MICHEL
HENRITZI
KEITH ROWE SERVES IMPERIALISM
w.m.o/r
29
Released 4th of January of 2007
CDr with a 8 pages
booklet
Edition of 240
French
ORIGINAL TEXT
Reviews &
Criticism
Michel Henritzi
" Keith Rowe Serves
Imperialism "
Feat. Shin'ichi Isohata -
Mattin - Bruce Russell - Taku Unami
1 - Improvisation
right channel : Michel
Henritzi - turntable
left channel : Shin'ichi
Isohata - Gibson Johnny Smith 1965, playing acoustical
2 - Feedback
right channel : Michel
Henritzi - guitar
left channel : Bruce
Russell - guitar
3 - Independance
right channel : Michel
Henritzi - hammer, electric saw & acoustic guitar
left channel : Mattin -
guitar
4 - Action
Directe
right channel : Michel
Henritzi - jack
left channel : Taku Unami
- computer
___________________________________________________________
Taku Unami's track had
been recorded at hibari studio in Tokyo (November 2006)
Mattin's track had been
recorded at the Burger of Christ in Berlin (October 2006)
Bruce Russell's track had
been recorded at the Temple of Music, Lyttelton, NZ
(October 2006)
Shin'ichi Isohata's track
had been recorded by md at Isohata's house in Kobe
(September 2006)
Michel Henritzi's tracks
had been recorded at the Black Room, Theatre du Saulcy, Metz (October
2006)
Dedicated to the memory
of
Derek Bailey and Masayuki " Jojo " Takayanagi
Contact :
m_henritzi@club-internet.fr
Keith ROWE serves
imperialism
" Nowadays musicians
are really protecting something that is far more than a
tradition, which is
really
cool but also is in total contradiction with the
form, that pagan bawling,
which gave it birth. " Lester Bangs Main Lines,
Blood Feasts and Bad Taste
" I have always known
that some musicians used to work on some material a
whole day long and dealed
it as an improvisation on the same night concert.
" Gavin Bryars from
Derek Bailey's book Improvisations
Improvisation, as it is
played since Joseph Holbrooke *, this face to face
between two or several
musicians as stuck inside the nakedness of acoustics
as they are inside their
own histories and strategies of playing, this all
about asking and
answering
kind of playing which stays the basis of most of
the improvisational music
meetings, is still nowadays keeping on doing and
undoing itself through
that usual kind of horizontal relationship. Since its
origin, free
improvisation
- if we cannot pretend to lock it in a fixed
terminology - is forced
to
reject everything that had been constituting
itself in order to make
it
really happen. Listener's hear has very quickly
identified this practice
as a style as sure as he was able to recognize a
flamenco or a blues tune.
Linear relationships had to be broken as spatial
relationships had to be
torn to pieces so that each musician must become a
middle central point.
Members of AMM, since the 60's, will have been the
craftsmen of this
epistemologic rupture.
The improviser steps into
a relationship with what he already knows about
the other one,
anticipating over his playing strategies. Improvised music
identity is deeply
identified as the musician's own identity. Each musician
is culturally determined
throughout the influence of his hands' memory and
throughout the restraint
of his own instrumental limits. If speaking of
idioms about free
improvisation is debatable, it is not yet possible to deny
the fact that it is
marked
by the improvisor's idiosyncrasy. As an
instrumentalist the
improviser is progressively building his own language
and own vocabulary all
along his whole trip ; improvising is nothing but the
stating of his own
selfbuilt vocabulary, an in a real time construction or,
to say it differently, it
is a reflex determined by a renewed context. Deep
inside him there is like
a
temptation for drawing his own trace, for fixing
himself, for letting us
hear his own language. This is why the question will
be never more the generic
one : is it improvisation ? But it will be the
acting one : when does
appear improvisation ?
" If the main reason
why we are listening to music stands in the fact that
we can hear in it the
expression of passion - as i believed it all through
my whole life - how far
then will this music be considered as good enough ?
What this whole thing is
really telling about us ? What kind of thing are we
ratifying within
ourselves
through that worship of a so neutral kind of art
? And in the same time
what are we destroying or at least are we belittling
within ourselves ? "
Lester Bangs Main Lines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste.
Keith Rowe used to say
about Derek Bailey that he was still stuck in an old
language, in a stammering
language. That he deeply was the gate keeper of
tradition just because
Bailey was still making phrases. Perhaps Bailey has
always tried to get in
touch with the other one and has been trying to tell
about himself so that he
could be able to tell about the other one. But if
Bailey is kept prisoner
by
history then Rowe poses as a post-modernist.
History is then no more
inhabited by men but is just an hazy matter thrown
onto the screen of art.
Rowe's big find will not have been in putting the
guitar on the table, a
gesture that was just a following one to the Cage's
prepared piano or to the
Joseph Kekuku's hula slide, but is to have
introduced the radio in
his own set : a ready made by which politics stepped
inside the closed field
of
cultural avant-gardes. If the radio receptor
opens up the very closed
area of art to the social area, it is also very
significant that this
reality would become its spectacular mediation. This
summoned reality is
nothing but its negative, its faked performance. We do
not stand within a
relationship between an indoor and an outdoor to the
musical area but within
the representation of this relationship. What is
then given through its
listening is nothing but the gloomy songs of the
Société
du Spectacle. We have not yet stepped out of the world of art as
radio waves are doing
nothing else but just widening the concert hall.
Bailey, stucked to his
vertically held old technology, stands up with a more
primitively political
gesture : he entirely is within a social relationship
between consumers who
came
there in order to listen to a piece of music and
to him too as a musician
solely paid for the price that was fixed before his
performance. But through
this symbolic exchange there stands a political
gesture. That one that
consists in telling a story or an idea throughout a
syntaxic acoustical
construction. If music is borrowing to language or
painting in order to
regenerate itself, that does not mean to cut off
anything from its own
gesture. Both Bailey and Rowe deal with a gesture that
is producing some
exchange
value, the one which founds the whole economy
inside the cultural area.
Its conclusion is lying
in
its recording, that reproductible merchandise
that is endlessly
repeating the very moment of its production and
contradiction. The
manufactured record is deifying the living moment of the
performance into a
finished work, into an object which is just feeding the
market of Art.
" I could say that if
recordings seem to be by themselves a problem, it is
because they generally
produce some records. " Derek Bailey, Improvisations.
" A commodity
appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily
understood. (...) The
form
of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a
table out of it. Yet, for
all that, the table continues to be that common,
everyday thing, wood.
But,
as soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is
changed into something
transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the
ground, but, in relation
to all commodities, it stands on its head, and
evolves out of his wooden
brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than "
table turning " ever
was" Karl Marx, the Fetishism of the Commodities and
the Secret Therof.
What really is a record
of
improvisation ? Does improvisation happen each
time ? These questions
have from the very beginning of free improvisation
always been the center of
the reflexions from its authors, bringing back so
many contradictory and
passionate answers. But nowadays the question is
keener because of the
overproduction of improvisational records which is
essentially due to the
drop of production costs. The records that were
closed followings to the
Company Weeks were considered as documents that
were keeping a close
relationship to History. These famous records were like
phonographies, like sound
snapshots taken from artistic and cultural events
which were radically
modifying the musical history. But today things have
changed as if records had
even been recorded a long time ago before the
meeting just took place.
