Sept Ames (Montreal)

Nirvana in Negative
Noise & Capitalism and the aesthetics of academia

In 2007 I was invited to the 40th anniversary party of CTV, Canada’s dominant media organization, by mistake. Sitting there with my date, drinking quietly in a corner while MPs and anchorpersons from across the country mingled and unembarrassedly commented on us (“You guys look so stylish! You must be from Montreal”), I suddenly spotted a well-dressed but bleary and lost-looking old feller. No sooner had I realized that eye contact might be a mistake, then he’d locked his sights on us and orbit became entry. He eventually introduced himself as the President of CTV Newsmedia, to which I was tempted to reply “yeah, and I’m Donald Duck” but I kept it in check and exchanged pleasantries until he was quickly bored of us.

When I learned this was in fact Bob Hurst, president of CTV Newsmedia, I did what enterprising young folks are supposed to do and tried to get a meeting with him so I could ask for a job. It was a disaster; he was much sharper then, and between eating a sandwich and checking email, in his office of ten thousand television sets, he withdrew my life history from me. The peak of the discussion came when I got to describing my undergraduate thesis, which I very generously described as a study of “the aesthetic differences between works of composition and works of improvisation”. He pretty much froze. Now I had gone and done it. “Really?…. what did you come up with?” The incoherent babbling episode that followed, with references to Jackson Pollock, the Rolling Stones, and “spirit” went longer than I’d care to remember before he finally showed mercy and cut me off by telling me in a cool low voice that if I hoped to be a journalist I had better learn how to explain something.

The thesis was really just a recording of my composition process and the research accompanying it, and it was that process that was a study in the differences between improvisation and composition. I never sent it to get bound, as it is meant to be, because when I finished the essay I decided the purpose of this essay was probably to show me what would become one of the fundamental questions with which I would fill my earth-bound days, so why not spend a lifetime on it instead.

In Noise and Capitalism, a new book of essays published by Arteleku, improvisation acts as a stand-in for the scene called noise or noise music in many of the pieces, and several tease out thoughts on the nature of spontaneity in a material and capital culture, and its political ramifications for those who engage in such activity, for their audience, and society at large.

The main promoter of the book, and contributor of its first and last essay, is enthusiastic, no-irony performer and all around good person Mattin, a performance artist who I much admire. He’s the pitchman for this assembly of musings on noise and capitalism from a dozen or so chatter-borgs who have produced enough prog-talk to thoroughly stone anyone. It comes in the form of an academic journal, with an overload of footnotes, references to theorists of varying popularity, and large words and larger concepts are hoisted around like so many steel storage containers at port, threatening to crush the reader in their brutish lack of clarity and coherence. Read the rest of this entry »

Radical Philosophy review of Noise &Capitalism book by Andrew McGettigan.

As a supplement to the abstract theories of Peters, 
Noise & Capitalism devotes six of its eleven contribu
tions to concrete discussion of ‘free improvisation’ in
 music. It treats both the complex relation to jazz and 
its reaction to the dominant forms of musical space
 and experience. Peters is opposed to the valorization
 of jazz as an interstitial political practice dreaming
 of communion and empathy. However, by explicitly
 positioning free improvisation as a deliberate attempt
 to create an environment ‘free from the tradition of
 bandmasters, composers and notation as well as the
 emerging spectacular culture through which popular 
music was beginning to circulate’, this collection is
 better able to assess the stakes, successes and failures 
of that attempt and its continuation into the present
 day.
 Eddie Prévost summarizes well the position he
 has developed in other publications. He presents free 
improvisation as an alternative cultural form (marked
 by working relations between the musicians, which
‘counter the ethos’ characterizing capitalism). Two
key features of ‘normal music’ are emphasised, against
 which improvisation is distinguished: the score as the 
notation determining performance; composition and 
rehearsal as the point at which the technical problems
 of musical production are resolved in advance of
 performance. Improvisation eschews both, with the
 corollary that the hierarchical relations of produc
tion are displaced – performance is then a dialogical
 process of discovery for all participants. No longer
 hidebound to the creative genius of the composer,
‘we have to decide on the meaning of the practice’.
 In this way, its politics can be seen in its opposition 
to authority and celebrity: the marketing of named
 composers is resisted. Read the rest of this entry »

