Dojam neke "nove" vrste muzike. Zvukovne instalacije s udaraljkama i žicama - kao da si utrobu instrumenata raširio po prostoriji kako bi stvorio rezonantnu kutija svojih neurotičnih unutrašnjih prostora. Odjeci psihičkih prokišnjavanja, grebanja i struganja organa koji se penju uz tvoju prozirnu dušu. Osjećaji izgubljeni u umnažajućim odrazima razlomljenih zvukovnih zrcala. Kaos i poredak samo su djetinjaste ideje - okruženi smo iznutra i izvana nečime što je nezahvatljivo tim primitivnim pojmovima.
Streaming ovdje.
Eli Keszler: http://www.elikeszler.com
Druge stvari:
Catching Net is a collection of selected installations and compositions Keszler has created during the last two years. The double-CD set includes both stand-alone recordings of the installations and the integrated ensemble scores performed in conjunction with those installations.
The first disc features two ensemble versions of Cold Pin previously released in a 2011 LP of the same title on PAN, plus a 26-minute, previously unreleased live ensemble recording. The personnel for all three tracks is Eli Keszler drums, percussion, crotales, guitar; Ashley Paul, alto saxophone, bass harp; Geoff Mullen, prepared guitar; Greg Kelley, trumpet; Reuben Son, bassoon; and Benny Nelson, cello.
The second disc begins with the title track, Catching Net, a 17-minute score for string quartet and piano with the Cold Pin installation. It is performed by pianist Sakiko Mori and the Providence String Quartet: Carole Bestvater, violin; Rachel Panitch, violin; Chloë Kline, viola; Laura Cetilia, cello. The score is fully notated, timed with stopwatch markings rather than tempo or meter.
Following are two recordings of Keszler’s large-scale installations functioning on their own. Catching Basin (video below) features strings splayed from a two-story water tower across two large, empty water purification basins, which acted as an amplifier for the sounds produced by the installation. A ‘solo’ version of Cold Pin (without live performers) concludes the album.
Tracks 1 and 3 on the first disc and track 2 on the second disc were recorded at the historic Cyclorama, a massive dome at the Boston Center for the Arts. Cold Pin was installed directly on a large curved wall in the dome, using microcontrolled motors and beaters to strike extended strings ranging in length from three to 25 feet. The 2-CD set comes with a booklet housed in a large-scale gatefold design, featuring extensive images from the installations, program notes, sketches of the installations, scores, electronic schematics from the projects, and accompanying drawings. The cover art is a multi-layer drawing based on ideas around the mapping of the Collecting Basin installation, including a silkscreened outer sleeve using sketches from the project.- relrecords.net
PAN continues on it's amazing streak with this new double CD release of a variety of Eli Keszler's most notable pieces. Included are both sides of last year's PAN release, Cold Pin, with a choice bonus track of the piece of landmark avant composition being performed live by an ensemble of Keszler, Ashley Paul, Geoff Mullen, Greg Kelly, and Reuben Son, and then, on the other CD, "Cold Pin" recorded live at the Cyclorama in Boston in its installed form. "Cold Pin", as you might remember, was an installed piece of music, composed of "14 strings ranging in length from 25 to 3 feet are strung across a 15 x 40 curved wall, with motors attacking the strings, connected by micro-controllers, pick-ups and RCA cables." We love the video of this crazy new kind of music, and we wish we could have been present for it's actual performance! Lucky for us, we can listen to the recording, which is almost as wild.
The second CD also includes "Catching Net", a piece performed by the more standard instruments of a string quartet and piano in the Bell Street Chapel in Providence, RI. However, the whinnies and grunts of this string quartet are truly inventive, forcing these classical instruments to climb on top of what 300 years of composition for them has created for them, to plant a flag of the new sound revolution. Lastly, we have the track "Collecting Basin", a piece built in the city of Shreveport, Louisiana, where "Extended Piano wire from 20 to 200 feet are struck with motorized beaters which are triggered from a micro controller system. The strings splay directly out off a two story water tower, extending over empty water purification basins." Just try, for a second, to imagine what this sounds like. Now listen. See how wrong you were?
Catching Net will be available soon via Forced Exposure and Boomkat, but in the meantime, get your first listen here. - www.imposemagazine.com/
Composer/percussionist/multimedia artist Eli Keszler hits the spotlight this summer with a new double-CD compilation titled Catching Net, released July 6th on the Berlin-based PAN label. Catching Net brings together new and previously-released versions of his acclaimed installation-based work Cold Pin, including the title track with string quartet and piano. Cold Pin has been featured on NPR, was just performed at the juried MATA Festival, and has earned Keszler Finalist status in the 2012 Gaudeamus International Composers Award competition (the winner is announced in September).
Catching Net is a collection of selected installations and compositions Keszler has created during the last two years. The double-CD set includes both stand-alone recordings of the installations and the integrated ensemble scores performed in conjunction with those installations.
The first disc features two ensemble versions of Cold Pin previously released in a 2011 LP of the same title on PAN, plus a 26-minute, previously unreleased live ensemble recording. The second disc begins with the title track, Catching Net, a 17-minute score for string quartet and piano with the Cold Pin installation. It is performed by pianist Sakiko Mori and the Providence String Quartet. The score is fully notated, timed with stopwatch markings rather than tempo or meter.
Following are two recordings of Keszler’s large-scale installations functioning on their own. Catching Basin (video below) features strings splayed from a two-story water tower across two large, empty water purification basins, which acted as an amplifier for the sounds produced by the installation. A ‘solo’ version of Cold Pin (without live performers) concludes the album.
Tracks 1 and 3 on the first disc and track 2 on the second disc were recorded at the historic Cyclorama, a massive dome at the Boston Center for the Arts. Cold Pin was installed directly on a large curved wall in the dome, using microcontrolled motors and beaters to strike extended strings ranging in length from three to 25 feet.
The 2-CD set comes with a booklet housed in a large-scale gatefold design, featuring extensive images from the installations, program notes, sketches of the installations, scores, electronic schematics from the projects, and accompanying drawings. The cover art is a multi-layer drawing based on ideas around the mapping of the Collecting Basin installation, including a silkscreened outer sleeve using sketches from the project.
Prior to the CD release, Keszler’s monumental new work, L-Carrier, was unveiled with a live performance at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center in New York (see left for New York Times review). Commissioned by Issue Project Room and turbulence.org, L-Carrier is Keszler’s most ambitious creation to date, functioning simultaneously as a large-scale installation, score, ensemble composition, and remote website. The L-Carrier installation will remain on view at Eyebeam through June 23 and will be followed by further work in San Francisco, London and Utrecht.
Together, Catching Net and L-Carrier form a portrait of a musical thinker who, at the age of 28, is blazing new paths for the 21st-century avant-garde – merging high and low technology, digital sophistication and visceral impact.
Video Cold Pin Installation
Biography:
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Eli Keszler (pron. KESS-ler) began playing drums at eight, and composing at twelve. Before finding an interest in experimental music and improvisation, he played in rock and hardcore bands; his work retains an intense physicality and churning, often ferocious energy. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he studied composition with Anthony Coleman and Ran Blake. A self-taught visual artist, his aesthetic outlook owes as much to Richard Serra and Robert Smithson as it does to musical icons like Xenakis, Nancarrow, and Ornette Coleman. He has collaborated with Phill Niblock, Roscoe Mitchell, Joe McPhee, Loren Connors, Jandek, and many others, and has recorded more than a dozen CDs and LPs for ESP-DISK, REL, and PAN.
