When I listened to this CD, I was quite frustrated by the very high level of 'hiss' on the recording. As far as I can tell, this is not caused by the wind, which can be heard separately. It rather appears to be an artefact of the recording equipment. I'd be interested to hear about other people's perception of this.

It didn't register to me as equipment-derived hiss. Maybe not wind, but just a general ambient blur. I don't know whether or not the garden in which it was recorded is in an urban area, but that's the sense I got, that you were hearing muffled layers of urban noise. I could, of course, be wrong.

I don't think the hiss is made of muffled layers of urban noise, if only because I have never heard an actual or recorded city produce anything like that fog of electronic sound. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect that the sound is backround hiss introduced by the recording process. If that is so, we are confronted with the irony of a recording of a unique and delicate soundscape itself enshrouding that soundscape in an obscuring 'lo-fi' sonic smog.

Well, if that's so, if we're hearing a rather pristine performance semi-buried beneath a layer of tape hiss, I *still* think it's a wonderful recording and, considered as a whole, a lovely kind of atmosphere.

I wouldn't, by the way, put it beyond Otomo to consciously do such a thing, to consider tape hiss as a primary sound source, but I have no idea if that was the case. Maybe he's "building" on Taku's "Hum Piece" (a composition in which the only sounds are the hums of the amplifiers of the guitarists involved).

I've been holding back so far, but for Dan's benefit, here goes.

I get nothing out of this disc after about 4 or 5 listens. I think the idea is cool, I would have liked to have been there walking around, but as a recorded document, it does nothing for me. like Wayne, I can't get past the recording quality on this to the actual music, it's a bit like the second CD of the Malfatti/Sugimoto on IMJ. part of my problem is possibly that I'm working on a double CD of Otomo/Sachiko/Toshi, which is recorded impeccably in a roughly similar musical style (in terms of sparseness, at least).

have you guys heard Les Hautes Solitudes? for me, that's a disc along similar lines (with a film projector instead of being outside, and with Sugimoto instead of Ichiraku) that I think is much more successful.

i haven't heard this CD, but generally i think poor recording quality doesn't have to be a negative point at all. in fact it can be an intrinsic part of the listening experience. my standard example of a CD where this works amazingly well is THE DEAD C. "the withehouse" (on siltbreeze, 1995, i think)... one of my all time favorites. when you get past the dust, you'll be rewarded with some of the most insane sounds ever created...

yes, I like that Dead C. record, I'm not someone who insists on impeccable fidelity. this is well beyond that.

Jon>
have you guys heard Les Hautes Solitudes? for me, that's a disc along similar lines (with a film projector instead of being outside, and with Sugimoto instead of Ichiraku) that I think is much more successful.

One of my favourite discs. I'm a sucker for bringing the outside in, cf. "Dach", "Lines Burnt In Light". etc. Haven't heard this ISO disc yet but hope to soon.

it depends on the music i guess. there's music that deliberately plays with those factors (say hiss) and other that just needs high recording quality because it wouldn't make sense otherwise. imagine bernhard gunter on vinyl. not that i didn't like the idea, but as he tells himself on the pt-interview, the music would go under in the background noise... something i like about the first filament for example is the fact that it all sounds like tech. mistakes, i mean the sounds that people usually try to get rid off. i don't know if this would work that well if it was recorded lo-fi, honestly. a standard example of music that needs high recording quality: coil's black light district. this one woudn't work with background noise, i think.

jon - weird... i'm almost "touched" by the fact that you like that dead c. record - this has been a very influencial record for me. most of the time i show this to people in this field of music, the reaction is kind of "...and you listen to that?!"... you're the second person today to react positively: the first was koen holtkamp from apestaartje (who played in zurich tonight.)

I really like the Dead C., I saw them do an amazing show here in Hoboken once, on one of their very few trips to the US ever. I'm not crazy about their last few records since they started exploring electronics, though, I didn't even pick up the latest one.

I used to be way into the NZ free noise scene, I have most of the Corpus Hermeticum catalog, Metonymic, a bunch of other stuff. Corpus Hermeticum was definitely one of many role model labels for Erstwhile.

yes, hermescorp is a very interesting label. do you like GATE (michael morley et al.)? i think he has done a few bad records but the good ones ("the dew line" & "monolake" amongst others) are really great.

I got a picture of the actual CD of The Dew Line into Time Magazine, in a piece on art on actual CDs (this is when it was very rare to have anything but writing on the silver). definitely one of my peak accomplishments in my ten years of service at that silly place...

hehe :)

i still need to come up with a good record that mr.abbey doesn't know...

