jon abbey

nothing, really. ask Clem Strauss why he felt compelled to go there on this thread, not me.

um, I've been here for a while, and you're the one who brought up the entirely irrelevant topic, reported thoroughly inaccurately as usual (no wonder you never got a real journalist job). I just clarified it, since your secondhand, half-assed reporting and the actual piece bear no relation. and again with the referring to yourself in the plural, what an endlessly amusing conceit. you contain multitudes, I know.

FWIW, here's the excerpt in question, albeit in the writer's version, not the somewhat edited one that ran: ===================================================== What does today's electroacoustic improvised music have in common with the pop song? Apparently nothing. EAI is everything pop is not: it's predominantly slowmoving, structurally amorphous, studiously avoids regular rhythm, and there aren't many notes. Anything remotely resembling a singable melody or a standard chord progression is right out. And there are no lyrics. Make no mistake, EAI is serious stuff, and its empty samplers, inputless mixing boards and table guitars arouse passionate discussion among devotees in specialist online newsgroups. And yet, on May 19th 2004, the closing set of AMPLIFY 2004, EAI's premier showcase festival curated by EAI's premier label Erstwhile Records, began with a song by Prince. Or at least the lyrics of a song by Prince (the chorus appeared later), delivered simply and patiently in the melancholy cadence of Viennese laptopper Christof Kurzmann. The song in question, which eventually morphed into a long stretch of typically exquisite EAI, was "Sometimes It Snows In April", an appropriate enough choice for Kurzmann's duo with guitarist Burkhard Stangl, Schnee (German for snow). "If we'd played on the second day of the festival it would have been completely different," Kurzmann recalls with a wry smile, "but I felt we needed a reaction to four days of reductionism. I asked Margareth Kammerer and Adeline Rosenstein, who were in the audience, to come in with the backing vocals when I gave them a cue. But I didn't tell [festival organiser and Erstwhile boss] Jon Abbey what we were going to do. I don't know if he liked it!" Abbey evidently liked it enough to release it – schnee_live was the third of five ErstLive albums culled from that year's AMPLIFY festivals.

actually, Dan exaggerated that part for effect and for an effective lead for the piece, because those guys ended the festival I curated in Berlin with a 33 minute Prince cover. and the end result was that I released a CD of the set, so not a very good point all in all, little boy. P.S., the Austrian's name is Christof Kurzmann, one of the more interesting musicians around.

also, when it is relevant, it tends to be in projects involving musicians who have forgotten more about classical music history than Mr. Silly Rabbit will ever know (Tilbury, Rowe).

you're right, I did. that's certainly true, although even more pointless to this discussion, in my opinion. you can't be an expert on everything, even if you think you are (ahem, Mr. Strauss).

see, this is where you show your ignorance in your haste to write off an area you know little about. you're making connections that don't exist, not to mention just making shit up. I'm sure there are plenty of areas of music you know a ton about, and plenty of areas you know way more about than I do, but this isn't one of them. and your three card monte style of posting may work with some people, but I can tell there's nothing under any of your shells on this topic, sorry.

seriously, man, this "us" conceit you insist upon is about as accurate as 2006 Bruce Springsteen thinking he speaks for the working-class. I'd say I've heard a fair amount of classical electroacoustic music, although nowhere near as much as someone like Keith Whitman has. it tends to not interest me very much, with a handful of huge exceptions (Xenakis, Stockhausen-Telemusik, Ashley-Automatic Writing, Riley-You're Nogood, Dockstader-Apocalypse and Quatermass, Parmegiani-De Natura Sonoorum and La Creation Du Monde, Ferrari-Presque Rien, probably a few others). I don't think it's so directly connected to EAI, though; I know plenty of people who like one of those areas quite a bit and not the other (both ways), my darling Clementine being a local example.

you, just you, silly rabbit.

again, I don't really agree with the way you divide things here. first of all, there really is no "prize" in this world, even many of the biggest names have to take a full-time job or rely on others for financial support. the only prize is in funding institutions or the academic world, and people generally have to water down their art a fair amount to get those, that's not the artists I'm talking about. but more importantly, what plenty of artists enjoy doing (or more strongly, need to do to live with themselves) is trying to create something genuinely new. you may think that's fruitless or a waste of their time, and you may even be right (although I don't think so), but that's what they feel compelled to do, just as much as the "folks you enjoy the most".

not sure why I get the blame, I was only talking about music. Mr. Strauss was the one who made it personal.

nope, I'm saying that clementine/D. Strauss isn't very funky, no matter what he listens to. that's all I'm saying.

nah, you're a white boy, just like me, sorry. I listen to plenty of Fela and hiphop and whatever also, but I don't go around claiming ultra-funkiness, or trying to pretend to be something I'm not (feel free to take that on multiple levels).

oh, man, now I know you're either just busting my chops or deaf. or both? Matmos? really? I don't even think Drew Daniel would agree with you there.

it's spelled Lilburn, not Lillburn. ok, silly rabbit, you win, not sure how I can argue with such a skewed perspective as that one. it did make me laugh, though...

