Live Music Show - Keith Fullerton Whitman - Curated by Keith Fullerton Whitman
1.
Laurie Spiegel "Improvisations on a Concerto Generator" live at Bell Labs, 1977. Here Laurie is manipulating the Bell Labs Digital Synthesizer, aka the "Alles Machine" (or just "Alice") in real time. I love how baroque this is ; the pulverizing 16th-note motorik starts to blur together until all you hear are the lovely arpeggiated chord-shapes ...
2.
... speaking of motorik ; Can "Paperhouse" live in 1972, at the peak of their powers ... You often think of Can as this freak-out group, but here they sound as restrained & musical as ever ... of course Jaki is on fire throughout, but I'm more impressed by Holger's timekeeping in this clip !!! One of Damo's best performances to boot, perfect Karoli guitar tone ; I could watch this on repeat, all day, every day ...
3.
Seeselberg "Synthetik-1" , ca. 1975 c/o WDR. Seeselberg were two brothers ("Eckhardt" & "Wolf-J") who issued a lone LP in 1973 of some of the most bewitching, non-denominational electronic music ever committed to tape. This feature-ette shows them jamming in front of a small gallery crowd, then at home in the studio ; cut with some rather Brakhage-esque direct-film experiments ... Sounds like a million bucks !!!
4.
Bembeya Jazz National "Petit Sekou" live at the RTG studios in 1979. Slays me every time. Top-notch interplay, jagged but never showy guitar ... Love the VHS / helical scan wobble in the intro as well ...
5.
Short film of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's commission for The Curve at the Barbican Center in London, 2010 ; Incredible idea, gorgeously executed ...
6.
Great clip of Moroder actually performing "The Chase" from "Midnight Express" on a MiniMoog in 1979 ; proper synth freakout in there as well ...
7.
Harry Bertoia Sound Sculptures, performed by his son, Val in 2001. About 5 years before this was filmed, I made the pilgrimage out to rural Bally, PA to witness these for myself ... since Harry's passing in 1978, the sculptures have been standing in a barn, largely untouched, for the last 30 years; this is a rare document of their majestic forms / sounds ...
8.
Pink Floyd "Echoes Part II" ; never was a big Gilmour fan, but I'll rate this as the best bit from the later "Stadium" Floyd's reign ...
9.
Erkki Kurreniemi "Computer Music" ... mid-60's film showing Erkki's process for composing with computers. Typewriter? Check. Scads of jumbled up paper tape? Check. Composer falls asleep, dreams of psychedelic spinning landscape, rife with paranoid overtones? All there. As close as you'll get to a valid "performance film" of early Computer Music ...
10.
The Voice Crack trio of Norbert Möslang, Andy Guhl, and Knut Remond performing a set of their trademark "Cracked Everyday Electronics" in a gallery in their hometown of St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1989 ... I hear this not only as the blueprint for every "pedal noise" performance of the 90s / 00s, but as the invention of a few different languages that make up a large part of our current experimental music vocabulary. These guys are VISIONARIES ...
Bio
KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN, musician, writer, filmmaker, and distributor left during his fourth year at music school to work for music distributor Forced Exposure. Five years later he retired to work his mojo as alter-ego HRVATSKI to dwindling crowds in medium to small sized rooms across eight continents for another five years. He then continued to record and produce and engineer music for and with a large number of people from all over the world, while issuing the sporadic recording under his own name.
GENERATOR, his latest work, was a year-long experiment in live electronic music the culminated in two lp records and many, many cassette tapes. He lives in Somerville, MA with his cat Robyn and his partner Wilbur, and works in Cambridge, MA.
www.keithfullertonwhitman.com
Network Awesome - Live Music Show - Keith Fullerton Whitman
http://networkawesome.com/show/live-music-show-keith-fullerton-whitman/