: drawing, poetry, film, radio, children's literature. Although these are all briefly touched upon, Looking for Truth is, first and foremost, an attempt at a psychological sketch vaguely veiled in the conventions of biography. His childhood traumas, including a now humorous fratricidal attempt, are revisited once and again by Cutler himself and several artists and companions (like Robert Wyatt and Paul McCartney), all of them trying to understand the "terrifying sadness of the comedian" and the sources for his sometimes bitter joie de vivre. Critical moments are discussed at some length, such as his teaching years in an alternative school for misfits of all sorts, his Magical Mystery Tour flick with the Beatles or his long-time partnership with poetess Phyllis King, but the easy temptation of linear life-narrative, in which A explains B, is fortunately avoided. What is offered instead is a multi-layered, direction-free diagram of Cutler's psyche, interspersed with live footage and archival material - one that seems to run in circles instead of dishonestly pretending to have found the truth. His pythonesque humour and and child-like mischievousness are gayly portrayed but there are also some snippets of the unforgiving ageing process and its effect on the artist and the man. Several excerpts of live and TV performances displaying his unique brand of surrealist folk and existential humour are presented, making Looking for Truth an invaluable document for Cutlerologists and a fine introduction for newbies. It may be true that "a Scottish jew is an unbelievably heavy thing to be", but not if you truly believe in bugs.

Looking for Truth with a Pin

PHILL NIBLOCK THE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE WORKING PART 1 (1973-74)

Director: Phill Niblock

Year: 1973-74

Time: 96 mins

Music:

Phill Niblock

with

Daniel Goode (Clarinet), David Gibson (Cello), Arthur Stidfole (Bassoon)

Eye of Sound: Shot in the mid-70s, The Movement of People Working has been frequently used as a visual accompaniment to Niblock's live music performances, and it is arguably both the least obvious and the best possible screen expression of his musical vision. The first part of the collection comprises four different 16 mm films (Trabajando and Sur, both divided in two parts) and, except for Sur Dos, recorded in Peru, all were shot in Mexico. The films focus on the almost tactile details of non- or semi-industrialized labor methods in these countries and are almost entirely composed of tight close-ups of hands (Sur) and bodies (Trabajando). Threshing, seeding, weaving, painting, carving or fishing, bodies and hands are set in a relentless and often impersonalized motion that creates a hypnotic tapestry of repeated gestures and diversified techniques of immense choreographic beauty. Niblock's soundtrack, recorded between 1975 and 1980, features the author's characteristic multi-layered "drone" immersions in which one radiant, glowing sound-object is sent into a dynamic but imperceptible chain of simultaneously minuscule and overarching transformations that constantly challenge distinctions between motion and quietude. Despite the apparent contrast between the two dimensions of labor, there is a deep but unfathomable correspondence between the succession of these bright fragmented images and the illusory continuity of Niblock's aural radiance: as if the slow, minute gestures of the hands and torsos that weave and thresh find an unexpected double in the tactile and intricate movement of the musician's workings.

Just click to sound-watch or right-click to eye-grab

The Movement of People Working

NEGATIVLAND NO OTHER POSSIBILITY (1989)

Year: 1989

Time: 58 mins

Music: Negativland

Eye of Sound: It's probably easy today to dismiss Negativland's activities as trifle, banal or plain stupid. They probably wouldn't be too uncomfortable with that, as they rarely claimed to go beyond the softest platitudes of the entertainment biz. But despite some recognition in some circles and some notoriety due to the famous copyright battle with U2 and Pepsi, the band is perhaps still to be acknowledged as one of the most relevant and prophetic projects in the 80s. In fact, from their first surrealist works on alienated concrète to their later sample-based beat palimpsests, Negativland paved the way for much of today's collage-centered pop culture as seen, for instance, in the increasingly common televised montages of political events and commercial samples for critical or humorous purposes. No Other Possibility, their first video work, showcases the band at a career threshold,  before their U2ploitation move and just after their Christianity hoax. It typically explores the debris of American pop culture, dealing with automobile fetishism, televised preaching, halloween traditions, Marlboro masculinity, soft drinks and MTV. Featuring such iconic culture-jam figures as Reverend Dick, The Weatherman, Dick Vaughn or Crosley Bendix, it expands on the visionary concept of Universal Media Netweb and seamlessly jams live footage, TV excerpts, street interviews and home-recorded theatrical performances in a zapping collage that could well have inspired EBN's ZooTV show. From the brilliant Christianity is Stupid murders hoax to the magical significance of numbers, from lime soda to green slime and lung cancer, No Other Possibility stands as an entertaining essay on pop culture, tele-kinetics and media-noise. And there's also a small boy who, like most people, would prefer bands to have girls playing drums.

Note: This is the first official SOE/UBU collaboration. 

Just click to watch or left-click to snatch. 

