variousing

Cheers * Yeh - perhaps, as you suppose, it was somewhat freer and easier during the early 1970s. Certainly, there was a spirit to that time which is a lot less apparent now. There are pockets of beautiful and honest invention out there today, however, and the internet makes it easier, and possible, to locate these, and thus to build a kind of community from the diaspora. In fact, I do wonder how I ever met anyone years ago, pre-internet! Word of mouth was all there was, and that makes for a fragile little world. Email can create strong bonds, in making communication easier; including file-sharing. It has to be social. It has to be fun. It has to feel like a group, an economy, against that cold mainstream freeze. Improv provides that, and it's my main musical interest at the moment - and the only one I'm keen to pursue at the moment, too. I get ideas and schemes for composition, but, for now, I'm looking to explore the happenstance and indeterminacy of improv. And I don't mean jamming - vamping along on an Em or similar, or just playing 'separately together' with others, in an undifferentiated din. I'm keen to increase attention to detail, and to avoid strategies and forms associated with rock music. Yet, even if it was in some useful way freer and easier back then, one cannot take anything away from the fantastic invention of those times. Originality is still hard-won, whatever the climate. I'm sure you agree. For me, stuff like Jaco, Derek Bailey, Miles Davis' good stuff, Cage, Satie, Morton Feldman, etc. is just genius, period. This all gets added to all the time, of course. THE major musical event for me in the foreseeable future is Scott Walker's next album, The Drift, released next month! First since Tilt of 1995. Recently, I heard part of Symphony No.10 by American composer Glenn Branca. Amazing! Terse, dense layers of orchestration. Never heard anything quite like it. There are some soundartworks of mine on www.myspace.com/esoterian24skidoo - four in total. These are just fragments of experiments; nothing too serious; mostly me feeling my way through some software. They have their charms, though. Best thing to give you an idea of what I'm doing at the moment, though, is just too large to email - as it's a 25 minute DVD. Send me your address and I'll happily send you a copy. Thanks for your interest. Best of luck with your project. I don't envy you trying to obtain funding! Hope they stump up the money! Regards, Anthony