Weird Music: Slapping Pythagoras - Tony Conrad
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
- Band: Tony Conrad
Album: Slapping Pythagoras
Label: Table of the Elements
Year: 1995
Is a weed trimmer an instrument? Maybe... Today, we're diving into oneof the most intense recordings I've ever set my ears upon. Slapping Pythagoras by violinist Tony Conrad. The dude's second solo venture in the world of music, following on from his debut collaborative album in 1973 of 'Outside the Dream Syndicate' with Faust. Slapping Pythagoras is an equally beastly recording, if not moreso, as it boasts a plethora of experimental musicians from the early 90s burgeoning post-rock scene, as well as the entire production being recorded and engineered by the one and only Steve Albini. It's the kind of record you need to hear to really believe... As for the more philiospical aspects of this record... It's not something I am equipped for at all... All I can do is just appreciate the music as it bombards me with sensory overload... Still, it is fantastic.
This video uses footage from the following videos:
• Video
• Tony Conrad: "The Flic...
• Tony Conrad: Pythagora...
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One of my favorites. Not sure what happens a little after the 7 minute mark, but it shifts in some way, and sounds fantastic. Got to see an entire performance of "10 years alive on an infinite plane", which I'm pretty happy about. Doubt I'll see anything like that ever again. Couldn't believe how loud a violin could sound. There are some photos over on Table of the Elements site that are from the recording session with Albini, Conrad, and Jim O'Rourke. One has them at the mixing desk. Interesting to hear your thoughts.
I 'studied' under Conrad at SUNY Buffalo. By 'study' I mean I got to sit and listen to all of his own recordings while he danced around the room flailing his arms and soaking up our adoration. We all got an A+. This is pretty typical of tenured composition professors. I got to know him a bit over drinks and he's such an asshole. Years later I saw him at Knitting Factory and he played the same note on a violin for two hours. He was a worthless attention hog in the magnificent canon of minimalism.
I worked at a place that was showing some of his movies. Can confirm, kind of a dick.
If you delve deeply into Tony Conrad's career, you can really go down some rabbit holes. The roots of Slapping Pythagoras go back to ideas that Tony Conrad has about the political implications of different theories of tuning & musical temperament. Conrad basically believes that Pythagoras and Pythagoreans, who are the progenitors of the dominant octave-based tuning of Western music, are a pernicious force based in mysticism, irrationalism, sex-phobia, and anti-democratic thought, which has brainwashed the Western world for over 2000 years. I also think that "Pythagoras" is probably also an allegorical stand-in for LaMonte Young, who Conrad later came to view as dictatorial. Tony Conrad and John Cale had been in a legal dispute with La Monte Young over who had intellectual property rights in the many unreleased recordings of the Theater of Eternal Music, which was founded by Young but included Conrad and Cale in the ensemble. Young has consistently maintained that he is the "composer" of the improvisatory performances created by the Theater of Eternal Music in the 1960s, whereas Cale and Conrad insisted that the performance were improvisations, which they claim means that the performances of The Theater of Eternal Music are collaborative works jointly owned by the entire group. La Monte Young's Mela Foundation website (melafoundation.org) has lots of documentation where Young outlines his beef vs. Cale and Conrad. Slapping Pythagoras has a family resemblance to John Cale's viola work in the Velvet Underground, but an interesting contrast would be to juxtapose it with La Monte Young's work The Well-Tuned Piano. Both are inspired by delving very deeply into the minutia of tuning and temperament theory & what the implications are not just for music, but for Western thought as a whole.
Now I have to watch all your videos
This is a really cool essay, Tony Conrad needs to be known more. I first learned about him in film school when I studied Flicker, A Movie, and Report (every one a must see). I didn't know, until years later, that he also did the kind of music I seek. Brain explodes.
I love that you played some of his music. But for the love of Yoko, no music should be playing wall to wall during an essay.