March 22, 2020

"Is there a way to make music that includes... cars honking, trains going past, buses grinding gears, people shouting in the streets?"

"We’d been reading ‘Silence,’ by John Cage, and that was the last key really. Chairs scraping can now be the music; what do we want to include? No drummer, because music is so quickly fixed and made traditional and acceptable by the four-four-drum pan of the rock music. Then why do you need to know how to play? What is an instrument? Something that makes a noise, amplified or not. We don’t need to know how to play. What’s around? What can we use, in the spirit of a Duchamp readymade?... [Cossi Fan Tutti] didn’t like electric guitar, because it was too heavy, so we got an electric saw and sawed off the bits we didn’t like. I didn’t really like the trying to learn where to put my fingers, and it wasn’t necessary for our purposes. Another member, Sleazy, who was Peter Christopherson, was really into William Burroughs, so he said, 'I’d really like to involve cutups, with a tape recorder.' He altered walkman tape recorders so when you played a cassette you could hear both sides at the same time..... Chris built synthesizers. Nobody was using them in England. We said, 'That’s great—it’s very anti-rock.'... Industrial music for industrial people.... And little did we know it would become a global phenomena—from that tiny space and four people who couldn’t play.... We had a big digital clock onstage, and we played only an hour; we were clocking on and off.... We had wanted to make music like Ford made cars on the industrial belt. Industrial music for industrial people."

From "Industrial Music for Industrial People: The Singular Legacy of Genesis P-Orridge" (in The New Yorker)(and here's where we talked about the NYT obituary for P-Orridge).

23 comments:

Tregonsee said...

YouTube has background sound recordings which run for hours. Such things as a crackling fire, the sound of surf crashing on the beach, rain on the roof, and even the background sounds of the various Star Trek ships in flight. No doubt there either are, or soon will be, recordings such as you describe for those who want to experience the Sounds of Normalcy instead of the Sounds of Silence.

Spiros said...

Is this musique concrète or avant-garde music?

Maillard Reactionary said...

I suspect that the musical "legacy" of "Genesis P-Orridge" will be completely forgotten in 20 years, if not before. The problem with this sort of music is that it is intellectually and emotionally sterile. It is like elevator music, except that it is aggressively ugly instead of soothingly anodyne. Some of us, years ago, bought recordings of music written by Karlheinz Stockhausen (I confess) but who of us ever listens to them (I don't)? Same with Edgard Varèse. He used a siren as part of the orchestration! What a rebel! What a genius! He is still inflicted on music students, I suppose, but rarely on audiences.

If it keeps the composers off the street corners and out of the gin mills, I suppose it's all fine. John Cage, when he wasn't hookwinking his peers in the musical world, was an amateur mycologist. Good on him for that: fungi don't get enough respect.

Spiros said...

I had to listen to Revolution 9 by the Beatles on a nonstop loop as part of a fraternity stunt. Even decades later, I remember how awful it was. This music is vile.

Maillard Reactionary said...

It could have been worse, Spiros. At least it wasn't Karen Carpenter doing "Sing a Song".

Jack Klompus said...

Einsturzende Neubauten created some of the most eerie and sublime musical pieces using combinations of electronic and organic instruments along with a variety of found objects, oil drums, airplane turbines, drills, sheet metal, springs bowed cellos, and other percussion "instruments." Their performances are mesmerizing when you see and hear them put it all together on stage as an industrial orchestra.

rcocean said...

I suspect that the musical "legacy" of "Genesis P-Orridge" will be completely forgotten in 20 years, if not before.

Its pretty much forgotten already. You can succeed in the arts by doing something "new" and "Interesting" - but its only Temporary. Atonal music used to be a big thing but it went nowhere and has been forgotten except among a few.

JML said...

One man's music is another man's noise.

mtrobertslaw said...

Once the distinction between music and noise has been erased, the word "music", because of its past connection to elitism and snobbery, should be retired from usage. The word no longer has any meaning and ought to be treated as an unintelligible mumble.

William said...

I'm sure it can be done, but wouldn't it be easier with pianos and trombones and such. Tchaikovsky used cannons to good effect, but the kettle drum is the better instrument.

chuck said...

