Chapter IVVIRIDIAN
The Drone of the Holy Numbers
Minimalism, the Theatre of Eternal Music and just intonation
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001
The Well-Tuned Piano
La Monte Young
From pieces that started before they were ‘played’ and continued after they ‘stopped’ to twelve-day blues, sine wave rumbles and his six-hour epic The Well-Tuned Piano (still considered a ‘work in progress’ over three decades after its debut performance), Young’s music hinges on the power of hypnosis.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
002
Deep Listening
Pauline Oliveros
From the nexus that formed around Young and his improvisational drone supergroup the Theatre of Eternal Music (which launched both future Velvet Underground members John Cale and Angus MacLise, as well as underground agitator Tony Conrad) to Deep Listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros, as well as the enduring legacy of the band who emerged, via John Cale, from minimalism to take the drone into the rock sphere and in the process change everything, for ever: the Velvet Underground.
Album 1989 Open ↗ YouTube -
003
Raga Sindhu Bhairavi
Ali Akbar Khan & Chatur Lal
It was Indian music that had the greatest influence on changing his path from jazz to no-holds-barred radical composition, however – the aforementioned recording by Ali Akbar Khan (sarod) and Chatur Lal (tabla) of Raga Sindhu Bhairavi in particular.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
004
Trio for Strings
La Monte Young
Trio for Strings drew on what Young termed ‘sustenance’ – i.e. the drone at the core of the piece, as opposed to a background to melodic progression.
Composition 1958 Open ↗ YouTube -
005
For Brass
La Monte Young
Although his earlier compositions For Brass (1957) and the following year’s For Guitar had both worked with sustained tones, Trio for Strings was more extreme than either.
Composition 1957 Open ↗ YouTube -
006
For Guitar
La Monte Young
Although his earlier compositions For Brass (1957) and the following year’s For Guitar had both worked with sustained tones, Trio for Strings was more extreme than either.
Composition 1958 Open ↗ YouTube -
007
Poem
La Monte Young
Poem (1960) was inspired by the drone of wooden benches dragged across the floor of a Berkley laundromat.
Composition 1960 Open ↗ YouTube -
008
Fluxus Manifesto
George Maciunas
It was, above all, a clarion call to the moment, as Maciunas wrote in his bombastic Fluxus Manifesto (1963):
Book 1963 Open ↗ Goodreads -
009
Music of Changes
John Cage
Cage used this method to compose Music of Changes (1951), consulting the oracle book to make decisions on tempo, melody and timings, itself a subversion of the classical obsession with order and control.
Composition 1951 Open ↗ YouTube -
010
An Anthology of Chance Operations
Edited by La Monte Young
The Cageian influence was solidified with the publication of An Anthology of Chance Operations, a Fluxus text edited by La Monte Young in 1963.
Book 1963 Open ↗ Goodreads -
011
Four Dreams of China
La Monte Young
Pieces such as The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer (part of his Four Dreams of China quartet) were pure drones, constructed from specific pitches and frequency ratios that track back to Young’s childhood, imbuing the drone of the American power grid with metaphysical spiritual significance.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
012
Metal Machine Music
Lou Reed
As Lou Reed once quipped when asked about the (supposed) extremity of his 1975 feedback fest Metal Machine Music, ‘you should have heard the Dream Syndicate’.
Album 1975 Open ↗ YouTube -
013
Dorian Blues
La Monte Young
Throughout 1963 they worked mainly around Young’s Dorian Blues series, each member holding a different pitch for as long as possible while Young blew soprano sax fast and wild, cascades of notes blasting in circular motifs above the dense dronal bedrock.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
014
The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys
Theatre of Eternal Music
The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys was an improvisational framework – a selection of frequency ratios – that enabled the band to move from one tone to the next.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
015
Day of Niagra: Inside the Dream Syndicate
Theatre of Eternal Music
American avant-garde revivalist label Table of the Elements issued a fascinating bootleg recording in 2000 entitled Day of Niagra: Inside the Dream Syndicate which collated a recording of the original Theatre, although it was unsanctioned by Young.
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016
Early Minimalism
Tony Conrad
As Conrad wrote in the sleeve notes of his 1997 Early Minimalism compilation:
Album 1997 Open ↗ YouTube -
017
Originale
Karlheinz Stockhausen
In 1964 he’d picketed Karlheinz Stockhausen’s New York premiere of Originale with a clapperboard reading ‘Action Against Cultural Imperialism’.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
018
The Flicker
Tony Conrad
His 1966 film The Flicker consisted of rapidly moving black and white images, strobe like – nothing more, other than a warning for epileptics, and a schlocky 1950s B movie-esque caveat that a ‘doctor should be in the house’ whenever it was shown.
