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For the Sake of Grace: an excerpt from No Sound Is Innocent by Eddie Prévost

Listen or Go Home! by Mike Marlin

Dear Lucy

Our Salute to the WTO:

• In the Field at the WTO -- Field Recording in the Line of Fire (Part I) by Christopher DeLaurenti
• Night Trawler Wins Time Off -- In Jail! by Henry Hughes
• Catch and Release: The Anti-Fascist Marching Band by Dennis Rea

Local Composers Gather for Philanthropic Project by Gavin Borchert

Davy Jones' Locker

Noise Lovin' Ned by Ffej

Prévost: For the Sake of Grace

In art we make the world. We gaze at a morass of possible meaning and search for sense. We see a confusion of images and try to find our own identity. We explore models which we slip on and off like a suit of clothes. But they may also be stripped from our backs. Using a model is a very intelligent-seeming way of progressing, but it is wrong. The model, the objectives, the methods can only be properly understood when they are mastered. By then the artist is a captive, unable to move his own way. The more ensnared he is, the more he will defend his own chains.

Tutoring makes the student psychologically dependent. How to blow, how to hold and move a bow or hold a stick -- such things might usefully be taught. But a philosophy is bound into every move. Received technique masks its deep assumptions: A defining premise, though handed on, remains unspoken, still effective, though unnoticed.

Watch a self-possessed man walk. Lie of shoulder and stride of step will tell you about him. Each shape and contour will impart information -- the man is a walking art-form. What can we know of a battalion of soldiers marching in unison or a corps de ballet? Nothing, certainly, about the individuals within them -- except that they subscribe to a particular form of discipline. Such systems ascribe grace to those who learn the lessons best. But there are alternative 'traditions': more open, more severe, more difficult. Learn to make music as if it has never been played before!

Teachings are not necessarily untruthful but they are standard readings of the 'great narrative.' Tradition is the smoothing out of mores, practices and expectancies. Tradition is a medium of social control. Even when we alight upon some positive aspect of a tradition it is as well to be aware of the imprisoning effect it will have upon thinking and practice. Traditions are the shackles people grow to love. True grace is the manner in which we perceive all forms.

-- Eddie Prévost

Eddie Prévost is a founding member of the seminal improvisation ensemble AMM. Excerpted from No Sound is Innocent, an in-depth study of "meta-music" published in the UK in 1996.

Listen or Go Home!
A Tentacle Polemic

One of the greatest challenges facing performers of live experimental (or any) music these days is the difficulty in attracting an attentive audience. What do I mean by attentive? Well, attention is one of those slippery words . . . In the modern world of channel-surfing, cell phones, and attention deficit disorder, attention to a particular source has lost some of its meaning and could be construed to be multitasking, or as I am fond of saying, possessing an eight-track mind. For the purpose of this rant, I am referring specifically to the ability and choice to listen, to pay attention to and absorb sound in a performance setting.

Music, when emitted or transmitted from human beings, is an act of vulnerability, and I believe the listener (in this case audience member) has the right, privilege, and responsibility to honor this vulnerable act by not talking during a performance. There is great temptation -- especially if a concert or set of music does not resonate with or begets an unfavorable, visceral response in an observer -- to distract oneself by talking to friends, wait staff, even strangers. I decry this behavior and hope to persuade readers of the offensiveness of such nefarious outbursts by dispelling some erroneous, albeit longstanding, arguments to the contrary.

Some detractors will undoubtedly wish to out me as a frequent taper of experimental music shows, and thus question my ulterior motives in expressing the need for pin-dropping quietude. They may feel that my taking issue with audience chatter is purely selfish or rigid. I cannot dispute that I have been known to tape a show or two in my day. But my perception of sonic disruptions to music began long before I embarked on an amateur, personal, noncommercial stint as a sound archivist. My yearning for unspoiled sound performances began at an early age, probably when attending a perfomance by Yul Brynner in The King and I at Wolf Trap in Virginia at age 8. I remember two people behind me babbling and laughing for nearly the entire evening, and how I wanted to turn around and scratch their eyes out. I've grown since then, and have learned to manage my anger slightly better, but my ire rises and disbelief grips me whenever I hear extended verbalizing during a musical performance.