Keszler’s installations employ piano wires of varying lengths; these are struck, scraped, and vibrated by microprocessor-controlled motorized arms, giving rise to harmonically complex tones that are percussive yet resonant. These installations are heard on their own and with accompanying ensemble scores. Said Keszler in a NPR All Songs Considered interview, “I like to work with raw material, like simple sounds, primitive or very old sounds; sounds that won't get dated in any way. I was thinking of ways I could use strings or acoustic material without using pedals or pre-recordings, so the live aspects appealed to me.” In addition, the patterns formed by the overlapping piano wires allow Keszler to create visual components that relate directly to the music, without having to use projections or other electronic equipment.
This combined-artwork concept finds compelling expression in both the Catching Net CDs and L-Carrier. The pieces compiled on Catching Net combine the mechanized Cold Pin installation with ensemble scores for mixed sextet and piano quintet; these are captured in contrasting acoustical spaces, including the resonant Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. Also included is a recording of Collecting Basin, in which piano wires up to 250 feet long were stretched from a two-story water tower in Shreveport, Louisiana, and struck with automated beaters as in Cold Pin.
L-Carrier advances the concept further, introducing a wild-card element in the form of a remote website that processes visual and sonic information from the installation and performance (captured via surveillance camera), and uses that data to modify the installation itself in real time. - www.backspinpromo.com/
In Yukio Ninagawa’s 2004 production of Hamlet, actors
executed wonderfully theatrical displays across a jet-black set, void of
any decoration or obstruction bar a profusion of lengthy barbed-wire
strands that stretched from stage to ceiling. Each filament tackled
various angles and thickness, imposing a silent, metallic violence on
both audience and cast as the performers played around its vicious
spirals. Despite the minimalist approach to set design and prop use, one
of the greatest works in documented theater was re-imagined through the
constrictive presence of fencing hardware, out of context and brimming
with supplication.
When Eli Keszler organizes piano wires that run the course of his sound exhibitions, he is not just attentively manipulating them by reconfiguring their sound; alternate contexts are arranged from the bowels of traditional musical instruments and spread across spatial canvases that become integrated with each composition. Where Ninagawa’s cast were instructed to bound and shimmy between rigid strips of reconditioned barbed wire that physically constricted their performance space, Keszler completely distorts his materials to create sounds intrinsic to his art in such a way that they become unraveled, complementing objects that encompass them as opposed to causing an obstruction.
But this only constitutes a foundational layer of depth within the music offered here, for despite his multi-instrumentalist capabilities, Keszler is primarily a percussionist. The use of wires in his work create a stave on which his notes, formed from rampant striking, are inscribed. “Collecting Basin,” the closing piece on disc two of Catching Net, is a reference to the water purification facility at the McNeil Street Pumping Station in Louisiana, home of the primary installation, where a number of piano wires varying in length were exhibited and “struck with motorized beaters […] triggered from a micro controller system.” The affect on the recording is a haunting one, which contrasts the arresting abstraction of the original idea and immediately calls into question the validity of documenting a sound installation to begin with.
The sonic experience remains most riveting throughout the entirety of this collection, which guides the listener towards subjective and transient visualizations, despite uncovering initial methods on recording setups. Catching Net embodies the documentation of exhibitions that were initially intended to be experienced in the flesh, as opposed to spanning an album of original material. And though these tracks were part of singular performances, the very fact that they were recorded is an indication their results were meant for playback.
Both discs provoke similar emotional responses through the sounds that are conveyed, but the models they adhere to are very different. The title track embodies string arrangements and piano keys, which rest upon the dirge of vibrating cables — it sounds industrial, a vacuous churning. The compositions are dramatic and semi-improvised, illustrating a range of provocative images, like a million tungsten tips dropping to the floor at different speeds and landing on a pile of broken string instruments. Bass threads give “Cold Pin 1” a woeful feel, while frantic percussion and sluggish trumpet contributions exemplify a constant clash in stamina. A feeling of immense anxiety and unease is carved through atmospherics and delivery, like a screeching portal that never fully opens. Fear suppresses the desire to discover what is on the other side, but the suspense eventually subsides; when the percussion returns, it comes as a relief.
As conceptually experimental pieces, the invocation of images for circumscribing resonance to sound becomes second nature. Visual transgressions are consequential to the drama and vitality expressed here, manifest in a corollary of appropriation, a daydream sequence. “Cold Pin 2” is mechanical rain that can be physically felt — standing alone on the pavement with no light in the sky, torrential precipitation dashes a tin roof, a man from the restaurant opposite takes out evening trash, while faint and distant trumpet purr can be heard from a jazz club uptown. A pocket watch goes berserk.
These tumbling and turbulent instances constitute a reflection of the artist’s mettle. They amplify portions of his character, charisma, and energy, which are personified through the rapidity of symbols that crash, trumpets that dirge, and lines that twang — which on “Cold Pin 3” insinuates a running motor, tough and sturdy, then, masses of falling cutlery. Keszler describes these moments as “tiny little attacks” that are used to support the longer, more drawn-out sounds. It may feel as though one is under fire at the time, but like the abounding rain, each siege allows for growth and evolution. This forged realm is both luscious and full of promise.
The audacity of each composition in its original incarnation might be somewhat quashed through playback, but Keszler’s ambition permeates above all else. His electronic abstinence amplifies conviction in conveying precise moods that he wishes his audience to explore, and this is achieved to heart-stirring affect. Sounds are nurtured here in organic forms that grow, breathe, and mutate as extensions of interaction the artist has with the instruments and objects he manipulates. This is a wonderful environment to explore sonically, and these recordings allow for a most preeminent exemplification of forbearance, while simultaneously splitting the ears of the groundlings. - Birkut
When Eli Keszler organizes piano wires that run the course of his sound exhibitions, he is not just attentively manipulating them by reconfiguring their sound; alternate contexts are arranged from the bowels of traditional musical instruments and spread across spatial canvases that become integrated with each composition. Where Ninagawa’s cast were instructed to bound and shimmy between rigid strips of reconditioned barbed wire that physically constricted their performance space, Keszler completely distorts his materials to create sounds intrinsic to his art in such a way that they become unraveled, complementing objects that encompass them as opposed to causing an obstruction.
But this only constitutes a foundational layer of depth within the music offered here, for despite his multi-instrumentalist capabilities, Keszler is primarily a percussionist. The use of wires in his work create a stave on which his notes, formed from rampant striking, are inscribed. “Collecting Basin,” the closing piece on disc two of Catching Net, is a reference to the water purification facility at the McNeil Street Pumping Station in Louisiana, home of the primary installation, where a number of piano wires varying in length were exhibited and “struck with motorized beaters […] triggered from a micro controller system.” The affect on the recording is a haunting one, which contrasts the arresting abstraction of the original idea and immediately calls into question the validity of documenting a sound installation to begin with.
The sonic experience remains most riveting throughout the entirety of this collection, which guides the listener towards subjective and transient visualizations, despite uncovering initial methods on recording setups. Catching Net embodies the documentation of exhibitions that were initially intended to be experienced in the flesh, as opposed to spanning an album of original material. And though these tracks were part of singular performances, the very fact that they were recorded is an indication their results were meant for playback.
