>From: JWBarlow@...
>There's been a lot of talk about Subotnick on the list lately and I was
>wondering if you'd ever heard of him? I've always been sort of ambivalent
>about W. Carlos stuff. I do like Bach, and heard the album Switched On Bach
>when it first came out (and liked it). But in a lot of ways it kind of
>reminds me of Ferente and Ticher (sp?) and Esquivel for classical music fans!
>Subotnick quickly started adding non-electronic instruments to his
>recordings, but his early (late 60s) recordings like "Silver Apples of the
>Moon" "The Wild Bull" and "Touch" show how EM can be used in non-traditional
>ways to generate music. Maybe others can list a few pieces of EM that show
>different approaches to music which might not be that be well known!
>
I'm a huge fan of Subotnick's early works! He has a couple of CD reissues
on Wergo, one compiles "Silver Apples" and "Wild Bull", his two absolutely
essential pieces from the 60's, originally recorded for Nonesuch, the 2nd
has "Touch", which features some really cool use of rhythmic sequencers and
modulars, along with "Jacob's Ladder", a later piece for Soprano and
interactive MIDI electronics, which I find considerably less interesting
than his analog pieces. I'm constantly amazed at how contemporary his
pieces from the 60's sound today, he was really exploring some interesting
places.
As for Carlos, while I think there is an element of exotic easy-listening
to her work, I still really admire her attention to arrangement and
performance, especially given how primitive her tools were while recording
SOB. I think it's a really musical interpretation of Bach, and I think
something like this was necesssary for the time to get people to accept the
synth as a musical intstrument.
The real Esquivel of the Moog wood have to be Dick Hyman! I love his Moog
records, though they are pretty cheesy.
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Dave Trenkel :
improv@... : www.peak.org/~improv/
"...there will come a day when you won't have to use
gasoline. You'd simply take a cassette and put it in
your car, let it run. You'd have to have the proper
type of music. Like you take two sticks, put 'em
together, make fire. You take some notes and rub 'em
together - dum, dum, dum, dum - fire, cosmic fire."
-Sun Ra
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