Of course I am no pioneer or innovator on this matter. If you are a serious listener of music and feel attracted to this approach, you certainly will have found your way to the music of Sun Ra, Weather Report, Miles Davis, Soft Machine, and such non-musicians as Brian Eno and Can, to name just a few. It seems that especially in the late sixties, when electric technology started off, musicians emerged that connected with the tradition but who weren't afraid to use naked sound a la Stockhausen. Curiously this quest for new sounds went together with a lightness, irony and casualness that gradually died away when hippies became yuppies and technology made everything sound serious and clean.
The purpose of these introductory notes has only been to give some guidelines to the appreciation of my work and might be somewhat exaggerated. When you listen to my music you might even wonder where all that randomness and purposelessness is hidden. One of the reasons for this is that our brain has a remarkable ability and inclination to find order and harmony in chaos. Another reason might be that in the process of recording and shifting, I have tended to select borderline cases between 'noise' and music, between pure sound and the conventional frame. Whereas in photography the distinction between frame and content is crystal clear, in music the distinction I propose is quite arbitrary and troubled. For example:
Where does the noise stop and does
a melody begin?
Instead as a problem I see it as a challenge and a source of enjoyment which I hope you will find back in my compositions.
...go back to PART II