Film 1966 Open ↗ IMDb -
019
Yellow Movies
Tony Conrad
His Yellow Movies series, for example, took the idea of watching paint dry literally.
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020
Outside the Dream Syndicate
Tony Conrad with Faust
We’ll fully discuss Conrad and Faust’s 1972 hypno masterwork – Outside the Dream Syndicate – later on, but equally compelling was his recording with Laurie Spiegel and Rhys Chatham, Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain, a long-lost 1972 New York live recording that was finally released by Superior Viaduct in 2017.
Album 1972 Open ↗ YouTube -
021
Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain
Tony Conrad, Laurie Spiegel & Rhys Chatham
We’ll fully discuss Conrad and Faust’s 1972 hypno masterwork – Outside the Dream Syndicate – later on, but equally compelling was his recording with Laurie Spiegel and Rhys Chatham, Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain, a long-lost 1972 New York live recording that was finally released by Superior Viaduct in 2017.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
022
Year
Angus MacLise
We’ll fully discuss Conrad and Faust’s 1972 hypno masterwork – Outside the Dream Syndicate – later on, but equally compelling was his recording with Laurie Spiegel and Rhys Chatham, Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain, a long-lost 1972 New York live recording that was finally released by Superior Viaduct in 2017.
Book 1961 Open ↗ Goodreads -
023
Slapping Pythagoras
Tony Conrad
Meanwhile 1995’s Slapping Pythagoras was a seriously abrasive wall of sound produced by Steve Albini, layers of microtonal violin forming a wall of sound, the incessant drone of Conrad’s violin enhanced by the feedback-drenched scrape of Jim O’Rourke’s guitar (the title was a thinly veiled dig at Young).
Album 1995 Open ↗ YouTube -
024
New York in the 1960s
John Cale
John Cale’s sprawling three-disc retrospective New York in the 1960s shone a light on a long-forgotten cache of DIY tape recordings, showcasing a hallucinatory welter of solo pieces that had lain untouched in Tony Conrad’s attic until 2000, when Cale started the arduous task of listening to them, cataloguing and restoring them.
Compilation Open ↗ YouTube -
025
The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda
Ira Cohen
His soundtrack to Ira Cohen’s hallucinatory The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda was particularly evocative, a tripped-out descent into some dank netherworld of wet cave sonics.
Film Open ↗ IMDb -
026
Chumlum
Ron Rice
Equally thrilling was his Indonesian-influenced soundtrack to Ron Rice’s Chumlum (1964) where layers of echoing gamelan-style strings move against a rising swell of disquieting dream music.
Film 1964 Open ↗ IMDb -
027
The Cloud Doctrine
Angus MacLise
Despite recording during much of the sixties and seventies – both solo and alongside Conrad and Cale – most of his New York music, like that of his ex-Dream Syndicate collaborators, didn’t surface until the late nineties/early noughties, much of it compiled on The Cloud Doctrine (1999) compilation released by Sub Rosa and featuring a tapestry of spoken-word exhortations, the whistling wind of the Himalayas, gong chimes and ghostly tape crackle.
Album 1999 Open ↗ YouTube -
028
Four Sanskrit Hymns
Ramon Sender
Ramon Sander was a classical music student at the San Francisco Observatory of Music who’d started experimenting with a two-track Ampex tape recorder in 1961 on the Indian-influenced piece Four Sanskrit Hymns.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
029
Mescaline Mix
Terry Riley
A rotating cast of characters made use of the third-floor studio, including countercultural journeyman Terry Riley, whose early tape piece Mescaline Mix – a ghostly piece inspired by psychedelic experiences with the namesake plant – was composed by him physically feeding the tape spool out of a window and running it onto a spindle set up around wine bottles in his garden.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
030
Birds of Paradise
Terry Riley
Birds of Paradise (1964) was constructed entirely at random, using tape the contents of which Riley was unaware, while Shoeshine (1964) saw him record a Hammond organ blues solo from Jimmy Smith from the radio, chop it to pieces and reassemble it in different order.
Composition 1964 Open ↗ YouTube -
031
Shoeshine
Terry Riley
Birds of Paradise (1964) was constructed entirely at random, using tape the contents of which Riley was unaware, while Shoeshine (1964) saw him record a Hammond organ blues solo from Jimmy Smith from the radio, chop it to pieces and reassemble it in different order.
Composition 1964 Open ↗ YouTube -
032
In C
Terry Riley
On In C, however – one of the early minimal benchmarks – he went further into the game of chance.
