KNUD
further music explorations:
lionel marchetti's knud un nom de serpent
let's put aside first, any notions of problems arising out of possible exotic appropriations (we'll return to this later)...with this 'third world' frantic collage, which compositionally reminds quite a bit of Bladder Flask's "One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling." An amazing piece in its own right, with a fantastic title! A definite old favorite and classic, it'll open many doors, and in my mind is far more interesting than the Mixed Band Philanthropist, also by R. Rupenus (yes, of TNBlockaders).
Compositionally, these records are ecstatic and always moving collages of many disparate sources; the 'samples' are not linked in a coherent, but in an abrupt/jarring fashion, and last at the longest, a few seconds before shifting (not allowing for an imprint of the individual sources, but of the movement from one to the other, this is a way, of displacing the genuity of the 'source' in sampling, of displacing the elements of appropriation for the benefit of the ecstasy and purity of sounds.)
Well, it seems that for Marchetti, this ecstasy has a double meaning, as implied with his quote:
"For a while, I have been very interested in Shamanism. When I began ‘Knud’, I had been reading ‘Shamanism and Archaic States of Exctasy’, by Mircea Eliade, in which I found descriptions of rituals, symbolism of objects such as the tambour, wings, animals and strange singing. These were not far from a place of spirit that I have wanted to share. The composition is able to make the listener live with my mythology, more aware of the world’s potential forces".
Interestingly, the sources are not only consistent of appropriated musical sources of clearly exoticized and 3rd world references, but also of spoken word (passages consisting mainly of mainland francophone...with some feedback, maybe added), as well as naturalistic sounds, which in a way are reminiscent of walter marchetti's (not comparing due to the namesake, no relation) fluxus cum natural representations of the active and pastoral (non industrial) world (stones dropping in water, processed blowing wind, and so on). Marchetti's (Walter) Natura Morta is a possible indication, and forefather of this voice of naturalistic representation.
One the one hand, looking at Lionel Marchetti's background (formally educated, as it seems all French electro-acousticians are), as well as his usage of the term shamanism, and possible outmoded principles of the 'dark continent'(not my words)-as in the preservation of misrepresentative authenticity; preservation of a singular identity held in (non)existance by the past of the cultural signifiers of said continent. As well, the Asian influence (mostly in Indian references) are heavily used, in fact more so than the African content.
One important choice of words used by Marchetti, however, is imparting the listener with a view,or insight of 'his (Marchetti's) mythology.' What this means to me is a personal interaction with the sounds, which fortunately appear to be taken mostly from prerecorded sources (not anthropologically retrieved by the composer himself, in all likelihood, but taken from records (there is at points an insistent wash of surface noise from records), radio, tapes.) This is not, then, a disregard, nor authentication of esteemed use of anthropological sources, but a perspective of the composer, the author of the composition, one who does not hold the language, or the words, and is a mediator based on the ecstasy of the sounds at its disposal; contextually the lingual uses of the sounds are nothing more or less (non-political or identity-hegemony oppositional based, in other words). The frequency and counterdirections of the textual passages mirror my prior assertion in reference to Bladder Flask, as a displacement of any 'loaded' context of the original sound-source. The importance in defining this as Marchetti's sound-world is in detailing a personal response and interaction with the gallery and esotericism of an independent listener or reader, and taking those elements in, recycling them in endless psychoactive regurgitations of the listening experience-not-the experiential or theoretical.
Again, my assertion here is also based in the knowledge that Marchetti's other works are primarily examples of terminally sterile 'classical' european electro-acoustic music; both long and inconsequential. This is the exception to Marchetti's discography, and as stated before removes the 'compositional' element of the music (one doesn't quite know how randomly these pieces were selected and arranged, but clearly, less so than the standard pursuance of an extended compositional form). The composer in the case of Knud... is more or less without the language (the personal instrumentation of the composer/musician/artist), and is merely an expressive arranger, if that...
On a base level, this disc is complete immersive and immediate entertainment, and ecstatic exporation of sounds-Marchetti has succeeded. For his perspective, one can simply excerpt a portion of a passage arbitrarly, and in some way, make that passage a synechdoche, representative of the whole. That is how, although a French academic using, so freely these sources may seem problematic, there is no independent vision on Marchetti's part that seeks to refer to a single node of cultural implication in a political way; it does not authenticate or exoticize or preserve a cultural identity, quite probably because of the acompositional element of the piece.
