I just picked up a copy of As One - Reflections (for £8 - bargain!). I've
had the remixes for years, it's nice to hear the originals after all this
time. It's a beautiful album, highly recommended.
The sleeve notes are pretty cool, I thought people might be interested to
read them after all this talk of Kirk DiGiorgio, so I typed them in
(complete
with absence of capitals). Enjoy...
Ross.
naming an electronic music composition is one part of the creative process
(a suggestion of theatrical space in which a wordless piece can perform);
naming the authors or producers of the music (the band, to use an
anachronistic term) is another. techno names and pseudonyms can represent a
desire for anonymity, an avoidance of celebrity routines, freedom from
contractual ties and a tendency to channel the music into discrete styles to
match each imaginary personality.
releasing tracks on his own art label after an initiatory period of
collaboration with black dog, kirk digiorgio has worked under three main
project titles: future/past, as one and esoterik, where as future/past
denoted electronic music sampled beyond recognition and esoterik was
experimental, as one was, as kirk explains, "all the soulful influences on
my music coming together as one."
tracking the history of techno music threatens to become anorak heaven,
but the truth is, no single source is definitive, all sources converge and
collide in showering sparks. kirk shrugs off all the talk of tangerine
dream and cabaret voltaire. His music was shaped by pending saturdays in
ipswitch listening to robbie vincent and greg edwards playing soul and
fusion on the radio, buying the younger generation's "we rap more mellow",
then afrika bambaataa's "planet rock", delving into the electronic
experimentation of george duke or blue note recordings by bobby hutcherson
and herbie hancock, even hearing his london aunt reminiscing about nights of
dancing at legendary essex clubs like the lacy lady.
"i was born in stepney," he says. "moved out of london when i was four.
the family moved to ipswitch and i went to school there. i knew the black
dog guys in senior school and for breakdancing, we used to unroll our bit of
lino in the carr precinct. we were of that era."
so like lfo, bandulu and other pioneers of uk techno, as one's control of
the midi grid was sparked by electro. years later, kirk traveled to chicago
and detroit, homing in on metroplex, juan atkins, carl craig. "i remember
driving in from chicago," he says, "and seeing the hi-tech headquarters or
ford and then i was in the most extreme poverty i've ever seen in my life,
five minutes later. there's just no hope at all. it's just complete despair.
young girls on the street. you can really understand the melancholy feel of
a lot of those early detroit records, the coldness people associate with
them. you can imagine derrick may sitting up in his flat and looking out on
detroit. you can really see a city shaping a music."
kirk rejects many of the unwritten guidelines of current techno. analogue
synthesis is an unfortunate reminder of tangerine dream, he hates white
reggae and fake dub, he uses software on sufferance and dismisses the
indie-ambient convergence. any suggestion that the new electronica will
become the new film soundtrack music of tomorrow is dismissed as a cliche.
instead, he creates a cool world of warm sound, a machine philosophy for
mobile urban sentients.
his own inspirations come from soul music and jazz, rather than rock, or
they stem from books, travel, films, even hi-fi equipment. "i was in
israel," he says, talking about song titles such as "moon over the moab",
"dance of the uighurs", "shambala", "meridian", "asa nisi masa".
we were on a bus going through the negev desert. they're deep brown
mountains and they change colour as the sun goes down and the moon comes up.
for years, i've planned a trip to china, going across mongolia." he touches
on the xoomi throat singing of mongolia, chinese rhythms, the thought-reader
scene in fellini's 8 1/2, gengis khan and the legend of shambala, the silk
road and the uighurs, weird descendents of turkish people living in the
desert. "this is all tied in with the name future/past," he says. "it's
futuristic music but we can only base our vision of the future on things
that have happened in the past."
within the not-so-distant future, kirk's various musical identities may be
poised to withdraw, in fact. being centered in one item of hardware,
computer based media suggest a fluid movement between products - graphic
design for merchandising, soap operas on the internet, manifestos and
electronic magazines, or ideas none of us can dream of as yet. if electronic
music shifts towards the same old charisma routines of rock 'n' roll, then
the machines at art will fall silent until further notice. "i'm not being
elusive or some kind of thomas pynchon" says kirk. "i just don't want to
play the game that obviously"
...tavid toop february 23, 1994
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