Peripherique

»Pleasure grows with knowledge,« Dante once wrote. I haven’t a clue about this music when I push the play button of the CD player. The red & white cover suggests »improvised«, and it is a trio. I read someone plays »live electronics«… I can’t help thinking: as opposed to dead electronics? I’m waiting, I wait, the waiting becomes weighty. After 20 minutes I’m close to being bored and nervous. One could say: file under experimental-indus-drony-improv or something. High whistling pitch, urban poetry, mechanic modernism, western despair. Specialisation in specialism, not exactly »wide open«. Pause: »Das generalisierte Geheimnis steht hinter dem Spektakel als das entscheidende Komplement zu dem, was es zeigt und, wenn man den Dingen auf den Grund geht, als seine wichtigste Operation. Die bloße Tatsache, nunmehr ohne Replik zu sein, hat dem Falschen eine neue Qualität verliehen.« (Guy Debord: »Kommentare zur Gesellschaft des Spektakels«, Edition Tamat.) Back in the 60s, music market was producing »covers«. One hit would have its German, Italian, French version. Quality was not the thing that really mattered, since the product aimed at adding local flavours to the song. It is still happening, but worldalisation dressed up the operation nicely and was widely supported by the artists. To me, this record is archetypal of a common misunderstanding in genres and music(s). It rather »sounds like« and has most of the ingredients you’ll need to be sure that it is what it is. But in itself, or as music, it doesn’t enter something or go somewhere. It has no centre, no particular duration nor timing, not much sound focus or frame and very few directions proposed. It is like a series of slices, a catalogue of possibilities, tightly following a fixed aesthetic (I would rather say stuck aesthetic, transgression is surely too risky.) As to interpretation, there is none as I see it. Difference, avant-garde, experimentalism etc are words to describe something that precedes a tiny little file bin or reason. If not, listeners and amateurs should agree that their style preferences are no better than anyone else’s. In our times it gets more and more difficult to listen without particular frames attached. What’s so »different« when difference is the tuning of it all? I still think of exceptions. Good evening.