eArts roundup, pt. II

by Ben

I’ve been meaning to fill in a quick summary of the rest of the festival (the parts I was able to attend, at least). Sorry to leave you hanging!

I think by far the most common response to this year’s eArts Festival, voiced by performers, curators, and audience members alike, was to curse the disorganization of it all. While it was certainly an improvement over last year’s festival, which I didn’t even know was going on until it was over, getting information about what was going on where and when was much harder than it should have been. There was no clear, central guide; the website was late to come on-line, slow, and hard to navigate (quite an obvious problem for an organization dedicated to cutting edge digital technology); and texts were poorly and erratically translated (despite offers of free assistance from native English speakers).

The biggest problem was in the scheduling, though; it does a disservice to absolutely everyone to book so many simultaneous events. All of the performances were crammed into the first week of the festival, with locations ranging from the Science and Technology Museum in Pudong to Xujiahui Park in Puxi. I anguished over how to schedule my own concert-going, ever worried about missing something brilliant. My biggest regrets were Carl Stone’s first performance on night two of Streaming Objects, Dead J’s set in Xujiahui, and the whole of B6 and Yang Lei’s Feng Shui Omniscience (which sounded very cool, and the more I read about it after the fact, the worse I felt). I couldn’t even catch most of the installations in Xujiahui, since they were on display at the same time as the concerts. There was just no way to be in all those places at once.

But at least they hired top-notch folks to select the actual art, the festival’s saving grace. In the end, most of what I heard was of high quality, and even if it wasn’t, it represented an interesting or otherwise underrepresented voice in new media. So, yes, it was a good and needed festival, and I enjoyed what I was able to catch, but there’s clearly lots of room for improvement.

My performance schedule during this hectic week oscillated between Yao Dajuin’s Streaming Objects three-night opening concert at the Zhangjiabang Riverfront, just behind the Science and Technology Museum in Pudong, and ArtHub’s Final Cut series in Xujiahui Park (organized by Davide Quadrio and Defne Ayas).

October 19
Patience for the Man 忍而为人

I believe this piece was formed at the instigation of Alizia Borsari (also known for a widely circulated photograph of me belly-slamming Final Cuts co-organizer Davide Quadrio that I cannot in good conscience endorse). It was billed as a “work in progress,” and it pretty much lived up to its billing. Mainly, it was short, lasting barely half an hour, to the annoyance of the packed crowd, who had been erroneously informed that the show would last for 2 hours.

I’m pretty lousy at describing choreography, but here goes. There were two female dancers, Nunu and Ling Xi, at times very sculptural and solid and making sharp and brusque gestures, and at other times playacting, which may have been a way of establishing some kind of dichotomy between fact and metaphor, real life and artifice. Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. The two images that stick with me is when one girl was crawling on her knees, and the other girl picked a fight by pushing her over, and then later one of the girls scampered across the stage, acting like a dog. See some pics.

Behind them Aaajiao was doing real-time 3D graphics using Processing, rear-projected on four big panels, and B6 was accompanying with music on his laptop. Aaajiao’s side of things was fairly straightforward Processing stuff, swirls of particles, similar to what you see in Radiohead’s “House of Cards” video (shot without cameras, generating data that you can edit and recompile yourself in Processing). B6’s set was a bit rougher than what I’m accustomed to hearing from him, or maybe it was the soundsystem (which was partially replaced when Yu Yin Tang’s Zhang Hai Sheng 张海生 was called in as last minute audio insurance just before the Christian Marclay show 2 days later), but still a good, supporting set.

When I asked B6 after the show how he was doing lately, he replied, “busy,” which was a bit of an understatement. In addition to this performance, he had put together the Feng Shui Omniscience portion of the eArts Festival, together with Yang Lei 杨磊 over in Pudong, while simulateously preparing for the launch of his new Modern Sky CD Post Haze (a very fine collection of minimal techno) and subsequent China tour.

Anyway, as I said, the show was short, so afterwards I rushed over to Pudong, hoping I might still catch Carl Stone’s performance at Streaming Objects, but it turns out I missed the first three sets.

I didn’t know the first act, Skoltz_Kolgen from Montreal, but I had dinner with them afterwards, and they are quite charming and erudite, and I wish I could have caught their set.

Then Masayuki Akamatsu 赤松正行’s iPhone Snowflakes got another chance. The story I heard was that some official in attendance on opening night (there were a bunch) had had enough and wanted to leave, but he quite reasonably thought it might be rude to leave in the middle of a piece. So he ordered the piece stopped, allowing time for a more respectable exit. Crazy, but it exemplifies my impression the whole festival’s priorities; to have a big, flashy, expensive spectacle, with little regard for the messy art. Anyway, I went out to lunch with Masayuki Akamatsu, along with Carl Stone, Wang Changcun, and two other guys the next day, and he showed me some other iPhones aps he had done; having graduated from large-scale computer systems, he’s taken to the iPhone as an art medium in a big way, and I think he’s right on the money.

And I missed Carl Stone, who was third up, but I took solace in the fact that he’d be playing again the following night.

When I arrived some slow moving, moody music, and subdued color field visuals were washing over the river. The piece must have just started, since it wasn’t until 20 minutes or more later that I was able to identify the work as being by Ulf Langheinrich. Very subtle, but I dug it.

Then last up was the Hangzhou wonder duo of noise guitarist Li Jianghong 李剑鸿 and laptopist (and Mr. Li’s paramour, if I’m not mistaken) Vavabond. Mr. Li cut a striking figure dressed in black, wailing with his axe like a siren out across the water, enveloped in mist from the fog machine, warmed by the glow of stage lights.

October 20
This night, I was all Streaming Objects’s. First up, 8GG’s set struck me as rough and loose, a bit of a disappointment. There were real time sounds and images, a long stretch of scenery going by outside of a car window, with faces floating above. The last section had white dots in a black background, seemingly dynamically spawned, but bouncing around in very predictable trajectories, evoking Pong in a not altogether favorable comparison, with some noisy blips for impact sounds.

It was Brian O’Reilly who really got the party started. I was stunned by the images he had going, stark, also black and white, but complex and biomorphic, frosty landscapes swallowed up in a ball of undulating brainwaves, unlike anything I’d seen before; it was seriously viscerally thrilling. After the show he slipped me a CD/DVD collaboration he did with granular synthesis pioneer and Computer Music Tutorial author Curtis Roads entitled Point Line Cloud, on which he provided visualizations for several of Mr. Roads’s electronic works. Previously I had mentioned that I’ve been working with granular synthesis, and he said something like, “Oh, you don’t need to tell me about granular synthesis!” Little did I realize he was a close collaborator of the guy who literally wrote the book (Microsound, 2001, MIT Press)! He even revealed that he was the friend who mentioned to Mr. Roads, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you need a visa to visit China,” a few days before Mr. Roads’s cancelled appearance at the 2006 MusicAcoustica Festival in Beijing.

Anyway, next on the bill I finally got to see Carl Stone, and he was awesome, mixing in some pre-prepared elements (pianos and things) with material he sampled in realtime from multi-instrumentalist Wu Wei 吴巍, performing on sheng and erhu and occasionally vocalizing. Fantastic balance of space, variety, color, density…awesome.

Last up was Frank Bretschneider, who returned to the idea of simple shapes in black and white, but wow, what a symphony of forms he unleashed from such humble materials! I think he even topped Ryoichi Kurokawa in terms of audiovisual synchronization, very tight, very minimal, but everything impeccably placed and proportioned, a prime example of how two media conspiring together can coalesce into something greater than can be achieved via one medium alone. The girl sitting next to me thought it was too long, and perhaps it was a bit long for a concert setting on a cool autumn night, but I was kept rapt in the mere contemplation of what it must be like to experience his work in a club! A triumphant culmination to Streaming Objects’s three nights of concerts.

I think in general, once the opening night jitters were over with, things went a lot more smoothly at the Zhangjiabang riverfront. (Although that poor, floating video cube in the river made an appearance each night, each time getting a little farther until pow, flatline, blue screen of death. I was really rooting for the little fella. Maybe next year!) In all, a very fresh and necessary sequence of performances.

