Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Non Projects is a record label dedicated to the support and discovery of Los Angeles' most innovative artists and composers. Mislaid within an ever-changing and confused recording landscape, Non Projects offers imaginative works of art and sound.
With the aim to showcase each artist's devotion to their love of music and the joy of uncovering hidden and undiscovered sounds and resonances, each release is available with supplemental materials providing a commonly forgotten tangible experience no longer associated with acquiring music.
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Lara Lee conducted this interview with Teo Macero in September of 1997 at his home in NYC.
LL: Do you think that the studios that you had been working in early on were in any way comparable to the studios today?
TM: I had a studio available to me for thirty years. And I had access to guys who could create a piece of equipment that I needed. In the '50's and '60's we didn't have anything like a digital delay. We had to manufacture a digital delay. Now when you want a digital delay, you turn your machine half a step or whatever it is. To me, that doesn't really make the difference. It was the crudeness of all the things that we did.
Join us for an incredible evening of live sound and visuals in an intimate home setting.
Saturday, November 7, 8 PM.
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Echo Beach
Melody Maker // April 11, 1987
By: Frank Owen
You may know Arthur Russell for his World Of Echo album. Then again, you may remember Dinosaur L or The Necessaries. Frank Owen takes us on a trip of cross fertilization and explains the appeal of the vernacular.
Lesson One: Before approaching the avant-garde, watch where you're putting your feet.
Within minutes of meeting Arthur Russell, disco stylist, cellist and avant-garde composer, I've closeted myself in the toilet of his East Village pad, trying to surreptitiously remove the remains of the doggy doo, a present from the streets of Alphabet City.
Look at me desperately trying to avoid messing up Arthur's carpet. Look at Arthur, paranoid and suspicious, convinced I've traveled 3,000 miles to stitch him up, contorting himself in the next room at the imminent horror of being interviewed by someone he thinks massively misinterpreted the contents of our last chat.
Arthur is plainly ill at ease, all the more so when I jokingly comment on the two cents CBS royalty cheque (part payment for a track called "That Hat" written for Peter Gordon of Love Of Life Orchestra fame, on his last album "Innocent"). Ooops!
What do I think of his new album, the magnificent "World Of Echo"? Do I think his voice is any good? How do I intend to transcribe the tape of our interview? But most of all, what has Will Socolov, co-founder of Sleeping Bag Records along with Arthur, been saying about him?
So I grabbed my alto saxophone earlier today and decided to do a cover / remix of one of my favorite Squarepusher songs, "Tommib."
Here it is.
Photo: Florian Aichen
Self released as part of Nicholas' A Cycle Of Meditations a few years back, this track is quite the lesson in minimal drum programming.
Listen and learn.
Atley Kasky / Folkert Gorter
But Does It Float was started in February 2009 by two Los Angeles-based designers, Folkert Gorter and Atley Kasky, whose other projects include SpaceCollective.org, GOOD.is, and cargocollective.com. But Does it Float serves as a dynamic visual conversation between Folkert and Atley, wherein art and design images line up against vintage aerial photographs and other visual ephemera to form a seemingly infinite image scroll that chatters back and forth, creating a new form of telling. With an inquisitive, otherwordly drive to collect and show, Folkert and Atley have created an art blog that sits widely outside both the worlds of contemporary art and ubiquitous blogdom. The site began, says the two, "As an idea to organize and focus our meanderings around the Internet. We're both collectors of visual artifacts and use the internet heavily for finding, storing, and sharing. We felt that our joint sensibilities and appreciation of ‘good' work across all genres would make for a distinct filter, separating the wheat from the chaff. We started doing this not only for ourselves, on a purely archival basis, but also for the edification of our prospective audience. We have the time and the interest in sorting through the maze of internet clutter, most people don't." The resulting site looks and behaves like a cabinet of curiosities as viewed through an infinity mirror.
And while the duo hasn't ever curated in a gallery environment, says Folkert/Atley: "We're essentially hanging images on the page, and in that sense it's a bit like a gallery. We made it a priority to give as much space to the work as possible, to let it have whatever we feel it requires. Browsers and bandwidth limitations have been decreasing steadily, and we are taking advantage of that." And like traditional curators, their goal is to create a unified thesis through the disparate works that they feature "By putting things next to one another you create a relationship and begin to discern connections, intended or not. Additionally, the blog allows visitors to continue scrolling from the latest to the first post, without ever having to click. This seamless interactivity plays with the notion of a filmstrip, resulting in the feel of an endlessly flowing conversation. We've been trying to alternate our posts with an exquisite corpse-like notion, where part of the goal of writing a post is to let it be influenced in some way by the post that preceded it."
From Art In America.
Atley Kasky is the in house Non Projects designer.
Evan Parker gave this talk on 5 August 2006 as part of Jazz Em Agosto in Lisbon, Portugal.
I follow the school of thought that says there are basically three phases in Coltrane’s musical life. I would identify his activities from the beginning up to 1961 as one phase. From ‘61 onward to ‘65 or ‘66 there is the period where he was leading his own group, especially what’s now often referred to as the classic quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. At the end of this phase, there is the transition period where Coltrane’s determination to keep moving forward, finding new possibilities, strained the quartet to the point where Elvin was unhappy with the addition of other drummers and McCoy Tyner probably couldn’t hear himself anymore. These are all matters of public record and I don’t think it’s wrong to talk about them. This transition led to the late period of Coltane’s life which, although you would think that the area that I might be most expert on, it is actually the area that I know least about. That’s partly because it overlaps with my own entry into a full-time relationship with music, attempting to be a professional musician, which, for me, started probably around ‘65, and ’66.
There was no clear beginning for me between playing with student bands and then gradually earning some money by doing that and then gradually meeting the players that I thought I wanted to play with. All of this was happening during the last period of Coltrane’s life. At that time, his music from that period was available to us only through recordings. The last tour that Coltrane was supposed to have made of Europe was scheduled for 1966 but it was canceled. His health was already suffering at that point and that’s probably the reason that last tour was canceled. So we in Europe never got to hear those late Coltrane performances, the type that were documented during the tour of Japan. It’s hard to imagine what the response would have been in England; but I’m fairly sure that it would have been pretty hostile. By then, Coltrane’s music was a step too far for many people.
Non Projects inaugural release, the self-titled debut from Asura, available for purchase now!
