<<i think ive told you time and time again: NICO! (R.I.P.)
tw>>
I got Nico's "The End" a few months back and it
really made me wish I knew more about that kind
of music. It's essentially rock music but the
electronic aspect of the music is fairly
impressive. The liner notes credit "Eno" for
doing the synthesizer, and if that means Brian
Eno I believe it. Screaching and squeeling
abstract sounds behind a morose organ and Nico's
deep dark voice. The songs sort of plod along
slowly like dirges and have this weird Baroque
quality that I think comes from Nico's tendency
to sing in scales. I heard Nico was one of the
first singers in the sort of proto-"goth" vein.
But don't let labels throw you. At least this
album--the only one I own--is just as electronic
and cutting-edge (for its time anyway) as Bjork
or Radiohead. So even though it's no way IDM
(being 1974, for one) it falls into that non-IDM
stuff that people discuss on IDM category. And
for being from the early 1970s, that's saying
something. I don't know what kind of label to
slap on the 60s and 70s music that spans between
psychedelic rock and ambient/experimental
electronic (e.g., Nico to Tangerine Dream), but
I really wish I knew more about cutting edge
music from that era. I have a feeling there's
quite a few experimental-electronic-rock gems
from that era that have forgotten about, or at
least await re-discovery by this generation of
IDM heads.
ps. On Duchamp's "Fountain" piece... Here's the
compromise I would make if I were an art critic
at the time. Sure, it's art, I'd say, but it's
just really shitty art. (Almost literally.)
There, everybody's happy. If I remember correctly
they had the urinal at the Yale museum for awhile
and then destroyed it. I think Duchamp should've
one-upped them by installing another "Fountain"-
like oeuvre inside men's room, fully functioning.
A sort of concept piece. That way fortunate men
could tell all their friends that they pissed all
over a Duchamp.
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