[NewMusic] Lehn/Robair tour vids online

[Matt Davignon]

Hmmm, I personally like knowing what the objects are that make the
sounds. For Keith Rowe, there's a reason why he chooses a guitar as
his work surface rather than a contact mic'd table. There are very
"guitar" properties, that people don't tend to think of when they
think of guitar, but you can't get from other instruments. (Which may
have to do with thickness of strings, distance between strings,
distance from the pickup and the internal electronics.)

On the other hand, when you're ebowing a snare, or running a toy
sticky octopus over it, you're still getting sounds that you wouldn't
get from a non-percussion instrument. So, while you may not be hitting
things, "percussion" does suggest something to do with tightened
membranes or things usually hit with sticks. I guess what it comes
down to whether you want people to accurately visualize you making the
sounds they're hearing.

When I first saw you listed as "Voltage made audible", I thought that
meant you would be playing your synthesizer, or processing the sounds
of a 60hz hum.

Frankly I'd rather people say I play drum machine than "overprocessed
sound generating module" or "electronics".

Nurse With Wound is the only other band I've seen that's as abstract
with instrumentations. On one album one member plays "ghost" and
another plays "catfish". My favorite is where one member "makes
sounds" and the other "changes sounds".

Matt


> On 4/10/07, Robair, Gino <grobair at emusician.com> was all:

> > All I did was use an appropriate term ("energized surfaces", "voltage made audible") to describe how I approach my
> > instruments, and then I get a couple of wiseass guys in the media giving me
> > a hard time! Like I give a shit.... :-) But anyway....
> >
> > There have been entire gigs and sessions where I haven't actually hit
> > anything, so saying that I play "percussion" is misleading --  when in fact
> > I use *some* percussion instruments, but much of the time they are
> > "energized" by bows, horns, friction, etc.
> >
> > Don't even get me started about the "Fricative School" of playing, and how
> > the reviewers have absolutely no idea what their talking about when they
> > describe the intriguing work of, say, Ninh LeQuan, Chris Cogburn, or Sean
> > Meehan (among others). It's like saying Keith Rowe plays guitar! Well, okay,
> > he uses a guitar as a table...