IDM Mailing Archive

Spooky is from the school of old school hip-hop and dub. He's not about playing a set that sound like the same freaking song played for 90 mintes and anal retentive technique worship. It's all about the mindfuck. Just because he has some delusions of granduer in his liner notes has little to do with what his music sounds like. I saw the Scanner/DJ Spooky show last night in SF, and while I think Spooky was a little off last night(both of the performers made it well known that they were not happy with the sound setup), I've seen him before and been blown away. Nonbelievers and the curious should pick up "Songs From a Dead Dreamer" and the "Galactic Funk" 12'. Final Note: If you don't like him, fine. If you feel the need to resort to high school insults, flame me by private mail. ------------------------

At 09:47 AM 10/14/97 -0700, Jeff McMillan wrote:

quoted 8 lines Spooky is from the school of old school hip-hop and dub. He's not about

>Spooky is from the school of old school hip-hop and dub. He's not about >playing a set that sound like the same freaking song played for 90 mintes >and anal retentive technique worship. It's all about the mindfuck. Just >because he has some delusions of granduer in his liner notes has little to >do with what his music sounds like. I saw the Scanner/DJ Spooky show last >night in SF, and while I think Spooky was a little off last night(both of >the performers made it well known that they were not happy with the sound >setup), I've seen him before and been blown away.

you know.. with all this about excessive linear notes i'm surprised no one has mentioned Terre Thaemlitz. or is it that no one on the idm listen to him? that boy can rant. five page explanations of songs. wonderful stuff. anyone familiar? ------------------------------------------------- wells oliver : s0ewoliv@titan.vcu.edu "perhaps all pleasure is relief" : w.s.b. -------------------------------------------------

On Tue, 14 Oct 1997, wells wrote:

quoted 2 lines you know.. with all this about excessive linear notes i'm surprised no one

> you know.. with all this about excessive linear notes i'm surprised no one > has mentioned Terre Thaemlitz. or is it that no one on the idm listen to him?

Tah! This IDMer was a TT proponent while his stuff was still in demo! I don't recall his first two Instinct (and first Comatonse) CDs having excessive linear notes. But as you pointed out, Terre's got you reaching for the dictionary and spooky usually has me turning the page... I subscr!be to TT's e-news letters and they incite smiles every time. Now *there's* an ambient dj who can juice... Teep

quoted 5 lines you know.. with all this about excessive linear notes i'm surprised no one

> you know.. with all this about excessive linear notes i'm surprised no one > has mentioned Terre Thaemlitz. or is it that no one on the idm listen to him? > that boy can rant. five page explanations of songs. wonderful stuff. anyone > familiar? >

Really? I've got Soil (which is excellent BTW and on right now) and the liner notes are pretty minimal.

quoted 4 lines -------------------------------------------------

> ------------------------------------------------- > wells oliver : s0ewoliv@titan.vcu.edu > "perhaps all pleasure is relief" : w.s.b. > -------------------------------------------------

Tim One tequila Two tequila Three tequila Floor

At 08:32 AM 10/15/97 +0000, Tim Fothergill wrote:

quoted 4 lines Really? I've got Soil (which is excellent BTW and on right now) and

> >Really? I've got Soil (which is excellent BTW and on right now) and >the liner notes are pretty minimal. >

well.. i was thinking about Couture Comestique specifically.. i e-mailed him a couple of times asking what certain songs were about, and he'd go on for pages. i was quite impressed. he definately puts some thoughts into his music. ------------------------------------------------- wells oliver : s0ewoliv@titan.vcu.edu "perhaps all pleasure is relief" : w.s.b. -------------------------------------------------

In message <l03110702b06952a54506@[206.169.27.154]>, Jeff McMillan <jmcmillan@green-room.com> writes

quoted 9 lines Spooky is from the school of old school hip-hop and dub. He's not about

>Spooky is from the school of old school hip-hop and dub. He's not about >playing a set that sound like the same freaking song played for 90 mintes >and anal retentive technique worship. It's all about the mindfuck. Just >because he has some delusions of granduer in his liner notes has little to >do with what his music sounds like. I saw the Scanner/DJ Spooky show last >night in SF, and while I think Spooky was a little off last night(both of >the performers made it well known that they were not happy with the sound >setup), I've seen him before and been blown away. >

So you reckon he's better than DJ Rectangle eh? -- Ben Coffer Hybrid Productions http://www.hybridgame.demon.co.uk/