October 21
Q2008

Feng Mengbo 冯梦波 seems to be the most famous Chinese artist working in “game art” (which always strikes me, as a longtime game developer myself, as a rather presumptuous category, like saying “film art” or “photograph art,” but I won’t go into that here), and having heard that he primarily uses a modified Quake 3 engine as his artistic medium, his set was more or less what I expected. He had modded the game, replacing the typical beefy combatants with nude girls wielding cell phones instead of guns and shooting roses instead of bullets. And that was about it. He ran around the level performing what might be generously described as a kind of virtual improvisatory choreography.

He pulled one kind of cheap trick, which is to turn off screen refreshing; this requires nothing more than the flip of one Boolean variable. It works like this: think of a computer game as a software film projector that calculates each image and flashes it on the screen at a steady rate; then imagine that each new image doesn’t erase the first, but is simply superimposed on top, leaving trippy trails behind moving objects, obscuring the sense of virtual space, a shortcut to achieving a very dense visual composition in a hurry.

A key concern for game artists ought to be interactivity, the primary characteristic that differentiates games from other media. But here there was only a stultifyingly simple nod in interactivity’s vague direction. Audience members were invited to come up one at a time and click a mouse on a table that did I don’t even remember what to the image on the screen. There was no engagement, no transformation, just the equivalent of opening the refrigerator door and watching the light come on, serving no purpose other than to prove that, yes, it’s all happening in real-time.

Talk among the spectators was that this represented an unprecedented level of erotic permissiveness for officially approved art on the mainland. Mr. Feng manipulated his digital girls to tumble perpendicular to the screen, affrording the audience a clear view of all the polygons shaded to look as if the sun don’t shine on them. Particularly titillated were the group of older ladies who faithfully attended Final Cut every night, as the temporary stage in Xujiahui Park displaced their usual evening ballroom dancing practice.

October 22
Christian Marclay’s Screen Play

I plan to make my participation in this performance the subject of a longer post on my own new blog soon, so I won’t go into it here. Stay tuned!

And that was it for eArts 2008 performances!

BTW, you can read Carl Stone’s own account in two parts on New Music Box.

As I mentioned above, I just started my own blog, less than a month old, and I expect to post most of my ruminations from there from now on, so I’ll be less active on GNO. But many thanks to Lawrence Li and Yao Dajuin for inviting me to participate in GNO and providing feedback and guidance along the way! (Also note that Lawrence has an additional blog keeping him busy these days; see what he’s up to over at the Shao Foundation.)




eArts Performance Guide Update!

by Ben

OK, big apology to everyone; while the Final Cut portion of eArts as described below seems sound (kicking off tonight with a vengeance as Aaajiao and B6 present their “Patience for the Man”), the “Streaming Objects” schedule I posted was pretty far off, but has now been updated. Also, I didn’t realize you need an invitation to get in to “Streaming Objects,” and I’m not quite sure how you’re supposed to aquire one.

Last night’s show seemed fraught with more than its fair share of technical problems. Sound cut out a few times during Sulumi’s set (which expanded beyond 8-bit to encompass his whole career, including some early chestnuts; perhaps he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as “that 8-bit guy,” and it’s good to see him stretching out). The collaborative piece Ferry (attributed to Zeng Duo, Yi Lian, Feng Chen, Cao Shu, Zhang Ruyu, Lu Yang, Guo Huilan, and Li Wen) culminated with the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death splayed across a huge digital cube floating in the Zhangjiabang River, mirrored on five massive screens in the background. Laetitia Sonami’s set was a bit of a snore (not sure if that was a technical or aesthetic issue), a bit of a let down after years of hearing about her pioneering work; ideas were brought in and dropped, some particularly ugly sounds went on for way too long, and other chunks seemed canned, leaving me skeptical about how much was actually being controlled in real-time, though for a few delicate minutes in the middle I was quite transfixed. And in general, transitions between sets were awkward, with bumper music (which veered disappointingly towards the pop) ending early, leaving long, dark silences, while title slides with dense descriptions whizzed by too fast to parse.

But three pieces more than compensated for these mishaps; Wang Changcun’s algorithmic piano improvisations (moved to Saturday from Sunday) were captivating, rendered acoustically on a Yamaha Disclavier. A piece involving speech synthesis from internet chat (I’m guessing that was 2510, but maybe it was 4×4x4) was similarly fresh in its careful exploration of a limited range of sounds. And Ryoichi Kurokawa’s Parallel Head was a sublime and masterful final flourish for the evening, an extremely satisfying symbiosis of sound and image.

Anyway, pushing the boundaries of technology inevitably leads to technical snafus from time to time, and if some experiments come off less successfully than others, I am willing to accept this as the price of progress! Looking forward to more experiences like this throughout the festival.




Ben’s eArts 2008 performance guide

by Ben

Since people seem to be wondering what’s up with live performances at this year’s eArts Festival, I’ve taken the liberty of posting the information as best I can parse it here, along with my colorfully biased commentary. Note: all shows start at 7:30. And they’re all free (although the “Streaming Objects” shows seem to require invitations)!

If you’re only going to check out two events, first go to Pudong on Sunday, Oct. 19, to see laptop elder statesman Carl Stone and Wang Changcun’s real-time algorithmic music for acoustic piano [Whoops, Wang Changcun got scooted to Oct. 18]. Then on Wednesday, Oct. 22, come see me and Yan Jun 颜峻 and Bruce Gremo and Elliott Sharp and Top Floor Circus 顶楼的马戏团 perform Christian Marclay’s Screen Play in Xujiahui Park.

But if you want to dig deeper (and there’s lots more cool stuff), read on…

Final Cut, Xujiahui
First let me blatantly plug the part of the show I’m personally involved with, “Final Cut,” going down in Xujiahui Park. This part of the show was organized by the indefatiguable Defne Ayas and Davide Quadrio, of ArtHub, and in addition to the five nights of live shows below, they’re running wild with videos and installations, even taking over Xujiahui’s huge digital displays for artistic ends; check out the ArtHub site for details. The “Final Cut” performances are happening on a specially constructed stage in Xujiahui park.

Saturday, Oct. 18, 40+4 screening
Ok, not a live performance, but a screening of ArtHub’s 40+4 interview project, in which artists answer fundamental questions about their art and practice.

Sunday, Oct. 19, Patience for the Man
A “live performance within a musicscape,” featuring live performances by B6 and Aaajiao, with dancers, on a stage created by the architect duo Wang Zhenfei and Wang Luming.

Monday, Oct. 20, Dead J + Chen Xiongwei
Dead J’s a minimalist electronic musician from Beijing with two ablums out on Modern Sky, and these days I understand he performs in a spacesuit. He’s also a pal and a good guy, and you can listen to his stuff on NeoCha! I don’t know Chen Xiongwei, but he’s going to be doing live video stuff.

Tuesday, Oct. 21, Feng Mengbo’s 冯梦波 Q2008
I don’t know this guy’s work first hand, but he’s got a reputation as the leading practitioner of game art in China, which seems to stem largely from a Quake mod that incorporated the image of Mao Zedong. Personally, coming from 12 years in the game industry, and knowing just how easy it is to make a Quake mod (games are designed to let you do this, for community building), I’m bringing a healthy dose of skepticism to this show, but I’ll definitely be there.

Wednesday, Oct. 22, Christian Marclay’s Screen Play
This should be a very cool show, and not just because I’m performing in it. Christian Marclay is one of the truest definitions of “sound artist” around, active in the downtown New York experimental music scene since the early 80’s, whose work plays with sound and suggestions of sound and objects associated with sound in consistently delightful ways. Screen Play is a ~25 min. video score that cuts together old black and white film footage with a computer graphic overlay of simple, abstract shapes in bright colors. The score is “to be interpreted by a small group of musicians,” and at this show 3 groups of musicians will take a crack, in succession: me, veteran Beijing-based sound artist Yan Jun, and Beijing-based American musician Bruce Gremo (playing his custom digital flute, the Cilia); Marclay’s pal the guitarist Elliott Sharp, over from NY for the occassion, performing with Wang Li Chuan 王力川 and Wu Na 巫娜; and Shanghai’s beloved punk ensemble Top Floor Circus.

