#3 Radio Music
By Jon Leidecker
“Radio Music” connects three examples from the history of the potential of the radio receiver as musical instrument, from its early beginnings in the twenties as captured on a comedy record, to formal art experiments in the forties and fifties, to its nostalgic presence in one of the very first song-based pop music collage albums, which heralded the now familiar practice of sampling.
Since 1990, Jon Leidecker has performed appropriative collage music under the pseudonym Wobbly, improvising live with prerecordings to coax the harmonies out of the recorded sounds of individuals from disparate cultures. Previous and ongoing projects include the bands Chopping Channel (with Don Joyce & Peter Conheim of Negativland), Sagan (with Blevin Blectum, Lesser and Ryan Junell), the Freddy McGuire Show (with video artist Anne McGuire) and Amen Seat (with MaryClare Bryztwa), as well as live and studio collaborations with People Like Us, Matmos, Negativland, Thomas Dimuzio, Tim Perkis & Xopher Davidson, Hrvatski, The Tape-beatles, The Evolution Control Committee and Otomo Yoshihide.
In 2009 he was commissioned by Ràdio Web MACBA to produce VARIATIONS, an ongoing radio show on the history of musical collage & sampling.
ISSN: 2013-4681
In Memoriam
A few words in memoriam of Don Joyce (February 9, 1944 – July 22, 2015).
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #7. The Composer, curated by Jon Leidecker.
Transcript of VARIATIONS #6. The Library, curated by Jon Leidecker.
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #5. The Discipline, curated by Jon Leidecker.
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #4. The Explosion, curated by Jon Leidecker.
Transcript
Transcript of VARIATIONS #3. The Approach, curated by Jon Leidecker.
The Approach
In the seventies the avant-garde finally crosses the line into wholesale plundering of commercial pop music, and the pop disciplines of disco and dub become increasingly comfortable with manipulating released music into new forms, narrowing the divide between art and pop practices.
Transition
As recording supplanted sheet music in the 20th century, the presence of communal influence became unavoidably obvious once again as composers began to use recordings to make new recordings. From the beginning, recordings have been instruments.
The Relationship
The convergence of mainstream and social media platforms sidelines traditional record labels and sparks new sub-genres from mashups to vaporwave, but also reinforces the perception of music as consumable entertainment. How are we being retrained to our new environment by an aesthetic that has become so pervasive as to turn itself nearly invisible? Never conclude a historical narrative in present time.
Ràdio Web MACBA's Contribution
What is Radio Art? What are we doing? Ben Vida, Felix Kubin, Goodiepal, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jon Leidecker, Tetsuo Kogawa, Chris Cutler and Roc Jiménez de Cisneros give their own answer to these ontological question.
The Composer
If sampling had seemed an inherently revolutionary practice in the eighties that called into question the definition and the authority of the composer, the proliferation of artists in the decade that followed reasserted that authority. Mainstream audiences finally recognized appropriation as a legitimate form of creativity once artists became comfortable practicing it as a form of self-expression.
The Library
Sound libraries are collections of sounds explicitly designed or collected for further use, presented as unfinished ingredients. Sounds increasingly detach from their sources and are used by new authors less as references than as simple objects.
Pastoral V.2
This layered 60 minute DJ set by Jon Leidecker underlines the history of those classic works of electronic and concrète music which sought to mimic and extend the voices and sounds of our pastoral landscape.