vita reale sogno ed altro da sogno Tony Conrad - Outside The Dream Syndicate (1972) (CD 2002) Disc 1: 01.- From The Side Of Man And Womankind 02. From The Side Of The Machines Disc 2: 01.- The Pyre Of Angus Was In 02.- The Death Of The Composers 03.- From The Side Of Woman And Mankind Glorious ecstatic hymns exclusively made of violin abrasive drones and freak-out dissonances, accompanied by drums sections and e-guitar bass lines. This intriguing album is now a true classic of contemporary music and progressive rock. This one captures the essence of minimalism music and the energy of rock. To be honest, this album looks like more to Tony Conrads explorations in experimentation sounds and insistent droning performances than FAUSTs hybrid rocking universe. From The Side Of Man And Womankind is based on a repetitive, ritual drum pulsation, giving the rhythm for long, monotonous, fuzzy violin drones (played by Tony Conrad); the atmosphere is wonderfully noisy, extreme and transcendent. From The Side Of The Machines takes back the same schema of composition but within a more colourful, dynamic flame, the result is completely physical, throwing the listener into a deep visceral meditation. A landmark, epic album! Personnel Tony Conrad – viola Werner Zappi Diermaier – drums Jean-Hervé Péron – bass guitar Rudolf Sosna – guitar and keyboards Sound Kurt Graupner – engineer Uwe Nettelbeck – producer Outside the Dream Syndicate is a 1973 collaboration album by United States avant-garde filmmaker Tony Conrad and German krautrock group Faust. The album marks Conrads first and only musical release for many years, and remains his best known musical work. It is considered a classic of minimalist and drone music. Pitchfork Media exclaims for a moment in Outside the Dream Syndicate, one forgets what exactly is moving and what is standing still. The original LP contained two 26-minute pieces. The album was digitally remastered in 1993 and released on CD by Table of the Elements with an additional 20-minute previously unreleased bonus track. Background In the mid-1960s Tony Conrad was a member of The Dream Syndicate, a United States experimental and drone music group. In New York City Conrad was approached by a filmmaker from Hamburg in Germany who said that he knew a producer in Hamburg who would be interested in Conrads music. Conrad flew to Hamburg where he met Uwe Nettelbeck, Fausts producer. Nettelbeck took Conrad to an old schoolhouse where Faust had been recording, and invited him to make a record with the band, outside Conrads group, the Dream Syndicate (and hence the title of the album). In 1995, Conrad and Faust reunited to play a 50-minute live version of the piece From the Side of Man and Womankind; the concert was eventually released in 2005 as the album Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive. Track listings 1973 LP release Side A From the Side of Man and Womankind (Conrad) – 27:16 Side B From the Side of the Machine (Conrad) – 26:20 1993 CD release From the Side of Man and Womankind (Conrad) – 27:16 From the Side of the Machine (Conrad) – 26:20 From the Side of Woman and Mankind (Conrad) – 20:04 2002 30th Anniversary edition (2 CD) CD 1 From the Side of Man and Womankind (Conrad) – 27:16 From the Side of the Machine (Conrad) – 26:20 CD 2 The Pyre of Angus Was in Kathmandu (Conrad) – 03:38 The Death of the Composer Was in 1962 (Conrad) – 03:16 From the Side of Woman and Mankind (complete version) (Conrad) – 31:09 Tony Conrad (born Anthony S. Conrad in 1940) is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer. His father was Arthur Conrad, who worked with Everett Warner during World War II in designing dazzle camouflage for the US Navy. Conrad is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B., 1962, major Mathematics). Support for Conrads work has come from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the State University of New York, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Film In an interview with Tony Oursler, as part of Oursler’s Synesthesia: Interviews on Rock & Art, Tony Conrad says he moved to New York in the early 1960s and entered into the art picture because of his interest in music, but went to film because it was too boring in music. At the time, film was institutionally unattached, which drew Conrad towards the community of New York filmmakers. In 1966, he made his first film, The Flicker, said to be a “landmark in structural filmmaking.” Conrad says, “Since other filmmakers were making films at the time that dealt with structure as a foregrounded principle, and this seemed to be built around mathematical principles, it was adopted as a kind of flagship film for the structural film movement, where it dealt with abstract light-organizing ideas. The film consists of only completely black and completely white images, which, as the title suggests, produces a flicker when projected. When the film was first screened several viewers in the audience became physically ill. (Rapid flashes produce epileptic attacks in a small percentage of population.) Conrad wished to generalize the whole technology of film. He approached the film by considering the