The majority of blogs appearing here are migrating from our Red Square Myspace site. This is to make it easier to link to individual entries. God know, I've tried on Myspace, but to no avail!
These wading blogs have migrated hundreds of miles across the blogosphere. Sadly some of the older ones did not survive the journey.
Please do not disturb their feeding grounds unnecessarily, and do keep your pet cats on leads!
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Sounds Making 'Grrrrhh' Noises: a Red Square biog.
The 2009 release by FMR Records of ‘Thirty Three’ documented the early years of Red Square, a remarkable, pioneering British group that originally formed in 1972 and broke up in 1978, before re-forming in 2009 as a result of renewed interest in their extraordinary history.
Though largely forgotten for 30 years, Red Square were a key link bridging the worlds of psychedelic rock and avant-jazz. The group also had a fierce, ideological commitment to total improvisation delivered through very big speakers. There was an almost proto-punk quixotism about their railing aural assaults on the mainstream: very few people thanked them for it, and the music on ‘Thirty Three’ was considered far too extreme for release at the time.
Since reforming Red Square have gigged regularly and released two new albums. Recent dates have included the Vortex, Resonance FM, Darkstar at the Dogstar, Oxford's Klub Kakofanney, Southend's Culture As A Dare Fringe Festival, Utrophia's Cwm Festival, the Tinderbox Festival, Oxford Improvisors, Chatham's Brutally Honest Club and Brighton's On The Edge.
They have attracted critical acclaim for both their live and recorded work, and were recently the subject of an in-depth feature by Frances Morgan in the journal Loops.
Live, Red Square remain a unique, exhilarating sonic experience, and sound like nothing you've heard before. Their new album 'UnReason: Red Square Live At The Vortex' is now available.
The groundwork for what became the Red Square sound was laid when Jon Seagroatt & Ian Staples began a musical collaboration in Southend-on-Sea, Essex in 1972, following encounters at a number of experimental music workshops.
Staples, fresh from the London underground scene, had been gigging regularly at the legendary Middle Earth Club in London with Ginger Johnson's African Drummers, alongside, amongst others, Pink Floyd and Mark Bolan. He was working with tape multi-tracking, noise, psychedelia and action painting. Staples’ electric guitar playing was a revolutionary blend of Hendrix and Beefheart, with the sonic palettes of Derek Bailey and Stockhausen.
Seagroatt, galvanized by the explorations of Johns Coltrane and Tchcai, Evan Parker, Steve Lacy, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, also drew freely on groups such as Can, Faust, Weather Report, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Soft Machine.
Both were also heavily influenced by developments in contemporary 'straight' music.
From the beginning of their collaboration they determined to improvise all of their music. Within a year they found a kindred spirit in drummer Roger Telford, a committed exponent of the free-jazz style of kit playing being pioneered at the time by Milford Graves and Sunny Murray.
The combination of electric guitar, amplified bass clarinet and drum kit gave Red Square a unique sound palette to explore, as well an instantly recognisable group sound.
The line up of Seagroatt, Staples and Telford remained constant throughout the band's six year history, as did the original commitment to total improvisation, but, given the group's wide range of influences, their improvisations drew as much on avant-rock as they did on jazz or contemporary improvised music.
Staples became adept at unleashing cunningly atonal guitar riffs, which referenced metal without ever becoming metal. These onslaughts were critiqued and counterposed by Telford's coruscating, densely-textured polyrhythms. Seagroatt moved between the two, weaving sinuous cats-cradles of fractured melody in the liminal space where metal met jazz.
Live, the group was often punishingly loud (one story recounts that a Red Square set drowned out Cliff Richard who was playing at a venue half a mile away!). Despite the support of luminaries such as Miles, then writing for NME, they frequently enjoyed a combative relationship with audiences. Their enthusiasm for playing inappropriate venues (including folk clubs and pub-rock dives), and their willingness to engage forcefully with hecklers led to a number of hurried back-door exits from gigs, and presaged the arrival of punk a few years later.
As well as their now legendary semi-squatted 'residency' in a vast, condemned Victorian hotel in Westcliff-on-Sea, Red Square played innumerable gigs (four in one day on one occasion!), benefits and student occupations, and gigged with Henry Cow, Red Brass, David Toop & Paul Burwell and Lol Coxhill. They were also active in Music For Socialism.
