As I arrive at Unknown Public 09, the tenth issue in the series to feature on Music Arcades, the penny has finally dropped that these cardboard boxes, containing an assemblage of music, writing, art and miscellaneous paraphernalia, are a nod to the Fluxus movement in art.
By Issue 9, there's an unavoidable sense that the ideas are running a bit thin. There's less writing in this one than any of the others I can remember, no art, and the 'miscellaneous paraphernalia' consists of no less than four advertising flyers for other contemporary music ventures, plus a small ten-page blank notebook. Very funny. UP had retrieved the situation by Issue 11, but then abandoned the boxes for Issue 14 (or 13, but that was a special issue).
Some marginal notes:-
- In case you were wondering what "All Seeing Ear" is all about (I was), it's an exploration of the visual aspects of music: "Listeners can find it hard to think of music without some associated image… Composers create scores as pleasing (or more so) than the sounds they invoke" (more here).
- I'd forgotten there's another Tom Phillips composition on this CD, Six of Hearts (Songs for Mary Wiegold) — I admit this is a case in point where the scores (see Part V and Part VI) give me more pleasure than their performance. TP is quoted, "Most graphic scores I know that are any good are very precise. They don't leave you any more freedom than conventional pieces".
- Jocelyn Pook's composition, Tango with Corrugated Iron, is her second appearance here this week. She was in the string section (credited as Joss Pook) for either Us or "i", or both.
- My favourite pieces are Michael Brook's Albo Gator film soundtrack and Steve Roden's A Herd of Bees, oh, and Zbigniew Preisner's Lake.
Details of this album at the Unknown Public site
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