c'était demain (il est une machine à danser)

كان هذا غدا

 

This really was tomorrow - pipping Schaeffer and crew to the concrete post by a few years (although S likely was unaware) and done using wire recorder rather than tape-tape. 

72 hours of Love

 

Now I want to hear the 72-hour version! 

On the same record, there's also "Water Music"

I'm interested in these composer dudes who just do one or two or maybe three tape / electronic pieces - and then revert to the orchestral / choral palette. 

Takemitsu also did this electro-acoustic piece  - harp + tape 

Other dabblers include Ligeti, Boulez, and Henri Sauguet, who did just the one concrete piece, among my absolute favorite pieces of electronic music ever

Ligeti's efforts:"Glissandi" and "Artikulation" 

Wonder why Kubrick didn't use either of these in 2001?

Boulez bits: 

And this job has some tape in amidst the tiddlybonk 

What disinclined these chaps from going any further? 

Ligeti expressed frustration: ""I am in a prison. One wall is the avant-garde; the other is the past. I want to escape."

Yet according to this liner note chappie, Ligeti had mastered how to express emotion through tape rather than the usual gimmickry and discontinuous sound-events

munmusik / det här var imorgon

 

música en la boca (canto)

 

Another great Beatriz Ferreyra record from Room40 -  Canto+

Listen and buy here 

Release rationale: 

".... Beatriz Ferreyra is one of only a few female concrète composers who were active across the second half of the 20th century through to today. Her work, which is still very much an active investigation, is simultaneously complex and elegantly simple. Often drawing upon singular object of focus, Ferreyra’s use of tape and other forms of manipulation radically reconfigure her chosen sound materials, opening them outward.

"Canto+, collects works from almost 40 years of her life in music and pays homage to her unerring interests in dynamism, rhythm, voice and the morphic potentials of concrète materials. Two of the works are also dedication to close friends; Jingle Bayle’s (to François Bayle) and Au revoir l’Ami (to Bernard Bashet). This edition picks up where Echos+ leaves off and opens her sound worlds even further." 

mouth music (recherches sur la voix)

via Keith Fullerton Whitman's  YouTube archive of Creel Pone releases

Was this one (CP 216) ever actually released?

info:

Three of the singles released by Les Disques ICEM-CEL; the in-house label of the Institut Coopératif De L'Ecole Moderne, following in the education models of Célestin Freinet & usually accompanying the "Art Enfantin" journals... "Recherches Sur La Voix" (1972) surveys experimental & extended vocal techniques as implemented & carried-out by composer Jean-Louis Maudrin & his students. "Musiques Electroniques" (1973) offers four Electro-Acoustic pieces by Lionel Tasquier ("Hiroshima"), Jacky Pasquier ("Musique Du Désert"), Pascal Panizut & Sandrine Lanoux ("Larsen Et Percussion"), and Dominique Richard & Jacky Pasquier ("Embouteillage"). "Musiques Concrètes" (1974) has a side of Jean-Louis Maudrin pieces ("Voix", "Le Petit Canard", "Cithare à L'Envers", "Percussions à L'Envers", "Voix + Tube à Musique") followed by individual ones by M. Debray ("Je T'Aime") and Jacky Chassane ("L'Orage"). Of course the "Electronic Music by Children" dynamic has been full-well explored here (listen to the flexi-disc reproduced as part of the initial 'Creelpolation' volume) but this is an extremely great example of how far the various alternate educational/belief systems have embraced experimental & Avant-Garde music at a fundamental, introductory level. Of the 20-odd ICEM disques, these three were the only ones we've been able to turn up, and while a stash of the "Art Enfantin" magazine was found, none of them line up w/ these particular titles... for now, enjoy the music!

musique de bouche / musique de bec / musique de museau

aka mouth music / beak music / snout music

"For harpsichord, birds,human voice, pigs"

Mâche it up selector

you, Berk!

Watch this - https://vimeo.com/255347738 -  for a reconstruction of Ernest Berk's avant choreography accompanied by Berk's own electronic music,  organised by Christoph Winkler in early 2018 and titled "The Complete Expressionist". The piece will be staged again in Berlin on September 3rd and 4th this year.

Reconstruction rationale:

"On three consecutive nights at HAU2, a rich programme of performances and lectures will explore the life and legacy of choreographer, electronic music composer, improviser, dance therapist, and pedagogue Ernest Berk. Berk’s innovative, multifarious career spanned six decades and reflected deep involvement in leftist politics and devoted interest in non-Western aesthetics.... 
Berk opened a studio in Camden, London and began dedicating himself more seriously to the composition of electronic music and musique concrète, at first mainly for his own performances but then also for theatre, television, and film. His synthesis of musique concrète and movement made him one of the most visionary in a wave of pioneering electronic music composers....  It wasn’t until the 1980s that Berk would return to Germany – this time to Berlin, where he began teaching music therapy and improvisation at both the performing arts and music departments at the Arts university, Hochschule der Künste (now Universität der Künste)....

