04/07/2023
out now:
NRRUSA: Fontana C-90, C-60, C-30
Edition of 72
norentrecords.com
norentrecords.bandcamp.com
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WHO:
18 anonymous artists, American or living in the USA, listed as artist one, artist two etc. The same number represents the same project each time. The running order is the same artists. If say "artist 10" suddenly changes styles on one of of the tapes its because "artist 10" has range. I removed many artists (including myself) to ensure it had a deep range of styles.
WHAT:
Each artist was asked to use John Cage’s "Fontana Mix" as source material for a new piece. Their only instructions were to perform live, and have the master to me in an unheard of 7 days. "Live" could mean anything as long as they sent a single take. The pieces averaging between 7-20 minutes and were uniformly cut to identical lengths for each length of tape. All cuts were hard cuts or micro-fades, except in preservation of a few natural fades.
clear track order, which might convey the encroaching nature of the full album better conveyed in number form, appears at the end of this text
I asked each artist to showcase their authentic style, often resulting in the disappearance of the source material and the emergence of their unique voices. The singular nature of the pieces impressed me, as they reflected the distinct creative expressions that only those specific artists could produce. Despite Fontana Mix being beyond elite source material, people's hard earned individual styles took over and the album drips with immediacy, personality, and most important true urgency.
The displayed works demonstrate a significant display of skill, allowing you to identify certain artists solely based on their unmistakable sound. Should be a fun part of it.
• This is the true glory of noise.
• We'll give no further clues.
The sense of urgency and rawness is palpable. Its a tape you can seriously get lost in.
MOST IMPORTANTLY!
Thank you to the artists for giving so much of yourselves to make this happen, in one week, and for no credit. Let's fu**in go
This album was recorded, compiled, dubbed, and released in 9 days. .
Physically speaking its three cassettes in separate high quality o-cards, . The cassettes include c90, c60, and c30 (mislabeled as a C32) and comes with additional track list and information. It is strictly limted to 72 available unless the John Cage Trust wants to throw me some money (DM's open!)
No distribution at all outside the norent circle. but there is new unlimited file transfer service available from today until June 24. To access the files, copy and paste the following link into your broswer:
https://we.tl/t-ytotfTQ2GS
This version contains 6 folders. one per side of the original cassette. (C90A, C90B, C60A etc) Them there's an entire 4+ hours of the raw live tracks. The sense of urgency even apparent here but 4 hours is a long time. I think its interesting to compare them to the cuts. So, seven bonus hours of highly skilled live noise. Also some cute stories, cool photos of various Cage scores, then just the basic information with more personal antidotes.
We want to keep this service regularly utilized, and anonymously supported to a degree it can become a free feature of certain NRR releases when called for if only a tiny percentage of people downloading it send some for of payment to [email protected]
Special thanks to Dan Timlin, who runs Strange Mono locally, for going the extra mile and quadruple checking the masters to ensure excellent sound quality. The dubs are massive. There are more thank you's due but that would reveal too much of who was on it. I think figuring it out should be part of the fun. Just please know your help and encouragement made a big difference. I've already kissed your ass ahout this privatly
WHY:
"Fontana Mix" itself is my favorite Cage peice (with the exception of Imaginary Landscape No. 1). I had been saying for years that "Incapacitants were just distorted Johnny Cage," and I was wrong. The Incapacitants definitely knew their stuff more than me. There is nothing random about their use of distortion. But I wasn't completely wrong. The real reason to say something like that was to respectfully highlight the continuum. I view it as what would have been a straight line, interrupted cruelly by the Great Depression. That's life. Where things suck, and then get worse. But let's get into it:
A Google search will show that so many of the early experimental artists in the USA were homeless. Not even "the common man" bandied about by politicians but straight-up train-riding, literal hobos. They were still able to access emerging technology and make works that stood the test of time (Harry Partch is the easiest example, but just Google it, I'm not lying).
The Depression forced emerging technology to the only places that had the money for it: universities, with their recession-proof armor. Music that wants to exist will find a way. It is one of the most indestructible substances on earth. As easy as it is to be angry at the wealth of people who do very little to earn it while you grind away, it should be equally hard to be upset with artists who simply want their work to exist. Academic composers became "academic" because it was the only way their music could continue to exist. If a single-cell organism knows nothing but to survive, imagine if you're John Cage. An acknowledgement of this could do a lot for the future of noise. I understand economic and social forces go hand in hand. But if you're reading this, you have more technology at your disposal than John Cage ever did. You literally have no excuses.
