Haunted Weather

Pic from Furious
For me, Haunted Weather was a minor miracle; mixing just the right amount of poetic eccentricity with studied facts, academic philosophy with boundless wonderment. The book centers around sound and silence, pondering on the depths of the limitless spaces in which music can exist. David Toop follows the fringes of the fringe movements to expound new theories on the 'how', and 'why' of things particular to the artistry of sound production. Of notable interest, are the passages explaining the convergence of the human mind, with the still burgeoning digital frontier.

Serious fans of Michael Snow, Fennesz, Brain Eno, Akira Kurosawa, John Cage, Pan Sonic, and Matmos will all find this book incredibly relevant, although people not so inclined to the avant-garde may also be engrossed by the open-eyed curiosity, and generally selfless way in which Toop dissects many obtuse, and typically hard-to-understand theories.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

A quote from Brian Eno describing the ethos of generative music

Brian's aphorism: 'Generative music is like trying to create a seed, as opposed to classical composition which is like trying to engineer a tree.' Gardening and engineering are key metaphors, 'I think one of the changes of our consciousness of how things come into being, of how things are made and how the work,' he says, 'is the change from an engineering paradigm, which is to say a design paradigm, to a biological paradigm, which is an evolutionary one. In lots and lots of areas now, people say, how do you create the conditions at the bottom to allow the growth of the things you want to happen? So a lot of the generative music thing is much more like gardening. When you make a garden, of course you choose some of the things you put in, and of course you have some degree of control over what the thing will be like, but you never know precisely. That's the wonderful thing about gardening. It responds to conditions during its growth and it changes and it's different every year.'

On too many choices

My initial relationship with an instrument was developed with a few, fairly simple tools. Now I have maybe six different computer software programs for making and editing music, all with a multitude of choices accessible through digital plug-in effects, plus racks of analogue equipment, all with their own array of choices, and a large number of sound making devices. The choices of what I can do and how I do it are only limited by my own imagination.

But that's not so different from gardening. A program pushed too far will crash; a plant grown in the wrong soil or conditions will die. There are infinite choices of how to make a garden. Omission is a virtue. Without limitations there is only confusion, vulgarity, the loss of meaning. I can't truly live by it but I bear it in mind: who feels the need to have so many things?

Derek Bailey regarding audiences

'Usually, I avoid talking about audiences,' he said, 'because I came to the conclusion that I know nothing about 'em at all. I've played the most appalling shit in front of huge audiences and they're really enthusiastic.'

Bjork on ProTools

'We've been doing folk music or whatever you call it for 2000 years, and the instruments, the tools you use, if they're limited it means you have to be more imaginative and creative. 100 years ago, radio arrived and the first music that was going then sounded crap on the radio. Later on, humans became genius at writing and arranging and producing specifically for radio. Now we've got the Napster thing, the Internet and downloading and you write specifically for that. I use microbeats, a lot of whispery vocals, which I think sound amazing when they're downloaded because of the secrecy of the medium. It's all about being in a little house, on your own. You're creating paradise with your laptop, or underneath your kitchen table where nobody knows about it. It's survival in that sense. I can't lie when I sing. With ProTools, it's not like you're lying but it's easier to focus on what you want things to be. For me, ProTools is more connected with a fantasy and my voice more with reality. With the tools I can have everything I want and think of ridiculous things that don't exist but with my voice I'm always gonna show what happened to me that day, that month, that year. I can't hide anything and I actually quite like that.'

On noisy audiences and unconventional performance techniques

Just as you're about to go on stage to perform your improvisation for damp leaves, aerated confetti and contrabass bed socks at The Tunnel, Milan, you realize that the entire audience has rediscovered the lost art of conversation. What to do? The options are limited. You can stalk out to the microphone, deliver a lecture on the sanctity of your art and demand total hush. This will result in poor reviews and a severely alienated bunch of potential fans. You can sing a bunch of songs they all love, though the latest, greatest hit played on damp leaves may lack the necessary lift that the occasion demands. Alternatively, wrench the PA knobs round to 11, why not, and blast them with an hour of unbroken, consciousness shredding noise. Consequence? Their chatter will at least be crushed, though they may adjourn to the nearest bar to resume verbal intercourse, or they will talk loudly enough for you to be crushed. Now that many people regard musicians as a kind of sentient MTV, a background interference to be treated with the same utilitarian lack of love as their television sets, this is the most likely outcome.