The Faust Cycle: Day Eight
Artist: Ergo Phizmiz
Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)
Today’s section is “The Abduction of the Object”. By this point, I have lost most of the narrative thread of the story, only to say that I do know what the object is, and was surprised by this turn of events, as it represents possibly the only aspect of an actual plot line that isn’t part of the setup, or a set of narrative twists and turns.
Ergo is chasing a Linnet in a part of the house he doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t remember what he did with the parcel, and now imagines that if he happens on Dr. Faustus, he doens’t relish telling him that he’s lost the package. As he chases the Linnet he finds himself in an auditorium with a cross dressing person on stage, reciting odd sing-song-ish poetry than rolls on and on endlessly and barely making any real sense. The audience is a bunch of (again) people dressed in bird suits.
It’s after the cross-dresser that Faustus appears on the stage, wheeling out what appears to be a life size doll: Eloise. With the emergence of Faustus on the stage, we are presented with a series of processes for the construction of an automaton. I won’t explain here, however this section links together several of the more unusual recurring elements of the piece to give us an idea of how Faustus has accomplished a miracle: Eloise is an automaton.
While we and Ergo have been introduced to Eloise before, now she is quite appealing to Ergo. She has become a thing of beauty, something desirable. So desirable that he storms the stage, knocks out Faustus (with a trombone he steals from the orchestra) and grabs Eloise and runs away with her. And thus ends chunk 4 of The Faust Cycle, with possibly one of the most standard plot points of a narrative. However, it doesn’t seem like a cop-out. It works, we have seen Eloise before, and by now (nearly 12 hours into the piece) couldn’t have imagined that this was going to happen.
Much of the music and sound collages in this section were put together by James Nye & Ergo Phizmiz. And in this case, the majority of it has been used to illustrate the construction of Eloise and automata’s. This is possibly one of more distinct and specific examples of an interweaving of the narrative elements with sound collage techniques. Part of the sound collage reveals another source of the elements of The Faust Cycle: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Onwards..
Review: I Step Into The Advent
Cover: I Step Into The Advent
Title: I Step Into The Advent
Artist: Mikael Fyrek
Label: Kahvi Collective
Release Date: 11/10/2009
Catalog No: Kahvi 276
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND-SA
Mikael Fyrek is another example of one of the extremely fine electronic musicians that has been on the net for quite sometime. This release is his fifth on the Kahvi Collective, and it exemplifies what one person can do with a home studio and more than a dash of skill and creativity.
re:Sound: Work & Play
Welcome to a new series of articles called re:Sound. The idea for this column came from a couple of magazine columns I have seen in the past. Basically, the idea is to dig back into my collection and select a recording that is worthy of tracking down and listening to. While many of these will be netlabel releases that you can find fairly easily, some of them may be commercial releases that may be more difficult to find. (However, I will stay away from RIAA releases as much as possible in favor of true independent releases…)
So, let’s get to my first choice.
The Faust Cycle: Day Seven
Artist: Ergo Phizmiz
Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)
The subtitle for this section is “The Bird Machines”. I listened to part of this section over the weekend, and the whole thing again today.
This section starts with Ergo waking up in a hallway, observing Marcel Duchamp teaching a group of small birds. A gramophone approaches, music playing, baboon like legs clanking against the floor. Ergo watches from a corner, not wanting to interrupt the happenings. He watches as the gramophone changes records via it’s fused in record changer. The new record is “Dr. Faustus Book of Birds”.
The selection that is presented next is a musical interpretation / narrative of this selection of birds. When the record ends, a book is extended from the bell of the gramophone. Upon opening the book, Ergo finds himself in another hallway full of doors, with a film projected at the far end. He looks through the peep holes in the doors, which is accompanied by a rather lengthy sound collage. There is a narrative about ducks, followed by another sound collage, before going into a song. When the song concludes we are taken into another lengthy sound collage: first of birds, then bells, chimes and carnival music which concludes this section of the piece.
My attention to detail may not be quite as great in this section, as I said I listened to it twice, but was so lost in the collages and the musical interludes that I didn’t pay as much attention to the narrative relationships. The one thing that I did notice was the restoration of Ergo to the main house now, instead of being in the sewers or the ballroom.
The other thing that impresses me in this section is the emergence of the birds. I’ve been thinking that many of the creatures and animals have some form of symbolic meaning. Obviously, this is all the stuff that dreams are made of, but frequently dreams are a manifestation of our real lives. No matter what, these narratives are thickly layered with all sorts of things that can be interpreted. But the task of trying to assemble and interpret all of this would be a daunting task.
