After Thursday Afternoon disquiet.com by Richard Kadrey December 4, 2005

An electronic musician (Monolake), an English professor (Michael Jarrett),

and a science fiction writer (Richard Kadrey), all Brian Eno fans, walk into a

chat room

This year, an electronic-music anniversary passed with little fanfare. Two

decades after the release of Brian Enos album Thursday Afternoon, it was made

newly available in a remastered edition. The occasion provided an opportunity

for something Id wanted to do for a while: host an online discussion on a

specific topic, and then post a lightly edited transcript of the backnforth. I

invited four people, one of whom ultimately wasnt able to join in.

Over the course of two weeks, three of them conversed with me: Robert

Henke, the German musician better known as Monolake; Michael Jarrett, a

professor of English at Penn State York, and author of several books,

including Drifting on a Read: Jazz as a Model for Writing; and Richard

Kadrey, the San Francisco-based author of such science fiction novels

as Metrophage and Kamikaze LAmour.

I knew them all to be familiar with the subject, and to have creative

imaginations. Id interviewed Henke the year prior for e/i magazine (The

Organization Musician), and I had assigned articles to both Jarrett and Kadrey

while I was an editor at Pulse!, the music magazine once published by Tower

Records.

The subject, Thursday Afternoon, is a unique recording in Enos discography. An

hour-long swath of amorphous, largely organic-sounding quietude, it arrived

during an ebb in the popularity of ambient music. The year 1985 was well past

the tail end of the proggy 1970s, when Enos experiments with the studio as a

musical instrument first flourished, and close to a decade would pass before a

new generation of musicians, raised in the wake of the personal computer, would

revive electronic music. Still, the album looked ahead more than it looked back.

It took full advantage of the then new medium of the compact disc, making use

http://disquiet.com/2005/12/04/after-thursday-afternoon/

of sounds that would arguably have been swallowed up in the hiss and crackle of

vinyl. Likewise, it played for longer than vinyl could have accommodated without

requiring a flip of the LP, certainly at any comfortable level of audio fidelity. On

the other hand, it was less an album than it was a document; it was the

soundtrack to a piece of video art that Eno had released on VHS the year prior.

(That footage was also released this year, on DVD.)

As I warned Henke, Jarrett and Kadrey, Id never really done anything like this

before, and accordingly any lapses in communication or cogency are entirely my

fault. The trio had insights into what is, in fact, one of my favorite albums, and in

the course of our discussion they helped me listen to it in new ways. I plan to do

more of these in the future, having gotten one under my belt.

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: After Thursday Afternoon

Message: 01/20 The clock has just passed midnight here in San Francisco, and

Im turning on the email list for our discussion. Im excited to bring together

three people (well, four, counting myself) who feel that the 20th anniversary of

Brian Enos CD Thursday Afternoon is an occasion worth commemorating.

Needless to say, we all have lives and work, next to which this discussion is at

best a diversion. I dont want anyone involved to get the impression that hes

signed up for a marathon. Im just hoping this list will be, for a brief time, a place

youll check in to take a look at what has been submitted in your absence an

anecdote, a theory, an appreciation, a query and to reply to that which most

attracts your imagination. By simply replying to this email, or to any that

follows, your message will be distributed to all the participants. Gathered here

(virtually speaking) are musician Robert Henke, professor Michael Jarrett, and

science-fiction novelist Richard Kadrey. Ill moderate by participating as well.

Ill begin with two thoughts: one observation, and one personal experience.

1. First, the observation. Unlike most albums released at that time,Thursday

Afternoon was not made available simultaneously on several formats. It

was not available as a vinyl LP, nor as a tape cassette. The continuous,

hour-long soundtrack to a video artwork (available a year earlier on

VHS), Thursday Afternoon was recorded with the CD, then a new

technology, in mind. Between its quietude and its length, it could not have

existed in any previously commercial recording format.

2. Now, the personal experience: Thursday Afternoon was the very first CD I

ever purchased. I owned tons of LPs by 1985, when I was a sophomore in

college, and I had accumulated quite a few tape cassettes as well. Its hard

to describe how new and special the CD was when it first became available,

how odd it was to possess one of these circular mirrors held in its little

plastic box. I didnt even own a CD player at the time. I had to take my new

purchase down the hall in my dorm to the room of a classmate whod

recently purchased a CD player for his stereo. I recall a small stack of CDs

in his room, some Dire Straits and some Police. He went about his

homework while I popped in the Eno CD and started listening on big,

warm headphones. Everything about the experience was so new: the

music, which appeared, on first listen, to be nearly silent, and the medium,

which enhanced that quietude by eliminating the tacit surface noise of LPs

and tape. I didnt really know what I was getting myself into that

afternoon. The CD wasnt divided into individual tracks, so I just had to

begin at the beginning, and make my way through. I listened that day, and

used other friends players to listen to it again, and again, until I finally

bought my own machine the following summer; slowly I made sense of

what I thought Eno was up to. Twenty years have passed, and I guess Ive

never really stopped listening to Thursday Afternoon.

