Soon after he first emerged in the mid-'50s, pianist Cecil Taylor was the most advanced improviser in jazz; five decades later he is still the most radical. Although in his early days he used some standards as vehicles for improvisation, since the early '60s Taylor has stuck exclusively to originals. To simplify describing his style, one could say that Taylor's intense atonal percussive approach involves playing the piano as if it were a set of drums. He generally emphasizes dense clusters of sound played with remarkable technique and endurance, often during marathon performances. Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyone.
When The Wire published its first issue in 1982, it is doubtful that founders Anthony Wood and Chrissie Murray foresaw a future in which Heavy Metal – then derided in 'serious' music circles as an emotionally retarded, mongrel form of popular music – would share space in its pages alongside jazz, free improvisation and contemporary composition. After all, this was some time before the genre would begin its association with the 'avant' tag, and any dalliances with electronica, Ambient or musique concrète, though they certainly did take place, were not recognised as such by the post-punk firebrands of the music press.
1: Maintain a Daily Ritual. Music is like breathing, eating, walking, sleeping, drinking, pissing, and, with any luck, fucking. One must have something to play, create, and examine everyday; there are simply no vacations. Music must be a physical need and a mental compulsion in each moment of existence.
2: Live Aesthetic Immersion. One's aesthetic inclinations regarding sound should bleed over into and flow from all artistic disciplines as easily as they do from daily experience. There is no reason a sonic composition cannot be inspired by or contribute to a drawing, a tasty curry, or one's choice of socks.
3. When in Doubt, Bum Them Out. If you can't convert 'em, make 'em run crying and holding their ears. There is no shame in being a bummer. To elicit a reaction - positive or negative - is a valueless proposition and a noble pursuit in its own right.
4. Get in the Van. This is self-explanatory. Read the book, live the life.
5. Seek Strength Through Strength. Gear's gotta be carried, sleep must be forsaken, and long tours have to be survived, knowing all the while that ideas flow best when one has the stamina to let them out. Through proper consumption of wholesome fresh foods, daily strength training and sports, and copious amounts of fresh air, one can foster personal fortitude and allow room for creativity to flower.
6. Join the Family. AIDS Wolf is a nuclear family, from which flows an ever-expanding extended family network. Artistic collaborations, shared travels, exchanged stories, and general camaraderie with other bands and artists are not only motivating and inspiring but also serve as a vital metrics by which to measure one's own perceived worth.
7. Allow for Sonic Fields of Nothing. The use of negative space in music and design creates new dynamics, abstracts the obvious, and challenges both the creator and the audience.
8. Lift Anchor and Set Sail. De-anchoring compositions by dispensing with a bass guitar allows AIDS Wolf to make rhythm, often muddled, confused, and obscured with polyrhythmicality, the central feature of its performances. Lacking a "mama heartbeat", in this way, pushes the band out of predictability and puts atonality on a pedestal.
9. Become the Weird Punks. Remember when punk was weird and when weird was punk Destroy genre straight jackets and move out of the comfortable. Confrontation with norms and expectations is where the AIDS Wolf family is most at home.
Now that you have studied and committed the 9 Principles of AIDS Wolf to memory, you are ready to carry them into your daily life. Find failure and misery as you are guided by these tenets and bring them with you into the wider world.
In anticipation of Greg Ginn's forthcoming appearance in Buffalo (at Mohawk Place on March 19), take a look at this hilarious timeline of hairstyles worn by Ginn and his bandmates in the pioneering hardcore outfit Black Flag from 1976 to 1986. Fun stuff.
"Here’s a list of 10 great experimental rock bands from Japan [including Soundlab veterans Mono and World's End Girlfriend], in no particular order. Whilst all can be classified under the ‘experimental’ umbrella, most play post-rock or math rock to varying degrees" (from Sparkplugged.net).
"OK, we can all agree that reissue LPs are among the coolest things going in the music bizness today, right? Well, wait til you get ahold of the latest trend, reissue 7” records! We’re getting the party started by resurrecting the fantastic sound of The Fems. To do so, we had to travel back to the year 1982, when this single was pressed in some insignificant amount by the band and spread around the country, one copy at a time. The Fems represented early American hardcore punk at a time when speed wasn’t necessary in order to punk out and the intersection of angst and humor was a common crossroads for aspirant songwriters. Hence, the barbed humor of “Go To A Party” and “Is It Living?” alongside the primal screaming of “Order.” The Fems were a legend in their hometown of Buffalo, presiding over energy-charged crowds with loads of sarcastic banter and making themselves a party favorite in the wide-open early 80s. Their 7”EP “Go To A Party” was recorded with the vocals, drums and bass closest to the mic and the guitar somewhere in the next room – but the low, rumbling sound that resulted is a unique vision from early punk days. For frustrated collectors, it’s a must-have – but not too many copies have been pressed, as part of our effort to duplicate the original release in every way. Make us sorry, punker! If you’re in Buffalo around Christmas you can catch The Fems’ annual reunion show — but if not, this is your chance at a rare slice of punk rock greatness come back from the grave!"
