Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 12:14:16 -0400
Subject: Re: avant-noise


I was writing up a cv to cover my last few months work and remembered that I
was working with a musician named Tommasso Vittorini.  I got to like his work -
midi sounds are an acquired taste.  He is a trained composer who makes dollars
playing jazz and composing television and cinema background music for real
instruments.  Tom has developed a method of compressing (virtual?) midi files
down to amazingly small sizes.  His work "Aulla" is six minutes long and is
only 36 k.  That means that his music can be downloaded in about 20 seconds and
can be associated with web page designs as either feature or background music.

He composed all the background music at Duchimp
http://members.tripod.com
Aulla is at:
http://members.tripod.com/duchimp/darkside/Aulla/vittorini00.htm
and there is a link to his home page at both the above URLs.

Vittorrini has a large range and I'd call him "postmodern" because his is not
limited by a personal "style" but can make his work suit the purpose and a
humanistic range of moods.  I could dance to it.  I was listening to Aulla with
a head set a few minutes ago and my daughter was dancing on the stairs making
fun of me and I was sure she was hearing but she wasn't... that is very Cage.

But then, on the other hand my daughter and I would dance to Mozart... so there
you go.

Christine Palma wrote:

> At 10:25 PM -0400 4/23/99, Damien Henderson wrote:
>
> >I'm not quite sure how familiar anyone is with the contemporary
> >avant-garde electronic music syndicate nowadays.  But I have to admit,
> >it's mighty fine.
> >
> >If anyone is interested in this growing trend, inquire into the following
> >outfits:  microstoria, oval, rome, mouse on mars, and the list goes on.
> >
> >If anyone is interested in discussing the intricacies of these bands, or
> >others, and can, in fact, fill me in on some new sounds to consider, I'd
> >be much obliged.
>
> Actually, the term is IDM or Intelligent Dance Music - if you are
> interested in more hardcore discussion of these and the like I would
> recommend the IDM List - I believe it's hosted by Hyperreal or you can
> search on Yahoo for IDM.  There is also Wire magazine out of the UK which
> is a great place to get the scoop - they like to drop the name of John Cage
> a lot.  I think they have a simple site up with good back articles.  The
> IDM list is full of fanatics and they could give you this year's top ten
> list of what's really cool.  I think X-radio also has an IDM section and
> you can listen to real audio samples of entire tracks.
>
> I am a fan of most of these electronic IDM acts, however I consider them
> mostly a pop phenomenon/a genre and not really avant garde - they would
> probably like to think of themselves as avant garde and what they are doing
> as falling more in the art area, above regular anonymous beat driven
> repetitive techno.  However besides the earlier guys like Autechre  maybe
> Scanner and Photek, has that much experimentation really happened in the
> IDM genre?  I'm not saying that cool stuff has not come out recently, just
> that in defining themselves as "intelligent" or "high" electronic music,
> they are playing a marketing game and distancing themselves from the more
> viceral beat driven techno - which is successful in it's own way - regular
> techno is beyond concept.  I think that Atari Teenage Riot and ATR's Alec
> Empire could probably be called avant garde - they/he uses gabber form and
> noise to subvert techno.  Gabber is very fast hardcore beats - speed
> techno.  Most IDM is very sterile and minimal and adults like it because it
> seems to wear a suit of complexity, but remains palatable.  I'm saying that
> while I love IDM, I'm convinced it's not an art form.
>
> --Christine
>
> ________________________
> nanostep-AT-drumandbass.com
>
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