Just as if music did happen in order to be sold as
a consumable good. Many
musicians are obliged to put out recordings in order
to promote their music
which is really what promoters are needing so that
these musicians could be
able to estimate their weight only through their
recordings where
prestigious encounters would be able to be credited. Those
publications barely are a
genuine artistical project outcome but have just
been thought as an
advertising medium and for home listening. Those
publications are standing
without any kind of quality recordings and have
only been chosen among
several other similar live recordings. Nowadays
everybody's talking about
improv music and this shift in meaning is very
clearly announcing the
codification of every kind of practice. Recorded
improvisation has just
been ending in looking like wall paper where the only
difference between one or
another is marked throughout more or less skillful
shades of colour. A
drastic change had been operated within our relationship
to improvisation : music
is no longer regarded as an experience through dual
listening but had just
become an area to occupy. This is why it has to be
comfortable,
roughnessless
and safely.
" The whole history
of recorded sound is waiting for we could murder it. "
Coldcut
Here are four duos of
improvisation (of improv music) separately recorded in
terms of time and of
areas. Each one of us has improvised his part in his
home studio, unconnected
to the other one. Did he then really improvise ?
Listener will never know
anything about it. I reassembled these 8 solo
recordings so that i
could
edit them by pair. Each recording is affected to
a channel, left/right, in
order to mime one more time the stage area but
strictly through editing
studio works. Neither one or the other channel here
has been recorded as
improv meetings use to do it with this reactive act of
playing to the other
one's. We were all ignorant of the other one's music.
But this is precisely
where improvisation is taking place, just through this
arbitrary collage between
two distinct digital channels. Each part has been
interrupted as soon as it
reached 10 minutes, a kind of temporal restraint
aiming at being a proper
answer to the restraints of live acting, just like
a score used to do. We
are
the book-keepers of improv economy. We are not
free with our choices.
The
record as an object gives us a restraint with
which we must deal. The
market is selling us its norms and we need the
market to sell our
cultural production.
This record has been
conceived as an hommage to Derek Bailey and Masayuki
Takayanagi, both of them
were great erratics into the musical language. Here
are these 4 duos as 4
covers of the most symbolic improvisations belonging
to that improvised music
history. As an attempt to play one more time
Bailey and Takayanagi.
What would really be the fact of improvising while
doing a cover of an
improvisation ? Maybe it would be as we had been playing
within the memory of what
led us to love a music and its own oblivion. The
project contained
throughout this present record will not be able to escape
to political illusion.
" A record is
something really magic, it makes enter into your room a person
as he or she exactly was
in 1957, then you find that nothing has changed
with this person, that
even the tinier trace of usually happening corruption
did not affect this
person... When we hear Charlie Feathers or Elvis, they
really are in the same
room as we stand as sure as i am now talking to you.
" The Cramps
When listening to a
sound,
there is no difference between a composition and
an improvisation
Michel Henritzi, july 2006
* Joseph Holbrooke was,
between 1963 and 1965, a free improvisation band
with Derek Bailey, Gavin
Bryars and Tony Oxley.
FRENCH
ORIGINAL TEXT
Keith Rowe serves
imperialism
" En fait, c'est
aujourd'hui davantage une tradition que les musiciens protègent,
ce qui est cool mais tout à fait contradictoire avec le
braillement païen sous la forme duquel il naquit. " Lester
Bangs, Fêtes sanglantes & mauvais goût.
" J'ai toujours su
que certains musiciens travaillaient certains trucs dans la journée
et faisait passer çà pour de l'improvisation lors du
concert. " Gavin Bryars cité dans Derek Bailey,
Improvisations
L'improvisation telle
qu'elle s'est jouée depuis Joseph Holbrooke*, deux ou
plusieurs musiciens dans un face à face, dans le dépouillement
de l'acoustique, avec leurs histoires et leurs stratégies de
jeu, ce jeu de questions/réponses qui fonde une grande part
des rencontres de musique improvisée continue à se
faire et se défaire, aujourd'hui encore, dans cette relation
horizontale. Dès son origine l'improvisation libre - si on ne
peut prétendre l'enfermer dans une nomenclature fixée -
s'est trouvé dans l'obligation de rejeter ce qui la
constituait pour qu'elle puisse avoir lieu. L'oreille de l'auditeur a
très rapidement identifié cette pratique comme genre
aussi sûrement qu'il reconnaissait un morceau de flamenco ou un
blues. Il a fallu briser les relations linéaires, disloquer
les relations spatiales, faire en sorte que chaque musicien devienne
un centre. Les membres du groupe AMM, dès les années
60, auront été les artisans de cette rupture
épistémologique.
L'improvisateur entre
en relation avec ce qu'il sait déjà de l'autre, il
anticipe ses stratégies de jeu. L'identité de la
musique improvisée est fortement identifiée à
celle des musiciens. Chaque musicien est déterminé
culturellement, sous l'emprise da la mémoire de ses mains et
contraint par ses limitations instrumentales. Si il est contestable
de parler d'idiomes à l'endroit de l'improvisation libre, on
ne peut nier qu'elle est marquée par l'idiosyncrasie de
l'improvisateur. L'improvisateur comme instrumentiste se constitue au
fur et à mesure de son parcours, un vocabulaire, un langage
propre ; improviser est l'énonciation de son vocabulaire
constitué, une construction en temps réel, pour le dire
autrement un réflexe déterminé par un contexte
renouvelé. Il y a chez lui une tentation à se tracer,
se fixer, à donner à entendre sa langue. La question
n'est donc plus générique : Est-ce de l'improvisation ?
Mais factuelle : Quand y a-t-il improvisation ?
" Si la première
raison pour laquelle nous écoutons de la musique est d'y
entendre l'expression de la passion - comme je l'ai cru toute ma vie
- alors jusqu'à quel point cette musique se révélera
t-elle bonne ? Qu'est ce que ça dit de nous ? Que confirmons
nous en nous-mêmes en adorant un art aussi neutre ? Et
simultanément que sommes-nous en train de détruire, ou
du moins de rabaisser, en nous ? " Lester Bangs, Fêtes
sanglantes & mauvais goût.
Keith Rowe disait de
Derek Bailey qu'il était encore dans un vieux langage modal,
dans un bégaiement de la langue. Qu'au fond il était
gardien de la tradition, parce que Bailey faisait encore des phrases.
Peut-être que Bailey a toujours tenté de rejoindre
l'autre, de se dire, pour dire l'autre. Si Bailey est prisonnier de
l'Histoire, Rowe est dans une posture postmoderne. L'Histoire n'est
plus ici habitée par les hommes, mais n'est qu'une matière
indifférenciée qu'on projette sur l'écran de
l'art. La grande trouvaille de Rowe n'aura pas été de
mettre la guitare à plat, ce geste fait suite au piano préparé
de Cage et à la slide hula de Joseph Kekuku, mais d'avoir
introduit la radio dans son set : ready-made par lequel le politique
entrait dans le champ clos des avant-gardes culturelles. Si le poste
de radio ouvre l'espace forclos de l'art sur l'espace social, il est
significatif que ce réel soit sa médiation
spectaculaire. Ce réel convoqué n'est en fait que son
négatif, sa représentation truquée. Nous ne
sommes pas dans un rapport entre un intérieur et un extérieur
au champ musical, mais dans la représentation de ce rapport.