Both discs provoke similar emotional responses through the sounds that are conveyed, but the models they adhere to are very different. The title track embodies string arrangements and piano keys, which rest upon the dirge of vibrating cables — it sounds industrial, a vacuous churning. The compositions are dramatic and semi-improvised, illustrating a range of provocative images, like a million tungsten tips dropping to the floor at different speeds and landing on a pile of broken string instruments. Bass threads give “Cold Pin 1” a woeful feel, while frantic percussion and sluggish trumpet contributions exemplify a constant clash in stamina. A feeling of immense anxiety and unease is carved through atmospherics and delivery, like a screeching portal that never fully opens. Fear suppresses the desire to discover what is on the other side, but the suspense eventually subsides; when the percussion returns, it comes as a relief.
As conceptually experimental pieces, the invocation of images for circumscribing resonance to sound becomes second nature. Visual transgressions are consequential to the drama and vitality expressed here, manifest in a corollary of appropriation, a daydream sequence. “Cold Pin 2” is mechanical rain that can be physically felt — standing alone on the pavement with no light in the sky, torrential precipitation dashes a tin roof, a man from the restaurant opposite takes out evening trash, while faint and distant trumpet purr can be heard from a jazz club uptown. A pocket watch goes berserk.
These tumbling and turbulent instances constitute a reflection of the artist’s mettle. They amplify portions of his character, charisma, and energy, which are personified through the rapidity of symbols that crash, trumpets that dirge, and lines that twang — which on “Cold Pin 3” insinuates a running motor, tough and sturdy, then, masses of falling cutlery. Keszler describes these moments as “tiny little attacks” that are used to support the longer, more drawn-out sounds. It may feel as though one is under fire at the time, but like the abounding rain, each siege allows for growth and evolution. This forged realm is both luscious and full of promise.
The audacity of each composition in its original incarnation might be somewhat quashed through playback, but Keszler’s ambition permeates above all else. His electronic abstinence amplifies conviction in conveying precise moods that he wishes his audience to explore, and this is achieved to heart-stirring affect. Sounds are nurtured here in organic forms that grow, breathe, and mutate as extensions of interaction the artist has with the instruments and objects he manipulates. This is a wonderful environment to explore sonically, and these recordings allow for a most preeminent exemplification of forbearance, while simultaneously splitting the ears of the groundlings. - Birkut
over two years in the making, cold pin is the new full length record by eli keszler. both a composition and stand alone installation, 14 strings ranging in length from 25 to 3 feet are strung across a 15 x 40 curved wall, with motors attacking the strings, connected by micro-controllers, pick-ups and rca cables. recorded in boston's historic cyclorama, a massive dome built to house the cyclorama of the battle of gettysburg painting in 1884. the b side features in addition, a 'dry' version of the installation with motor attacks on metal squares rather then strings, creating dense percussive clusters. cold pin works within the frame work of left to right time and vertical structure. the installation acts as the architecture of the music, surrounding and immersing the live instruments into incredible density and sharp angular mass shapes, and functions alone as the performers stops. rather then an individual sound the sustained horns, strings, drums and metallic attacks function as a singular unit, and continue too when they stop alongside the installation. cold pin features eli keszler (drums, crotales installation and guitar), geoff mullen (guitar), ashley paul (clarinet, guitar, greenbox) greg kelley (trumpet), reuben son (bassoon) and benjamin nelson (cello). eli keszler is a composer, artist and multi-instrumentalist based in new york city. in performance, he often plays drums, bowed crotales and guitar in conjunction with his installations. in his ensemble compositions, he uses extended strings, motors, crotales, horns and mechanical devices to create his sound, balancing intense harmonic formations with acoustic sustain, fast jarring rhythm, mechanical propulsion, dense textures and detailed visual presentations. eli has toured extensively throughout europe and the us, performing solo and in collaboration with artists such as phill niblock, aki onda, joe mcphee, loren connors, jandek, roscoe mitchell, anthony coleman, joe morris, steve beresford, c spencer yeh, greg kelley (nmperign), t model ford, ran blake, ashley paul and steve pyne. he has recorded solo releases for labels such as hiw own rel records, esp-disk' and type (red horse). his installations have appeared at the boston center for the arts and nuit blanche nyc and the shreveport mspc new music festival. he has most recently won the mata composers competition for the 2012 season. eli keszler is a graduate of the new england conservatory in boston where he studied with anthony coleman and ran blake. the lp is mastered and cut by rashad becker at d&m, in a limited edition of 500 copies, pressed on 140g vinyl and comes in a poly-lined inner sleeve. it is packaged in a pro-press color jacket which itself is housed in a silk screened pvc sleeve with artwork by kathryn politis & bill kouligas.- relrecords.net
Oxtirn is a truly unique and powerful blend of free energy, modern composition and mechanical music that defies genre. With two proper full lengths and an array of self-releases under his belt, Eli Keszler has turned to ESP-Disk for the release of Oxtirn, his third, most composed and large scale effort to date. Capturing Keszler and crew at their most frenetic, Oxtirn abruptly spills out into a cacophony of tuned brass, squeaking rust, and electrically shorting contact mics, taking the detritus of post-industrial existence (sheet metal, spring boards and motors wrenched from their initial hearths) and transforming that refuse into a twenty-first century musique-concrete orchestra. On the album’s initial track, motors tumble across prepared sheets of metal as expertly placed squalls of bowed string and what could only be described as the sounds of a phantom brass band (courtesy of multiple horn player Andrew Fenlon and Keszler’s longstanding partner Ashley Paul on clarinet) mesh transcendentally with Keszler’s precise percussion and bursts of controlled chaos. Side B sees Eli and sonic artist Sakiko Mori on both prepared and installed pianos; as the two furiously scrape and agitate strings with a mix of switch-operated motors, contact mics and suspended preparations, slowly undulating resonant clusters float on top of the underlying din, creating a striking contrast. Here, the eerie timbre of Keszler’s bowed crotales recall Italian futurist Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori and the string quartets of Dumitrescu. Accompanying each digital release is an eye popping and dizzying visual score that proves Oxtirn, despite sounding wholly improvised, is a meticulously micromanaged piece of sound sculpture. In addition to the score, each digital release boasts an extra track with Keszler on “metal configurations”. The vinyl is limited to 300 copies and comes packaged with a beautiful, hand-screened poster featuring original artwork by Eli Keszler. Personnel Side A Eli Keszler : drums, bowed metal, crotales, guitar, prepared/riveted 4 x 10 foot sheet metal, contact microphone, spring harp, bass board, motor, prepared piano Ashley Paul : clarinet Andrew Fenlon : trumpet, tuba, french horn, trombone Side B Eli Keszler : piano, motors, cymbal, crotales, snare drum, microphones Sakiko Mori : prepared piano Digital Only Bonus Track Eli Keszler : crotales, snare drum, configurations Ashley Paul : clarinet
Eli discusses his favorite recordings (Ligeti, Feldman, Paul McCarthy, Derek Bailey / Tony Oxley and Alvin Lucier) with Ad Hoc here
“I didn’t know you were into tribal stuff now …” This is what my wife told me peeping into the room where I was listening to the record mentioned above. Actually, she’s not properly my wife, but we live together and we share a lovely kid. What I don’t want to share with her is my record collection.
