robert ashley

The Wolfman (1965) -- Ashley dresses in a lounge singer outfit, saunters onstage, places the microphone entirely inside his mouth, turns the gain until ear-clipping feedback begins and then begins shaping the pitches by lightly moaning and eventually howling. People who lived through these performances have good reason to find 80's noise music boring, this is louder, better, fiercer, more insane in every way. the CD contains several other cut-up collage pieces made from radio surfing, more contemplative, in the vein of Automatic Writing and is good.

In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women (1974) - Ashley recorded the poem to tape, then edited out all pauses; 40 minutes without taking a breath. then tracked four more layers of burbling circuit-bent & moog electronics on top. It is fantastic.

Both those are here: http://www.ubu.com/sound/ashley.html

Automatic Writing (1979) - classic

Yellow Man With Heart With Wings (1990) - the sleeper, ranks with the best works, one of his best texts: http://www.lovely.com/titles/cd1003.html

Private Parts: The Record is the only one on CD. Very minimal, all about Ashley's voice though I'm into the tabla/moog accompanyment.

The Bar, 1981 - is more of the same but set to an insanely catchy lounge-piano drum machine riff which memorizes itself

Music Word Fire And I Would Do It Again (Coo Coo): The Lessons, 1981 - is the disco number. Reminds me in some ways of the Black Dice "Cone Toaster" 12" but much much stranger, a constant disco pulse with prepared piano solos and very strange moog sequencer patterns constantly turning left, and lots of elliptical vocal chanting & performance art narration... it is a crime that these aren't out on CD, every time I DJ these out, people do lose it. Couldn't live without this one either.

I also like the versions on the 3 CD set, but they work much better in the context of the 3.5 hour video version. Seeing Ashley recite these lines in the context of his baffling hand gestures and gold glitter strewn through his hair is the way to hear this music.

Atalanta (Acts of God), 1985: long stretches of this are among the most amazing things he's ever done: mainly, the last two 'Anecdote with Chorale' sections. Each singer keeps assuming madly different vocal personas, and they fade in and out of the mix at different times; you could imagine someone with 20 different arias from different centuries in different languages all being vaguely faded up and down in the mix over strange casiotone & organ soundbeds with an out-of-tune doowop chorus occasionally punctuating, but you'd still have no idea why this such an emotionally extreme piece of music.

The 30 minute video accompanyment, Atalanta Strategy, is my favorite video of his. Abstract image montage, always on the edge of making sense.

That's a pretty good description. This was precisely the sound of electric organ/electric piano that I always made fun of, until I hear this, and somehow I just love the way it sounds. Music Word Fire is really good too, although I didn't like it at first.

I've never heard the Wolfman.

(Sorry to interrupt milton's more thorough annotated discography.)
"She Was a Visitor" is kind of a nice, what, Jackson MacLowesque composition, where the "chorus" takes different sounds from that sentence, and I forget exactly where it goes. Maybe nowhere. I don't know if that's available on CD. (Probably not.) It used to be a staple of the Relache Ensemble.

"She Was a Visitor" is very simple; one close miked person repeating the sentence every few seconds, while a large mixed chorus very slowly hold and stretch out the phonemes for five minutes, creating a shifting Ligeti-ish drone. I recommend timestretching the piece back down to 15 seconds, it sounds crazy.

Improvement has one great piece: the dialog between the doctor and the patient, track 4 on disc 2.

Maybe I meant Perfect Lives...are they the same opera? The one where he says "These are stories from the corn belt and the people who live in it (OR ON IT)" at the beginning of each segment!

The thing I like about his vocal delivery; all the accents on the words and sentences are in the wrong places. There are tons of emotional signifiers, but it's an obstacle course trying to unpack them because he's saying them in an almost impossible fashion.

Saying any word thirty times in a row reduces the word to a sound, and distances you from the reflex that associates it instantly with a 'meaning' without having to think too hard about the code: imagine listening to someone who makes every word sound as if you've just heard it thirty times in a row: you recognize every single word, but you can no longer tell what the hell the sentences mean anymore. After a few minutes, listening to Ashley talk sends you into the zone.

I must admit; recent operas are increasingly Earthbound. eL/Aficionado, Dust, Your Money My Life Goodbye... I could see how they'd make a terrible first impression.

If you like Automatic Writing and want to try the operas, the best place to start is probably Yellow Man With Heart With Wings.

I wish he had a talk show or something. I think I know what you mean. I probably mentioned before, but I overheard him talking during a music festival, and his ordinary speech didn't sound so different from his delivery as a performer. I just remember him saying to someone he was talking to: "That is. . . su-blime." (I wish I had been more of a creepy fan and hung around him just to overhear him talking.)

