Editorial
Introducing Ear | Wave | Event
In the distant 1990s, that dinosaur of the late twentieth century Jean Baudrillard once challenged us to “be meteorologically sensitive to stupidity.”1 A bit more recently, Jonathan Sterne offered a much cited moniker for a particular meteorological phenomenon which to this day insists on clinging to so much thinking of the sonic - what he [...]
Feature
The Illusioned Ear: Disembodied Sound & The Musical Séances Of Francis Grierson
Several days ago, Grierson had just completed one of his extraordinary piano performances, during which he channeled the creative energies of deceased musical geniuses and presented previously unheard compositions from beyond. As the music ceased, Grierson became very still, as was his habit... but after a long moment, his audience grew restless, and Tonner went [...]
Feature
Editor’s note: what follows is the script for a lecture given by Peter Ablinger in 2013. A version of the German original was published in MusikTexte 140 (February 2014). Preface: That I’m speaking in the last part of the symposium1 brings with it the unavoidable fact that many of my text’s terms have already come [...]
Interview
Editor’s note: the conversation that was the basis for this expanded transcript started in late 2013 in Brooklyn. Woody Sullender and Amy Cimini discuss listening, performance, presence, and power; Amy shares some musicological perspectives on embodiment and discusses some work she’s done with Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy, specifically on his Ethics (published posthumously in 1677). This [...]
Feature
1. ZAUM’ was a form of invented language or a broad term for the particles of language floating above any clear meaning used in Russian “Futurist” poetry of the early twentieth century. This neologism formally appears in the writings of Aleksei Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov in 1913. The wordplay that defines the logic of this [...]
Review
It is easy to imagine ourselves through literature. It speaks to us like a voice in our heads, showing us things and directing our thoughts as it proceeds. It is equally easy to imagine ourselves through drone music because it occupies the periphery of our minds with a receding, unnerving sameness that alters the way [...]
Review
I am watching people listen. At first, they do it quickly, in passing, moving though the hallway of MoMA on their way to the Soundings show. Tristan Perich’s piece, Microtonal Wall, is installed in this hallway. It is flush with the wall, projecting sound outward, into the passageway. If it were a painting it would [...]
Review
“Hearing Things Through Things”: Hong-Kai Wang’s Music While We Work
Introduction Displayed on adjacent video projections are two perspectives of a sugar factory in Huwei, a small industrial town found in present-day Taiwan. On the left screen an initial long shot renders a mostly-cleared sugar cane field. A large harvesting vehicle drives slowly across the daylight-filled horizon extracting still-standing cane husks. The other screen shows [...]
Feature
For the 50th Anniversary of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme
Editor's note: Though released by Impulse! Records in 1965, A Love Supreme was completed and recorded in late 1964. … Let us sing all songs to God To whom all praise is due ... praise God ... ELATION – ELEGANCE – EXALTATION All from God Thank you God. Amen. John Coltrane, Dec. 1964 (from A Love [...]
Score
Liebestod-Paraphrase Paraphrase
Re. Liebestod-Paraphrase Paraphrase Alternate title: …plays Liszt (2014) Materials: Sound recording (Liebestod-Paraphrase Paraphrase, SEE Liszt-Wagner bars 14-15, 17, 34, 37, 49, 50), loudspeakers (variable) Courtesy of: Artist Record of: Accumulation, chords stacked in imitation of death (SEE Rosenfeld: “Liszt ... reductionist with time to kill," Torrance Museum of Art, south Los Angeles, municipal “Civic Center [...]
Playlist
As the year 2014 marks the eclipse of compact disc sales by MP3s (not to mention ‘pirated’ downloads), physical audio media are increasingly conspicuous as fetish objects. Why do many of us still need to possess music as a material object? The following videos, largely found via a YouTube search for ‘my cd collection’, depict large [...]