“Streaming Objects,” Breath, Pudong
This is the official opening gala for eArts 2008, taking place in Pudong at the Zhangjiabang riverfront over the course of three nights, behind the Science and Technology Center. There’s a huge stage going up, and from the renderings I was sent, it looks like it’s going to be quite a spectacle. “Streaming Objects” is being put together by Yao Dajuin 姚大钧, composer and longtime advocate for new media in the Chinese diaspora, the man behind the Chinese New Ear web site and the Post-Concrete record label (which you doubtless know already, if you’re reading this on GNO).

Saturday, Oct. 18
Sun Dawei 孙大崴 (Beijing), aka Sulumi, proprietor of the revered Shanshui record label, performing 8-bit/chiptune music on a pair of modified GameBoys (see this article
I wrote on the subject a while back)
2510
Wang Changcun 王长存 (Harbin, now living in Hangzhou), real-time algorithmic compositions for acoustic piano, rendered on a Yamaha Disklavier; he is to eArts was Lang Lang was to the opening ceremony of the Olympics
Laetitia Sonami (France), “A Historical Moment on a Line Between A and B;” Sonami has developed a custom “Lady’s Glove” that she uses as a performance interface, a pioneer in the field
4×4x4
Masayuki Akamatsu 赤松正行 (Japan), Snowflakes, seems to consist of folks jamming on stage with an iPhone app he wrote
Ferry
Ryoichi Kurokawa 黑川良一 (Japan), Parallel Head, integration of real-time computer graphics with music

Sunday, Oct. 19
Skoltz_Kolgen (Canada), ASKAA
Masayuki Akamatsu 赤松正行 (Japan), Snowflakes, reprised from previous evening
Carl Stone (USA and Tokyo), “L’Os a Moelle,” from his great new album “Al Noor;” Carl is on my top ten list of favorite musicians ever; his album “Mom’s” is a desert island disc for me
Ulf Langheinrich (Australia)
Li Jianhong 李剑鸿 and VAVABOND (Hangzhou), Cosmic Sexy Junk; I just translated a big chunk of noise guitarist Li Jianhong’s blog on this very site, which should provide ample introduction to his oeuvre.

[Note: Autechre, originally scheduled to close this evening’s performance, has cancelled.
Also, it looks like Shen Ligong’s 沈立功 Second Life thing and Wu Baohui 吴珏辉 have also been cut.]

Monday, Oct. 20
8GG (China), The Air Being Broken, very curious to find out more about this outfit, who I know primarily for inclusion in a VJ book I picked up in Tokyo last February (also represented in B6 and Yang Lei’s adjacent installation)
Brian O’Reilly (Santa Barbara, USA), Weather Mechanics; a former associate of Xenakis, Eliane Radigue, and Naut Humon (Asphodel)
Wu Wei 吴巍 and Carl Stone (USA), Shanghai Rhythm; Carl Stone takes the stage again to collaborate with sheng virtuoso Wu Wei
Frank Bretschneider (USA), Rhythm

Around the corner from the big riverfront gala performances is an “outdoor interdisciplinary performance” put together by B6 and Yang Lei 杨磊. I don’t know a lot of details about this, but it seems to be more about immersive installations than specific live performances. I’m sure it will be worth checking out. Yang Lei was one of the organizers of the very successful Notch Festival at the beginning of this month, and he’s got close ties to the Nordic music scene, so expect solid Nordic representation.

Ancillary Shows
One of my favorite bands, 10, has the misfortune of landing in Shanghai on Oct. 18, the same night that things are getting going in Xujiahui and Pudong for eArts. 10 is the duo of Marqido (laptop, from Japan) and itta (vocals and toys, from Korea), and they just released a CD called Nomad on Wangba records. I attended their CD release party in Beijing last week, and now they’re touring China in support of the album. So if you can’t decide between Streaming Objects and Final Cut on Oct 18 and don’t want to slight either party, head up to Live Bar and be assured a great seat.

Also, while the Christian Marclay show moves up to Beijing’s D-22 on the 24th, with Bruce and Elliott reprising their roles with a new roster of sidemen, stay tuned for Yan Jun performing at NOIShanghai 20 with Torturing Nurse, here in Shanghai on the Oct 25, Live Bar, 2:30pm, as usual.

In Closing
This information is based on my research for a That’s Shanghai article I wrote over a month ago, so some details may have changed since then. I welcome all corrections.

The biggest change, of course, is that Autechre has cancelled; it seems they were demanding someone to open their beer and wine for them in their rider. That’s pretty stupid prima dona stuff; they should be advised that outside a small circle of hardcore music geeks, everyone to whom I gushed, “…and Autechre is coming!” responded with a blank, “Who?”

Another cancellation, or postponement, happened a while ago, but you may have seen in early press info that there was supposed to be some big digital opera thing at the Shanghai Grand Theater, with Tan Dun among the participants; last official word I heard was that it’s been pushed back to December.

It’s really too bad that, even though the festival is about a month long, all the performances are front-loaded to happen during the first weekend, which means lots of unfortunate overlaps. The only rationale I can think of is to have the ability to brag later on about the size of the festival and all the simultaneous events all over the city. But it really does a disservice to the artists and organizers (and Defne and Dajuin have each put together an amazing line-up that could stand on its own as an independent festival) as well as the adventuresome public who would like to absorb as much of this new media bounty as they possibly can.

Anyway, enjoy the festival!

OK, and let me also add, as a final plug, that you have until 5pm on Tuesday, Oct. 21, to check out my ambient sound installation that’s running every day from 9am to 5pm in the 100% Design display at Shanghai International Creative Industry Week, in support of MÜ Furniture designer Jutta Friedrichs’ furniture installation.




Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries: Dramatis Personae

by Ben

[Note: to avoid confusion, family names are in capital letters below.]

LI Jianhong 李剑鸿
Our intrepid protagonist, Hangzhou-based noise guitarist, half of D!O!D!O!D! (together with Huang Jin 黄锦), organizer of the 2pi festival and founder of 2pi records.

Marqido
Japanese musician, the electronic half of the duo 10, Li Jianhong’s host on this tour.

itta
Korean musician, the theatrical and vocal half of 10.

Hideo IKEEZUMI 生悦住英夫
Proprietor of the PSF record label and Modern Music store. His PSF label reissued D!O!D!O!D!’s Ghost Temple album and organized this tour.

Shoji HANO 羽野昌二
Japan’s best free jazz drummer, according to Li Jianhong, and the substitute for Huang Jin on this tour.

NARITA Munehiro 成田宗弘
Psychedelic Japanese guitarist, half of the influential group High Rise.

Zbigniew Karkowski
Polish-Swedish composer and performer, founding member of Sensorband, based in Tokyo for several years.

Ainotamenishis 愛のために死す
Psychedelic punk band opening for Li Jianhong at the UFO Club, subsequently appearing on the PSF compilation Tokyo Flash Back 6: P.S.F. Psychedelic Sampler.

Shizuo UCHIDA 内田静男
Bass player in Keiji Haino’s 灰野敬二 Nijiumu 滲有無 project. Attended Li Jianhong’s show at UFO Club. Designed the artwork for the PSF re-release of the D!O!D!O!D! Ghost Temple album.

Seiichi YAMAMOTO 山本精一
Japanese guitarist, formerly of the Boredoms. Owner of the live music venue Bears in Osaka and the Ummo Record label.

Koyuki 小雪 (translated literally as “Little Snow” in early posts, whoops)
Manager of Super Sonic China, agent and promoter for the Shanshui 山水 records in Japan. Organized Li Jianhong’s second Osaka performance at New World cocoroom.

Iida 饭田 and Tanaka 田中
Friends of Koyuki, and hosts of Li Jianhong, Marqido, and itta in Osaka.

YOSHIKAWA Masatoshi 吉川昌利
Another friend of Iida’s who accompanied Li Jianhong around Osaka.

Tetsuharu MASUDA 増田哲治
Opening act at Bears in Osaka, performing guitar noise processed with delays, loops, and feedback. Designer of effects processors.

Masonna
Japanese noise musician unexpectedly found working in the Alchemy store in Osaka.