"no longer just swept along" consists of installed visual works including paintings, wall drawing and sculpture in addition to media content of audio and video elements. Through the combination of these artistic medias, no longer just swept along encompasses the shifting immense cycles of nature that surrounds us such as growth and decay, the weather and the seasons, showing the significance these forces play in our lives. The exhibition will open to the public with a reception with the artist on Saturday, March 7, 2009 from 8:00 to 11:00 pm. Big Orbit Gallery is located at 30 Essex Street in Buffalo.
David Andree, a Minneapolis, Minnesota native pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in the Visual Studies Department at SUNY Buffalo, displays the unique artistic ability to combining drawing, sculpture, audio and video work into cohesive visual and conceptual statements. no longer just swept along has originated from what David writes is his “desire to investigate the same idea, of locating the self within the ever-changing systems of nature that surround us through multiple sensory experiences.” … “Creating these works has become a struggle to make implicit the temporary nature of existence – a state of constant change and decay, a world which forces continue independently from the will of any individual part.”
Toronto's burgeoning experimental music scene was featured in the December 2008 issue of The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music's monthly "Global Ear" column. Unfortunately, the article isn't available online, although here is a selection of accompanying tracks by the likes of Canaille, Joda Clement, Element Choir, Feuermusik, Darren Copeland, Barry Prophet, Tim Hecker and interestingly, Buffalo's Baczkowski/ Padmanabha Duo.
Stanford Magazine reports on the applications from psychological research Carol Dweck's work, which uses careful experiments to determine why some people give up when confronted with failure, while others roll up their sleeves and dive in.Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure—and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, “really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns.” Her 1975 article on the topic has become one of the most widely cited in contemporary psychology.
Attribution theory, concerned with people’s judgments about the causes of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions, explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term “fundamental attribution error” for our tendency to explain other people’s actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped “shift the emphasis from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions—why it matters what attributions people make.” Dweck had put attribution theory to practical use...
...[S]ome of the children who put forth lots of effort didn’t make attributions at all. These children didn’t think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: “Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” During one unforgettable moment, one boy—something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type—faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, “I love a challenge.”
Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”
My encounters with Feldman remain perversely inspirational. I liked much of Feldman's music and enjoyed texts of his that I had come upon. At the University of Buffalo, he was the philosophical emperor of the music department. I took part in the Composer's Forum which held discussions (or rather Feldman held court and we listened) and presented our music. My first concert used a 90-second through-composed soprano sax melody played through a ring-modulator to tape, slowed down to half-speed, with a now 180-second melody, ring-modulated, over-dubbed. This tape was played back at half-speed again yielding a 360-second background over which I improvised again on soprano. Feldman called me into his office the next morning. In his thick Brooklyn accent with 2 inches of cigarette ash ready to anoint me, he pronounced 'Improvisation, I don't buy it!' and dismissed me.
"At our next Composers Forum event in March 1975 I presented my Attica Brothers piece based upon the eponymous prison uprising (I was involved in some support groups and activities around this). The piece used a microtonal melody (for maximum buzz and difference tones) for electrified string quartet plus conga drums, rock drums (the beginning of my association with Bobby Previte) and orchestral percussion. The parts (written out) were conducted by time-cards. The conga player played a 16th note pulse throughout. As we were about to commence the piece in a packed concert-hall, Feldman stood up and said 'Where's his music-stand?' pointing to the conga drummer. I replied that he didn't need one as he was cued by the conductor to begin and end. Feldman got up on stage, grabbed a music-stand and placed it in front of the conga drummer saying 'Now you can play it.' Again I was called into his office the next morning and told: 'You put too much sociology in your music - music should be listened to sitting in red plush seats and your music is for sitting on the floor!'"
Saxophonist David S. Ware is ailing and in need of a kidney donor, reports Steven Joerg who heads Ware's label, Aum Fidelity. Diagnosed with kidney failure in 1999 and on dialysis ever since, Ware has continued to perform and record, with Shakti, a new record featuring a new lineup, out this month. In late December, Ware reported that treatment was no longer working effectively, and that a transplant is his only option. Various friends and family members have offered to help, but have been rejected as donors since they do note share Ware's O blood type. Ware is seeking interested donors who are under 60 years of age and who are in generally good health without diabetes and high blood pressure. The transplant would take place at New Jersey's highly-regarded Robert Wood Johnson Hospital. If you think you can help, get in touch with Joerg at 718 854 2387 or at aum@aumfidelity.com. Ware, of course, is a towering figure of avant-garde jazz, who came to light in the '70s in the bands of Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille, and who led fairly consistent quartet lineups that epitomized modern free jazz throughout the '90s and '00s, landing a major label contract with Columbia at one point but primarily recording for highly-regarded boutique labels like Aum Fidelity, DIW and Thirsty Ear.