So 80-90 years later, 32% of the time the United States has existed as a country, We're stuck with this bulls**t "academic" vs. "noise" dichotomy. From high art, low art dichotomies. What on earth can be gained by discouraging young artists from creating outside a tiny, reductive, always shrinking framework? In a nation as young as the United States, that's an ancient, useless dichotomy.
Other elemental American forms were impacted too but not rendered impossible. Country and blues both begin to use smaller bands in this era, which had something - or everything - to do with money (both were bigger band "swing" vibe before that; country sounded like jazz before the Depression, look up Dixieland jazz - fall in love with it).
The Great Depression took the foundations of experimental music away from the common man, but it's easy to argue pre-depression, it was just as much or even more of an elemental American form made by ordinary citizens, not ivory tower professor types on one hand and slapdick rock stars on the other. Every genre from black metal to gabber has it's elemental forms. My question is what are the elemental forms of noise in America? As a genre that exists within "experimental" but also as it's own thing, its hard to say.
New York City was able to build its gigantic heights the moment developers noticed the land underneath was granite. Country music's entire history is defined by hotly argued-against steps up in production quality, and the notable post-depression step down (which is many people's favorite era, brought us Kitty Wells and Hank Williams, zero complaints). Hendrix revolutionized the guitar stylistically speaking, not because he was such a fu**ing genius (though he was), but because he was a rock-solid fundamental blues player. People who think electric B.B. King sounds "fake" also say similar bulls**t about country and jazz. They aren't blues, country, or jazz fans; they just like recordings from 1940-1950, where the depression was over but the budgets were still low. They like to imagine their favorite artists covered in soot, barefoot on a porch, and not the rock stars they were. Electric B.B. was a beautiful step out of the Great Depression, as was outlaw country, as was free jazz, pop-avant, s**t - so was LAFMS.
My point is, this music is yours, and with respect to the institutions that kept this vital music alive in dark times, you have the same tech. Once past that the question is, how do you be a "rock solid experimental musician" but not in the service of retro, but in the service of building higher from a stronger foundation?�
The foundation is not an ad copy writer referring to everything over 1 dB as "apocalyptic." The foundation is not holocaust obsessed 80’s guys. And don’t name the fu**ing Italian you’re thinking of. We really don't know what it is. And this compilation exists as a naive search for roots. A rare non-academic, true study of a great piece of American experimental art by let's face it, a bunch of drunks. So the question becomes, how to notice the arc and bridge or simply acknowledge the gaps in it. After 20 years and counting of worshiping Masonna, retraining your ears to even notice the discordance of Charles Ives, for instance, is a good exercise. Not writing off deeply experimental music from the '30s and '40s because of university adjacency is another. This was HARD for me.
Or is it over? Are there no roots to be found? Is noise left to build on a foundation of cynical advertising copy? Please, no. If you hate identity politics, practice what you preach. I view this work as part of a long continuum of American experimental art that existed before the more famous types of American music (all of which I love, except maybe zydeco; I kinda have a hard time with zydeco, but I do listen to ragtime... I dunno, can't do everything).
(my favorite version is here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgpQzRE2ORE)
This is sort of my thesis. Or at least goal of my later career. Not about Cage. About growing up thinking you're too dumb to get Cage and having that enforced at every opportunity. I had released like 6 full lengths before i even considered understanding this music as a possibility to even understand You're a better musician than that. I earnestly think noise doesn't improve by leaps and bounds without some reckoning there.
Thank you for listening.
Jason Crumer
"When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic—here on Sixth Avenue, for instance—I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound ... I don't need sound to talk to me." - Johnny Cage
perhaps the tracklist gives an idea of the "creepin up on you" vibe of the whole piece. Tho you are encouraged to listen in any order.
Artist 01 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 02 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 03 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 04 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 05 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 06 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 07 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 08 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 09 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 10 (4:56) C90, SIDE B
Artist 11 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 12 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 13 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 14 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 15 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 16 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 17 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 18 (4:56) C90, SIDE A
Artist 01 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 02 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 03 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 04 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 05 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 06 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 07 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 08 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 09 (3:18) C60, SIDE A
Artist 10 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 11 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 12 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 13 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 14 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 15 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 16 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 17 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 18 (3:18) C60, SIDE B
Artist 01 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 02 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 03 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 04 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 05 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 06 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 07 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 08 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 09 (1:38) C30, SIDE A
Artist 10 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 11 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 12 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 13 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 14 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 15 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 16 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 17 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
Artist 18 (1:38) C30, SIDE B
