Quote from: JLIAT on June 25, 2020, 05:11:55 PM
In reply to your 5 points...
Quote from: ImpulsyStetoskopu on June 25, 2020, 03:03:00 PM
First of all -
1) It seems the term 'Avant-garde' as applied to the arts was adopted from the military around 1910, and as I said if you checkout those associated with the term de Sade is significant. Whether he can be considered avant-garde is if one wants to apply the term retrospectively. Such that Sade might be not the first but certainly fits "The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to mainstream cultural values" likewise Baudelaire et al. 2) Your second point seems not to be relevant, If Stapleton coined the term "Power Electronics" and it involved pushing " these earlier groups' sounds and fascination with extreme subject matter even further" I see no good reason for saying that is just what PE is in relation to industrial. The term and PE 'music' here applies to the nature of the music he wished to produce. 3) I made no assumption of your use of Avant-garde, I said "If" and by this I referred to what I understood you claimed, that TG was not industrial, though they coined the term, likewise PE and Whitehouse. 4) I've explained fairly precisely what these terms mean in relation to their historical context. But I see a danger in using historical terms such as these in a contemporary setting. Especially if they depart from the original ideas. 5) I'm sorry I missed your Encyclopaedia, and so your "basic terms" are. What are they? I should say here that at the time and since i've no particular interest in Industrial or PE, as for me rather than being anything Avant Garde I could see it doing not much more radical than Dada / Fluxus or DIAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_in_Art_Symposium.. or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennese_Actionism with which I was familiar- what excited me was the difference between such performance art and the denial of creativity or critique in noise, esp. on first hearing Merzbow. Much the same for Vomir. So i'm also unfamiliar with Savages 5 postulates, but i'll try to explain why Throbbing Gristle should be more associated to "industrial music" than for example - WHITEHOUSE or The NEW BLOCKADERS," Firstly I think his opening remakes might give an idea of "more" ... "these were best exemplified by Throbbing Gristle in London, and Cabaret Voltaire in Sheffield ...These two, in particular, used the space offered to them to develop the ideas which I, in my purism, would prefer to call, for the sake of argument, "industrial." So the fact TG coined the term & Sage thinks they best exemplified should have some weight. That Whitehouse sort to push the industrial envelope into more non-musicality and so coined the term and the genre Power Electronics should account for why TG are better examples of Industrial. As for TNB – I think they very much see themselves as do others as Noise, not Industrial. (see ttp://www.thenewblockaders.org.uk/ and http://www.thenewblockaders.org.uk/tnbarticles.html ) But here i'd see Merzbow as being more radical. i.e. having less of an agenda. So that is why i'd see TG as better representative of Industrial than Whitehouse or TNB. As to the 5 postulates, 2 seems to rule out TNB anti anti..and again is supported by a direct reference to TG and in P1 there is an indirect reference to TG, "The choice to record for their own, or independent labels "... P3 says use of synthesises and anti music, but TNB I think used junk, and were / are famously anti anti... I think " In this, Throbbing Gristle's Second Annual Report (1977) with its reliance on synthesizers and non-musical sounds, was prototypical. " also kind of makes TG a bench mark for industrial, at least for Savage or anyone using his 5 postulates... yourself? And TG certainly from the get go did P4! And again TG are cited as examples of P5.
Finally much of more recent 21stC "industrial" music would fail Savge's 5 postulates.
"It seems the term 'Avant-garde' as applied to the arts was adopted from the military around 1910, and as I said if you checkout those associated with the term de Sade is significant. Whether he can be considered avant-garde is if one wants to apply the term retrospectively. Such that Sade might be not the first but certainly fits "The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to mainstream cultural values" likewise Baudelaire et al. "
Avantgarde is term and phenomena mainly in the ART and in the context of the Art we should consider this phenomena. Its importance for culture is the second question, which isn't problem for us here. So, established Avantgarde was based on esthetical fundaments, and different canon of beauty, not "cultural values". For example - Russian or Polish futurists weren't against culture values, but everyone of avantgardists was against classic canon of beauty. So, de SADE and his art/literature was based on classic paradigm of literature. Even his topics, which was shocked in his time, agree, was create in context of standard human freedom. Shocking topics don't make him avantgardist... I didn't find anywhere who saw him as such writer. It would be nonsense. His influence on some Avantgardists can not change this opinion.
"Your second point seems not to be relevant, If Stapleton coined the term "Power Electronics" and it involved pushing " these earlier groups' sounds and fascination with extreme subject matter even further" I see no good reason for saying that is just what PE is in relation to industrial.".
You are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I didn't mention Stapleton in case of his "power electronics", only in case of his declaration about "surrealist music" which he creates. at least he thought so, and need to question such artist's declaration because we must take bigger context than artist's imagination about himself. I haven't objection about term "power electronics". I don't want to name it as "industrial music", only show you that power electronics has more common to "industrial music" than Throbbing Gristle, CV and SPK which are incarnation an avant-garde of rock music. In other words I could see Power Electronics (and noise industrial, experimental postindustrial, ambient industrial) as sub-genre of Industrial Music.
" I should say here that at the time and since i've no particular interest in Industrial or PE, as for me rather than being anything Avant Garde I could see it doing not much more radical than Dada / Fluxus or DIAS"
First of all, I mentioned that "industrial music" (so power electronics and noise industrial) is trend of neo-avantgarde. Besides, it mustn't be "radical" to name it "neo-avantgarde". We are discussing about MUSIC (its esthetics) not about her out-of-musical radicalism.
"So the fact TG coined the term & Sage thinks they best exemplified should have some weight."
Not true. It was accident with coined the term. It was advertising slogan "Industrial music for industrial people" for a new label Industrial Records. Cazazza and Orridge didn't think about new genre in music. It was taken by journalists. About "industrial music" wrote already P. Schaeffer and P. Henry in the end of the 50. who described such their concrete musique.
Jon Savage even didn't mention about rock music in his postulates which were base for many people who want to see TG, SPK or CV as "industrial". These three projects are based on rock music, its avantgarde idiom, so I don't see any reason linking mentioned groups to industrial music. Industrial music must be based ONLY on ANTI-MUSIC, without any pseudo musical factors like regular rhythms or melodies, so only on NOISE, whatever it may come, from synths, broken devices, no musical objects, or traditional instruments which are used against musical formulas. This is the Industrial Music, not rockish avatgardish of punk-psychedlic-hippies who used some "antimusical" parts in their rock music formula.