Ce qui est donné à entendre ce sont les chants
mélancoliques de la Société du Spectacle. Nous
ne sommes pas sorti du monde de l'art, les ondes radio ne font
qu'élargir l'espace du concert.
Bailey, accroché
à sa vieille technologie, tenue dans sa verticalité,
est dans un geste plus primitivement politique : il est dans un
rapport social entre des consommateurs, venus là pour entendre
un moment de musique, et lui, musicien salarié par le prix
fixé pour sa représentation. Dans cet échange
symbolique il y a bien un geste politique. Celui de raconter une
histoire ou une idée à travers une construction
syntaxique sonore. Que la musique emprunte au langage ou à la
peinture pour se renouveler ne retranche rien au geste. Bailey comme
Rowe sont dans un geste de production de valeur d'échange,
celui qui fonde toute l'économie de la chose culturelle.
Sa conclusion en est
le
disque, marchandise reproductible répétant infiniment
le moment de sa production et sa contradiction. Le disque réifie
le moment vivant de la représentation en œuvre finie ; objet
alimentant le marché de l'Art.
" Je pourrais dire
que si les enregistrements posent un problème en soi, c'est
que généralement ils produisent des disques. "
Derek Bailey, Improvisations
" Une marchandise
paraît au premier coup d'œil quelque chose de trivial et qui
se comprend de soi-même. La forme du bois, par exemple, est
changée, si l'on en fait une table. Néanmoins la table
reste bois, une chose ordinaire qui tombe sous le sens. Mais dès
qu'elle se présente comme marchandise, c'est une toute autre
affaire. A la fois saisissable et insaisissable, il ne lui suffit pas
de poser ses pieds sur le sol ; elle se dresse, pour ainsi dire, sur
sa tête de bois en face des autres marchandises et se livre à
des caprices plus bizarres que si elle se mettait à danser. "
Karl Marx, Le Caractère Fétiche de la Marchandise et
son Secret.
Qu'est-ce qu'un
disque
d'improvisation ? L'improvisation a-t-elle toujours lieu ? Ces
questions ont depuis les origines de l'improvisation libre été
au centre des réflexions de ses acteurs, apportant autant de
réponses contradictoires et passionnelles. La question se pose
de façon plus aigue aujourd'hui, du fait de la surproduction
de disques d'improvisation, liée pour l'essentiel à la
baisse des coûts de production. Les disques qui faisaient suite
aux Company Weeks étaient considérés comme des
documents, on était dans un rapport à l'histoire. On
pourrait parler à propos de ces disques : de phonographies,
d'instantanés sonores d'évènements artistiques
et culturels, qui transformaient l'histoire de la musique.
Aujourd'hui les choses ont changé, c'est comme si les disques
avaient été enregistrés avant que la rencontre
ait eu lieu. Que la musique n'avait lieu que pour être vendue
sous forme d'un bien consommable. Beaucoup de musiciens sont dans
l'obligation de sortir des disques pour promouvoir leur musique,
objet promotionnel que leur réclament les promoteurs, pour les
évaluer en fonction de leur poids en disques et rencontres
prestigieuses créditées. Ces publications sont assez
peu souvent l'aboutissement d'un véritable projet artistique,
pensées en fonction d'un support et d'une écoute
particulière, de " salon ". Enregistrements live "
sans qualité ", choisi entre différents
enregistrements live semblables. On parle aujourd'hui de musique
improvisée, ce glissement sémantique annonce très
clairement la codification d'une pratique. L'improvisation
enregistrée a fini par ressembler à un papier peint, où
la seule différence consiste dans des nuances de tonalités
plus ou moins savantes. Un changement radical s'est opéré
dans notre rapport à l'improvisation : la musique ne s'écoute
plus comme expérience partagée, elle est devenue un
espace à habiter. Aussi il se doit d'être confortable,
sans aspérité, sans danger.
" Toute l'histoire
du son enregistré attend que nous l'assassinions "
Coldcut
Quatre duos
d'improvisation (de musique improvisée) enregistrés
séparément dans un temps différé, des
espaces séparés. Chacun d'entre nous a improvisé
sa partie dans son home studio, coupé de l'autre. A-t-il
réellement improvisé ? L'auditeur n'en saura rien. J'ai
rassemblé ces 8 enregistrements solo pour les éditer
par couple. Chaque enregistrement sur un canal, gauche / droite,
rejouant l'espace de la scène dans le montage studio. Aucune
des pistes n'a été enregistré à la façon
dont se jouent les rencontres d'improvisation, dans le jeu réactif
à l'autre. Nous étions ignorants de la musique de
l'autre. L'improvisation se joue là, dans ce collage
arbitraire entre 2 pistes numériques séparées.
Chaque partie a été strictement arrêtée à
10 minutes, contrainte temporelle visant à répondre aux
contraintes du live, comme sa partition. Nous sommes comptables de
l'économie de l'improvisation. Nous ne sommes pas libre de nos
choix. L'objet disque nous donne une contrainte avec laquelle nous
nous arrangeons. Le marché nous vend ses normes et nous avons
besoin du marché pour vendre notre production culturelle.
Ce disque a été
réalisé en hommage à Derek Bailey et Masayuki
Takayanagi, deux grands irréguliers de la langue musicale. 4
duos comme 4 reprises jouées des improvisations les plus
emblématiques de cette histoire de la musique improvisée.
Comme une tentative de rejouer Bailey et Takayanagi. Qu'est-ce
que serait l'acte d'improviser lors d'une reprise d'une improvisation
? Peut-être jouer dans la mémoire de ce qui nous a amené
à aimer une musique et son oubli. Le projet de ce disque
n'échappera pas à l'illusion politique.
" Un disque, c'est
magique, ça fait entrer dans la pièce une personne
telle qu'elle était en 1957, on retrouve cette personne,
intacte, sans qu'elle ait subi la moindre corruption du fait du
passage du temps ... Quand nous les écoutons, Charlie Feathers
ou Elvis sont dans la pièce avec nous, autant que je le suis
en te parlant. " The Cramps.
A l'écoute d'un
son, il n'y a pas de différence entre une composition et une
improvisation.
* Groupe
d'improvisation libre, réunissant : Derek Bailey, Gavin Bryars
et Tony Oxley. 1963 - 1965.
Michel Henritzi.
Juillet 2006.
Reviews
& Criticism
I
HATE MUSIC
============
VITAL WEEKLY
============
number 561
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week
4
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MICHEL HENRITZI - KEITH
ROWE SERVES IMPERIALISM (CDR by W.m./or)
This release raises a few
interesting questions about improvisation and recordings thereof. Is
a recording of an improvisation still an improvisation, or has it
become a composition, frozen in time, put out on vinyl or CD (or in
fact any other sound carrier)? Or is it simply a documentation of an
event? The booklet comes with some interesting notions about it,
which I won't spoil here. The concept behind the music is
interesting. Michel Henritzi invited four improvisers to send him a
recording of improvised music which is placed on the right channel
and on the left channel we hear improvisations by Henritzi. None of
this was made with hearing what the 'other' was doing. "It's an
arbitrary collage between two distinct digital channels".
