My purpose as a sound artist, musician, and composer– is to illuminate the invisible — and to make visceral, the intangible.
Everything to me, has a pitch (i have perfect pitch) — which is why I think most any sounds can be harmonized or able to be made into music. When one widens the definition of codified ‘music’ to include found sounds and field recordings, music opens itself up unto a whole subliminal language at which we associate sound, music, its proximity, and texture, to have a narrative and cinematic quality — that is both subconscious and visceral, while also able to tell an abstract story, and most importantly, has the ability to transport.
My work is a kind of musical sound design, that is performed live — part foley, part dance, perhaps even a kind of audio Butoh – a morphing experiment of language, beyond the literal to the abstract, and visual, that trigger associations in the mind, making dynamic use of music’s rarefaction of inner space, and outer space.
Being a contrarian most all of my life, I have come to arrive at the experimental work that I do — because I have taken note of things I do not want to do. By avoiding the duly noted, and fusing what I find evocative and compelling from mediums across the board, my work is formed by closing in on the negative spaces of existing forms, to form a hybrid of sorts.
It is the anomalies, and the intersection of fields that interest me most — as it is there where I believe various mediums serve as analogous mirrors to each other, and is the spark of truly interdisciplinary innovation.
09.05.09 | John Cage on a TV Game Show in 1960 (video)
Here’s John Cage performing Water Walk in January, 1960 on the popular TV show I’ve Got A Secret.
At the time, Cage was teaching Experimental Composition at New York City’s New School. Eight years beyond 4:33, and quite the controversial figure in the musical world at that time. His first performance on national television was originally scored to include five radios, but a union dispute on the CBS set prevented any of the radios from being plugged in to the wall. Cage gleefully smacks and tosses the radios instead of turning them on and off.
While treating Cage as something of a freak, the show also treats him fairly reverentially, cancelling the regular game show format to allow Cage the chance to perform his entire piece.
thanks WFMU. thanks Dr. Mark Radice, for superceding all the conceptual jargon, to succinctly describe Cage’s music as a way to ‘creatively participate with time’. You gotta wonder, with a last name like that, whether he intentionally set out to transcend his very name, or seemingly subconsciously outlined and negotiated that negative space, which would become his life work.
08.29.09 | You are what you eat
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I was recently given the neat opportunity to curate a small listening party at my friend Josh Bonati’s beautifully pristine mastering studio down in DUMBO - where the Journal of Popular Noise 7″ vinyl master I did with Ben Frost was prepared. What this means: full artistic reign over a pair of 8-ft tall mastering speakers for an hour in which to design an audio journey to a private roomful of folks.
Now, what surprised me, was that people were really taken for a loop with how to react to this party. I don’t get it. So what is it? Is there going to be live music? so we’re just going to listen? are you playing original music? My thoughts: are we really that far into the 21st century of the digital age of feeding forward, and the next next next inertia-making mentality we New Yorkers so torturously love, that we can no longer fathom that time-consuming act of singularly focusing and appreciating music (that’s not promotional)?
The concept is pretty simple: taking it back analog to the good old days when you would invite your friends over to just listen to some records. What’s been reeling your mind, ruling your world, making you dance in your kitchen, making you feel that much more alive. Sharing what has fed you, as we are what we eat.
So here are some favorites I’ve collected over the years, seemingly disparate but essentially sequenced: die-hard inspirations, old treasures, new finds, and rarities - passed down by mentors, colleagues, old and new friends, of musics of all shapes and sizes. All sequenced into a journey of musical diasporas, outlining that very tricky and particular thing we call Taste.
Bora Yoon
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