relationship between the subjective psychological conditions of the flicker, and its relation to narrative and storytelling. He says, “I had felt that my own experience with flicker was a transporting experience in the way that movies affect the imagination at their best by sweeping one away from reality into a completely different psychic environment. Yellow Movies is a project that Tony did in 1973. It consists of 20 “movies,” which are square frames painted in black house paint onto large pieces of photographer’s paper. Conrad’s concept came from a continued attempt at pushing the framework of film, and his interest in engaging the audience in long spaces of time. He wanted to make a film that would last 50 years, but knew that “normal materials” could not last that long, so he created a whole knew conceptual stratagem for Yellow Movies. The emulsion is painted on, and the movies take their own course over time, changing very slowly. In the mid-1970s, Conrad began performing film. With Sukiyaki Film he decided that the film should be prepared immediately before viewing. Sukiyaki was chosen as the paradigm for the work because it is a dish often cooked immediately before eating, in front of the diners. Conrad cooked sukiyaki in front of an audience: egg, meat, vegetables, and 16mm film; and literally “projected” onto the screen behind him. Conrad made a piece called Pickled Film: Well, if you take a roll of film and instead of making pictures on it, you process it by pickling it in vinegar and putting it in a jar and presenting it for people to look at that way, projected through the lens of the fluid around it, this is so distorted and such a monstrous disfigurement of the normal way in which you are supposed to use film, that it is a kind of pathology; it’s a sickness in the sense of a virus being inserted in the system. I think wellness and change are measured by comparison to potential for extremes of illness or death. I was trying to kill film. I wanted to let it lay over and die. —Tony Conrad Conrad began to work in video and performance in the 1970s as a professor at Antioch College in Ohio and the Center for Media Studies at the University at Buffalo. Another of Conrads early films, Coming Attractions (1970) led indirectly to the founding of Syntonic Research and the Environments series of natural sound recordings. Conrads work has been shown at many museums including the Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 in New York City. In 1991, he had a video retrospective at The Kitchen, an artist-run-organization in New York City. His film The Flicker was included in the Whitney Museum of American Arts exhibition, The American Century. In 2006, the full hour-long recording of Conrads Joan of Arc was released, a 1968 recording for the soundtrack to Piero Heliczers like-named short film. Conrad has been a faculty member in the State University of New York at Buffalo since 1976. He continues to teach there in the Department of Media Study as well as work on many notable B&W film image projects with Princess G. St. Mary. Music In music, Conrad was an early (though not original) member of the Theatre of Eternal Music, nicknamed The Dream Syndicate, which included John Cale, Angus MacLise, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela, and utilized just intonation and sustained sound (drones) to produce what the group called dream music (and is now called drone music). The Theater of Eternal Music performed pieces consisting of long extended tones, in which the performers sustained harmonically related pitches for the duration of each piece. Often, Young performed complex improvisations on saxophone or voice. In recent years, Young (who retains many original recordings) has claimed authorship for the compositions the group performed. However, Conrad has characterized those works as collaboration for which he, Angus MacLise, and John Cale should share collective credit. These views remain a source of contention for Conrad and, to a lesser extent, Cale among the former participants in the group. Conrads first musical release, and only release for many years, was a 1972 collaboration with the German Krautrock group Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate, published by Caroline (UK) in 1973. This remains his best known musical work and is considered a classic of minimalist music and drone music. Recently, Conrad has composed more than a dozen audio works with special scales and tuning for solo amplified violin with amplified strings. Recent releases include Early Minimalism Volume 1, a four-CD set, Slapping Pythagoras, Four Violins (recorded in the 1960s), Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive (with Faust, from London 1995), and Fantastic Glissando. He also issued two archival CDs featuring the work of late New York filmmaker Jack Smith, with whom he was associated in the 1960s. He released the 1968 recording of Joan of Arc in 2006. Conrad played together with Rhys Chatham in an early ensemble. Conrad has been chosen by Animal Collective to perform at the All Tomorrows Parties festival that they will curate in May 2011. In 2012 Conrad was part of