Thursday, July 31, 2008

2006 Arpanet Interview

I was sent an English translation of an interview done with Heinrich Mueller for the French magazine Chronic'art from July 2006 just before his legendary 2006 concert at La Geode in Paris as Arpanet. A big thanks to one of my readers for that. For my French readers and to see the original article follow this Record Makers link.
http://www.recordmakers.com/review.php?id=277
Also found a link to an Arpanet MySpace which looks like it was set up by Record Makers, not sure if I ever linked it before but check it out as well, it only has 34 friends.
http://www.myspace.com/dataphysix
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After a very rare live concert at La Géode late June, Arpanet answered our questions through his vocoder.
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Arpanet stands for “Advanced Research Projects Agency Network”, it’s the first American paquet network, originally developed by the DARPA in 1967 before an official release in 1972. But Arpanet also stands for a musical project lead by a very secret person. He’s been working under the Arpanet name since 2000, and is best known as Heinrich Müller. He’s been involved in a consequent number of projects including : Dopplereffekt, Der Zyklus, Japanese Telecom, Elecktroids, Glass Domain and the last but not least, Drexciya. An important release to date is Gesamkunstawerk , produced mid-nineties, 1995 in Detroit. The artwork (the communist Hammer and sickle) and of course “We have to sterilize the population” or “I want to be, a porno star” choruses remains unforgettable.
Working with his wife, Müller puts the political debate aside in order to consider the Kraftwerk motto : technology serves art, the machine is poetry. His first release, called Wireless Internet was a technology oriented album with a fascination for the I-Mode, a mobile technology marketed by the Nippon company NTT-DoCoMo. Today in 2006, Inertial Frame deals with quantum physics to patchwork in connection science and music. Although he’s a very secret person and a media phobic, he accepted to answer “cordially” to our questions.
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TO MONITOR AND TO PUNISH
Remaining anonymous, Heinrich Müller has troubles to tell his what he believes. Obviously it’s surprising to be an African descent and to have chosen the name of the Gestapo general at the same time. When asked, he answered “let the reader/fan understanding and acknowledging what he would like”. Anyway he keeps an eye on the totalitarian heritage in the today’s era, communism or nazism and subserviencey. According to Heinrich Müller “Medias networks are often right but most of the time they spread lies. Such as the H5N1 crisis. Information networks don’t like the pure truth that much.” A conspiracy? Heinrich thinks so : “The government controls and censors mass-medias, as a consequence the information is fallacious and is targeted to mislead people. Today there’s a small percentage left of true information because of the simple fact pure information is being cut off and is reduced to a small element. The only way to get true information is to grab it at its source without any link with the government control.” This is his point of view of modern information. On the one hand you have a total liberty, on the other hand you have even more pressing control. The Internet is the best example to describe those words: “Yes it permits to communicate everywhere on Earth, even in remote areas but it’s also an over-monitored network. The whole activity and mail traffic are being monitored. International governments do so. China applies a very strict policy regarding the Internet. Could we say it’s liberty? Isn’t it technologic oppression?"
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CONSUME OR DIE
Heinrich Müller gives great credit to Darwin’s thesis. According to this thesis “species that survive are not the most intelligent or the strongest ones, but it’s species that are able to adapt. Nowadays, the motto is consume or die. Sometimes you have to make harsh decisions and sacrifices to sustain life. It’s nature and the natural selection process. The human kind is an animal assuming a specific role in the ecosystem. There are predators and preys. You must have a predator mindset. It must be genetically written.” So Heinrich Müller thinks that chance has nothing to do with life. It’s all about having the right genetic characteristics. “I don’t think that the social environment interferes that much. Whatever the context you evolve into, you can become a citizen of the world, it depends on your approaches and your genome. For example, being wealthy does not guarantee that you’re adaptable and strong at all. There’re breaches in those type of living. Every day gives its singular example.” Heinrich Müller is walking on the eugenism path with a unexpected beautiful world in mind : “Eugenism is related to racism but I think that it can have good effects. Reducing the crime rate for example. I totally believe that human beings can be improved by genetic operations.” Those frightening words don’t lead to fascism he says : “Involving the Homo-Sapiens wouldn’t have been controlled by politics but by science itself.” And so on with GMOs : “this type of technology could be either good or dangerous. It only depends on who applies those technologies. Although ethics is accommodating theories, discoveries, it’s not enough to prevent certain kinds of abuses from happening.”
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STOP SLEEPING
About Detroit, his supposedly native city he doesn’t feel uncomfortable with its downtown where big automotive companies used to do business, leaving wandering people in such a ghetto. Surprisingly, he shows an incredible sense of optimism : “This situation is getting better, it requires brand new perspectives for the inhabitants. Only people can make it happen, not the government. They have to stop sleeping.” What about revolution? “Status quo doesn’t serve the community, you must wake up to make things change, a kind of rebellion. Revolution has very different forms : it could be silent as well as violent.”
