The Story of ORCH5

Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop, 2011

The 20th century will be remembered as a time where the domain of music has undergone some changes doomed to reshape it in a radical way. In fact, it was exactly during this century that the concept of music itself collapsed. If until then music was defined in opposition against what was considered non-music , the last century witnessed a tendency towards an all inclusive-process of assimilation of all kind of sound into music : noises, silences, non-intentional sounds, were all progressively accepted inside the musical domain- a domain that was stretched to the point that its meaning was getting closer and closer to that of the broader field of sound . At the same time, technology had developed at incredible speed, being one of the main contributors to that radical process of sound expansion: "Radio, recording and new instruments (...) all challenge the borders of the soundworld and of music" . Recording, in particular, played a pivotal role: "Recording was the crucial technological advance which liberated a concern with sound as sound- never before could one analyse sounds and alter their envelope" . The advancements in technologies have created new instruments, new musical genres and new techniques, affecting both the music itself, as well as the way in which music circulates, is produced and distributed : "the transition from artisanal to industrial production transforms not only the technology of distribution but also that which is distributed" . It was during the 20th century that the concept of mass culture took shape in the way we know it, leading to a situation in which music is sold as any other kind of commodity. That situation generated a fertile and on-going debate on the relationship that exists between art, interpreted as a sphere autonomous from society whose products were supposed to be created for their own sake, and popular, understood as mass, culture, a domain that is instead inherently social, whose products are created to please consumers. The main focus of my research will be exactly the tension existing between the spheres of art and pop as mass culture, a problem that has to be analysed on the backdrop of the frame that I have sketched above. What I would like to show is the fact that due to the impact of technology on both of these domains, art and pop are not just two opposite poles, but are entangled in a continuous dialogue. These dynamics have become even stronger since so-called postmodernism, when the boundaries between high and low culture have been progressively dismantled, and the production of culture has become inextricable from market questions. I will try to make an account of these processes, seeing them according to different angles and contexts. My strategy will be to do so taking as example the case of glitch music, and dividing my research in three different parts according to the different perspective that I am going to take into account. A 'glitch' is, literally, "the sound of a digital 'mistake' that occurs through the mistranslation or deterioration of digital data" , a "digital tick caused by lost or incorrect binary code" . For the time being, we might describe glitch in a very generic way as a genre that makes use of digital mistakes as its musical material. I decided to choose this musical genre because, being emerged at the end of the 20th century, it seemed to me that it had a kind of inherent ability to embody a vast set of issues caught within the frame that I have sketched before. A first cue of that ability is the fact that glitch music is often referred to with a variety of different names: laptop music , independent microsound , art-techno are just some of the names used to refer, more or less, to the same group of artists or musical current. I suppose that this proliferation of different names depends from the kind of issues that every author wants to highlight. For what concerns my research, I would use simply the term glitch, because in my opinion the feature that is worth emphasising is the use of a digital noise as raw material for music, because that feature calls into question issues concerning the impact of technology on music. In addition, noise has often been associated with the more bleeding edge musical fringes; consequently, another topic that will be called into question will be exactly the problem of the relationship between art and pop music. As I have anticipated earlier, I will divide my essay in three sections, each one devoted to the analysis of the tension between art and pop from three different angles. This strategy will allow me to have a broader perspective on the problem, seeing how this is inflected according to different spheres. In the first part I will make a general account of glitch music, discussing its origin and the different influences that have merged into this genre. My aim is not to show simply that glitch music is a genre born from the merging together of elements coming from a popular milieu with ones coming from an experimental one, but to highlight how these two fields have become, through the 20th century, deeply intermingled one with the other. In addition, I will discuss briefly the question of the influence of technology on music, being that this latter problem is highly connected with the question of the bouncing between art and pop, and being that glitch music is a genre dependent on technology as any other before it. In the second section I will give a closer look to the way in which the problem of art and pop articulates in relation with the work of a single artist. The artist that I decided to focus on is Carsten Nicolai, considered according to several accounts as one of the most representative glitch-master. His case is particularly interesting to take into account because, apart from being well known as a musician, he is also a renowned visual artist of international fame. Nicolai is a figure strongly committed with a more established art milieu: he participated in international art exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta, and had several solo exhibitions in art galleries . Nicolai has the ability to accommodate several identities, as it might be understood from the adoption of different monikers according to the different roles that he interprets: as a visual artist, he is known with his given name, Carsten Nicolai, Alva Noto is the moniker that he uses for his most pop-oriented musical production, and simply Noto is the one for the most experimental musical outcomes. In addition, he counts several collaborations with other artists , as, for instance, the one with Japanese pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Cyclo project with Ryoji Ikeda, and collaborations with Mika Vainio from Pan Sonic and Blixa Bargeld. In spite of the nominal separation of the different roles, Nicolai's various identities continually overlap and intersect one another, as it happens with the aural and visual element in his work. Martin Pesch, in his article on the work of this German artist, highlights how his strategic approach has the ability to link together club, art-galleries, avant-garde, techno and design . Despite his commitment with the art establishment, with projects such as the one under the moniker Alva Noto Nicolai oversteps the boundaries of the gallery to drip into clubs and music festivals. My attempt will be to show, taking into account the way in which he talks about his music, how Nicolai's takes elements form both the art and the pop side, and how these elements interact. It is thanks to one of the identities of Carsten Nicolai that I can introduce the discourse that I will take into account in the third section of my research. Carsten Nicolai runs, together with his friends Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider, its own independent record label, Raster-Noton, one of the leading labels for what concern the production of glitch music, minimal techno and experimental electronic music. Nicolai's role as entrepreneur allows me to take into account the question of music commodification. The music market is a particularly interesting environment to consider, as it is within this domain that practical problems relating to the tension between art and pop come into play. It is also the field in which practices and strategies are operating, and the analysis of those might supply some example of how this relationship between art and pop is articulated in practical terms. Through these three different levels of analysis, I want to highlight how art and pop are not to be seen as merely contrasting poles, but rather as two extremities that continually dialogue with one another. The dialogue has been made possible in the 20th century thanks to the strong commitments that both these domains have with technology.

2014

During the early years of electronic dance music (EDM), certain producers discovered creative new ways for using drum machines and synthesisers which had been originally designated by manufacturers as substitutes for "real" instruments and human performers. These artists, sometimes accidentally or unintentionally, produced copies without originals by steering away from the natural referent and using these "fake" instruments not as imitations but for their own special sonic attributes (Butler 2006: 70). Similar to a musical meta-language, many EDM tracks are primarily concerned with the qualities of the medium into which they are embedded; their content is frequently subordinated to this concern, and lyrics are often non-existent or applied as atmospheric effects reinforcing the sound. Following , in such instances the medium becomes explicitly the message, reflecting an engagement with the intertwined mediums of electronic sounds and drugs from which a range of cultural and historical ties unfold.

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2021

Review of “Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold War Musical Avant-Garde, by Jennifer Iverson. New Cultural History of Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019”