They released two cassette-only albums, 'Paramusic' and 'Circuitry', the latter being a live recording of a gig with Henry Cow in Southend. Tracks from both of these albums are included on 'Thirty Three'.
Red Square were in many respects years ahead of their time, and methods and sounds that they pioneered have since become common practice amongst experimental and avant-rock musicians.
Jon and Ian continued to work together after the original break-up of the group, gigging and releasing albums under the names of B So glObal, Omlo Vent and Miramar for a number of labels including Chillum, Fo Fum and Emergency Broadcast. Jon formed a writing partnership with singer Bobbie Watson which led to the formation of the trip-hop band Drift, and, later, to the punk-jazz inflected Colins of Paradise, whilst Ian developed an extensive catalogue of solo material as the Visitor.
Having been approached by FMR to release their old material, the band so enjoyed trawling through the reels of tape to choose album tracks that they decided to re-form. The group are now back gigging, some thirty years after last playing together as Red Square, and recording new choice cuts of elemental, genre-defying, avant-rock and outer-limit free-jazz rampaging.
As well as their commitment to the re-formed Red Square, the group members are also involved in other projects. Jon is a member of legendary psych-folk weirdlings, Comus, and the fusion band Consortium, Ian is a successful painter, and Roger is active in the Oxford Improvisors collective, playing with Pat Thomas, Tony Bevan and Pete MacPhail’s Nostromo.
Though largely forgotten for 30 years, Red Square were a key link bridging the worlds of psychedelic rock and avant-jazz. The group also had a fierce, ideological commitment to total improvisation delivered through very big speakers. There was an almost proto-punk quixotism about their railing aural assaults on the mainstream: very few people thanked them for it, and the music on ‘Thirty Three’ was considered far too extreme for release at the time.
Since reforming Red Square have gigged regularly and released two new albums. Recent dates have included the Vortex, Resonance FM, Darkstar at the Dogstar, Oxford's Klub Kakofanney, Southend's Culture As A Dare Fringe Festival, Utrophia's Cwm Festival, the Tinderbox Festival, Oxford Improvisors, Chatham's Brutally Honest Club and Brighton's On The Edge.
They have attracted critical acclaim for both their live and recorded work, and were recently the subject of an in-depth feature by Frances Morgan in the journal Loops.
Live, Red Square remain a unique, exhilarating sonic experience, and sound like nothing you've heard before. Their new album 'UnReason: Red Square Live At The Vortex' is now available.
The groundwork for what became the Red Square sound was laid when Jon Seagroatt & Ian Staples began a musical collaboration in Southend-on-Sea, Essex in 1972, following encounters at a number of experimental music workshops.
Staples, fresh from the London underground scene, had been gigging regularly at the legendary Middle Earth Club in London with Ginger Johnson's African Drummers, alongside, amongst others, Pink Floyd and Mark Bolan. He was working with tape multi-tracking, noise, psychedelia and action painting. Staples’ electric guitar playing was a revolutionary blend of Hendrix and Beefheart, with the sonic palettes of Derek Bailey and Stockhausen.
Seagroatt, galvanized by the explorations of Johns Coltrane and Tchcai, Evan Parker, Steve Lacy, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, also drew freely on groups such as Can, Faust, Weather Report, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Soft Machine.
Both were also heavily influenced by developments in contemporary 'straight' music.
From the beginning of their collaboration they determined to improvise all of their music. Within a year they found a kindred spirit in drummer Roger Telford, a committed exponent of the free-jazz style of kit playing being pioneered at the time by Milford Graves and Sunny Murray.
The combination of electric guitar, amplified bass clarinet and drum kit gave Red Square a unique sound palette to explore, as well an instantly recognisable group sound.
The line up of Seagroatt, Staples and Telford remained constant throughout the band's six year history, as did the original commitment to total improvisation, but, given the group's wide range of influences, their improvisations drew as much on avant-rock as they did on jazz or contemporary improvised music.
Staples became adept at unleashing cunningly atonal guitar riffs, which referenced metal without ever becoming metal. These onslaughts were critiqued and counterposed by Telford's coruscating, densely-textured polyrhythms. Seagroatt moved between the two, weaving sinuous cats-cradles of fractured melody in the liminal space where metal met jazz.
Live, the group was often punishingly loud (one story recounts that a Red Square set drowned out Cliff Richard who was playing at a venue half a mile away!). Despite the support of luminaries such as Miles, then writing for NME, they frequently enjoyed a combative relationship with audiences. Their enthusiasm for playing inappropriate venues (including folk clubs and pub-rock dives), and their willingness to engage forcefully with hecklers led to a number of hurried back-door exits from gigs, and presaged the arrival of punk a few years later.