(the following is an addendum to this post)
Some reviews tear apart Knud for the same reasons which I implied were the strengths of this piece, I wrote the initial criticism not in relation to any of the following reviews, but would like to provide a response to them.
"Lionel Marchetti's Knud un Nom de Serpent, a ragbag collage of shamanistic and other ecstatic rites, interjected to no discernible purpose with "citations" from 20th century experimental music, is tedious in the extreme. If Marchetti's intention was to produce an ecstatic document for domestic consumption, he failed; if his intention was to deal with ecstatic rites forensically, he failed; if collaged snippets of pop song, reggae and hip-hop are supposed to hint at barely submerged ecstatic rituals operating within a rational, essentially Western context, he failed. What's most worrying is that Marchetti seems to have no feeling for his material, and the compositions demonstrate only a meagre musical intelligence. His editing is so crude it has to be heard to be believed. Knud un Nom de Serpent works intermittently as a pile-up of instruments and voices that represent diverse ritual traditions with certain (rather tenuous) factors in common, but nothing much is made of this - or anything else, for that matter. A reviewer in The Wire (issue 209) described it as "An astonishing work". Execrable, more like."-Brian Marley
Well, the non-intention of Knud... in listenting is apparent, when working with an accrual of so many sources, you're dealing with densities and not personal attention/intention with the individual sources (for example, several years ago I was influenced by the Bladder Flask record so much that I had tried for some time to make compositions in the simplest meaning of putting elements together; not actual composing, by using quite literally hundreds of sources from my own backlog of recordings, processing them (crudely), and adding them together in condensations which were nonthematic, anti-musical. I really had no time to seriously consider what I was placing next to another sound, and this is the charm of this kind of collage; there is no time for ponderance both in composing it and in listening to it...it assumes an expressive state of ecstasy of sound(s). Given even that it was a short piece (5 minutes?) it took an entire day to put together, even without the responsibility of subtraction and/or intended organizations; the quantity and condensations, while individual are short, when compiled, assume an even greater involvement in time and effort than actual compositions of a few elements, planned in a particular way.
Another review expounds negatively on all the elements that would have me really excited to hear the subject of the review! I'd want to get this immediately based on the following:
Music concrete that ruins your nerves. There is almost nothing else to say about this CD. This album by Lionel Marchetti features 7 long tracks that seem more or less improvised and which are definitely made of the most unnerving samples you can find (at least if you speak french, since most of the samples are in French). The press release says that this musician wanted to do a CD dealing with shamanism and magic, and it is true that there are a lot of ritualistic chants and music, being all mixed together with excerpts from TV series and movies. But you just can not take this shamanistic approach seriously. The most beautiful arabic or oriental choirs are mixed with looped and treated screams from some soap opera. All the elements are colliding together, mix with screams, noises, hissing, clicks and silence.
It's difficult to describe what you hear on this CD, but imagine, for example, a girl screaming "kill me!" histerically for ten minutes, while a contact mic is rubbed on every single thing in a room, or a man trying to dub a TV documentary about shamanism and bursting in laughter every other minute. More or less, this is a bad TV sound team being thrown into a rooms where Lars Von Trier's Idiots are covering Dead Can Dance. It sure is original and strange, but I bet that nobody can listen to this CD twice in a row without skipping some tracks.
Totally ruining your nerve and your concentration, this CD just sounds plain weird. I can not believe Lionel Marchetti took it seriously, as this is just a chaos of stupid samples and shamanistic music. If he wanted to focus really on this element, he failed. But if he wanted to make fun of it, this is for sure a success. But can you pass me the aspirin now?
