I've been working on this music for the best part of two years now and have finally managed to finish it all off. Some of what is represented here was initially included for submission for the fourth Systems Theory album, but instead it has been released separately. This has largely been because the tracks are complete and afford little or no opportunity for anyone else to contribute to them. Systems Theory has been and is a collaborative effort, and although some material we have produced has occasionally leaned further towards one member of the band, the music has always been open to interpretation, revision, addition and subtraction by the entire group.
I've listed the instrumentation used on each track partly out of interest (my own - I've never really put all the instruments and sounds together in my head like this) and partly to provide links to sites that feature more information about them. I've never been an 'instrument fetishist' who wants to put as many different instruments on a composition just to show that he can play anything - which I absolutely cannot - or simply to name-check them, but I do like some of the individual sounds that some instruments and devices produce, most of which are not exactly new and hence could require an introduction.
The tunes are in 256kps MP3 format. A full ISO file for the CD is available here as well as the CDT and CUE files required to burn the disc. Download all files to the same folder and then burn the CD. (I recommend IMGBURN but you may have your own personal favourite program for the job, such as NERO). If you are using an Apple Mac then I suggest you use Firestarter FX which seems to do the trick. Note that burning the file straight in OSX will not work due to bugs with OSX and the use of CUE Sheets. A PDF version of the album artwork can be downloaded from here. A Microsoft Word version of the artwork is also available here. Also, under the title of each track beneath there is a link allowing you to listen to a streamed preview. The 'start' button on the left will stream the music to you via Last FM. The band link will take you to my last FM web page and the track link will take to to the Last FM player page for that track .
Comments and criticisms are more than welcome!
Mike Dickson, Edinburgh, July 2007
The six included 'Consequences' tracks shown here were initially an idea I had to revive some of the compositional workings of Systems Theory. The idea was for each of the three of us to work on (say) ten short piece that would run for no longer tha thirty seconds and to sequence these mini-tracks one after the other to produce one 'meta-track' that would run for several minutes but whch would go all over the place. I took the ten tracks I had produced and tried flipping them around to see if I could sequence them into a five-minute burst of inspiration. After some experimentation I conceded that it sounded quite disjointed and decided instead to use them as 'link tracks' to join other tunes together. Presented like this the tunes run for slightly more than the planned thirty seconds to account for the fade in/out overlaps and edits they were to have with each other.
Instrumentation:
'The male glance has often been described. It is commonly said to rest coldly on a woman, measuring, weighing, evaluating, selecting her - in other words, turning her into an object.
'What is less commonly known is that a woman is not competely defenseless against that glance. If it turns her into an object, then she looks back at the man with the eyes of an object. It is though a hammer had suddenly grown eyes and stare up at the worker pounding a nail with it. When the worker ses the evil eye of the hammer, he loses his self-assurance and slams it on his thumb.
'The worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.' -- Milan Kundera, 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting'.
Instrumentation:
'Moins de temps qu’il n’en faut pour le dire, moins de larmes qu’il n’en faut pour mourir, j’ai tout compté, voilà. J’ai fait le recensement des pierres; elles sone au nombre de mes doigts et de quelques autres; j’ai distribué des prospectus aux plantes, mais toutes n’ont pas voulu les accepter. Avec la musique j’ai lié partie pour une seconde seulement et maintenant je ne sais plus que penser du suicide, car si je veux me séparer de moi-même, la sortie est de ce côté et, j’aoute malicieusement: l’entrée, la rentrée de cet autre côte. Tu vois ce qu’il te reste à faire. Les heures, le chagrin, je n’en tiens pas un compte raisonnable; je suis seul je regarde par la fenêtre; il ne passe personne, ou plutôt personne ne passe (je souligne passe). Ce Monsieur, vous ne le connaissez pas? c’est M. Lemême. Je vous présente Madame Madame. Et leurs enfants. Puis je reveins sue mes pas, mes pas reviennent aussi, mais je ne sais pas exactement sue quoi ils reviennent. Je consulte un horaire; les noms de villes ont été remplacés par des noms de personnes qui m’ont touché d’assez près. Irai-je à A, retournerai-je à B, changerai-je à X? Oui, naturellement je changerai à X. Porvu que je ne manque pas la correspondance avec l’ennui! Nous y sommes: l’ennui, les belles parallèles, ah! Que les parallèles sont belles sous la perpendiculaire de Dieu.' -- Andre Breton, untitled.