the line-up of the touring avant garde festival Sonic Protest that took place in five cities in France. In 2013 Conrad is in Genoa for his first solo exhibition in Italy. Conrad and The Velvet Underground Conrad is known as being indirectly responsible for the name of The Velvet Underground, although he was not an actual member of the famous group. Lou Reed and John Cale found a book entitled The Velvet Underground, which had belonged to Conrad, after moving into his old apartment on Ludlow Street in New York City. Minirecensione di Massimiliano Drommi (miuzik) Dallunione tra il minimalista Tony Conrad e i due Faust/ progenitori del kraut-rock Werner Diermaier e Jean-Hervé Peron nacque Outside The Dream Syndicate, lavoro in studio risalente al 1972. I tre musicisti si incontrarono poi altre due volte negli anni 90 per suonare dal vivo. Lalbum in questione documenta la loro ultima apparizione live (avvenuta il 18 febbraio del 1995 alla Queen Elizabeth Hall di Londra) nella quale venne eseguita una versione espansa del primo lato di quel disco, oltre laggiunta di un traccia (il bis). In quella occasione intervenne anche un ospite ad irrobustire il suono, ovvero Jim O Rourke: di conseguenza a prendere forma fu una lunga cavalcata strumentale (From The Side Of A Man And Womankind), recante in apertura delle sviolinate droning grevi ed esacerbanti, solerti nell infrangersi su una sezione ritmica robotica e sostenuta. Dal taglio più misticheggiante la seconda composizione (Encore!), persa tra vapori trance e flussi sonori annichilenti. (Table Of Elements/Wide) - 20-6-2006 Rewiew by Joe Castleman (gyrofrog) TONY CONRAD WITH FAUST - Outside the Dream Syndicate compact disc (1993 CD) Table of the Elements Li During the 1960s, Tony Conrad was a member of La Monte Youngs Theater of Eternal Music, a.k.a. The Dream Syndicate, a performance group dedicated to the creation and exploration of drone music and the just intonation system. (The groups efforts strongly influenced Velvet Underground, whose bassist/violist, John Cale, was also a Dream Syndicate member). As explained in the C.D. liner notes, Conrads association with Young continued sporadically through the early 1970s, when Youngs performances in Germany brought Conrad in contact with the experimental rock group Faust. This recording is the result of that meeting. Outside the Dream Syndicate consists of three lengthy tracks, each over twenty minutes long. On the first, From the Side of Man and Womankind, Conrads violin slowly builds a layer of drones over a bass/ drums rhythm section that is Kraftwerkian in its simplicity. The second track, From the Side of the Machine, is more dynamic and alluring than the first, as the drums and bass have (somewhat) freer rein, the violins sound less tremulous, synthesizers become rather prominent, and the rhythm gradually increases in tempo. The final track, From the Side of Woman and Mankind, is extremely similar to the first track (perhaps it is an outtake or unused portion thereof) and was discovered just prior to the C.D. remix of the original recordings. Your own feelings about this compact disc will probably correspond directly to your tolerance for very repetitive, slowly evolving music. There arent any chord changes here, other than the constant harmonic permutations of Conrads violin. The rhythm of the first and third tracks goes on unchanged for the duration of both, and even the second track is still pretty controlled. But those who arent bothered by this will find Outside the Dream Syndicate to be a very rewarding listening experience. The music changes so subtly that it becomes all the more intriguing when a variation does occur. Very, very meditative. (This is the third [Lithium] in the Table of the Elements series, whose releases include a series of seven-inch records featuring experimental guitar music by Jim ORourke, K. K. Null, Henry Kaiser, and others). ©1996 Review by Jason Ankeny (ALLMUSIC) (4 stars) Recorded over a span of three days in 1973, Outside the Dream Syndicate was Tony Conrads first official release; though also credited to the celebrated Kraut rock band Faust, its primarily a showcase for Conrads minimalist drone explorations, an aesthetic fascinatingly at odds with the noisy, fragmented sound of his collaborators. Consisting of three epic tracks, each topping out in excess of 20 minutes, the album is hypnotically contemplative; the music shifts in subtle -- almost subliminal -- fashion, and the deeper one listens, the more rewarding it becomes. Rewiew by Marc Medwin (dustedmagazine) Faust fans are deeply indebted to Table of the Elements. It was fantastic to see the Faust/Conrad collaboration Outside the Dream Syndicate back in the catalogue upon its 30th anniversary reissue in 2002. Last year, 1994’s Rien came back into print after a long and inexplicable absence. Now comes this CD issue of the 1995 Faust/Conrad Queen Elizabeth Hall show, long discussed, bootlegged and now, finally, widely available. Anybody who’s reveled in the hypno-purr, clang and swoosh that typified the 1972 effort might feel, as I did, that as great as that album was, a certain push over the edge was lacking. All