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SOUND OF SILENCE
What about music? Technology is the main principle of Arpanet’s music. Subaquatic ambient oriented, then synthetic pop then deep electro, Inertial Frame is now a classic lining up among Drexciya or Dopplereffekt releases. Heinrich Müller doesn’t want to share his secrets about the music he’s been making but “it’s an ode about science, a celebration of its own power.” Arpanet encompasses the whole scientific world : quantum physics, Einstein theories, … “We are technology integrated. We analyse technology and then, we organize the sound. Producing electronic music is a scientific process, we take hypothesis forth and we test it. Machines that produce sound are science products, there’s nothing more clever than analysing theories that run those machines in order to use it.” Heinrich Müller thinks that technology may not be misused. “In the future, organic organism and artificial organism would make the same biologic piece and one day, the artificial organism will be as common as a slot machine. Of course not right now, it will take time for the whole society to acknowledge and to accept those kind of technologies but in the end we’re going to gradually loose our fear of the artificial organism.” Any relation between electronic devices and molecules ? “Basically molecules have nothing to do there, we only control negative ions and positive ions flow. In other words, voltage. The human kind is biomechanic, machines are electronic, we are an interface.” All these frightening points of view make us forget that they serve the most unique music we could listen to right now, in 2006.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Arpanet - Quantum Transposition

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it."
Neils Bohr
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Arpanet released their second album, 'Quantum Transposition', in 2005 on the Rephlex label. For me, getting to the stage of reviewing this album in particular is a bit of a landmark as it was the first new release by Gerald Donald after I began doing DRL. It has therefore taken me just over three years to catch up to where he was exactly the same length of time ago! But I did have roughly 15 years of releases to get through, not to mention miscellaneous articles. I'm quite happy never to catch up with him entirely though, this is music, particularly an album like this, that you shouldn’t rush into assessing. He still has something of a head start anyway with quite a few releases and MySpace projects for me to consider so I would still be doing well to reach him even now. The text information on the sleeve and labels is pretty scant this time, without any name credited with writing or production. I will have to revert to calling him Gerald Donald for this article then.
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Again I went for the vinyl option when getting this album (will I ever learn!) and with two records to get through it is not surprising for someone like myself who has obviously gotten out of the habit of playing vinyl that it has been an album that I only listened to rarely after I first got it. Although one of the more positive things about having an album on vinyl is that it can be more of an occasion when you do put it on, plus you will more than likely be hearing it on a reasonable home sound system at your ease and not just on the portable machine in the kitchen when your making dinner! This is music which does deserve attention anyway as if you don’t know already, it follows on in the ‘Linear Accelerator’ template. I suppose at the time yeah it was still a surprise to see that another of his previously more accessible projects had also now gone down the same path as Dopplereffekt and Der Zyklus. Interestingly the previous Arpanet album, 2002’s ’Wireless Internet’, was the final album he did with his earlier more accessible style. Updating this project as well, after he had updated the Dopplereffekt and Der Zyklus templates, also marked once and for all his commitment and fulltime move into making these brave new sounds. The choice of label was also a bit of a surprise at the time but shouldn‘t have been. Even though the last Arpanet album had been on the French label Record Makers, who he would incidentally return to for the release of the next Arpanet album, he was obviously under no contract or obligation to them and ended up with the UK label founded by Aphex Twin and Grant Wilson-Claridge. Rephlex had previously released the Drexciya 3 12” and also the final Transllusion album and 12”from the Storm Series. This is a relationship which continues to this day with Dopplereffekt’s 2007 ‘Calabi Yau Space’ album and Heinrich Mueller remixes for their label. It would be interesting to know how lucrative it is for a label to have one of his releases on their catalogue these days but kudos wise it is no doubt desirable. The people behind Rephlex are definitely fans of his music as well though so it is probably a bit of an honour for them as well. Although I have a feeling that there wouldn’t be too many established labels chasing his output he appears to have a small core of European labels he continues to work with which I hope will continue to be receptive to him when it comes to finding a home for his latest releases.
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Thematically this album is more of a follow up to ‘Linear Accelerator’, it’s back to cutting edge science after the previous detour of real time identity matching on the Der Zyklus ‘Biometry’ album. But musically it progressives on from both those albums very smoothly indeed.
The first four tracks on the album are all short pieces which are tracks yes but not as you would normally know them. 'Innershell Shielding' begins the album with a slow tempo procession of weird but complimentary sounds. It has an inhuman quality somehow too, of course it is electronic music but it lacks the human touch somehow. It is certainly one of the darker tracks on the album as well which could be a statement in itself. 'Planck Factor' is much different template-wise featuring a swirling mass of high pitched electronics. I would hesitate to call it a track, again, more of a mood than a whole piece. It comes in at 1 min 36. Next comes 'Entangled Photons' which does quicken the pace but is basically a nice sounding loop coming in at just the 1 min 25 sec mark. 'Heisenberg Compensation' follows and while I said that the opener was dark, well this one would give even it a run for its money. It almost reaches the 2 minute mark at 1 min 50 sec. We are actually getting into Black Replica/Zwischenwelt territory here to my ears, which might make more sense later in the article. This first group of tracks definitely belong together, united on the surface level by their short length and sequence, but also by the unsettling mood they collectively inspire. This will turn out to be a spooky enough sounding album anyway, so this opening suite kind of lets us know that in advance. It is also a completely instrumental album unlike the previous Arpanet album and its follow up.