Best,

Marc

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: When Confronting Message:

02/20 Marc, Robert, Richard,

In certain situations I have a tendency to hang back. Particularly in electronic

space, I tend to lurk. For example, I routinely fail to send thank-you notes to my

friends. I wait and wait for the perfect words; they are glimpsed, dimly, on some

distant horizon. Instead of scribbling a short note, I imagine a time, always

imminent, that never actually arrives - a time that will grant me the clarity to

express myself fully, definitively. Wanting to say just the right thing, I fail to say

anything.

I make this admission for two reasons. First, because I am not going to let my

tendencies win out in this discussion. And second, because my admission sets up

an understanding of Thursday Afternoon.

In the mid-80s, the compact disc emerges as medium of choice (the technology

that imposes itself as de rigueur). In an analogous situation - the advent of the

long-playing record - what did the Beatles, what did the Beach Boys do? They

labored to create the grand expression: that statement so complete, so perfect, so

full, that it would realize in one blinding flash everything the medium could

possibly be. The Beatles made Sgt. Peppers, and if that LP did not deplete their

artistic resources, it certainly left them nowhere to go. Hell, that chord on A Day

in the Life left them nowhere to go (though if the Beatles had worked with it and

it alone, they might have made something akin to Thursday Afternoon). For

their part, the Beach Boys tried to make Smile, and it about killed them, pushing

Brian Wilson into madness. Indulgence spread like a plague.

Confronted with a new medium (the CD but also music television with its

Eisensteinian editing), Eno took another route. (So far as I know, the making

ofThursday Afternoon prompts no tales of Sturm und Drang.) The music is

tentative. It is no grand statement exemplifying (and, thereby, exhausting) all

the possibilities of a medium. Long by pop standards, Thursday Afternoon is not

Mahler or Wagner not by a long shot. It is a small gesture writ large

(calligraphy on a banner?). It seems almost offhand. Theres no attempt to erect

a monument to an emerging technology. (The music, therefore, is not phallic; it

is a matrix: womblike.) In a word, Thursday Afternoon is simple. Instead of

waiting around, hanging back, trying to comprehend (to grasp it all) and, then,

to express the potential of a new medium in a definitive work, Eno composed a

note worth celebrating.

Best,

Mike

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: Re: When Confronting Message:

03/20 In afterthursday@, Michael Jarrett wrote:

> In an analogous situation - the advent of the > long-playing record - what did

the Beatles, > what did the Beach Boys do?

Its an interesting comparison, Mike, and I agree. Its true that so many of the

outings that sought to celebrate a specific recording medium ended up with

some attendant, if not inherent, richness that veered toward the garish. Thats

probably why concept albums got such a bad rap for so long.

Eno definitely succeeded with Thursday Afternoon in drawing attention to the

powers of the CD without drawing self-conscious attention to what he was up to.

Limited liner notes; a particularly non-representational cover, even by Tom

Phillips standards; that mysterious image of what appears to be the score,

such as it is thats all we, the listeners, have to go by, beyond the music, which

itself sets a new standard of understatement.

Of course, you could say that the quietude that is Thursday Afternoons defining

characteristic is simply the flipside, the mirror, of the kind of envelope-pushing

that most musicians pursue in their medium-specific endeavors. Eno recognized

that one of the CDs gifts was its dynamic range but rather than go wide and

deep and loud, he headed in the other direction. He took the tabula rasa of

digital playback, and added to it without forsaking its defining clarity and

pureness.

> Long by pop standards, Thursday Afternoon > is not Mahler or Wagner

I would say, though, that this Eno album does have one thing in common with

Mahler, specifically with the opening of his First Symphony, how those held

strings eke out as much ambience as they possibly can before the requisite

rhythmic material arrives and breaks the spell. Thursday Afternoon is those

opening 20 seconds or so, sustained for an hour, with the sounds of the world

seeping in.

