Posts by Arthur Brown6

Ron Geesin - A Raisin in the Sun (1967)



Genre: Spoken word, electronic, experimental, poetry, avant-folk, musique concrète, jazz, ragtime, abstract

Full Album.

Steven Newman50 said:Take Arthur Brown6, for example. He took the subject entirely too literally. 😬

Well, if that's how we're playing it, here's the contact info for photographer Robert Davidson:



😁

Four pages of avant-garde improvisation. It’s mostly acoustic instrumentation, though they tucked a guitar into the mix here and there. But really, the mix is the star of the show. They ran the recordings through all sorts of filters and spliced them together in ways that feel truly experimental. It's original stuff, and honestly, pretty high quality.

Check this out!



(Click the image to enlarge.)

From the book "this Mississippi River".

Getting the vocal cords in tune.

United Kingdom, 1977 - Part 2

Brian Eno - Before and after Science

It's a deal. Expect the script sometime over the weekend.

Moving on to something completely different.

United Kingdom, 1977 - Part 1

Peter Hammill - Over

The Necks - Hanging Gardens (1999)

Steven Newman50 said:Arthur Brown6, which albums are we talking about?

Penguin Cafe Orchestra from '81 and Escalator over the Hill from '71.

Critiquing my own drowning while staring at the passing scenery...

Two albums have been drifting through my mind via a bizarre chain of associations, leaving me itching to revisit and absorb them once more. They are similar yet worlds apart. Both feature top-tier performances across acoustic and electric instruments, though their vibes couldn't be more different. One is sun-drenched, airy, and wordless; the other is a dense, dark slog filled with lyrics depicting surreal imagery. Yet both are brilliant—one captures that classic Americana spirit, while the other has a gritty New York edge with some exotic spices thrown in. The first is lean and punchy; the second is a two-hour behemoth (originally much longer).

And so it goes.

Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4 (1984)



1. Ruhige Nervosität
2. gemäßigter Aufbruch
3. …und Mittelspiel 4. Ansatz
4. Ansatz
5. Damen Eleganza 6. Ehrenvoller Kampf 7. Hoheit
6. Ehrenvoller Kampf
7. Hoheit weicht (Nicht Ohne Schwung...)
8. …und Souveränität
9. Souveränität 9. remis

I think I’ll tackle translating that interview with Günter from the mid-2000s. Might as well get to work.

brightwolf48 said:Playing with sound and experimenting doesn't always have to yield a "musical work," but the result can end up being more intriguing and higher quality than something we traditionally label as music.

Exactly. This specific album was actually the product of two years spent messing around with two samplers and an Atari—basically gear and software from the late 80s and early 90s.

Now you've given me an idea for the next Album of the Week. It's another artist from Germany, but from an earlier era. An electronic album, highly influential in certain circles, born from just one night of playing around with a few instruments—no software involved. It was released raw, without any overdubbing or editing, and it is simply brilliant.

"Irritation"—that’s the right word. Honestly, it just comes down to personal musical taste and your own history as a listener. For instance, some other forum called this and several other drone albums nothing more than a "collection of test signals." A test for what, exactly? And for whom?

For me, listening to this album is a form of meditation. Especially now that I have my own little dedicated space where I can focus intensely on music without much outside noise—and even more so since I picked up a high-end subwoofer. I realize those are trivial details. Still, this music is almost entirely stripped of external associations. It actually surprises me that the album even has a title, especially one so poetic ("dirty snow").

If anyone is interested, I can translate a fantastic interview with Olivier Lamm that was published on the South by Southwest website.

Gerald Jackson48 said:(...) considering there were plenty of similar sonic experiments ("anti-music") long before 1993.

Sure, and for a very long time at that. I highly recommend this great compilation from 1986:

Whatever you say. That’s your take, and I have zero issue with it. My impressions of this album aren't some absolute, objective truth—that much is obvious. It’s just that experimental music has been enriching my life for quite a while now, whereas for you, I assume it feels somewhat draining. So, thanks for the passionate input!

As an afterthought, you might actually prefer the artist's more recent album.

Tracklists and durations from the 1993, 1996, and 2017 releases:

1. Untitled I/92 (9:00)
2. Untitled II/92 (12:29)
3. Untitled III/92 (14:29)
4. Untitled IV/92 (16:31)
5. Untitled I/93 (20:29)

Tracklist and durations from the 2003 release:

1. Untitled I/92 (8:59)
2. Whiteout (For Takahiro Tanaka) (27:00)
3. Untitled IV/92 (16:00)
4. Untitled I/93 (20:12)

"The music on this CD is intended to be heard at a very low volume!" (from the liner notes of the 1996 reissue, my translation)

"[Günter] is the first person to make good computer music. It’s aesthetically very similar to the work of Morton Feldman - White on White, yet it remains computer music—which, of course, sounds like a contradiction." (interview with Jim O'Rourke, 1995, my translation)

"White on White" is the debut album by the German composer and musician Bernhard Günter, often described as the "guru of digital sub-sonic minimalism bordering on silence." He began his foray into computer music back in 1987. This record features five—well, four—pieces of sorts "musique concrète" crafted via sampler. It is pure experimentalism, often categorized under the lowercase and microsound subgenres.

Your audio setup matters here; the quality of your gear isn't trivial if you want to actually experience this. Minimizing ambient noise is just as vital. You could call Günter’s work a digital variation on the "deep listening" concepts explored in purely acoustic settings by Stuart Dempster and Pauline Oliveros. Instead of Gothic cathedrals, underground cisterns, or cavernous spaces, the environment where this sound lives is entirely virtual. But more importantly, it’s the space within the mind and heart where the sound transforms into music. Is that enough? Or is it too much?

Lisa Davis46 said:and I have no clue where our rare birds have vanished to. Arthur Brown6 (...)

Far from New York City and my studio, mostly due to circumstances beyond my control.
But still, if we could just pull ten together... Something truly brilliant (referencing the Thirty Birds label).

Bernhard Guenter - Un peu de neige salie (1993)