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Aspirations of Madness, Blank Forms' fifth collection of archival, unpublished, or newly translated texts, takes its title from a series of interviews with Japanese free jazz pioneer Masayuki Takayangi that were published in Japanese in 1975-76 and are published here in English for the first time. The interviews provide a rare look at Takayanagi's eccentric practice and personality, both long under-recognized by audiences outside (and often, inside) of Japan. The postwar Japanese history that Takayanagi describes also surfaces in this publication's opening piece, a poetic tribute by the writer and artist Louise Landes Levi to one of Takayanagi's contemporaries, the poet Kazuko Shiraishi. Asp...
The first ever book on American composer and sound-art pioneer Maryanne Amacher, with letters, manifestos, notes and more elucidating her eclectic thinking on sound and perception Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009) was a composer of large-scale fixed-duration sound installations and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization and aural architecture. She is frequently cited as a pioneer of what has come to be called "sound art," although her thought and work challenges assumptions about the limitations of that genre. Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviewsrepresents the first ever book-length collection devoted to the composer, whose life and work are as va...
Avant-garde jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and textile artist Moki Cherry (née Karlsson) met in Sweden in the late sixties. They began to live and perform together, dubbing their mix of communal art, social and environmentalist activism, children's education, and pan-ethnic expression Organic Music. Organic Music Societies, Blank Forms' sixth anthology, is a special issue released in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name devoted to the couple's multimedia collaborations. The first English-language publication on either figure, the book highlights models for collectivism and pedagogy deployed in the Cherrys' interpersonal and artistic work through the presentation of archival documents ...
One of the world's most singular guitarists, Loren Connors has wrung distinct shades of ephemeral blues from his guitar, its sound ever-shifting while remaining unmistakably his own in more than 100 records across almost four decades. In the mid-80s, Connors took a partial break from music and focused instead on the art of haiku, for which he received the Lafcadio Hearn Award in 1987. With his wife Suzanne Langille he also co-wrote an article on blues and haiku, "The Dancing Ear," published in the Haiku Society of America's journal. It was during this period that Connors penned the material that appears in Autumn's Sun, a chapbook first published by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley's Glass Eye...
Writings and interviews engaging the artists and themes from Blank Forms' public programming, from Thulani Davis to Charles Curtis This iteration privileges new texts produced for the publication. These include an interview with the idiosyncratic Texan singer-songwriter and visual artist Terry Allen, conducted by curator Anthony Elms; a conversation between writers--and longtime friends--Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn, on the occasion of Davis' poetry collection Nothing But the Music; a discussion between composer Sarah Hennies and cellist Judith Hamann; and a conversation with composer-performers Tashi Wada and Charles Curtis, on the heels of a recent compilation of Curtis' work, Performances & Recordings 1998-2018, produced by Wada. Also featured are reflections on legendary jazz percussionist and healer Milford Graves, by Ciarán Finlayson; English multimedia artist Graham Lambkin's beguiling 2011 album Amateur Doubles, by Alan Licht; and the UK-based experimental music trio Still House Plants, by Joe Bucciero. The interviews and essays are complemented by three poets, René Daumal, Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn.
This two-volume set, Poesy Matters and Other Matters, presents selected texts by the Swedish polymath Catherine Christer Hennix. Volume one, Poesy Matters, is divided into two sections: poetry and drama, with each section also containing pieces of commentary by Hennix or her longtime collaborator Henry Flynt. Volume two, Other Matters, is divided into two sections: first, program notes and essays about a wide range of topics (including music, psychoanalysis, and mathematics), and second, a reproduction of Hennix's 1989 work The Yellow Book. The first comprehensive publication of Hennix's written work, Poesy Matters and Other Matters illustrates the singular depth and variety of her contribut...
For the past thirty years, Alan Licht has been a performer, programmer, and chronicler of New York's art and music scenes. His dry wit, deep erudition, and unique perspective- informed by decades of experience as a touring and recording guitarist in the worlds of experimental music and underground rock-have distinguished him as the go-to writer for profiles of adventurous artists across genres. A precocious scholar and improvisor, by the time he graduatedfrom college in 1990 Licht had already authored important essays on minimalist composers La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, and Charlemagne Palestine, and recorded with luminaries such as Rashied Ali and Thurston Moore. In 1999 he became a regular contributor to the British experimentalmusic magazine the Wire while continuing to publish in a wide array of periodicals, ranging from the artworld glossies to underground fanzines. Common Tones gathers a selection of never-before-published interviews, many conducted during the writing of Licht's groundbreaking articles, alongside extended versions of his celebrated conversations with artists, previously untranscribed public exchanges, and new dialogues held on the occasion of this collection.
The amazing life of Jerry Hunt, Texan avant-garde composer, occultist and artist, with appearances from Pauline Oliveros, Karen Finlay and others Jerry Hunt (1943-93) was among the most eccentric figures in the word of new music. A frenetic orator, occultist and engineering consultant, his works from the 1970s through the early '90s made use of readymade sculptures, medical technology, arcane talismans and all manner of homemade electronic implements to form confrontational recordings and enigmatic, powerful performances. Tracing Hunt's life across his home state's major cities to a self-built house in rural Van Zandt County, this memoir-cum-biography by Stephen Housewright, Hunt's partner o...
Archival documents and new writings on Texas-based composer, performer, and visual and video artist, Jerry Hunt. Jerry Hunt (1943-1993) was among the most eccentric figures in the word of late 20th century new music, sometimes described as a shamanic figure with the look of a "Central Texas meat inspector." His works combined video synthesis, early computers, and custom-made sensors with rough hewn sculptures, scores drawn from celestial alphabets, and homemade electronics activated by his signature wands and impassioned gestures. Hunt lived his entire in Texas, between Dallas, Waco, Houston, and Austin, eventually settling in a house he built himself ("an interactive environment") on a ranc...
Thulani Davis' synesthetic documentary poems breathe impressionistic life into the sonic-social history of East Coast avant-garde jazz, soul and punk Written between 1974 and 1985, these are Davis' most anthologized works. Featured musicians and dancers include Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Bad Brains, Henry Threadgill, Thelonious Monk, the Revolutionary Ensemble, the Commodores, Ishmael Houston-Jones and many more, in performances at historic venues such as the Five Spot, the Village Vanguard and the Apollo. Nothing but the Musicis further proof of Davis' place as a crucial figure, alongside poets Jayne Cortez, Sonia Sanchez and Ntozake Shange, in the cultural landscape surrounding the Black Arts Movement. Thulani Davis(born 1949) is the author of the novels 1959and Maker of Saints, several works of poetry and the forthcoming book The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom(Duke University Press). She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin.