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Oakland-based composers Cliff Caruthers and Matt Ingalls work on a piece.
SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - Cliff Caruthers, co-curator of the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, will be the first to admit that unless there’s a seizure-inducing light show going on, electronic music rarely lends itself to a visually compelling experience for a concert-goer.
“A lot of live electronic performances involve someone sitting in front of a laptop, and that’s not a terribly interesting experience. It doesn’t add anything to the music,” he says.
So, why not just eliminate the keyboard-punching middleman?
Well, that’s basically the idea behind the Tape Music Festival. Beginning Friday and extending through Sunday, the eighth annual experimental music festival delivers an ear-tickling sonic experience via a 16-speaker surround-sound system in darkness.
“For us, the elimination of the performer allows the audience to focus on the sound which is a performance in itself — that’s why we keep the place dark,” says Caruthers, 37, of Oakland.
Tape music (also known as fixed media music), Caruthers says, is no different than film, in that both perform via a recording.
“I like to explain it like this: film is to a stage production as tape music is to live music,” he says.
Tape music, which runs the gamut from field recordings to narrative soundscapes, has had a long history in the Bay Area and dates back to 1962 when the San Francisco Tape Music Center was founded to promote education about the medium. Today, the San Francisco Tape Music Collective keeps the spirit of the legendary 1960s center alive.
Caruthers, who not only is a force behind the festival but also a contributor, says that this year’s festival boasts some pretty big names.
“Brian Eno is probably the biggest, most recognizable name. He’s premiering a brand new piece. We’ve also got the original, four-channel work from Stockhausen on Sunday, which is huge,” he says.
“Hymnen,” the epic multi-channel work from renowned German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, is highly anticipated by tape music enthusiasts because the composition is strictly prohibited from being played in a concert setting unless using the master tapes, whose rights are difficult to acquire.
As for his own piece, “House on the Hill,” a dream soundscape from the play “Mr. Fujiyama’s Electric Beach,” Caruthers hopes his work and other festival compositions open audiences to a new experience.
“For me, I’d like for everyone’s ears to open a little bit and experience the sounds in their environment as music,” he says. “I’d like them to listen to sounds in a new way and just enjoy the sonic experience.”
San Francisco Tape Music Festival
Where: ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., San Francisco
When: 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday
Tickets: $12 to $24
Contact: (415) 863-9834 or www.sfsound.org/tape
Comments from Examiner Readers
11:19 AM MST on Sun., Sep. 28, 2008 re: "Skinny Puppy is back, making myths"
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ironlungcorp said:
Skinny Puppy did pave the way for NIN though, in the sense that they were essentially THE pioneering industrial act.
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Gnome said:
Why is everyone obsessed with comparing Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy? Who the hell cares if one was influenced by the other? They're completely different by now.
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Concerning Truth my A**! said:
Let's clear up this NIN "conspiracy" before this "genius" goes out and blows up his school: the phrase at issue is "putting this Puppy right back at the head of the Nine Inch Nails pack it originally whelped." Look up any dictionary and you will see that "whelped" means "gave birth to" or slight variations thereof. You therefore are railing against the writer who you agree with. Good job!
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Truth my A**! said:
Get your facts right! All Reznor did was glamorise industrial music by making it more accessible (which Puppy weren't out to do). NIN opened FOR Skinny Puppy in 1988, Skinny Puppy had already formed in 1982, and if you were such a big fan of NIN you would already know that they released "Pretty Hate Machine" in 1989...AFTER Puppy released their first Album "Back & Forth" in 1984! It doesn't take a genius to work out who came first!
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TRUTH said:
If this comment is implying that "Skinny Puppy" helped create/start NIN then this article is a "Mythmaker". The one and only member of NIN, from the beginning, is Trent Reznor. He was/is a fan of Skinny Puppy, leave it at that!
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