Industrial music for industrial people

So, German marching bands and beer? The Gay Nineties were great. We now live in a post-industrial digital landscape. The internet is great, but it ain't beer.

Jack Klompus said...

I suspect that the musical "legacy" of "Genesis P-Orridge" will be completely forgotten in 20 years, if not before.

Say what you will about GP, regardless of his goofy gender trip and the purposeful shock value of his early projects, his legacy within his realm is petty rock solid and will always be.

He won't be remembered only by the wannabe avant garde crowd but by many in the electronic/synth/ambient/etc music scene (Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, bands like Depeche Mode, Cabaret Voltaire) that will pay homage to his influence. Throbbing Gristle isn't everyone's cup of tea and was more like a performance troupe than a band, but what TG spun off and evolved into (Coil, Psychic TV) are great.

Not everyone likes everything and certain genres and styles aren't for everyone. I personally think Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart is unlistenable tripe, but I know some believe it to be a musical masterpiece. Ok, fine. I'll keep trying.

Also, separating the persona from the product can be hard to do for sure. I know GP was an oddball and most likely had some "issues." I still can appreciate a good bit of what he did in the art world. Brian Jones was a grade-A sack of shit as a human being but I'm not going to stop loving the Rolling Stones. (In fact, Psychic TV, one of GPs projects did a song called Godstar, an homage to Jones. It's a great song and has a great video. Why not?)

Fernandinande said...

German marching bands and beer?

Neue Deutsche Härte and Coca-Cola

Mary Beth said...

"What is an instrument?" How about a chainsaw?

fleg9bo said...

Tchaikovsky used cannons to good effect, but the kettle drum is the better instrument.

The Portland Symphony Orchestra used to do the 1812 Overture in the big park by the river every year. They used real cannons from a local armory. Way, way better than kettle drums would have been.

Wince said...

Didn't the Beatles did that with A Day in the Live and Revolution 9?

Robert Cook said...

"One man's music is another man's noise."

And one man's noise is another man's music.

To each, his own.

Jack Klompus said...

And look at everything that was cobbled together in the production of Pet Sounds.

Robert Cook said...

"I personally think Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart is unlistenable tripe, but I know some believe it to be a musical masterpiece. Ok, fine. I'll keep trying."

Count me in as one who thinks TMR is a musical masterpiece, particularly the tracks HAIR PIE, BAKE 1 and HAIR PIE, BAKE 2.

Pianoman said...

My first semester of Music History, the professor asked the class: "What is Music?"

Silence. We were all looking at each other, wondering what the hell Dr. Maas was going on about.

After a minute of confusion on our part, he grabbed a piece of chalk (yes, I'm THAT old), and wrote the following on the blackboard:

ORGANIZED
SOUND

So the question I would ask is: Can the sound produced by a busy street (say, Times Square in NYC) be considered "Organized"? I would say that the answer is "No".

But that doesn't mean you can't make music with junk. Those that are familiar with the show "Stomp" would agree. Those guys can make music with anything. I would consider that to be a better example of "industrial music".

There is a form of music called "aleatoric", which had random chance elements. John Cage composed a piece called "Music of Changes", which is formed from the I Ching. Also, "4 Minutes 33 Seconds", in which performers just sit with their instruments, and the "music" is created by the ambients sounds around the performers. In each of this, there is a huge element of randomness, but the randomness is still organized. Like a 100-sided D&D die, there's many possibilities but it's still had organization.

It seems to me that Genesis Porridge is following the John Cage anarchy model when it comes to defining "what music is".

Pianoman said...

Another way to put it: There is an element of "organization for purposes of music generation" in aleatoric music. But the organization of a city street isn't done for musical purposes. It's done for commercial and industrial purposes.

You can't just point at a factory and say, "That's music" merely because there are sounds coming from it.

Ambient sound isn't music. A rainstorm is soothing, but it's not organized sound.


Maillard Reactionary said...

Pianoman: I get your point, and I agree with it.

But we should not forget that the sound should be organized in a way that sounds good, and, ideally, engages the listener on both an emotional as well as an intellectual level.

That's the hard part, compared to the task of simply organizing it.

The foregoing is just my own personal musical aesthetic. Others may disagree, and that's fine.

MadisonMan said...

Cars Honking

I immediately think of Kraftwerk's Autobahn (which is a great song!)