A few weeks back Chris W. was asking about MB & I asked
if someone could find my old (ca. 1998) posts, as I'd lost my old emails ... I
did find 'em, finally, so here they are if anybody still cares -- with some
added notes[1] now that I'm a bit less ignorant than I was then.
[1]Like this.
The completest discog I've seen is at
http://www.wwa.com/~sdm/mbweb/discog.htm
>begin mail 1<
Maurizio Bianchi: _Colori_
OK, I've had this thing for a week now, & played it five or six times now,
and I still don't know quite what to think of it.
First reaction: damn. commercial synth. presets.
Why this is an issue: On what I'd call the "real" MB albums (e.g.
_Mectypo Bacterium_, _Endometrio/Carcinosi_, _Armagheddon_, the Come Org
releases, etc. ... if all you've heard is the bootleg reissue of _Activitat_
you don't really know what the fuss was about), the big vibe was the cloud of
mystery floating over them – not only what he was *doing*, but what he was
doing it *with*. Homemade electronics? Commercial synths? A chain of effects
with arbitrary source material?
Noise source with a chain of equalizers straining out frequencies? Who knew?
There was just this amorphous cloud of "sound" ... no referents, no
sense of a physical source for the sound ... aside from the occasional audible
tape splice, no sense of a "maker's hand" ... we
joined the program already in progress, and were snapped out of it when the
needle, without warning, hit the run-out groove.
So there was this sense that these were, in someway, not really
"recordings" at all, since recordings are supposed to be records *of*
*something* (like signifiers point to signifieds) and if you tried to look
through the recording to some generative event, there was "nothing"
there.
The evanescence of the experience had something to do with the composition (or
"decomposition", as he called it) as well ... Bianchi's special
talent was for draining any hint of perceptible goal-seeking out of the
material: no tension/release, no elaboration/reaffirmation of pattern, no
building to high pitch/volume, no satisfied settling back into a tonic, no
triumph of consonance over dissonance (or vice versa),
no drama, no program. No progress. No history. Just this *block* of *sound*.
The same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Eternity.
<ahem.>
Not that this wasn't *composed material*, not that it was *random stuff*
... it's structured, just not in a way that humans can hear in real time (i.e.,
what patterns there are take longer than echoic memory to cycle; pitch &
volume are cycling, but on different cycles; the "pulse" is maybe
1.67 bpm for two minutes but then it's 1.33
(not that you can tell w/o a stopwatch anyway) and some other sound is
slithering around
aimlessly on top of it...), and not in a way that music is conventionally
structured (most composers *want* humans to hear what they're doing).
So you wind up with the needle clicking at the end of the record, and if
someone asks you what "happened", there's really nothing to say.
So at some point Mr. Bianchi gets religion, and stops recording. Just stops.
And then, 5,114 days (his count) later, this (_Colori_, Ees't Records, a
Division of Alga Marghen, 1998) appears ... and I have no idea what to expect.
I bring it home, drop it in the
box, and well,
this kind of sounds like New Age music, doesn't it? Peaceful. DX7, I'm
guessing, Harp, String Section, Bells (bells are fun to program on a DX7,
aren't they?). Well, I'm fourteen years older too, can't listen to Space Streakings
*all* day, can I? I leave it on. He says in the liner notes that he
"wanted to raise an hymn to serenity and peace"; I can't fault him,
precisely (even artists deserve to be happy if they can manage it, don't
they?), but the choice of instruments is just so stereotypically
"heavenly" it's hard to take it seriously. OK, there's these weird
resonances here and there, either there's some wacky feedback in the synth
programming or there's some really subtle effects processing going on ... sometimes
(as on the older records) those weird drop-outs where a sound cuts off in
mid-decay, like a bad edit or a tape rollout ... but generally things just
drift along. "Green" almost blows it completely, more regular &
predictable than anything I've heard from MB (downbeats! it's got a ONE! could
it be ... common time?) – this piano sound playing the same dumn pattern over
& over (except when it "loses count"); but the string/swell voice
layered with it it keeps changing timbre throughout. Sure is peaceful. Not really
going anywhere, tho.
But then, wasn't I just ranting about how not "going anywhere" was
the *point*? Uh, yeah. So does it "go nowhere" the same way that
_Carcinosi_ "goes nowhere"? Uh, yeah. Maybe. Sometimes. I dunno. I
don't remember, maybe I should play it again.
So it's a week later & I'm still playing it again and we're into
"Indigo" now and there's a bed of synth with events happening on top,
fairly unpredictable as events go ... I'm really
reminded of Feldman's _For Samuel Beckett_ here, there's the same sort of cloud
with things plunking into it, which are either repetitions or variations but
it's hard to tell which is which ... and hell, I *like* Feldman, and I think I
like this,
But it's just so damn *tonal* ... who ever expected *notes* from MB?