Tomas: the Dead C fucking rule, at least as far as I've heard them. Have you heard "Repent"? They're live recordings from around the time of The Whitehouse. It's a sentimental favorite, when I was like 13 or so, and studying at Duke, a friend of mine loaned me a copy of that one, and I remember spacing out to it while it was impossibly hot outside....easily one of the more memorable moments of drone bliss I've encountered.

Whatever one may think about poor recording quality generally, I do think that it poses a problem for this particular CD. I don't have the disc in front of me, but if memory serves the music was performed at a temple. Efforts seem to have been made to capture something of the quality of the unique soundscape in which the performance took place. Indeed, in the sleeve notes it is pointed out that it was decided not to remove the sounds of dogs, ducks etc during post-recording in order not to undermine this sense of place. All this makes it especially unfortunate that dogs, ducks, musicians and everything else lay half-concealed behind the hiss. It is a little like being invited to watch some exquisite calligraphy being written and then being required to peer at it from the far side of a pane of opaque glass.

yes, wayne. that's a good comparison - i think i know what you mean. i just wanted to point out that i think recording quality is sometimes being a bit over-emphazised. but then again there are situations that require good recording quality as probably is the case with this i.s.o., no doubt.

I think more is being made of the hiss than necessary. I don't find it "half concealing" anything. It's certainly there if one is attentive to it, but it isn't dominant. It doesn't sound as polished but I think a lot of it has to do with the wind and other ambient sound. i like it a lot better than Les Hautes Solitude. The projector was interesting but I certainly could have lived without it.

Clearly, opinions will differ as to how deleterious the hiss is. For my part, I find that not only does it muffle to some extent the sounds that are there, it also fills or extinguishes the spaces and silences that should be an integral aspect of the soundscape. Its superimposed presence additionally serves, for me, to diffuse attention and prevent sharp focus on the fine detail of the sounds.

Jon might know better than I, but I have to assume the sound of the recording was exactly what the trio involved wanted. Otomo's enough of a technophile in other matters, certainly. I think (total guess here) it has something to do with what I perceive as a movement on the part of certain musicians (some of the Japanese crew, maybe Rowe once in a while) toward a non-music kind of music, a kind of levelling out of sounds, where those produced by the musicians have no greater or lesser importance than (in this case) dogs, ducks or wind or (in other cases) those produced by machines (amplifier hum or single-state sine wave). Dunno.

actually, my guess would be that the setup of the concert was exactly what the musicians wanted, and the recording was done by whoever arranged the show, who later decided that they wanted to release it, and the musicians said ok, go ahead. I think they probably liked the end result, along the lines of what Brian is saying, but I doubt they planned to do it that way for release beforehand.

a development along similar lines that's interesting is the non-listing of the musician's instrumentation on this disc. today, Otomo, Toshi, and Sachiko told me that they'd also prefer to not have their instruments listed on the upcoming double Erst disc, although that hasn't been decided for sure yet, we'll see.

A real Cagean would suggest throwing a bunch of pieces of paper with names of instruments on them into the air over squares with the performers names on them and just listing the person as playing whatever lands on them. Could be cool:

Sachiko M., English horn, triangle, trombone
Otomo, flute, harpsichord, bugle, tympani
Toshi, alto sax, no-input mixing board, maracas

you are completely wrong walter: already forgot that toshi plays no-input shoeboxes?

Walt, it's a Cagean idea in that the musicians would like to fit into their surroundings, with the listener not dividing what they hear into what's created by the musicians and what's created by the world around them.

but it's also a very non-Cagean idea, in that these are highly focused, extremely talented freely improvising musicians, and the sounds that they create are anything but random. you heard Toshi's focus live in the set with Keith in Boston. I have no doubt that were I able to hear what the I.S.O. musicians were doing more clearly, I'd probably be pretty into it.

but you guys are talking about the I.S.O. disc, I'm talking about the double CD project I'm working on, which is pristinely recorded, yet still is all about atmosphere. "atmospherics": that's a better genre name than "eai". what do you think about that, tomas?

Jon, I was wondering if any of your roster has suggested not putting his or her name on a release. That seems like it might fit somewhere in the egolessness progression. First don't identify the instruments, then don't identify the instrumentalists.

I suppose one could also use masks or screens or something to block identification during concerts?

BTW, I do agree that the players you mentioned are not looking for "randomness" in the same way Cage was. It's an interesting and difficult distinction. (Randomness is difficult and interesting in a number of contexts--even the insurance rating world!)