Just a fantastically appealing review that seriously...when the reviewer dismisses something due to it's 'weirdness', and then goes on to address all of those elements in the most extreme way, through comparisons between unlikely references...I'm ALWAYS interested in the item being reviewed, and I think that's generally a good rule of thumb, by which I'm rarely disappointed if acquiring something because of a review (don't think i do that anymore, though). Still.
lionel marchetti's knud un nom de serpent
let's put aside first, any notions of problems arising out of possible exotic appropriations (we'll return to this later)...with this 'third world' frantic collage, which compositionally reminds quite a bit of Bladder Flask's "One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling." An amazing piece in its own right, with a fantastic title! A definite old favorite and classic, it'll open many doors, and in my mind is far more interesting than the Mixed Band Philanthropist, also by R. Rupenus (yes, of TNBlockaders).
Compositionally, these records are ecstatic and always moving collages of many disparate sources; the 'samples' are not linked in a coherent, but in an abrupt/jarring fashion, and last at the longest, a few seconds before shifting (not allowing for an imprint of the individual sources, but of the movement from one to the other, this is a way, of displacing the genuity of the 'source' in sampling, of displacing the elements of appropriation for the benefit of the ecstasy and purity of sounds.)
Well, it seems that for Marchetti, this ecstasy has a double meaning, as implied with his quote:
"For a while, I have been very interested in Shamanism. When I began ‘Knud’, I had been reading ‘Shamanism and Archaic States of Exctasy’, by Mircea Eliade, in which I found descriptions of rituals, symbolism of objects such as the tambour, wings, animals and strange singing. These were not far from a place of spirit that I have wanted to share. The composition is able to make the listener live with my mythology, more aware of the world’s potential forces".
Interestingly, the sources are not only consistent of appropriated musical sources of clearly exoticized and 3rd world references, but also of spoken word (passages consisting mainly of mainland francophone...with some feedback, maybe added), as well as naturalistic sounds, which in a way are reminiscent of walter marchetti's (not comparing due to the namesake, no relation) fluxus cum natural representations of the active and pastoral (non industrial) world (stones dropping in water, processed blowing wind, and so on). Marchetti's (Walter) Natura Morta is a possible indication, and forefather of this voice of naturalistic representation.
One the one hand, looking at Lionel Marchetti's background (formally educated, as it seems all French electro-acousticians are), as well as his usage of the term shamanism, and possible outmoded principles of the 'dark continent'(not my words)-as in the preservation of misrepresentative authenticity; preservation of a singular identity held in (non)existance by the past of the cultural signifiers of said continent. As well, the Asian influence (mostly in Indian references) are heavily used, in fact more so than the African content.
One important choice of words used by Marchetti, however, is imparting the listener with a view,or insight of 'his (Marchetti's) mythology.' What this means to me is a personal interaction with the sounds, which fortunately appear to be taken mostly from prerecorded sources (not anthropologically retrieved by the composer himself, in all likelihood, but taken from records (there is at points an insistent wash of surface noise from records), radio, tapes.) This is not, then, a disregard, nor authentication of esteemed use of anthropological sources, but a perspective of the composer, the author of the composition, one who does not hold the language, or the words, and is a mediator based on the ecstasy of the sounds at its disposal; contextually the lingual uses of the sounds are nothing more or less (non-political or identity-hegemony oppositional based, in other words). The frequency and counterdirections of the textual passages mirror my prior assertion in reference to Bladder Flask, as a displacement of any 'loaded' context of the original sound-source. The importance in defining this as Marchetti's sound-world is in detailing a personal response and interaction with the gallery and esotericism of an independent listener or reader, and taking those elements in, recycling them in endless psychoactive regurgitations of the listening experience-not-the experiential or theoretical.
Again, my assertion here is also based in the knowledge that Marchetti's other works are primarily examples of terminally sterile 'classical' european electro-acoustic music; both long and inconsequential. This is the exception to Marchetti's discography, and as stated before removes the 'compositional' element of the music (one doesn't quite know how randomly these pieces were selected and arranged, but clearly, less so than the standard pursuance of an extended compositional form). The composer in the case of Knud... is more or less without the language (the personal instrumentation of the composer/musician/artist), and is merely an expressive arranger, if that...
On a base level, this disc is complete immersive and immediate entertainment, and ecstatic exporation of sounds-Marchetti has succeeded. For his perspective, one can simply excerpt a portion of a passage arbitrarly, and in some way, make that passage a synechdoche, representative of the whole. That is how, although a French academic using, so freely these sources may seem problematic, there is no independent vision on Marchetti's part that seeks to refer to a single node of cultural implication in a political way; it does not authenticate or exoticize or preserve a cultural identity, quite probably because of the acompositional element of the piece.