Onwards…
Sunday Re-spin #4
Alright, this week has been hard fought, but quite successful, I would say…
- Six articles on The Faust Cycle have been posted, and there will be six more of them.
- I posted my commentaries on: the Cowon iAudio 7 & 9 players, A Brief Word About Security, and the iPad & iBooks.
- I continued serveral series: Finding Music Online, Shoestring Classical Series.
- I posted part two of my January Classical Listening article.
- I reviewed a new release by Pharmacore on the Pavillion36 label.
- And I started re-working the Links & Locations portion of the site.
The Faust Cycle: Day Six
Artist: Ergo Phizmiz
Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)
So today’s listening was a turning point on The Faust Cycle for me. Actually, it wasn’t a single turning point, but rather multiple turning points.
First was the introduction of The Faust Cycle Podcast. My first impression about this was: what a wonderful thing to do. Sharing this work with a group of kids, getting them the experience of making free-form music, and experimentation. Getting them excited about the process of recording this type of work. It’s a completely wonderful way to expand these kids horizons, but also extend the community of the Creative Commons and Libre Culture to another generation.
The inclusion of their podcast in The Faust Cycle itself adds another, very interesting, dimension to the piece. Those who are familiar with the writings of Jorge Louis Borges, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and James Joyce, to name a very few (it can be argued that I am referring back to Laurence Sterne again as well), have undoubtedly heard of the term meta-fiction.
Meta-fiction is typically fiction about fiction, or at least is self-aware in one way or another. The introduction of the podcast in this context adds another type of meta-fictional element: this is now an audio piece that is aware of itself, aware of the elements that have gone into it’s production.
Of Kinetoscopes & Dung
Now, back at the main piece we arrive to the next twist of the narrative: Ergo finds that he has become human again and is no longer a puppet. He realizes that he has no idea what amount of time has transpired: hours, days weeks? And he realizes that he’s about to burst, and sets off to find a lavatory to relieve himself. And, after finding an appropriate room, with one enormous push he is emptied.
While this activity is normal and necessary, he has a realization that he feels more empty than normal, that something is wrong. While playing a harmonica, trying to figure out what is wrong, he hears wailing from the pipes beneath where his soul has gone with his bowel movement. After noting the irony, Ergo realizes that he must get his soul back and thus flushes himself down the pipes.
What transpires in the sewage system below can only be described as hellish in ways we haven’t encountered thus far. Ergo watches several kinetoscopes of films about Lucifer, but is unable to decide what they mean. However, after the 2nd film, he hears a piano off in the distance, and decides to follow the sound to find his soul.
The piano we hear, is the same James Nye piece that has been used throughout: An Evening In Hell. Ergo finds himself in a ballroom, where many people are dancing and humming. As he stands in the corner, where only the piano has noticed his presence, he suddenly hears a voice in his ear reciting nonsensical poetry. He looks around to find the source of the voice, only to find a pig, which when patted squeals and expands to the size of the room then falls to pieces.
Lonely Violin music, and an interpretation of “Le Tango Perpetuel” and “An Evening in Hell” close this section of the piece.
Onwards…
The Faust Cycle: Day Five
Artist: Ergo Phizmiz
Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)
When I left off yesterday, I stated that I wanted to have a separate download of “Improvisation for Cello & Electronics” by Bela Emerson. It is such a captivating piece that I mentioned that it reminded me of a Karlheinz Stockhausen piece, alas I didn’t mention the title: Mantra. I also mentioned Klaus Schulze & Rainer Bloss, but didn’t mention that I was thinking of the 2nd half of the Audentity album.
I’ve re-listened to the Bela Emerson piece, and still hold to my words. However, besides Stockhausen and Bloss, I knew there was more that I was thinking about. The next section of The Faust Cycle was to bring the connections to other music that I have listened to throughout the years to the foreground. Hell Kebabs by Angela Valid brought into my mind some of the really classic electroacoustic pieces I’ve listened to throughout the years… One of the better compilations of such pieces can be found in the Archives GRM collection, which features composers / artists like Pierre Boulez, Edgar Varese, Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Luc Ferrari, and Francois Bayle just to name a few.
It also occurred to me that this is one of the things that I am not hearing a lot of the electronic micro-tonal / marco-tonal works that are coming out on netlabels like Resting Bell… While the electronic works are detailed, well structured and thought out, they tend to not have the level of text and detail found in the earliest electroacoustic works from the 1950’s and 1960’s. It’s definitely something that sets The Faust Cycle apart from other works.
