Tomoyuki Fujii – 水と循環の音楽 “Mizu To Junkan No Ongaku” (Water Sounds and Music in Flux), 80pp book, Niigata, Japan, December 2017

Niigata-based ambient music enthusiast Tomoyuki Fujii published 2 books on Ambient music and environment. The first was “Mori To Kiroku No Ongaku” (Sounds of the Forest – my translation) in 2009, followed by “Mizu To Junkan No Ongaku” (Water Sounds and Music in Flux – my translation) back in 2010. The latter was revised, augmented and reissued in December 2017 and I was fortunate enough to receive a copy. These are humble, small-sized A6 booklets, 80-pages long and printed on newsprint paper. Great care has been put in the lovely overall design.

Tomoyuki manages the Post Ambient blog, where he writes about ambient music releases from the 1950s to the present. His approach is rather inclusive, with many sub-genres and peripheral styles covered, from soundscapes to electronica, from field recording to techno, from new age to experimental. The 47 examples in the book were written around 2009–2010 and eventually served as the basis for blog posts from 2010–2017. Each page features one release (k7, LP or CD) with cover artwork, reference details, related listening suggestions and comments from the author in Japanese. The book comes with an introduction, an interview with musician Takashi Tsuda and an afterword.

Titled Water Sounds and Music in Flux, the overall theme is hence music related to-, made with- or including water sounds, extending to marine soundscapes and environmental issues. “Music in Flux” perhaps refers to the Confucianist concept of constant flux, an interesting spiritual dimension applied to ambient music. The choice of albums is remarkably noncommittal and cross-boundary –the merits of the inclusive approach mentioned above, no doubt– and the selection is broadly international. I enjoyed coming across rare releases by unknown artists – Rob Smit (Metaal, 1981), Jeff Johnson (No Shadow of Turning, 1985), Veno Tagashi (New Glass, 2005), Marc Leclair (Musique pour 3 Femmes Enceintes, 2005), etc. Japanese artists from the Kankyo Ongaku [ambient music] breed of the 1980s–90s are of course included, some hardly known in the West, like Inoyama Land (Danzindan-Pojidon, 1983), Masahiro Sugaya (Zoo Of The Sea, 1988), Hiroshi Yoshimura (Wet Land, 1993), Takashi Kokubo (Water, 2001), among others.

I love how the book –just like the blog– is making connexions between musics from different eras and geographical origins, to the point where ambient becomes an attitude towards life and sound in general, rather than a niche genre. For Tomoyuki, ambient music is about listening closely, in a state of sound awareness to music and nature sounds – he says he’s interested in the “mental state of people who listen quietly.”

Additionally, the music is put in a clear historical perspective and the introduction mentions Satie’s Furniture Music, Cage, Glass, Murray Schaeffer, Eno, suikinkutsu 水琴窟, digital minimalism, etc – but not Toru Takemitsu’s Water Music, 1969. The book also gathers releases which are not usually grouped together because of format divergences (cassette, CDs, mixes, movies, online projects, …). On a personal level, I’ve known Tomoyuki for a long time as he was a follower of my first blog, Continuo’s Weblog, 10 years ago, and I know he discovered a good deal of music there, some of it is included in his book.

Tomoyuki’s web presence:
http://post-ambient.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/fleaongak?lang=fr
https://soundcloud.com/post-ambient-blogspot

Sergei Eisenstein – The Spherical Book

Some of you may already be familiar with “books”, a technology enabling a subject to read page after page of a printed text in a practical way. But now might be the time to get acquainted with Spherical Books, where the reader proactively organizes chapters or articles in a way that makes sense to him/her, prioritizing topics and circulating inside the book according to one’s prefered path.

A prefiguration of the ebook envisionned by Soviet film director and essayist Sergei Eisenstein in 1929, the Spherical Book was devised as a way to hypothetically present a collection of his theoretical articles in a modular fashion devised by the reader, called “mutual reversibility”. This concept arose from Eisenstein’s unrealized film The Glass House (1926) about a transparent building where walls won’t block camera moves, where social hierarchies and notions of directions would be abolished.