There was in any case some truth in her remark. Reading from Eli Keszler’s website we learn about this release what follows. Catching Net is a two-disc collection of selected installations and compositions the artist created during the last two years. It includes both stand-alone recordings of the installations and the integrated ensemble scores performed in conjunction with those. We find, on disc one, two ensemble versions of Cold Pin, a superb percussion composition resulting from a technological installation that had been previously released on vinyl in 2011, plus a 26 minutes long excursus given by the mix of several live ensemble recordings of such a work. To be more accurate, the installation going under the name of Cold Pin features 14 strings and piano wires of various lengths strung and stretched along a wall and struck (I imagine maybe with different intensity) by micro-controlled motorized beaters. Come on! Help me please and watch this video!
The result is a self sufficient musical universe that can be enhanced by the live performance of a varying ensemble that numbers, in this case, Eli Keszler on drums, percussion, crotales and guitar, Ashley Paul on alto saxophone and bass harp, Geoff Mullen on prepared guitar, Greg Kelley on trumpet, Reuben Son on bassoon and Benny Nelson on cello.
Especially the long live act gives us back all the sound gradations and the stylistic undertones that constitute Keszler’s musical vision and approach. Percussive clusters, jarring resonances, scraped cymbals emitting drilling whistles and harmonically complex tones interact and merge in an archaic maelstrom of paths to follows in the dark, bursts of light, death and life. My involvement during the listening is more epidermal than aural. That’s why in some way I understood the definition of “tribal”. This music is timeless and boundless to me. I can imagine it playing both as an hidden soundtrack during the rush hour on a NYC subway and as a far echo coming from a bonfire in the Gobi desert at night. It’s tribal because it sounds as our lives sound. It’s tribal because it has the urgency and unavoidability of the mechanism of life itself.
The second part of the work begins with Catching Net, a 17 minute score for string quartet and piano performed by pianist Sakiko Mori and the Providence String Quartet to be played in conjunction with the Cold Pin installation. Then we find two recordings of Keszler’s large-scale installations functioning on their own. One is a solo version of Cold Pin without live performers. The other is Collecting Basin which features piano strings/wires splayed from a water tower in Louisiana across two large empty basins acting as amplifiers for the installation. Imagine a drunk and immense double bass playing a stunning perpetual low chord. I’m the kind of person who can be motionless and enraptured for hours “seeing” live such a sound.
Packaging offers besides an extensive selection of images and sketches of the installations, program notes, electronic schematics from the projects and drawings by the artist himself.
This is what Keszler’s music also makes me think. As John Cage reported more than once in his writings, when you enter in an anechoic chamber - a specially designed room to stop and absorb reflections of either sounds or electromagnetic waves both from inner or exterior sources - you will not find in any case total silence. You are going instead to hear two different noises. First is a low uninterrupted tone. That’s the flux of your blood. Second is a sharp recurring pitch. That’s your nervous system at work. We could summarize saying that sound is inside you, something you cannot completely get rid of. Something that has always been there, that you can maybe cut out of your attention but that sooner or later will emerge to take a coherent shape. In my opinion this is what happen as well in the Eli Keszler’s music conception.
I was about to give a five stars rating, but this is in any case a collection of already released stuff. So, I promise that the missing half star will be added to the next, I’m sure even more challenging, Keszler’s release. Per aspera ad astra
I was there overflowing while thinking this thoughts when I felt the need to listen to Mats Gustafsson “Needs!” album.
“Is our washing machine broken?” She came and asked. I will not marry her.
Listen if you want. - Paolo Casertano
Ensemble With Piano Wires, Off the Wall and Ceiling
By STEVE SMITH
Whenever an artist produces something so boggling and so inexplicable as
to defy more than a cursory understanding at first brush, I am reminded
of the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s suggestion that “any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There
was magic in the air on Thursday evening at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in Chelsea, when a new piece by Eli Keszler, “L-Carrier,” was introduced before a rapt audience.
Mr. Keszler’s work presents several paradoxes. A percussionist with
roots in punk rock and free improvisation, he fuses chaos and order in
his drumming: a burble and clatter akin to what European drummers like Tony Oxley and Han Bennink
invented in the late 1960s to distinguish their work from American free
jazz. Mr. Keszler’s penchant for pealing, ringing metal evokes another
European percussionist, Eddie Prévost of the English collective AMM.
Roots notwithstanding, Mr. Keszler is an original; the way he deploys
his energies is even more so. Listeners familiar with both hypercomplex
modernist composition and nonidiomatic improvisation know that those
methods, though radically opposed in aim, can sound similar in practice.
Mr. Keszler’s music inhabits a gray area between those poles, using
rigorously conceived scores to harness the inchoate energy of
improvisation and its capacity for surprise.
“L-Carrier” demonstrates another facet of Mr. Keszler’s work: the
construction of large-scale, interactive installation pieces, which can
function alone or in tandem with live performers. (“Catching Net,” a
two-CD set newly issued on the German label Pan, includes contrasting
versions of a similarly conceived piece.)
In essence “L-Carrier” is an installation of piano wires from 3 to 70
feet long, amplified and struck with mechanical beaters triggered by
input from a remote Web page hosted by Turbulence, a Web-art initiative.
At Eyebeam, Mr. Keszler’s spindly lattice stretches across a gallery
wall and extends to the ceiling beams, filling the reverberant space
with the steely pangs and groans of a ghost ship rocking on a river’s
currents. For Thursday’s opening-night event, presented by Eyebeam and
Turbulence in conjunction with the Issue Project Room’s Darmstadt
Institute, Mr. Keszler led an octet in a live version of the work.
Anthony Coleman, playing Farfisa organ, and Geoff Mullen, who applied
metal bolts and a glass slide to a partly unstrung electric guitar,
worked mostly in tandem with Mr. Keszler’s busy flux. Ashley Paul, on
clarinet and alto saxophone, and Reuben Son, a bassoonist, provided
long, slightly funereal tones; the violinists C. Spencer Yeh and
Catherine Lamb and the cellist Alex Waterman countered with warm
sustained chords and flitting squeals.
For just over an hour Mr. Keszler’s music waxed and waned, the
installation clanging and groaning along with the performers. At times
you’d swear that the mechanical beaters were assessing what the
ensemble’s sounds needed: a rude jolt here, a complementary hush there.
Artful, perplexing and endlessly fascinating, it could just as well have
been magic.
Eli Keszler: The Violent New Worlds of Catching Net; "L-Carrier" Video Premiere
What does it mean to be a multimedia artist today? For 28 year-old American composer/percussionist Eli Keszler (www.elikeszler.com), the answer might not be what you would expect. Keszler--whose new art installation L-Carrier recently opened on June 7 at Eyebeam Art & Technology Center in New York City (video premiere below)--frequently combines elements of sound, visual art, and mechanical engineering to create highly immersive sonic environments rooted in the tactile world.
A musical abstract expressionist, Keszler excises anything that suggests a melody in favor of myriad textures with drones that blare, sear, and scrape their way across the soundscape. His creations are unapologetically violent, and none of the double album's six tracks last less than ten minutes. It seems as if Keszler is attempting to break us from the preconceived notion that percussion's primary role is to establish the rhythmic foundation of the music. Throughout Catching Net, the percussionist elicits seemingly countless colors from his drums, crotales, and other percussion instruments. In this way, Keszler gives the percussion family equal footing alongside the other instruments, rather than relegating it to less-than-musical status. His approach to the other instruments' timbral possibilities is similarly inventive.