There are ways we can fool ourselves. Standing in the back of a raucous club or arena and yammering may seem innocent enough; however, not only does the shouting interfere with the ability of others to hear the music being played, but the shouter is also depriving him or herself of the experience. The argument that loud music overpowers the range and velocity of the human voice will fail if you listen carefully in almost any environment. Now I am not suggesting that people be prevented from talking in increasingly amplified musical settings -- I just want to point out the fallacy that shouting in a loud bar or whispering in a spacious theater does not impact sonic ambience.

I have also heard it said that the free-enterprise system gives the paying attendee the right to behave as he or she pleases. "I paid to get in, so if I want to talk that's your #@$^@$ing problem" is a phrase to which I have been subjected on more than one occasion. My question would be: Did you pay to see and hear music, or to get out of the rain and talk? Because if you noticed, the sign at the door said, "Dave Douglas Tiny Bell Trio, 8 pm," not "(insert your name here) talking about the cat's hairball or the new sex toy under the Yule tree." The defense of capitalism's rights and privileges would probably disappear upon reflection as to why one makes a decision to attend a music performance. I will not dispute that music can lift us up and move us to cry out, clap, or holler. The raw emotional power of music is unpredictable. Yet oddly enough, the music that tends to cause the most discomfort in audiences is that which dwells as much in a cerebral mode as an emotive one, and this, I believe, is primarily what causes people to talk distractedly during performances, almost as if they are oblivious and unmindful of the presence of others.

I'm sure some of you will write me off as a crank, and others will think "Gee, what else would you expect from a librarian?" I'll admit that when I sat down to write this I thought I would just use the whole page and write, in a huge font, SHUT THE FUCK UP OR LEAVE, YOU IGNORANT BASTARD! But I'll save that for the next time someone interrupts a sacred passage of an improvised horn solo, or when the next guy sitting at the OK Hotel back-room bar starts yapping like a bamboozled terrier during an electronic music performance by a world-famous German musician. Next time you feel the urge to talk during a performance, ask yourself why. When you figure that out, come on back for more.

Mike Marlin

Tentacle Submariner Mike Marlin is a librarian, musician, and writer who secretly listens to talk radio when everyone else has gone to bed.

Dear Lucy

Bunch o' questions for you: Why doesn't the Tentacle list gigs by straight-ahead improvisers in the Northwest? Do you only list "out jazz" improvisers because you think those straight-ahead guys aren't any good? What is "out jazz" anyway?

Downbeat in Seattle

Ahoy Downbeat,

Can I assume that by "straight-ahead" you're referring to jazz? Without a doubt, there are many fine mainstream jazz improvisers in the Northwest. Those who work on the Tentacle deeply admire and occasionally play straight-ahead jazz, but the Tentacle's purview does not include mainstream musics. For more information on straight-ahead jazz in Seattle, several publications aid and abet mainstream musics and musicians such as Earshot Jazz, the Stranger, the Seattle Weekly, and of course, the Seattle Times and P-I.

You should also know that being a great improviser or masterful player or great composer, etc., are not criteria for a Tentacle listing. We do not distinguish between "the best" improvisers in out jazz (or the master makers of the other musics within the Tentacle's purview) and those who may be less skilled in creating "out" music. Regardless of our personal admiration, abhorrence, or any other personal feelings for any group or individual, it will slight, if not insult, our fellow musicians in the community if the Tentacle attaches subjective superlatives such as "favorite," "leading," "premier," etc. to a calendar listing.

Those who know and/or believe themselves to be the best, most innovative, beloved, adored, worshipped, etc. should gracefully bask in their glory silently. Heralds are not required to trumpet greatness.

To answer your question, "What is out jazz?", here is a rough definition: Out jazz refers to the vertiginous abandonment of the timbres, tonality, and forms found in mainstream jazz. Some consider out jazz a subset of free improvisation (classic free improv recordings include AMM 1966, the intuitive music of Stockhausen, etc.), but most will agree that both musics strive for spontaneous coherence without predetermined forms, harmonies, licks, etc.

While some mainstream musics may allude to "out jazz" with brief flurries of "wild" textures (film scores often do the same thing), out jazz relentlessly assaults the conventions of playing and listening to jazz by subverting the instrumentation, accepted playing techniques (e.g., barely audible dynamics shifting from ppppp to pppp, or Keith Rowe of AMM applying a transistor radio to his guitar pickups), performance rituals (Machito repeatedly screaming "Manteca!" on Dizzy's record of the same name must surely be a forerunner to the spontaneous chanting and vocalizations by many instrumentalists), and so forth.