Divided into four strict tracks of ten minutes, each deals with a
certain aspect of sound. 'Feedback' explains itself through the
guitars of Henritzi and Bruce Russell,
'Independance' has Mattin
on guitar and Henritzi on hammer, electric saw and acoustic guitar
and is indeed two very distinct channels of Fluxus like happening
sound, mixed with noise. A jack is played on 'Action Directe' while
Taku Unami plays computer in a slightly rhythmic fashion, with
electric disturbance on the other speaker. The most pure
improvisation piece comes from Shin'ichi Isohata on an acoustical
playing on an electric guitar, while Henritzi plays a turntable. Pure
improvisation, perhaps, because it sounds like
it to those who are
only slightly familiar with the genre. Throughout I thought all four
tracks were great, and wether they are composed or improvised is
something I don't care about that much. The result, the artifact, the
residue or the conservation in time is what matters. And that is
great. (FdW)
The Sound Projector (London)
This incendiary release could almost be the last chapter in Mattin’s
series of critical polemic. But it’s Michel Henritzi’s show. Mattin
participates on one track here, and Henritzi enjoys the help of
collaborations from Bruce Russell, Taku Unami, and Shin’ichi Isohata.
Henritzi used to run the label A Bruit Secret in France, and he
released
numerous excellent examples of improvised music, including documents of
radical Japanese improvised music (and not just the onkyo players)
which
were always welcome in the TSP house. I am sure they will come to be
seen as very important slices of musical history. The inflammatory
title
of this release, I need hardly tell you, refers to Cornelius Cardew’s
famous 1974 tract Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, written at a time
when
the UK composer was informed by his new-found Maoist doctrine. At one
time Cardew was the UK’s foremost apologist for avant-garde music; few
were more active than he in promoting and exposing it to a wider
audience. This changed completely when he discovered his political
radicalism; his former mentor Stockhausen was his first target, whose
music was rejected wholesale as its 'mysticism' apparently distracted
listeners from the only important political issue of the day (ie the
class struggle).
Keith Rowe was of course a founder member of AMM along with Cardew; I
think at one time they may even have had political views they could
comfortably share, or at least find areas of overlap. He may be
surprised to find a younger generation turning on him this way and
apparently accusing him of being the same sort of suspect
‘establishment’ figure that, in Cardew’s eyes, the hated Stockhausen
had
become. 'Keith was little angry by the title,' Henritzi tells me. 'I
could understand, but it was not a personal attack. I chose him just
because he's become a kind of Improv icon and for a joke with the
Cardew
book.' In fact, Henritzi’s thoughtful 4-page essay which accompanies
this release probes many areas, in pursuit of an argument involving the
very nature of improvisation, social relationships, the commodification
of improvised records, and a process which Henritzi calls the
‘codification of practice’. (It seems this is something rather dreadful
which we all ought to resist). Along the way, his argument takes in the
work of AMM, Joseph Holbrooke, Derek Bailey, and Masayuki Takayanagi
(the last two named as ‘great erratics into the musical language’), and
is bolstered with telling quotes about rock music and the recording
process from Lester Bangs and The Cramps.
In conducting this line of enquiry, Henritzi asks many pointed
questions. His questing attitude extends into the actual recorded
improvisations on Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism, all of which are
making
tentative forays into what constitutes improvisation. In fact, it seems
to have been the aim of all concerned to turn all the conventional
ideas
upside down. In the end, each contributor made their recording at home,
completely ignorant of what their sparring partner might chose to do;
Henritzi made the final assemblage on his home computer, matching
unrelated performances. He limited the time to around ten minutes for
each piece, cutting everything off abruptly so that nothing proceeds
beyond that point. Stern discipline, and a technique possibly informed
more by the philosophy of Debord than by the recording techniques of
Bob
Woolford or Martin Davidson. So much for the naked charm of music
realistically documented!
You may be surprised to learn that the results are quite brilliant.
Henritzi appears on all four cuts, playing guitar, a turntable,
implements from a toolbox, and jack plugs; the other contributors named
above also play guitars apart from Taku Unami who plays his computer on
the last cut. Not only is it a very varied and exciting record, it’s
also a noisy one; the third cut ‘Independence’, named after the famous
LP by Takayanagi, is a metallic rumbling fest of detailed, grumbling
blackness that does full justice to the pioneering 1970s Japanese
player
to which it is dedicated, and I venture to say he would have approved
this tribute. Bailey, to whom the release is also dedicated, is present
on track one to the extent that Henritzi is playing a Bailey LP on his
turntable, and in places appears to be scratching and sampling it quite
violently. I’m aware that both these actions must be regarded as sheer
heresy in some quarters, and Michel must know this too. 'Maybe you know
some guys shot me' he reveals, 'maybe they didn't have humour sense'.
Yet it’s a glorious piece of work, and somehow again seems closer to
the
spirit of Bailey’s achievement than attempting some form of lame
imitation of his guitar ‘style’.
A record like this raises all kinds of questions, and it probably means
nothing to anyone outside a well-informed audience who would have to
know something about the history of the improvised music genre to
understand what Henritzi is talking about, and indeed appreciate the
boldness of his statements. Even so this record is well worth hearing,
and it’s well worth investigating this stimulating essay to open up
further avenues of discussion, thought and action.
ED PINSENT 21/08/2007
The Wire (London, April
2007) by Dan Warburton
A snappy title like Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism certainly
boots brand awareness, but at a price:
most of the heated controversy generated by Henritzi's debut solo
album was concentrated on the essay he penned to accompany it- a
rambling an ineptly translated manifesto on improvisation as Henritzi
sees it.
The album itself consist of four-ten-minute duos featuring the
Frenchman with laptopper Taku Unami,
Shin'ichi Isohata, Bruce Russell and Mattin. Their contributions
were recorded separately, and Henritzi addred his turntable, hammer,
electric saw and jackplug without having heard them, a cadavre exquis
approach he describes in somewhat hamfisted prose as “precisely
where improvisation is taking place, just through this arbitrary
collage between tow distinct digital channels”. (Henritzi's
material is on the right stereo track throughout, that of this fellow
musicians on the left). It's an splendid set of pieces, from the
prismatic, colorful opening “improvisation” -Isohata's playing
recalls both the album's dedicatees, Derek Bailey and Masayuki
Takayanagi- to the tense crackles of the closing “Action Directe”
with Unami.
“Feedback”, with Russell, is just that, and Henritzi, after
half a lifetime fronting the late lamented Dust Breeders, is a s good
at handling feedback as the New Zealander. “Independance” (sic)
is a bracing power thrash battle between Henritzi's toolbox and
Mattin's guitar. It's a shame there isn't more guitar playing on the
offer, as his spare, Setagaya-blues fringerpicking is well worth
checking out, notably with Fabrice Eglin in The Howlin' Ghost
Proletarians.
For the record, despite
being one of France's most erudite and insightful New Music
journalist, Henritzi admits he's never mad it through the book that
inspired his album title, Cournelius Cardew's Stockhausen Serves
Imperialism.
Outer
Space Gamelan
1.22.2007
Michel
Henritzi - Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism (w.m.o/recordings CD-R)
Michel
Henritzi is a multi instrumentalist from France best known for his
work in the Dustbreeders as well as running the (defunct?) A Bruit
Secret label. Now in 2007, he seems to have devised at least a clever
way to generate some additional publicty by releasing the "Keith
Rowe Serves Imperialism" CD-R on Mattin's w.m.o/r label, also
available for a free download via Mattin's website. The title is an
implicit reference to Cornelius Cardew's 1974 book "Stockhausen
Serves Imperialism", and is also the name of the 4-panel essay
Henritzi penned to accompany the release. The essay has been subject
to much criticism for a wide array of reasons, from quote attribution
to flawed logic to lousy grammar (the text reads like it was written
in English, translated to French, and finally back again to English
using an online translating service). Are the criticisms valid? To a
degree, yes. When you write something as flagrantly attention-seeking
as Henritzi has, you've got to expect backlash in copious quantities.