Carl Stone
American composer and performer, based in Tokyo and San Francisco, and also on the faculty of the Media Department at Chukyo University in Japan.

HUANG Jin 黄锦
Drummer in D!O!D!O!D! who wasn’t able to make the trip to Japan with Li Jianhong, so Japanese drummer Shoji Hano substituted for him on this Japanese tour.

Asahito NANJO 南条麻人
Psychedelic Japanese bassist, the other half of the influential group High Rise, whom Li Jianhong would have you know has not given up the bass for guitar.

SUN Dawei 孙大威
Better known as Sulumi, the Beijing-based 8bit artist, head of Shanshui records. Koyuki, who organized Li Jianhong’s second show in Osaka, is the agent and promoter for Shanshui in Japan.

Yoshiyuki “Jojo” HIROSHIGE 広重嘉之 or JOJO広重
Osaka-based guitarist, the one constant member of Hijokaidan 非常階段. Founder of the Alchemy label and record store, were Li Jianhong bumped into Masonna.




Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, Days Nine, Ten, and Eleven

by Ben

At long last, here are the final 3 days of Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, just over a year from first to final post. I took advantage of itta and Marqido staying at my house to clear up my last remaining questions on the translation. Many thanks to everyone who helped out, including Dajuin, Lawrence, itta, Marqido, Chio Kawada, and Huang Zhuojun. Corrections or comments are still welcome.

Now what shall I read next…?

December 17, 2008
The concerts are all over, so now all that’s left is to be a happy tourist. I’d be happier if I had some money to spend, ha ha. But that doesn’t matter, most of the time money doesn’t buy happiness.

Unfortunately today itta was sick with a cold and a fever, so she and Marqido stayed home at Iida’s place. Iida and his friend Yoshikawa Masatoshi 吉川昌利 accompanied me to go stroll around Osaka.

We first went to Shinsaibashi 心斋桥 to check out a market specializing in second-hand clothing, a really big place. The top floor was nothing but second-hand clothes of every kind, trousers, shoes, hats…they had everything, and everything was arranged very clearly. For example, Levi’s Jeans were all hung according to size, making it very convenient to choose the right pair. There were so many pretty and fashionable clothes, and huge numbers of young people shuttling back and forth inside, picking out some clothes, trying them on, then trying on something else. Too bad, I didn’t buy anything.

Afterwards we went to a keyboard store. Inside were all kinds of second-hand keyboards and effects processors, all kinds of effects boxes stacked up like gold bricks, extremely enticing. It was a good thing I had already withstood the temptation of Ochanomizu’s second-hand music stores; otherwise I would have had my heart broken all over again. I saw a Gibson Firebird V, made in America, almost like new, at a very good price. It seems if you had some capital to invest, you could make a good profit buying equipment here and selling it elsewhere.

Afterwards, we went to the birthplace of the Alchemy label, the CD store opened by Jojo Hiroshige JOJO広重. Just like the Modern Music store, this place is on the second floor, with the door covered in D!O!D!O!D! posters, and very small inside. Upon entering, I saw a salesperson with long hair, dressed all in black, very cool. I thought to myself that this guy strongly resembles Masonna. Prior to this, I had no idea he might be here. But I didn’t want to pry, so I just minded my own business, turned around, and started browsing through the CD’s.

In addition to local new music from PSF and Alchemy, there was a wide selection of European and American rock and psychedelia from the 60’s and 70’s, such as Hawkwind, Can, Amon Düül II, etc. And the music playing in the store was also this kind of old rock, just like in Modern Music. It seems the influence of old rock from the 60’s and 70’s on Japanese new music is truly significant. In fact, looking deeper, Japanese noise goes quite well with this early rock. Lots of noise musicians listen to hard rock, Kraut rock, prog rock, art rock, etc., each of them absorbing nutrition, energy, and inspiration.

In the end, I finally chose a double CD called Alchemism, a 20-year retrospective of music on the Alchemy label. On it, in addition to extreme noise music by the likes of Merzbow, Hijokaidan 非常阶段, The Incapacitants, and Masonna, most of the rest was early rock, such as Sekiri 赤痢, SS, SOB 階段, etc. There were also some tracks from JOJO’s former group Ultra Bide and Seiichi Yamamoto 山本精一. After listening, the feeling could be summed up in one phrase: original flavor. Besides the idea I mentioned earlier , that it’s important to find your own angle and dig down deep, this idea of “original flavor” is another important aspect of Japanese new music. Careful attention to mastering your own style and finding your original flavor are the twin nuclei of Japanese new music.

As I was paying for my purchase, I asked the salesperson, “Are you Masonna?” He replied, “Yes!” It seems my earlier guess was correct. I asked if I could take a picture of the store, and he said, “Of course you can, we’re selling your CD’s here.” Afterwards we chatted for a bit.

After we left, the weather suddenly changed, and the drizzle unexpectedly turned to hail. I thought to myself that previously I had only seen such a strange and sudden change of weather in Yunnan.

At nearby Sankakukouen 三角公园 we ate the famous local octopus, which is rolled up into little balls, ha ha. It’s a fashionable place in Osaka for boys and girls to gather together. When the weather is good, there must be a lot of open-air performances.

Finally we returned to that musical instrument shop we visited earlier, and I bought a loop pedal. It’s the newly released Boss RC-2, which I still haven’t seen for sale in China. They didn’t have any second-hand models on sale, so I just bought a new one.

After we got back to where we were staying, we started to pack, since our long-distance train was leaving at 10 pm, arriving in Tokyo at 7 am, 9 hours of travel.

As we were leaving, Iida gave me a copy of Derek Bailey’s book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice 即興演奏の彼方, which had been strongly recommended by those guys. Too bad it’s in Japanese. I thought to myself that it would be so much better if there was a way to translate it into Chinese. There are too many books on music without a Chinese translation, which is really too bad.

December 18, 2006
After returning to Tokyo, we passed out for a bit. At noon, I contacted Karkowski by phone, but we had to cancel our plan to record today, since his friend’s recording booth was already in use. So we were out of luck.

Very well, said Marqido, today let’s go shopping and be happy! After eating lunch, we went to Harajuku to visit the Meiji-Jingu shrine. This shrine was originally constructed in honor of the Meiji Sun Emperor and his mother. Every year on New Year’s Day, people from all over come to pay their respects. The gigantic inscription above the door is Japan’s largest. Inside, the ceiling is constructed of ancient wood, adorned with crows. As it happens, some rite was being performed inside the Meiji-Jingu shrine; the specific details weren’t clear, but Marqido said what we were hearing was Japan’s most ancient music. I hear that the divinations performed in this shrine are very accurate, but I didn’t stick around to find out for myself.

Afterwards, we walked along a footpath kitty corner to the Harajuku subway station. It seemed to be the famous Omote-sando 表参道, the one with two big eyes at the intersection. This really is a place for young boys and girls to gather. Both sides of the street are lined with Tokyo’s most fashionable clothing and jewelry stores, all of them with their own unique style, vying for the attention of the young passers-by. Everywhere you look, fashionable young guys and beautiful girls shuttle back and forth along both sides of the street in every kind of shop, dressed up in traditional uniforms, or decked out in punk or rock attire, or in kawai style, or in cosplay, each one individual and different. It was a pleasure just to enjoy the spectacle. The three of us couldn’t help doing some shopping ourselves. I bought a second-hand jacket, my only luxury purchase, excluding musical gear, since arriving in Japan.

But the happiest surprise was when we suddenly stumbled upon a wondrous, hidden, second-hand synthesizer shop. All kinds of Moogs, Korgs, and Yamahas were stacked up on the floor, filling the room. They also had monitors, effects processors, even a few old Theremins, along with lots of other stuff. Several young shopkeepers were inside busily testing out newly received equipment; it looked like they were repairing talking robots. Not only did the place look like a space ship control center, but lots of these old machines were plugged into speakers, so we could play happily. You can be like a spaceship captain, launching any waveform or signal into whatever direction you can imagine.

Our stroll finally brought us to Shibuya. Evenings in Shibuya can only be described as bustling, with every kind of neon light and billboard; it made me think of Ghost in the Shell. Standing on the street, I thought of my friend Lao Fang 老方. He would surely enjoy Shibuya, since he loves crowded places, and this place was seriously crowded. When the light turns green, from all four directions people crowd into the middle of the street, then quickly disperse in every direction. It seemed like a scene from a movie played back sixteen times faster.