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The first full length track is 5, 'Ionic Crystals'. This goes back and forth between melody and abrasion with a layer of what will have to pass for a beat on top. A few other textures of synth do emerge as the track progressives. Without these extra touches it would have been sort of throw away which is telling you we are dealing with some pretty minimal production, it just about works.
'Entrophic Decay' in contrast has huge reverb soaked beats topped off with more outer space textures slowly emerging from the ether. We can imagine being sucked into a black-hole. This is again unsettling, interesting as well but the mood is definitely one of unease. In my notes for this article I wrote down 'classic' after 'Probability Densities' and yeah it is one of my personal favourites on the album. Whether it is one of Gerald Donald’s best though, probably not. Again the tempo is slow but that beat is still somehow the driving force. There are loads of different touches exhibited here as the track progresses. Towards the end almost everything falls away to be rejoined by the driving beat and it is a wonderful moment. It is kind of delicate and you have to almost will it along, like at the point I just described but it rewards that effort on your part.
'Orbital Wavelengths' is has to be said is also amazing. The beat is again the most important aspect, it has an incredible rhythm, almost so different as to justify the formation of its own new dark electronic genre. The other sounds on it are sparse for sure but somehow it is just enough to hold it together and work. The end is unusual, suddenly slowing right down for a few more bars to an echo. This has to be my other favourite on the album.
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'Information Quanta' also has tempo changes but this time it is one of the main elements used throughout the track. The beats are fully present and correct on this one as well, but they drop out a lot in-between the large variety of sounds which play the melody. It is a bit all over the place but not in that morphing into completely other sounding tracks that was evident on the previous two albums, ‘LA’ and ‘Biometry‘. Interestingly that never happens on this album, which shows that he is approaching it in a different and distinct way to the others. He will in the future go back to this morphing thing but for now he is taking a break from it and the tracks remain consistent in content.
'EPR Effect' is tightly wound and uncurls right out of the gate only to retract again as the tempo slows up. The tempo changes a lot on this one as well. With all this tempo changing going on in these tracks Gerald Donald is obviously trying to make a point. I will speculate on this later but it is one of the things which gives this album it’s own distinct feel. I get a clockwork/time vibe from how it sounds as well. This might tie in with the title which again I’ll get to later. If 'Quantum State Recombination' had some vocals it could almost be from the early Dopplereffekt era. It definitely has elements of that more accessible period but for all of that it is sort of disappointing. It’s kind of stuck somehow and doesn’t really go anywhere interesting for me. It rattles along and sustains interest but is ultimately a bit empty.
'Wave Function' is another one of those original sounding tracks that might in a parallel dimension have its own underground musical genre. Its melody gets into your head but it’s also of another delicate and slight construction. It’s rare that you can say that Gerald Donald’s music reminds you of something you’ve heard before but on this track and one of the earlier ones I got a Polygon Window feel (one of the more ambient PW tracks). It is strongest on this track for sure, just one of the layers of sound here is doing it to me. I’m talking about a project by Richard D James aka Aphex Twin (him again), an album he did called ‘Surfing on Sine Waves’ in 1992 on Warp as part of their ground-breaking ‘Artificial Intelligence’ series. This album would still be in my ‘top ten favourite albums of all time’ if I was a true Nick Hornby type. You kind of wonder if Donald listens to anyone else’s music at all or does he still, like James Stinson said in his interviews, shut down from outside influences when doing music. It would be interesting to know what he listens to himself when not in the studio but unless and until he chooses to share this information with the public we won’t know.
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A bit of a surprise next in that 'Isotopic Balance' uses the same or almost the same melody from the previous track. It does have loads of those tempo changes and stops which does make it a kind of remix really. It is quite different from ‘Wave Function’ alright but the melody is actually the same. But I don’t think we should report him to the trading standards board just yet! He did do something like this once before, interestingly on the previous Arpanet album with two tracks which were only slight variations on the other, ’I-Mode’ and ’NTT Do Co Mo’. Maybe at this point with Arpanet he had a running theme going? Some people would find this a bit of a cheat really but I’ll forgive him, some people only have one track and spend their whole career rewriting it. He might also be making a point about how many directions a track or anything can evolve in and that might tie in partly with the conceptual side of the album which I’ll get to. All the variables.
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'Uncertainty Principle' is the only one which you think is really about to morph in an ‘LA’ way at any moment but it just about holds its form together. It moves along at quite a click with a solid and insistent beat with lots of drop outs to just soundscape textures. The end has no beats and is all soundscape. It’s pleasant, not one of the high points but a reasonable track and quite distinct from the others in certain ways.
'Variables' is a lovely way to end the album, it has a familiarity about it somehow, like an old friend that comes to greet you after the confusing dark ride this album has been. It is still in keeping with the album however. It's a simple enough loop based track, a kind of final reprieve for us at the end. It has loads of ghostly sounds throughout but in a way is quite upbeat. Again I couldn’t think of any particular artist but it does have an element of that kind of lo-fi clockworky electronica that was popular a few years ago, just an element though. Although it is almost 4 minutes long it does kind of remind you of the first four tracks which were setting a tone or mood. It kind of wakes you up again and reassures. This goes to show how subjective this all is anyway, you might have a totally different and equally legitimate view of the album.
