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Morton Subotnick of historical interest only?

dsg

dsg

Formerly bearded
The recent re-release of Silver Apples Of The Moon on vinyl has led me to finally listen to this 1967 "classic". Like a lot of early electronic music, it's not an easy listen. I'm a great fan of electronic music but I can't imagine sitting down to an evening of Subotnick. I remember when I first started seriously exploring electronic music in the early 1990s I tried to get hold of a lot of this sort of stuff and found it generally heavy going. Yet, it's often spoken and written about reverently. It's made me wonder whether anyone actually enjoys this kind of stuff or whether it's of more historical rather than artistic interest like some of the Radiophonic Workshop's more irritating electronic experiments.

Generally speaking, I think the music produced by electronic musicians today is much more interesting artistically than that produced 30, 40 or 50 years ago. I think that may be because the technology no longer costs vast sums of money, so it's more accessible and it's easier to use, so you can get on with making music rather than writing machine code or crawling around under a desk with a soldering iron.

Is this heresy? Does anyone enjoy early electronic music, really?

Damian
 
Silver Apples Of The Moon is amazing. I love it, and would kill for a Buchla modular as you really can't get that stuff out of anything else! I'm also a bit of a Stockhausen fan too, so I guess it's no great surprise I love this stuff. In fact my CD of Silver Apples Of The Moon / The Wild Bull is sitting in the pile on top of the right La Scala as I was playing it only a couple of days ago.
 
Hell yes.
There's never been a better time to listen to electronic music-regardless of vintage than now either.
 
"Does anyone enjoy early electronic music, really?"

Yes, I do. But it's a very wide field and there is a lot of trash out there. I'd argue that the really good stuff stands the test of time and is more difficult to date accurately. Look at the influence Radigue's 70s ARP/EMS synth work has had on the contemporary field since 2002 (the ubiquitous drone). And I doubt anything like the skill and sonorities employed in Parmagiani's better works will ever happen again, ditto Xenakis and Bayle.

I think Silver Apples Of The Moon is accessible and dated - but that is no bad thing; still a wonderful period piece.

Interestingly, I also think that some of the more interesting contemporary artists working with electronics/electroacoustics are using older technologies (Jason Lescalleet with his tape machines and Toshi Nakamura with no input mixing board spring to mind).
 
I still love The United States of America, the only 'electronic' pop record from that era that really worked for me. I tried to like White Noise at the time but it didn't do it for me. So yes, another one who enjoys some of it.

Ring modulators and tone generators at the ready; lets modulate!
 
d m butcher said:
I still love The United States of America, the only 'electronic' pop record from that era that really worked for me. I tried to like White Noise at the time but it didn't do it for me. So yes, another one who enjoys some of it.
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'60s US psych outfit Silver Apples were damn fine (and thread-relevant!) too. Remarkably ahead of the game, their first two albums still sound nicely odd now. I like the United States Of America album too (wasn't aware there was more than one), and I'd argue the White Noise album is excellent when it's not being unbearably twee. It's certainly worth having.
 
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The second album "The American Metaphysical Circus" is recorded under the name Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies.

If you're into the whole US Psych + primitive electronics, you also need teh albums by 50 Foot Hose and Lothar and the Hand People.
 
Tony L said:
'60s US psych outfit Silver Apples were damn fine (and thread-relevant!) too. Remarkably ahead of the game, their first two albums still sound nicely odd now. I like the United States Of America album too (wasn't aware there was more than one), and I'd argue the White Noise album is excellent when it's not being unbearably twee. It's certainly worth having.
Click to expand...

I was playing the chill out room of a big party a few years back, and played some Silver Apples - it went down surprisingly well.
Later that night I had someone come up to me thanking me for playing Can, as it stopped him freaking out on acid.

Ahhhh, good times.
 
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Yep, in fact "this sort of music" it started to make me question what the limits of music are, still searching.
 
Love it.