Neural Magazine (Italy) media art-hacktivism-e music since 1993

This book is an exception to the rule that a product can be judged from its price. It is free (either downloading it or trading a printed copy) and it sports professional editing, graphic design and production. But it seems just a direct consequence of the challenge to properly face such a topic. Noise in music has been usually treated for its specific and problematic way of approaching composition (except for the seminal book “noise” by Jaques Attali from which this text seem to stem and flourish), and its ability to reflect the very edge of our time. This work looks at the political role of noise in the market, reconstructing the genre through a series of essays describing different music dynamics, while representing a clear act of resistance. This kind of resistance involves not only “assuming risks” about musical stereotypes and the markets surrounding them, but also affects the act of performing, production and distribution. Produced by the Basque Arteleku institution and its active Audiolab, the book can ideally be accompanied by the CD, “Gezurrezko joera” by Jean-Luc Guionnet, a perfect complement to the theory, with another peculiarly split and non-harmonic classic organ performance by the artist. Finally, it would be useful to point out that the only way to get this book is a distribution by trading. Creative people can request a copy by sending a sample of their work (that will be hosted in the Arteleku library) or by writing a critical response to the book (after downloading the free pdf file).

English:

http://www.neural.it/art/2010/04/edited_by_mattin_anthony_iles.phtml

Italian:

http://www.neural.it/art_it/2010/04/edited_by_mattin_anthony_iles.phtml

Extensive and analytic review by David Grundy for english (recommended) digital EARTRIP magazine, 5th issue. Thanks!!*
[http://eartripmagazine.wordpress.com/]

This is fantastic stuff. Of course, there is a smallish swarm of intellectual activity surrounding the sort of issues discovered here, but  more often than not it centres on jazz and American practices.
Consequently, discussions tend to get sidelined into the race issue – an issue which is crucial for the development of that music, but which can impose a narrowing of focus when one considers that much noise and free improvisation is created by non-African Americans who are not living in the particular historical context of a racially-oppressive society (though of course one with its own deep networks of imperialism, alienation, &c.). Serious intellectual examination of music, as practiced by some of the journalists from Wire magazine, may also find itself restricted by the necessity of providing a review of a product (whether a live performance or an album) which evaluates that product on aesthetic grounds first and foremost – and whose audience may resist the presence of critical theory: too much politics for them to swallow, an ‘irrelevance’, intruding on their desire for a generalised ‘underground’ freedom to enjoy their niche of generalised musical resistance to the ‘mainstream’ (represented by such easy-target bogeymen as George Bush and…um, Britney Spears).

DOWNLOAD AND READ THE REST OF THE REVIEW (pdf)
DOWNLOAD AND READ EARTRIP#5 MAGAZINE (pdf)

Noise and Capitalism Edited by Mattin and Anthony Iles -

There is always an irony about collections that assail capitalism for recycling popular culture for its own ends, when both radicals and academics do the same with ideas they respect (yes, more Derrida, Deleuze, Adorno? And hey, remember in May ’68 when…zzzzzz..?) However, as it becomes more apparent that late Capitalism has proven the adage that Pop Will Eat Itself with the squalid addendum that we are also fodder for that mash-up, new voices from the Left and Right are needed to even get the possibilities of alternatives out to the public. It may be a cul de sac to be rebuking a system that one benefits from, either from the tenure system, the internet, etc., but we are all users of what keeps us trapped, and maybe we can use it to shout out ideas rather than shout at each other with no point.

Noise & Capitalism is a thought provoking, blunt, often maddening collection of essays about the commodity of music, and whether or not Noise represents that which escapes being commodified, or is merely the next rebellion against Corporatism to wait in line to be turned into background music for tampon ads. Read the rest of this entry »

Italian Blow upmagazine published a review of Noise & Capitalism book on his february issue (#141) written by Stefano I. Bianchi. Thanks.