As well as their now legendary semi-squatted 'residency' in a vast, condemned Victorian hotel in Westcliff-on-Sea, Red Square played innumerable gigs (four in one day on one occasion!), benefits and student occupations, and gigged with Henry Cow, Red Brass, David Toop & Paul Burwell and Lol Coxhill. They were also active in Music For Socialism.
They released two cassette-only albums, 'Paramusic' and 'Circuitry', the latter being a live recording of a gig with Henry Cow in Southend. Tracks from both of these albums are included on 'Thirty Three'.
Red Square were in many respects years ahead of their time, and methods and sounds that they pioneered have since become common practice amongst experimental and avant-rock musicians.
Jon and Ian continued to work together after the original break-up of the group, gigging and releasing albums under the names of B So glObal, Omlo Vent and Miramar for a number of labels including Chillum, Fo Fum and Emergency Broadcast. Jon formed a writing partnership with singer Bobbie Watson which led to the formation of the trip-hop band Drift, and, later, to the punk-jazz inflected Colins of Paradise, whilst Ian developed an extensive catalogue of solo material as the Visitor.
Having been approached by FMR to release their old material, the band so enjoyed trawling through the reels of tape to choose album tracks that they decided to re-form. The group are now back gigging, some thirty years after last playing together as Red Square, and recording new choice cuts of elemental, genre-defying, avant-rock and outer-limit free-jazz rampaging.
As well as their commitment to the re-formed Red Square, the group members are also involved in other projects. Jon is a member of legendary psych-folk weirdlings, Comus, and the fusion band Consortium, Ian is a successful painter, and Roger is active in the Oxford Improvisors collective, playing with Pat Thomas, Tony Bevan and Pete MacPhail’s Nostromo.
Comments with plug-ins on Myspace sites
Why do some cats persist in posting adverts for themselves on myspace sites? It's just weird! Also, it makes the host sites load more slowly, which is a bit annoying to the host site's hosts!
From now on we're going to delete all comments that launch plug-ins as the main page is loading. We don't mind people advertising in the 'Hi there, lovin' the great music here, please check out my new sounds and let me know what you think' vein, even though it's depressingly pointless because no-one ever does 'check out their new sounds', but stick that Soundcloud or Youtube plug-in in and we're afraid it's straight in the virtual binette for you, young and not so young sirs and ladies.
Sorry if that seems a bit heavy handed, but we really don't want to sit round watching some paint dry, whilst the site loads!
Anybody come across Downliners Sekt, by the way?
I'll share a link then; http://www.downliners-sekt.com
Click on 'releases' and download: HELLO LONELY, HOLD THE NATION. Work backwards from there, and read through their site, and make a donation!
Now that's much better, you see; I've recommended another band through our site!
From now on we're going to delete all comments that launch plug-ins as the main page is loading. We don't mind people advertising in the 'Hi there, lovin' the great music here, please check out my new sounds and let me know what you think' vein, even though it's depressingly pointless because no-one ever does 'check out their new sounds', but stick that Soundcloud or Youtube plug-in in and we're afraid it's straight in the virtual binette for you, young and not so young sirs and ladies.
Sorry if that seems a bit heavy handed, but we really don't want to sit round watching some paint dry, whilst the site loads!
Anybody come across Downliners Sekt, by the way?
I'll share a link then; http://www.downliners-sekt.com
Click on 'releases' and download: HELLO LONELY, HOLD THE NATION. Work backwards from there, and read through their site, and make a donation!
Now that's much better, you see; I've recommended another band through our site!
Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable
Re: the 'currently reading' bit of the previous blogette: Molloy, Malone Dies & the Unnamable are three novels by Samuel Beckett often grouped together as a trilogy (though not by the writer himself!), and no, they're not just for posers and people who can't make friends.
I'm part way through the last, The Unnamable, looking forward to the last sentence (because it's about 20 pages long, not just because it's the last sentence!). The novel is a worm-holing roller coaster through the mind of......who or what, you know not, but a mind racked in howling protest at the eternal avalanche of language into which it is tipped and by which it is trapped, and by means of which it is forced to be.
