“Tony Conrad” (Used 14 times)

The label Table of the Elements lives up to its name: nothing more than elemental, and nothing short of encyclopedic. They’ve released a 4-CD box set by Tony Conrad titled “Early Minimalism,” and they’ve kept available a number of truly foundational works by Rhys Chatham, among them “Two Gongs” and “Die Donnergotter.” The concept of cover art was reinvented in the early age of the CD; a 128 page book was included with the 7-disc Charley Patton revival collection “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” where used copies fetch around $200 on Amazon. The list goes on and on, with a dual focus on the avant-garde and on so-called primitive American musics: from John Fahey’s fingerpicking to Zeena Parkins’ electro-acoustic harp.

But the periodic table is only so large, and eighteen years later the label has reached the end of it. To celebrate this occasion, the label has assembled a three-night Copernicium Festival (May 12 – 14, $20 a night or $15 for ISSUE members) as a massive sendoff, with artists ranging from Stephen O’Malley, to Jonathan Kane’s February, to Tony Conrad, to Zeena Parkins, to a performance of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio with a small guitar army. It’ll traverse minimalism, blues, death metal, free improvisation, film, and visual art (with projections of Robert Longo’s Pictures for Music from 1979).

I’ve uploaded tracks from Jonathan Kane’s February releases February and Jet Ear Party, as well as a recording of Zeena Parkins’ March 2010 duo with violinist Jon Rose. The mix also includes a track from Peg Simone’s performance at ISSUE which later appeared on her Table of the Elements release Secrets from the Storm, and a live performance by death-sludge-metal artists Sunn O))), whose Stephen O’Malley will headline the final night of the series. Check out the attached mix, and come by any or all of the three nights to celebrate the conclusion of a great label.

The label Table of the Elements lives up to its name: nothing more than elemental, and nothing short of encyclopedic. They’ve released a 4-CD box set by Tony Conrad titled “Early Minimalism,” and they’ve kept available a number of truly foundational works by Rhys Chatham, among them “Two Gongs” and “Die Donnergotter.” The concept of cover art was reinvented in the early age of the CD; a 128 page book was included with the 7-disc Charley Patton revival collection “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues,” where used copies fetch around $200 on Amazon. The list goes on and on, with a dual focus on the avant-garde and on so-called primitive American musics: from John Fahey’s fingerpicking to Zeena Parkins’ electro-acoustic harp.

But the periodic table is only so large, and eighteen years later the label has reached the end of it. To celebrate this occasion, the label has assembled a three-night Copernicium Festival (May 12 – 14, $20 a night or $15 for ISSUE members) as a massive sendoff, with artists ranging from Stephen O’Malley, to Jonathan Kane’s February, to Tony Conrad, to Zeena Parkins, to a performance of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio with a small guitar army. It’ll traverse minimalism, blues, death metal, free improvisation, film, and visual art (with projections of Robert Longo’s Pictures for Music from 1979).

I’ve uploaded tracks from Jonathan Kane’s February releases February and Jet Ear Party, as well as a recording of Zeena Parkins’ March 2010 duo with violinist Jon Rose. The mix also includes a track from Peg Simone’s performance at ISSUE which later appeared on her Table of the Elements release Secrets from the Storm, and a live performance by death-sludge-metal artists Sunn O))), whose Stephen O’Malley will headline the final night of the series. Check out the attached mix, and come by any or all of the three nights to celebrate the conclusion of a great label.

In training for the Electric Temple-hosted Drone Marathon this Saturday at ISSUE Project Room, we've put together this mix of drones to get you through your Friday. Hopefully you'll be all limbered up and ready to drone by 2 p.m. on Saturday—think of this one as a Drone 5k.

The brand-new label Electric Temple ambitously looks to be both a production company and record label. Putting together events as well as putting out recordings, their goal is to challenge audiences by crossing generational and genre-based gaps in the avant-garde world. The lineup they've put together for this marathon definitely does that: drone godfathers Phill Niblock and Tony Conrad are on the same bill as younger artists like Noveller, Marcia Bassett, and Tom Carter. The entire schedule (the whole 10 hours of it) is posted on the main page, but the juxtaposition of "conceptual drones" by Pitchfork-praised Kyle Bobby Dunn, Downtown staple Aki Onda, and Tony Conrad's Three Loops for Performers and Tape Recorders from 1961 looks like they're out to expand everyone's horizons. And isn't that what drones are all about?

MV Carbon continues her residency at ISSUE Project Room with a free concert this Friday, appearing with J. Graf (as Metalux) followed by a duo with Aki Onda. Metalux grinds with echoes of heavy metal and dystopian industrial apparatuses, and feels both claustrophobic and remote. Analog synth sweeps combine with gritty transistor distortion, and the vocals (when there are vocals) are almost totally obscured.

I've added some Metalux tracks below, as well as an excerpt from Carbon's July 17 performance at ISSUE, the first of her residency. July was Floating Points month at ISSUE, so all performances highlighted our fifteen-channel hanging speaker system. Carbon's was no exception: she projected repeated loops throughout the venue, with the intention of creating a state of paranoia. "It's almost like a closed circuit in their head when they keep believing something and believing it and believing it even if it's not true."

An integral aspect of Carbon's art is her instrument-building. She has makeshift cellos attached to Moog synth pedals, sometimes with guitar fretboards and other times with TVs for bodies. Clips of some of these instruments are in a video after the jump, as well as an excerpt from Tony Conrad's interview of Carbon, filmed and edited for her residency.

The combined accomplishments of Genesis Breyer P. Orridge and Tony Conrad are legendary and enormous, and are well-documented elsewhere.  Over the years, both artists have appeared and performed at WFMU many times.

Genesis first came by for an interview in 1988, on one of my late nightshifts in the old basement studios at Froeberg Hall, when WFMU was still part of Upsala College.  That was during the early Acid House days of Psychic TV.  (And just last year he came to the station with all of Throbbing Gristle for a long and lively chat session in the studio).

About a year after that first interview with Gen, I met Tony Conrad, and I asked Tony to come to the station for an interview not long after.  He couldn’t be there in person so we did that interview by phone, but since then he’s performed in the studio twice and we’ve done several in-studio interviews.

Though I’d been friends with both of them for many years I had never considered the possibility that Gen and Tony might work together:  to me they seemed to be  approaching their work from wildly different perspectives. But circumstances can sometimes conspire to completely blow away our cherished, previously-held notions. At the suggestion of filmmaker Marie Losier, who’s been working on two separate documentaries about both artists, a concert with Gen and Tony playing together was finally organized.

And this is more or less how these two very unique artists were brought together, along with Edley O’Dowd on percussion, for a concert at Issue Project Room in January 2009 and for the one you can access here on the Free Music Archive. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.