Sixties Electronic Drone Question
 

Does anyone know of a band/musician working in the sixties/early seventies interested in electronic drones in a sort of dark, almost 'mind-control' kind of a way? The only thing I can thinbk of, but which is a pretty good example is White Noise's 'Electric Storm in Hell'. sorry I can't be any clearer than that, it's just for a project I'm working on.

Edit: Listening to White Noise now, too 'song based' for what I'm thinking about.

That's a great album, it seems my copy is lost in my brothers collection somewhere it seems, but anyways i don't know if i'd consider it really heavy electronci drone music i mean sure yeah it has elements then again i haven't listened to this in a long long time... anyways to answer yr question the first thing i think of is minimalist music from that era from the likes of LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine and Tony Conrad... Tony Conrad is still very active in the scene...

Add Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, Lou Harrison, Terry Riley to the above list. I doesn't sound like it's any of them you're after though, but all drone-y to an extent. Palestine wins that particular game, to my mind.

How about Pierre Henry's "Cortical Art" album, made by using brainwave activity as a sound source. Pretty far out, that.

Takehisa Kosugi's "Catch Wave" might fall into this, but I don't know what his motivations were.

The Pierre Henry thing certainly sounds good. I just listened to some Delia Derbyshire stuff for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and, although not drone based at all, seems exactly the type of thing I'm after. The only problem being that her CDs, as with all the RWS stuff, are going for absolutely daft sums.

just wanted to say "an electric storm" is fucking great, an inspiration to me. but i can't answer your question..white noise has a couple other albums though.

oh and to add to that, i remember hearing "white noise 2'' and it didn't have songs on it.. just drones..

there's that european avant-garde band called AMM, i dunno if that's what you're looking for..they did long improvs w/ prepared guitars, radio mix-ins, cello and other stuff..

I think what I'm looking for is a kind of sci-fi/sound effect/moog type stuff, like what the BBC Radiophonic Workshop were (are?) doing. Sort of a less song oriented Joe Meek 'I Hear a New World' (which, of course, is one of the greatest albums known to mankind) kind of thing. I downloaded Sarramkrop's Hungarian Electronic album, which is utterly fantastic and that's DEFINITELY getting there. Music made by old men and women in labcoats, to read Dan Dare to, basically.

Taj Mahal Travellers (a group led by Takehisa Kosugi whom Mr. Clone mentioned) I think might be exactly the sort of thing you're looking for. I think I can find some links to some of their stuff. Un momento.

http://sector2814.wordpress.com/2007...-july-15-1972/

There's also a Taj Mahal Travellers tour documentary from 1973 on the ubu website: http://www.ubu.com/film/taj.html


For what it's worth, though, I don't really like them all that much. I just can't take all those sci-fi-ish sounds seriously in this context.

edit: It seems I have graduated to the rank of stalker. Hooray!

maybe try these:

morton subotnik - silver apples of the moon
sun ra - concert for the comet kohoutek
tangerine dream - alpha centauri, zeit, atem, electronic meditation
klaus schulze - irrlicht

Quite a bit of what Gyorgy Ligeti did for the soundtrack of 2001 A Space Oddysey fits as well (particularly some of the stuff that wasn't used in the actual movie.) For that matter Walter Carlos' "Timesteps" from A Clockwork Orange has those elements too.

Not really droney, but check out Bruce Haack aswell.
oh, and Cluster

Most of them have been mentioned already. David Rosenboom's Brainwave Music is another good one. I've started a thread about Richard Maxfield yesterday. Check out his music as it's phenomenal.

Maybe try Dick Raaijmakers. Not sure if he was wearing a labcoat, but at least he made his sounds in a labatory, being a researcher for Philips during the 50s-60s. Some of his work is droney, although most of it isn't. It's all weird tape manipulations sound effects stuff though, often with a bit of a sci-fi feel to it. It's definitely a bit in the same corner as that Hungarian electronic album at least.

there are some audio samples here:
http://www.donemus.nl/cd_detail.php?id=85&lang=EN

Bruce Haack = Yes!

Particularly 'Dance Sing And Listen Again And Again'.


http://www.haackmovie.com/

yeah...riley, charlemagne...tangerine dream, klaus schultz...some popol vuh i guess.

but i don't understand something, are you looking for something with a method or purpose (the 'mind control' thing) or were you just describing the type of music you wanted to hear?

Sounds like library music stuff to me, I think.

my question, pretty much, is if he's looking for artbook/academic stuff with instructions and a meaning or representation of something or if it's just sound for the sake of sound (so to speak).

i remember somewhere it mentioned a record called black mass lucifer or something, from the early 70's, that's said to be all synth drones and meant to be an invocation of evil spirits or something to that effect. it was put out by a major label.

Speaking of library music stuff, I've just found this little gem on the wmfu blog. Some of you might know who George Martin is.

Ray Cathode (aka George Martin)

 

George Martin began his career working at the BBC Music Library after which he landed a job at Parlaphone, EMI's "junk label" that released novelty records, soundtracks and light-pop orchestra material. After spending a few years recording classical music he went on to produce lots of comedy projects working with Peter Sellers & Spike Milligan (the Goons) and Peter Ustinov.