of the necessary components were there – Jean Herve Peron’s rippingly metallic bass, Zappi Deiarmeir’s stoically thunderous drums, Conrad’s shrill and ever-changing “eternal music” violin ruminations, all augmented by keyboard atmospheres courtesy of the late Rudolf Sosna. It all sounds just a shade too perfect now, too contrived, with every element audible without achieving the necessary blend. As a recent album title has it, “It’s magnificent, but it isn’t war.” Conrad’s Early Minimalism project came much closer to how I imagined the 1972 material to sound in Wumme – stark, full, distortion breeding difference tones which breeded three-dimensionality. The 1995 show kicks off with a bang as Conrad hurtles headlong into the familiar drone, this time with more energy and focus than usual. He is joined eventually by violin and cello, and those chest-rattling low frequencies kick in; the overtones ascend, filling space and frequency spectrum with static, and just as saturation threatens, Zappi shatters the screaming silence with uhr-groove artillery. For perhaps the only time on disc, his legendary explosions are captured in all their slow-burn bludgeoning glory. He and Peron are in thunderous agreement throughout, Peron snapping a string and literally drawing blood before it’s all over. The audience is enthusiastic to say the least, a few moments of down-right confrontation filling the gap between the set proper and what I’m assuming to be an eight-minute encore. As with any release in which Conrad is a participant, to attempt a concise description is akin to verbalizing a waterfall or summarizing the inner workings of a motor. The two Faustians provide the perfectly repetitive backdrop to Conrad’s microtonal reflections, and if the rehearsal recordings from a recently released and limited box set are fit evidence, they are taking the same venom and vigor on the road as they tour the UK (without Conrad) in late October and early November. It is fitting that the QEH gig sees release now; Faust is re-examining its legacy, and this concert is an indispensable component. I hope it is only the precursor to further archival releases. Recensione di Neu!_Cannas (DeBaser) (5 stars) Signori benvenuti e buonasera. Oggi nella rubrica Tutti pazzi per il kraut si parlerà di un certo personaggio di nome Tony Conrad, e di tre dei cinque Faust che un giorno decisero di incontrarsi e produrre della musica. Era ottobre, ottobre del 1972, località Wumme. Il prezzo del lavoro finale? soltanto 1,49 sterline. Ma i prezzi finali come ben sappiamo, in musica sono relativi e del tutto paradossali. Forse un prezzo più elevato avrebbe avute la conseguenza logica di creare molto malcontento tra chi comprava questalbum, ma era sprovvisto del senso delludito. Un pò come successo lanno dopo oltreoceano con Metal Machine Music di Reed. Ecco Reed. Ecco i Velvet Underground. Per descrivere questopera è davvero inevitabile citare questultimi, Andy Warhol, la banana e tutto ciò che fù. Questo di Conrad e dei Faust è la risposta europea, prettamente tedesca, alla sperimentazione Velvettiana tipica di brani quali European Son, Venus in Furs o The Black Angels Death Song. E Conrad sembra essere la risposta a John Cale, alla sua voglia di sperimentazione, al modo in cui suona, o meglio crea paesaggi e atmosfere surreali, con il violino. Qui alla batteria però cè un uguale primitivo Diermeier rispetto alla Tucker, ma più movimentato, e allo stesso tempo monotono. La musica che ne esce è divisa in due parti (più tardi verranno chiamati brani), che diventano tre nella imperdibile riedizione di fine 90: The Side of the Machine; The Side of Man & Womankind; The Side of Woman & Mankind. Tre diversi aspetti, tre diversi modi di straziare un violino, di violentarlo davanti ad una batteria che sorride allaccaduto, senza però preoccuparsi minimamente. Infatti la batteria rimane ferma, stabile, vorresti quasi spronarla a cambiare, a reagire, ma ormai ti ha ipnotizzato dal ritmo serrato dei suoi tamburi, rotti soltanto da qualche sporadico colpo di piatti, che raggiungono il loro scopo nellobbiettivo di renderti cosciente dellaccaduto. Daltronde le macchine sono così, hanno i loro ritmi serrati, indipendenti, stabili. Poi il ritmo si dilata, tranquillizza un pò, il violino prende più il sopravvento, simbolo dellemotività della razza umana. Questa è la maggiore differenza tra i due movimenti dellalbum, musicalmente ed ideologicamente. Ecco perchè potremmo includere anche la traccia aggiuntiva della ristampa in questa differenzazione (anche se molto più movimentata rispetto alla precedente). Ed è la fine del disco, del saggio, dellopera chiamatela come vi pare. Sta di fatto che Conrad si dimostra qui uno sperimentatore come pochi sulla piazza, un avanguardista minimale, forse più minimale di Cale. E i Faust, che non erano certo il gruppo più ortodosso dei 70, gli fanno da spalla nel migliore dei modi, impazzendo insieme a lui, rimarcando quel concetto di non cognizione della realtà presente nel loro esordio, in questa lunghissima cavalcata sonora sulle colline di Uranio. Ma in realtà le persone pazze sono semplicemete più sensibili, più emotive in