Thursday, January 22, 2009

Not my top 10

I found these amazing videos on ubuweb. The first one is called Sound?? with John Cage and Rashaan Roland Kirk. Unfortunately, the two of them are never together; it's just videos of the two edited into one. Theres nothing new here on Cage, aside from some really funny shots and camera tricks. There is however some amazing footage of Roland Kirk. Mostly footage of Roland Kirk performances and snippets of Cage talking about sound and music.

The second video is called Island Song. Charlemagne Palestine strapped a video camera to himself and got on his motorcycle. He rides in a circle around a small island singing about escaping. Palestine puts on his cantor voice, and the motorcycle creates an interesting vocal effect and helps create some really nice harmonies.

Also ubuweb hosts a series of tapes called Music with Roots in the Aether. They're a series of 2 hour tapes by Robert Ashley. They all focus on one experimental composer and include an interview and performance. The featured artists are Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Philip Glass and Robert Ashley. All the installments are downloadable as huge video files as well as mp3.

Also,
Alvin Lucier - I am sitting in a room
This is mentioned in
Alan Licht's top 30, but it is not posted. Alvin Lucier records himself (in a room) speaking, then records as he plays it back. Then he plays and records the new tape and so on. It begins as you might expect, it sounds like an echo chamber or reverb effect. As he repeats the process over 45 minutes, the speech becomes completely indiscernible as it devolves into the resonant frequencies of his recording space. Originating from his voice, the resonance becomes more powerful in each new recording as it slowly takes over. Worth a minimum of one listen.

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