In early 1962, Martin and Maddalena Fagandini recorded the first single released by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop under the pseudonym "Ray Cathode". "Time Beat" was the A side of the 7" and was a re-working of one of Fagandini's interval signals. It's a decent track but is trumped by the B Side, "Waltz in Orbit" which was summed up nicely by Jonny Trunk (of the brilliant Trunk Records) thusly:

"This is a BBC Radiophonic Workshop thing, pressed on Columbia. You will definitely see this dinky little cheap single about and it seems like a bit of a lost gem to me. It's early (1962) but hugely progressive, with like a fat and catchy electronic waah-waah thing going off at the same time as a waltz. Only available on a single this sounds great very loud, most intense and thoroughly satisfying. I can liken it to being pissed in a microwave oven. So well done the workshop."

A few months after this single was released Martin would audition the Beatles and it took roughly three years before he got to fool around with electronics in the studio again. Some people claim that Martin played this single to Paul McCartney in 1965 and was an influence on Revolver's sound.



Ray Cathode - Time Beat

 

Ray Cathode - Waltz in Orbit

Sounds like you wanna hear Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air to me. Also try La Monte Young's Dream Syndicate-Day Of Niagra CD. (La Monte, Tony Conrad, John Cale, Angus Mac Lise and Marian Zazeela-the Kings (and Queen) of Drone. Plus, Tony Conrad-4 Violins, Lou Reed-Metal Machine Music and Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians (if you wanna hear where the Spiritualized guy stole half his stuff from). Drone rules!!!

Morton Subotnick, "Passages of the Beast"




Notes from Owl Recordings OWL-30:
mp3
PASSAGES OF THE BEAST (1978) 19:36 (Theodore Presser, ASCAP)
1. Before Dawn; Awakening
2. Night Song; Dance of Emergence

The composer supervised and mixed this premiere recording. The work, for clarinet and an electronic ghost score, was commissioned by the International Clarinet Society. Ramon Kireilis premiered the work at the 1978 International Clarinet Clinic held at the University of Toronto, Canada.

MORTON SUBOTNICK (b. 1933) has been acknowledged for over fifteen years as a pioneer in composing with electronics, beginning with several purely electronic works created expressly for the record medium. The first of these was Silver Apples of the Moon (1967); others include The Wild Bull (1968), Sidewinder (1971), 4 Butterflies (1973), and Until Spring (1975). Subotnick then began to explore the relationship between performers and technology in a series of "ghost" pieces for instruments and interactive electronics. In these compositions, the ghost score is a silent digital program which activates electronic modules to modify the instrumental sounds with regard to pitch, timbre, volume, and location of the sounds. Each work has its own digital program which controls a standardized ghost box. The ghost electronics were designed by Donald Buchla and built by John Payne according to the composer's specifications; funding was provided by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. There are fourteen ghost works (composed between 1977 and 1983), and, at present, Subotnick feels he has finished this series. While the ghost pieces have used electronics to modify instrumental sounds, it appears Subotnick's next compositional period will involve having instruments control computer generated sounds. Ascent into Air (1981) is the first work drawing on this new approach.

Subotnick attended the University of Denver and Mills College, studying under Leon Kirchner and Darius Milhaud. Currently on the faculty of The California Institute of the Arts, he has also been a visiting professor in composition at the University of Maryland, University of Pittsburgh, and Yale University. Among Subotnick's numerous grants and awards are three from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Composer Award. Nearly all of his major works involving electronics have been recorded, mainly with Nonesuch and Columbia. Subotnick states:

"The title Passages of the Beast refers to the rites of passage, of beastness to humanness, the passion of the beast and human awareness joined. The clarinet is treated as both a very old instrument (through a series of invented fingerings to get some of the non-diatonic qualities back into the technique) and a modern instrument, paralleling, more or less, the transition or passages from beast to human. The almost programmatic quality of the work is in keeping with the mainstream of my work for more than a decade. Passages, in particular, deals metaphorically with the evolution of the human spirit, and was one of a group of works which led up to the final (as of this writing) piece in the series, The Double Life of Amphibians, ' a ninety minute staged tone poem which received its world premiere at the 1984 Olympics Arts Festival in Los Angeles."

Ramon Kireilis has been extensively involved with new music for clarinet for many years. He has premiered several works, some of which have been written for him; these composers include Morton Subotnick, Milos Stedron, Normand Lockwood, and Marvin Feinsmith. Since 1973, Kireilis has been a principal guiding force in the International Clarinet Society, a group that not only holds an annual composition contest, but also commissions new works. Subotnick's Passages of the Beast, premiered by Kireilis, resulted from one of these commissions. Kireilis received his bachelor's and master's degrees from North Texas State University, and his doctorate from the University of Michigan. He has taught at the University of Denver since 1967. Performing regularly as a soloist throughout Colorado as well as making numerous European appearances, Ramon Kireilis has also recorded clarinet quintets by Arthur Bliss and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on Spectrum.
http://www.analogartsensemble.net/blog.html

Is anyone listening to 60’s drone?