Interestingly, in the second-hand section of one CD store, on the Noise/Avant-garde rack, I discovered a D!O!D!O!D! album selling for 1470 yen, ha ha! Well OK, since they were selling my album, I bought a few second-hand CD’s there for myself: two Derek Bailey disks, one Naked City, and one David Shea.

When we finished shopping, Marqido suggested going to visit a friend, and I thought he was referring to a friend’s concert. When he said the name, it didn’t ring a bell. I only knew that he said this guy has been making computer music for a long time, and Karkowsky should know him. Only when I saw his face and exchanged greetings did I recognize elder statesman Carl Stone. He said, you must know my old friend Yao Dajuin 姚大钧, and I replied, of course I know him, we just played a show together in Hangzhou [the 2pi Festival 2006]. Carl Stone invited everyone to a bar to chat. He and itta and Marqido chatted quite happily, but I couldn’t keep up with the language, so I just listened on the sidelines.

December 19, 2006
My return flight to China is a little after five in the afternoon. I got up at eleven in the morning and decided to prepare a Chinese meal for Marqido and itta to thank them for their hospitality. I originally planned to make some taro pork chops, but unfortunately the store stocked neither taro nor pork chops. So I just prepared three very simple dishes: Chinese yam with scallions, stir-fried egg and tomato, and shredded pork with celery.

After eating, I packed my bags and went out the door. Good-bye, Japan.

Thanks to everyone I met in Japan who assisted me and extended such friendship.




Chinese new music on the BBC

by Ben

A very quick note to let everyone know that the BBC is currently streaming a two-part special devoted to Chinese new music on their “Hear and Now” program’s website.

Presenter Robert Worby and producer Philip Tagney were in town in April to poke around, and they met up with Junky of Torturing Nurse, Wang Changcun, B6, and some folks from the EArts festival. They also checked out the first RESO show. From Shanghai they went up to Beijing to meet Yan Jun and others, and were treated to a special performance organized by Eli Marshall and the Beijing New Music Ensemble.

It’s about 1.5 hours long and available for one week only, so set aside some time to check it out!




First anniversary of Helmut Schäfer’s death

by lawrence

Randy H.Y. Yau has assembled a set of nice photos on his Flickr page. This one by Joe Colley is my favourite.

Helmut Schaefer & Zbigniew Karkowski by Joe Colley

Randy captioned it as such:

‘Last picture taken of Helmut together with Zbigniew at his home in Graz, Austria. Helmut’s unique energy is captured in his expression here. Joe gave me this photo at the end of 2006 saying, “here’s a picture of your two favorite guys.” It’s been on my refrigerator since.’




[Event] China Incidental

by lawrence

China Incidental: Production Consumption Interpretation

Artists: Yan Jun 颜峻, Zhong Minjie 钟敏杰, Lin Zhiying 林志英, Hitlike (Zhang Liming 张立明).

Royal Festival Hall London, 18th - 28th April
Curated by Matthias Kispert

A slice of contemporary China that is not seen but heard, presented through the work of some of China’s leading experimental artists, including Yan Jun (Beijing), Zhong Minjie (Guangzhou), Lin Zhiying (Shenzhen) and Hitlike (Harbin). Commissioned by CHINA NOW, the UK’s largest ever festival of Chinese culture.

For eleven days, the Foyer of the Royal Festival Hall will be infused with real-world sounds from China. The recordings create a fluctuating, unpredictable mix that changes with the time of day, causing a shift in localities between the grand concert hall and the world of everyday life on a different continent.

The three themes, production, consumption and interpretation, are a reference to the changes that are currently affecting all layers of Chinese society. With the rapid increase in production and private enterprise, the emerging consumer culture and the availability of spare time to spend as one wishes, comes a continuous need for communication, interpretation and re-evaluation of people’s everyday living realities.

(CHINA NOW, the UK’s largest ever festival of Chinese culture, is a six-month nationwide celebration of over 1000 Chinese events including exhibitions, performances and activities spanning Chinese film, cuisine, comics, art, literature, music, design, science, technology, business, education and sport across the UK. Visit www.chinanow.org.uk/events for full details of all events.)




RESO show tomorrow

by Ben

Quick blurb to let everyone know about a show going down tomorrow night in Shanghai called RESO: Reconstruct the Experimental Soundscape of Ourselves. It’s being organized by Mai Mai 卖卖 from the noise rock band Musclesnog (with whom Torturing Nurse’s Junky sat in on vocals and guitar last weekend at Live Bar). Mai Mai will be debuting his solo side-project, Asthma Writers Union, and also a duo project, Porn Moon Twins. Also on the bill is Dominik 多多, a British sound artist who was last in town about two years ago and played a NOIShanghai gig at that time. I’ll also be performing a set of vocal improvisation and Max/MSP futzing, inspired by this brief, impromptu collaboration with Yan Jun 颜峻 at the last NOIShanghai show in January.

Date: Saturday, April 12, 7:30 pm
Venue: Mecooon (aka Downstream Garage) 下河迷仓
Address: Long Cao Road, lane 200, number 100, building 3 (next to the former Yu Yin Tang).
龙漕路200弄100号3楼（育音堂原址隔壁）
Cover charge: 20 RMB (includes free CD for first 50 audience members)




Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, Day Eight

by Ben

December 16, 2007
Today’s concert was arranged by Super Sonic China, which Koyuki manages, and it’s also my last show in Japan. The venue is New World cocoroom. When we arrived I discovered it’s a coffee shop that’s part of a big, multi-storey entertainment complex.

The show started with a VJ performance organized by Super Sonic China. Koyuki and Iida presented a film montage of the Chinese Model Operas, which was interesting. [The Model Operas or Yang Ban Xi 样板戏 were the dozen or so revolutionary works that were permitted to be performed during the Cultural Revolution, exemplifying revolutionary ideals. If I’m not mistaken, Torturing Nurse incorporated an LP recording of one of them, The White-Haired Girl, into a recent performance. -Ben] Tanaka had originally been scheduled to perform, but in the end he wasn’t feeling well, so he had to pull out. Afterwards was 10, and the timing and emotions of their performance were just right. Marqido made a recording, as he does every time they perform. Then came my solo set. After two days of rest, my hands were much better, so today’s performance was calm and level-headed. Listening to the recording after the show, it sounded quite good.

I thought to myself, this is a contradiction. In a situation where I remain relatively sober and level-headed while performing, my hands will be fine and not cramp up; however, if I throw myself into it in total oblivion, problems will surely emerge after ten minutes. In terms of musicality, for sure it’s clearer when I’m cool-headed; but on the other hand, it won’t be as emotionally intense as when I throw myself into it in total oblivion. So, how to strike a balance between level-headedness and intense emotion remains a problem that I need to deal with.

Last was an improvised collaboration with 10: Marqido on computer, itta vocalizing, and me on guitar. It probably lasted about thirty-five minutes. It sounded awesome, a really great collaborative performance! Maybe we’ll put out a CD together.

There was a Japanese guy who had come from out of town just for this show, and afterwards he was very excited. He came over to tell me that he was told about this show by the PSF label, so he rushed back just to attend. He also bought my CD before leaving. I was surprised that quite a few Chinese people had come to the show, especially an old friend from Beijing who’s already been doing business in Osaka for many years. Previously he only went to extreme metal shows; this was his first time checking out something new, and surprisingly, he really liked it. There were also a few Chinese students studying here: a pretty young girl from Shanghai and a handsome young fellow from Shandong.

In addition, I sold 10,000 yen worth of CD’s. Altogether at three shows I sold 30,000 yen worth of CD’s (about 2000 RMB), notwithstanding the fact that I forgot to bring my CD’s to the BEARS show to sell.




Download Your ARCHIVAL VINYL

by Dajuin

On Chinese New Year’s Day, 2/7/2008, Post-Concrete started a brand-new line of releases of sound art, experimental electronic, laptop Max/MSP/Jitter/SuperCollider, algorithmic piano, noise, not-in-the-field recordings, live bootlegs, etc., featuring mostly artists in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. This line is net-only and all releases are offered in the lossless FLAC format (i.e., CD quality sound and can be burned to CDs). All for immediate download at zero cost.

