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WPS1 Art Radio is the Internet station of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate, featuring an MP3 stream of music, talk, and historical recordings and a free on-demand archive of over 1200 programs.
Elliott Sharp presents a world of sound including contemporary and archival composed and improvised musics, conceptual experiments, rare classics, and non-Western musics as well as salient interviews and discussions.
The great film composer's most sonorous and brooding, get-under-your-skin hits! Selections here include music from Taxi Driver, Fahrenheit 451, The Day The Earth Stood Still, North by Northwest and the rarely heard, Night Digger. PLUS you'll hear the composer himself speak about writing film scores!
Russell Hoban
is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, mainstream fiction, poetry, children's books and other, completely unclassifiable works. He has resided in England since 1969. That is where composer Elliott Sharp recorded him reading, in November 2004, from his post-apocalyptic novel, Riddley Walker, and his poem Lament for Thelonious Monk, and then made these sound settings for them with saxophones and zithers as well as an analog synthesizer and a computer. (Note: Riddley Walker is written in the first-person and Hoban manifests the title character's halting and uncertain speech. In "Lament," we hear the author's own voice.) Mostly known in the U.S. for Riddley Walker (written in a postulated future dialect of English), his other works include Pilgermann, Mr. Rinyo-Clacton's Offer, Angelica's Grotto and Her Name Was Lola.
On February 9th, 2005, seven artists and ten crewmembers set sail from the Port of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, the southeast point of Argentina. Their journey centered on a search for an unknown island and an encounter with a unique solitary creature that was rumored to live only on the shores of an unnamed island somewhere at the height of the Polar Antarctic Circle.
This adventure was planned to be the first part of a film. The second part, the representation of the adventure, takes place in New York on October 14, 2005 at dusk with A Journey That Wasn't, an orchestral musical in Central Park, based on the journey. Using ice, atmosphere, light, and an original score -- written by composer Joshua Cody and performed live on the ice by a symphonic orchestra -- Huyghe will transform the distant island in Antarctica into musical form. This event is both a presentation and a film shoot.
Viewers are invited to sit and watch the show, which will be presented three times in a row. Each time will last under 30 minutes and may include pauses to re-shoot. The filming will record both the show and the audience members who watch it, so that those present witness the spectacle and become extras in the resulting film. Audience members are encouraged to come before 6:30pm and to wear dark or neutral-colored clothing.
The event, organized in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, will become part of a new film by Huyghe to premiere in the 2006 Biennial Exhibition.
Traditional Hungarian dance music played in exceptional ways by the Moldavian stylist Mihaly Halmagyi on violin, and his wife, Gizella Adam, on voice and gardon. Shake that booty
Playlist
01 Hungarian dances
02 Swift Csardas
03 Hungarian Dances
04 Couple Dances
05 "Once a Little Bird"
06 Round Dance
07 Rakoczi March
08 Csardas
09 Hungarian Dances
10 Wedding March
11 "When People Are Looking for the Hen"
12 Chase
13 "The Shepherd Lost His Sheep"
14 Lament
15 Dance
16 Funeral Ceremony
Besides writing music for British television and horror films, Kirchin created unique music mixing modified animal sounds with orchestra. Program includes a tribute by Rudolph Grey with fellow guitarist Licht and drummer Rashied Ali.
LEMUR is the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Founded in 2000 by musician and engineer Eric Singer, LEMUR's philosophy is to build robotic instruments that "play themselves." In LEMUR designs, the robots are the instruments. Host Elliott Sharp interviews Singer and Luke DuBois of LEMUR and plays music composed for LEMUR by Joshua Fried and Mari Kimura as well as the sounds of the recent LEMUR installation, Drumming on the Ceiling.
Playlist
01 Music for Robots - Joshua Fried
02 GuitarBotana - Mari Kimura
93 Drumming on the Ceiling - LEMUR
Highly acclaimed for his novels including Motherless Brooklyn and
Fortress of Solitude, Brooklyn-based author Jonathan Lethem reads three short pieces with an original score composed and performed by WPS1's Elliott Sharp and featuring his compositions Zeppelin Parable, Children With Hangovers and Top Five Depressed Superheroes.
A selection of music, both instrumental and vocal, from Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. The instruments represented are all varieties of lutes from the region, both plucked and bowed. This music is from a CD series on the music of Indonesia from the Smithsonian Folkways label.
Playlist
01 Sampaq Lepoq
02 Pahampangan
03 Tumbang Gaya
04 Tingang Kuai
05 Sampaq
06 Karangut Saritan Nampui Kambang
07 Cak-Cakun
08 Jauh Di Mata
09 Ayun Anak
10 Sampaq Penihing
Korean traditional and classical music has always made great use of improvisation. Here are selections from the Ensemble Jong Nong Ak Oho, the Korean National Classical Music Institute, and legendary kayagum-player Hwang Byung Ki (one of the instruments being played by the ensemble is gayageum, a horizontal plucked zither and the ancestor of the Japanese koto). Excellent listening experience!