I think you probably meant to type "outside of the mainstream", no? avant-garde does literally mean 'vanguard' in French. the rest of your post makes some sense to me, although I think it's a pretty simplistic reduction. first of all, no one really uses the term 'avant-garde' anymore, and I think it's completely healthy to try to do something "new" within your own work as an artist. obviously you can't be totally sure that no one else has done a similar thing before, no one's heard everything. but that doesn't mean you can't try, you may think it's a fruitless pursuit, but I don't think that's true, and neither do plenty of others. anyway, my original point was that there is a lot of groundbreaking going on in the EAI world over the last 6-7 years, no matter what Clementine/D. Strauss babbles to the contrary, so if someone is looking for an "avant-garde" which has some roots in jazz, that might be one place one might look. I wasn't proclaiming anything more than that, I was just surprised it wasn't mentioned in the first nine pages. that's it.

oh, silly rabbit, you're still sticking with the "we" construction? I'd be more impressed if along the way to writing off an area of music, you'd mentioned a single EAI record or musician, but I doubt you've really heard much of it. the Teitelbaum stuff you cite also doesn't fit, although he was certainly working with live electronics early on (I was in the front row at that 1994 Merkin show that got released). racist. Boris are a sometimes good Japanese rock band. the Boredoms were done being interesting about a decade back, coincidentally around the time THE REAL D. STRAUSS stopped paying much attention to music.

I know I'm in way over my head here, but ignorance hasn't stopped me before. Don't think I've ever heard any EAI - and don't think I'd probably dig it all that much given the sound of it here - but while I've no doubt that EAI may be avant-garde (or avant-gourde if you'd rather), Jon's description above makes me wonder if it can even be considered "jazz." no, it can't. my original point in posting was that there is no avant-garde (in the actual sense of the word) in jazz anymore, and there's likely never going to be any ever again. as the previously cited John Butcher says, "jazz is a historical genre".

hehe, Phil Kline. too funny.

this whole "we" thing is the funniest part of your persona. it's a shame, you know a lot about music, but you're clearly unable to admit that you have blind spots.

that's all I was trying to do, my real name and his real name.

have you ever read any of your own posts? and, no, I haven't released a record from musicians from every single country in the world, great point. I wasn't equating Erstwhile and EAI, but I can play that way also, even though I'm just one guy running one label out of my apartment, not a whole genre. but if you want to list countries, I've released discs by musicians from the US (NYC, Boston, Chicago), the UK, Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and Australia. is there another improv label who's covered that much geographic ground in their first 50 releases? Wolf Eyes are generally pretty boring since Aaron Dilloway left, Braxton collab included. Dilloway's duo with Lasse Marhaug in the ErstQuake fest here a few weeks ago was pretty mindmelting, though, hopefully the recording of that turned out well.

I have had actual cashcheckmoneyorder transactions with Clem, and his name is not neither Dave nor Strauss. So let's move on about that. whatever you say, Jim, but I'm going to stick with my "incorrect" belief. I'm not sure why he doesn't want to be outed, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.

yeah, both of those guys (especially John) work in EAI contexts, but that duo isn't really one of them. when I told John I was coming to see them at the Knitting Factory a few years ago, he said "why? you're going to hate it!". I didn't exactly hate it, but the point is made. back on topic, I'm not sure how successful some kind of "fusion" (sorry to use such a loaded term) between jazz and EAI can be, it seems like oil and water to me. if this is something you are interested in, though, the two 2006 releases by Otomo's New Jazz Orchestra fit the bill. the first is the one I prefer, just titled 'ONJO': http://www.doubtmusic.com/dmf-102_e.html with Axel Dorner, Mats Gustafsson and Cor Fuhler as sidemen (!). the strategy here is generally to keep the EAI and the jazz parts separate, one then the other, which is probably why it's reasonably successful. Otomo's other ONJO disc from this year is a track for track cover of Out To Lunch. I don't think that this (or a cover of Ascension) is avant garde in any way, but it's interesting at least, again with Axel, Cor and Mats supplementing the core Japanese band: http://www.doubtmusic.com/dmf-108_e.html

FWIW, neither of these projects are EAI, both incorporate musicians from the EAI world (Otomo in the Rova thing, Kevin Drumm and now Lasse Marhaug in the Territory Band), but both projects are deeply rooted in the free jazz aesthetic.