Composition 1964 Open ↗ YouTube -
033
A Rainbow in Curved Air
Terry Riley
It was on CBS that Riley unleashed the swirling, hypnotic A Rainbow in Curved Air in 1969, one of few avant-garde crossovers of the period.
Album 1969 Open ↗ YouTube -
034
Sonic Meditations
Pauline Oliveros
For a full year she experimented with a single note on her accordion while developing Sonic Meditations – radical text compositions that gave instructions, or ‘recipes’ – as suited to the curious participant as the classically trained musician.
Composition Open ↗ YouTube -
035
Four Electronic Pieces 1959–1964
Pauline Oliveros
Recent compilation Four Electronic Pieces 1959–1964 included her very first tape piece, the twenty-minute epic ‘Time Perspectives’, a journey through discordance and disorientation.
Compilation Open ↗ YouTube -
036
Dial Tone Drone
Pauline Oliveros, Aura Satz & Laurie Spiegel
She discussed the ‘sensuality of sustained tone’ with artists Aura Satz and Laurie Spiegel in the 2015 installation Dial Tone Drone – a piece that used the electronic dial tone of telephones as a starting point for a conversation.
Composition 2015 Open ↗ YouTube -
037
Accordion and Voice
Pauline Oliveros
Key junctions include her masterful Accordion and Voice (1978) and its follow-up The Wonderer LP (1984).
Album 1978 Open ↗ YouTube -
038
The Wonderer
Pauline Oliveros
Key junctions include her masterful Accordion and Voice (1978) and its follow-up The Wonderer LP (1984).
Album 1984 Open ↗ YouTube -
039
Silver Apples of the Moon
Morton Subotnick
Combining envelope generators, oscillators, filters, voltage-controlled amps and analogue sequencer modules, the Buchla 100 led to Subotnick’s key late-1960s/early-1970s trio: Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), The Wild Bull (1968) and Sidewinder (1971).
Album 1967 Open ↗ YouTube -
040
The Wild Bull
Morton Subotnick
Combining envelope generators, oscillators, filters, voltage-controlled amps and analogue sequencer modules, the Buchla 100 led to Subotnick’s key late-1960s/early-1970s trio: Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), The Wild Bull (1968) and Sidewinder (1971).
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
041
Sidewinder
Morton Subotnick
Combining envelope generators, oscillators, filters, voltage-controlled amps and analogue sequencer modules, the Buchla 100 led to Subotnick’s key late-1960s/early-1970s trio: Silver Apples of the Moon (1967), The Wild Bull (1968) and Sidewinder (1971).
Album 1971 Open ↗ YouTube -
042
Bitches Brew
Miles Davis
However, his rigorously traditional rendering of ragas proved no more suited to mainstream Indian tastes than Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew or Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction would be to a smooth FM jazz station.
Album 1970 Open ↗ YouTube -
043
Science Fiction
Ornette Coleman
However, his rigorously traditional rendering of ragas proved no more suited to mainstream Indian tastes than Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew or Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction would be to a smooth FM jazz station.
Album 1972 Open ↗ YouTube -
044
Earth Groove: Voice of Cosmic India
Pandit Pran Nath
Bewitched by the roughshod majesty of his Earth Groove: Voice of Cosmic India (1967) album – a raw recording of ragas ‘Boophali’ and ‘Asavari’, complete with throat clearing, coughs and plenty of background noise – Young invited him over to New York where he quickly became immersed in the avant-garde world, teaching numerous figures from the scene and setting up the New York Kirana Centre for Indian Classical Music in the city in 1972.
Album 1967 Open ↗ YouTube -
045
Ragas
Pandit Pran Nath
His 1971 recording of Ragas (‘Yaman Kaly’ and ‘Punjabi Berva’) – featuring La Monte Young on tanpura (Nath pioneered his own specially built tanpura with an accentuated bass drone) – is imbued with an ancient bearing, the grain of his voice portentous and otherworldly, all offset against the eternal thrum of the tanpura.
Album 1971 Open ↗ YouTube -
046
Music of India
Ali Akbar Khan
Figures like Nath and Ali Akbar Khan, whose Music of India (1956) is repeatedly name-checked – offered the same kind of primal inspiration to the underground as Ravi Shankar did to the rock mainstream, as Terry Riley explained.
Album 1956 Open ↗ YouTube -
047
The Tanpuras of Pandit Pran Nath
La Monte Young & Marian Zazeela
For a full, depth-charge session check La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s The Tanpuras of Pandit Pran Nath (1982), which showcases the (specially built) Nath-style tanpura, which resonated with an extra-deep bass drone: it’s a thrumming, mesmeric wall of sound.
Album 1982 Open ↗ YouTube
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