Instrumentation:
Yes, yes, yes...I know who this sounds like and I'm quite happy with that thanks all the same. :-)
This is a 'textured' piece that (as you might be able to tell) started out as two separate ideas which fell together neatly. The treated piano was more or less disassembled to leave a bare frame and wooden support which was played using a plectrum and pick ups.
Instrumentation:
Instrumentation:
'If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.' -- Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War'
Instrumentation:
'take-it-crumble-it-spread-it-infinite distance to hell. In the center, center of these flattened TAMTOUMBS-width 50 square kilometers-leap 2 3 6 8 splinters-fisticuffs-headramming-rapid fire batteries Violence, ferocity regularity, pendulum game, fatality-this grave bass apparent slowness-scan the strange madmen very young-very mad mad mad-very agitated altos of the battle Fury anguish breathless ears My ears open nasals! beware! everything everything everything taratatatatata the machine-guns shouting twisting under a thousand bites slaps traaktraak cudgellings whippings pic pac POUMTOUMB juggling clowns' jump in full sky height 200 meters it's the gunshooting Downwards guffaws of swamps laughter buffalos chariots stings prancing of horses ammunition-wagons flic flac zang chaak chaak rearings pirouettes patatraak besplatterings manes-neighings i i i i i i i medley tinklings three bulgarian batallions on the move crook- craak (double bar slowly) Choumi Maritza o Karvavena officers' shouts copper plates knocking against each other pam ici (vite) pac over there BOUM-pam-pam-pam here there there farther all around very high look-out god-damit on the head chaak marvelous! flames flames flames
flames flames flames
flames crawl from
forts over there Choukri Pacha telephone orders to 27 forts in turkish German hello Ibrahim! Rudolf hello! hello! actors roles blowing-echos
odor-hay-mud-manure I can't feel my frozen feet stale odor rotting gongs flutes clarinets pipes everywhere up down birds twitter beatitude shade greenness cip-cip ip-zzip herds pastures dong-dong-dong-ding-beee Orchestra Madmen keep hitting orchestra professors they bent beaten playing playing playing Great fracas far from erasing drink tiny noises revomit them precise them out of their echoing mouth wide open diameter 1 kilometer Debris of echoes in this theater of laying rivers sitting villages standing mounts recognized in the audience Maritza Tungia Rodopes 1st and 2d row loggias groundfloor boxes 2,000 shrapnels gesticulation explosion zang-toumb white handkerchiefs full of gold toumb-toumb clouds-gallery 2,000 grenades thundering applause Quick quick such enthusiasm pulling hair very black hairs ZANG-TOUMB-TOUMB war noises orchestra blown beneath a note of silence hanging in full sky captive golden balloon controlling the fire.' -- Luigi Russolo, 'The Art of Noise'.
Instrumentation:
'Everyone will tell you that I am not a musician. That is correct. From the very beginning of my career, I classed myself as a photometrographer. My work is completely photometrical. Take my Fils des Etoiles, or my Morceaux en Forme d'une Poire, my En Habit de Cheval, or my Sarabandes — it is evident that musical ideas played no part whatsoever in their composition. Science is the dominating factor.
'Besides, I enjoy measuring a sound much more than hearing it. With my phonometer in my hand, I work happily and with confidence. What haven't I weighed or measured? I've done all Beethoven, all Verdi, etc. It's fascinating. The first time I used a phonoscope, I examined a B flat of medium size. I can assure you that I have never seen anything so revolting. I called in my man to show it to him. On my phono-scales a common (or garden) F-sharp registered 93 kilos. It came out of a fat tenor whom I also weighed.
'Do you know how to clean sounds? It's a filthy business. Stretching them out is cleaner; indexing them is a meticulous task and needs good eyesight. Here, we are in the realm of phonotechnique.
'On the question of sound explosions, which can often be so unpleasant, some cotton wool in the ears can deaden their effect quite satisfactorily. Here, we are in the realm of psychopyry.