Peter Kowald and Damon Smith: Mirrors - Broken But No Dust listen |
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First broadcast October 24, 2005
Improvised pieces for two acoustic basses performed by the late and lamented Peter Kowald from Wuppertal and Oaklander Damon Smith. Recorded in April and May of 2000 in Oakland. (60 minutes)
Saxophonist, electronic musician and composer Briggan Krauss presents Object, selections from a series dedicated and inspired by the work of visual artists. Object #1 is comprised of pieces dedicated to the work of the American artist Joseph Cornell. Object #2 (Systems) is music from a collaboration with visual artist Raha Raissnia. Source material comes from recordings of acoustic instruments, found objects and sounds created or manipulated in Reaktor and Max/MSP.
A 1992 recording from Sub Rosa, one of the first ambient and industrial music labels - a suite made exclusively with granite or clay stones that are struck, smashed, and grated. An electronics archive and producing entity for sampled sounds and texts, films, objects, Sub Rosa
was founded by Frederic Wallheer and Guy Marc Hinant in the late 1980s and continues to produce fascinating tracks like these.
The London Musicians Collective has not only organized a festival of "exteme musics" for the last 13 years, it is also the producing power behind Resonance 104.4 FM, a broadcast and web-based arts radio station in the U.K. This program of guitar soloists comes from a commemorative CD featuring a track from each participating artist. In many cases it is material recorded exclusively for this program or is elsewhere unreleased.
Playlist
01 A Spy (Alan Licht) 6:37
02 Short Story (Janet Feder 3:20
03 Xirx (Annette Krebs) 3:37
04 Loud Clouds (Alfredo Genovese) 4:01
05 Sitting On the Dock of EBay (Billy Jenkins) 2:01
06 Via Libera (Paolo Angeli) 4:01
07 The Slice (Elliott Sharp) 4:08
08 Memories of a Forbidden Planet (Dave Tucker) 5:06
09 Solo (Simon King) 2:29
10 Guitar solo (Keith Rowe) 5:48
11 Improvisation (John Bisset) 3:45
Artist Christian Marclay
created
Graffiti Composition as a visual work and an ongoing open-ended musical score. He and host
Elliott Sharp discuss their upcoming realization of the piece at MoMA's Titus Theatre on September 13, 2006 that features guitarists Vernon Reid, Lee Renaldo, Mary Halvorson, and Melvin Gibbs. (58 minutes)
Playlist
01 Blinding Shadow : Marclay/Sharp
02 Sliced And Diced: Marclay/Otomo Yoshihide
03 Score for video "Through My Fingers" by Janene Higgins: Marclay
04 Derailment: Marclay/Yoshihide
Two composers whose work, heard live, seems to settle on your skin like a mist that then gathers drop by drop into a doppelganger who tackles you to the ground where you land in a pile of rose petals, feathers and lightning bugs.
Francisco Lopez, Live in Montreal: From the composer's notes: "All my live performances are created by a multi-layered module structure with a surround system (multi-channel), in which a myriad original field sound sources are interweaved and mutated live to create an immersive experience in sound, instead of one of a listening kind."
Carl Stone, Nak Won: From Vital Weekly: "The title track starts off as a "test" - an aural Rorschach experiment. What turns out to be a quite lovely play of primary tones is collaged and replicated over the course of 24 minute-long Max/MSP dissertation. At times like Speak & Spell for adults, at times simplified tonalities that percolate the unused portions of your brain stem. Cage would be quite proud of Stone's latter-day approach, breathing new life into minimalist composition, while filtering out even minute traces of excess. On Nak Won he has created a barren horizon line that hosts thousands of sound spheres, hovering and kinetic. This is the work of a clear mind filled with sketches."
Feel a yen for noise? This live collaboration
between sonic provocateurs Masami Akita (aka. Merzbow) and Zbigniew Karkowski will blow your roof off. Recorded at the Pezner Club, Lyon, France in September 1999 and re-edited/mastered at Bunker 301 Studio, Tokyo, May 2000.
Lawrence "Butch" Morris
assembled a monthlong music marathon that he named Black February to celebrate 20 years of his "conduction" style of improvised conducting.
"Standing before a group of improvisers -- often jazz improvisers, but he has worked with poets, electronic musicians and others -- he dislodges music from them, arranging it as it moves by means of hand signals, working from a little bit of his own written music, or more often none at all... While he long ago proved the validity of his idea, in some particularly moving performances he has also developed efficacy in its practice." -Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
The selection here illustrates how Morris extends his ensemble directing strategies into the theatre. Morris collaborated with Martin Schutz and J.A. Dean on Sucht Lust, a work of music-theater by Christophe Marthaler, with assorted actors. Recorded at Hamburg Schauspielhaus, March 30, 1994. (German text)
Ennio Morricone may be best known for his scores for Clint Eastwood "spaghetti westerns" but he's far more than an Italian Henry Mancini, as this survey by Fabio Roberti makes clear. Here Morricone emerges as a Class-A experimentalist with a canny sense of sound for all sorts of musicians. And if this show isn't hip enough for you, just try one of Fabio's Strength Through Failure ("The Failure of Rock," The Failure of Noise," "The Failure of Pop," etc.) shows on WFMU (and God bless).
