By the mid-1970s, the hippie spirit had faded in California. However, with the Los Angeles Free Music Society, pioneers of the DIY aesthetic were already waiting in the wings. Its members liked the absurd and were inspired by the idea of a non-musical approach to music.
Soliman Gamil was unimpressed by the artistic possibilities of tape recording when he studied in Paris in the early 1950s. At that time, Musique Concrète was emerging there thanks to the new technology. But Gamil was only in the city to learn about Western composition from Nadia Boulanger.
For American composer Laurie Spiegel, music is a way of expressing the conscious experience of existence. When she was confined to bed with a viral infection in 1990, she decided to translate her illness into sound.
The desire to find a partner outside of real life is nothing new. A look back at the United States shows how the approach, but also expectations, have changed over time. In 1966, beatnik and singer Tuli Kupferberg took texts from advertisements in newspapers and magazines as source material for new intonations.
‘We wanted to abandon a language that had been devastated and rendered impossible by journalism!’ This is how Hugo Ball described the Dadaists' motivation for leaving words behind at Zurich's Cabaret Voltaire. Many artists began experimenting with the possibilities of phonetic poetry, based solely on the musical expression of the voice.
At the age of twelve, Percy Grainger had already imagined a form of ‘free music’ with gliding tones and irregular, beatless rhythms. That was in 1894. But it was not until 1920, with the invention of the electronic theremin, that smooth transitions between notes became possible in a way that appealed to Grainger.
During long, collective improvisations in the studio, Cologne-based Krautrock pioneers Can repeatedly ventured into the territory of other cultures. Between 1968 and 1974, the band collected such excursions in the ‘Ethnological Forgery Series’.
There is something mysterious about Ghédalia Tazartès' works, which often evoke shamanistic rituals. The French artist began experimenting in his Paris studio in 1977 with field recordings, tape loops, vocals and electronics. Time and again, he slipped into the role of strong-willed characters.
After seeing the Sex Pistols on Japanese television, Hiromi Moritani flew to London for a few weeks in 1976. Back in Osaka, and still under the impression of her experiences in the punk metropolis, the 17-year-old formed her own band, Aunt Sally.
There were no flowers in the desert, but the scent of melodies hung in the air everywhere, recalls Deben Bhattacharya. In 1955, the music collector travelled from Paris to Kolkata, India, in a converted milk truck. On board: a tape recorder with which Bhattacharya recorded music along the way.
Crowdfunding without the internet – in New York, this was done in 1966 with a record. The proceeds went to the newly founded counterculture magazine ‘The East Village Other’. A who's who of pop culture gathered for the recording on 6 August. The date not only marked the 21st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
Charles Darwin believed that even human ancestors made musical sounds long before they could speak. Animals are still limited to this form of vocal expression today. During a visit to the Yukon in Canada, artist and cyberneticist Oswald Wiener noticed that sled dogs prefer to do this without an audience.