But on the other hand, do I really think Henritzi meant the essay to
serve as the be-all end-all word on improvisation as we've come to
know it? No. Maybe it's just me but I find it hard to look at
"Imperialism" and not think it was written with tongue
planted firmly in cheek and that maybe some of us are getting too hot
and bothered over nothing. But I guess that's besides the point. Like
I said, Henritzi's made some points of contention and allegations in
the essay that people were obviously not going to agree with from the
get-go, so let the battle commence I spose. I myself thought it was
going downhill from the Gavin Bryars quote on, but check out the
essay yourself here
and see what you think. I also encourage you to read the topic
on the I Hate Music board to garner some additional insight.
Aside
from that, I understand "Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism"
also comes with some music too. Four tracks, in fact, with Henritzi
collaborating with a different artist on each one. "Improvisation"
sees him working with Hibari Music's Shin'ichi Isohata, "Feedback"
pairs him with the Dead C's Bruce Russell, "Independance"
is with Mattin and "Action Directe" features Tokyo
improvisor Taku Unami. The catch is that the collaborations all occur
seperate from one another, with the artists recording their pieces
and sending them off to Henritzi, who had already recorded four
pieces of his own. Then he paired four of them together with each one
playing in a different headphone/speaker channel, cut them off around
the 10-minute mark, and that was that. I guess this has to do with
Henritzi's search for a "true" improvised collaboration,
being that it's pretty hard to get a feel for what the other guy's
playing if he's playing it on another continent. That said though,
the tracks manage to hang together pretty well. The rockiest of all
is probably "Improvisation", with Isohata's acoustic Gibson
Johnny Smith 1965 (!) scampering rounds across the song's terrain and
only the occasional arm-bending static and sound snatch rising up
from Henritzi's turntable. I'd actually pay good money to hear
Isohata playing solo though. In terms of ear-burning intensity,
"Feedback" with Bruce Russell takes the cake as both men
turn to the guitar to sculpt a veritable tundra of eye-watering noise
and, well, feedback. I have to believe that Russell was given some
instruction as to what to record, or else there's some kind of
mind-meld taking place the likes of which the World Weekly News
should be notified. I believe it's Henritzi playing a very hypnotic,
droning hum that would be quite pleasing on its own but Russell
refuses to relinquish the stranglehold he's got on his amplifier and
wrenches out shrill, wavering tones that are strong enough to pull
the fluid offa your brain. The album's strongest track is definitely
"Independance" with Mattin - Henritzi mans the hammer,
electric saw and acoustic guitar on end his to diabolical means while
Mattin roasts a guitar over on his end. The track is amazingly
brutal, not in the ultra-harsh way that "Feedback" was but
just in terms of aggressive panache. Sounds like Maurizio
Bianchi jamming with Merzbow of all things. I can't figure out how
the sounds produced came from the few instruments I named, but that's
what the booklet says. Who am I to question? "Action Directe"
with Taku Unami is most certainly an homage to Masayuki Takayanagi
(well the entire album is dedicated to him and Derek Bailey) but
plays out more like one of the Japanese guitarist's "gradually
projection" pieces instead. Henritzi fiddles with the input jack
to an amplifier (I assume) while Unami spits out the occasional
digital droplet with his laptop until midway through when an ominous
droning ripple joins the fray. Sounds to me more like something you'd
hear at the ErstQuake festival, which isn't the first thing I think
of when I hear "directe" but still an enjoyable listen
nonetheless.
Similar to Mattin's "Proletarian of Noise",
I'm sure "Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism" won't get its fair
shake from listeners who feel like the title and essay alone have
done enough damage, or who feel that it's just a desperate publicity
stunt for an album that wouldn't have been worth listening to if it
went by any other name. Personally I prefer to keep the two seperate,
as I may not have cared much for the essay but the music within at
least was interesting enough to me. I encourage you to hear the music
first, read the essay second, and form your own conclusions last.
posted by Outer Space Gamelan at 11:25
PM 0
comments
Michel
Henritzi
KEITH
ROWE SERVES IMPERIALISM
wmo/r
I
love liner notes. I think it's fair to say I learned more about music
from reading liner notes than I ever did at university (I hope to
goodness my ex-Cambridge professor Alexander Goehr isn't reading
this, but if he is it'll probably only confirm what he always
suspected anyway). Sure, sometimes they don't amount to much more
than a set of potted bios, or a blow-by-blow description of what most
semi-conscious listeners can figure out for themselves, but when
they're good they can be both informative and fun. Personal
favourites include Ralph Gleason's hip wacko notes to the late 60
Miles Davis LPs ("that's right" says Miles Davis), Byron
Coley's "take the top off your head" liners to the BYG
Actuel boxset a while back, and especially The Journal Of Vain
Erudition essays that accompanied releases on Bruce Russell's Corpus
Hermeticum imprint, particularly the exchange of letters with Alan
Licht that accompanied the latter's The Evan Dando Of Noise? One
wonders whether Russell hasn't also been something of a role model
for Mattin in this regard too, as several releases, not only by
Russell, on the Basque avant provocateur's wmo/r label (and Mattin's
Going Fragile with Radu Malfatti on Formed) have come
wrapped in some serious wordage. The Licht / Russell correspondence
that accompanies the abovementioned album is indeed fascinating, but
the music can and does survive perfectly well without it. Evan
Dando of Noise? would be a cracking album even if it came in a
plain white jewelbox with minimal track info. The same could be said
of this latest offering from French guitarist / turntablist Michel
Henritzi, but the fact that he's chosen a deliberately provocative
title for it inevitably draws one's attention to the words
accompanying the disc (1600 words of them, in the original) and away
from the music on it, which is unfortunate, as the music is strong
and coherent and the text isn't.
Michel Henritzi has long been
one France's most important commentators on new music, having signed
numerous perceptive articles and interviews in Revue &
Corrigée, and one of its most ardent champions,
organising several important European tours for major players on the
scene, many of them Japanese, and releasing key documents on his
excellent A Bruit Secret label (now sadly on ice, it seems). Since
his seminal noise outfit Dust Breeders ceased operations (blew itself
away might be a more appropriate description) a while back, Henritzi
has signed a couple of fine releases himself on the Absurd label with
Fabrice Eglin under the name Howlin' Ghost Proletarians. Keith
Rowe Serves Imperialism marks his solo debut, and, not
surprisingly with a title like that, it's already made a few
waves.
Before we get into the polemical stuff, a few words about
the music. The album contains four ten-minute tracks on which
Henritzi is joined by, in order, Shin'ichi Isohata (guitar – Gibson
Johnny Smith 1965, in fact), Bruce Russell (guitar – no make
specified), Mattin (guitar – no make needed because he always
manages to make it sound pretty terrifying) and Taku Unami
(computer). The guests recorded their improvisations separately in
various locations between September and November last year, and
Henritzi his own four contributions – on turntable, guitar, hammer
/ electric saw / guitar and jack plug – in Metz in October 2006.