In “The Complete Expressionist”, the celebrated and versatile Berlin choreographer Christoph Winkler will oversee the long-overdue reconstruction of Ernest Berk’s dance pieces and the performance of selected musical compositions as live tape concerts.... Whereas some performances strive to provide accurate reconstructions of original pieces, others will reference the originals through performativity or feature new compositions that pay tribute to Berk through adherence to his texts about performance. The evening, which resembles programme cycles typical of the 1960s and 70s in its eclectic collaging of short works, includes solo dances, duets, and group pieces both pre-composed and improvised. A lifelong believer in and practitioner of nudism, in the 1970s Berk regularly hosted “trance dance sessions” at his studio in which he improvised repetitive electronic rhythms and dancers moved, naked, in repetitive gestures." 

A couple of people associated with the PAN label - Rashad Becker and Pan  Daijing - were involved in "The Complete Expressionist".

"These sessions will be reenacted via two pieces, and group A will provide the live soundtrack using samples of Berk’s original rhythmic patterns. In collaboration with Pan Daijing, Rashad Becker will use fragments from Berk’s original material but also present new material inspired by Berk’s working methods, musical structures, and textual instructions.

"A short BBC film clip about Berk, select video art pieces, and talks by British experimental musician Ian Helliwell and theatre and dance researcher Patrick Primavesi will round out the presentations. Listening stations featuring Berk’s numerous compositions will also be installed in the HAU2 foyer."

Damn would love to have heard the Berk tuneage on those listening stations!

All that exists out there is an unfindable private press album in a very small run presumably done for the dance performances, and some contributions to a library album, An Album Of Space And Science Fiction Tracks And Unusual Brass Fanfares, equally unfindable.



Actually that's not quite true - two tunes appeared on the CD with Ian Helliwell's Tape Leaders book, "Chigger Sound 1" and "No Fish or Oh Mr Bard"

But the vast majority of his music, some 230 compositions, languish out of earshot.

But they still exist - safely kept if inaccessible to most everybody who'd be interested - in an archive in Cologne:

Content:
Berk, Ernest, 1909-1993, dancer, choreographer. 

The estate of Ernest Berk: 

The Historical Archive of the City of Cologne has been home to the artistic legacy of Ernest Berk since April 1994: audio tapes with accompanying works directories, a tape recorder, concert program, newspaper articles and letters. This hitherto neglected estate opens up the possibility of exploring another area of ​​Berk's artistic activity, which has hitherto been predominantly known as a dancer and choreographer: the composition of electronic music in the field of tension between "musique concrète" and "modern dance" - two terms, Berk has often chosen as the motto of his performances. 

The life of Ernest Berk:

Ernest Berk was born on October 12, 1909 in Cologne, from where he worked as a solo dancer and choreographer at various locations after training at the Cologne Wigman Institute (expressive dance) and at the Rheinische Musikschule (composition). 

In 1934 Berk went to England with his wife Lotte. Here was his ambition to make new forms of dance public through a wide range of art. In 1955 he founded his own studio for electronic music in London. With his instruments, he created a complete work of about 230 tape compositions for ballet, expressive dance, film and television. In 1985, Berk followed a call to the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, where he expanded his activities through teaching, as an actor in the theater and in feature films. On September 30, 1993, Ernest Berk died in Berlin.

Find list by Martin Köhler 

Contains: 

correspondence, personal documents, production and teaching materials, audio tapes, photos 

Notices: Closed until: 01.01.2024 
Amount: 22 boxes, approx. 14.00 meters of tape


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Here's something I found online that may well be Berk's music - it's not identified as such - as the score to an "unrehearsed live performance with Peter Donebauer, Simon and dancer Ernest Berk" from the late Seventies..


In Earnest 1979 - clip from Peter Donebauer on Vimeo.


Then there's Berk's score to this short film by David Gladwell.




Public Information were supposed to reissuing some Berk music but they've gone awfully quiet recently - last release was 2016. 

shadok boksing

wiki entry entiere

"Les Shadoks is an animated television series created by French cartoonist Jacques Rouxel (26 February 1931 – 25 April 2004)[1] which caused a sensation in France when it was first broadcast in 1968–1974.

The Shadoks were bird-like in appearance (in the tradition of cartoon birds they had beaks with teeth), were characterised by ruthlessness and stupidity and inhabited a two dimensional planet.

Another set of creatures in the Shadok canon are the Gibis, who are the opposite to the Shadoks in that they are intelligent but vulnerable and also inhabit a two-dimensional planet.

Rouxel claims that the term Shadok obtains some derivation from Captain Haddock of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin and the Gibis (who wear Bowler hats, which unlike their heads, contain their brains) are essentially GBs (Great Britons).

The Shadoks were a significant literary, cultural and philosophical phenomenon in France.

Even today, the French occasionally use satirical comparisons with the Shadoks for policies and attitudes that they consider absurd. The Shadoks were noted for mottos such as:

"Why do it the easy way when you can do it the hard way?"
"When one tries continuously, one ends up succeeding. Thus, the more one fails, the greater the chance that it will work."
"If there is no solution, it is because there is no problem."
"To reduce the numbers of unhappy people, always beat up the same individuals."
"Every advantage has its disadvantages and vice versa."
"If there is one chance out of a 1000 to succeed, rush failing the 999 first tries."
The Shadoks had five monosyllabic words in their language: "Ga", "Bu", "Zo", "Meu" and "Ni" (French spelling). But their brain had only four cells. So they could only remember the last four ones heard.

