Metamatic Forums News and Announcements John Foxx news John interviewed for show on Radio 2...

Thanks for the reminder Rob. Hopefully I get this one 'live' rather than having to listen again in the morning.

"Glitch?!" who comes up with all these irritating, nonsense names?!

Hi Alex,

No idea but ‘Glitch’ is (sort of) – Hip Hop Cut/Splice/Paste methods applied to digital media…sort of. It’s origins are (very roughly); recording music to a CD and then scarring that CD with a knife/implement of choice, playing back the CD and recording,re-mixing,sampling the rhythm of the glitches created by the laser of the CD player passing over the knife marks – and using the raw material from this to create sound collages, so the tag ‘Glitch’ does fit I suppose. That’s what it was about 10+ years ago when bands such as Oval were doing it, but now with artists such as Fennesz etc it mostly involves processing random sounds/noise through (very expensive) software such as MAX/MSP.

David Sylvian used the original CD/Knife method to process the backing vocal on the track ‘The Only Daughter’ on the album ‘Blemish’, which also features Fennesz’s processing on the track ‘A Fire in the Forest’.

Gazza

It was all explained (rather well I thought) in the show. Its all about how mistakes, faults and experimentation have become an artform. The term really describes the progression of Acid House to IDM and beyond very well.

A fascinating, if rather fragmented half hour, exploring the history and development of electronic music. From Wendy Carlos to Kraftwerk, from Brian Eno to Autechre, from Ultravox! to Timbaland.

people like Eno walked across the field and left a few footprints in the long grass. Others followed, and started to wear a path. Ultimately Timbaland and Missy Elliott laid a three lane motorway down and put Little Chefs on either side
(NB. This is NOT a quote from Foxx, but my own precis of Timbaland's excellent summing up)

It's essentially about how computers have enabled non-musicians to make sonic representations of music

Great little interview with Autechre, and typically insightful and witty observations on "the aesthetics of machinery" from John Foxx:

making electronic music is kind of taking revenge on the factories

Extracts of Metal Beat, contextualised with Tomorrow Never Knows and Smokestacks Lightnin'. Really interesting stuff - but at only half an hour it was never going to be definitive.
Should be a good series.

Isn't it great how John Foxx music just seems to fit everywhere...?

I finally got to hear it last night on iplayer - it seemed to be more about The Edit as an ideology rather than 'glitch' - but life's far too short to split hairs and Morley knows what he's talking about so I'm not gonna argue with him (and I'm certainly not going to be the one to start putting such vast, wonderful experimental musics in such restrictive genre titles!).

It was a good show (and I think it's fair to say that when Morley spoke of 'Metamatic' it's clear his opinion since 1980 has changed), I hope he does a few more shows like this - I've always liked the way Morley is prepared to get involved in the process as he did with Matthew Herbert in the programme, rather than be a detatched observer as others would be.