And I always thought Matthew Shipp played free music:
MS: I really don’t like talking that way because that’s our craft, improvising. We spend a lot of time really developing a capacity and methodology to do it. William and I have been playing together for 16 years. When you play that long with somebody, things take on a life of their own. It is same process whether you are doing it with a piano or not. You are still solving musical problems. Let’s just say that there is a guiding gestured idea behind everything whether it is written down or not.
VR: What kind of idea?
MS: Like a gesture. It is discussed. Like "this section is going to be this, this color, this rhythm, this type of focus and we want to go there. " That is known at the least.
You can read the rest of the interview here. The same site features an interview with Devo's Jerry Casale that is more interesting. He's a pretty together cat:
VR: Going back to your early days. You were present at the Kent State shootings in 1970. How did that day affect you?
JC: Whatever I would say, would probably not all touch upon the significance or gravity of the situation at this point of time? It may sound trite or glib. All I can tell you is that it completely and utterly changed my life. I was white hippie boy and than I saw exit wounds from M1 rifles out of the backs of two people I knew. Two of the four people who were killed, Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause, were my friends. We were all running our asses off from these motherf&*$#ers. It was total utter bullshit. Live ammunition and gasmasks – none of us knew, none of us could have imagined. They shot into a crowd that was running. I sopped being a hippie and I started to develop the idea of devolution. I got real, real pissed off.
Be warned, however, that the rest of the site isn't interesting.
Some stuff aboutpalindromes, which have continued to interest me: A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Eerie.
I played at SCUM in Seoul again last week in duo with Alfred 23 Harth. Also on the bill were Astronoise, who did a Steve Reich thing with cd players, and Yoshimitsu Ichiraku and Kawabata Makoto from ISO and Acid Mothers Temple, respectively. Ichiraku was outstanding, as was A23H (in rare form, in fact). Kawabata once said this:
Music, for me, is neither something that I create, nor a form of self-expression. All kinds of sounds exist everywhere around us, and my performances solely consist of picking up these sounds, like a radio tuner, and playing them so that people can hear them. However, maybe because my reception is somewhat off, I am unable to perfectly reproduce these sounds. That is why I spend my days rehearsing.
But, in point of fact, his playing is extremely expressive, even willful. Rockin', repetitive, mantric, trancelike sheets of distorted sound via violin bow, e. guitar, and delay pedals. I'm not sure I understand the relationship between the rhetoric and the execution. He is, however, quite good at what he does. A bit like a poor man's Bill Horist. It's just not my thing, I guess. Plus I left my napkins on another table so I had to make do with my fingers in my ears for protection from his rapacious frequencies. It's a small room...I can't help but feel that that sort of ruckus is unfriendly. Maybe I'm just being a baby?
posted by Brad Larcen 8/01/2003[edit]
