Quote from: Andrew McIntosh on September 02, 2010, 01:06:51 AM
"Helikopter-Striechquartett", despite the inclusion of the dippy vocals.
Indeed, vocals are not the best, but I think this is sometimes good quality of avantgarde. That it doesn't really please you 100%, but gives kind of "what the hell?" feel.
This is most true when reading the extensive liner notes, so typical to classical music and avantgarde. This is something perhaps even worth to debate.
My own idea of music/art is, that it should work in many levels. It should be functional as pure musical entertaiment. At the same time, if wanted, it should have depth beyond. Be it religious, political, sexual, social angle or whatever. Something what connects it to true emotion rather than mere skill to perform series of technical gimmicks.
This leads to question of modern art. There was a friend who said that problem of noise is that nobody explains. That you can't really get what the artists actually mean. This in context of offensive/provocative material. He gave example of great modern art, where pile of shit on the floor, is accompanied with 2 sheets of A4, which explains the intent and meaning. And suddenly though theory art transforms into interesting thing.
I tend to disagree, at least on personal level. That it hardly is very good art, if it can't work without 2 sheets of paper explaining. Then rolo of the physical/visual piece could be anything. It could be anything, looking like whatever. And only later you paste on certain theory to awake discussion.
This is something what often is so pretentious in academic music. When you expect that piece itself should work on many levels, automatically. That the reasons how things are done, serve some purpose. But not. Often it seems as if the technic & method of composition or recording has serious gap between the final result.
So lets get back to CD: Helicopter quartet is complex composition. It has 4 guys in 4 helicopters. Each has 3 microphones and camera. Contact mic for strings, vocal mic to catch inside helicopter sound and one microphone capturing the sound of rotating blades as base rhythm. Composition follow the pace of rotors, making it mainly fast paced. All 4 targets are broadcasted via TV/radio link to their own PA & TV towers placed in front of audience in nearly "surround system" style. Audience is being explained what is being done and what is happening.
And when the final piece is relatively interesting experience, one could conclude result is good. But the is also urge to ask: Why?
While a lot of music contains direct emotion (in good and bad), certain cultural reference, what is the nature of music like this? What is the role of certain rituals, concepts or installations, etc. Or is it eventually mere technical process in aim to capture interesting sounds? In such case, I do think that in mid 90's, one could have done much much more intense pieces with helicopter and strings. Especially if financial limitations aren't there. If I would have the financial reality and connections to perform live shows inside amplified factories, that would be perhaps thing most interesting. Nothing new, nothing ideological really, but my strong assumption would be that the piece unleashed in air would be such a sonic phenomena, it would work as piece of art without 5 pages liner notes.