Some "out jazz" players have extended this subversive vision to their personal and economic lives by living collectively and distributing their music independently (Sun Ra is the most famous example), but that should be the subject of a future Tentacle article.

Of course, if words could capture the essence of music, then music would not be needed. Happily such is not the case, and experiencing the music live and on records yields the best definition.

You may be well acquainted with these recordings, but we include them here in the interest of specificity. Some outstanding and by now classic "out jazz" records include Cecil Taylor's Conquistador, Ornette Coleman's Science Fiction, Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity, and Sun Ra's Heliocentric Worlds Vols. 1 & 2. Almost any record by the Art Ensemble of Chicago or Henry Threadgill is a safe bet, too.

Happy listening!
Lucy

Dear Lucy,

You have "noise" and "new composition" on your cover. How about some definitions?

What Does Ned Love?

Ahoy WDNL:

Noise generally refers to a continuous broadband sonic assault generated by electronic devices such as pedals and amplifiers sometimes coupled with nonstandard vocal and instrumental techniques. The volume swerves from infinite quiet to (more often) the threshold of pain and beyond. Many noise gigs furnish free earplugs to the attendees, though devotees tend to bring their own ear protection. Merzbow is still considered the fountainhead of noise, though Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (1975) and some of the more "out" electroacoustic music (cf. Rune Lindblad) pioneered the genre.

New composition generally refers to through-composed music of almost any instrumentation that grapples with or at least betrays an awareness of the musical achievements of the last 50 years: the abolition of tonality and application of serial and/or aleatoric controls, new harmonic and tuning schemas, the controlled allocation of sound moving in space, etc. The December-January issue of the Tentacle features an article that summarizes the century in music and addresses the new-composition angle effectively. You may also peruse the article on-line at www.tentacle.org, though the Ink issue also includes photos of a few twentieth century innovators as well as a composition score or two.

Lucy

Dear Lucy,

You guys must have lots of industry connections. How do I get a record deal? Should I start my own label? I live in New York. Will you review my record? It's OUT OUT OUT!!!!

Gotta Obtain A Deal

Ahoy GOAD,

While we prefer that our readers treat the Tentacle as a community endeavor and a resource rather than another stop on the PR Wagon Train to the Stars, here is some generic advice that you should supplement by talking to your fellow adventurous musicians in New York.

A record deal, at least for adventurous musicians, rarely satisfies anyone's pocketbook. A few recordings become cult classics, but the scarcity of saturating radio play and haphazard distribution offered to even the most renowned boutique labels make releasing adventurous music a labor of love, not a money-making endeavor.

Although your new record sounds, er, "OUT," the Tentacle maintains a steadfast "no review" policy for CDs and other new recordings.

It might seem unfathomable why the Tentacle abjures the tidal wave of free CDs that traditionally flood music magazines. Yet reviewing CDs would unleash a torrent of material onto our shores. It would be a disservice to our fellow artists and readers to try and review new recordings without the staff and space to do the music justice.

For Northwest creators of adventurous music, a simple press release suffices to be listed in the Tentacle Northwest Artist Releases section. The Tentacle does not give preferential treatment to those who send us music, but CDs that come our way do get listened to.

Lucy

Local Composers Gather for Philanthropic Project
Artists/Organizers and Conservative Composers from Academia
Set Aside Major Political Struggle

Although riven in recent months by contention (the factional disputes over whether a cadential 6/4 should be considered a chord in its own right or merely an appoggiatura to the subsequent dominant being only the most rancorous example), Seattle's new-music community has nobly banded together for a new fund-raising recording project, selflessly offering its time and effort free of charge for a most worthy cause.

All proceeds from the sale of the just-released CD, a collection of covers of songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA arranged and performed by some of Seattle's best-known and most talented composers, will be donated to the re-upholstery of the George P. and Emmeline A. (Bipsy) Lucas Memorial Ottoman, currently residing majestically next to a Louis XVI writing desk in a corner of Gerard Schwarz's Benaroya Hall office. "We wanted to honor the Seattle Symphony for its longstanding commitment to experimental works and local composers," said project coordinator Tom Baker, "and give back to the Symphony, in this small way, some of the attention and support it has lavished on us over the decades." "When we heard of the lamentable state of disrepair into which this treasured icon of Seattle's cultural scene had fallen," added participating composer Samuel Jones, "we realized immediately what steps had to be taken, so we set aside our differences and came together as a community to help restore this ottoman to its rightful glory."