Such a book was just published by Aalto University School of Arts Design and Architecture, in Helsinki, Finland, and is available for free from a dedicated website – from which all pictures in this post come from. The spherical book is called Culture as Organization in Early Soviet Thought: Bogdanov, Eisenstein, and the Proletkult, a collection of essays edited by Pia Tikka.

http://crucible.org.aalto.fi/spherical/

Via Monoskop:
https://monoskop.org/log/?p=17785

Frans De Waard – This is Supposed to be a Record Label, book published by Timeless Editions, Cugnaux, France, July 2016

This book contains the memoirs of Frans de Waard (born 1965) about his experience with Staalplaat, a record label and shop in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he was employed from 1992 to 2003. The text consists in a collection of more or less chronological anecdotes about day-to-day work at the shop, vagaries of a very peculiar label boss, endless problems with distributors (Tesco, Lowlands, These Records, Odd Size, Semantic), etc. De Waard’s English writing was proof-read and reviewed by Mark Poysen, so is less faulty than your average Vital Weekly review, but still the style is extremely fragmentary and unstructured. Preferably, one should be familiar with the European underground scene from the mid-1990s, as many people emerge with minimal explanations, and usually refered to by their first name only.

Previous to 1992, Frans de Waard (FdW) had issued the Nederlandse Cassette Catalogus in 1983 [PDF], and the Katacombe Volume 3 cassette compilation on his own Korm Plastics label in 1984. In the mid-1980s, he started playing noise music as Kapotte Muziek, later played with Beequeen or Goem in the 1990s, and today in The Tobacconists and Modelbau, among others. FdW is the editor of Vital Weekly, reviewing experimental and underground releases since 1987. With his almost 40 years of experience in experimental, independent music, FdW witnessed major evolutions and one or two revolutions. It is indeed a privileged, even unique position as most actors active in the 1980s ceased to be involved – except someone like Hal McGee, for instance.

When Geert-Jan Hobijn, founder of Staalplaat in 1982, hired FdW in 1992, the shop also had volunteers and state-sponsored recruits via a back-to-work programme – but FdW was officially employed. The Staalplaat shop was located first on Spuistrat, then on Paleisstrat – both squats–, then in the basement of Fort van Sjakoo bookstore on Jodenbreestraat, then on Staalkade. Staalplaat organized concerts at NL Centrum and V2, as well as, occasionally, Steim Studios and Zaal 100. Staalplaat definitely relocated to Berlin in 2004. Today, the label merely survives thanks to Muslimgauze reissues, while the Berlin record shop and Staalplaat cassettes have been handed to third parties – Guillaume Siffert and Rinus Van Alebeek, respectively.

Whatever FdW’s goals were while starting writing these memoirs, the impression is bad. The writing focuses on failures and fuck-ups, while achievements and joy are nowhere to be found. Granted, the quality and originality of packaging is mentionned several times, but the discovery of new music, a positive feedback from customers or reviewers, or any long term vision are absent. People are usually described as complete assholes, label management is erratic and incoherent, relationships between label and pressing plant, musicians, or distributors are described as mischievous, to say the least. At some point, FdW regrets having been rude to Dick Raaijmakers himself (p.74), while shop visitors are routinely treated like shit:

“I try to be rude most of the time, so that customers leave quickly. One tactic I use is to try and guess what they like and then play the exact opposite.” (FdW, p.24)

In the end, it’s quite hard to have any sympathy for FdW or Staalplaat in this book. Perhaps the author wanted to set the record straight in his own way, so as not to be held responsible for Staalplaat’s decline while rival labels like Cold Meat Industry, Touch or Sub Rosa fared better. But the reader can’t help feeling uneasy faced with a write-up which is so evidently inspired by revenge and jealousy. The addition of 50 pages of Appendices is perhaps meant as a way to re-balance things with different perspectives – e.g. the Geert-Jan Hobijn interview, for instance. Nevertheless, the book is interesting for the insight it offers into a major European independent label. But another, more balanced history of Staalplaat would still be of interest, I think.