The Shadoks were also noted for their seemingly useless and endless pumping — as the Shadok say: "Better to pump even if nothing happens than to risk something worse happening by not pumping".

In 1973 The Shadoks appeared on Thames Television, London's ITV company, in the early evening. Kenneth Robinson provided the narration in English."


The Shadoks music by Robert Cohen-Solal appeared back in the late Sixties - or some of it  anyway- on this Prospective 21e Siecle release

Robert Cohen-Solal Shadoks (7:47)
A1a – Les Rumeurs Géophysiques De La Planète Shadok
A1b – Les Démêlés D'Un Shadok À Bicyclette Sur Une Route Et Sur, Sous Et Dans Des Escaliers
A1c – Visite Médicale Chez Le Sorcier-Psychanalyste-Plombier
A1d – La Machine À Pomper
A1e – Le Combustible « Cosmogol 999 »


Was reissued in its entirety not so long ago, here is a megamix sampler






below, other Cohen-Solal from an animation or short film, unofficially reissued by a micro-label that was actually the precursor to Creel Pone

musique de bouche (son champion)

in my Top 5 all-time electronic tape concrete etc toons

from this #1 electronofiend fetish object

                                      


amazingly nobody's properly scanned and disbursed to the commons the inner booklet

that's all i could find



maybe i should scan my own?

and likewise zero information out there about the making of "Ponomatopees" '

you tend to assume everything is known, documented, historicized, archived...  simply because so much nonsense and inanity is thoroughly covered .... but there are plenty of gaps, untold stories...

likewise I've never really heard the story told of how the Prospective 21eme siecle imprint got started,  who was in charge of it, and why it was over so quickly after such a short, intense burst of activity - about 35 records in around three-four years.

nobody even seems to know who the designer was

perhaps the story is out there in French but nothing's ever turned up when i've gone a-searchin'

szájzene / ez holnap volt

this was tomorrow

Interesting chap, John Pfeiffer - he helped RCA develop stereo and quadraphonic techniques

Also produced a couple of Tomita albums, including my favorite The Planets, which includes this marvel of stereophonia



Although that said, the version on YouTube appears to actually be in mono, annoyingly!

Worth searching out on vinyl (and be sure to go with the 1976 original, rather than the later digi-ed up revisiting)



Like the mispelling of the title there - "dawn chores"!

And produced a shitload of classical on the RCA Victor Red Seal and Victrola imprints

In terms of his own music, however, Electronomusic was Pfeiffer's only recording, sadly

Never noticed before the cool parentheticals behind each title:

Warm-Up, Canon And Peace [For Inharmonic Side Band] 7:28
Reflection Of A String [For Contraformer] 3:07
Drops [For Programmer And Sines] 2:47
Moments [Events For Parametric Blocks] 6:37
Take Off [For Metric Transperformer] 3:32
Forests [Modes For Alphormer And Set] 12:52
Pavone [A Duotonic Transform] 3:20
Orders [For Sequential Sines] 5:45
After Hours [For Ordered Simpliformer] 3:05

mouth music (chanson de geste)

get mash up

middle bit of this (from about 3.22 in), aka, "Danse", gets quite proto-junglistic

made in 1970!

Petite Suite (1970) I.Prélude II. Arioso III. Danse IV. Sérénade V. Toccata Groupe de Recherches Musicales de L'O.R.T.F. Each deliberately concise piece refers to a traditional musical form, both anecdotally and instrumentally. Successively: "Prelude", tuning and instrumental departure; "Arioso", dramatic form located between the air and the recitative (moans, cries, breaths, etc.); "Dance", simple and steady rhythm and energetic increase of contents; "Serenade", serenade (violin melody, vocals, music boxes, laughter, lullabies); "Toccata", finally, the brilliance, the fantasy and the virtuosity. The original elements of drum and guitar are due to Michel Foudrinoy and Jean-Pierre Vassout.

Mundmusik (Kayn in the membrane)

One of the first electronic avant-classical albums I acquired was this deep purple Deutsche Grammophon release from 1970 with this on one side and Luigi Nono's Contrappunto Dialettico Alla Mente on the other. Only $3! Those were the days.

Roland Kayn's very productive 1968:

"The electronic composition Cybernetics I is realised in a provisional studio at the NDR, Hamburg. Kayn also completes the first version of Cybernetics II for seven choir groups, sound producers, sound sources, live electronics, and tape. Preparatory work for Cybernetics III begins, using only vocal sounds of humans and animals as the starting material."

musica per la bocca (si si nono)

musique de bouche

beak music (kiwi krew)

bonus electropastoralism





"inscape" is from Gerard Manley Hopkins right?

there are another two Lilburn inscapes out there on YouTube

μουσική στο στόμα (mousikí sto stóma)

"A Video on putting across score reading regarding the graphic notaion of Anesis Logothetis. A film by Julia Logothetis, kindly supported by "Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien"."

repeat play of this



and this too i think

musica de boca (luis luis)