The Disc One opener, entitled "Cold Pin 1," features a relentless barrage of sound -- various drum rolls, clatters, clinks, screeches, tapping, and ear-ringing frequencies. This visceral onslaught gives way to "Cold Pin 2": whirring sounds reminiscent of baseball cards stuck in bicycle spokes and pattering akin to rainfall provide a quieter, if no less daunting aural environment. As the composition progresses, signs of enigmatic and unspecified life suddenly appear -- frog-like croaking, primal squealing that sounds like electric guitars, bird-like chirping, low growls and gongs.
"Cold Pin 3," a nearly half-hour long live ensemble version of the composition, closes the first disc. This iteration gives the listener the impression of increased distance, as Keszler's percussion reverberates uninhibited through the cavernous sonic space that is the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. The arrangement of instruments is noticeably less cluttered, giving individual utterances more freedom to move through time before colliding with the other looming sounds. Arguably, this final track in the trio that comprises the first disc is the most harrowing -- a slow scream clawed by guitar drones and meddlesome percussion, along with wailing trumpet and woodwinds, in what sounds like some new earth groaning amidst the process of creation.
By comparison, the title track and Disc Two opener "Catching Net," a string quartet and piano version of the Cold Pin installation, lacks the feral mystery that characterized the previous Cold Pin variations. The expressive capabilities of this known quantity pale in comparison to the idiosyncratic configuration on the first disc that included guitars, trumpet, bass harp, cello, saxophone, and bassoon. The triumph of the Cold Pin variations is its enigmatic approach to sonic production--the listener can never be quite sure of what he or she is hearing at any given moment. Which instrument played what, and how exactly was that particular sound achieved? All of these fascinating questions are answered in "Catching Net," and that's the problem. When the unconventional timbres are mined by a more traditional ensemble, the mystery is deconstructed, and the magician's secret is revealed.
But if "Catching Net" made us temporarily forget what makes Keszler's creations so special, the album's closing track "Collecting Basin" instantaneously reminds us. In this recording of a Shreveport, Louisiana installation of Cold Pin, the composer employs colossal scale -- with piano wires as long as 250 feet suspended from a water tower two-stories tall. What results is what sounds like the world's largest didgeridoo. If it were a physical landscape, "Collecting Basin" would be virtually impassible, a windswept and craggy terrain. Somehow it could be the highest cliff, or the lowest valley.
The double album Catching Net confirms Eli Keszler as an artist whose distinctive blend of soundscape and architectural engineering transcends the perceived limitations of percussion, and in the process, forges new sound worlds. - Daniel J. Kushner
Eli Keszler vs. Keith Fullerton Whitman
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An artist-on-artist interview in three parts. Part one: the clock; the synth; sabotage.
Left: Eli Keszler; Right: Keith Fullerton Whitman
We asked Eli and Keith to interview each other, because we had an inkling that beyond being slapped together on two sides of vinyl, they might also have an interesting amount of dialogue in the current state of experimentalism and also the specifics of each other's work. However, we might not have estimated that they would have quite so much to say; for your reading comfort, and for ours, we have split this interview into three parts, each published over the next three days (on Wednesday, we will include a downloadable PDF of the entire text). Please enjoy part one, where Eli takes the dominant role in interviewing Keith about his work. —Eds.
Eli Keszler: I was curious about your connection to the idea of the body in relationship to what you are doing, because you are an interesting case. You can really here a certain rhythmic intensity in your music – even in the slower pieces, that to me wouldn't be there if dance music, and acoustic music, wasn't a real part of your life. For me its almost the opposite case, where my body is right in the center, and when its not with the mechanized music or composing, it really isn't. With you, it seems a little bit more complicated.
Keith Fullterton Whitman: Good start! recently, i've been feeling more and more disconnected with the organization of the sounds that I'm "performing" at any given time. One of the main ideas behind the hardware system(s) I've been using recently is that, when you get down to it, they're largely self-sustaining. I'm almost not even part of the equation.
I can see that – but the results are very you.
My role is merely a "puppetmaster". Maybe i'm dangling the strings in a certain way, in a certain order. But the sounds are mostly the result of an internalized decision-making process that doesn't necessarily need me as a "performer" inside the loop. I can influence the boundaries, the ranges. maybe even the timings & their adherence to or complete denial of a central "clock". but the individual sounding elements are policing themselves.
Can you listen to your music objectively because of this? Do you feel that if you get negative criticism, you are receiving it, or do you just think of it as someone objecting to a mathematical fact, in a way? For me I try to detach myself emotionally from what I'm doing, not because I want my music to be devoid of feeling, because I feel a lot when I'm playing. But I just don't think of it in those terms. It's just material.
As a performer, no. But I guess this all blurring the lines of what constitutes a performer and what a listener. I'm sure you've often been in that so-called "alpha state" while performing, where maybe each individual hit isn't calculated in real-time. More like you're overseeing the overall energy and pacing. But your motor skills are largely handling the intricacies, and maybe your frontal lobe is working towards the complete, overall sound, not each one as it's going by. I'm very much in the moment when I'm playing, even if the time-scale is compressing & expanding at its own free will. I often step away from a performance thinking only a few minutes have passed, when in the audience's time-scale it's been 10, or 20, or 60...
For sure, I'm rarely paying attention to each hit. That's for me, maybe the big thing I focus on that I think has been greatly under developed in percussion. Drums are always thought of in small units one hit a time, each attack matters..but what about so many sounds overlapping that it creates a tone out of sound? This is a idea that's applied to all sorts of instruments, but I don't hear it too much from drums, perhaps because its counter intuitive, but that's what is so important about it for me-- Also, in my mind, some of the slower work I do with bowed crotales, and more sustained tones is very connected in pace to the more percussive pointed pieces, I'm not hearing things on a tiny scale, but more through the larger lens.
As a solo performer your abilities to multi-task have to be constantly put to the test; you're not just providing sound, you're also shaping the overall form, plus preparing for the next move/set of tools, breathing…
On rhythm Keith, I was wondering what your connection to pulse was? Do you hear parts of your music as adhering to tempo and breaking from it, or more in terms a open space, where things can jump of? To my ear, I here a connection with your rhythmic ideas and someone like Nancarrow, for example in study no. 21. You have crossing tempi over the course of three minutes or so, and you hear a process unfolding. Do you think of having multiple tempos or is it more open then this?
in the pieces i'm doing these days, the "occlusions" (the name is kind of a misnomer – the act of opening and closing your ears akin to opening and closing a filter – but it's stuck) there is ALWAYS a "master clock" and everything is derived from it. That said, i've gone to great lengths to use the clock to multiply & divide musical time in interesting ways. At the core is this idea that there's a threshold at which you can perceive "harmonic" rhythm, and where you only hear asynchronous, unrelated tempi. The Nancarrow example there is perfectly in line with this. You're interpreting the "crossings" of unrelated rhythm-sets as "resolutions", whether you want to or not. It's human nature to do this. Also ; the master clock is mutable. I've found a way to have it influence itself, in a feedback-loop of decision-making. It often gets "stuck" and needs me to reach in and restart it. It's dialable from straight-time through short bursts followed by long silences.
So thats a point that you would re-enter the piece, in a way.