grado di cogliere cose che gli altri non sarebbero in grado di cogliere, come la differenza tra uomo e macchina, tra rumore e suono, tra rock e avanguardia, tra ciò che esiste veramente e ciò che la mente elabora alla stimolazione di questa musica. Rewiew by Brent S. Sirota (pitchfork) (4.5 stars) An old Zen koan comes to mind; delivered through the lesser hands of seekers and compilers, beats and Deadheads, the New Age-- but surely, I imagine, of wise and noble provenance somewhere back. A flag flapping in the gale sparks an argument between two monks on the nature of things. The first declares that the flag is surely moving. The flag is still, counters the other, it is the wind that is moving. Sure enough, where an insoluble paradox appears, the wandering master is not far behind. Which is it, ask the monks, is the flag moving or is the wind moving? Neither, replies the master; mind is moving. Fair enough. Take it, like any wisdom, with a grain of salt, but it springs to mind. Not because Tony Conrad sees still air and a flapping flag, or because Faust occupy a world of volatile weather, but just because, for a moment in Outside the Dream Syndicate, one forgets what exactly is moving and what is standing still. Heres what we know: in October 1972, at a hippie commune in Wümme in southwestern Hamburg, a German art-rock collective bred on the stringent drone and skag-pop of the Velvet Underground hooked up with the young composer who gave that band its name-- or rather, who handed Lou Reed the sadomasochism exposé whence the band derived its name. Tony Conrad and the members of Faust collaborated for three days on an album that would be released the following year in England and would tank immediately thereafter. The musicians did not communicate or collaborate throughout the following two decades. Minimalism is unquestionably the wrong word; I prefer asceticism. Anyone familiar with the Zappa-like hysteria of Fausts first album or the searing kosmische of IV must imagine the sheer force of self-denial at work in implementing Conrads vision: to have a deep base note tuned to the tonic on Conrads violin and to have the drummer tuned to a rhythm that corresponded to the vibrations. Minimal in design, I suppose, but catastrophically huge in execution. From the Side of Man and Womankind opens in dead motorik, the usually nimble percussive battery of bass guitarist Jean-Hervé Peron and drummer Zappi Diermaier, stalled out to a hollow thud-- like the heartbeat of a machine. Conrads violin bleats mournfully, endlessly; rising, breathing, sighing, screaming, but without ceasing: relentless. Faust resisted. Perons second bass note, inserted against Conrads wishes, adds a spring and thrust to the proceedings. Zappis odd cymbal crash shatters like punctuation in a prayer. Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck dulled the serrated violence of Conrads violin, somehow rendering slow murder into long caresses. The Side of Man and Womankind runs like a conveyor belt through fog: going without moving, advancing, standing still. From the Side of the Machine is oddly less mechanical than its counterpart. A half-hour in length, like Man and Womankind, the Machine side ruminates with muted psychedelia: serpentine bass, ceremonial percussion, the purr and roar of Rudolf Sosnas humming synthesizer, Conrads violin passing high above like an electrical storm in the upper air. There is a predatory quality to the Side of the Machine: an encircling peril, a certain restlessness above and behind. Mind moves, as if hunted. The Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Outside the Dream Syndicate adds a second disc of material. Two brief tracks-- both named with the young death of former Dream Syndicate comrade Angus Maclise in mind-- offer the remaining fragments of those three days at the abandoned schoolhouse studio at Wümme. Both the slow burning The Pyre of Angus was in Kathmandu and the tremulous The Death of the Composer Was in 1962 reveal a looser agenda in the sessions. In the latter piece, Conrad abandons the impassive drone of the first disc for an almost celebratory psych-rock. The second disc is rounded out by an alternate production of From the Side of Man and Womankind, lacking the overdubbed violin lines of the album version. So perhaps a little Zen, perhaps a little cataclysm. After all, as Lou Reed said, Its the beginning of the New Age. And a few decades before that, a poet ended his long flirtation with Buddhism by joining the Church of England. In his conversion poem, however, he continued to pray with eastern paradoxes. Teach us to care and not to care, T.S. Eliot intoned, teach us to sit still. And this album finally begins to show us how. Contributo di .... (isle-of-noises.blogspot) Tony Conrad (1940) è una delle figure di spicco dell’avanguardia musicale e cinematografica di New York dei Sessanta, segnatamente di quella forma artistica che, pur nella variabilità del significato, viene definita minimalista. Essa consta di due elementi essenziali: l’impersonalità, ritrovata nell’utilizzo di materiali basici dilavati dalla fascinazione del colore e delle simbologie nonché da qualsivoglia