Agnetha, Benny, Björn, Anni-Frid: names redolent of grandeur, passion, heartbreak, and sheer joy; names that inspired Seattle's legitimate composers, and improvisers, too, to what many of them feel has turned out to be their finest work. One of the most thoughtful presentations on the disc, for example, is Christian Asplund's treatment of "Take a Chance On Me." The oom-pah Alberti-bass accompaniment figure from the original sounds marvelously idiomatic on Asplund's trademark harmonium. The text is sung in authentic Swedish (for once!) by Asplund's poet-spouse Lara Candland; her plaintive soprano provides a striking counterpoint to the composer's own improvised speed-metal viola licks, which make manifest the desperation implicit in the song's title.

Ethnic-instrument enthusiast Christopher Shainin provided a haunting "Fernando," scored for an uncharacteristically sparse ensemble of string quintet, two sopranos, alto, baritone, two pianos, oboe, harp, timpani, synthesizer, koto, shakuhachi, erhu, tabla, didgeridu, kalimba, gamelan, Yoruba drums, Maori nose flute, Pomeranian lkjhgfdsa, Patagonian mnbvcxz, autoharp, vibraphone, banjo, fluegelhorn, lion's roar, water gong, children's choir, eight coffee cans filled with sand, and baton twirler. In contrast to this timbral reticence is the trippy, atmospheric setting for Stratocaster and popsicle stick of "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)" by Bill Horist, clown prince of Northwest guitar improvisers. Stuart Dempster's omnipresent, ever-enthralling PVC pipe enlivens another improvisation, an extended fantasia on a motive from "Voulez-Vous," overdubbed with an unbilled cameo appearance by the unmistakable shimmering vibrancy of Ellen Fullman's Long String Instrument. Drum wizard Dave Hollinden conjures a wondrous psycho-aural illusion, somehow recreating the soaring melodies of "The Name of the Game" using only unpitched percussion. And, in a single-reed summit meeting, Paul Hoskin and Wally Shoup make raucously witty interplay out of "Knowing Me, Knowing You" -- though perhaps their collaboration loses a bit without the visual component of their distinctive performing style.

ABBA's oeuvre was treated freely by these composers as the vital, ever-fresh body of work it is, with no misguided reverence; in fact, these reworkings often illuminate profound and powerful new facets of the songs, revealing their spirit (if not their letter) in some instances better than the commercially constrained original recorded performances were able to. In one stunning example, the Degenerate Art Ensemble found in "Dancing Queen" startling parallels to an ancient Japanese folk tale about a beautiful princess possessed by malign spirits who force her to dance herself to death. Benny Andersson's seemingly innocuous lyrics, lines such as "You can dance, you can jive/Having the time of your life" or "Feel the beat of the tambourine," gain a macabre resonance in the DAE's Noh-influenced setting, especially when screamed at the top of her lungs by Haruko Nishimura.

Project curator Baker's artful (and lavish) use of guitar harmonics and bowed crotales, no less than his supremely sensitive word-setting, helps restore to "Waterloo" some of the unrequited-love wistfulness missing from ABBA's relentlessly danceable version. (A second version of "Waterloo" is Joël-Francois Durand's straightforward art-song arrangement, a fine example of his well-publicized recent apostasy in the direction of Diamond-esque neotonality.) And I think Janice Giteck has done well to replace the rather mawkish lyrics of "Thank You for the Music" with poetry and personal reflections by Native American at-risk youth.

Perhaps the most ambitious track on the 3-CD set is Christopher DeLaurenti's 37-minute contribution, a lushly assaultive sound-collage of Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Victor Herbert (DeLaurenti's favorite composer), and field recordings of the voices of homeless people and altered-state frat-boys gathered by the composer over several successive Friday nights in Pioneer Square. Underlying all this is a basso continuo purportedly built up from a granular-synthesized 0.7-second fragment of "I Do! I Do! I Do! I Do! I Do!" -- to these ears, unfortunately, rendered unrecognizable. Another interesting misfire is Gregory Nissen's; his decision to rework "Mamma Mia!" for solo piano in the style of early Donizetti was, I think, perhaps too obvious and "safe" a choice.

