Standing Reserve

Drew Hemment. Text commissioned for the pHonic exhibition in Christchurch, New Zealand, July 2001 curated by r a d i o q u a l i a

exploders, cracklers, buzzers and scrapers were the 20th centuries first diy sound machines, ‘noise intoners’ built by the italian futurists to blast perception out of the claustrophobia of nineteenth century art. this was the curtain call for a century of exploding boundaries between art and technology, a century of innovation driven by accident and misuse that both swept away the ideal of the autonomous artist and tore open the closed set of possibilities inherent in technology and instrument design.

EACH INSTRUMENT, EACH TOOL, THEORETICAL OR CONCRETE, IMPLIES A SOUND FIELD, A FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE, AN IMAGINABLE AND EXPLORED UNIVERSE. TODAY, A NEW MUSIC IS ON THE RISE, ONE THAT CAN NEITHER BE EXPRESSED NOR UNDERSTOOD USING THE OLD TOOLS, A MUSIC PRODUCED ELSEWHERE AND OTHERWISE (jACQUES aTTALI).

machines used for purposes they were not designed for, that function by breaking down. the drum-machine which ignited the house revolution, the roland tr-808, was bought cheap on the second hand market following its premature discontinuation because of its failure to emulate real instruments. a similar case was the roland tb-303. notoriously bad at what it was designed for, simulating bass-guitar lines, it was very good at making mistakes. its programming procedures were so complex that the operators intentions would become lost and unexpected results appear out of the confusion - with the mistakes proving more interesting than what was intended. soon the misuse became the norm, as the unique squelching sounds produced by its filters came to define a whole genre of music: acid house.

TOMORROW, WITH ELECTRONIC MUSIC IN OUR EARS, WE WILL HEAR FREEDOM (jOHN cAGE).

no longer enmeshed in the parameters set by traditional instruments and musicianship, sound was unleashed. its de-composition intensified when the availability and creative application of digital sampling technology set the foundations for the further quantum leap of drum n bass. musical perception became reconfigured through the infinite expansion and decomposition of the sonic instant. reversed, stretched, speeded up. colours and shapes in sound dematerialise the dancefloor and shapeshift the crowd.

IT IS NOT THAT MUSIC OR THE WORLD HAVE BECOME INCOMPREHENSIBLE: THE CONCEPT OF COMPREHENSION ITSELF HAS CHANGED; THERE HAS BEEN A SHIFT IN THE LOCUS OF PERCEPTION OF THINGS (jACQUES aTTALI).

musical perception has become microscopic. no longer focused on the messages of songs or the organisation of harmony it has opened up a new world in the space between the beats. synthesisers and filters generate infinite textures, and sound byte science (sampling) explores the virtual potential of sonic matter.

WHAT CHARACTERISES THE WORK OF THOSE MUSICIANS RADICALIZED BY THEIR RELATION TO BIT-ORIENTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IS THE EFFORT TO RAISE THE TECHNICAL PRECONDITIONS OF THEIR MUSICAL MATERIAL TO THE LEVEL OF CULTURAL EXPRESSION. THAT IS TO SAY, THEY STRUGGLE TO MAKE AUDIBLE THE NOISE/INFORMATION POLARITY THAT BOTH GROUNDS CONTEMPORARY LISTENING AND UNDERMINES IT (mARTIN hEIDEGGER).

morphing the medium. electronic music screens and sculpts the noises of the user interface, the grain of the machine. it is a celebration of the texture of expression, a manipulation of sounds and a soliciting of distortions.

AT THE PRESENT STAGE OF REVOLUTION, A HEALTHY LAWLESSNESS IS WARRANTED. EXPERIMENTATION MUST NECESSARILY BE CARRIED ON BY HITTING ANYTHING . . . NOT ONLY HITTING, BUT RUBBING, SMASHING, MAKING SOUND IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY. IN SHORT, WE MUST EXPLORE THE MATERIALS OF MUSIC. WHAT WE CANT DO OURSELVES WILL BE DONE BY MACHINES AND ELECTRICAL INSTRUMENTS WHICH WE WILL INVENT (jOHN cAGE).

whilst digital culture breeds a generation of acolytes and the space race its cadets, artists on the electronic frontier turn to redundant analogue technology to get their kicks and basslines. retrofuturism. the gleaming exteriors and shining preset sounds of the latest keyboards are rejected as audio artists turn to the technologies of the past to generate the sounds of the future. cubase retains metaphors of discrete instruments and linear time whilst the mutant music machines of cristian vogel and the aphex twin and the smash and grab tactics of post-coldcut sampling keep the revolution off course.