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: Re: When Confronting Message:

04/20 In afterthursday@, Marc Weidenbaum wrote:

> He took the tabula rasa of digital playback, > and added to it without forsaking

its > defining clarity and pureness.

Good point and one Id like to develop a bit later, once Ive collected my

thoughts. May be nothing more than fancy, but Ive thought that the sound

ofThursday Afternoon is the sound of CD transduction (though that sound is

pure sonic metaphor, since the CD represents the elimination of transduction

noise). My idea is that the sound banished or purged always returns (but like the

repressed) as a metaphor.

> Thursday Afternoon is those opening 20 seconds > or so, sustained for an

hour, with the sounds of > the world seeping in.

To sustain decay: pretty great idea.

Best, Mike

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: another strategy Message:

05/20 Looking back at material Ive written about Eno and his music, I ran

across this thumbnail:

THURSDAY AFTERNOON (EG). How to keep the attention of listeners for the

duration of a full-length CD? Enos solution: make music so unobtrusive that it

renders the problem irrelevant. The single piece on this 61-minute disc is

scintillating in a slow-motion sort of way.

Im beginning to ponder other problems other binary oppositions that have

conventionally structured popular music that this recording confounds or

displaces. And Im beginning to think about music that renders long-held

musical problems irrelevant. Oblique Strategy for today: When stymied by a

problem you cant solve, throw a monkey wrench, a spanner, into the works.

Create something that renders pressing problems obsolete (because it poses new,

more interesting problems).

Take an old problem: How many angels can fit on the head of a pin? In the late

Middle Ages (give or take a few hundred years) this question seemed a matter

worthy of speculation and conjecture. Hard to imagine, but it once felt relevant.

The question presumably sparked the imaginations of Europes greatest

thinkers. It didnt go away, however, when a satisfactory answer was finally

posed: St Thomas forever settled the matter of pins and angels when he

ventured (pi)r (with r being the radius of the pin) as the most likely and

reasonable solution. But rather, the question vanished into history when it was

supplanted by questions perceived as more interesting and relevant.

Maybe, its not about being the only band that matters (about getting it right),

but about being the band that incidentally makes other bands not matter.

Best,

Mike

From: Robert Henke Subject: about time Message:

06/20 The Thursday Afternoon CD contains one track, one single ID at the

beginning. Even this marker is questionable since there is no real start and there

is no real end. At some point the music fades in and one hour later it fades out.

The fade is a rather radical concept, unparalleled in music created with acoustic

instruments. A longer fade over a whole piece is a potential indicator of infinity.

The fade symbolizes that there is no end, there is no beginning. The duration

of Thursday Afternoon is not one hour, it is eternal, and this makes it special.

The concept of ambient music is avoiding drama, avoiding musical process. Erik

Satie coined the term of musique dameublement, music as furniture, but it

needed the invention of electricity to finally realize it. The chord in the

background ofThursday Afternoon is not changing. It has been set up at some

point. I would assume that what we hear on the CD is just an excerpt of

something that had been set up at Brian Enos studio for a long time. He created

a sonic sculpture, and once it was done he made a picture: the final product. If I

remember correctly, he referred to this process as I print it on tape. The way

such a sonic sculpture is realized is quite different from the way one would

compose drama. The endless repetition creates a mood in which both the

composer and the listener, later, dive in, are surrounded with, live with. The

most striking change happens when the music stops, another indicator for its

potential eternal duration. Being unobtrusive is an important factor, both for the

composer and for the listener. In order to stand such music during the period of

its creation it needs to be unobtrusive. You would at some point simply turn it off

before it is finished if it would be annoying in any way. The process of creating is

evolutionary, has once again to do with sculpturing. Not much happens all the

time, but what happens needs to be placed carefully in time, which is equivalent

to space, and needs to be sculptured. The background color, texture, volume,

diffusion, the piano notes, the lush washes which show up occasionally; they are

the building elements of that sculpture and listening to them is like touching it.

Every shape has to feel good finally. A rough part would need to be polished, too

much detail would diminish the impact of the whole work.

more to come, I need to go to work now ;-)

Robert

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: Re: When Confronting Message:

07/20 In afterthursday@, Michael Jarrett wrote:

> May be nothing more than fancy, but Ive thought that the sound >

of Thursday Afternoon is the sound of CD transduction (though > that sound is

pure sonic metaphor since the CD represents the > elimination of transduction

noise).