The piece is continuous, whether it's sounding that way or not! That's one of my favorite aspects of it. Also that it's essentially eternal and I'm just bringing it up for 20 minutes at a time to be "heard". I love the idea that it's running on any given night for a few hours between soundcheck and performance, at exactly the same intensity. then it comes up over the PA and is somehow made "significant" simply due to the fact that people are listening to it. But it's been going the whole time. It doesn't have any perceptions as to what, formally, is significant or not. It's executing a task.
I see – I think that idea shows a real divide that has happened now in the way we think of time and development in comparison to a piece like this one by Nancarrow. Very little music is so clear cut in terms of its form anymore as this piece. Talk about letting go – I think Nancarrow really did this in an incredible way. He's essentially showing proportions between rhythms, with a canon, but when you hear it especially to the end its so beautiful when it reaches that density. It takes on a whole different meaning, and becomes something far beyond the basic components. It's amazing. But, I imagine you have a similar instinct in you, to break away from such clear cut forms as you described. It's just not in me at any rate. That's my response to this, as much as I love this music. He's one of my favorites.
I feel a great resonance w/ Nancarrow. Not just the forms, but also in that he's taken a purpose-built instrument (the player piano; for when the saloon is too cheap to pay a pianist!!!) and has just gone in the other direction with it. He worked with the idiosyncrasies of the instrument, emphasized them and used those as the core of his music. I have a hard time with most dance music these days ; especially the 4/4 things. I feel like we should moved so far past all of that by now. The '90s were an excellent time for re-introducing heavy syncopation into that highly socio-sexualized area of music; I feel like all of that good work has just been abandoned & we're back in the stone ages of NTSS NTSS NTSS again.
I really agree with you. You must have felt to a degree in the '90s that this was it! We are finally moving beyond the 8th note. . . and then back to square one. At the same time, there is an atmosphere to the simplicity of pulse, I can sympathize with it. I just see a lot of possibilities to reach that point with different sets of material then something so ancient, as I'm sure you do.
In the same way as nancarrow, I'm taking this language of sound - his piano timbres, my analogue synthesizer ones, but removing the timbres from their normal stylistic use - his classical & jazz, my dance & hip-hop. Keep in mind that I ONLY got interested in dance music AFTER all of that stuff started happening. Late jungle, drum & bass, breakcore, etc… when all of that disintegrated and then gave rise to 2-step, garidge, then dubstep, I gave up and went back to free jazz, etc. But there's a deep love of the early, renegade stuff ; esp. the afro-futurist elements - Detroit & Chicago techno, etc.
For sure. Well it makes sense, you have to go the opposite way of the crowd.
For me it was all about this imagined contest, a race towards a real complexity that somehow invaded the consciousness of the "pop" music listener… for a blip. Obviously, the audiences were dwindling with each step towards the brink of total chaos. And, at the end, the audiences were really all that mattered to most people who were active in those days. They went back to populism, back to simplicity. I kept going.
Do you think you'll move away from the synthesizer?
Definitely. I'm very happy with it both as a signifier and as a direct link to the history of electronic music. But it's a huge undertaking to yield even 1/10th of what can be achieved with even a modest computer these days. Or hell, even a cell phone. The form factor of the modular is crucial for me; it's visually analogous to the construction of any given variant of what I'm performing, in a very real way - a patch cord is removed and sound or control stop. But as I strive for more and more detail and control, it grows physically. I'm already having problems carting the bare-bones version around. I could easily build something just as rewarding in Max/MSP and have it on a little MacBook Air, maybe save my back a little bit. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting as a performance gesture. it's not about the "reality" of analogue vs. the "virtuality" of digital. At this stage 80% of what i'm running in hardware in the modular is digital.
In a way its just the output. You could plug any sounds into the generated material you are using, which seems so crucial. Do you feel in control over what comes out? How much is your coding based on feedback – or trial and error? Or can you sit down and write in the language, and it come out with the sound you are interested in? Almost thinking in the code. I find that it's a matter of trust. I stopped writing music at the piano or behind any instrument at all a few years ago, and I couldn't believe how much accuracy I had between the sonic idea and the reality that would come out, but it takes a lot of trust on my end, to give up using your hands and ear to check your inner-ear. I'm curious your relation to that.
Much of the patching I've done involves feedback loops. In audio, in code, in control information. I do love the sound of an analogue oscillator; t's infinite. And the little tuning inconsistencies that come with using analogue gear and tuning "by ear" … I definitely feel in control now; whether it's an illusion or not. I think that comes with just spending time with a system & being surprised by it less & less with experience. that said, there's always somewhere to go with these systems. I'm a fan of sabotage when things get too complacent, too repeatable.
Left: Eli Keszler; Right: Keith Fullerton Whitman by Pinar Temiz
Eli Keszler and Keith Fullerton Whitman put out a really cool split LP with NNA Tapes earlier this year. Both of these gentlemen are high-grade experimental musicians, working within analog and digital frameworks to not only create new sounds but to change the ideas of what exists as music and what could be music. Keith became known in the '90s as a maker of what in that time was called IDM under the name Hrvatski. However, he stopped assuming this moniker, and making dance music at all, instead moving on to taking apart modular synthesizers in ever more adventurous ways. Eli Keszler could be referred to as a "sound artist", a delighfully unspecific term. But it makes sense – he creates entire installations of sounds that are capable of playing themselves, including two recent fascinating ones: "Collecting Basin", in which piano wire is strung to the top of a water tower in Louisiana and struck by micro-electronics to create a present tone, and "Cold Pin", in which an assortment of wire and electronics are strung, arranged, and programmed in a gallery in Boston. Both of these men are interested in the role of the musician in music, and in Eli's forms, he is a ghost or a shadow, not really present.
We asked Eli and Keith to interview each other, because we had an inkling that beyond being slapped together on two sides of vinyl, they might also have an interesting amount of dialogue in the current state of experimentalism and also the specifics of each other's work. However, we might not have estimated that they would have quite so much to say; for your reading comfort, and for ours, we have split this interview into three parts, one published yesterday, and one tomorrow (on Wednesday, we will include a downloadable PDF of the entire text). Please enjoy part two, where Keith and Eli get a little technical.
Keith Fullerton Whitman: So, in lieu of using a piano, or an instrument, what are you using to prototype your music these days? Are you still deep in Arduino & processing?
Eli Keszler: Pretty much paper and my imagination. . . And then the coding, which I am still wrapping my head and around a bit to get a feel for it. At first I was using a little LED box that would flash the patterns back that I would code so I could get a sense of timings – basically like I used the piano before, but, at this point I have an idea about how many milliseconds means what sound, rhythm, etc. There are a bunch of levels to think of at once as you know when you are writing code. The hardest thing for me is the spacing, because with long strings the resonance is huge, even a four second or five second gap between attacks can be way to close. At the same time, I am now using the opposite type of setup quite a bit, with very short percussive sounds that are mechanized, and I often run into the opposite problem. I'm working on a new installation and large ensemble project that is going up at Eyebeam in Chelsea, with a performance on June 7 which is showing some of my new ideas. The whole mechanical component of what I'm doing solved a lot of problems I was trying to work out, I don't see it going away really.