I've met him once, it doesn't seem to be an assumed persona...

String Quartet Describing the Notions of Large Real Bodies / How Can I Tell The Difference? -- two pieces from 1972-3 released on alga marghen a few years ago. String Quartet = one violin multitracked four times, played with the bow held down on bridge with as much pressure as possible and very long (5-10 minute) strokes. this sound fed through gates and doubled with short delays. Difference is two variations on the first piece, performed live in the tunnels on the coast of the Marin Headlands; subtle scrapes and drones join the violins, along with the echoey sounds of a motorcycle rider, far away in another part of the tunnels. A little patience goes a long way with this disc; it's maddening for five minutes, but fantastic after thirty. especially the last track; only one violin, in the tunnel, slowly overwhelmed by rumbling, scraping and eventually a timid electronic organ drone. Definitely the closest precursor to Automatic Writing.

I think I'll go with 'yello man...' and 'atlanta...' for now.

(I might do a similar thread on alvin lucier soon - I own 'I am sitting...' and that's it)

'People who lived through these performances have good reason to find 80's noise music boring, this is louder, better, fiercer, more insane in every way.'

it would be awesome to see this live or to see other performers tackle it bcz its an awesome piece of music.

thanks for everyone's comments.

http://www.lovely.com/events/events-celestial-berlin.html

(guess I should do an update: after reading what drew said all those months ago I did turn up the volume on 'automatic writing', it is the kind of piece that wd make me think it best to hear it quietly to fully absorb its creepy undercurrent but its a lovely surprise to find those basslines underneath) (got hold of 'your money my life' on the cheap but didn't really care for it at the time otherwise i wd've revived, but will pull it out again)

Celestial Excursions is even further in the direction of Dust. Less surrealism, more direct sentimentality, the speakers all take turn telling narratives about the eccentric & elderly. I'm sure this is incredible live, on record I'm even more easily distracted from it than I was with Dust. I'm glad I have it but I'd certainly recommend Atalanta or Yellow Man With Heart With Wings for later Ashley well before this.

And Lovely really needs to issue The Bar & Music Word Fire on a single CD, that's urgent.

thx to all again -- goes without saying these operas must be performed, hopefully one or two of these are on a small enough scale so that we don't have to rely on the traditional opera houses to take this on.

the Lucier and Oliveros interviews are particualrly headsnapping if you're bandwidth-pinched, but these are best taken in sequence, there's a reason he calls the series an opera. I'm ordering the book from Lovely, I need the transcripts. I've watched each of them at least twice by now. If I'd seen them in time, I would have voted for these in the ILE 'favorite films of the 70's' poll.

The OHM: Pioneers of Electronic Music box set was just re-released with a 20 track DVD -- three of the tracks are excerpts from Ashley's series.

You're definitely right, though -- now that you've mentioned it, it's clear, though it sounds like it's coming from four rooms over. And it comes in and out of the mix at different volumes & moments independent of Ashley's speech, so it wasn't just printed on the tape of his vocal performance, it was obviously captured and strategically mixed in at various points of the piece.

Cool!

this is a great interview

http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=1194

ROBERT ASHLEY: Well, the problem in discussing hip-hop with somebody who doesn't like hip-hop is that they don't hear the melodies. There's no difference in the quality of the melody in any good hip-hop record now. There are so many I can't even name them. But there's no difference in the quality of the melody between that song and something like Billie Holiday for instance. It's just that the world has changed, the street language has changed and now you have to tune our ears to be able to hear that the very best hip-hop singers are singing exactly in tune. It might be going a little too fast; the melody might be going a little too fast for you to perceive it as melody, but there's no doubt that there's melody..

i've posted on ilm about five times, but i figured i'd chime in here--

got a promo for 'now eleanor's idea' this week and am enjoying it pretty well so far. as far as comparisons, it's not nearly as frightening as 'foreign experiences'; it's actually a lot like 'dust' in texture but more expansive, more desert-like (makes sense--the libretto is about a woman who finds her true calling in a low-rider community in new mexico). anyway, yeah, i've become near-obsessed with ashley in the past year and a half; this is pretty welcome right now.

the libretto is about a woman who finds her true calling in a low-rider community in new mexico

Haha, this sounds like it could be my soundtrack for 2008.