Five titles have been released in three days (with more in the works):

AV001 Wang Changcun - KUNCHONG
AV002 Xie Zhongqi - KUROJAWAN
AV003 Jiang Liwei - EXPERIENCES
AV004 Yao Dajuin - DREAM REVERBERATIONS (singles)
AV005 Wolfenstein - LIVE AT NANHAI 2007

ARCHIVAL VINYL: http://www.post-concrete.com/vinyl/




NOIShanghai 2nd Anniversary show this Saturday

by Ben

NOIShanghai XIII will take place this Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008, 2:30 pm, at Live Bar in Shanghai, 721 Kunming Rd., near Tongbei Rd., way up in Yangpu District.

The program includes Torturing Nurse, Wang Changcun, and Runar Magnusson from Iceland, now living in Denmark. Runar was also in China a year ago and played some gigs with Dickson Dee in Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Looks like they’re playing again in Shenzhen tomorrow.

Thirteen concerts organized in two years (see list) is not a bad track record!




Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, Day Seven

by Ben

December 15, 2006
We got out of bed at noon to go have lunch with Koyuki. Today she wanted to invite us to eat an Osaka specialty, okonomiyaki, at a little place called Cherry Blossoms. This dish is a little bit like teppanyaki; looks, smells, taste—got them all.

Afterwards, Koyuki took us to nearby Kobe to check out a famous street for second-hand goods. This market sprang up under one of Kobe’s light rail lines. It must stretch past several stations, certainly more than a kilometer in length. We entered from 7th St. and went straight in, successively passing 6th St., 5th St….I can’t remember clearly. I liked the part where we started our stroll, which had mostly old stuff like second-hand clothes, digital equipment, antiques, musical instruments, toys, albums, furniture, adult videotapes, a lot of adult manga, used books, and all sorts of other stuff, good quality at a cheap price. The shop owners were mostly middle-aged and elderly people. The things we saw the most of were shoes: old and new, leather and cloth, they had it all, since Kobe is the center of Japan’s shoe production. There was one store that specialized in second-hand Converse shoes; inside and out, the place was crammed full of Converse shoes of every size and shape, style and color. They were distinguished by their place of manufacture: Made in USA, Made in China…. The American ones were naturally more expensive, the Chinese ones were naturally much cheaper, and there were also shoes produced elsewhere at varying prices.

It really was a feast for the eyes, especially all of the toys and figurines, including lots of Japanese cartoon characters, all kinds of toy monsters, and small-sized Japanese antiques—really easy to “waste” time on. In the end, Marqido and itta bought several toy instruments, and my harvest was a pile of monsters to take back. The only one whose name I knew was Godzilla. Koyuki told me several of the other models were also famous Japanese monsters. I was wondering if some might be from Kairyu Daikessen 怪龙大决战 (Battle of the Dragons, 1966), but I couldn’t remember for sure.

As we continued pressing forward, the items on sale got newer. 1st St. and 2nd St. were basically a young person’s world, the majority of the products being fashionable clothes. Nothing there to really turn my head.

When we were done shopping, Koyuki went back, while Marqido, itta, and I continued strolling around Kobe until we were ready for dinner.

When we got back to Osaka, Iida and some of our new friends were all having dinner at his place. His parents had made several dishes, of which one dried, pickled radish dish was especially good, and I ate quite a bit. The Japanese word for “radish” is “daikon” (literally “big root” in Chinese)…such an exciting name! It kept reminding me of the virile male genital organ.




Stockhausen and Videogames

by Ben

I already had Karlheinz Stockhausen on my mind prior to his death last month. For probably a good twelve years now I’ve had my eye out for a recording of Gesang der Jünglinge, which I think was originally issued on Deutsche Grammophon back in the 60’s, but for a long time was out of print. In the early 90’s Stockhausen regained the rights to his early works and started releasing them on his own imprint (before Radiohead or even Prince!), but as I recall it was originally only available on an expensive three-disc set that had to be specially ordered from Germany, a pricy proposition. Twice I came close to finding it: once at Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo, and again last summer at Amoeba Records in Los Angeles; both stores had almost the complete set of Stockhausen-Verlag recordings, but no Gesang der Jünglinge.

I mentioned this fact in passing maybe two or three times to my girlfriend, who happened to grow up just down the road from Stockhausen in the suburbs of Cologne, and she astounded me with the gift of this long-sought recording for my birthday last October. So it was gratifying to be already engaged in his music when I got news of his death, to avoid feeling that little twinge of regret at not having paid enough attention to someone’s work while that person is still alive, the way I did with Ligeti.

Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths), which portrays the Old Testament story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, was as spectacular as I remembered it, all the more amazing considering that it was realized in 1956. I guess it’s generally considered to be the first composition (or at least first significant composition) to mix pure, electronically generated sound with musique concrète, in this case, a recording of a boy singing a Psalm (evidently an apocryphal addition to the book of Daniel) from the Catholic mass in German. It’s backed with Kontakte plus three early studies for electronic sound. The package contains a thick booklet of Stockhausen’s voluminous notes, numerous excerpts from the detailed scores, and more charts and tables than you can shake a stick at. Indicative of the painstaking attention to detail is a photograph depicting a reenactment of an elaborate, home-rigged tape splicing technique he developed, so that he could perform his more tedious tasks at home and make the most of his precious studio time.

It’s also been fascinating to get reacquainted with Kontakte. This piece from 1960 exists in two versions; I already have a recording of the version for tape with piano and percussion (on the Wergo label), but this CD features the version for tape alone. The work has 16 sections (Struktur), several of which are further subdivided, and unlike the Wergo recording, each section of the piece is indexed as a separate track. For a work of this scale (thirty-five and a half minutes), this indexing underlines the fine attention to every minute detail of the piece. As an example, and in the spirit of evangelism, I hope that Stockhausen-Verlag will not begrudge my posting the gorgeous “Struktur XV” in its entirety. No event passed too quickly to escape Stockhausen’s scrutiny; he is in complete command of these 43.8 seconds.

I don’t know much about his recent work, though I’ve been boning up a bit lately. Around the time I first encountered Gesang der Jünglinge in 1993 or 1994, I asked a professor what Stockhausen was up to these days, and he replied something like, “He used to write such great music, but now he’s just trying to talk to aliens!” In one of Stockhausen’s obituaries, I read that he actually started off as a fairly devout Catholic (like his professor Messiaen, illuminating his choice of subject matter for Gesang der Jünglinge), who seems to have gradually developed his own unique strain of cosmic mysticism, as suggested by this prayer posted on his website.

The only recent work I know is the Helikopter-Quartett from 1993, which I consider a fascinating, audacious, curiously flawed, but ultimately inspiring piece. Like most of his music from 1977 until 2003, it figures into his gargantuan, 29-hour opera cycle Licht (Helikopter-Quartett is the third scene from Mittwoch). It’s a string quartet that also requires four helicopters, a huge audio-visual relay system, and a stadium in which to perform it. Helicopters have a complex sound with multiple components (I know, because part of my job is putting helicopter sounds into videogames), and it’s interesting to think of using this sound for musical purposes. But parts of the score require the musicians to count out numbers in German, which seems oddly superfluous, like they suddenly stumbled into a George Crumb piece.

Nonetheless, especially in the early days of my career, when I was doing a lot of work-for-hire music, and my creative impulses would occasionally clash with the producers’ commercial instincts, I used to listen to Helikopter-Quartett as the ultimate statement of artistic confidence and integrity. He doesn’t doubt for an instant that the quality of his music deserves anything less than these ridiculous logistics. And every aspect of the spectacle is spelled out in the score, including the post-performance discussion; Stockhausen composes everything. The kicker is that after the premiere and all the expense and negotiation and coordination it entailed, he had the audacity to revise the work, which necessitated a new recording!

But ultimately more relevant to my work in the non-linear medium of videogames is Stockhausen’s investigation of form.

