It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
Around 1978, a handful of bands in downtown New York City who all knew each other tried to answer the central question of post-punk: "why does rock music have to sound a certain way?" The groups that came to be identified as the "no wave" scene rejected every kind of orthodoxy of pop music, from tunefulness to conventional instrumental skill - what the Ramones and other punk bands were doing, by contrast, was practically bourgeois… more »
A most welcome issue of the live performance of this important and stirring work from 1982. In conception, its title incorporates a tribute to and commentary on some of the fundamental concepts of John Cage’s work, as well as describes a sonic and musically-spiritual phenomena that occurs over the course of a performance of this hypnotic, important piece. – “Blue” Gene Tyranny