By coincidence, the first page of youtube hits for "Robert Ashley" turns up this story about a Robert Ashley in New Mexico, but it's not that one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAWl5ywT5ws

Now Eleanor's Idea is fantastic. An opera about a community of Mexican Americans who practice their relilgion through the design of elaborately painted low riders. The Mexican monologues floating through the mix talking about their lives in the 2nd section is new territory, and Joan LaBarbara goes off in the final section.

Not entirely new territory actually -- now that Now Eleanor's Idea and Foreign Experiences are out, it makes Yellow Man With Heart With Wings seem more like the crucial departure point for all the 90's work -- bits of the text from it actually turn up verbatim towards the end of Foreign Experiences -- it's good to finally have access to the larger picture. YMWHWW is the key album for anyone who's a fan of his 70's records looking to get into the later operas, it unlocks the other ones

Foreign Experiences is finally catching up with me as well -- it's much more of a Sam Ashley showcase. It seems to be a re-performance / remix of the original 90's version of the piece, with Sam & Jacqueline Humbert are the only two clear voices, much spacier electronic music by Sam, and completely bizarre fragmented samples of the original chorus creeping around in the mix. And the libretto is basically about Ashley's experience at Mills College in the 70's, so there are tons of familiar little hints if you've been to the campus.

Celestial Excursions had a great libretto but the music threw me a bit, the last two are definitely back on track (though I'd still go through the 70's stuff before going to them)

relilgion-ay

An opera about a community of Mexican Americans who practice their relilgion through the design of elaborately painted low riders.

oh i love that man.

fwiw my favourite of the operas is definitely "Improvement (Don Leaves Linda)" but that could be because the 2-10 minute sections allow for me to spread the listening experience out and to access it more easily, somehow. "eL/Aficionado" is another big favourite from the more recent stuff. i haven't yet been able to penetrate "Celestial Experiences" or "Dust".

In Sarah Mencken, Christ and Beethoven, there were men and women is so unbelievably beautiful.

I know, right?

I've yet to be disappointed by anything I've heard of his.

Very really grand men and women.

Very Titanically.

I listened to the 2nd half of Automatic Writing before bed last night, and brought Private Parts to listen to today. Those two are probably my favorites. SMC&B definitely comes close too--i was so happy the day i found that LP.

Three men have loved her. One a decade, on the average.

I really need to dig up a copy of YMWHWW. I also want to dig up the VHS tapes for Private Parts; I think some distributors still have 'em but I don't exactly have $75 to shell out right now.

they put out 'Private Parts' as a 2 DVD $50 set. if you're looking to spend, my favorite of his videos is 'Atalanta Strategy' though

Matmos is covering 'The Backyard' tonight at the Stone

Bob Ashley, David Behrman, Chris Mann and Alvin Lucier give a FREE concert in honor of John Cage at The New School on September 7 at 7 pm. 66 West 12th Street.

if only i knew before now i could have taken time off work :(

So, has anyone read the Kyle Gann book on Ashley? Came out in November apparently... wanting to order it from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Ashley-American-Composers-Kyle/dp/025207887X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367108789&sr=8-1&keywords=kyle+gann+robert+ashley

The design looks Chinese.

:(

;__;

It would be a thrill to make work at least half as good as he did

so so so so sad. I feel like some of the deepest connections I have made on this website have been over The Record. This record. THE Record! All of his records! Ian, Joe, Plax, others - all in my thoughts now. Robert Ashley, I Love you.

:/

oh man :-/

yah sad faces

Pretty much speechless.

salute!

in the beginning there were rocks and on those rocks with harder rocks we learned to make a million bruises to spell out things like 'we were here' and 'watch your water' -- they only moved it, the idea of bruises adding up to something, from rocks to skin

pale purplish blue to pale violet
lighter than dusk blue
civil twilight

:(

Sad news to wake up to. RIP

:(

:-(

RIP Mr Ashley, you made some amazing music.

didn't wanna open this thread

RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBU8vLIJbSE

I'm glad someone's finally put this version of 'The Backyard' on youtube so I can share it with everybody and maybe someone can explain to me why it kills me every time.

I know the NYT can take its time for an obit on occasion but this is getting embarrassing for them

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/arts/music/robert-ashley-opera-composer-who-painted-outside-the-lines-dies-at-83.html?_r=0

You are slain because of the tabla playing, which is virtuosic and passionate and threatens to explode out of the not-that-simple repetitive pattern but doesn't explode so much as slide around it and through it and into simpler and simultaneously more complicated patterns and because that combined with that text and Ashley's reading of it is just too fucking much.