In 1956, he wrote the mobile-like Klavierstück XI, which is structurally similar to some Earle Brown’s pieces. I checked out the score for this piece at the University of Washington music library a few years ago. It comes rolled up in a big tube, with a little stand that you unfold and to which you affix the printed score before placing it on the piano (not that I attempted to play it; it’s way, way beyond my capabilities). It was in the rare books section, so the librarian gave me white gloves to wear while handling the score. Several short phrases are spaced about the page, and the pianist may move from phrase to phrase arbitrarily. When any phrase is played for a third time, the piece is over. The most unique application of this mobile structure is that the end of each phrase dictates the manner in which the subsequent phrase, whichever it may be, should be played, so that the same material may be subjected to real-time variations.

This mobile-like structure is handy enough, but even more useful is Stockhausen’s notion of “moment form,” which permeates every element of the music, not just a few branching forks in the road. He elaborates on this idea in the liner notes to my earlier Wergo recording of Kontakte (comments reproduced from a 1961 interview):

During the last years, there have been forms composed in music which are far removed from the form of the dramatic finale; they lead up to no climax, nor do they have prepared, and thus expected, climaxes, nor the usual introductory, intensifying, transitional, and cadential stages which are related to the curve of development in a whole work; they are…forms in which at any moment one may expect a maximum or a minimum, and in which one is unable to predict with certainty the direction from any given point.

The idea is that the music can exist in stasis, not moving towards any dramatic climax, but just doing its own thing indefinitely, until, for whatever reason, it does something else. Kontakte is an accretion of small structures, not a big structure that’s been broken down into smaller subdivisions. The form is additive, which is to say, it’s the opposite of a traditional Western symphony that is divided into movements, sections, phrases, measures, beats, subdivisions of beats, etc., all working towards a big final cadence.

(This is the same revelation Philip Glass had much later when transcribing Indian music for Western musicians, and he points out that most non-Western music also shares this conception of music as being a behavior that can evolve. I’d also point out that many composers have found this type of music well-suited to spiritual expressions like Stockhausen’s, including Olivier Messiaen and Steve Reich, not to mention a great number of composers operating way back when church music was the norm, such as Perotin or Allegri.)

You could call it non-teleological (thanks to Bret Battey for introducing me to this word), or non-goal-oriented music. And when music isn’t moving towards a specific goal, it’s free to go anywhere at any time. And that’s an exact prescription for music that must accompany an indeterminate, real-time process, in which the goal may not be forseeable. And that’s one way to describe a videogame.

I’ve often been tempted to make yet another analogy between film and videogames (there have been many), in regard to the influence of classical music on new media. I think you can say that Debussy, for example, is a very cinematic composer. A lot of his transitions sound like camera cuts. He encountered in some capacity this new technology and thought about what it meant for the world of ideas, and it was reflected (innately, and along with lots of other ideas) in his music, at a time when film was still finding its aesthetic legs and real film music basically consisted of borrowed ballet scores.

(Note that this is not the same as talking about how composers of horror film scores have looted the music of the Second Viennese School; while it’s true that audience’s ears have grown to accept sounds that were once considered cacophonous, that’s a different discussion, which is more about content, or what Morton Feldman might call the surface of the music. It’s not about grappling with the fundamental expressive or structural capacities of a new medium.)

In the same way, as the notion of modern computers seeped into the public consciousness, composers in the middle of the last century began to think through the aesthetic ramifications of the new medium, even though, in the majority of cases, they were not actually writing music for computers. John Cage didn’t use a computer to generate his random numbers until the very end of his life, but the idea of this possibility was surely there much earlier. It’s only now that everyone’s got a computer and videogames are truly mass media entertainment that these ideas can be linked back up to the technology that may have sparked them in the first place. This is true of Stockhausen’s moment form. What may once have been considered irrelevant intellectual conjecture is finding increasing application in the consoles of legions of videogame players.

This underscores the necessity of contemporary music; it structures ideas about who we are and the world around us. The media we use influences the way we think, and Klavierstück XI is basically a web page. To pick an arbitrary example, Beethoven’s music, as great as it is, can never fully address the experience of someone living today, because Beethoven never had a cell phone.

Around the time I first encountered Kontakte in the late 90’s, I read a quotation by Stockhausen that I think I’d go so far as to say I’ve adopted as a life principle, though I’ve probably stretched it a bit beyond its original context (which I have now forgotten). He said, as I recall, “In everything, I am trying to integrate more and more.” That’s already a noble enough goal for a piece of music: to think through every aspect of an artwork, accepting no tradition or convention untested, making sure every element has a reason to be there.

But I think this maxim can apply equally to a whole life, relating what one writes to what one eats, one’s grooming habits, how one conducts one’s relationships, etc. This attitude reminds me of how Laurie Anderson says she used to go to other artists’ homes early in her career to see what was in their refrigerators, or how my former composition professor Peter Hamlin used to invite students to his house for his homemade chili. It seems to me the most integrated and satisfying music results from truly living one’s art.

Such a mantra doesn’t seem like such a bad legacy.




Stockhausen Serves Imperialism

by Ben

I’d recommend the British composer Cornelius Cardew to anyone who’s following new music and China. For a long time he was on my list of composers I ought to know more about, but it took moving to Shanghai to provide the necessary impetus to dig in.

I had been curious to read some Confucius, so about two years ago I ordered Ezra Pound’s version of The Great Digest. I also picked up excerpts of Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning, a gargantuan piece of several hours based on the same work (”The Great Learning” and “The Great Digest” both being renderings of the Chinese “大学 Da Xue”), as well as the piano piece We Sing for the Future! I also started reading his book, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, and in light of Stockhausen’s death, this seems as good a time as any to mention it here. In the introduction he rails against the capitalist notion of copyright, so I don’t think he’d object to my posting it.

Cardew was an assistant to Stockhausen from 1956 to 1960, and later an associate of John Cage’s. Cardew converted to communism in the 1970’s, and a significant chunk of the book is devoted to lambasting both of them as bourgeois idealists. Here’s a taste:

The American composer and writer John Cage, born 1912, and the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, born 1928, have emerged as the leading figures of the bourgeois musical avant-garde. They are ripe for criticism. The grounds for launching an attack against them are twofold: first, to isolate them from their respective schools and thus release a number of younger composers from their domination and encourage these to turn their attention to the problems of serving the working people, and second, to puncture the illusion that the bourgeoisie is still capable of producing “geniuses.” The bourgeois ideologist today can only earn the title “genius” by going to extreme lengths of intellectual corruption and dishonesty, and this is just what Cage and Stockhausen have done. Inevitably, they try and lead their “schools” along the same path. These are ample grounds for attacking them; it is quite wrong to think that such artists with their elite audiences are “not doing anyone any harm.”

There’s all kinds of interesting stuff that makes this book worth reading. He provides a fascinating overview of the history of the Scratch Orchestra, a kind of pick-up avant-garde collective he founded to perform The Great Learning. He also does a thorough self-criticism of his own works, including The Great Learning and Treatise, referencing Mao Zedong’s Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art. It’s valuable as a glimpse of how China was perceived in the West in the 1970’s, and it raises all kinds of questions about the role of composer in society, the relationships between composer and performer and audience, the value of abstract intellectual inquiry, allegations of elitism, etc.

The Great Learning may be a flawed piece, but it actually contains a lot of unique solutions to the question of how to coordinate the indeterminate actions of multiple performers, reminding me in some ways of Christian Wolff. And I’m not completely convinced that a big piano piece like We Sing for the Future!, written after Cardew’s avant-garde reformation, is necessarily demonstrably more “useful.” But his comments about how “derivative” pop music “will serve for the ideological subjugation of the working class…through encouraging degenerate tendencies, drugs, mass hypnosis, sentimentality” do bring to mind Howard W. French’s recent article, “The Sound, Not of Music, but of Control.”




Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, Days Five and Six

by Ben

So much for my goal of finishing these translations by the end of the year…

Happy New Year!

December 13, 2006
Today’s performance was at the UFO Club, and judging from the name alone, you can tell it’s a psychedelic rock venue. It’s also located in a basement, and the stairway down to the entrance is plastered with posters advertising concerts and recruiting musicians. I was surprised to discover that the boss here is the same guy who runs Show Boat.