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To sum up the musical feel of the album I would have to repeat that it is dark, foreboding and uneasy. Just listen to the end of 'Uncertainty Principle' or the eerie tones of 'EPR Effect' to pick just two random examples, but basically they all share this feeling more or less. Even someone over at Warpmart picked up on this, they describe it as a “set of gothic futurist vignettes”, which would be a pretty close description of Black Replica. I like it, it has a mood and is very listen able in the main, even accessible. I think the music ties in very well with what I think he is trying to communicate to us here. Of course you could say that all of Gerald Donald's could be interpreted as dark but I think this is by far his blackest statement to date and that he is making a point along those lines. As you have already seen the track titles look more like the glossary of a science book than anything but once you start to understand what they are referring to it begins to make sense.
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The album title itself to be honest doesn’t tell us a lot at this stage. So, what is Quantum Transposition anyway? Actually it is a term that I struggled to locate but I have deduced that it is about the fact that a quantum can swap two elements of a set. Very revealing I know! If you didn’t already know, the subject here is quantum theory and if you only remember that this simply assumes that energy and radiation are in the form of packets and that quantum mechanics is the method of analysing the universe using that assumption then that is an achievement. I’m really afraid of losing people at this stage but please stick with it! Gerald Donald has really taken a leap into the unknown from this point onwards and going deeper and sharing my findings with people is what DRL is all about so joining him there is the only route to take. I agree that this is a crazy subject for music but only by normal standards, but when you understand it, it is actually a perfect match. You can still get into it of course without going to this level of analysis, just play the music.
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Although this has been a very successful theory owing to the fact it has yet to be disproved and might not take that much bravery for him to get behind. But with ‘LA’ he was still dealing with emerging hard science, getting close to the fringes of the unknown yes but still working on information which was emerging from the DESY centres and others. Although the ultimate objective of ’LA’ is the elusive Higgs particle, which is itself only theorised about. This subject matter is very much a counter balance to that. Here he is diving into a whole other, purely theoretical area, no matter how long it has managed to be disproved. I wonder if Donald had any doubts himself about this? Thankfully he took that step and like Drexciya before, who when the whole underwater thing was getting predictable, for themselves as well as us, they began the Storm Series. In the same way he too has evolved his themes of science and technology to the frontiers of science and beyond. Black-holes and ESP are a long way from cellular phones and simulated sex! Although as I’ve said in the past he is well capable of working on different themes simultaneously.
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One big clue which would not have made much sense at the time is printed only on the CD itself where there is an equation. He’s crafty alright, what about the poor vinyl people or is this some comment on preferring digital?! The Ψ symbol, used just a year later by Black Replica, is the first character of it. This gives us a whole new context for it, one beyond mere speculation. The symbol in the context of Black Replica certainly still represents the Greek word psi which represents the word or study of psychology as discussed before. But what it also now clearly represents is the Ψ particle. The equation on the CD probably represents the definition of a wave function, with rho being the density matrix. A wave function is the mathematical description of the state of a particle. It is the very basis for any quantum description of a problem. I further investigated the connection between the symbol and physics and found that the particle was discovered in 1974 by a group led by Burton Richter at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre, who named it the Ψ particle. Unbeknownst to then, at about the same time in November 1974, the team of Samuel Ting at the Brookhaven National Laboratory found the same signal. They had dubbed their particle, J. It is now commonly known as J/Ψ and has remained a particle which has been studied intensively ever since. So important was this discovery that they jointly received the 1976 Nobel Prize. Why did the first group call it after a Greek letter you might ask? The odd coincidence was that a computer reconstruction of the decay of a J/Ψ particle looks just like the Greek letter Ψ. Wikipedia said this about it, "The J/ψ is a subatomic particle, a flavour-neutral meson consisting of a charm quark and a charm anti-quark. Mesons formed by a bound state of a charm quark and a charm anti-quark are generally known as "charmonium". The J/ψ is the first excited state of charmonium (i.e, the form of the charmonium with the second-smallest rest mass). The J/ψ has a rest mass of 3096.9 MeV/c 2, and a mean lifetime of 7.2×10-21 s. This lifetime was about a thousand times longer than expected." I think that Gerald Donald was struck, just like the scientists were, that the decay of this particle should take such a distinct shape. That something more was going on here, something unknown. I think this is a great symbol to use then if you want to start to begin dealing with just these unknowns of physics. Like for example why the observation of certain experiments influence the outcome. Erwin Schrondinger, one of the originators of quantum mechanics said, “Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experiments in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.“ We are now in an area which ultimately leads us to the belief that we are all connected, that the Universe is all. Where heretofore unexplained things like ESP begin to make sense. This has got to be a subject he needed to explore separately but in tandem to his more straight science related theme. This album therefore is the splitting point of his thoughts on this subject. But they are related really but perhaps he felt as an artist that they needed to be treated as different things for now.