Artists / Computers / Art, exhibition catalogue, published by the Canadian High Commission, London, UK, 1982

Early proponents of computer music in Canada ca. 1982: Theo Goldberg and Barry Truax. 

Mario Garcia Torres & Rodrigo Ortiz Monasteiro – Radio Nancarrow 92.5 FM, Guayaba Press, November 2015 [Full hi-res PDF here]

This booklet was published for the Sounds Like Isolation to Me collective exhibition at Museen Dahlem during the 8th Berlin Biennale in 2014 curated by Mexican contemporary artist Mario García Torres (see Frieze). The exhibition is currently shown in Mexico. The booklet collects essays on Conlon and Annette Nancarrow (who married Nancarrow in 1948, her 3rd husband), her work with muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, a photo essay on their vacation home in Cuernavaca, 2 interviews with the composer and the Nancarrow-themed broadcast playlist.

Joseph Schillinger (1895-1943) – Kaleidophone: New Resources of Melody and Harmony, 96pp book published by M. Witmark & Sons, New York, USA, 1940

Germano Celant – The Record as Artwork: From Futurism to Conceptual Art, exhibition catalogue, 17.5x17.5cm, 121 pp, Fort Worth Art Center Museum, Texas, USA, 1977 [PDF @ Monoskop]

The fine folks at Monoskop have delivered the goods once again with this complete PDF version of Germano Celant’s legendary The Record as Artwork, possibly the first publication about artists records. This is the catalogue to an exhibition curated by Germano Celant and held at Fort Worth as well as Philadelphia, Chicago and later Montreal in 1977–78, hence the French translations included. The book comes with several essays by Anne Livet and Germano Celant. Eric Lanzillotta of Anomalous Records has created a list of (almost) all records mentioned in the catalogue on Discogs –including a list of ‘not on Discogs’ items, in true Russel’s Paradox fashion!

Pie Paper #5 – The Food Issue, 126 pages, 140x190mm, multicoloured Risograph print with colour inserts, New Zealand, 2014 [Facebook]

This issue of Pie, directed by designers Simon Oosterdijk and Markus Hofko, included illustrations and texts from my previous blog, a post about a rare 1985 seven-inch single by Jean-François Gaël, with music inspired by kitchenware and played by Michel Deneuve on Cristal Baschet. Unfortunately, my scans and writing were uncredited by the editors.

Jean Roblin – Louis Braille, book published by Royal National Institute for the Blind, London, UK, late 1950s.

Bilingual book about the life of French Louis Braille (1802–1852), inventor of a famous alphabet at age 15. Among other striking images, the book includes a drawing of the knife with which the young Louis hurted his eyes at age 5. Note this weird sharity shop find is stained with red mercurochrome, for some reason.

Illustrations from Francis Bebey’s African music: a People’s Art, Lawrence Hill Books, NY, 1975, originally published as Musique de l'Afrique by Horizons de France, 1969. Find a Bebey biography here.

Les Carnets du Paysage – Le Musical, 240pp magazine directed by Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage, published by Actes Sud, Arles, France, October 2015 (website)

“Les sons palpent l'espace et le sonde, ils le décrivent”,
Jean-Christophe Bailly about echolocation, p.15

“Le Musical” is the latest issue of Les Carnets du Paysage, a magazine about landscape architecture published by Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage based in Versailles and Marseilles. The magazine had varied and wide-ranging topics in past issues, like migration, plants, food, climate change, drawing, archeology, etc. Accordingly, sound and music are unexpected topics for a landscape architecture publication, but this new issue convingcingly examines how sounds emanating from a natural or man-made landscape can modifiy how we perceive it, hence their importance for landscape architects (“La sonorité d'un paysage déploie en lui des spatialités auxquelles le regard n'a pas accès facilement.” Jean-Marc Besse, p.6). The magazine surveys some of these environmental sonic properties the landscape architect should be aware of, as well as the intervention of contemporary artists in the landscape, musical symbolism in Japanese kabuki theater and the silent music of Chinese poetry, the role of architecture in the propagation and resonance of music, with examples from a Central Park music pavilllion and modern shopping malls.