Right; there are physical limitations to sounding objects. A hammer can't accurately strike a string that's still in motion. You can't press a piano key that's already down. But one of things I love about inserting systematic or process-oriented control is that the systems & processes don't inherently KNOW these things. The system will function perfectly whether the hammer strikes the string or not; its job is done. I'm curious about the high transient sounds on that first piece on the split. I listened to it a few times over the weekend.
Exactly, you can get a very raw sound, out of a very controlled system, it becomes real to me at that point.
It appears to be a computer-controlled variant on the sort(s) of rhythms your hands seem to create naturally when you're sitting in front of a snare drum. Do you see it as a dialogue between your system(s) and your self in real time? I.E., were you performing alongside the system itself or just a recording of it? And is there a feedback element that interprets your real-time playing reciprocally back into the system? There are so many "happy accident" type moments in the recording that would imply this.
I was trying to get a sound that would blend in perfectly with the attacks from percussion, for the reasons you mentioned, to get some break up between the tones, to get transients to occur, but with varied lengths and shifting as a process over time. I had to think backwards, as when I would try to code rhythms that would line up with what I wanted to play, it really didn't work, it didn't fit with the drive I was looking for. I eventually had to break down what I knew I was going to play on the drums into tiny units, and then code corresponding patterns into the micro-controller, and have them reconfigure themselves and reconfigure spacing length and so on. It's a little bizarre how close it sounds to my drumming. It made me understand some components of my playing, but that was sort of the point. It's a bit of a backwards process, but so interesting to break down language and reconstruct it like that, especially when it is your own. I haven't been using feedback systems yet with the mechanical projects. Though with this Eyebeam piece there will be a visual feed back system. The LP was all live takes – it's a really simple set up. That was part of the idea with the LP was creating massive physical pieces out of the smallest set-ups possible. One thing I really appreciate about what you said about what the computer knows and doesn't know. It doesn't understand about stopping and starting, only if you tell it to. It's a perfect environment for the happy accident to occur. The fact that the code is translating into a intensely physical form is so crucial. You really hear that transition, and get this intense physicality out of something that in process is so removed from physical space. That variant really is what makes it fascinating for me.
I've been fascinated with musically useful versions of randomness and the differences between generating randomness in digital software and analog hardware. A couple of weeks ago, Nicolas Collins sort of took me to task about my stance on "true" randomness vs. "digital" randomness at a talk at SAIC. His point was valid, that you can seed a random number generator in an infinite number of ways, and that the resultant sets were virtually infinite. But something about HOW computers decide on randomness has always bugged me. In the analog world, noise is literally infinite, non-repeatable; a defect, or "feature", of a specific, unique capacitor. It's always felt like a cheat to have a computer "do" randomness. All it knows is ON or OFF. There's really no gradation at the atomic level. I love how that recording really splits the Arduino transients and the acoustic drum ones into discrete ranges. I could tune them using the tone-controls on the stereo in the office here.
Let me know how that goes. . .
Focus on one element, then bring in the other for the exchange.
With this type of computing I think of it very simply like you said, ON and OFF. To me, if you want a looseness and a sense of random, or natural flow to it, it needs that extra input from the world, which brings in that element on impact. We've talked before about this, but the difference between electronic music recorded in a room vs. directly into a computer is so drastic. You can really hear this in David Tudor for example, that music exists in a space for me, and that's what is so wonderful about it. It really brings this seperation into focus. Even though with computers, I'm very much a 'learn just what I need to know' kind of person, it seems to me that you can really hear in computer music, or anything involving digital technology, the pieces that the physical reality of what they were doing was kept in mind, and those that were caught up in the technical side of it. I don't always think its as obvious too, which pieces fall into which category The conversation of 'random' vs 'non - random' is interesting, it seems like this is still an argument about whether is valid in a way, which seems obvious to me that any process – controlled randomness, or randomness is a valid process. Randomness should just be a part of the vocabulary today, no different then anything else to me.
Interesting; so you embrace that – the cold, heartless flip-flop… the computer's decision-making process, vs. your own. Do you see the Arduino making executive decisions that are a canonic replacement for human pacing & timing? Or are they accurately executing an algorithm that you've put in place that defines the composition? Ok, maybe that's a side-track. Still, you are building complicated technical systems; there's no shame in getting caught up in how successful they're doing what you set out to do with them… or not.
The technical means in which I produce these pieces and sounds, to me is the least interesting part. They are interesting absolutely – but I'm thinking more about other components of it. Keep in mind they are only a small part of the variables, because I'm putting live musicians playing off of score or cues in the middle. There is also the other dimensions – the physical space in the way it sounds, the code's relationships to the physical attacks and visual look. The installation is really a part of the environment. I think of them controlling the vertical space. It pulls the musicians upright, while the piece pushes both ways at once. It is interesting to talk about the technique, but often I find myself deflecting answers, trying to give away as little as possible, because we have a tendency, maybe because of the lack of language in describing sound, to get immediately into technique. Even music that is supposed to be about sound and material is talked about in terms of technique. I'm not sure what the answer is, I do it all the time, but this is a real problem to my mind. I wonder what would happen if everyone stopped talking about technical detail and started talking about the experience of somebody doing something. I don't think of what I'm doing as trying to go after something exactly human. It's not really human or in-human, it really is just a piece that shows what it shows. That's pretty vague, but it's a sound first, piece first idea. I think it gets a little complicated. It reveals how powerful and basic acoustic sound and human movement is, when the machine rhythm becomes so blatant. At the same time on the receiving end, I'm not sure it matters if you let that go. It is what it is.
Blatant; that's it, exactly. The balance between blatant and cloudy; digital vs. acoustic/actual. They're both just avenues, different sounds. You're making them play nice together. Or even just step on each others toes.
Yeah. They become a unit. It's collision.
Left: Eli Keszler; Right: Keith Fullerton Whitman
We asked Eli and Keith to interview each other, because we had an inkling that beyond being slapped together on two sides of vinyl, they might also have an interesting amount of dialogue in the current state of experimentalism and also the specifics of each other's work. However, we might not have estimated that they would have quite so much to say; for your reading comfort, and for ours, we have split this interview into three parts. Part one is here and part two is here. If you would like to download a PDF of this interview for posterity, you can do that here. Please enjoy part three, where Eli and Keith talk about Eli's new installation and their format preferences.
Keith Fullerton Whitman: Excellent. So about the Eyebeam piece: this is another installation and ensemble work?
Eli Keszler: I'm doing a large ensemble piece, a pretty big group of 9 people or so. I'm writing a large score for it, and I'm basically working on a program, thats going to reorder the installation based on a sort of 'score' using a drawing of mine that'll be flexible. There are going to be two installations essentially stacked on top of each other. One will cause the drawing patterns to move which will trigger the other, which will trigger the first part. Basically a massive circling system. I'm doing a score to go along with it for the group. Stacking everything on top of each other. They'll be a website with a audio/visual feed of the piece as well that shows this whole process, though removed.
The score itself is being changed by the installation in real time? How do you implement that? And is this your first time working with graphic scores?
It's both like this and the opposite, the installation score is a flexible system, so its changing the installation – but the installation is changing the installation. The musicians performance, is in it or out of it. It is graphic in a sense, but in another way, I think of it as just being a notation form I'm developing for the installation because it is it's own system. It's not abstract really, like you think of a graphic score as being interpretive, it's very precise. In a certain way.