Of course, no project bringing together such a collection of sensitive and highly-strung (not to say pathologically touchy and humorless) artists could be entirely without controversy. One composer dropped from the recording at the last minute has made his displeasure very public. This composer, whose years of rabble-rousing and muckraking have made him no few enemies in local avant-music circles, has recently been an outspoken critic of the UW School of Music's policies regarding required ear-training courses for composers enrolled in CERTAIN[1]. He now earnestly claims that his signed statement, "I AM GOING TO BLOW UP THIS BUILDING," spray-painted in 3-foot-high letters (including the witnessing notary's seal and signature) on the music building's south wall, was misinterpreted, and believes that ultimately responsible for banishing him from the recording project was a hostile behind-the-scenes clique consisting of Paul Schell, Slade Gorton, Kenneth Starr, Jesse Ventura, the Trilateral Commission, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands -- even though in a later statement the composer admitted, "I do, however, plan to cause some damage to a randomly selected object as a protest against a very slick and calculated manipulation of ABBA's music by the elite administrators who claimed to represent us, and the farm animals whom [sic] they sleep with on a regular basis." To this threat the officers of the Washington Citizens Forum responded with a sharply worded letter in which they resolved not only to permanently revoke the composer's Washington residency, but also to "personally escort [him] to the Oregon border and then beat the shit out of [him]."

This kerfuffle aside, the recording seems poised for financial triumph, and the fervently awaited restoration of the ottoman can't be far off. The success of the project has rejuvenated Seattle's creative music community, spurring a renewed sense of, well, maybe not importance, but at least non-irrelevancy. Future collaborations? "Definitely," says Baker. "We're mulling over a wealth of ideas for similar cover projects. Maybe the Partridge Family," he suggests. "Either them or Roger Sessions. But nothing's been confirmed yet."

-- Gavin Borchert

Gavin Borchert is a Seattle-based composer and music writer.

^[1] Center for Electroacoustic Research Through Academically Incestuous Nepotism [Eds.]

Finn de siècle: The Tentacle is saddened to report the passing of yet another giant of creative music. Composer, drummer, and bandleader Edward Vesala, a pioneer of contemporary Finnish music and mentor to generations of adventurous Finnish musicians, succumbed to heart failure on December 4 at his home outside Helsinki. He was 54 years old.

Vesala recorded a series of exemplary albums for the ECM label over his career, including Nan Madol, Satu, Lumi, Invisible Storm and Nordic Gallery (both with his group Sound & Fury), and the critically lauded Ode to the Death of Jazz. From the obituary posted on the ECM Web site: "All important developments in Finnish improvisation over the last 30 years stem from his example or direct involvement, but he also influenced music beyond jazz and beyond the Finnish borders . . . as a drummer, composer/arranger, improviser, musical philosopher, and polemicist, Vesala was a unique figure. He played his own kind of jazz, yet his complete oeuvre would stretch the most far-reaching definitions of the genre . . . Rock's sound and energy were part of his palette, but so was microtonal music, the tango, music of Thailand, Korea, Bali, Vietnam, West Africa, Finnish folk music, the classical tradition from Beethoven to Lutoslawski -- all of this and more is refracted and subtly reflected in his writing."

A memorial concert was held in Helsinki on December 21.

Clifford Jarvis, 1941-1999

Percussionist Clifford Jarvis, best known for holding down the drum chair for the Sun Ra Arkestra from the early 1960s to mid-1970s, departed the earthly sphere on November 26 at age 58. The Boston native lent his inimitable touch to such classic Ra LPs as Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow, When Sun Comes Out, Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, Strange Strings, Outer Spaceways Incorporated, Atlantis, and The Solar Myth Approach -- recordings that significantly expanded the parameters of "jazz" percussion. In addition to his work with the Arkestra, Jarvis performed and recorded with many key figures of the new music, including Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Pharaoh Sanders, Lester Bowie, Sam Rivers, Reggie Workman, Archie Shepp, Alice Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, and Don Cherry, In later life he moved to England, where he remained until his death, gradually receding from the public eye. The Tentacle wishes Clifford pleasant travels on the spaceways.