Gordon Mumma was among the first composers to make use of electronic circuitry of his own design. That made him a perfect collaborator for John Cage and David Tudor, while they were working with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Here are choice selections, recorded between 1959 and 1984. Check out his Web site here.
The essence of the outsider composer who built his own instruments and created his own tuning systems in the service of what he called "Corporeal Music."
This compilation of Roy Lichtenstein's favorite music tracks was made for a 2003 exhibition at the Kunstforum Vienna, on view from December 11, 2003 - March 7, 2004. Cassandra Lozano of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation aided Hayes Greenfield, the artist's saxophone teacher, in collecting the sources. Greenfield selected the versions his student liked best. On the last three tracks, the artist himself is playing and singing, live, at the Internet Cafe in New York.
Playlist
01 Homage to Pharoah-Hayes Greenfield 7:47
02 Body & Soul - Coleman Hawkins 3:29
03 Cannonball - Cannonball Adderley 4:20
04 Bloomdido - Charlie Parker 3:29
05 That Old Black Magic - Johnny Hartman 3:26
06 Chez le Photograph du Motel - Miles Davis 3:56
07 Back Beat - Johnny Hodges 7:30
08 God Bless The Child - Billie Holiday 4:02
09 It Don't Mean A Thing - Stan Getz 6:40
10 Every Time We Say Goodbye - John Coltrane 5:45
11 Oh Lady Be Good - Lester Young 3:37
12 Live At The Internet Cafe - Roy Lichtenstein 3:49
13 Roy Singing The Blues - Live - Roy Lichtenstein 1:30
14 Dots & Lines - Roy Lichtenstein/Hayes Greenfield 1:56
From the Indonesian island of Roti, sounds made only from instruments constructed of bamboo and coconut leaves.
(From the collection of the King Record Company - no relation to King Records in Cincinnati - a seminal music label headquartered in Tokyo in the years following World War II, and unavailable now - except here!)
Negativland (These Guys are from England and Who Gives a Shit) listen |
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First broadcast January 23, 2005
The notorious banned Negativland remix/parody of U2 has finally been released on the band's own Seeland label in the form of various live perfromances and remixes. U2's pursuit of this fair-use appropriation and commentary cost Negativland tens of thousands of dollars and consumed years of their lives in courtroom battles. In a magnificent feat of hypocrisy, while suing Negativland, U2 on their own tours appropriated video and radio imagery and sounds to use in their stage show and trumpeted the modern uses of media collage. (40 minutes)
Playlist
01 Excerpt from Over The Edge
02 Long Distance Dedciation
03 1991 A Capella Mix
04 Special Edit Radio Mix - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
05-10 Live in concert at the Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, 1993
Performance poet Tracie Morris takes to the turntables to play a selection of funk and R&B - ancient to the future - with an ear to contemporary world issues.
A selection of recent works from the award-winning Turkish composer,
Erdem Helvacioglu.
Helvacioglu is a multi instrumentalist, playing guitar, keyboard, bass, balama and other Turkish instruments. His music is a combination of ambient electroacoustic textures, the processed sounds of Turkish instruments, and adventurous harmonies and programming of synthesizers. His music was twice among the finalists of the Luigi Russolo Electroacoustic Competition. In 2001 he received the Best Performance Award in the 6th Roxy Music Competition, with his electronic band HAZ. (58.5 minutes)
Playlist
01 Wandering Around The City
02 Untitled Conversation
03 Blank Mirror
04 Below The Cold Ocean
05 Dance Of Fire
06 Wounded Breath
07 August 17
Bernard Lang is a Graz-based composer who works in many different media. His DW8 features the Radio-Symphony of Bavaria conducted by Peter Rundel and two turntablists, Marina Rosenfeld from New York and Dieter Kovacic. DW15 features singer Martina Koppelstetter and Georg Glasl on alto zither. (54 minutes)
Taken from a concert recorded at the DDM Warehouse in Shanghai.
Performed as a collaboration by Other Two Comrades, Yan Jun, and The Top Floor Circus with Huan
Qing on kalimba, jawharp, guitar effector, mixer, live record; Chen Zhi
Peng on hand drums; Yan Jun on iPod, CD, MD, mixer; Lu Chen on vocals,
vocal effector, oral organ, clarinet; Mao Du on vocals, guitar effector,
handbell, loudspeaker; Gu Lei on vocals, snowbell, clarinet, strap for
S&M; and MZ, telekinesis transmitted far from Germany. Cross-listed on
the labels KwanYin
(002) and Mule (200). (58 minutes)
NU is the collective term for a group of electroacoustic composers based around Tama Art University and Mushashino Art University in Japan. Using laptop computers, musical instruments, and electronic processors, they are sonic seducers of the algorithmic first rank.