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With the use of certain titles, doubt is beginning to be introduced. On the surface, titles like 'Uncertainty Principle', 'Probability Densities' and 'Variables' speak for themselves. The 'EPR Effect', better known as the EPR Paradox and also known in scientific circles as 'The Pandora's Box of Modern Physics', deals with just this uncertainty as well. This is a famous thought experiment dreamed up by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolonsky and Nathan Rosen in a 1935 paper which was originally trying to prove that quantum theory was not complete. But in fact it truly was a Pandora’s Box because when you brought their two objects going in different directions which can’t possibly affect each other, they can only be affected by local causes, down to the level of the photon for example(’Entangled Photons’), strange things start happening. They appear to have an intelligence, appearing to have a connection to the other, if one is caused to spin so does the other, instantaneously! It's worth stating that entanglement in general is one of the most important elements of quantum mechanics with the shocking outcome if true that we are all somehow entangled/connected. This might account for there being random number generators being used for experiments which if the operator wishes for say more zero's than ones then that is what they will get! This reference therefore is a clear acknowledgement of just this possibility which is later explored by Black Replica and Zeischenwelt. Now you can see why Neils Bohr felt as he did about this subject, "Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." This flies in the face of only local causes effecting their independent movement. Similarly ‘Planck Factor’ is relating to the German physicist Max Plank who came up with the ‘Planck Constant’ or ‘Planck’s Quantum Principle‘, which I presume he must be referring to. Quantum mechanics itself developed from this theory and Heisenberg’s ‘Uncertainty Principle’. Planck’s Principle stated that light can be emitted or absorbed only in discrete quanta whose energy is proportional to their frequency.
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‘Entangled Photons’ deserves its own paragraph as this is one of the specialities of Anton Zeilinger who is credited with providing the cover image. The sleeve credits him with being based at the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University of Vienna. Obviously we are meant to follow this up if we want to go deeper. I have included a link to his biog at the base of this article for you to do just that. Reading from it I also presume that what we are looking at on the cover is another of his fields of research, atom optics. But I may be wrong here on this. This is from his biog, “In 1990, Zeilinger became Professor of Physics at the University of Innsbruck. He took the opportunity to start two lines of research. One concerned entangled photons, the other, because of the limited possibilities with neutrons, atom optics. He developed a number of ways to coherently manipulate atomic beams, many of which, like the coherent energy shift of an atomic De Broglie wave upon diffraction at a time-modulated light wave, have become cornerstones of today’s ultracold atom experiments.” There is too much to write about him here but as far as we are concerned, Donald is well aware of his work, he has probably had some limited contact with him as well to secure the cover image. This subject also brings me to the title, ‘Probability Densities’, which provide a framework in quantum photodetection, which if the album cover is not what I said it was then more than likely this is what is going on.
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Another person, non living alas, which is central to this album is Werner Heisenberg. For it is he who came up with the ‘Uncertainty Principle’ which is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the velocity of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the velocity of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain. We are back to the observer and the observed again. His ‘Heisenberg Compensation’ theory also gets a name check. This is said to remove uncertainty from subatomic measurements. I found a reference to this in a Star Trek context by the way. It is said to be how their transporter works, wasn’t this called the hollo deck? This is the second time a Star Trek reference could possibly be drawn from his work. Gerald Donald may be a Trekky. The previous one was strangely in connection to the last Arpanet album as well! See that article for more on this subject.
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‘Ionic Crystals’ are a crystal consisting of ions bound together by their electrostatic attraction and they are indeed used in quantum mechanics experiments. ‘Orbital Wavelengths’ brought me to consider that particles and waves are properties of the same identity. That quantum mechanics treats electrons as waves and that wave properties are more than the particle properties of electrons. At that point I said, “Deep enough”! Although they are related to ‘Wave Function’, which is a mathematical tool used in quantum mechanics to describe any physical system.
‘Innershell Shielding’ was a tough one to find a specific meaning for but I think it’s safe to just take a literal one from it for now. It’s probably part of some piece of experimental equipment. ‘Information Quanta’ is literal enough also, (quanta is plural of quantum). ’Quantum State Recombination’ is again literal enough, it’s the experimental process of putting quanta back together. ’Isotopic Balance’ in the context of quantum mechanics I’m not sure if it does fit but an isotope is a chemical element, of which there are many different types. To have a balance might be important for some experiment or other to do with this subject. Maybe someone else knows and that goes for any more details or even corrections you can make here. ‘Variables’ has got to refer to hidden variables in this context. Hidden variable theories were espoused by a minority of physicists who argued that the statistical nature of quantum mechanics indicated that it is incomplete. Einstein, the most famous proponent of hidden variables, famously insisted that, "I am convinced God does not play dice." This meant that he believed that physical theories must be deterministic to be complete.