Fantastic; this makes perfect sense given your background in visual art, design, screen-printing, and so on. That's a great marriage of divergent interests into a single piece. And the idea of a non-interpretive graphic score is also very appealing. Do you stress a very specific visual language to the performers?
Right now it's very simple. The performers will be playing off of a detailed score. I'm trying to keep it as basic as possible to achieve the results and idea. I'm really interested in putting all of this together that I've been working on. So the score will be a very precise and detailed piece, and at the same time – almost a folio, in addition to a website. Luckily my friend Andrew Fenlon who runs this wild website called Scanner Jammer is helping me, he has been very patient in dealing with a lot of the technical stuff around this. But there are a lot of sections. So there are a ton of variations. I'm thinking a lot about the visual presence of the piece. About this idea, what we were talking about before – the way data shifts forms and takes on so much different meaning, when it's just code it is what it is. But when you add the strings, and space, it takes on this engulfing quality. When you add an ensemble to it, and then on top of it, this circular system using the internet- it turns into this very complex situation, which is what I'm after. But again, for me I'm just trying to picture it and imagine what it will feel like..that's all it is really, the technical part is just a means for me.
What struck me the most when watching the cold pin group perform at the BCA was that the installation was, for all intents & purposes, just another "member" of the group. Another layer of sound performing by its own interpretation and aesthetics. . . albeit one that was working in spectral ranges not covered by the musicians. In the Eyebeam piece, is the installation still working below and above what the musicians are providing?
That's how I thought of it, I thought of it as the architecture for the piece. It's to frame the performance, you can put something in it, or leave it out. You get into a very interesting space between vertical time like a sculpture or installation, and horizontal musical time. In this new piece I was thinking of adding a third type of time to the equation, which is a completely multi-directional temporal sense, this is what digital technology allows to me, and trying to stack all three. At Eyebeam I'm going to be using a more vertical structure in the space, so the strings will be going across the space and all the way into the ceiling over lapping quite a bit. I'm also using these wooden resonators that will have dryer percussive tones, which will be placed around the room, the piece will have a little bit more rhythmic attack to it.
But still, with that massive room sound that makes spaces like the BCA and Eyebeam so appealing, right? I mean, it's a treat to hear any kind of music played in spaces like that. It's such a natural "enhancer" to have a large resonant space just calling and responding with what's happening, sonically.
Exactly. And you really are just bringing out what's all ready there – bringing out the architecture. Can I ask one other thing?
Shoot.
I'm sure you've thought about this a lot. I'm wondering about you and your brother and the connection between your work. You run one of the best places in the world to pick up records – LP's and CD's, etc. And he is deep in the world of advanced digital music technology. Do you see your work in conflict? Do you feel uneasy about digital music in that way? [Ed. note: Brian Whitman is the co-founder of the Echo Nest, a company that has built an API used by, amongst others, pre-programmed radio stations and other musical applications, often combined with Spotify. Keith himself runs a distro called Mimaroglu, which is highly recommended.]
I think at first, after he started the Echo Nest, he got tired of repeatedly hearing my. . . perhaps myopic interpretation of what the "digital music" trains of thought were doing to the perceived "excitement" of listening to music. But, if anything, over the past five years I've changed my own perceptions, vastly. I'm still, very much, as I'm sure you are too, committed to a physical issue of music that's about more than just the signal. There are so many ways to cleverly wrap your music in extra context and/or associated visual cues via physical editions that become mere afterthoughts when everything is experienced through Spotify. But ultimately making all music available to anyone, then designing systems that quickly and elegantly allow for personal refinement of taste and/or aesthetic, are both fantastic things. Now that it's no longer about expensive hardware and elite delivery mechanisms, I'm fine with all of it. Computers are cheap, phones are virtually free. it took me 15-20 years of frequenting record shops to go from Faith No More to John Zorn to Mauricio Kagel to Fluxus to La Monte Young to Eliane Radigue. Now that often happens in an afternoon of requisite Googling. I literally can't see how that's a bad thing.
I agree with you. It's very complicated but I think thats true. This is probably my problem, but I can't for the life of me, really internalize any digital music I have. I have Spotify, I use it all the time. But for whatever reason, it might be something deeply trained into me, but I need to put in the CD or play the record to engage with the music. This must not be true for everyone.
I'll keep making records available to people that, like myself, PREFER them. But I'll never ask someone to purchase a CD or LP that has literally no way to play it or any interest in setting up a stereo at home. Which, of course, I recommend that EVERYONE does at some point in their life, if only to, as you say, internalize their relationships with music. I haven't traveled with a pair of headphones in 10 years; I don't listen to music to kill time on the bus, or on the airplane. Disposable rom-com's, maybe, but I kind of put most music on too high a pedestal for it to be a passive activity. Of course I only feel this way as I've had the resources to set up a nice stereo in a nice sounding room, on which I listen to records roughly 8-10 hours a day, every day. If I didn't have that 20-minute cycle of walking across the room to flip over the record, i'd have succumbed to deep vein thrombosis a long time ago…
It is great that anyone in the world can check out any music they want. It will lead to incredible things.
Agreed, absolutely. It's already happening. I have very informed conversations with 18 and 19 year old undergrads at concerts about music on a regular basis. If I knew half of what they've absorbed when I was their age… I'd probably be listening to different music now.
It's pretty nuts, I wonder though how it's different in certain ways. I wonder how much music one can really know? I think a lot about what you take in and what you don't. I think I've taken in so little in a certain way. Little fragments of this and that, but the big things – they come from obsessions. And I have a few of those. I wonder if people still are obsessed with a single song. Just the act of rewinding or, picking the track on a record leads to obsessive behavior. I think this used to be a good thing. Maybe it's not useful anymore. Spotify, by nature discourages this. But that's ok, maybe that whole idea of exclusion is a thing that is over with, and people can put it all in now. - www.imposemagazine.com/
fantastic LP of austere solo percussion and dark matrixes of strings from this past collaborator with Jandek, with aspects of Scelsi and Dumitrescu, , Keiji Haino and Biota..... This is an amazing set that straddles 20th century avant garde thought, sound sculpture, free jazz and contemporary drone and is one of the most lovingly assembled packages to have passed through VT of late" - -david keenan (volcanic tongue, wire magazine)
“Anyone who’s been fortunate enough to catch Eli Keszler and Steve Pyne’s Red Horse... live can now bring it all home cuz these two east coast sound junk beauty futurians finally made an LP (Rel Records re1007). And it is awesome... With all the various recordings of the last decade exploring temporal interplay Red Horse... really achieve some deep and artful result without losing the ball to excess or mundanity. -thurston moore and byron coley, bull tongue Arthur Magazine
aside from the virtuoso performance(s - eli’s next-level, pan-trajectorial spatter is better captured here than anything else i’ve heard), this one’s notable for the focus on the sculptural elements of his arsenal ; the motorized sound-icons & metallic, ringing overtones call to mind the mammoth, grinding automatons of jean tinguely & survival research laboratories, albeit filtered through a decidedly humanized master-concept ... a major work ; for once i agree with the supplied hyperbole - this really does transcend genre, equally incorporating the areas-of-interest that fuel eli’s quest ; brutal free jazz, scaled back euro improv, the confined roar of late 70’s no-wave / art punk, and various aspects of post-war compositional dictates ..... hearing this as eli’s master-work ; naturally it comes highly recommended !!! - -Keith Fullterton Whitman on Oxtirn, ESP-DISK' release
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