Yea! Dj Spooky Bashing!!! Let me gave a go at it! Um, I'll try to be "edjumacted" about it as well... Dj spooky as a musician? On this matter I have absolutely no problem with the man. His "Songs of a dead dreamer" is quite nice. Also, necropolis isnt bad either... For a studio mix... I think that most peoples problem with him is that he is an insult to the art of all that is known as DJ. He is not old skool hip-hop or dub (actually I think refering to him as old skool dub is about as bad an insult you say to the genre of dub) He is a pretentious NY "artist" who can talk MAD shit about djing yet has the unique ability to drive all known djs away in droves - the man has no idea what to do with tech 12s and actually, when I lent my tables to him for an in store demonstration here in richmond VA, he came damn near close to bending my tone arm off - I cant even tell you how bad my needles were when he was done! - He stood in front of a group of people and stated that his "style" is supposed to be disjointed and cut up sounding - Thats fine, but dont call it dance music... If the mixing is so bad and the beats so off and the scratching resembles something that is more likely to result from bumbing into a turntable with your hip than hand manipulation HOW CAN YOU "DANCE" TO IT??? I guess that what I'm trying to say is this: If you are all about RANDOM noise that his DJ style is great - Its fucking perfect at being random and noise - if you like rhythm and melody and music - Hope that you are at a multi-room event when he spins. Final note: I asked a promoter at a party that both spooky and myself spun at why he had booked spooky, his reply was "Because he has a draw, because the press love him." When I asked why people were drawn by spooky he said "well, ever notice how traffic slows down around a car accident....? Looking foreward to spooky's next STUDIO release, Brien Sears DJ Ebben Flow Richmond VA

quoted 8 lines of a group of people and stated that his "style" is supposed to be

> of a group of people and stated that his "style" is supposed to be > disjointed and cut up sounding - Thats fine, but dont call it dance > music... If the mixing is so bad and the beats so off and the > scratching resembles something that is more likely to result from > bumbing into a turntable with your hip than hand manipulation HOW CAN > YOU "DANCE" TO IT??? > I guess that what I'm trying to say is this: If you are all about > RANDOM noise that his DJ style is great - Its fucking perfect at being

No personal attack intended, but there are some points here that i find slightly problematic. To simplify, i'll remove them a bit from the Spooky context. Point 1: "if the mixing is so bad and the beats so off . . ." there is a definition at operation here--an implicit bias. good mixing=matched beats. mixing (v): to match beats. one point of djing is that you begin to see music functionally, not definitionally. music is what it does as part of the environment you create for it and with it. THE POINT . . . mixing is a function as well. it doesn't mean to simply match beats . . . it means creation, complexity, layers, indifferentiation, a seeming inability to undo which is sometimes followed by the very deconstruction which we felt impossible . . . sometimes the point is to emphasize the doing. imagine your stirring water into a powder--there is a lot of mixing prior to the homogenous liquid which we can see analagously as the Matched Beat. the bumbled scratch can be a sonic artifact, a history lesson--a reoccurance of that torn moment where some dope realized that it sounded good . . . it was a real sound, a concrete sound, it was the idiom of vinyl, what happens when vinyl is liberated from histrionics and the trumpetting of other voices. Point 2: "Random noise" many people still feel that putting random before noise is like saying VERY two times in a row or like saying bad rap--just an emphasis in case you forgot that all rap is bad and all noise is random. i've never seen him perform, but i've seen Otomo Yoshihide of Ground Zero and Christian Marklay maul needles, break records in half and rub them like tablets across the stylus, pick up technics and drop them, slam a microphonic guitar down on the platter and watch it lazy susan.. Marklay literally constructs records in a concrete way: breaking records apart and piecing them together in new orders, playing them like grooved cut ups or fold ins. they are random\ texts as Burroughs texts are random, as automatic writing a la Breton was random. preparation can happen at any point in the creative process--the thinking about, the mulling over, the torn exchanges of imagined hands before accessing their content . . . improv is far from random. check out otomo yoshihide's "Pekinese Opera" or Ground Zero's "Consume Red". Marklay's new collection of works from 85 (?) to 92 (?) is also a good point to explode into. you can find them at forcedexposure.com william burroughs The Third Mind, written with Brion Gysin, is also a good book to check out on the cut up fold in tip. gotta go to class so excuse the frozen mind in the word rush, ryan whitehead

At 15:20 15/10/97 -0700, Ryan Richard Whitehead wrote:

quoted 3 lines many people still feel that putting random before noise is like saying

>many people still feel that putting random before noise is like saying >VERY two times in a row or like saying bad rap--just an emphasis in case >you forgot that all rap is bad and all noise is random.

Noise is random. Music is a (semi)ordered collection of sound. All this 'deconstruction' business sounds like an excuse for not being able to (or not bothering to learn) to mix. Beats don't necessarily have to be matched perfectly but if I'd payed for a DJ that's what I'd want to hear. I suppose if you're aware of Spooky's style then you'd know what to expect. Personally I think I'll steer clear of him.

quoted 5 lines i've never seen

>i've never seen >him perform, but i've seen Otomo Yoshihide of Ground Zero and Christian >Marklay maul needles, break records in half and rub them like >tablets across the stylus, pick up technics and drop them, slam a >microphonic guitar down on the platter and watch it lazy susan..

I'd have thought that anybody could do this (as long as they could afford the hardware). It doesn't sound like anything I'd want to listen to. Sounds more like a visual thing than an aural thing, which is fair enough, I suppose. Jon - Jon Green zcapn33@ucl.ac.uk They're back: "F**k the Millenium" see http://www.2k.org.uk

(END HERE IF YOU WANT MUSIC CONTENT, THESE ARE MY RAMBLINGS. IMPORTANT AS THEY ARE TO ME--I SPENT A HALF HOUR ON THIS AFTER ALL--TO MOST THEY WILL SEEM A TANTRUM)

quoted 6 lines Noise is random. Music is a (semi)ordered collection of sound.

