Karlheinz Stockhausen RIP

[DJ PIMP]

Was that when he said "techno musicians are primitives"?

Pretty cool...

 

[wonk_vitesse]

do you mean it's inarguable that they are or that they're not?

i remember a thing where he listened to aphex and hawtin etc and criticised it as tribal music, afx's response was amusing something like he should come out raving with me and my mates and he'd appreciate it.. haha

I'm arguing that they are full stop. As for Aphex et al, their music has always been about other things, tribal music whatever, never really saw a huge overlap with Stockhausen's aesthetic.

 

[dHarry]

Stockhausen had a hatred of repetitive rhythm which he associated with military marches and fascism since childhood, having experienced his mother killed by Nazi euthanasia after a long spell in an insane asylum, and his father dying in combat as a Nazi soldier.

 

[nochexxx]

apehx on stockhausen

here's a link to that much talked about article where he dissects aphex, scanner etc .

you will find it after all the japanese gumph. i've copied and pasted aphex's response.

Aphex Twin on Song Of The Youth

Mental! I've heard that song before; I like it. I didn't agree
with him. I thought he should listen to a couple of tracks of
mine: "Didgeridoo", then he'd stop making abstract, random
patterns you can't dance to. Do you reckon he can dance?
You could dance to Song of the Youth, but it hasn't got a
groove in it, there's no bassline. I know it was probably
made in the 50s, but I've got plenty of wicked percussion
records made in the 50s that are awesome to dance to. And
they've got basslines. I could remix it: I don't know about
making it better; I wouldn't want to make it into a dance
version, but I could probably make it a bit more anally
technical. But I'm sure he could these days, because tape is
really slow. I used to do thingslike that with tape, but it does
take forever, and I'd never do anything like that again with
tape. Once you've got your computer sorted out, it pisses all
over stuff like that, you can do stuff so fast. It has a
different sound, but a bit more anal.

I haven't heard anything new by him; the last thing was a
vocal record, Stimmung, and I didn't really like that. Would
I take his comments to heart? The ideal thing would be to
meet him in a room and have a wicked discussion. For all I
know, he could be taking the piss. It's a bit hard to have a
discussion with someone via other people.

I don't think I care about what he thinks. It is interesting,
but it's disappointing, because you'd imagine he'd say that
anyway. It wasn't anything surprising. I don't know
anything about the guy, but I expected him to have that sort
of attitude. Loops are good to dance to...

He should hang out with me and my mates: that would be a
laugh. I'd be quite into having him around.

well here's a link to that article where he dissects aphex, scanner etc . scroll down pass the japanese

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I sympathise with Stockhausen's criticisms - it's more interesting to avoid repetition (even if it means that you won't have a 'chewn' that people can dance to).

tbh, in the vast majority of cases, I don't think that 'IDM' artists have got the skills to create music that is more ambitiously structured (on a macro level, that is).

The whole hardcore continuum is a rogue's gallery of people giving in to what Stockhausen calls 'stylistic temptations' (largely through a desire to make chewns that others can dance to).

 

[subvert47]

Stockhausen had a hatred of repetitive rhythm which he associated with military marches and fascism since childhood, having experienced his mother killed by Nazi euthanasia after a long spell in an insane asylum, and his father dying in combat as a Nazi soldier.

being taught by Messiaen may have had something to do with it as well

 

[Mr. Tea]

Heh, I take it he didn't dig Laibach too much then, either!

 

[soundslike1981]

Stockhausen had a hatred of repetitive rhythm which he associated with military marches and fascism since childhood, having experienced his mother killed by Nazi euthanasia after a long spell in an insane asylum, and his father dying in combat as a Nazi soldier.

That's interesting information. But I wonder--was he known for being particularly racist, or simply as ignorant as his age/milieu/interests would tend to infer? The business about "post-African" and "African rhythms" sits a little weird with me in that interview about contemporary "sound artists". He makes no bones about his feeling that any repetition is inherently lazy (makes me wonder if his heart beat in endless arrhythmia). So I feel like it's not too much of a stretch to superimpose the two pejoratives and detect an underlying hatred. . .

I love some Stockhausen, primarily his electronic works (especially the acoustically unaccompanied version of "Kontakte,") but I have a feeling I love his work the "wrong" way, for reasons he would detest. I find his (and contemporaries) explorations of non-rhythm/anti-repetition viscerally thrilling, at least in short bursts, that's my response to the music-as-sound; but taking a broad view, I appreciate (as in intellectually) he and his contemporaries for what they added to an accumulated vocabulary, not as some "new" or "perfected" end in "human intellectual achievement" (as Stockhausen says). To put it another way--I look at music like this as "raw material," and my greatest intellectual appreciation for it stems from the ways in which that material has been mined by "popular" (in the broadest possible definition) over the ensuing decades. There's still room for the Scanners and the Daniel Menches etc., of course--they haven't been superseded simply because Can or Burial or whatever exist. But the thrill, for me, is in the synthesis of myriad strains, rhythm meeting texture, hook meeting noise, melody meeting dissonance and forming new wholes, to be attacked/reused/altered/dismantled/reconfigured again and again.

So it's disheartening--though not at all surprising--to hear that he's such a cocky, we-are-the-last-great-art modernist, an end timer really. It's an academic mindset that I can't help but presume to be somewhat disingenuous in most advocates of intellectual extremes--I can't imagine how anyone particularly intelligent can look at the process of genesis/synthesis/regeneration of human art/thought and think there's going to be one Final Answer, one Supreme Form, especially in matters which are artistic and fluid and not especially tied to practical function.

I guess I'm agreeing with Daniel Pemberton's take, though I've not heard his music:

he should stop being so
afraid of the normal: by being so afraid of the normal he's
being normal himself by being the complete opposite. He
should try to blend the two together: that would be new and
interesting. To me, anyway.

 

[nochexxx]

I sympathise with Stockhausen's criticisms - it's more interesting to avoid repetition (even if it means that you won't have a 'chewn' that people can dance to).

tbh, in the vast majority of cases, I don't think that 'IDM' artists have got the skills to create music that is more ambitiously structured (on a macro level, that is).

The whole hardcore continuum is a rogue's gallery of people giving in to what Stockhausen calls 'stylistic temptations' (largely through a desire to make chewns that others can dance to).

i have to admit i take issue with this idea of repitition being primitive, gross and outdated. the idea that we can avoid repetition/ looping is an inescapable concept to my mind, so why fight it and worse still pretend we can work outside nature's framework? we get up each day and brush teeth, may as well work with it.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

i have to admit i take issue with this idea of repitition being primitive, gross and outdated. the idea that we can avoid repetition/ looping is an inescapable concept to my mind, so why fight it and worse still pretend we can work outside nature's framework? we get up each day and brush teeth, may as well work with it.

I would want my works of art to hold a few more surprises for me than brushing my teeth does.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Also, from a naive capitalism-crit standpoint, getting your audience to accept intra- and inter-song repetition makes it easier for you to keep churning out (the same old) product at a fast lick.

 

[zhao]

I've been after a copy of Hymnen for years

probably my favorite of his recorded works so far...

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

Open casket at the funeral and a grave lined with white tiles.

"A combination of logic taken to the extreme and illogic taken to the extreme" - Pierre Boulez

 

[trouc]

Just got the singcircle version of Stimmung yesterday, about 45 minutes into side 1 I thought "How the hell'd they pack 45 minutes on to one side?" and realized it was on 16rpm. Needless to say, it sounded pretty fucking awesome. RIP indeed.