Henritzi's material is on the right stereo track throughout, that of
his fellow musicians on the left. (Oddly enough, this
take-it-as-it-comes superimposition of music recorded at different
times in different locations is also the basic working method behind
the forthcoming MIMEO project, tentatively entitled "Cy
Twombly", the latest brainchild of the arch-imperialist himself,
Mr Rowe. But more of him later.) It's a terrific set of pieces,
starting with a spiky, colourful guitar duet – not for nothing is
the album dedicated to the memory of Derek Bailey and Masayuki
Takayanagi – followed by an awesome Russell / Henritzi feedback
battle (both musicians really understand feedback, and it shows:
budding noiseniks take note), a rough'n'ready tussle with Mattin and
a delightfully abstruse assemblage of beeps and crackles with
Unami.
If Michel had left it at that and resisted the temptation
to write at length on it all, it would have been just fine. Instead,
what is one of the most varied and satisfying improv outings in
recent months has become a talking point for the wrong reasons. I
don't feel like dwelling on the text, to be honest (if I had ten free
minutes I'd prefer to listen to one of the tracks on the disc instead
of re-reading Henritzi's essay), but it's worth pointing out that the
author freely admits he hasn't read much of Cornelius Cardew's book
Stockhausen Serves Imperialism (available if you're
interested for free download at
www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/index.html)
and has no Maoist sympathies. Just as well, because Mao is way out of
fashion and Cardew's book, though better written than Henritzi's
essay, is just as daft. Leaving aside the misrepresentation of Keith
Rowe's remarks about Derek Bailey in an interview he gave me in
January 2001, the oblique references to Guy Debord and Marx (double
yawn), the only reason I can think of for accusing Rowe of serving
imperialism as opposed to Otomo, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry
Kaiser or any other free improvising guitar hero is to get some kind
of dig in at Erstwhile's Jon Abbey, as if he was head honcho top dog
of the improv scene and making a packet of money out of it (he isn't,
on both counts). Abbey's ferocious championship of Rowe is often the
subject of conversation amongst musicians both on and off the record,
and Mattin, master pisser offer if ever there was one, knows how to
find a sensitive acupuncture node and drive a nine inch nail into it,
but next time he feels like doing so he should engage the services of
a professional translator, as there are numerous shoddy mistakes in
the English version of Henritzi's essay which serve to make an
already muddy text at times positively opaque. What's the point of it
all? If it's just to draw attention to the disc by provoking
inveterate hacks like me into devoting a separate review to the album
instead of slipping it into the Jazz / Improv section with all the
others, bravo – it worked! In fact, it's what I'd call aggressive
marketing, and if aggressive marketing isn't a hallmark of 21st
century capitalism – which as far as I'm concerned is the modern
equivalent of imperialism – I don't know what is. I know I know I
know, the albums are there for free download, anti copyright,
creative commons, no more music at the service of capital, fuck this,
fuck that, but from where I'm sitting it's not Keith Rowe that's
serving imperialism here, but Mattin and Michel Henritzi.–DW
Michel Henritzi - Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism
KEITH ROWE SERVES IMPERIALISM
w.m.o/r
29
So.
I take it for granted that my caveats on this matter are known
well enough. It’s impossible not to deal with the disc’s title; I
only wish that Henritzi had stated his case with more clarity so
dealing with it, positively or negatively, could have been more
easily accomplished. Only about an eighth of the accompanying
text—one paragraph—deals explicitly with Rowe (he’s mentioned
in one other) and within that paragraph one looks in vain for the
term “imperialism”. Much of the remainder of the text appears to
deal (the translation from the French is doubtless wanting so
additional caveats may apply) with Henritzi’s, and Bailey’s as
well, dissatisfaction with the idea of recordings of improvisatory
music, its commodification and reduction in many cases to “wall
paper”. I take it he holds Rowe at least partially responsible for
this.
The portion dealing with Rowe takes him to task, implicitly, for
impugning Bailey as a practitioner of the “old language”, a
distortion of was actually said and meant in the interview in
question. But even if so, does categorization in terms of aesthetic
advances automatically connote imperialism? When punks derided the
excesses of prog and other pop forms in early 70s, were they
imperialists? Were boppers who found Dixieland to be old-fashioned
imperialists as well? Henritzi also, if I’m understanding
correctly, lowers in value Rowe’s horizontalization (to coin a
phrase?) of the guitar, asserting that the action was merely an
extension of Cage’s prepared piano, which is true to an extent, and
Hawaiian flat guitar playing, a more questionable point. He disagrees
that introducing the radio into improvised music brings the outside
world into the performance space. Rather, a performer doing so is
merely “widening the concert hall.”
All well and good, though what this has to do with imperialism I’m
hard put to say. Reading into it, I suppose one could argue that
Henritzi is charging Rowe with cultural imperialism by virtue of
implying that his (AMM’s) approach to improvisation is more
profound or at least “newer” than Bailey’s. One could argue
that but, in my understanding of the term, there needs to be a
certain amount of coercive power behind any desire to force other
people to come around to your aesthetic view before you can be
branded “culturally imperialistic”. It’s risible enough when
one understands what tiny numbers of interested parties exist in the
first place, more so to think that any of them are likely to be
forcibly swayed simply because one generally admired practitioner
states an opinion.
Did I say “generally admired”? Ah, here’s something else
that is perhaps hinted at in this text but has certainly come up in
other group discussions over the years: that there exists a certain
hierarchy in this music, Rowe positioned as eminence grise
(or even “pope”!) with acolytes doing his evil bidding in the
improvised world, allowing this but not that, garnering this
recording here, nixing that one there. All artists refusing to kowtow
before him are vanquished with a sneer. The very idea that some
listeners can “rank” musicians and find themselves generally
enjoying the work of one more than another on a fairly consistent
basis smacks of imperialistic tendencies, of somehow enforcing a
hegemony of taste onto the bovine masses. Throw in one pre-eminent
label in the field and a producer who largely shares Rowe’s
predilections and I guess for some people you have the eai equivalent
of Blair and Bush, right? Stuff and nonsense, says me, but the issue
surfaces surprisingly often.
Perhaps others can interpret the tract in a clearer manner. When
Henritzi replied to a thread about the recording on I Hate Music, his
response basically boiled down to an assertion that there’s a lot
of uninteresting music being created and recorded these days in this
field, not the most startling or provocative declaration. If he was
simply taking the Tilbury-esque tack and criticizing Rowe for playing
in the US, recording for US labels, etc., I assume he would have come
out and said so. There’s also the unseemly aspect of knowingly
wishing to cause some amount of personal pain for the individual
under attack, someone who’s fought, implicitly and overtly,
imperialist tendencies throughout his career. I get the sense that
some Dadaist aesthetic was involved, of simply casting about to find
an individual held in high regard and asserting that this regard
itself is reason enough to pull him off of whatever pedestal he’s
claimed to be perched upon. One might ask why append this to a
recording and, if one is doing so, why not allow there to be some
obvious connection to the music? If it’s there, I can’t hear it.
Oh yes, the music. It’s actually pretty good, at least in part.
There are four tracks, duos placing Henritzi with, in order,
Shin’ichi Isohata, Bruce Russell, Mattin and Taku Unami. “Duos”
in the sense of two musicians occupying each track—in all cases the
music was produced in separate locations, at different times.