> Noise is random. Music is a (semi)ordered collection of sound. > All this 'deconstruction' business sounds like an excuse for not being able > to (or not bothering to learn) to mix. Beats don't necessarily have to be > matched perfectly but if I'd payed for a DJ that's what I'd want to hear. I > suppose if you're aware of Spooky's style then you'd know what to expect. > Personally I think I'll steer clear of him.

noise is CHOSEN--choice is not random. if i roll some dice is it random that a 5 shows up? well, i chose to roll the dice--i shouldn't be surprised if i see a number hovering before me. i chose for a number to be THERE, and sometimes a number is precisely what one needs. i've got six choices and i can't decide . . . i really wish i had a number. ok, #5 . . . i'll pursue this with all the intensity that i have . . . i'll sculpt it. the genius is in knowing when to roll the dice, where to roll them, with what explicit or implicit intentions, with what instanciation. OR MAYBE there is no GENIUS to it at all, just open mindedness and adventure. I'm very disheartened when i hear people say "if i payed for X then that's what i want to hear." i know, i know, we have moods, we have preferences, but it's a sadness beyond words when we subject our broad minds to a black twist, to an expulsion of possibility. we lose the moments between expectation, and oftentimes debilitate the unexpected which invades our longed for moments. there is such a thing as CREATIVE LISTENING, CREATIVE READING . . . marshalling the active elements of your mind at all moments is . . . possible though not essential--therefore it is often neglected. kafka never FINISHED a story, all is a raw immensity, a parsed phrase, invalid's repast, material for mutatis mutandis, snake oil to grease cognition. never finished a story . . . have you?

quoted 3 lines I'd have thought that anybody could do this (as long as they could afford

> I'd have thought that anybody could do this (as long as they could afford > the hardware). It doesn't sound like anything I'd want to listen to. Sounds > more like a visual thing than an aural thing, which is fair enough, I suppose.

What's the response of Tristan Tzara (The Dadaists), John Cage,etc to the statement "Anyone can do this"? well, they can either say "Yeah, so" or they could ask "But has anyone?" or they could surreptitiously challenge "oh, really?" not that i'm a great fan of abstract expressionism, but look at some of the BAD shit that happened when people thought Pollack was just tossing paint. this is a point i choose because of its connection with the beginnings of a free jazz movement (with all the talk of JAZZ influence over the past months, why have we never spoken of FREE JAZZ--or anyone other than Miles and Herbie for that matter?). one of the early Ornette Coleman albums (the shape of jazzz to come?) used a pollack painting as the cover art (full fathom five? sorry about the speculation, i don't have it near me). of course anyone with an orifice capable of expelling air and several digits capable of epilleptic/brownian movement can play free jazz. or . . . can they? the very fact that they TRULY take what they (free jazz, abstract turntablists, etc.,) are doing seriously--ie as more than anarchic amusement--separates them from people who IMMEDIATELY (that is, without the actual perceptual phenomena, the MEDIA, coming into the picture) write them off as performers and sensationalists. it's impossible for those people who do not take the ideas seriously to THINK of them in the same manner. interior and exterior breaks down when one takes these ideas seriously . . . deconstruction, cut and paste, theoretical production . . . these are not bloodless acts because, for those who take them seriously, they impact the flesh, each feature is canonized by contemplation, the imagination is cindered. is it accidental that so many of these cut up artists (from burroughs to Ground Zero with Spooky in the middle) take GENETIC (often viral) metaphors as titles--what they produce may seem thin and bleak, but it is a strange new flesh, and like a breath, it passeth away and cometh not again. we make a touchless clean room by calling these explorations heretical, we deprive ourselves of EVERYDAY raptures. moreover, we forego the opportunity to shear the tensile link in the modes of communication we are presented with and those we long for, we isolate Challenges (BY ALL MEANS, LETS CONFINE EVERYTHING WHICH CONFRONTS OUR TEPID SENSIBLITIES TO A MUSEUM, A CELL, A BARGAIN BIN, A DUSTBOWL OF SHATTERED ASPIRATIONS, A WALLED UP SHAFT FOR ICONOCLASTS. let's become the ideal demographic--a market sector of mildly dissatisfied consumers with mild cases of future-shock and mild yearnings for a 98.6 degree authenticity.), we let virgin records tell us what is New (let's avoid a corporate whore line of thought). Perhaps it's the fact that Marklay knows that we think of the DJ as a definition, a beat matching mindless homogeneity addict, someone who will play Wu-tang when asked (or compromise him/herself in some other way) perhaps it is for this reason he tells people that he is NO DJ. Wouldn't you? when someone says "it doesn't sound like anything i'd want to listen to" it seems apparent that it is almost certainly not something that they WOULD or COULD listen. i mean, listen as in penetrate, manipulate, think through, challenge. we are strange in forgetfulness-- These type of debates make me realize that we never learn anything, simply call old errors by new names. ryan whitehead