Dear James...
I’ve just been reading ‘Stockhausen serves imperialism’ by Cornelius Cardew . He was a leading figure in the British avant-garde in the 60s who, influenced by Maoist thought, subjected his previous ‘bourgeois’ music to a vitriolic self-critique. He disavowed all his previous work and involvement with the avant-garde and set about writing ‘workers songs’ that would raise the consciousness of the working class. His colleagues thought he’d gone off his rocker. The book is pretty potent stuff, for example:
“Treatise was a largescale opus on which I wasted more hours of craftsmanship and intellectual effort than I care to recall. It would gratify me to sell the manuscript to a sleepy bourgeois at an inflated price and thus receive at least some compensation for that waste”.
Anyway, what has this got to do with ‘Four Ambient Pieces’? The pieces are about 5 years old as I write and whilst I’m not about to repudiate my work like Cardew, reading his polemic did set me thinking. What do I think of the work that set me on this path towards calling myself a ‘composer’, a producer of ‘ambient music’? and my current term, no less clumsy, but slightly more descriptive ‘experimental musician’. Well I wanted to think about 4AP, since I’ve deleted it from the Quiet catalogue. Am I embarrassed by it? Has it aged well? Have I still got the same ideas since I wrote it?
To put myself back there I’ve gone to what I wrote in the first draft to the sleevenotes to 4AP:
“On Monday the 21st of October 2002 the rain was pouring down in Sheffield. With nothing better to do and lacking inspiration to do something proper I decided to embark on an experiment. Having dabbled with 'ambient' techniques - loops, delays, repetition etc. I have never fully committed myself to writing a proper ambient piece. Armed with a cup of strong tea I set out to follow Eno's blueprint and compose an ambient piece.”
I’ve also pulled out my music journal for that period. There’s no date. It says (verbatim, although I can barely read my own scrawl)
“New Avant Garde loop piece
Music for 2 trumpets and 2 French Horns
4 loops, treated with delay on 4 track
looped using ModPlug
All in Bflat
Loop 1 – Track 4
Loop 2 – Track 3 (too much feedback on b)
Loop 3 – Track 1
Loop 4 – Track 1
The result is beautiful
(in red ink) 72 patterns = 36 minutes
x 2 = length of CD (about)”
But what do I think of it now? As for the writing in the sleevenotes – I was certainly very excited at this new thing I’d found and obviously thrilled at my first efforts. I’d be lying if I said that both the notes and the music feel kind of juvenile now, I’d certainly read about experimental music by that point but I definitely wasn’t as schooled in it as I am now. My knowledge was patchy and a certainly wanted to make a record that looked like the Steve Reich, Eno, Bryars, etc that I’d started to collect.
The pieces are almost certainly too long. I thought that making them really long would bring out the variation through repetition, since then I’ve worked out that around 10 minutes is more than enough if you’re not going to introduce a change or movement. I’ve not abandoned this idea though but my ‘infinite music’ program means that the idea of very long ambient loop music is a lot better realised.
There were other mistakes – wanting to use instruments like trumpets etc because that’s what a ‘proper’ composer would use. Listening to the recording tone isn’t so great on the horns (it’s got worse since) but I still like the melodies I came up with. I think this could be scored and played and I wouldn’t mind to hear it.
Since then of course, one of my key developments has been in choosing sound sources that are truer to me (a whole load of pieces based on guitar) and just generally being more interested in choosing interesting sound sources; found objects, toys, home made electronics, field recordings.
Piano I think is quite weak, relying on that (illegal) sample from a Keith Jarret record (this is part of why it’s deleted from the quiet catalogue).
Having listened to Bowed Guitar and Violin and Chord Organ I don’t think they’re too bad at all. Chord Organ, in particular I still use as part of my ‘retrospective’ compilation. I think it has the most ‘movement’ in it, probably because the loop is about 4 minutes long and has many variations already in it. The pearl analogue delay pedal that was central to the sound of 4AP is still central to my studio.
Well, inspired by Cardew I came to write this half-wanting to dismiss 4AP as a flop, a pretentious load of rubbish, something to be buried and forgotten. In my final assessment I’d say that It was useful groundwork I think, an important stepping stone to the music I make now. Reading though what I’ve written here I see a lot of continuity.
The very next thing I made was the Uranium EP, which I think was a quantum leap in terms of introducing new loops and manipulating the sounds gradually. Even something like “229, 294, 306, 337” that I released just last year obviously has a debt to what I began with 4AP. If nothing else it marks a transition from the ‘Ian Baxter’ who made bass, drums, guitar and FX post-rock to Ian Baxter the ‘composer’.
Post Script Dec 2007
This was a letter I wrote to someone who requested a copy of 'Four Ambient Pieces' even though I'd deleted it from the Quiet catalogue. It gave me the chance to think and I enjoyed the opportunity to write about these pieces some 5 years after I originally recorded them. I haven't edited the original letter here although I did correct some spelling and gramar.