Having said all that, I love this from the same book:
'But let us first suppose, in order to get on a little, then we'll suppose something else, in order to get on a little further, that it is in fact required of me that I say something, something that is not to be found in all I have said up to now'.
Now that is a nice little basis for going forward in any given circumstance. Our lives viewed as a series of suppositions. We must presuppose certain things in order to proceed on our way. If we did not, we would never move, choosing instead to test the evidence and reliability of our senses. By a series of such suppositions we proceed on our way. The supposition, in this instance, is that it is incumbent upon the speaker to to say something new. A fresh supposition will carry us bobbing along the stream of language a little further still.
An unexpectedly humane, almost homely view of life.
The other thing is - much to my surprise - I found myself laughing out loud at points in all three books. There are really funny bits. I don't mean 'deliciously amusing' bits like some toffs claim to find bits of Mozart operas, I mean very-funny-so-you-laugh-out-loud bits. Fantastic.
And the other, other thing is that Beckett has a cubist-like ability to emotionally fracture a narrative flow, so that you can be shatteringly wrenched from the admittedly weird sense of normality into which Beckett has drawn you, into a breathtakingly sudden encounter with the terrifyingly un-hinged. And back again.
Just like that, as Tommy Cooper used to say.
Samuel Beckett to Francis Bacon in one move: eaaaasy!
Samuel Beckett to Tommy Cooper in one move:..........uurrmmm.....give me time, give me time. I'm working on it............
Molloy, Malone & the Unnamable. Three books by Samuel Beckett. Read them now or else we'll tell our mums to hide in your wardrobes.
I'm part way through the last, The Unnamable, looking forward to the last sentence (because it's about 20 pages long, not just because it's the last sentence!). The novel is a worm-holing roller coaster through the mind of......who or what, you know not, but a mind racked in howling protest at the eternal avalanche of language into which it is tipped and by which it is trapped, and by means of which it is forced to be.
This jolly little chap from Bacon's Three Figures At The Base Of A Crucifixion gets the overall mood just about right:
Having said all that, I love this from the same book:
'But let us first suppose, in order to get on a little, then we'll suppose something else, in order to get on a little further, that it is in fact required of me that I say something, something that is not to be found in all I have said up to now'.
Now that is a nice little basis for going forward in any given circumstance. Our lives viewed as a series of suppositions. We must presuppose certain things in order to proceed on our way. If we did not, we would never move, choosing instead to test the evidence and reliability of our senses. By a series of such suppositions we proceed on our way. The supposition, in this instance, is that it is incumbent upon the speaker to to say something new. A fresh supposition will carry us bobbing along the stream of language a little further still.
An unexpectedly humane, almost homely view of life.
The other thing is - much to my surprise - I found myself laughing out loud at points in all three books. There are really funny bits. I don't mean 'deliciously amusing' bits like some toffs claim to find bits of Mozart operas, I mean very-funny-so-you-laugh-out-loud bits. Fantastic.
And the other, other thing is that Beckett has a cubist-like ability to emotionally fracture a narrative flow, so that you can be shatteringly wrenched from the admittedly weird sense of normality into which Beckett has drawn you, into a breathtakingly sudden encounter with the terrifyingly un-hinged. And back again.
Just like that, as Tommy Cooper used to say.
Samuel Beckett to Francis Bacon in one move: eaaaasy!
Samuel Beckett to Tommy Cooper in one move:..........uurrmmm.....give me time, give me time. I'm working on it............
Molloy, Malone & the Unnamable. Three books by Samuel Beckett. Read them now or else we'll tell our mums to hide in your wardrobes.
Right. So. What's next then....??
The Red Square ImprovsInAFieldInOxfordshireMicroFestival-cum-BirthdayParty went off like a dream last weekend, and we were sufficiently encouraged by the responses from both bands and audience members to start planning for next year.
We would like to thank the following musicians and bands for playing this year, and because they were the Men From Improv who say 'Yes!', and because they went down so well, we've already asked them to come back and play again next year;
Bitten By A Monkey
Dylan Bates: violin, saw, mediaeval fiddle, overtone flute, xaphoon
Steve Myers: recorders
Roland Bates: piano
musicians from the Oxford Improvisers
David Grundy: laptop
Martin Hackett: synthesizer
Stuart Chalmers: electronics
musicians from the Brighton Safehouse Collective
Gus Garside: double bass and electronics
Dan Powell: laptop, small percussion, guitar
Chris Parfitt: soprano sax
One thing we found very interesting was the way that people who had never been exposed to this kind of music enjoyed both the music and the day itself. It seems that the setting of a small, outdoor festival with a decent PA and some lights creates a user-friendly context for improv and helps to overcome some of the suspicion that often greets experimental musics. If you're lying in a field in the sunshine with a glass of wine and a nice bun, whilst some crazee cats are busy circuit bending on stage, it's somehow all seems a little less threatening. We will certainly keep the relaxed, 'challenging music in a non-challenging environment' feel for next year.
