ARTAUD LOOP
*ANDIE:
Do you remember the little song that kept wafting out of the ether on your amp paul(y)? The one from "In This World" that kept cropping up in the middle of rehearsals in Ashwin Street?
*CINDER:
That sound that kept coming out of the amp at rehearsals was the "sweetness loop",used at the beginning of "Touched" (In This World).
I'd found that whilst surfing radio waves back in 1983,during the "Camouflage Heart" sessions.We always thought it was a Portuguese radio signal.But that it should mysteriously re-appear to guide us through our rehearsals to play live more than a decade later was very beautiful indeed.If I recall it also followed us on our U.S. tour in 1996 as well... spooky....
"There's enough elegy in "Touched" to melt an invading army..."
(Melody Maker,1988)
(Artaud loop by Azriel)
(Crackle Series photo by Cinder)
15 comments:
A few days ago,a kind soul sent me a live Cindytalk tape from the 1996 tour.The set ends with a huge stramash of noise while the voice keeps reciting "Pussy Envy".
Then it all comes to a halt and JUST for a few seconds,the sweetness loop appears,like a sonic mirage...
"stramash",eh!? been reading that Scots dictionary again?
Oh,no,that is a solid part of my limited Scots repertoire!
;-)
oh!!! and you can actually still click the t in "touch" to take you to the trocchi piece.fantastic... you keep surpassing yourself,spaewaif.i wonder where dear azriel is? must send out a message to him...
carnt see the thistle though...
yatta!!! i just saw it,it's there... tar x
dale lloyd of lucid/after the flood once told me that he'd heard a stockhausen record from the late 1960's that used what we call "the sweetness loop".he didn't have it and couldn't recall the title but said it was basically the same sound.as previously mentioned,i recorded it off the radio back in 1983 and perceived it to be a radio signal from a portuguese station.it would come in at the top and tail of programmes on that channel.i heard it over a period of years,always by
accident,i'm nowhere near organised enough to actually make a note of the frequency.but if the stockhausen story is true then
it's possible that the radio station knew that and was using stockhausen as it's holding pattern between programmes! in other words,we might have nicked a sound from him without realising it.that would be quite funny as at that time i doubt if i'd even knowingly heard a stockhausen record... knew the name but hadn't yet reached the music.or maybe stockhausen heard the same radio signal a generation or more earlier and used it too.it's a mythtery...
It did take me a while to get it right when embedding the piece.
It was too big so had to make it smaller,then the background kept showing the dots but finally managed.
And yes,the thistle is there and the link is there too.
Hmm..I did a search and found this:
"Around the mid-1970's, Karlheinz Stockhausen visited a music box factory in Switzerland and was inspired to write twelve little - endless - pieces of music for the boxes.
Never a man to "waste" a piece of music by writing it for only one format, he then recomposed the pieces for various solo instruments and also for instrumental ensembles."
That is what apparently ended up being "Tierkreis",twelve piano melodies representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
I have the CD because I have always liked this beautiful and delicate composition and I am listening to it again now but cannot relate it to the sweetness loop although the music box quality is still there.
Tierkreis
You can even buy the music boxes!
Music in the Belly
Listen to Tierkreis here:
Karlheinz Stockhausen
hmm,just had a quick listen to Tierkreis and it could very well be related.. not sure but if you follow the notes it could be a variation.would be interested to
find out if the sweetness loop did begin life as a swiss music box...
p.s.... my mobile's ringing,hang on... d'oh!!!! ;-)
this place gives strength to the heart. doomo arigatoo gozaimasu.
I was reading the notes on the insert of Tierkreis and it says that "it belongs to the new and more "accesible" (quotation marks are mine) music sometimes characterized as "new-friendliness",which was introduced after the harder and very abstract avantgarde sound and form world of the 1950's and 1960's."
"Sweetness" and "new-friendliness"...
It makes perfect sense.
Maybe the little ghosts on the covers of ITW were at play,hammer AND feather.
Oh! I have just remembered I have my own radio tune story.
It belongs to a composer I hold very dear,Mompou.His "Placide",Cahier I from the beautiful "Musica Callada" (Muted Music) was used as a signature tune on RNE (Radio Nacional de España) when I was a child and it wasn't until years later that I became acquainted with the original.
Past crisscrosses into present weaving into future.
Strange confluence, Cinder. I haven't visited here in a long while, but tonight -5am- I found myself wondering ... seems my ears must have been ringing, as they say. I haven't touched autopsis in an even longer time, but it's still out there like an amputee waving. For the record, Gordon created the Artaud piece and I just built it for him. And strangely enough I just bought a cd from Dale a few days ago (http://www.and-oar.org/pop_and_24.html).
I'm well and miss you. I'm just older, fatter and grumpier.
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