IDM Mailing Archive

In a message dated 8/15/99 6:28:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, diskono@lineone.net writes:

quoted 8 lines Steve Roden's stuff is excellent, specially the 3"cd series on Interior

> Steve Roden's stuff is excellent, specially the 3"cd series on Interior > Sounds..also recently released a cd on JennyJoyGallery, recontextualized > Gallery recordings..i think The Wire reviewed it last month...seen this > tagged as 'lowercase-sound' ("some examples include > the music of Morton Feldman, Panasonic, AMM, John Cage, Artists on the > Trente Oiseaux label (eg Bernhard Gunter, Francisco Lopez, Steve Roden), > Field recordings of Chris Watson & visual work by Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman > , Stan Brakhage")

lowercase sound is a very specific sort of minimalism. Roden coined the term and has described it as music with "a certain sense of quiet and humility; it doesn't demand attention. it must be discovered ... it's the opposite of capital letters - loud things which draw attention to themselves." the accepted model for lowercase-sound is Feldman (Roden again: "[Feldman] is the perfect lowercase music; it seems serene, but there's much going on beneath the quiet exterior.") Cage as well. but Cage worked within such an incredible range that you have to be careful when pigeonholing his music as lowercase-sound. i'd venture that the lowercase-sound aesthetic is even closer to the instrumental impressionism of Marion Brown's unique "Afternoon of a Georgia Faun." the literary equivalent of the lowercase-sound would be Samuel Beckett, whose essence-in-the-details style is much beloved of everyone from Evan Parker to Bernhard Günter. lowercase-sound would not include Pan Sonic (maybe you're thinking of microwave-sound?); defining AMM as such also makes me uneasy. Prévost and Co. are coming from a very separate school of thought. many of the Trente Oiseaux artists fit the lowercase mold, but you can't really generalize. that wouldn't account for the anything-but-lowercase sound of John Duncan/Max Springer's "The Crackling" and Daniel Menche's "Legions In The Walls." on the other hand, nearly all of the titles on the meme label - especially Richard Young's essential "House Music" and Roden/Labelle's "The House Was Quiet..." - are perfect examples of lowercase-sound. as are: Roden's splendid In Be Tween noise CDs, "So Delicate & Strangely Made" and "Humming Endlessly In The Hush" and the works of guitarist Taku Sugimoto (try "Fragments of Paradise" or the duets with John Drumm on Boxmedia and meme), Francisco López - maybe even Organum, Jliat, and Thomas Köner. falling between lowercase-sound and microwave-sound: Anthony Burr/Skuli Sverrisson's powerful "Desist" (on Fire, Inc; label of occasional lowercasers Stilluppsteypa) and Carl Michael Von Hausswolff; Tamaru's "Karmaless" and "Fuyu Ni Katarito;" certain Ikeda titles (like "Time/Space"), Hecker, the interesting Nzetwork Down ... - any of which would be the best lowercase-sound point of entry for IDMers more attuned to the quietude of a Mika Vainio or #/Tau. it's all worth discovering. fascinating stuff. mr. e. now on: cabbageboy: genetically modified (ntone)