Very titanically

My perfect introduction to Robert Ashley-- though I didn't know it was him til years later-- was in a car in San Francisco when I was 20. My older brother (then a San Franciscan) had driven me up to Muir Woods and we were stuck in traffic on the way back, all the way over the Golden Gate bridge. We channel surfing and we suddenly hit upon a station playing "Private Parts" and were too transfixed to change channels. My brother was dismissive, he said it was typical San Francisco listening. I asked him what genre it was and he said "acid jazz, I think?" (Later, when I heard real acid jazz: "if this is acid jazz, what was that talking guy?") It was so moving on first listen how such emotional highs and lows were created in such a static sonic environment. I wish I had kids so I could play this music for them

I asked him what genre it was and he said "acid jazz, I think?"

People say the funniest things part x6382462691

http://blog.frieze.com/robert-ashley-1930-2014/

Live perf of Automatic writing on the 30th at Cafe Oto (where else?).

Wanna go but it does clash with another recital :-(

I should go to that. I missed the Ashley weekend they had there in 2012 and I've been annoyed at myself since.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/05/music/four-episodes-from-robert-ashleys-vidas-perfectas
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/arts/music/vidas-perfectas-spanish-version-of-a-robert-ashley-opera.html
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/05/music/on-robert-ashley
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/15/arts/music/robert-ashleys-work-lives-on-at-the-whitney-biennial.html?_r=0
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/05/music/contrapunctual-music-for-spoken-words-only

I want to say something about myself:
I am not sitting on a bench next to myself, whatever that means.

started listening to the new(ish) version of Improvement and was totally floored by The Airline Ticket Counter - I never really gelled with the 1992 recording but this one seems to find an emotionally affecting quality while still being weird and not like anything else

this opera was staged in Melbourne in 1993 under the musical direction of Robert Ashley - I was visiting and picked it out of a festival programme at random as the most interesting-looking thing on offer - I was 19 and completely bemused by it but the images and atmosphere stayed with me - though I subsequently forgot the name and details - in the Internet age I made some failed attempts to work out what I had seen - then twenty years after the event I was getting into Automatic Writing and reading more about Robert Ashley and made the connection, it was a super-satisfying revelation

amazingly, there is footage of that production on the internet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaO5WMzp3OQ

Very much enjoyed this footage and your backstory, thank you

https://vimeo.com/321877684

the performance the new recording is from is on vimeo and its pretty fabulous, i watched it the other night and i am currently obsessed with the the recording. my favourite part, turning over in my head, is the description of the dance studio from 'Left-Handed Golf':
"The Arcade,
/ an enormous gallery, filled with people,
/ light filtered through the glass above,
/ two stories high, a block long,
/ without rain, perfect temperature forever
/ on stone pavements made beautiful with use.
/ A cathedral, secular, just big enough.
/ Royal chambers on the second floor.
/ Secret stairways, gold lettered windows,
/ locked doors. The studio itself,
/ vast hardwood, perfect in tongue and groove,
/ the likes of which, etcetera. The Arcade
/ builder, Worth, knew what he was up to.”

also very excited to realise that the account that published that has many full performances of later operas from the kitchen (Dust, Celestial Excursions) so worth checking for anyone who like me didn't know filmed versions existed.

Yeah, between that (absolutely wonderful) "Improvements" and the previously unreleased realization of "Foreign Experiences" that came out last year, I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I've gotten out of hearing multiple realizations of these pieces.

Looks like there's a new version of "el/Afficionado" coming later this month as well. Never really connected with that one despite the "Eleanor" cycle on the whole being some of my favorite music of any kind, so I'll be especially curious to hear it.

looking at the timing my guess is that the new production of Improvements was intended to inaugurate a celebration of ashley that has been railroaded by the thing that's railroaded everything. excited about these new recordings as i haven't heard Foreign Experiences either.

Oh! "Foreign Experiences" is maybe an acquired taste but it's one of my favorite weird corners of that cycle, absolutely saturated in the 70's west coast milieu of "divorced guys reading Castaneda", which tbf may or may not be something you're up for. Both of the versions available from Lovely are great, but I have a special fondness for the 2006 CD version that's just Sam Ashley and Jackie Humbert bc Sam's delivery is just so relentlessly freaked out and seething, boiling over with bad vibes in a way that ratchets up the psychic claustrophobia of the piece to a paranoid fever dream.

And as for the more recent productions, no idea whether there was any larger plan there but I'm really happy to see that many of the people (e.g. Tom Hamilton) who were involved with his ensemble have taken an active role in ensuring the survival of the work and mentoring another generation of interpreters.