Definitely something that sits with me. Perhaps because of when it arrived, it has

been sort of like a base line of CD ambience in my imagination, to the extent to

which it is, in my mind, the sound of the CD. This is overstating things, of

course, because there is so much going on in the music in fact, each time I

listen to Thursday Afternoon, it sounds louder than the previous listen.

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: Re: about time Message 08/20

In afterthursday@, Robert Henke wrote:

> In order to stand such music during the period of its > creation it needs to be

unobtrusive. You would at some > point simply turn it off before it is finished if

> it would be annoying in any way.

This really sticks with me, in part because I simply hadnt thought about it before

that is, anything as immersive as a 60-minute piece like this would be

draining to the composer after a while if it werent inherently pleasurable. But

also because, as Id hoped, Robert, that youd provide some insight from your

own work as a musician, as you have here.

I often think about ambient music requiring a different kind of listening, but the

opposite is true as well, that it requires a different kind of composing. Not simply

different in terms of the skills and impulses and technology required on the part

of the music-maker, but also the means by which the composer tests the work

throughout its creation.

I like, now, thinking of Thursday Afternoon as, in your words, a sculpture, and

by extension as a kind of architecture a sonic space that Eno built, spent time

in, came to approve of, and then felt was worth sharing with the world.

Marc

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: Re: another strategy Message:

09/20 In afterthursday@, Michael Jarrett wrote:

> And Im beginning to think about music that renders > long-held musical

problems irrelevant. Oblique > Strategy for today: When stymied by a problem

you > cant solve, throw a monkey wrench, a spanner, into > the works. Create

something that renders pressing > problems obsolete (because it poses new,

more > interesting problems).

Let me know if my habit of responding to particular parts of posts is

troublesome. It helps me to whittle something to its core, and then go on from

there. I had just made note today of a review in the New York Times of an

electronic music concert held this past Friday at the Japan Society a show of

Japanese musicians that also included the composer Carl Stone, who splits his

time between the U.S. and Japan.

The newspaper sent one of its classical/opera critics to a show of laptop music. I

wasnt certain if this was a nod to the compositional roots of avant-garde

electronic music, or just a curious excursion on the part of the critic, or an act of

an editor assigning against type. In any case, the result was not surprising, and

it encompassed the paradigm shift, or generation gap, that Mike described.

This is the close of the review: Whether loud or soft, noisy or soothing, an onkyo

improvisation is more like a sound environment than a musical composition.

You cant complain when a sound environment runs on or seems aimless. Such

concerns are not the point.

Im not sure if this is a criticism, but it sounds at best like a backhanded

compliment.

Marc

From: Robert Henke Subject: several degrees of attention Message:

10/20 In afterthursday@, Marc Weidenbaum wrote:

> You cant complain when a sound environment > runs on or seems aimless.

Such concerns are not > the point. Im not sure if this is a criticism, but it >

sounds at best like a backhanded compliment.

It seems to be the typical case where the expectation of the listener has not been

met. A situation I also sometimes experience, since my work spans a range from

more textural sound art to pretty much dance-floor-compatible music. Music, as

all art, cannot be reviewed without context. There is always some functional

aspect in it, and it has been composed with a specific emotion and for a specific

context. Even avoiding context leads to context. Enos work is intended to fill a

space, and has much to do with the intentional absence of drama, which makes it

suspect for the classical-trained critic. Interesting enough even in classical

music there are parts that work the same way, creating a space without drama.

The big difference is that the function of these parts in classical music is to

provide contrast to the rest of the work. In ambient music, there is nothing but

that space. Obviously in both cases it is not essential to pay full attention. The

critic fails since he assumes he has to find drama instead of letting go. No

wonder that this kind of musical thinking is way more compatible with

Buddhism then with our western culture.

I my own experience I am always surprised how much context defines my

appreciation for music. At home I often more enjoy complexity and richness in

detail. If I go dancing I need much fewer elements and I am in particular

disturbed by the wrong element at the wrong place. I explicitly mention dance

music, and especially the genre of more minimalistic techno, since I do not see

much of a difference in the way both genres, minimal techno and ambient, deal

with drama. It is all about creating a state of emotion and keeping it for as long

as possible. While the classic song is about changing the emotion from track to

track and therefore is much closer to symphonic music. In both genres it is often

more important to avoid the wrong note than to add more notes. An experience

that from time to time drives me nuts, when playing new Monolake tracks for the

first time in a club and realizing i did, once again, way to much and therefore

missed the point. Thanx to modern technology I am afterwards able to get rid of

the problem.

And then I figure out that stripping a track down to the essence does not at all

make it more boring, just the opposite. The fewer elements, the more you pay

attention to detail. And at this point we are back to Thursday Afternoon. The

sculptural quality of the work lies in the way its details are made. Eno is a master

of the creation of lush mellow atmospheres and his taste and sense of time and

space is what made Thursday Afternoon a great record. It could have been a very

boring CD. Just imagine a cover version of it with different sounds

Robert

From: Richard Kadrey Subject: Re: another strategy Message:

11/20 In afterthursday@, Marc Weidenbaum wrote:

> that it requires a different kind of composing.

Marcs note about ambient music requiring a different type of composing and

listening made me think of Andy Goldsworthys sculptures, where the materials

hes working with on any individual piece dictate both its shape and duration.

You have to come to Goldsworthys work with the understanding that its

probably going to be temporary. You can approach a lot of ambient music,

certainly Thursday Afternoon, with the idea that any individual work might be

endless.

Before this project, I hadnt listened to Thursday Afternoon in years (Id been

mostly listening to Enos more recent work such as Lightness, Nile, etc.).

HearingTA again brought back a lot of memories of listening to it for the first

time. I remember wondering if it was, at least in part, a kind of musical joke. For

a long time I was sure that Eno had simply taken an unknown Harold Budd

recording, removed half the tracks, slowed it down to half speed and used pitch-

correcting software (or one of those little pitch boxes, since the software

probably didnt exist back when TA was recorded) to bring the frequencies back

up again. I seemed like the kind of elaborate joke he might pull, but mostly I

think I was just trying to put the piece into some category that I could

understand. TA went so much deeper into the idea of eternalness of sound that

his other ambient recordings at the time.

Hearing TA with relatively fresh ears brings up a lot of thoughts to me. The

timing and meter is odd. Notes blend into one another and then crash into each

other as if one or more just fell from the sky. To my present day ear TA sounds

like it could be an improvised duet where the players have agreed on a key and

nothing else. The slowest and most sonorous free jazz recording in history.

I can also hear TA as a new kind of court music, slow and stately, gentle, but not

fragile. Even in this context it feels like a duet, but an unintentional one. We can

imagine ourselves as kids in a royal palace, hiding behind a tapestry in a wing

were not supposed to enter. There are musicians playing at either end of a long

corridor. In fact, they might even be playing the same piece, but theyve started

at different times, perhaps at different points in the composition so their playing,

while melodically complimentary, never quite synchs up. What we hear in our

hiding place are the echoes of their playing. A kind John Cage chance approach

applied to court music.

I also wonder about the CD itself. It implies mysteries and a kind of suspended

tension. Thats inherent in the music, but could some of it exist because what

were experiencing with the CD is an incomplete work of art? If the music was

intended to accompany a video, then were not getting the full work, just a

portion, like an exquisite black and white rendering of the Mona Lisa. I dont

pretend that the video will reveal any answers to the nature of the piece, but it

will definitely shift its meaning to imply different mysteries and alternate

tensions (though time suspension is the one element that seems essential to any

version ofTA).

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: Re: several degrees of attention

Message: 12/20 In afterthursday@, Robert Henke wrote:

> It seems to be the typical case where > the expectation of the listener has not >

been met.

Indeed, I think the writer of that review was both aware of the different listening

strategy required, but also dismissive of the difference. What fascinates me in

particular about that cultural divide is that much of the shopworn critical

descriptive terminology employed in reviews of classical music often applies

much more effectively to ambient music issues of epiphanies, transcendence,

timelessness. Of course, those are generally lazy terms in either context, but

theyre much more factually accurate in ambient music than in, say, Strauss, or

Beethoven, or even Debussy.

Deeply ambient music like Thursday Afternoon reminds me of how I listen to

improvised music. The first time around, especially in a live setting, the result of

live improvisation has a formlessness to it, because its unclear where its going.

But when you revisit it, you cant help impose some sort of narrative onto it, or

into it well, you can try not to, and thats a receptive state one might aspire to,

but I think there generally is some sort of internal logic, something map-able,

about the decisions the musicians made as the piece went along. So, when

revisiting a recorded improvisation, you know whats coming up, and that makes

the earlier sections seem more like premonitions, instead of something entirely

other from what follows. This might have simply to do with the fact that much

ambient music is built from a set of samples, and one hears those raw materials

in different settings over the course of the work. It might have something to do

with the fact that decisions having been made on the part of the musicians,

consciously or not, theyre decisions the listener can investigate after the fact.

But I suppose what Im getting at, is that having listened to Thursday

Afternoonhundreds of times, I think of it as having a structure, albeit one that

defines itself over time in ways quite differently from the forms of music that

preceded ambient music. First of all, it is incredibly slow, and thus can appear

utterly formless during the act of listening. Second of all, and this is a more

recent realization on my part: it can take months if not decades to really begin to

grasp it fully.

> Just imagine a cover version of it with different sounds.

Have you heard the cover versions of Music for Airports, which the Bang on a

Can ensemble in New York released? They managed to map, notate and then

reproduce much of the album. Different composers tackled the challenge, and

they all handled it differently.

Marc

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: Re: another strategy Message:

13/20 In afterthursday@, Richard Kadrey wrote:

> Before this project, I hadnt listened to Thursday > Afternoon in years

Can you recall the circumstance of the first time you heard the record actually,

this is a question Id like to pose to everyone. Can you describe the initial context

in which you heard the record (when it was first released, or when someone

introduced it to you later on)? Can you describe what your initial response was,

along the lines of Richards initial suspicions?

> To my present day ear TA sounds like > it could be an improvised duet where

the > players have agreed on a key and nothing else.

I had this suggestion of yours in mind when I made my last post, a few minutes

ago, about the way that TA reminds me of improvised music, jazz or otherwise.

This is true, as well, that for all its quietude, given the contrasting elements it

contains, how they come up against each other out of time, TA is arguably

anything but patient or inactive. It may be glacial, but that doesnt mean it isnt

in its own way abrasive, tactile and present.

> I can also hear TA as a new kind of court music, slow > and stately, gentle, but

not fragile.

Definitely. Eno speaks a lot about the commonality between ambient music (to

Roberts point, this applies to music in general that is, give the functional

aspect of all music) and perfume, both serving as a context in which actions

occur, things that can coax along a certain environment, a certain aura or feel for

the space they infiltrate.

Marc

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: more questions Message:

14/20 Two more Im thinking about: Can you recall the responses of people you

introduced to Thursday Afternoon and can you summarize their responses to

the music, and how you described the album to them. Have you had a

opportunity to hear the remastered version of the CD, which came out a few

weeks ago, and can you hear differences between it and the original CD?

Marc

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: answers Message: 15/20 I was over at a

magazine editors house. What have you gotten recently? I asked him. I cant

remember what he showed me, but Thursday Afternoon the video was one

item. I borrowed it, and read the press kit (I guess) or some accompanying

materials. I bought Enos theory hook, line and sinker. (Still do.) The fast-cut

montage style of MTV created homogeny at the level of structure, and led music

video to something of an impasse. Why not video paintings, then?

Viewing the video was a disappointment, though I like it better now than I did

back then. (Bought a used copy about five years ago.) First off, I considered

Enos decision to employ a vertical format (and his suggestion that I turn my

monitor on its side) as silly to a fault. It failed to accommodate my everyday

reality: the way people really use monitors. Was Eno serious about providing an

alternative to music television, about rethinking video in homes? Or had he

merely figured out how to sell an art installation for home use? I dismissed the

video as interesting on paper but in practice about as engaging as a bowl of wax

fruit. Kaleidoscopic images of a model? Ho hum.

I loved the music, though. And I bought the CD soon after seeing the video. (Id

previously bartered with the magazine editor, trading record reviews for my first

compact-disc player.) I didnt do a lot of evangelizing because, at the time, I was

traveling with Eno converts. I recall that, at the time, I was listening a lot to The

Pearl. While I didnt think hoax or possible hoax when I re-listened to Thursday

Afternoon, I did think, Man, Id like to make something like this.

One Saturday, I brought one of my kids bicycles into the house. On the spokes of

the bikes wheels were hard-plastic snap-on beads called spokey dokies. When

the wheel turned, the beads slid up and down the spokes, making delicate

trinkling sounds (gamelan music on tiny bells). I made several recordings

using a four-track reel-to-reel tape deck with different configurations of

spokey dokies. Mostly, I recorded at a fast speed and played back slowly. I then

bounced down these tracks to a cassette tape. Primitive stuff, but a fun

experiment. I really enjoy the work of art that makes me want to make artor to

write.

Best,

Mike

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: amateurism Message: 16/20 I think a

lot of my writing is motivated by a desire to introduce people to music that Ive

found pleasurable. Below is a piece on Eno that I wrote for Pulse! Its for a

general reader. So dont be insulted. It does, however, raise some issues that

weve been discussing, but it broaches one we havent engaged all that fully:

namely amateurism.

BRIAN ENO Ambients highest-ranking amateur

God may have created ambient sounds the rustle and murmur of the world

cupping its hands around our ears. But in our own time, it was avant-garde

composer John Cage (1912-1992), recalling the transcendentalist Henry David

Thoreau, who recommended hearing ambience as music or, more democratically,

hearing all sounds as sounds. Dont buy the idea? You have a hard time hearing the

ubiquitous murmur of traffic as music? The quiet hum of that refrigerator

compressor isnt your idea of sonorous? Cage didnt mind. Call the sounds of

automobiles, airplanes, and photocopiers anything you want, but listen anyway. For

it is in the listening not so much in the making that music is created.

Like Cage, with whom hes often identified, Brian Eno is a conceptualist. With every

finished musical work, theres a corresponding, compelling idea. And like Cage, Eno

has paid particular attention to ambient sound. But there the similarities pretty

much cease. Born in 1948, Eno grew up in Suffolk, England, close to two U.S. air

bases. Records from the PX stores, purchased by his sister, introduced Eno to

American music. All accounts reveal, he was especially captivated by their sonic

textures, by the way records imply physical spaces.

Not long after graduating from Winchester Art School in 1969, Eno joined Roxy

Music. On the bands first two albums, he played synthesizer. Which is accurate by

half. Eno didnt approach the instrument from a pianistic orientation, but rather as

a modernist painter. To him, synthesizers were electronic palettes; they could

fabricate colors beyond the imaginations of their users. Eno maintained (still does)

that he was not a musician. Hardly an insignificant claim, it defined an aesthetic

absolutely crucial to the work he would accomplish after leaving Roxy Music:

Vitality lies, not in professionalism, in the twin persona of composer and virtuoso,

but in amateurism. The amateur is, above all, a lover (from the Latin, amator

lover, devotee, enthusiastic pursuer of an objective).

Eno left Roxy Music because hed lost enthusiasm. Or as he put it, [I]f you want to

make a lot of money in rock music you have one good idea and then you do it again

and again (quoted in Eric Tamms Brian Eno: His Music and the Vertical Color of

Sound). Eno has had lots of ideas. As much as anyone in popular music, he has

sought to explore - to make manifest possibilities latent in recording studios. Its

a motivation evident in his career-defining productions for Talking Heads, David

Bowie, Devo, U2, James and other bands. And its unmistakable in the ambient

music he has been creating and inspiring for going on 30 years.

An oxymoron, ambient music is Enos term for decorative sounds that teeter on

the cusp between melody and texture. It develops French composer Erik Saties

notion of a functional music that, instead of striving with ambient sounds, would

furnish environments, making them more livable. Its ambitions are utopian.

Ambient music is designed to be ignored or to sustain attention as listeners

choose. More often than not, it establishes and maintains a single mood by

initiating a series of musical events that seem self-generating. Typically, its simple

in the way that a painting by Mark Rothko or prose by Raymond Carver is simple.

Its likely to prompt listeners to think or even to say, I could do this! Which is, of

course, the ultimate compliment one can give pop art.

Best,

Mike

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: boredom Message: 17/20 In

afterthursday@, Robert Henke wrote:

> And then I figure out that stripping a > track down to the essence does not > at

all make it more boring, just the opposite. > The less elements, the more you pay

> attention to detail.

Robert also wrote: The critic fails since he assumes he has to find drama instead

of letting go. No wonder that this kind of musical thinking is way more

compatible with Buddhism then with our western culture.

Roberts observations prompted me to recall an anecdote that Cage uses

inSilence and Indeterminacy:

In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still

boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers

that its not boring at all but very interesting.

Eno, on this and many other matters, has to my tastes realized what Cage was

calling for.

I find lots of moments in Thursday Afternoon arresting. (Its as if I anticipate the

ambient equivalent of melodic hooks or recognize them when they pass:

timbres rubbing against each other, tumbling.) But I most enjoy the five minutes

or so toward the end of Thursday Afternoon. That enjoyment, I realize, is

predicated on the 50-plus minutes that precede it. If as Richard so nicely points

out, we can hear TA as the slowest and most sonorous free jazz recording in

history, then its final minutes play like a break, focusing my attention to

appreciate the wash of sonic color that concludes the piece.

Mike

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: train refrain Message: 18/20 In

afterthursday@, Marc Weidenbaum wrote:

> Indeed, I think the writer of that review was > both aware of the different

listening strategy > required, but also dismissive of the difference.

I ask myself, what trained me to hear Thursday Afternoon? I am being only a

little bit facile and simplistic and reductive when I answer, trains. Trains

trained me. They constructed a new kind of listener. Who told me so? The

evidence is widespread. But youll recall that the first piece of musique concrete,

by Pierre Schaeffer, Etude aux Chemins de Fer [Study of Trains] declares as

much. As does Enos Chemin de Fer. I understand these pieces as artistic

distillations snapshots (or holograms) of the railroad refrain. (Hey, and

trains are one reason I knew Roberts work and liked Monolake long before the

beginning of this discussion. Mood informed by momentum.)

I realized a few years ago that, while I could in no way identify with literal

trainspotters, my love for the sound of trains was pretty much boundless. All

types. In any context. From any position (close up or distant; on or off). Trains

are my favorite sonic sculpture (fade in/fade out). Theyre my idea of industrial

gamelan music (a new kind of court music). Or rather, gamelan music as

readymade (a la Duchamp or Lou Reeds, I want to be a machine). Trains

pass behind my house, on average, a couple of times a day. Because I live in a

city, the trains that I typically hear are moving slowly, picking up and delivering

freight.

Ive spent a good deal of time theorizing how trains invented modern ears

(shaped our sonic or auditory consciousness). I wont hold forth on the topic,

except to repeat a hypothesis: trains worked in a fashion that was the inverse of

the symphony hall. In the great concert halls of Europe and North America,

erected in the middle part of the 19th century, the bourgeoisie learned to sit

down and shut up and listen attentively. They learned to focus. (The same with

paintings, too.) At exactly the same time, the railroad fostered another kind of

listening subject: decentered, distracted, dreamy (just the listener that Theodor

Adorno would later deplore). Just as the train led travelers to see the world

panoramically, it also forced people (whether on or off the railroad) to hear

differently.

Onto the sound of the railroad, one cannot help but impose a narrative (as Marc

reminded me). That sound speaks of the most basic narrative: leaving town or

coming home. But as weve been noticing, the urge to tell stories to generate

drama is sublimated in order to enhance atmosphere or mood. It seems to me

that Eno whether directly or indirectly (consciously or not) has thoroughly

learned the lesson of the railroad.

Best,

Mike

From: Michael Jarrett Subject: context Message: 19/20

My last pass through TA prompted me to recall Wallace Stevens poem

Anecdote of the Jar.

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly

wilderness Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was

round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or

bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Play TA and the music can be heard as more or less fitting into (and filling) the

space the context in which it is played. But as Stevens reminds me, TA also

orders the environment. More profoundly, it shapes chaos into an environment,

orders space into environment. (It might also suggest what space sounds like

before it is ordered as environment.) My point is, environments do not

necessarily exist prior to music. (The voice of God orders chaos, creating

worlds.) To lift a phrase from Giles Deleuze, music has the power to

reterritorialize, to reconfigure the spaces that it fills. Film scholars speak of

diegetic and nondiegetic music. Diegetic music has its source (implied or

revealed) in the films story space (its diegesis). Nondiegetic music supplements

the story space: e.g., strings underscoring a romantic encounter, creating mood;

a bowed bass motif that says theres a shark lurking underwater. Anahid

Kassabian, in her book on film music, argues that these terms are misleading;

giving short shrift to sound. She points out that music is not added or applied

to an already created diegesis. Imaginary spaces do not exist prior to music.

Rather music is instrumental in constructing spaces, imaginary or real spaces.

Would it be fair to say that the effect (and the function) of ambient music is less

to fit into particular contexts, than to elicit (to make into instances) the very

contexts into which it will fit?

Best,

Mike

From: Marc Weidenbaum Subject: after after thursday' Message:

20/20 Like the album itself, we faded in, and we fade out. Thanks, everyone, for

having participated. This is the first time Ive tried to do one of these virtual

discussions, and I hope to do more in the future. I appreciate your having been

my guinea pigs, and for taking the time to share your enthusiasm for

EnosThursday Afternoon CD, on the 20th anniversary of its release.

Best,

Marc

Related links: Monolake/Robert Henkes website, monolake.de. Read Richard

Kadreys 64-story Viper Wire series, for free (infinitematrix.net).

disquiet.com by Richard Kadrey December 4, 2005

http://www.monolake.de/http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shortshorts/kadrey1.htmlhttp://disquiet.com/2005/12/04/after-thursday-afternoon/