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I‘ve left this title till last as although it does have a slight quantum connection it also I believe points to what is coming next. ‘Entropic Decay’ surprisingly brings in Donald’s interest in black-holes to this subject. I found this revealing text in reference to it online, “While it is the case that entropy tends toward collapse, physicists have also shown that ultimate collapse into black holes creates its own form of entropic decay in the evaporation of the black hole. This occurs because “information” is not destroyed so much as randomised when energy is crunched into the black hole. But, since energy retains its curious quantum properties of indeterminacy, at the boundary of the black hole, the question of whether it is “within” or “without” results in a gradual “leakage” until it evaporates. Consequently, energy neither being created nor destroyed means also that the information is neither created nor destroyed.” This subject will be followed up in later releases but unless I’m wrong this is the reference he is making. It may either have an evolutionary meaning as well, which would be of the inevitable social decline and degeneration of all living mammals. But I think the former is correct. I couldn’t find any direct reference to this term in relation to quantum mechanics. This may be the link to the next album, again an Arpanet release, ‘Inertial Frame’, which we will see is very much black-hole centred, pardon the pun. Somewhere in these titles, perhaps this one, there might be a meaning as to why he made a point of having all the changes of tempo. I think it ties in alright, unpredictability, time stretching, that kind of thing.
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It’s interesting and entertaining to see the actual Arpanet tracks come up now when you look for these terms on search engines. I wonder what researchers in this field make of it all! I must say that in trying to track down some of these titles they are either slightly off what they are normally known by or fairly abstractly related to the subject. I don’t know if this is to hinder the research of the layman but it does have that effect. It must be said, although I don’t for an instant believe Donald to be in the least cynical about this, but it would be possible for someone making this type of music to simply go to the glossary of a book on Quantum Mechanics or whatever subject it was supposed to be ‘about’ and simply pick the titles at random from it. Maybe this is why Donald went to so much trouble so that he couldn’t be accused of this. While there is always a danger of cynical deception when dealing with instrumental concept albums we ultimately have to trust the artist. Although I could think of a few examples of visual as well as musical artists that just tack on a load of rubbish to give their latest ‘effort’ a bit more meaning. Why I and usually everybody else notices this for the pastiche it is though is because it is blindingly obvious that the style does not match the substance. Donald on this showing certainly has the substance alright and the style also matches up.
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As I said already the artwork is pretty much just a cover image, a full colour photo courtesy of Anton Zeilinger as the credits state. The subject being at my best guess atom optics or photodetection. I presume the V and H on the instruments represent vertical and horizontal. When I saw this cover fairly small online it looked like an aerial view of a live concert or something. I was surprised when I finally got to see it close up. It is a great cover though, perfectly complimenting the subject matter. On the CD and the record labels for some reason Arpanet is written in either Russian or some weird font. Prefiguring Zerkalo, who knows, I’m tired?! After all that, the sad reality is that I feel I have barely scratched the surface of this album! But that is good, it’s mysteries are safe to continue intriguing us for another day.
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To sum up. Gerald Donald’s interest in the search for the Higgs particle has reached it’s logical conclusion in reaching the new frontier of quantum mechanics. You could read this as a balance between the known and the unknown aspects of science if you wish. You can also take it as the point where he splits his subject into another path of interest which will soon lead him toward Black Replica/Zwischenwelt and interests like ESP and the occult. But black-holes are also still pulling him too.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Dopplereffekt Dublin

I finally got to see Dopplereffekt play live at the Sugar Club in Dublin on 5th July 2008! All of the blurry photos here are by myself. I also saw another gig in Dublin just three short weeks prior to this which had striking similarities that I think would make sense for me to compare and contrast for this review. The gig in question was the first gig in Dublin by the reclusive Jandek, incidentally this was also a seated early show and he was also dressed completely in black as well. Black is obviously the universally recognised colour to wear if you want to be taken seriously! Although he did not go so far as to wear a mask. It was weird, even the ticket price was the same, considered by many as slightly expensive for what it was at 20 euro. In case you don’t know who Jandek is he has done over 50 albums of improvised guitar and singing since 1978 and only started to play rare live concerts in the last few years and he doesn’t talk to the press. He also has an obsessive fan website as well!
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For both gigs I felt a compulsion to go. Both shows were considered more as events than just another gig by most of those present. It was this expectant and reverential atmosphere which greeted both acts when they took to the stage too. They could have done anything and the majority of the people present for that hour would have applauded. In Jandek’s case I was very disappointed and even bored after an hour of improvised solo guitar strumming and monotone singing of lyrics from a notebook without any acknowledgement of the audience. Part of the problem was that Jandek was the only thing on a bill which was staged in an art gallery, that was exhibiting his album covers as art in another room. Although it's worth pointing out that I spoke with some people afterwards who felt time had stood still and loved every bit of it. I felt that the live context was totally wrong for him (and me) and that I would have been far happier at home with one of his LPs. But what did I really expect, these people are considered outsiders for a reason. But it made me wonder, why after almost 30 years did he start playing now? But more on this later. At least Dopplereffekt had only waited just over 10 years when they played live for the first time.
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Also in Dopplereffekts case the actual setting for this particular show was at least far more social. It was dark, you had a bar, you could talk and no-one seemed to mind. There was also a decent DJ to open and Decal supported with an epic industrial sound-scape set. Another DJ played for a short while before the two members of Dopplereffekt suddenly entered from the side of the stage and quickly took up positions at their keyboards. They were so quick in fact that their visuals hadn’t been switched on yet. In case you see pictures of them playing against a weird looking background for them you can rest assured that they haven’t dumped their usual visuals. I am terrible at remembering what tracks a group played and in what order so I won’t try. It’s always hard to remember what instrumental tracks are called anyway. But it was stuff from ‘Calabi Yau Space’ for sure and a surprising number of unreleased tracks. But whether this is normal or not regarding the amount of unreleased stuff I wouldn’t know. I do remember one unreleasd track which had what sounded like sampled female vocals.