Also Love

glenn branca, harry partch, david yang, steve reich, Iannis Xenakis, and tod dockstader, also... jandek(you wanna talk difficult..JANDEK is difficult)
 
I dunno sometimes experimental music is a bit like those "manliest of men" chilli eating contests where dumb rednecks are shoving edible battery acid down their throats. Autechre? Oh easy, try some RvsR... Meh, easy try the sound of squealing animals being rent asunder by chainsaws... Pah, try the sound of humans being rent asunder by chainsaws.

I love experimental music as especially transmissible musics, compositions that spread across different or use mixed media: Zorn, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Glass, Cage, Laurie Anderson, The Wombles when you have the critical tools to pull apart some of the more lauded works, they are as vacuous and as empty as a Christmas novelty song, and no I am not naming names except it peer published journals where it's ok to be a bitchy prick so long as you cite a bunch of people you can hide behind.
 
Seeker_UK said:
The second album "The American Metaphysical Circus" is recorded under the name Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies.

If you're into the whole US Psych + primitive electronics, you also need teh albums by 50 Foot Hose and Lothar and the Hand People.
Click to expand...

Fifty Foot Hose's "Cauldron" is an excellent album. "If Not This Time" is a marvelous, trippy bit of psychedelia.

Has anybody heard either of the two albums made in the mid 90's by "Cork" Marcheschi" under the Fifty Foot Hose name? Any good?

Chris
 
dsg said:
The recent re-release of Silver Apples Of The Moon on vinyl has led me to finally listen to this 1967 "classic". Like a lot of early electronic music, it's not an easy listen. I'm a great fan of electronic music but I can't imagine sitting down to an evening of Subotnick. I remember when I first started seriously exploring electronic music in the early 1990s I tried to get hold of a lot of this sort of stuff and found it generally heavy going. Yet, it's often spoken and written about reverently. It's made me wonder whether anyone actually enjoys this kind of stuff or whether it's of more historical rather than artistic interest like some of the Radiophonic Workshop's more irritating electronic experiments.

Generally speaking, I think the music produced by electronic musicians today is much more interesting artistically than that produced 30, 40 or 50 years ago. I think that may be because the technology no longer costs vast sums of money, so it's more accessible and it's easier to use, so you can get on with making music rather than writing machine code or crawling around under a desk with a soldering iron.

Is this heresy? Does anyone enjoy early electronic music, really?

Damian
Click to expand...

Early electronic music more than Subotnick! So little 'experimental' music that came from the 60s transcended novelty value. Genuine boundary-pushing was put on the back burner in favour of alignment with the zeitgeist. Retrospectively, much of it was derivative and suffered the just fate of subsequent obscurity. Too druggy, too lazy, too self-indulgent. Especially the Americana.

I'm not anti-Morton, per se, but I prefer the other one.

If you want to hear electronic music that was fresh, rigorous and exciting, the Futurists and concrete had it going on a hundred years ago. The 50s was everyhere the golden era of electronic music - personally I'd even take the Barrons' Forbidden Planet soundtrack over Silver Apples of the Moon, but I'm contrary that way. Silver Apples, yes; of the Moon, no.

If you want to hear electronic music getting interesting again, fast-forward to early-70s Europe and glitchily on through Carsten Nicolai and the back catalogues of Autechre and Xenakis. Or look East to Ryoji Ikeda, Toshiya Tsunoda et al. And I agree up to a point that the internet has heralded another golden age of electronica - as far as anyone can tell. The web is the end of the trend.

Though I believe fundamentally in Steve Reich, I'm never convinced by American electronic music of the 60s. The contrarian in me just wants to curl up with Delia Derbyshire.

Uneasy listening does have perversely macho, Clarkson-esque pulling power (Metal Machine Music anyone?), but it's not necessarily clever. Repeat listening is the knack: sometimes unexpected pleasures unfurl; sometimes it becomes a kill trigger.
 
with you 100% on Feldman.

"Though I believe fundamentally in Steve Reich, I'm never convinced by American electronic music of the 60s"

not even David Tudor? Rainforest?
 
There you go - America: the country, like it's seminal poet, big enough to contain contradictions.

OK - Tudor, Cage and that gang were part of a group forged before the excesses of the 60s and intellectually immunised against it. Rainforest is primal fun.
 
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