No Other Possibility

LUC PETER RECORD PLAYER: CHRISTIAN MARCLAY (2000)

Director: Luc Peter

Year: 2000

Time: 42 mins

Music:

Christian Marclay

with

Elliott Sharp & DJ Soulslinger

Lee Ranaldo & Thurston Moore

DJ Olive & Erik M

Eye of Sound: Although the history of musical pillage certainly starts way before the 20th century, the practice of plunderphonics (stealing snippets of pre-recorded sounds, often leaving its sources perfectly recognisable, in order to create something new and normally at odds with its original purposes) arose with the broadening of the aural spectrum brought about by the musique concrète revolution of the 1950s. The fact that it took so long after the invention of the first recording devices to take this decisive step is probably due to the resilience of modern ego-centered concepts of authorship and individuality that, although still prevalent in face of all the contradictory evidence, gradually started weakening after WWII. Inspired by the roads previously paved by concrète musicians and theorists, but also heavily influenced by the worlds of performance art, punk rock and no wave, Christian Marclay was probably the first musician to steal the plunder from the academic domain and to consistently work on the possibilities of disarranging previously ordered sonic artefacts. Long before being a d.j. meant anything more than someone putting one record after the other to make people dance (which is still what it means today), Marclay was exploring old vinyl collections, scratching vinyl in ways unthought of by Bambaataa, destroying needles against turntables and breaking up records in order to discover what lies beneath the groove. In this fairly conventional documentary, Luc Peter offers us a short portrait of Marclay's activities in more recent years, at a time when he's been elevated to avant-stardom by a society reasonably accustomed to the ideas of a musician using ready-made sources or of someone commanding people's respect behind the decks. Marclay briefly discusses his background, methods and artistic purposes, together with considerations on the turntable/record as an instrument or its place in improvisation and pop music. Luc Peter complements those statements with footage from four live performances. The first one, recorded at the IRCAM in Paris, presents us Marclay as he became known to the world: playing solo with his prepared records and turntables. The remaining performance feature Marclay's more recent challenges, i.e. improvising live with musicians from fairly different backgrounds: downtown NY heavy-weight Elliott Sharp and young noise-turntablist Soulslinger at the Tonic; Sonic Youth's guitar men Ranaldo and Moore at the legendary Victoriaville festival; and finally Olive (of the "illbient" collective We) and Erik M (one of the most interesting turntablists of the post- Marclay/Yoshihide/Tétreault generation) at the Centre Pompidou. Record Player hardly goes beyond the intrinsic interest of his subject, which is always a good way to measure one's merit in making a documentary: it is unfortunate, in particular, that no attention whatsoever is payed to Marclay's work as a visual artist (which, as he says, is as much a reflection on sound as his music), that the mighty turntablist's past works aren't even mentioned, and that Peter wasn't able to tap into the artist's known theoretical verve. Nevertheless, Record Player has its strong points: it's clean and sober, it offers us a rare opportunity to see Marclay playing solo and with a few top-notch musicians, and - perhaps even more important and certainly rarer - it gives us a chance to see the man haggling at a local sale for a stack of cheesy old records.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YXPGRM8X

FRANK SCHEFFER KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN: HELICOPTER STRING QUARTET (1995)

Director: Frank Scheffer

Year: 1995

Time: 81 mins

Music

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Arditti String Qaurtet

Eye of Sound: Dedicated to all astronauts, Helicopter String Quartet was composed for a very classical formation, the string quartet, in a very unusual setting: four players in four different flying helicopters, synchronized by means of voice signals and click marks. Stockhausen once had a dream. He was at some high-class party where he didn't feel welcome, and he just wanted to fly away from there. He suddenly starts flying in the air and through the objects, performing an elegant flight that mesmerizes the tuxedo-clad party guests who had snubbed him before. This was, the composer says, the very origin of this controversial piece. And throughout this fascinating documentary we see Stockhausen joyfully narrating the many signs, premonitions and supra-rational events that lead him to compose the piece. Many ideas merge in Helicopter: the dream of flying, music as a flying object, the double goal of translating the helicopter floating pitches into a score and integrating them in the recording, or the spiritual connotation of the flight. There is an overt spiritual quest in Stockhausen's composition, but this modern mystic must come to terns with his earthly dimension and become entangled in the mundane details of material reality in order to achieve an approximate translation of his dream. We thus are presented with a sample of the painstakingly meticulous rehearsals with the Arditti String Quartet and the immense technical challenges posed by the extravagant idea of putting four musicians playing together in four different helicopters. Stockhausen's joie de vivre and childish enthusiasm is evident throughout the film. There is, however, a key moment in the film in which the composer betrays an enormous inner angst: asked, during the dress rehearsal, to compare his dream to its practical fulfillment, Stockhausen doesn't fail to notice the obvious contrast between the freedom he felt in his dream and the heavy burden of technical and practical issues that surround him and somehow keep him from enjoying the moment. A grimace of sad resignation is then briefly allowed to take over his face. This is perhaps one of the strongest points about Scheffer's film: more than a simple documentary about an unusual avantgarde performance, fascinating as it may be, it is also a narrative about a man driven by  messages from the unconscious, sticking to his vision by means of premonitions and rigorous hard work, but finally recognizing the vacuity and failure inherent in his attempt to make his dream come true.

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