More on this, as the collective Squarion brain expands terrabytentially to absorb the lessons learned, whilst simultaneously planning for ventures new in the sunlit uplands of the future……..
Oh. Yes. One thing for certain; we need a snappier name for the event!
Here are some photographia of said event:
Bitten By A Monkey
Brighton Safehouse Collective, and a laptop screen in bright sunlight!
David Grundy (the Oxford Improvisors) tries a radical solution to the laptop problem......
Martin Hackett (the Oxford Improvisors), and his hot-wired Korg MS10.
Red Square making grrrrhhh noises: It's our party, and we'll improvise if we want to......
....and when not making grrrrhhh noises, it's time to get behind the desk, and make sure that everyone else's grrrrhhh noises sound nice.
We would like to thank the following musicians and bands for playing this year, and because they were the Men From Improv who say 'Yes!', and because they went down so well, we've already asked them to come back and play again next year;
Bitten By A Monkey
Dylan Bates: violin, saw, mediaeval fiddle, overtone flute, xaphoon
Steve Myers: recorders
Roland Bates: piano
musicians from the Oxford Improvisers
David Grundy: laptop
Martin Hackett: synthesizer
Stuart Chalmers: electronics
musicians from the Brighton Safehouse Collective
Gus Garside: double bass and electronics
Dan Powell: laptop, small percussion, guitar
Chris Parfitt: soprano sax
One thing we found very interesting was the way that people who had never been exposed to this kind of music enjoyed both the music and the day itself. It seems that the setting of a small, outdoor festival with a decent PA and some lights creates a user-friendly context for improv and helps to overcome some of the suspicion that often greets experimental musics. If you're lying in a field in the sunshine with a glass of wine and a nice bun, whilst some crazee cats are busy circuit bending on stage, it's somehow all seems a little less threatening. We will certainly keep the relaxed, 'challenging music in a non-challenging environment' feel for next year.
More on this, as the collective Squarion brain expands terrabytentially to absorb the lessons learned, whilst simultaneously planning for ventures new in the sunlit uplands of the future……..
Oh. Yes. One thing for certain; we need a snappier name for the event!
Here are some photographia of said event:
Bitten By A Monkey
Brighton Safehouse Collective, and a laptop screen in bright sunlight!
David Grundy (the Oxford Improvisors) tries a radical solution to the laptop problem......
Martin Hackett (the Oxford Improvisors), and his hot-wired Korg MS10.
Red Square making grrrrhhh noises: It's our party, and we'll improvise if we want to......
....and when not making grrrrhhh noises, it's time to get behind the desk, and make sure that everyone else's grrrrhhh noises sound nice.
Modernity, as was.........
An acoustic rehearsal with Comus in London the other weekend. A novelty for me, because I can't remember the last time I had a rehearsal where I wasn't trailing wires and had a mixer patched-up like a pot of boiling spaghetti.
I played the soprano sax and my flootie, and we spent the time working on a new song by Glenn which will probably go on the planned new Comus release in 2010.
Before the rehearsal I had time to wander into Tate Britain. I've not been there for a long, long time, but years ago (long before Tate Mod was a twinkle in Nicholas Serota's eye), it was one of my regular haunts.
I got immediately lost by going in through the unfamiliar side entrance, but managed to retain my characteristic air of cool that transcends the merely modish, by walking briskly and faux-purposefully up the staircase (where the fuck did this come from - I'm sure it wasn't here last time....), and turning left with a nod to the Tate guide who was there to help stupid people who had lost their way. As if!
Crap. I'm in a room stuffed full of olde masters in big olde gilt frames......snatch a Tate map and pause for re-orientation under the cover of assessing something or another on one of the walls with a purse-lipped, chin-stroking air of effortless superiority worthy of the Lord Brian of Sewell himself.