tocco decorativo o artigianale che possa intaccare la fredda oggettività della resa artistica; la ripetizione, propria delle produzioni seriali industriali, o dei ritmi percussivi ed ossessivi, che strutturano certe sonorità etniche o artificiali. Nel cortometraggio conradiano The flicker (1966), ad esempio, in circa trenta minuti, egli si serve di sole cinque inquadrature: le prime tre, sottolineate da una musica da two-reels* comico, consistono in semplici scritte (Tony Conrad presenta, The flicker ed un ammonimento**); le restanti due, accompagnate da una drone-music disturbante, sono un campo bianco e un campo nero che si alternano, con tempi variabili, fino alla creazione di una pulsazione stroboscopica. In campo musicale Conrad fu un membro dei Theatre of Eternal Music (fondati da LaMonte Young e ribattezzati in seguito come Dream Syndicate) assieme a Terry Riley, Angus MacLise e John Cale. Nel 1972, invitato dal produttore dei Faust Uwe Nettelbeck, incide, assieme a tre componenti del gruppo, Werner Diermaier (batteria), Jean-Hervé Péron (basso) e Rudolf Sosna (chitarra e tastiere), uno dei lavori più puri e memorabili dell’arte minimale***. Esso consiste in due pezzi di circa ventisei minuti, From the side of man and womankind e From the side of the machine. Nel primo pezzo Conrad, sorretto da una nenia percussiva estrema, estrae dal proprio violino, senza mai staccare l’archetto dalle corde, accordi prolungatissimi suonati con una totale assenza di finalismo melodico. Nel secondo, il lavoro della sezione ritmica e delle tastiere si fa più variato; per ciò stesso il lavoro di Conrad viene liberato dal fardello di una potenziale monotonia: una volta abbandonati al flusso della sua linea strumentale, quasi una cornamusa a corde, veniamo indotti in uno stato di trance evocativa. Proprio qui risiede la feconda contraddizione del minimalismo musicale rispetto a quello figurativo od architettonico: esso ingenera, con lentissime variazioni di temi elementari, deragliamenti dalla pura resa oggettiva e consegue coinvolgimenti emotivi di tipo quasi sciamanico****. L’edizione in CD per il trentennale regala, oltre alla versione completa di From the side, alcuni cascami di quella storica registrazione rititolati The pyre of Angus was in Katmandu, dedicato alla morte di MacLise (avvenuta nel 1979, sei anni dopo), e The death of the composer was in 1962 che, come spesso accade, hanno semplice utilità filologica e non di arricchimento artistico di ciò che fu già edito. * Letteralmente due bobine; tale era la consistenza di molti cortometraggi comici muti (16 minuti circa). ** Si avverte che l’effetto stroboscopico può causare attacchi nei soggetti predisposti all’epilessia. *** Il disco fu così titolato poiché eseguito fuori del gruppo The Dream Syndicate. **** Alcuni autori, infatti, derivano le loro rielaborazioni da musiche etniche, africane o mediorientali. Little biography by Philippe Blache (progarchives) Tony Conrad biography Tony Conrad is an American multimedia and experimental artist. He is musically known in the 60s for his abrasive violin drones and collaboration in the American Dream syndicate. In 1972 he visited the krautrock band FAUST at Wumme and recorded a first album with them called Outside The Dream Syndicate (1973). The album is a vast catalogue of shimmering drones for violin, accompanied by percussive minimalist pulses and moving bass guitar lines. The result is tripped out, engaging the listener in strange rituals (almost buzzing raga dreamy sounds. In 1993, when the album is reissued by Table of elements, Tony Conrad goes back to the scene (after a long break) and records an new solo album Slapping Pythagoras (1995) for sonic violin dissonances and harmonies. Eternal! Biografia breve di Piero Scaruffi Violin player Tony Conrad was one of the pioneers of New York minimalism, of microtonal music and of deep listening. He worked in 1962 on Lamonte Youngs Dream Music project with the likes of John Cale and Angus MacLise (both future Velvet Underground). Despite having recorded very little (or in virtue of it), he remained the purest and most ascetic of the minimalists. His compositions were long tone pieces in just intonation for bowed strings, without any melodic development, notably Four Violins (december 1964 - Table of the Elements, 1997), and his collaboration with Faust, Outside The Dream Syndicate (october 1972 - Caroline, 1973 - Table of the Elements, 1996), works which, in his own words, explored the border between pitch and rhythm. After leaving Youngs ensemble in 1965, he focused mainly on cinema, starting with The Flicker {1966), but Fantastic Glissando (december 1969 - Table of the Elements, 2003) was a performance of electronic music, while Music and the Mind Of the Word (1977) was a lengthy piano sonata. After a long hiatus, Slapping Pythagoras (Table of the Elements, 1995), recorded with a handful of post-rock musicians, is basically the logical continuation of Outside The Dream Syndicate. Early Minimalism (Table of the Elements, 1997) is a 4-cd retrospective. Thuunderboy (Table of the Elements, 2002) is a typical avantgarde swindle: Conrad recorded his son