(the following is an addendum to this post)
Some reviews tear apart Knud for the same reasons which I implied were the strengths of this piece, I wrote the initial criticism not in relation to any of the following reviews, but would like to provide a response to them.
"Lionel Marchetti's Knud un Nom de Serpent, a ragbag collage of shamanistic and other ecstatic rites, interjected to no discernible purpose with "citations" from 20th century experimental music, is tedious in the extreme. If Marchetti's intention was to produce an ecstatic document for domestic consumption, he failed; if his intention was to deal with ecstatic rites forensically, he failed; if collaged snippets of pop song, reggae and hip-hop are supposed to hint at barely submerged ecstatic rituals operating within a rational, essentially Western context, he failed. What's most worrying is that Marchetti seems to have no feeling for his material, and the compositions demonstrate only a meagre musical intelligence. His editing is so crude it has to be heard to be believed. Knud un Nom de Serpent works intermittently as a pile-up of instruments and voices that represent diverse ritual traditions with certain (rather tenuous) factors in common, but nothing much is made of this - or anything else, for that matter. A reviewer in The Wire (issue 209) described it as "An astonishing work". Execrable, more like."-Brian Marley
Well, the non-intention of Knud... in listenting is apparent, when working with an accrual of so many sources, you're dealing with densities and not personal attention/intention with the individual sources (for example, several years ago I was influenced by the Bladder Flask record so much that I had tried for some time to make compositions in the simplest meaning of putting elements together; not actual composing, by using quite literally hundreds of sources from my own backlog of recordings, processing them (crudely), and adding them together in condensations which were nonthematic, anti-musical. I really had no time to seriously consider what I was placing next to another sound, and this is the charm of this kind of collage; there is no time for ponderance both in composing it and in listening to it...it assumes an expressive state of ecstasy of sound(s). Given even that it was a short piece (5 minutes?) it took an entire day to put together, even without the responsibility of subtraction and/or intended organizations; the quantity and condensations, while individual are short, when compiled, assume an even greater involvement in time and effort than actual compositions of a few elements, planned in a particular way.
Another review expounds negatively on all the elements that would have me really excited to hear the subject of the review! I'd want to get this immediately based on the following:
Music concrete that ruins your nerves. There is almost nothing else to say about this CD. This album by Lionel Marchetti features 7 long tracks that seem more or less improvised and which are definitely made of the most unnerving samples you can find (at least if you speak french, since most of the samples are in French). The press release says that this musician wanted to do a CD dealing with shamanism and magic, and it is true that there are a lot of ritualistic chants and music, being all mixed together with excerpts from TV series and movies. But you just can not take this shamanistic approach seriously. The most beautiful arabic or oriental choirs are mixed with looped and treated screams from some soap opera. All the elements are colliding together, mix with screams, noises, hissing, clicks and silence.
It's difficult to describe what you hear on this CD, but imagine, for example, a girl screaming "kill me!" histerically for ten minutes, while a contact mic is rubbed on every single thing in a room, or a man trying to dub a TV documentary about shamanism and bursting in laughter every other minute. More or less, this is a bad TV sound team being thrown into a rooms where Lars Von Trier's Idiots are covering Dead Can Dance. It sure is original and strange, but I bet that nobody can listen to this CD twice in a row without skipping some tracks.
Totally ruining your nerve and your concentration, this CD just sounds plain weird. I can not believe Lionel Marchetti took it seriously, as this is just a chaos of stupid samples and shamanistic music. If he wanted to focus really on this element, he failed. But if he wanted to make fun of it, this is for sure a success. But can you pass me the aspirin now?
Just a fantastically appealing review that seriously...when the reviewer dismisses something due to it's 'weirdness', and then goes on to address all of those elements in the most extreme way, through comparisons between unlikely references...I'm ALWAYS interested in the item being reviewed, and I think that's generally a good rule of thumb, by which I'm rarely disappointed if acquiring something because of a review (don't think i do that anymore, though). Still.
posted by jacob at 7:59 PM
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