Christ. This place is like Ikea. Would it help if I held the map the other way up? Are there any of those in-betweeny doors like Ikea have that so reminiscent of the secret passages in Cluedo? No. Choke a rising sense of panic, by nodding sagely - but with a aficionado's faint smile - at an imaginary aperçu I pretend to have spotted in the text explaining the olde master in front of whom I was still stranded........
.......eventually, though, through the application of advanced Squarion trigonometry and a dash of low native cunning, I found what I'd come to see; the abstract and constructivist works from the 1950's and 60's.
As an original new-town baby I've a great affection for both post-war new-town planning, and the much-maligned murals that decorated civic buildings. These gave form to the idealism and optimism which was integral to modernity.
The paintings and constructions that I sought out at the Tate are artefacts from that land that time has forgotten, pre-Thatcher Britain. They come from a time before society was shattered into a myriad competing consumer-individual-units competing for the economic advantage of themselves and their family units over all the other competing consumer-individual-units.
They come like Jacob Marley's ghost, to warn.........
I would like to commend the following to your attention;
Alan Davie, Roger Hilton, Mary Martin, Kenneth Martin, Peter Lanyon & Anthony Hill. The list could go on, but here are some pictures that I grabbed off the interweb to whet the appetite;
Patrick's Delight - Alan Davie
January 1964 - Roger Hilton
Expanding Permutation - Mary Martin
Screw Mobile (1969) - Kenneth Martin
Painting - Peter Lanyon
Construction - Anthony Hill
I was particularly taken with Mary Martin's 'Inversions' (1966), below;
It is an example of 'process' art, similar in intent to 'process' music.
For more on this work click here.
Oh yes - Alan Davie was also an improvisor in music, check out this with the great Oxo;
I played the soprano sax and my flootie, and we spent the time working on a new song by Glenn which will probably go on the planned new Comus release in 2010.
Before the rehearsal I had time to wander into Tate Britain. I've not been there for a long, long time, but years ago (long before Tate Mod was a twinkle in Nicholas Serota's eye), it was one of my regular haunts.
I got immediately lost by going in through the unfamiliar side entrance, but managed to retain my characteristic air of cool that transcends the merely modish, by walking briskly and faux-purposefully up the staircase (where the fuck did this come from - I'm sure it wasn't here last time....), and turning left with a nod to the Tate guide who was there to help stupid people who had lost their way. As if!
Crap. I'm in a room stuffed full of olde masters in big olde gilt frames......snatch a Tate map and pause for re-orientation under the cover of assessing something or another on one of the walls with a purse-lipped, chin-stroking air of effortless superiority worthy of the Lord Brian of Sewell himself.
Christ. This place is like Ikea. Would it help if I held the map the other way up? Are there any of those in-betweeny doors like Ikea have that so reminiscent of the secret passages in Cluedo? No. Choke a rising sense of panic, by nodding sagely - but with a aficionado's faint smile - at an imaginary aperçu I pretend to have spotted in the text explaining the olde master in front of whom I was still stranded........
.......eventually, though, through the application of advanced Squarion trigonometry and a dash of low native cunning, I found what I'd come to see; the abstract and constructivist works from the 1950's and 60's.
As an original new-town baby I've a great affection for both post-war new-town planning, and the much-maligned murals that decorated civic buildings. These gave form to the idealism and optimism which was integral to modernity.
The paintings and constructions that I sought out at the Tate are artefacts from that land that time has forgotten, pre-Thatcher Britain. They come from a time before society was shattered into a myriad competing consumer-individual-units competing for the economic advantage of themselves and their family units over all the other competing consumer-individual-units.
They come like Jacob Marley's ghost, to warn.........
I would like to commend the following to your attention;
Alan Davie, Roger Hilton, Mary Martin, Kenneth Martin, Peter Lanyon & Anthony Hill. The list could go on, but here are some pictures that I grabbed off the interweb to whet the appetite;
Patrick's Delight - Alan Davie
January 1964 - Roger Hilton
Expanding Permutation - Mary Martin
Screw Mobile (1969) - Kenneth Martin
Painting - Peter Lanyon
Construction - Anthony Hill
I was particularly taken with Mary Martin's 'Inversions' (1966), below;
It is an example of 'process' art, similar in intent to 'process' music.
For more on this work click here.
Oh yes - Alan Davie was also an improvisor in music, check out this with the great Oxo;
It's Kaoss, Jim, but not as we know it.....
Since we re-formed Red Square I've been using a pair of Boss PS2 pedals for real-time, live transformation of the horns, a technique I developed in a previous band, the Colins Of Paradise. But I've also had an irrepressible desire to investigate transformational processes more thoroughly.