Henritzi himself, if I understand the notes correctly, did not
“improvise along” with the others’ music. Instead, the
improvisation takes place “just through this arbitrary collage”;
i.e., he chose which layer(s) of his music to overlay and intermix
with which ten minutes (he chose to cut matters off at the 10-minute
mark) of his collaborators. Given that aside from its title and text,
the disc is dedicated to the memory of Derek Bailey and Masayaki
Takayanagi, it may not be totally surprising to hear the former
channeled in track 1, but it does force one to ask, “I guess
imitation is anti-imperialistic?” I was previously unfamiliar with
Isohata’s work but see that he was a student of Takayanagi’s and
is something of a devotee of Bailey. In fact, noticing that Henritzi
is credited with turntable on the piece, I’m not at all sure he
wasn’t simply spinning some Bailey. Either that or Isohata’s
doing a pretty fair imitation. In either event, the music is solid
enough, though unexceptional, more improvisatory competence, as it
were, than inspiration. Had it issued forth from, say, Henry Kaiser
and were it released on Tzadik, I would’ve thought, “Yeah, that
sounds about right.”
The pairing with Russell works much better, twin strands of
ear-reaming feedback with assorted clanks and bumps. Hard to believe
the conjunction of the two approaches was coincidental but, if so,
it’s nice serendipity. Some rich sonorities here; I could’ve
listened longer. But the track with Mattin, “Independence”, is
the real standout on this disc. From Henritzi’s initial hammering
(literally) of the guitar (hmmm, could Rowe have been in mind?) to
the fuzzed, gravelly noises emerging via Mattin, it’s strong,
rough, consistently engaging. In short, a helluva piece. Unami’s
cut, unsurprisingly, is a tougher go and not entirely unrewarding but
strikes this listener as a bit too scattershot and flailing. Henritzi
manipulates a jack, presumably jostling it into and out of its
socket, with Unami bleeps away at his computer. I’ve tended to find
Unami more absorbing in live performance where the tension he creates
with regard to “success” versus extreme likelihood of “failure”
can be very exciting, not to mention the sheer fun of his toys.
So, a mixed bag sonically, though well worth hearing. If it pains
you to purchase something so carelessly titled, you’re in luck
since, as always, you can hear—and read—for yourself for free at
w.m.o/r
Posted by Brian Olewnick on January 27, 2007
7:58 AM
Tranzistor
(Greece, February 2007 by Nicolas Absurd)
μιλώντας
για κυκλοφορίες του mattin, όταν κυκλοφορούσε
στη w.m.o/r πριν
από 2-3 εβδομάδες το keith
rowe serves
imperialism
του michel
henritzi
είτε ήδη ήξερε τη
θύελλα που θα ξεσήκωνε ή το έκανε για
πλάκα. προσωπικά το βλέπω τόσο τον τίτλο
όσο και το κείμενο που ακολουθεί το
βιβλιαράκι του cdr σα
μια τρομερή παρωδία. βέβαια, αν αναλογιστεί
κανείς ότι ο keith rowe
από τα 60'ς μέχρι
τις αρχές των 00'ς άντε να χε βγάλει 15
δίσκους το πολύ, και από τις αρχές της
δεκαετίας ως σήμερα συναγωνίζεται το
merzbow στις
εκδόσεις μπορεί να είναι και σωστή η
επιλογή του τίτλου. τέλος πάντων.
παράφραση του τίτλου του stockhausen
serves
imperialism που
κυκλοφόρησε ο (μακαρίτης) cornelius
cardew όταν
σιγά σιγά άρχισε να εγκαταλείπει τη
μουσική και να στρέφεται όλο και
περισσότερο στο μαοϊσμό και γενικότερα
στον κομμουνισμό (όσοι ενδιαφέρεστε
για το βιβλίο υπάρχει online
στο www.ubu.com μόνο
προσέξτε μη φάτε κάνα brainstorming
από το απίστευτο
υλικό που υπάρχει ανεβασμένο για
κατέβασμα εκεί πάνω). στο cdr
όμως... η ιδέα
πανέμορφη. 4 ηχογραφήσεις του michel
από το ένα ηχείο
και από το άλλο 4 τυχαίες ηχογραφήσεις
4 καλλιτεχνών των bruce russel,
taku unami,
mattin και
shin'ichi isohata.
το αποτέλεσμα άκρως ενδιαφέρον!!! πολύ
περισσότερο μια που κάθε κομμάτι έχει
σχέση και με ένα είδος αυτοσχεδιασμού.
'αυτοσχεδιασμός', 'feedback', 'independance', 'action
directe'. ένα γευστικότατο
45λεπτο λοιπόν. προσωπικά το γούσταρα
τρελά ηχητικά και γέλασα με όλο το
σκηνικό που παίχτηκε με τις κριτικές/πολεμικές
εναντίον του. μπορείτε να το κατεβάσετε
για ακρόαση αλλά και να δείτε το κείμενο
καθώς και με σύνδεσμο να μπείτε σε φόρουμ
με τη μάχη που έγινε για την κυκλοφορία
αυτή στη διεύθυνση
http://www.mattin.org/recordings/Keith_Rowe_Serves_Imperialism.html
Mangenerated
The “Keith Rowe serves imperialism” CDr from Michel
Henritzi (w.m.o/r 29) for instance comes with a sober booklet of
four pages, containing a lengthy dissertation on improvisational
music written by Michel Henritzi himself, who dedicates this CDr to
the memory of Derek Bailey and Masayuki Takayanagi. He pretty much
lost me before I reached the end of page 1, despite the fact that in
my younger days I was an avid reader of the works of Cage and the
Fluxus-manifestos. Reading diagonally through the text I learned that
the 4 tracks contained on this CDr (lasting some 40 minutes in total)
are all duos, and that the right and left channel of each track were
seperatelly recorded in terms of time and area, the only constant
being Michel Henritzi, who particpates on every track (Mattin himself
appears on track 3). Strictly speaking what you hear in the right and
left channel is completely unconnected, but I must say that this
approach does work. The CD is quite varied, going from classic improv
guitarpickings over more droney to rather minimal stuff, in these
tracks Michel Henritzi uses practically everything from turntable
over guitar and electric saw to such simple things like a jack.
Autsaider
Magazine (Ukraine, May 2007)
http://www.autsaider.org/reviews/michel-henritzi-2007-keith-rowe.shtml
translation
MICHEL
HENRITZI
Keith
Rowe Serves Imperialism
CD,
w.m.o/r, 2007
w.m.o/r
is a record label of Basque improvised music anarchist Mattin.
Frenchman Michel Henritzi is a comrade of Mattin, art curator and
improviser musician. Neither the former, nor the latter likes the
situation within contemporary improvisation. Admittedly, it’s not
okay with many, and it’s clear that everybody tries to express his
anger in the most striking way possible. As one can judge from the
disc title, the manifesto included in the booklet, and the recording
technique used, Henritzi decided to express its anger with the help
of an art object, that is to say, within the genre of improvisation,
but in such a way that would make it a critique of the very same
genre of free improvisation.
This
disc is tightly linked to a certain context, and in order to
understand what Henritzi is trying to tell us, it’s absolutely
necessary to know the history of formation of the context. It’s
difficult to retell such a tract of the history in a nutshell, but if
one dared to do it then it would read as follows.