'To write my Pieces Froides, I used a caleidophonic recorder. It took seven minutes. I called in my man to let him hear them.
'I think I can say that phonology is superior to music. There's more variety to it. The financial return is greater, too, I owe my fortune to it. At all events, with a motodynaphone, even a rather inexperienced phonometrologist can easily note down more sounds than the most skilled musician in the same time, using the same amount of effort. This is how I have been able to write so much.
'And so the future lies with phonometrology.' -- Eric Satie, 'Memoirs of an Amnesiac'
Instrumentation:
'Very few animals learn anything from humans. The dog, the mule, the horse, the ass, the parrot, the blackbird and a few others are the only animals to receive even a semblance of education, and that can only be called education in that it isn't clearly anything else. Compare, I beg you, the teaching given to animals with that given by the universities to young human undergraduates, and you will have to admit that it is not worth speaking of and couldn't possibly widen or make easier the knowledge that an animal can pick up through its work and steady industry. But what about music? Horses have learned to dance; spiders have remained underneath a piano during the whole of a long recital put on for them by a respected master of the keyboard. And what then? Nothing. Now and then people will mention the starling's musicality, the crow's ear for a tune, the owl's ingenious harmony as it taps on its stomach to accompany itself — an artificial method yielding only slender polyphony.
'As for the oft-cited nightingale, its musical knowledge would make even the most ignorant of its listeners shrug his shoulders. Its voice is not properly placed, and on top of that it knows nothing about clefs, or keys, or modes, or time. Has it any talent at all? It is possible; it is even probable. But one has to say that its artistic grounding is very much inferior to its natural gifts, and that the voice it is so proud of is really a very poor instrument and of no worth in itself.' -- Eric Satie, 'Memoirs of an Amnesiac'
Instrumentation:
'Have I told you about my imitation Teniers? It's adorable, a lovely thing and a real rarity. Aren't those divine, those gems mounted in hardwood. Aren't they? And yet, there is something which surpasses these masterly works; which crushes them beneath the colossal weight of its majestic genius; which makes them grow pale with its dazzling radiance - it is a forged Beethoven manuscript (a sublime apocryphal Symphony by the Master) piously purchased by myself ten years ago, I think.
'Of all the works of this grandiose composer, this 10th Symphony, which nobody knows, is one of the most sumptuous. Its proportions are on a palatial scale; its ideas are fresh and plentiful; the developments are exact and appropriate. This Symphony had to exist: the number 9 just wouldn't suit Beethoven. He liked the decimal system: 'I have ten fingers,' he used to explain.
'Certain admirers who came dutifully to take in this masterpiece with thoughtful and attentive ears, quite wrongly felt it to be one of Beethoven's inferior works, and went so far as to say so. They even went further than that. In no way can Beethoven be inferior to himself. His form and technique are always portentous, even in his slightest works. In his case, the word rudimentary cannot be used. As an artist, he can easily stand up to any counterfeit attributed to him.' -- Eric Satie, 'Memoirs of an Amnesiac'
Instrumentation:
'The first worship of idols was certainly fear of the things in the world, but, connected with this, fear of the necessity of the things, and, connected with this, fear of responsibility for the things. So tremendous did this responsibility appear that people did not even dare to impose it upon one single extra-human entity, for even the mediation of one being would not have sufficiently lightened human responsibility, intercourse with only one being would still have been all too deeply tainted with responsibility, and that is why each things was given the responsibility for itself, more indeed, these things were also given a degree of responsibility for man.' -- Frank Kafka, Aphorisms (91)
Instrumentation:
This was originally intended to take the three themes from Greg Amov's track 'Codetalker' and weave them into something else entirely. One of the themes remains, but you can hardly tell where it is.
Instrumentation:
'Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.' -- Hugo Ball, 'Dada Manifesto'
Instrumentation:
In a (hopefully) rousing finale I present what amounts to a dance version of the first Systems Theory album; effectively this is Dancetracks for Imaginary Discos. Not all the samples are slavish lifts, there are substantial amounts of new material thrown in, and some of them are less than obvious, but hopefully they all work together. They also get substantially more obvious towards the end!
Instrumentation:
