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qcfoetus Offline




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Posted: Sep. 06 2020, 13:47

Quote (bluemlein @ Sep. 05 2020, 18:14)
incantations is fiendishly difficult, based on the circle of fifths. it's entirely possible that this sprang out of oldfield's head simply by virtue of his having heard and - consciously or not -analyzed it, developing it by sheer experimentation and repetition.

this is a very strictly mathematical work that is given a lot of life by the ornamentation especially of the flutes at the beginning. yes, hiawatha is long but i dare anyone who thinks it is too long or too monotonous to sit still during gavin bryars' "jesus's blood".

for myself i quite like it. during preparations for a failed project i listened many times to it, on earphone. i can tell you every glitch and squawk - but they do not detract. it is pointless to overwork something to the point of technical perfection if it drubs the life out of it.

Interesting to think that Mike, who tolerated these glitches and squawks in his mid 20s, decided at age 50 to re-record TB to fix mistakes in the original, and then in his 60s deliberately left mistakes in the recording of RTO to retain a human quality to the music. Anyway, I agree with your take on Incantations, which will always remain one of my favorite MO albums.
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bluemlein Offline




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Posted: Sep. 06 2020, 15:49

hey, qc*
i am a great believer in the evidence of the human hand, whether in  visual art, writing or music - even dance and other performance arts. if we seek to attain perfection that is one thing, but actually to try to erase every least little error is counterproductive and can border on OCD. i find it frequently in highly tweaked CD recordings, which can have a soulless quality. when you play an analogue recording of the same work, you can, at times, even hear musiciands and/or audience breathing. it is more immediate, more real.

listening to the original TB is a pleasure not only in the music itself but also in its very obvious human execution. then it hits: all of this was created, played, recorded, by a nineteen-year-old.
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qjamesfloyd Offline




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Posted: Sep. 07 2020, 03:35

Quote (qcfoetus @ Sep. 06 2020, 18:47)
Quote (bluemlein @ Sep. 05 2020, 18:14)
incantations is fiendishly difficult, based on the circle of fifths. it's entirely possible that this sprang out of oldfield's head simply by virtue of his having heard and - consciously or not -analyzed it, developing it by sheer experimentation and repetition.

this is a very strictly mathematical work that is given a lot of life by the ornamentation especially of the flutes at the beginning. yes, hiawatha is long but i dare anyone who thinks it is too long or too monotonous to sit still during gavin bryars' "jesus's blood".

for myself i quite like it. during preparations for a failed project i listened many times to it, on earphone. i can tell you every glitch and squawk - but they do not detract. it is pointless to overwork something to the point of technical perfection if it drubs the life out of it.

Interesting to think that Mike, who tolerated these glitches and squawks in his mid 20s, decided at age 50 to re-record TB to fix mistakes in the original, and then in his 60s deliberately left mistakes in the recording of RTO to retain a human quality to the music. Anyway, I agree with your take on Incantations, which will always remain one of my favorite MO albums.

Mike is well known for changing his opinions on the same subject years later, or just plain contradicting himself, which I am sure we all do, but because we are not in the public eye it doesn't get talked about or naticed.
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bluemlein Offline




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Posted: Sep. 07 2020, 17:25

Quote
Quote (qcfoetus @ Sep. 06 2020, 18:47)
Quote (bluemlein @ Sep. 05 2020, 18:14)
incantations is fiendishly difficult, based on the circle of fifths. it's entirely possible that this sprang out of oldfield's head simply by virtue of his having heard and - consciously or not -analyzed it, developing it by sheer experimentation and repetition.

this is a very strictly mathematical work that is given a lot of life by the ornamentation especially of the flutes at the beginning. yes, hiawatha is long but i dare anyone who thinks it is too long or too monotonous to sit still during gavin bryars' "jesus's blood".

for myself i quite like it. during preparations for a failed project i listened many times to it, on earphone. i can tell you every glitch and squawk - but they do not detract. it is pointless to overwork something to the point of technical perfection if it drubs the life out of it.

Interesting to think that Mike, who tolerated these glitches and squawks in his mid 20s, decided at age 50 to re-record TB to fix mistakes in the original, and then in his 60s deliberately left mistakes in the recording of RTO to retain a human quality to the music. Anyway, I agree with your take on Incantations, which will always remain one of my favorite MO albums.

Mike is well known for changing his opinions on the same subject years later, or just plain contradicting himself, which I am sure we all do, but because we are not in the public eye it doesn't get talked about or noticed.


it would be a sad world if no one ever changed their opinion of the worth of their work. i have written some ridiculous things - fortunately did not publish them or i'd be sitting here with an omelette on my face. as you say, when one is in the public eye it can be more problematic. it becomes especially bad when one has early success that one's public wants to hear repeated. let's face it, there is a subset of fans for any musician/group/writer/actor etc that wants nothing more than the same dished out 40 different ways.

also, when one gets long in the tooth, one has more lived experience against which to compare and judge one's work. there are some oldfield works that leave me not even cold, just beset by ennui, because in my estimation they are repetitive, derivative, lacking variation in tempo etc. but you could be sitting across the table thinking that's just bologna, because you hear them in a different way.

when one is a creative individual one may have a love-hate relationship with one's work, perhaps because of personal associations, bad timing, etc. and years later, when the above no longer matter one can see one's work more clearly. (that happened to me with one of my own works - it's strange to reread a couple of decades later and acknowledge that damn! it is good after all - better than groan, why did i ever issue this with my name on it)
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nightspore Offline




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Posted: Sep. 07 2020, 21:44

Quote (bluemlein @ Sep. 07 2020, 17:25)
- it's strange to reread a couple of decades later and acknowledge that damn! it is good after all - better than groan, why did i ever issue this with my name on it)

With the current focus on artistic theory, anything can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. The real creative act is not with the artwork, but with the theory according to which the artwork you currently like needs to be seen as great. :laugh:
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bluemlein Offline




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Posted: Sep. 08 2020, 10:13

Quote
he real creative act is not with the artwork, but with the theory according to which the artwork you currently like needs to be seen as great.
 i have never adhered to this idea, which falls into the same bin as the 100pp+ thesis on frank stella's paintings, which was: which is more meaningful, that he painted from the inside out or the outside in. if you say it is the theory of creativity that is the creative act you are dismissing the created works as mere byproducts. a typical academic approach.

i don't know about the music side, but visual art schools have been churning out grads who have no enhanced technical abilities and who have been taught - as you say - that it is the theory, the explanation of intent etc, that is important. in the late Sixties we had a bout of this. new art school directors threw out the underpinnings of their curriculum, told students to sit on the roof at sunrise because that was art and essentially destroyed all notions of qualitative discernment of created works - because everything you could do could be explained as art

in other words, come up with the right phraseology and you can slap a banana onto a wall with duct tape, call it art, and watch it being sold for over $100,000. have picasso (cynically, i might add) sign your coaster - and voila, you have an "artwork".  because in this case it is the signature alone that has value. neither of these two is art. i will admit it takes a certain amount of nerve to do the banana bit - but  even that sort of work is enervated, having been done 50 years ago with sand and apiece of board on an incline.

to get back to the work being discussed, it is the actual work, with its music theory underpinnings(conscious or not - some people absorb such by listening) and technical brilliance of execution through which certain emotions and ideas are expressed, that is brilliant. not without flaws and limitations, but brilliant.
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larstangmark Offline




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Posted: Sep. 08 2020, 14:23

Quote (qjamesfloyd @ Sep. 07 2020, 03:35)
Mike is well known for changing his opinions on the same subject years later, or just plain contradicting himself, which I am sure we all do, but because we are not in the public eye it doesn't get talked about or naticed.

Like the "computers are killing music" statements around the time of Amarok? It seems that later, he forgot.

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"There are twelve people in the world, the rest are paste"
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nightspore Offline




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Posted: Sep. 08 2020, 20:25

Perhaps Radiohead encouraged them with "OK Computer"  :D
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seventeen64 Offline




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Posted: Nov. 01 2020, 05:49

I agree that Incantations is probably Mike's most "inaccessible" work - took me a good few listens to begin to see value in the structure that had been crafted. There is something compositionally unique and valuable to the more mathematical, stark approach that you aren't likely to find in much content at all let alone in Mike's other work, although I'd argue that there is a strong clinical compositional strength underpinning all of Mikes' great works, that get layered with feeling and emotion during the process.

But whilst its definitely there for me, I can understand why Mike might have problems with it from a very personal level, relating to it through Exegesis and a period which he'd very much like to regret. But compositionally I think there is enough value in the content to be worth of standing as one of Mike's best.

As to who contributed to what extent, I can't personally see Mike handing off the vast majority of the composition to someone else given how much creative control he usually insists on. Collaborating and having an influence on the shape even, but not outright allowing someone else to come up with the main thematic content and just guesting on his own album.

Incantations has been in my musical headspace a lot just recently, and I'm happy to have it there. I fully appreciate how those of us that do have a positive relationship with this work are an endangered species compared to the average person these days lol
:D


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life is not one-dimensional
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bluemlein Offline




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Posted: April 07 2021, 17:18

just a fast note re incantations - while i was working on background for a failed psychological biography i had a link to one of the universities in new zealand which was teaching incantations. course work included the score. if you think the muisc is wild - can't wait to burst out of its strict confines - you ought to get a look at the "chicken tracks" all over the page. sadly, i didn't think at the time to copy and paste the info. it has faded into the great cosmic hum.
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