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voice of the machine
At what point does sound become music?
Sachiko M's "13072001," generated from a pair of oscillators, would seem to put this question to the test: it seems to be emptied of almost everything which might qualify as "musical" information. What we get instead is the intermittent appearance of short, stark bursts of sound which last for only a second before winking back into silence.
And yet it's not difficult to recognize that there's an aesthetic at work here, whether it be the Western-minimalist tradition of reduction and renunciation, the (much older) Eastern-minimalist tradition of incompleteness and negative space, or even an aesthetic of technological animism, which might suggest that the role of the musician is to permit the machine to speak in its own voice (related: Haco's "Stereo Bugscope" project). Regardless of where you might slot it, once you give yourself over to the piece its boldness and force become strikingly clear: the life-force that flutters here may be flickering or ephemeral but this only serves to make its vitality stand in sharper focus.
Listen: "13072001" by Sachiko M
From Disc Four in the Improvised Music From Japan box set (2001); special thanks to D. Bauler. Labels: music_commentary |
Friday, April 29, 2005
1:59 PM
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