while the child was playing with turntables and other objects, and the album pretends this to be art. Bryant Park (Table Of The Elements, 2005) documents a 1969 experiment in manipulating the sounds of an anti-war rally. Joan of Arc (Table Of The Elements, 2006) is a 1968 movie soundtrack that uses the pump organ instead of the violin. Tony Conrad, Tim Barnes, Mattin (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 2006) document a live performance from april 2005. An Aural Symbiotic Mystery (Subrosa, 2007) documented a live october 2005 collaboration between Tony Conrad (on violin) and Charlemagne Palestine (on organ). Biography by .... (hosting.zkm) Tony Conrads artistic creativity cannot be subsumed by any one category. He is certainly best known as a musician and film-maker, yet he is also a painter, a video- and performance artist, and at the same time a mediator of his knowledge by means of quantities of writings and teaching activities. As a violinist he was among the founders of Minimal music, which developed as Minimal arts accompaniment in the 1960s. Inspired by Jack Smith, pioneer of underground films in New York, and Beverly Grant, his first wife, he turned to the medium of film. In 1966, Conrad made Flicker, one of the key works of structural film. The alternation between dark and light images with varying frequencies is often the medium of such experimental films. Over the years, he had been creating films such as Coming Attraction, Straight and Narrow [both 1970] or Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals [1975], and videos such as Phonograph and Cycles of 3s and 7s [both 1977], Hail the Fallen [1981], and In Line [1986]. While the films primarily deal with perceptual problems, he often makes use of narrative structures in his video works. In the 1970s, Conrad began to occupy himself more with socio-cultural power structures. With his teaching position in the Department of Media Study at SUNY, Buffalo, an involvement with structures of control and authority increasingly began to have significance for him. Conrad is still active at SUNY, Buffalo, teaching video production and analysis. Tony Conrad has become a central figure for many media artists of a younger generation [for example Tony Oursler and Mike Kelley, among others] because of his having left the Modernist formal tradition, among whose masters he had belonged to in the 1960s, behind. Films Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals [Excerpt], 1975, 16mm-Film, 07:00 min im Loop Aquarium [Excerpt] 1975, 16mm-Film, 04:00 min Phonograph 1979, 16mm-Film, 01:00 min Teddy Tells Jokes 1980, Super8-Film, 04:00 min Beholden to Victory [Hail the Fallen] 1981, Super8-Film, 25:00 min Sip Twice, Sandry 1983, Super8-Film, 03:00 min Videos Concord Ultimatum [Excerpt], 1977, 10:00 min Cycles of 3s and 7s [Excerpt], 1977, 12:40 min Movie Show 1977, 62:00 min Any Time: 100 Songs [from Music and the Mind of the Word, 1977-81], 1980, 37:00 min Watching Movies 1979, 24:30 min Accordion 1981, 05:00 min Your Friend 1982, 10:00 min Height 100 [Excerpt], 1983, 10:00 min Lookers 1984, 03:50 min Eye Contact 1985, 08:00 min Ipso Facto 1985, 07:00 min Literature and Revolution with Joe Gibbons], 1985, 03:00 min In Line 1986, 07:00 min Egypt 2000 1986, 12:50 min Redressing Down 1988, 19:20 min That Far Away Look 1988, 24:30 min Vidi Vici: Narrative & the death of desire 1988, 11:50 min No Europe [with Chris Hill], 1990, 13:00 min Artpark -- One Year Later 1991, 30:30 min Lafayette Square 1991, 29:00 min Studio of the Streets [Part 1], 1991- 93, 62:00 min Studio of the Streets [Part 2], 1991- 93, 62:20 min Studio of the Streets [Part 3], 1991- 93, 62:20min Studio of the Streets [Part 4], 1991- 93, 62:30 min Audio Composition Piano Morning [aus Music and the Mind of the Word, 1977-81], 1978, 24:30 min Pi 1978, 08:30 min Early Minimalism: March 1965 1988, 15:00 min Harmony Lesson 2006, 07:30 min Photographs and Collages Photo Corner Works 1976-77 Infant Protective Gesture 1979 Tony Conrad at Artpark Protest, Lewiston New York, 1. September 1990 Presentation of the book by .... (mitpress.mit.edu) Beyond the Dream Syndicate Tony Conrad and the Arts After Cage By Branden W. Joseph Overview Tony Conrad has significantly influenced cultural developments from minimalism to underground film, concept art, postmodern appropriation, and the most sophisticated rock and roll. Creator of the structural film, The Flicker, collaborator on Jack Smiths Flaming Creatures and Normal Love, follower of Henry Flynts radical anti-art, member of the Theatre of Eternal Music and the first incarnation of The Velvet Underground, and early associate of Mike Kelley, Tony Oursler, and Cindy Sherman, Conrad has eluded canonic histories. Yet Beyond the Dream Syndicate does not claim Conrad as a major but under-recognized figure. Neither monograph nor social history, the book takes Conrads collaborative interactions as a guiding thread by which to investigate the contiguous networks and discursive interconnections in 1960s art. Such an approach simultaneously illuminates and estranges current understandings of the period, redrawing the map across medium and