We arrived there early, and the club still wasn’t open, so we just left our instruments, suitcases, and laptops at the door along with a note. Then we went to check out a street specializing in second-hand stores. There were second-hand books, albums, clothes, and home furnishings. Itta and Marqido especially dug into any shops that had red clothing, ha ha. They pay great attention to their appearance on stage; if it’s not red, they’re not interested.

There were a lot of interesting old books, including authors such as Shuji Terayama 寺山修司 and Araki Nobuyoshi 荒木经惟. In one used bookstore named Nishimuraya 西村屋, which also sells a great quantity of second-hand videotapes and DVD’s, I also saw books by Daisetsu T. Suzuki 铃木大拙. They weren’t expensive, but considering that I don’t read Japanese, I decided not to buy anything.

At 4:30 in the afternoon we went back to the UFO Club, where Shoji Hano was already sound checking his drums. Today before our duo free improvisation, I was scheduled to do a solo set. He said today he was ready to record, so he hoped that we could get a better balance between our playing volumes this time.

After waiting for all of the performers to finish sound checking, it was just about show time. Hideo Ikeezumi and Munehiro Narita had also come to check out the performance.

The first to perform was a newly formed Tokyo psychedelic punk band named AINOTAMENISHIS 愛のために死す. They had some pretty good songs, reminding me of the Beijing band Mafeisan 麻沸散. But they played a bit long, more than an hour; waiting for them to finish, Shoji Hano ran over to me and said that since they were playing so long, maybe I could curtail my solo performance a bit, if we still wanted to do our duo improvisation. I said no problem.

Next up was 10, and tonight they put on a great show, better than two days ago at Show Boat. But after they were done, my performance was really a disaster. Halfway through my solo set, I had a sudden recurrence of an old malady. My left hand cramped up to the point where I couldn’t hold down the strings, and my right hand couldn’t even hold my guitar pick. I was so emotionally pumped up that I couldn’t even stand steady, and I stumbled on the stage. After I was done, there was no time for a break, since the next set was my duo improvisation with Shoji Hano. My two hands were already completely stiff, and there was no longer any joy in playing, so the concert was very rigid and mechanical, with no chance for anything truly creative or inspired to happen. But Shoji Hano was great, just crazier and crazier; when I was ready to leave the stage, he called me back for more.

As far as I’m concerned, today’s performance was a complete mess. Sitting in the green room after the show, I just wanted to chop off my two hands. I utterly despise this old illness, which has so many times robbed me of the joy of performing. Of course Hideo Ikeezumi was also disappointed, since he was hoping to get a good recording of tonight’s show, but the result was far from ideal.

Afterwards someone came over to greet me. When he introduced himself, I realized it was Shizuo Uchida 内田静男, the bass player in Keiji Haino’s 灰野敬二 Nijiumu 滲有無 project. He also came to hear our performance two days ago at Show Boat. He was the one who designed the artwork for the PSF re-release of the D!O!D!O!D! album. We exchanged contact information, and he gave me a copy of the Shizuo Hasegawa 長谷川静男 CD he did together with Hirotomo Hasegawa 長谷川裕倫. I also gave him a few 2pi CD’s.

Just before we left, Hideo Ikeezumi gave us 5000 yen to go get a late night snack, as well as 10000 yen to pay for our trip to Osaka. What a great boss!

Today was such a tiring day. When we got home, I could only lie paralyzed on the bed. Itta brewed some pomelo honey tea for me to drink. This is a Korean specialty that she had just brought with her a few days ago, and it was extremely tasty. These last few days, this tea has become our best cure for staving off exhaustion. Two cups down the hatch, OK, the day’s work is behind us, and we’re ready for bed. Tomorrow we’re off to Osaka!

December 14, 2006
“Life’s got more twists and turns for the poor [穷人多折腾].” This is a famous saying for Marqido and me. Translated into the best English that the two of us could manage, it means, “Poor is hard, rich is easy.” Maybe it’s not grammatically correct, but if you understand the meaning, that’s enough. I’ve known him for two years, and between the two of us, we don’t know more than fifteen words of English.

“Poor is hard, rich is easy,” was in reference to the fact that the direct bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka, which only takes three and a half hours, costs 15000 yen, too much for our budget. In the end, we had to leave at 6:30 in the morning and change trains about seven or eight times, ultimately taking nine hours to reach Osaka.

But all this trouble was worth it. Although all these twists and turns meant that there was no chance for sleep on the train, the journey gave me a taste of some beautiful Japanese scenery, including Mount Fuji, the Pacific Ocean, several small villages nestled at the foot of the mountain, the tidy and tranquil countryside, and the kind of wild fields you’d see in a film by Hayao Miyazaki 宮崎駿. Large statues of Guanyin (a.k.a. Avelokitsvara, the Buddhist goddess of mercy), dotted the hillsides we passed along the way.

We arrived in Osaka in the afternoon around 4 pm and went straight to BEARS bar. This is Osaka’s performing holy ground, opened by the famous guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto 山本精一. All of the big name noise artists (or any kind of big name artists) who come to Osaka play here as their first choice venue. Tokyo may be Japan’s capital for psychedelic music, but Osaka is the noise music capital. This bar’s also not very big and also located in the basement; I’m realizing that basically all of Japan’s music bars are underground. The sound engineer was a young girl, but very experienced and fast-working, the most deft and precise sound engineer I’ve seen. When I was sound checking, she asked if I wanted more treble or bass, so I replied, “More bass,” and very quickly she had dialed up a satisfying tone. The audio equipment was also quite good; if you want to really crank it up, this wish is easily satisfied.

Before the performance, Koyuki 小雪, the manager of Super Sonic China, arrived. I met her a few years ago in Hangzhou. She is now in Japan acting as an agent and promoter for the Shanshui 山水 record label run by Sun Dawei 孙大威 (a.k.a. Sulumi). She also organized our other Osaka performance. Her Chinese is really good, and the other friends who accompanied her, including Iida 饭田 and Tanaka 田中, also speak Chinese. I was so happy that I could finally use Chinese to communicate with people!

The first act to take the stage tonight was pretty good, Tetsuharu Mashita 増田哲治, performing guitar noise processed with delays, loops, and feedback, very psychedelic, with some ear-splitting high frequencies. After the show, he told me he made effects processors. No wonder his music had such an original tone!

Next up was 10. I’ve already seen them perform many times, but I can always discover some new impression. Japanese artists and musicians all have a very persistent quality. Once they have chosen some mode of expression, they seem compelled to drill down deep to the heart of the matter. Because only then is it your own music, one that is totally unique. 10 also possess this quality, the idea that you’ve got to have something that’s your own; this is what touched me most deeply while I was in Japan. You might say that the proliferation of different forms of creative music in Osaka is the proof.

Next was my performance. I still hadn’t recovered the full use of my hands, so I couldn’t play guitar. Instead I chose to do a hardware noise set of “rubbing box” [a small, custom-made box that generates noise when rubbed] plus effects. The performance turned out alright, since the sound in that room was so good; all of the minute details and variations could be heard clearly. Since I pressed down so hard on the rubbing box, I actually broke off a corner of the table on which I was performing. When Seiichi Yamamoto came over to help me move my equipment off the stage, I apologized to him, but he said it was no big deal, and took a look at my rubbing box while he was at it.

The last performance was by a super prankish band, two guys and one girl, performing on keyboard plus a huge drum, along with Japanese comic dialog, very interesting.

When the concert was over, Seiichi Yamamoto gave us eight thousand yen to get us back to Tokyo, and Koyuki and her friends invited us out for some food. This meal was great; I particularly love those barbecued apricots, so fragrant. While in Osaka, we were staying at Iida’s place, so after eating, we headed back there to sleep. Iida is a very warm-hearted Japanese guy, very sincere. He studied in China for a while, so we were able to chat together quite happily.

Going to Iida’s house was my first time taking a Japanese taxi, since they’re so expensive. Even a short trip makes about 2000 yen just disappear. Marqido jokingly pointed to Iida from the back seat and said “Rich people! Rich people!”

What a great day this was: great scenery, great performances, great food, great friends…itta said today must have been my happiest day in Japan so far, since she was always seeing me smile.




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