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The performance was what it was. A backing track was definitely playing for every track and every now and then one of them would play a keyboard line on top. They may have been doing more live than it appeared, Mueller was doing the counting thing with his hand a lot, which looked important. This was ok I guess, with live electronic music if you want to be anal about it you need to bring your whole studio to reproduce a track. For me it was like I said about the Black Replica shows, it was theatre. Stuff like the masks helped very much in this. One of my friends was impressed simply that they managed to maintain the pose and atmosphere for the duration of the gig. Maintained it by doing almost nothing yes, but it was by no means a case of emperors new clothes. The music was captivating in and of itself, more so than I thought it would be, the physical side to it was brought out by a good sound system. It was definitely not like hearing it at home. For the last three tracks people actually got up and danced in the front row. This was not simply to be contrary, the music was surprisingly danceable in this context. Maybe not the whole set but definitely those last three tracks had bass lines and beats which made people respond in that way. Again, I couldn’t tell you if there were spontaneous outbreaks of dancing at their previous gigs. As I’ve said previously I wish people would say more than ‘it was cool’ or whatever when commenting on having been at one of their gigs, but that’s obviously just me!
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As well as volume their visuals too were crucial. They had had trouble getting their Mac, which was running the visuals, to link up with the projector earlier, one of my friends actually ended up fixing this minor problem for them. But I remember thinking how this visual element was so necessary for the show and if it wasn‘t there I think many would have had quite a different experience. The visuals themselves you’ve probably seen on any of their live YouTube videos already. There may have been a few new additions, titles like ‘Variable Dimensions’, 'Leptons’, ‘Higgs Particle Detected’ and maybe some of the picture and movie images were new as well, it might be constantly updated ever so slightly for each show, I don’t know. But it is a big part of the presentation and works pretty well, although it is quite a lo-fi touch really, it’s not sequenced to the music or anything, but it does all fit. If I hadn't already seen all of the YouTube live footage of them it would of course have been more of a surprise for me but this is the age we live in now. It's just that whether they knew it or not, the type of show they are doing is captured really accurately by a one camera wide shot. This is good and bad you know but it's essentially a pretty simple show led by projected visuals which depends a lot on your own level of expectation to carry it. With Jandek it was too naked and well lit up there, and he alone couldn’t carry it, I guess also my level of expectation was fairly low. I was really there because a friend had given me a free ticket and am more of a recent fan of the myth than the music to be honest. For Dopplereffekt I more or less stayed in the moment and was carried by the visuals, volume and that all important expectation.
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Dopplereffekt may have played a bit longer than they planned as the video came to an end before they were finished, the computer desktop was up there for awhile but the video was quickly started again from its beginning. I would say the show was in total about 70 minutes give or take, with the video probably timed for an hour. Maybe they were responding to the active and appreciative crowd in going a bit longer? Like Jandek, there was no acknowledgement of the audience during the gig or an encore, that’s legends for you! In fact, how the show ended was with Heinrich Mueller leaving his seat quite abruptly, quickly followed by To Nhan Le Thi. The music kept going though for another two minutes maybe and people still danced. It was a weird end but in keeping with the show. I noticed that the visuals had previously come to a climax of sorts with the repeated text ‘Higgs Particle Detected’. To which my physicist friend beside me said, “No it hasn’t!” Although he assures me that Cern do expect to find it within the year. This thought obviously excites Mueller and co so I won’t hold this wishful thinking against them.
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From the people I knew there, the audience itself was made up partly of serious Detroit techno fans, the obsessed, curious, young electroclash types plus people that are into electronic music and were aware of the occasion of the event. There was a reasonable gender mix as well but females were still in the minority. I was surprised to hear beforehand the descriptions of what they were going to be like; some people presumed they would be playing the ‘94-‘97 stuff, maybe this is fair enough, but also rubbish like expecting it to be somehow darkly sexual. I over heard the Nazi thing coming up again and again also. Which made me realise very starkly how you are only ever judged on the surface level and that these first impressions last. For Dopplereffekt it’s probably why they don’t do interviews or want to meet some of their fans.
