Dok (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} cyberinsekt) wrote,@ 2007-02-04 11:32:00 |
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Christian Marclay - John Zorn
Since Christian Marclay is currently exhibiting his latest work, Crossfire, at the White Cube gallery, he is now officially newsworthy. This is a good thing, as Marclay is very cool indeed. I first became aware of him in 1990 with the release of his album Footsteps. He had recorded the sounds of walking and dancing, and pressed it onto a 1-sided LP. 3,500 copies of this were then fixed to the floor of the gallery space, often between other exhibits, forcing people to walk over them. Only after the exhibition closed were these records then removed, packaged and sold. Isn't that just the best idea ever?
He's a fascinating character. A turntable pioneer and vinyl lover, who once boasted of buying all of his source material records for no more than $1 at various charity shops. He would literally cut up vinyl records, and glue them back together, physically mixing in other discs. For Marclay, however, unlike the rest of his peers, it was never about the appropriation or reclamation of culture. You don't have to have any pre-existing relationship with the original source material to appreciate his work. For him, his musical sources were Duchamp-like objets trouvées.
Today's track comes from his 1989 release More Encores: Christian Marclay plays with the records of.... It's a wonderful album, and one it's really hard to pick a stand-out track from. Whether it's the metronomic click resulting from a glued-together John Cage disc, the vintage ambience of his wind-up gramophone manipulations of Louis Armstrong, or the dense cacophonic crescendo of his layering of Chopin. In the end, I had to go with his remarkable treatment of an early Marclay collaborator, saxophonist John Zorn. Marclay makes the instrument sound truly wounded, extracting a plethora of animalistic roars and grunts from his source material. Intense and mournful and haunting stuff.
Since Christian Marclay is currently exhibiting his latest work, Crossfire, at the White Cube gallery, he is now officially newsworthy. This is a good thing, as Marclay is very cool indeed. I first became aware of him in 1990 with the release of his album Footsteps. He had recorded the sounds of walking and dancing, and pressed it onto a 1-sided LP. 3,500 copies of this were then fixed to the floor of the gallery space, often between other exhibits, forcing people to walk over them. Only after the exhibition closed were these records then removed, packaged and sold. Isn't that just the best idea ever?
He's a fascinating character. A turntable pioneer and vinyl lover, who once boasted of buying all of his source material records for no more than $1 at various charity shops. He would literally cut up vinyl records, and glue them back together, physically mixing in other discs. For Marclay, however, unlike the rest of his peers, it was never about the appropriation or reclamation of culture. You don't have to have any pre-existing relationship with the original source material to appreciate his work. For him, his musical sources were Duchamp-like objets trouvées.
Today's track comes from his 1989 release More Encores: Christian Marclay plays with the records of.... It's a wonderful album, and one it's really hard to pick a stand-out track from. Whether it's the metronomic click resulting from a glued-together John Cage disc, the vintage ambience of his wind-up gramophone manipulations of Louis Armstrong, or the dense cacophonic crescendo of his layering of Chopin. In the end, I had to go with his remarkable treatment of an early Marclay collaborator, saxophonist John Zorn. Marclay makes the instrument sound truly wounded, extracting a plethora of animalistic roars and grunts from his source material. Intense and mournful and haunting stuff.