British
collective AMM, existent since 1960’s, was one of the first who
practically defined the genre of free improv. One of AMM members,
composer Cornelius Cardew, came to the avant-garde from the school of
Karlheinz Stockhausen. Disappointed in nearly all aspects of
serialism (dominant trend in academic avant-garde at the time), its
excessive austerity, purposive complexity and will to mystification,
he wrote a book titled “Stockhausen Serves Imperialism,” wherein
he inter alia accused his former teacher of bolstering the
establishment of classical orientation of western art towards a grand
figure of “genius,” thus maintaining a distance between art and
common people, the proletariat. In 1970’s, it was a brave and
decisively new position in relation to the old system of cultural
hierarchies of the western art, which seemingly encountered a fresh
format of music, that of course put Cardew on the frontline of
cultural battles of that time. It must be observed that Cardew was a
convinced communist and Maoist. The artist died in a car accident,
circumstances of the accident unclear, in 1981. Keith Rowe was
another famous member of AMM. He improvises until this day though
does not regard himself as a Maoist. On the one hand, he is an active
musician and a living classic of advanced music with a long artistic
biography and a number of followers; on the other hand, he is a
perfect target for those critics and musicians who think that
contemporary improvisation contains nothing progressive and that it
has transformed into a tradition. Some of them are sure that it has
happened primarily because of Rowe.
Michel
Henritzi’s album is titled “Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism.” The
title implies mockery intended to express dissatisfaction of the
highest degree with idiomaticalness of the music which guitarist
Derek Bailey called “non-idiomatic improvisation” before AMM.
Henritzi thinks he is a follower of Derek Bailey and believes the
guitarist was a musician who formulated a unique language of his own
to create a true conflict in music, and that argues him being a true
improviser. He calls Keith Rowe an ideologist of postmodernism
apparently believing that he doesn’t prove an improviser but erects
himself an intravital monument. To do justice to them, it must be
said that Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey always were, though not quite
hostile, but openly indifferent to each other that somehow makes
Henritzi’s disc a continuation of the equally meaningless and
ceaseless battle of modernism and postmodernism.
The
disc raised a sea among people who one way or another are related to
the contemporary improvisation scene, i.e. critics, curators, record
label owners, artists. Henritzi was subjected to high waves of anger
and accused of denunciation and unfair self-promotion. The disc
became the subject-matter of numerous discussions in Internet forums.
Henritzi must be happy – Madonna and Kirkorov can begrudge him
efficiency of his PR action.
Henritzi
himself says that we must tackle serious things directly; it seems
that he makes us think about what improvisation has transformed into,
as well as about what it has transformed us into – instead of
taking his mocking spoonerism in good fun we let out our righteous
anger. Look at it from outside: it’s one of the most powerful and
open provocations of our time; it touches upon real thorny issues,
Henritzi playing upon the sense of justice inherent in everyone of
us, and he definitely is a superman in this playing. But there is one
very important aspect, which, be it never so sad, cancels out all
charm and relevance of the prank.
We
know that art critique sometimes expresses itself directly in an
object of art, and for effect it can assume extreme forms. In its
essence, the disc “Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism” is an example
of this kind of objects. Firstly, it’s been released by a label
every disc of which is available for free download, while
contemporary improvisation is based on brand labels (Erstwhile,
Grob, Durian, Creative Sources) products of which
are successfully sold. Secondly, one of the postulates of free
improv, interplay of improvisers, gave up way to a reciprocal
approach: Henritzi and his colleagues (Mattin, Bruse Russell, Taku
Unami and Shin'ichi Isohata) recorded their
parts perfectly unaware of what their partner was playing in any
particular moment. Only the music itself, which should have
apparently been at the head of the table, does not seem to connect
with the general design well and thus fails to be critically
rethought. Unfortunately, the music of this disc is quite
professional high-quality improv, which sounds like products of the
same brand labels and makes journalists produce remarks like, “if
you listen to the music, it proves surprisingly good.” I think that
when you get to work on the idea designed to shift the paradigm, its
realization must be a changed world, not hype in an international
charmed circle.
Of
course, it’s hard to say what exactly the music should have sounded
like to really pick a pimple. However there is one cautionary
example. Away back in 1970’s, under the circumstances of another
crisis of visual arts, a Swiss painter who lived in Paris then, Niele
Toroni by name, produced paintings as follows: he made a dot with the
help of a brush No. 50, measured out 30 cm from it and made another
one with the help of the same brush, then measure out 30 cm… And he
continued until he ran out of a canvas (or a wall). His works looked
desert, no representation at all. Despite its repetitiveness,
it’s no décor. One can
hardly call it minimalism, too (minimalism means certain specificity
in development of a theme, and Toroni’s paintings provided for no
development at all). He had (and still has) them exhibited in the
most famous galleries, although few understood why contemporary art
might need such canvases and what was that all about. However, Toroni
himself understood it very well: recanting any recognized or any
least functional technique, he demonstrated us that the development
vector of visual arts is defective and dead-end, since all they can
offer us, is the use of visual representation. Toroni did a JOB, he
made artists think over the poverty of the idea of representation of
objects / events / feelings / anything, he suggested that it’s time
to change the situation radically! And Henritzi simply did not stand
the content test.
Denis
Kolokol
Radio Student Ljubljana 17.2.2022
Godbeni imperializem by Luka Zagoričnik
... neodvisno ...
V tokratni oddaji se bomo podajali v vmesja elektroakustične improvizacije, raztelešene v formi in prostoru, v sožitja zvena in vibrirajočih predmetov in površin, razprostrih v zvočnem in fizičnem prostoru, ter v zvočnost reminiscemc spomina, dnevniških zapiskov v obliki svojstvene kompozicije ...
Začeli bomo z raztrganino v zvočnosti in vstopili v razprt, fragmentiran, hrupen in zvočno raztelešen prostor kitarskih zvokov in udarcev ter gnetenj šumečih gmot računalniških povratnih zank baskovsko-francoskega dua MATTIN & MICHEL HENRITZI s posnetkom iz l. 2006, ki se lepo vpenja v takratne prevladujoče zvočnosti na sceni, a obenem že razpira neke temejlne postulate v svobodni improvizaciji preko neke jasne preslikave dialoških, zvenskih relacij v skupnem zvočnem prostoru, ki je ves čas v soodvosnosti, a jo hkrati skupša zlomiti z nenadnimi prekrivanji, sunkovitimi raztezanji intenzivnosti in zamaknjenostjo v prostoru. Henritzi je strunar, nojzer, abstraktni bluesman, pisec o glasbi, sodelujoč s številnimi japonskimi ustvarjalci in ustvarjalkami, med njimi denimo z legendarno Junko, s katero je dvojec l. 2008 posnel tudi skupno ploščo Je T’aime. Pred leti je vodil eno od formativnih založb za sodobno improvizirano glasbo A Bruit Secret. Mattin je improvizator, performer, pisec in teoretik, ki je ravnokar povil novo zanimivo knjigo Social Dissonance pri znani založbi Urbanomic. Čeprav pričujoča glasba izvira iz preteklosti, subverzivna hrupna raztelešenost skladbe Independance še vedno intenzivno in aktualno resonira skozi našo nemožnost (ne)odvisnosti.
