Today I was supposed to go to Berlin for a couple of days and later to Linz for Ars Electronica 2009. Due to an expired passport I ended up staying home, plastic-wrapped luggage and all. After a couple of hours of (not so) mild depression, I remembered that I was thinking about buying Kompakt Total 10 and that I had downloaded a preview copy that I never got around to listen to.
I was planning to go to the Kompaktorama night in Barghain this evening so this compilation is nothing but a mild panacea. Still, the Kompakt Total series always had a positive effect on me and this goes for a lot of their other releases as well. The only explanation that I can find for this mysterious phenomenon is that most Kompakt music is superficial and that it lacks concept. Although lack of concept is a concept in itself. According to Joseph Kosuth,
"all art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually."Brain-bending aside, don't you find it odd that it's starting to be more and more about the trip? It's as if the delicate balance between concept and sensation that you see in any good piece of music is starting to accelerate in favor of the trip. Could it be that there are no more good ideas to be applied in music. Is conceptual music at a stand-still until someone discovers molecular music or genetically engineered harmony? OK I admit, all of the above will probably never be more than imaginative bullshit, but let me tell you something that's not.
Do you know why we just witnessed this explosion in the form of minimal music? Here's the picture: through a computer we find out more and more details about the world around us. Obsession for the "rules behind" made way into physics, chemistry, sociology, biology, whatever you want. You can use a computer as a microscope and point it in any chosen direction. What this did is to provoke a twist towards the detail-oriented world of reductionism.
Now then, art always reflects present, past or future times. Taking this into account, minimalism is an artistic exaggeration regarding our present and future environment. What minimalist artists do is to push that microscope as far as it can go, until it's picturing a world of straight lines and dots (relevant video
here).
What concept can one find behind a dot? The answer is: none. But as I said earlier - lack of concept is a concept in itself. Ergo minimal.
On this skeleton of lines and dots we've crafted modern music and on this skeleton we trip. Where can we go from here? Where do you go from a skeleton that does not exist?
To Berlin?
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