stylistic boundaries to reveal a constitutive hybridization at the base of the decades artistic development. This exploration of Conrad and his milieu goes beyond the presentation of a relatively overlooked oeuvre to chart multiple, contestatory regimes of power simultaneously in play during the pivotal moment of the 1960s. From the sovereign authority invoked by Youngs music, to the paranoiac politics of Flynt, to the immanent control modeled by Conrads films, each avant-garde project examined reveals an investment within a particular structure of power and resistance, providing a glimpse into the diversity of the artistic and political stakes that continue to define our time. About the Author Branden W. Joseph is Frank Gallipoli Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and an editor of the journal Grey Room (MIT Press). Reviews “Joseph writes powerfully ... and with a brio most academic writers can only dream about.... a major book”—The Wire “[A] meticulous and imaginative study.... a vital argument for recasting in unlikely, counterintuitive or even absurd ways the cultural histories we think we know best.... a compelling and exemplary history.”—Art Review “Joseph moves across and between disciplinary genres of scholarship, and thereby challenges the reader’s capacity to think outside familiar categories. This study sits at the fringes of several academic disciplines and, to its credit, fits squarely within none.”—Stephen Petersen, Leonardo Reviews “A superb book.”—Daniel Birnbaum, Artforum “Branden W. Josephs new book, Beyond the Dream Syndicate, is a major contribution to our thinking about this period.... an immensely engaging—and important—book.”—Modern Painters “Branden W. Joseph’s new book Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage is a necessary and timely one. In sum, Joseph has succeeded in substantially altering our notion of the so-called expanded field of art and film. With its meticulous research and precise mode of argumentation, Beyond the Dream Syndicate sets an important standard for future scholars...”—Texte zur Kunst Endorsements “Branden Joseph has emerged as one of our most accomplished and significant cultural historians. Ranging across film, music, and art, his new book focuses on the myriad accomplishments of Tony Conrad. The combination of its detailed scholarship across a very wide cultural field, the incisiveness of its analyses, and its ease in moving dialectically from the most precise formal details of works of art to their general social and political implications is remarkable. Overall his demonstration of the interrelatedness of different cultural spheres presents a radical challenge to the hermeticism of orthodox art history and to the simple-minded high/low binaries of affirmative cultural studies. Its hard to imagine, let alone find, a work in sixties cultural historiography of comparably broad insight and originality.” —David E. James, author of The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles “Beyond the Dream Syndicate is Branden W. Josephs admirable step outside the art historians typically crisp disciplinary boundaries. Josephs gambit is to use the brilliant, improbable Tony Conrad as his guide through one generations challenge to make art after John Cage. In the course of this expedition, we encounter rigorous meditations on minimalist music and visual art, Henry Flynts Concept Art, daily life with Jack Smith, the hilarious head-on collisions that resulted in the Primitives and the Velvet Underground, and the stroboscopic consequences of Conrads 1966 film The Flicker. This is a highly original, rewarding book, and one that will catch people by surprise. I imagine that this is a book for which many people have unconsciously been waiting.” —David Grubbs, Drag City recording artist “In the avant-garde, Conrad knows no peers. He is so fundamentalist that his only rival in the whole of the Universal music scene could be Sky Saxon of the Seeds.” —Julian Cope, Krautrocksampler “Pivoting on Tony Conrads seminal role as artist and theorist, this groundbreaking book reexamines the post-Cagean milieu of early sixties New York where visual art, music, film, and performance increasingly overlapped and hybridized. Richly detailed, scrupulously researched, Josephs brilliant analysis deploys a Foucauldian model to reformulate crucial questions of artistic authorship, tease out the political and social implications of Conrads prescient production and interactions with his peers, and reconfigure a broad swathe of American vanguard culture so that the imbrication of these artists practices in structures of power stands newly revealed.” —Lynne Cooke, curator, Dia Art Foundation “Branden W. Joseph has emerged as one of our most accomplished and significant cultural historians. Ranging across film, music, and art, his new book focuses on the myriad accomplishments of Tony Conrad. Its hard to imagine, let alone find, a work in 1960s cultural historiography of comparably broad insight and originality.” —David E. James, author of The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles
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