Do you think there are exponents of ea-i who ARE more Cagean in this respect of randomness? My sense is that there are, but you probably have a better take. Brian mentions above "a non-music kind of music, a kind of levelling out of sounds, where those produced by the musicians have no greater or lesser importance than (in this case) dogs, ducks or wind or (in other cases) those produced by machines (amplifier hum or single-state sine wave)." That seems to me Cagean as well as Zen.

jon - "eai" or "atmospherics" are both probably as inadequate as every other genre name. i know what you mean by "atmospherics", but it reminds me too much of "ambient" or furniture music. besides all the "non-music" in this music, there is still a great tension and concentration in it, i think. "atmospherics" seems a bit too loose here. when i talk to friends i often call it "erstwhile-ish" music. yes, the fact that you're shaping the form of a whole genre with your work is a huge compliment, but i'm sure you're aware of the negative implications as well: if we say something sounds like "erstwhile-music" in a couple of years, and still mean the same thing as right now, we have a problem...

What's the atmosphere on the upcoming release, Jon?

Walt:

"I was wondering if any of your roster has suggested not putting his or her name on a release. That seems like it might fit somewhere in the egolessness progression. First don't identify the instruments, then don't identify the instrumentalists."

no, I'm not even thrilled about not listing instruments. I would probably draw the line there.

"I suppose one could also use masks or screens or something to block identification during concerts? "

different music, but Tony Conrad has always done this, he usually plays behind a scrim, so that you can only see his silhouette.

"Brian mentions above "a non-music kind of music, a kind of levelling out of sounds, where those produced by the musicians have no greater or lesser importance than (in this case) dogs, ducks or wind or (in other cases) those produced by machines (amplifier hum or single-state sine wave).""

let's be careful here not to confuse Brian's guesses at the motivation behind releasing a poor-sounding recording (motivations not necessarily belonging to the musicians at all) and the actual motivations of the musicians involved.

tomas, wow! that's a very nice compliment, thank you very much.

"if we say something sounds like "erstwhile-music" in a couple of years, and still mean the same thing as right now, we have a problem"

no worries, I'm not sure this will still mean quite the same thing even after the next few releases. :) anyway, that's a challenge I'm happy to take on...

I really can't wait for people to hear these next three, both in terms of quality music and in terms of the surprise/shock factor, particularly the rowe/fennesz. that one will melt minds!

michael, I don't really know how to answer that question, I think you need to hear the music and decide for yourself, I guess...

No. . .where was it recorded?

"...when i talk to friends i often call it "erstwhile-ish" music. yes, the fact that you're shaping the form of a whole genre with your work is a huge compliment..."

Does this mean that Erstwhile will eventually carry the same branding clout as say Kleenex™ or Xerox™?

it was recorded in a private studio in Tokyo, not one I was previously familiar with, "studio wellhead-5". those guys are getting very good at recording themselves, as evidenced by the first disc of the AMPLIFY box among other things, a very nice development.

Derek, I'll just be happy if I can afford to keep putting out records for a while, that's really my main concern at this point.

Right on, Jon. I wish you the best. Reminds me that I need to send you those Cadence reviews.

"What's the atmosphere on the upcoming release, Jon?"

Cloudy, with a chance of meatballs.

I'm with Bill on this one. I think too much is being made about the hiss. Ultimately, whether it was intentional or not, the hiss provides a certain character to the recording that makes it a different recording if it weren't there. When it comes to obtrusive sound quality, one can either learn to live with it, absorb it as part of the music, or reject the piece altogether. I'm leaning towards absorbing.

Having said that, I would also like to hear this recording in a more pristine version. If anything, the contrast should be interesting.

interesting post sergio.

one of the things i find most fascinating about perception in general (and specifically with listening), is that it is so selective. it's amazing how you can just filter out things, you don't want to perceive. this is also know as the "cocktail party phenomenon": even though there's dozens of converations going on, if you listen closely, you're able to understand the one you are following.

i'm not sure if this is what you meant by "absorbing", but it's a nice thing to know anyway, isn't it ;)

well i would like to post another opinion.
i found the music and recording to be perfect for the music played.
the hiss was comforting and embraced the sounds.
i haven't tried it yet on speakers my listening was on headphones, in backyard. i love the way the current wind blends with the wind at the time of the recording.
i also look forward to the recording "a double CD of Otomo/Sachiko/Toshi" taht jon mentioned.

Very late to this party I realize, but I just got this disc over the weekend. In part I think I held off on getting this due to this review and comments. However I found that I really liked the disc. The much maligned hiss really seemed part of the effect, giving the feel of quite sounds in a larger space. One wonders how much you had to strain to hear the sounds at the actual event. Regarding the "hiss", I have done a lot of open air recording and this type of noise is ever present when you are recording quiet sounds. I believe that it is just what sensitive microphones pick up amplified. Considering that most of the sounds were pretty low volume only a board recording would have eliminated this noise. That would have done nothing to capture the sound of the environment, which was clearly a high priority. No recording of a live event is a substitute for being there and in some cases this is particularly evident.

hatta, did you pay the $23 at Wall of Sound, or did you buy it elsewhere?

I bought it from Erstwhile Records for US$18.00
http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/inventory/list.asp