Yeah, it sounds like "new age" but "new age" wishes it
sounded like this ... if there's one thing you can say for that Hearts of Space
stuff, it's that it's utterly predictable (melodically, harmonically,
structurally) and this isn't generally (but sometimes) ... but it is
authentically *peaceful* in the way that other stuff is trying to be &
hell, I could use some peace too.
Do you want this thing? Like I said, how the hell do I know? Maybe I'm just
spending everybody's time trying to rationalize spending eighteen bucks on it.
But I've certainly listened to it harder than I've ever listened to any
"new age" record I've owned
before, and it gets *more* interesting instead of less each time ... of course,
if it
weren't Bianchi, I wouldn't have kept trying ... I probably need to listen to
it again ... God, I hope this doesn't turn me into some kind of cultist or
somethin.
>end<
And later, responding to aquestion about the earlier
work ...
>begin mail 2<
The deal so-to-speak w/MB is that he got involved w/the Armstrong church &
basically repudiated everything he'd done up til that point ... &
apparently
(based on the liners for the new one) that's not likely to change. So (hate to
put it this way) barring sudden death or loss of faith, we're probably never
going to see real reissues of any of them.[1]
[1]Duh. :-)
The only thing I've seen booted on CD so far is _Aktivitat_, which AFAIK never
*was* released at the time[2] (there was an lp, also a boot, 3-4 years ago).
The material on this one is pretty early, maybe 79, judging from the sound, and
is the most "typically" industrial thing I've heard from him; it
could easily be mistaken for early live TG. It's ok, but not really what it's
about.
[2]Actually, it was a cassette, released in 1981; it does sound like earlier
material, tho; and it was recorded at the same time as _Endometrio_, which
sounds like 2 years *later*. Go figger.
Earliest official material is 3 cuts on a Bain Total compilation, I think from
'80. These are interesting because they give some clues about where he was
going technically, but they're still recognizable ... short tape loops, fading
in & out of each other in layers.
_Menses_ is a festival of homemade electronics ... rumbling drones &
aimless "melodies" on raw oscillator, tapescrubbing as a structural
device. Listening to it now (right now), I'd say it wouldnt be out of place on
a comp with Gerogerigegege or CCCC; it's that ugly. Difficult listening at its
finest.
These were followed by the two notorious albums on Come Org., both titled
_Liebestandarte_. Drifting snippets of mournful _Carnival of Souls_ organ and
alternately blatting and shrilly piercing, reverbed electronics ... mixed with
Nazi speeches (added w/o MB's knowledge by William Bennett). We've had more
Nazi crap mixed into noise than I care to think about in the 18 years since
these came out, but these still disturb the shit out of me.
There's a bootleg cassette called _IBM_ that Banned Productions put out a few
years ago. No indication of source on the tape, but from the sound I'd date it
somewhere shortly before or after _Menses_ (same use of tapescrubbing,
f'rinstance).[3] Still noisy as fuck, sometimes dropping into some kinda
rhythms (produced with pulsed white noise) but some droney stuff as well; of
course, it could be odds & ends from a 4-year period, too (the sound
quality ranges from pro to mono-on-one-channel).
[3]Again, it's earlier than I thought at the time, from 1981.
The "real" stuff followed (I can only talk about the ones I have,
unfortunately)
...
_Endometrio/Carcinosi_[4] was two single albums in complementary sleeves,
shrinkwrapped together. These are where the "meat" starts, IMHO. One
of these was a soundtrack to a film I'd dearly like to see before I die. Sound
is pretty much as I described in earlier post.
[4]OK, so _Endometrio_ was actually from 1981. It makes *sense* as a pairing
with _Carcinosi_, recorded 3 years later. I dunno, now that there's a decent
discography available & the boxes are out, it seems even harder to make
chronological sense of his development.
_Regel_. Never heard this one but people who have swear by it.[5] I think
they're trying to make me feel bad. ;-)
[5]They were right.
_SFAG_ is a cassette (C90 if memory serves) of shorter pieces, probably
outtakes or "earlier state" work tapes.[6]
[6]Apparently from _Symphony for a Genocide_, which I hadn't heard at the time
I wrote this; my copy is the Flowmotion reissue, which I why I thought it was
later.
_Armagheddon_ and _Mectypo Bacterium_, some of the subtlest and most beautiful
noise I've heard, comparable only to mid-period Mnemonists (whose Dys label the
latter appeared on). As I've said before, these resist linguistic synopsis.
Followed by _The Plain Truth_, made during the throes of his conversion (as you
might guess from the title), more subliminal yet ... a friend described it once
as "listening to a tv in the next apartment while delirious with
fever" & I don't think I can do better.
--
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Jim Flannery newgrange@sfo.com "My hair has grown
thin thinking of music." -- I Wayan Lotring