The issue opens with references and articles about Henry David Thoreau, John Cage and Raymond Murray Schafer, thus setting the tone for a series of environmental considerations in the following essays (section I: Ecouter). The first is William Henry Hudson’s observations on South American tropical birds in the 19th century, based on his travels in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil between 1870–1874. Hudson’s writings include observations about bird song notation and the relative merits of European and South American bird songs – a hot dispute in late 19th century apparently. The essay is illustrated with lavish bird watercolors from Philip Lutley Sclater’s Argentine Ornithology, 1888. Polish aristocrat Waclaw Seweryn Rzewuski (1784–1831) travelled across the Ottoman empire from Constantinople to Aleppo and Damascus in Syria, living in each town for several years. His diary and drawings feature lengthy descriptions of Arab norias and Rzewuski stresses their key role as water sources and the importance of their sound “tuning”, locals enjoying a certain type of mechanical noises.

The next section (“Interpréter”) examines the intersection of contemporary art and landscape, starting with the pioneering work in this respect of Giuseppe Penone and his last book – Transcription Musicale de la Structure des Arbres, Bernard Chauveau éditeur, Paris 2012–, where the artist transfered the silhouette of trees into musical scores. Of the other artists mentionned (Erik Samakh, Cécile Le Prado and Céleste Boursier-Mougenot), the former has the closest relation to landscape and environment with his outdoor, field recording installations and solar energy powered flutes installed in trees.

The 3rd section (“Composer”) is about landscape in classical music composing. Michel Collot lists examples of the evocation of landscape in Western classical music, silent music found in Eisenstein’s Potemkine, and the German concept of stimmung. In her analysis of landscape evocation in kabuki theater, Véronique Brindeau mentions musicians behind a screen raising whole landscapes purely with musical means – a woodblock to evoke a river, a bass drum for sea waves, duck calls. Brindeau makes a parallel with Japanese poetry and haiku, where sound is often a key element, a dimension which is deemed essential by Hervé Brunon in his survey of the acoustic aspect of Chinese classical poetry. Quoting examples from Liu Xie, Liu Ji, Yuan Zhongdao, Yuan Mei and Hong Liangji, Brunon describes how the poem becomes a vehicle for the evocation of an audible landscape and the creation of “images sonores”. Finally, Alexis Pernet revisits the wonderful but abandonned project of a floating music pavillion for Central Park in 1860. Envisonned by American designer, musician, translator and architect Jacob Wrey Mould (1825–1886), this magical setting would have used the surface of the pond to propagate classical music to spectators on the bank. Another music pavillion was finally built ashore on Bethesda Terrace in 1862 by a different architect. In his conclusion, Pernet mentions an interesting floating music pavillion build on a pond in Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris in 1900.

The issue ends with a translation of a chapter from Brandon LaBelle’s book Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (2010), about the ubiquitous Muzak heard in US shopping malls, the interaction between sound design and consumerism, and the notion of feedback.

Herbert A. Deutsch ‎– Synthesis: An Introduction to the History, Theory & Practice of Electronic Music, book+7inch record, Alfred Publishers, USA, 1976

A book on early electronic music and Moog by American composer, inventor, and educator Herbert A. Deutsch (born 1932), co-inventor of the Moog instrument with Robert A. Moog in 1964. The book comes with a 45rpm record with examples of tape manipulations and Moog music.

Fred Prieberg – Música de la Era Técnica, published by Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires (Eudeba), Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1961