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Quite why both these artists have decided to begin playing live at this stage in their careers is anyone's guess. In both their cases I don't believe it's really to connect with the loyal fans after all these years, certainly going by the non-communication and lack of acknowledgment of us from the stage. Although, this doesn't mean they don't feel some sense of duty to reward people after all this time, their just bad communicators because they never did this before or that's just the type of people they are. Travel might be a slight lure also but money and self promotion is the most obvious reason for doing it. Which is fine in my book, they have every right to get whatever rewards are out there for them. In both cases the money would still just be underground money as they are both still very much fringe artists. The tickets for Jandek sold out yeah, but there were only 100 of them. I guess for Dopplereffekt you would still have got in on the night but the venue was pretty packed with a few hundred capacity. It's still good money for the level they are at though so it might be enough of a reason for them. Although neither artist had merchandise or records for sale so they aren’t exactly being mercenary either. Album sales could get a slight boost in that city I guess but I don't believe it would be really significant enough to begin touring but I may be wrong. I would say fun would be another reason but going by the type of people involved they don't seem like that would be on top of their agenda. Perhaps both artists think they are adding to the enigma, never a bad thing when you have an enigma to add to, but actually they are doing just the opposite. From their position that might be something hard for them to recognise but having seen them now I don’t think I would bother going again, not unless the show was radically different, in Jandek’s case I know I wouldn’t. If it was a local gig for me, sure why not go every week, but it’s about 100 miles to drive before I get to Dublin for example and I never do that journey lightly anymore. I have full respect for anyone who fly's to see them, but I don't have that kind of passion for bands or concerts anymore. Dopplereffekt definitely haven’t ruined the enigma or anything, I’m still just as curious, as you can see, but I don‘t personally think they have added anything to it by playing live. They have added an extra element to the whole package that’s all, an extra dimension if you will, but it’s only a slight addition in my opinion. With a different type of show, yeah, that could be something special, but they are evolving as artists and change is good. It’s funny, those couple of solo Dopplereffekt shows last year with just To Nhan Le Thi were actually more intriguing, because you kind of knew it could be better if they were both there. Giving people what they want is never a good idea. Tease us and we only crave more. It strikes me that Dopplereffekt using their own science terminology might on one level be viewing the shows as field experiments. Another plausible reason which might be partly at the root of it could be that bringing Drexciya into the live arena was something which certainly James Stinson stated as wanting to happen someday but which tragically never came to pass. So maybe if this was a wish which Gerald Donald also shared, then in a way he is fulfilling that desire with Dopplereffekt. It's hard to say, this is all speculation anyway, only they will ever know their true motivations and where it might be leading them could be just as much a surprise for them as us.
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I’m not sure if this is what my regular readers would have expected my review to be like, I know what I write in general is never what new readers expect but this is how it turned out this time. It’s only my opinion anyway, everyone there had different ones which are just as valid. It was cool though!
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So far only one Video of the show is up, but I will update this part of the post when and if more appear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkV8vKel-m0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA4yYlZ7gIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKfwY8EgOpI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHYXQ056SSg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVjJ_TPdzrQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP0Sa-WlbV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4onGpn5oMvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_dZQdD_8RU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78JzjCTc0R4
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The DRL of Jandek
http://www.tisue.net/jandek/
Check out this Jandek documentary and it will all make sense.
http://www.jandekoncorwood.com/

Monday, July 07, 2008

Zerkalo +

There is a new track up on the Zerkalo site called 'Invisible'. Always nice to get another track from one of the MySpace projects. Although this one in particular might not be solely based in the virtual for much longer. In answer to a question on the site about a CD they replied, "...Very soon, we are finishing the LP." Of course it might still be a download from somewhere but it may appear on a more standard format as well. We'll just have to wait and see, which it has to be said is quite refreshing in these days. The new track has female vocals which are more or less as follows,
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Your presence fills
all spaces around me
its invisible, invisible, invisible.
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Also with a small bit of digging on their site I discovered the inspiration to the previously available instrumental track 'Warning You'. They have posted a poem in Russian and English by the noted Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. This continues their interest in Russia. The poem is from 1940 and is itself called 'Warning You', it goes,
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But listen, I am warning you
I'm living for the very last time.
Not as a swallow, nor a maple,
Not as a reed, nor as a star,
Not as spring water,
Nor as the toll of bells...
Will I return to trouble men
Nor will I vex their dreams again
With my insatiable moans
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If you want to hear the poet herself speak the poem in Russian click here
http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/texts/warning_you.html
For more general information on her life go here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Akhmatova
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They also have some info on the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky there as well, not sure if this is new or not but I have covered him in a previous Zerkalo concerned post. They have a YouTube video of him there where he is asked to answer the question, what is art? I think his answer is obviously important to them so have transcribed it into English from the subtitles. They have the French translation up. He says, “Before defining art or any concept we must ask a far broader question: What's the meaning of man's life on earth? Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually? If our life tends to this spiritual enrichment then art is a means to get there. This of course is in accordance with my own definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Some say art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don't believe this possibility of knowing. I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know the less we know; getting deeper our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man's own spiritual capabilities and he can then rise above himself, to use what we call free will." This might explain their insistent “Life, Life.” title footer.
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Check it all out as ever at http://www.myspace.com/myopspace
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The site they recommend for more on Tarkovsky is here
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/
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Incidentally I found that Victoria Lukas of the group also has her own solo MySpace site which contains a sole track of mystery at
http://www.myspace.com/inkamera
Also, as detailed before, check out her work with Weltgeist at
http://www.myspace.com/weltgeist
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I plan on writing a full article about the recent Dopplereffekt show in Dublin soon but for now I have a link to one of the sure to be many videos of the gig to keep you going at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkV8vKel-m0
I took the following photo.