So I've bought a Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad.
And these are my thoughts, as the KP3 and I, over time, become old friends with a shared wealth of amusing anecdotes and fond memories of the first time I hit the power button............
**********
Because the Kaoss pad uses new techniques of sound sculpting and introduces a whole new sound-scape into Red Square, I felt the need to find a system, or process, to aid assimilation.
I had an idea of the kind of sound material that I wanted to generate with the KP3, but I needed an 'in', which would allow for an incremental development of knowledge and, eventually, for an intuitive relationship with it's sound control elements, such that I have with those of the horns, the PS2s and Cubase.
I have been interested in the tension that arises between the idea of an improvised music and the elements that are lost or added when that music is recorded. (For example, after a few listenings it is possible to 'predict' what is going to happen next).
I spun this idea round and decided to experiment with adding previously recorded material to live improvisation in the form, initially, of samples of my soprano saxophone extracted from earlier Red Square rehearsals. These would be like 'snapshots' from an earlier time, partially de-contextualised. The samples would be subject to processing, as an old family photograph is transformed by speculation about it's origin and subject matter.
The result, in both instances, is the development of a narrative rooted in the imagination and creativity of the interpreter.
My initial tasks are to find appropriate samples and suitable transforming processes within the KP3, and thereafter to work at developing the intuitive, gestural control of the KP3's various pots, sliders, buttons and touch-pad that I mentioned earlier.
I think that this will mean putting to one side traditional instrumental 'expertise', and starting from the basis that my role is transformational, not generative; that I do not produce the sounds that are heard using traditional instrumental skills at the moment in which they are heard.
I may have taken them and trimmed them to length from earlier rehearsals to which I have listened, and from which I have selected. But once loaded into the KP3 they play, if looped, for eternity.
Initially, therefore, I am obliged to do nothing more than listen.
************
An initial thought; looped, the samples have a periodicity absent from the original recordings. How can this periodicity fit into the free flowing interconnections of Red Square improvisations, where rhythm has precedence over metre?
Hmmmmmmm.........
A cliff-hanging page-turner, if ever I saw one.............
.........more, doubtless, to follow........
Jon
So I've bought a Korg KP3 Kaoss Pad.
And these are my thoughts, as the KP3 and I, over time, become old friends with a shared wealth of amusing anecdotes and fond memories of the first time I hit the power button............
**********
Because the Kaoss pad uses new techniques of sound sculpting and introduces a whole new sound-scape into Red Square, I felt the need to find a system, or process, to aid assimilation.
I had an idea of the kind of sound material that I wanted to generate with the KP3, but I needed an 'in', which would allow for an incremental development of knowledge and, eventually, for an intuitive relationship with it's sound control elements, such that I have with those of the horns, the PS2s and Cubase.
I have been interested in the tension that arises between the idea of an improvised music and the elements that are lost or added when that music is recorded. (For example, after a few listenings it is possible to 'predict' what is going to happen next).
I spun this idea round and decided to experiment with adding previously recorded material to live improvisation in the form, initially, of samples of my soprano saxophone extracted from earlier Red Square rehearsals. These would be like 'snapshots' from an earlier time, partially de-contextualised. The samples would be subject to processing, as an old family photograph is transformed by speculation about it's origin and subject matter.
The result, in both instances, is the development of a narrative rooted in the imagination and creativity of the interpreter.
My initial tasks are to find appropriate samples and suitable transforming processes within the KP3, and thereafter to work at developing the intuitive, gestural control of the KP3's various pots, sliders, buttons and touch-pad that I mentioned earlier.
I think that this will mean putting to one side traditional instrumental 'expertise', and starting from the basis that my role is transformational, not generative; that I do not produce the sounds that are heard using traditional instrumental skills at the moment in which they are heard.
I may have taken them and trimmed them to length from earlier rehearsals to which I have listened, and from which I have selected. But once loaded into the KP3 they play, if looped, for eternity.
Initially, therefore, I am obliged to do nothing more than listen.
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An initial thought; looped, the samples have a periodicity absent from the original recordings. How can this periodicity fit into the free flowing interconnections of Red Square improvisations, where rhythm has precedence over metre?
Hmmmmmmm.........
A cliff-hanging page-turner, if ever I saw one.............
.........more, doubtless, to follow........
Jon
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