Thinking (and feeling) about experimental music.
The Albigna dam, Vicosoprano, Switzerland.
I got together for drinks with Patricia Jäggi and Christoph Brünggel* yesterday afternoon at Stazione Paradiso on the banks of the Limmat river in Zürich. If you’ve read the liner notes to my new record, it’s nothing, but still, you’ll recognize them as contributing artists on the song unsound structures. Their field recording emerges out of the cacophony at about 5:30, and embodies perfectly the hypnagogic, disoriented feeling I experienced after my stroke in 2019.
A bit of background: at the beginning of the pandemic, they both embarked on a field recording project exploring the auditory environments of energy producing infrastructure, visiting and documenting selected dams, power stations, incinerators, and geothermal power plants throughout Europe. The specific field recording I used on unsound structures—captured by a magnet-mounted geophone on an exterior metal hatch to the Albigna dam in southern Switzerland—was part of this sonic survey.
Anyway, as we began a somewhat lengthy discussion about contemporary experimental music, and specifically the effect of academia on the production of sound art, I reiterated a long-time complaint: much of it is just too cerebral. It does not move me.
I’m again reminded of a quote by one of my favorite modern classical composers, John Luther Adams.
"I’ve always felt that I can have my cake and eat it too—that music can be ravishingly beautiful or profoundly physical, and still be intellectually airtight, rigorously conceived and executed. It’s always seemed like a false dichotomy to me: why couldn’t music be smart AND sound good?"
Without getting too deep into the weeds regarding the problematic nature of the definition of beauty, or what it means to“sound good,” I’ve come to interpret the tail end of the quote like this: why couldn’t music be rational AND emotive? In my experience, the best works of art appeal to both the intellect and the heart. The pieces that affect me profoundly are those that speak to my whole person, that are deep enough for me to explore completely—body, mind, and spirit.
*Christoph Brünggel has advanced degrees in Music and Contemporary Arts Practice from HKB, Bern University of the Arts, where he currently has a teaching assignment in Sound Arts. In addition to his academic and artistic work, he's one-third of STILL UND DUNKEL, a multi-disciplinary performance ensemble and fellow label-mates on Hallow Ground. Patricia Jäggi has her Ph.D in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Basel. She's currently a research associate at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Music, focusing on the anthropology of sound, listening and the senses, sound studies, and sound art. Both publish and exhibit frequently.
