sound-based music: where we're at now
It's funny, for someone who calls himself a sound artist, I really don't talk much about sound-based music on my blog. I sometimes feel slightly guilty about it, as though I am a traitor to my cause. Please don't be fooled, I care more than ever about these things, but after grad and post-grad thinking about music/sound/art (in whatever combinatorial nomenclature one cares to use) I think I became a little exhausted of talking about it.
But a book I've been reading lately is the freshest thing I've seen in a while. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization by Leigh Landy (which I first saw last year at PQM in Berlin) is just an amazing work that proposes an unforgiving and clearheaded perspective on where we're really at now in sound-based music, from microsound glitch to noise and most points in between, especially taking into account the strange, sometimes brilliant, but often really rather sad epoch that is known simply as "20th Century Music." I can't recommend this book enough, as a strong and invigorating approach to understanding the current state of things, without sentimentality nor nostalgia.