After Hell Kebabs we return to a more narration oriented section, although this time, there is some meshing of the electroacoustic work in the background of the narration, even when a tango and waltz are mixed over the top of the abstract and complex texture of Hell Kebabs, which finally fades into the background as we are introduced to “Gretchen”.
Ergo, still in his wooden puppet form, watches Gretchen, and listens to her as she whispers in his ear. She eventually slips into sing chanting portions of Anything Goes. We listen to a a small ensemble perform for a bit, then “Improvisation for Cell & Electronics” is re-introduced behind Gretchen. This is a wonderful bit of meta-audio-narration as the familiar chirping of birds are re-introduced, the mixture of the string ensemble with muted trumpet, and several themes re-emerge.
After the conclusion of “Gretchen” we are cast into “Chronicles of the Suspicious Gentleman”. This section starts with a piece sung by a small ensemble, and then Gretchen narrates the story as depicted by puppets. The story revolves around the Gentleman and Madiana. Much of the stroy is told through musical interpretation that mixes elements in a unique form, sounding like modern electronica, a 1920’s victrola and a carnival barker before giving way to an unusual interpretation (mashup?) of Fever, which gives way to another unusual interpretation — I can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch). This gives a whole new meaning to the context of the song, bringing out the elements of jealousy and insecurity.
This section is a little more successful, or at least a little more obvious, when it comes to linkage between the music and the narrative elements. It’s either that, or I am getting some of my chops back for listening to a more complicated work such as this.
Onwards…
Who could beat iBooks and iPad?
While there has been a lot of media chatter over the iPad (see references) and the iBooks application, no one is asking the serious questions, and believe me, there are a lot of them to consider. Here’s a couple of them that need to be discussed a lot more:
- What will compete with iBooks and iBookstore?
- Is iBooks the best thing for the publishing industry?
- What damage is being done to consumers?
Those questions are discussed in the remainder of this article.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Faust Cycle: Day Four
Artist: Ergo Phizmiz
Title: The Faust Cycle (or The House of Dr. Faustus)
This section is sub-titled Operatic Laughter. The opening of this portion reminded me of something Negativland would do: use a sample from an opera, chop it up and loop it, then juxtapose it with a really cheesy latin-style jazz piece. This segment is then followed with the Monkey Song.
Ergo, now presumably in the middle of a dream, has come to the realization that he is a puppet, who gets to do a dance once a day. Now he is relegated to watching all manner of unusual performances around him, being unable to move since he is made of wood. The monkey reappears, using Ergo Puppet to relieve himself. It always seems that with the appearance of monkeys the subject turns scatalogical. 
After being used, Ergo is shown several short films… However, first, he is subjected to Igor Stravinsky’s standup routine which ends with Stravinksy disappearing through a picture of Caruso’s buttocks. Then the films.
Eventually there is a filmed production of Eloise. This stage production is about a doll being trained in opera by Dr. Faustus, or rather, someone portraying Dr. Faustus. After the film we are presented with another Negativland style collage of operas being mixed into a new rhytmic and melodic structure, and juxtaposed with a piece of pop music.
This finally gives way to a minimalistic piece for cello and electronics (by Bela Emerson). This is a wonderful piece, reminding me of a cross between a Karlheinz Stockhausen piano piece, and some of the works of Klaus Schulze and Rainer Bloss.
This last piece is just incredibly gorgeous. I’ve started thinking that I want to download the music sections of this piece seperately (I know they are available on FMA), and this piece alone makes the case for having the music as a stand-alone entity.
Onwards…
A Brief Word About Security
Yes, okay, this is a bit more of a geeky subject than I normally write about here. However, I wanted to make certain that everyone is clear on this: never reveal even a portion of any of your passwords to anyone.
I’ve had several domains for a while now. Unfortunately, with time constraints, I hadn’t gotten around to really getting any content going on a couple of them. I decided last year that I was going to wait until the contracts expire with the hosting services that I had been using, and consolidate under a single hosting company (based on the excellent service the hosting company had provided me and others on several occasions).
So, as my hosting contract expired on the old service, I was contacted before their auto renewal system was unable to process my credit card (it was an older card that had been deactivated due to my car being broken into over the summer). Anyway, what follows is a chopped down version of an email exchange with that company regarding cancelling my account:
