interview with keith rowe.pdf

2/27/2014 Interview with Keith Rowe

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issue 12 :: July 2007

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INTERVIEW: Keith Rowe

In April 2007, Keith Rowe, who co-founded the AMM ensemble (1965), toured theU.S. East Coast with Rick Reed and Michael Haleta as the Voltage Spooks. Sevenshows in eight days. Immediately after, Rowe came with Reed back to Austin toperform solo and duo, much as they did a few years ago. I had the pleasure ofinterviewing Rowe the day after the show, and because of my contacts with him onhis previous three visits to Austin, I felt a bit of comradarie which I think generatedan interesting interview. I expect people who read this interview to be familiar withDan Warburton's 2001 Paris Transatlantic interview, which covers Rowe's earlycareer and general methodology. I have tried not to duplicate any of that material.An interesting 1996 interview with Rowe can be found here, made during AMM'sfirst visit to Austin. Thank you to John Pham and Susanna Bolle for the use of theirVoltage Spooks photos from Boston and NYC.

interview by Josh Ronsen, April 22, 2007

Q: How has the tour been?ROWE: Really great. A really great time. Socially, it’s been really nice, which I think is alwaysimportant. Obviously the music is important too, but I think to have really good travelingcompanions, sympathetic people, I always find that important.

Q: Does that affect the music? If you’re in a good mood?

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http://ronsen.org/monkminkpinkpunk/12/austin.html

http://www.amoda.org/artists/artist.php?ArtistID=307

http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/rowe.html

http://www.korperschwache.com/dead/archive/interviews/amm_interview.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnpham/sets/72157600129551527/

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ROWE: I don’t really know, because I think I’ve always avoided touring with people I don’tlike. I felt confident. I think it does [thinking about question]. The music left a lot of space foreach other, a lot of consideration, and I think we were all willing to come in with quite strongideas when we had them, but also to retire and allow the others to speak, but at the same timekeep three very individual voices.Q: You’ve talked about some AMM recordings being three solos and not a group. How do youwork to make it a group where people aren’t assigned a rhythm or melody situation?ROWE: Did I say three solos or three accompanists?Q: The interview was transcribed as “soloists.”ROWE: I think the idea was closer to 3 accompanists, accompanying each other. I think whatyou would find -- and I think it is true of the Spooks tour as well -- is there wasn’t that kind ofsoloistic mentality. People didn’t tend to use soloistic vocabulary, a vocabulary which is isalready full. It doesn’t need anything else. I think you already know this experience too, you’llbe playing with someone.Q: Sometimes I want to put something in the foreground and other times have something in thebackground.ROWE: That’s right. Again, when you’re playing as a soloist, a solo, you are covering all theareas in a sense. If you have three or four people doing that simultaneously, it does get full andunnatural. I think most of us in those circumstances would draw back for a few moments. Partlybecause you’re not helping the situation continuing what you’re doing. But also maybe whatyou said in a way, that the person feels at that point the freedom to do something very soloistic.Being sensitive to that is not a bad thing, because it gives a dynamic to the overall picture of themusic when someone does something very strong.

Q: When you’re playing with people, how quick is your reaction time? When someone doessomething, can you react, [snaps fingers]? Or do you have to pre-plan...?ROWE: I think your reaction times are very fast. In fact, it’s a skill to have four or fivesimultaneous possibilities and you’re only actually utilizing one of them, and you havesomething in the background that you can bring out straight away. For me, I would never try toreact in that sense. I have the capability of reacting in that sense, but I much prefer having aschema you are running through, but a schema that has an ambiguity and open-endednesswhich will automatically accept almost any other activity along side it.Q: And you can adjust it if you need to.



ROWE: A little bit. You could be adjusting the equalization or maybe the volume, you couldpush it or make it more or less transparent, to make it work in a totality. Because obviously inthe end you are always working for the totality of what is happening rather than what you aredoing. And it’s much better in a way to understate what you are doing. Maybe it’s better to bedoing something not so brilliant but adding to the whole in a way which makes it work.

Q: When you use electronics, delays -- and I think you have one of those Loop Stations thatRick [Reed] uses -- you set up electronic loops which are almost another level of playing inwhich you control or conduct as a separate entity. Do you play that level, or let it play itself?ROWE: I think they’re really dangerous. I think the Loop Station is a dangerous thing. I thinkRick is really good in that you don’t detect he is using it. That’s the worst thing, that you candetect it in operation. I think hiding it is best.

Q: I didn’t look at your setup last night, so I didn’t see if you were using it.ROWE: I was, but I have a half-sized one of Rick’s. The RC-20 has a reverse. I use the RC-2.

Q: The reverse seems like the best feature...ROWE: [laughs] Well, I think that is true. For a lot of people the reverse is the feature they



really like. I think the problem with that is that it becomes a kind of trap. I would say one of thethings that always needs to be avoided in music is affectation. And I think these have thepossibility of becoming an affectation.

Q: Where it becomes recognizable what it is?ROWE: Well, it drives you towards making convincing, interesting music, and then I think itbecomes almost a crutch. I’m not saying it is, but there is a danger. The test of that is to not haveit, then you see how much you’ve come to rely on pressing this button for an effect. I think thatwill continually take away from the process of making music.Q: When you use electronics, do you experiment to find something to use, or do you use thembecause you want a certain feature?ROWE: The thing is, the electronics, and I’m not absolutely sure about this, allow for a degreeof abstraction in music which somehow I never felt was there with acoustic instruments. Maybeit is only the difference between lyrical and hard-edged abstraction, but there is something aboutthe abstraction which really attracted me right from an early age. I think with the abstraction,because you don’t have a lot of the other craft/technique elements with electronics, you canhave a degree of fluidity in what you’re doing which I really enjoy. I think electronics allows amodular approach to music as human performance and to reroute stuff not only completely freshbefore you start but also during the performance. David Tudor was the great genius at that.Q: With his matrix switcher...ROWE: Yeah. We do it differently with 1/4” jack leads.Q: Do you rehearse with different orders of the electronics [plugging the electronics in differentorders]?

ROWE: No, I never do. I usually have an idea about it, I have a book. I would think “I wonderif I put the telephone pickup coil into the Loop Station?” What is the possibility of that?Q: And then you do that during performance?



ROWE: No, I get the idea sitting on the bus of waking up in the morning or cooking. I'mconstantly churning stuff over. And then I try to remember it long enough to write it down. Iforget loads of stuff. I might in the afternoon during sound check, I might try it. But the soundcheck is part of the playing. But I wouldn’t rehearse it to death. I don’t sit at home... I nevernever never at home put stuff on the table and rehearse.

Q: I don’t know if you remember, but when you [and Toshimaru Nakamura] gave theworkshop [in Austin], it was in 2002 or 2003, you admonished us for fidgeting around on ourinstruments at home. You said it cheapens the sound or the music-ROWE: The relationship. It dilutes the relationship between you and the instrument.Q: Because it is no longer a special relationship?ROWE: I think it becomes very informal. It has the potential to become very lazy and youteach your muscle memory bad habits. The possibility of bad habits creeping in, unless you’revery strict, just laying back on the sofa playing away.Q: Because you are not devoting all of yourself to playing?ROWE: Exactly. I think it is the concentration. But that’s just my quirk. I’m sure peoplestumble across stuff by doing that.Q: I’m guilty of that.ROWE: What? Stumbling across or...?Q: Both. But just keeping the calluses [on fingers] up...ROWE: Because I don’t play the guitar like that, calluses are not an issue. I try to strip themusic of all of the craft elements.Q: You never use your fingers to fret notes?ROWE: Very, very rarely. I did last night, a little bit. I wanted to make a sound, more likehuman sounds, just rubbing the strings with fingers, but there is no pressure, a very light touch.In fact, it’s a very light touch because the guitar is amplifying, with contact microphones. It’salso laying flat on a table which is resonating as well, the whole surface is vibrating, so thelightest touch on the strings can make a thunderous sound.Q: I always loved the story about the Japanese Zen Master who could produce vibrato just fromvarying the blood pressure in his fingers.ROWE: I have my own version of that in my “pan scrubber” period, when I used, for aboutfour years, a stainless steel wool pad. If you crank up the pickup very high so each sound isreally magnified and you put the pad on the pickup and hold it really still, you can hear theblood coming through. If you can control the blood flow by holding your breath or slowingdown. A couple of times I have used that notion of hearing the blood flow. And the brillo padon the pickup is not Zen [laughs], but it is an idea reminiscent of that.Q: Rick used to play guitar and that was one of his techniques.ROWE: I stopped doing it. I remember playing in Berlin in a small club and I think there werethree sets. I was setting up my table and I looked down and I saw -- I’m not joking -- fifteenbrillo pads on various tables. So I threw mine away and haven’t used any since.Q: What are you using the laptop [a G4 PowerBook] for?ROWE: It come from an old idea. Obviously it is a found object, you can treat it like an objectlike anything else, and it has very rich possibilities outside of its normal music [capabilities]. I



was inspired by a quote from Nicolas Poussin, a painter from the 1600s. I mentioned him lastnight [in his spoken introduction to his solo set].

In a letter he wrote “I who make a profession of mute things,” which always struck me as afantastic way of describing the role of an artist. There is an inherent muteness about things thatan artist brings out the possibilities from muteness. With the computer I use a telephone pickupcoil and try to explore all of the sonic debris the keyboard throws up, and also the Bluetooth[wireless] mouse. Last night I had the pickup coil on top of the mouse and operated it as amouse, say to launch a program, Reactor, and didn’t take any audio from that. The mousechatters [to the computer]. Positioning the pickup coil on top of the keyboard then I am able topickup this chatter. Then if I run that through the Loop Station and run it through the PS-3 andchange the pitch...Q: You pick up the hard drive sounds?ROWE: Yeah, in fact, it’s just one of those things I just do once. When I was fresh into usingit, it [went into standby mode] halfway through the performance and the whole motor went[makes winding down noise], but very gracefully, absolutely beautiful. So at the end of theperformance I turned it off by holding down the power button and had the pickup where Ireckoned it produces sound. Fantastic. But that could become a signature sound so I hope Iwould never do it again.Q: I don’t know about your Mac, but some models have a built-in microphone and I have seenpeople use it in performance.ROWE: Mattin.Q: Aaron Russell did something really beautiful where he bowed the shell of the laptop and thiswas picked up by the mic.ROWE: Bowed laptop. The bowed laptop ensemble [laughs].Q: Do you use that feature at all?ROWE: No. For me that is someone else’s idea. I would try never to steal or appropriatesomeone else’s idea. I would always want to work it out myself.



Q: Are you using the computer programs like Reactor, are you making computer music?ROWE: I don’t very much. When I first got it, I tried using it but it was so slow. Maybe it wasjust me, but it seemed really really slow.Q: It is almost like you have to compose something in advance. Or you can improvise with pre-made material.ROWE: I wouldn’t rule out using the sound capabilities at some point, but just at the moment Ifind it slow.Q: And you still prefer direct manipulation.ROWE: Yeah. I don’t suppose I will do that forever either. There is lots of other stuff which isequally interesting. CD players or iPods, use the platter from the iPod, one of them that has ahard drive [as opposed to flash memory]Q: I have read instructions how to send music signals to hard drive motors to turn the actualspinning of the hard drive platter into a speaker.ROWE: Yeah. I like the exploration. The result, whatever comes out, comes out. Portabletelephones, cell phones, the array of information coming out.Q: How do you approach playing with someone new? You’ve played with Rick once before.Have you ever played with Michael?



ROWE: I had about two years ago in Maryland. We did a performance of [Cardew’s] Treatisetogether. Obviously when you play with someone for the first time, you usually have an idea ofwhat they’re about.

pages 94-115 of Treatise

Q: ‘Cause you’ve heard their stuff?ROWE: Yeah, but just recently I played with a laptop musician I knew nothing about. He didthe first set and I did the second set and then we did a brief collaboration, so I got an idea fromthat, but sometimes people for their solo set have a completely different approach to liveimprovisation, probably good, too, I think. But it was odd because his solo set was veryconvincing, but when it came to the improvisation [with me], I think what I’ve been sayingnow, I really think the computer wasn’t fast enough, or whatever he was doing, wasn’t fastenough to interact in a sense. I felt he was running a program and I was decorating it. There is anatural kind of tentative nature, I think that is one thing that obviously happens, you both try notto get in each other’s way, try not to step on each other’s feet, try to leave space for the otherperson. And that can lead to a tentative and weak environment, and so much so that on thisoccasion after ten minutes I thought, “either I’m going to sit here and make a completelypathetic evening of music, or I can push it,” which I did. The kind of overplaying I wouldn’tnormally do. But that just woke the relationship up and I think I gave him the confidence to



come back at me and [he thought] “he’s making a lot of noise, so I can.” I think sometimes notto make a lot of noise, not to have a lot of activity you have to have confidence. It has alwaysseemed to me, you have to be more confident in what you do to be able to use less material andthe more material you use can be a feature of insecurity. It doesn’t have to be; I’m not saying itis a mechanical relationship but I think it is often the case, people over compensate. The dangeris playing too much so that you’re not sensing the actual environment you’re in. For me, themost important things that you find in the room, in the space, is continually changing. Like lastnight in the first half, the space was a certain kind of space and then after intermission, as I satdown to play I felt that the space was very different. Not good or bad or anything like that, butjust a different kind of feel of space, a tactile sense of space.Q: In relation to being in back of the room and watching Rick and then coming to the front ofthe room?ROWE: Partly it is the psychology of the people there which you can obviously sense, you cansense the kind of attention people are bringing to it. When you’re primarily using visualmaterial, because we are primarily visual animals, the concentration of the [audience] is visual,and in fact when there is no visual there seems to be a process around the irises, scratchingaround, looking to derive information, which is not there. And what one would think wouldhappen that the ears become more active, but the ears begin to close down. But if you have avisual image and a high volume. The ears are closing down from the volume and also closingdown from the eyes taking most of the concentration. So I think that needs a particular kind ofawareness from [the audience]. So often the intermission is totally different. I just sense it wasdifferent. And that was why I choose to talk a little to try to negotiate that different. And thenplaying, the first five minutes is just exploring the space, bringing up a soft drone as a way ofprobing and when it came back, I knew that what I had done was to pull people’s concentrationin the sound. I think prior to that it didn’t feel very good. They were still trying to locatethemselves in the space. A performance is a collaboration between everyone who is there andthe room itself, the quality of the room, the expectations of the people and their actualconcentration; it seems to be tangible.

Q: You’ve played in the room twice before, plus given a workshop, you have a history with thisroom. Have you ever played to video like Rick did?ROWE: I just did a tour of Portugal with a video artist from Oslo. It’s hard.Q: To make music that fits the video?ROWE: Well, I can do that easily. He uses a lot of flicker, generated flicker images,nonobjective images so they are abstractions. We each have an analog monitor on our tables.And what I do is use different pickup coils and radios, like long-wave radios, most televisionmonitors you will pick up the monitor’s process, where it is trying to hold the image in syncaround the edge of the screen, you can pick that up very strongly. You can explore the top partof the monitor, you get a very hard-edged sync with the flicking image. He then takes a anaudio feed which he puts into his Doppler which changes the flicker rates which then changethe sound. So we have a loop. It’s a very hard-edged electronic sound. It’s quite punchy.Sometimes I’ll break away from that and do something contrary. It gets very intense.Q: And you run this through your effects?ROWE: Yeas. We were given some money by a Norwegian arts association to spend a weekaway to experiment with the relationship between radio waves and monitors. It gave me a bigheadache at the end [taps on table]. But it’s wonderful to combine short-wave possibilities,exploring the different aspects of the sync locking, very extraordinary sounds.



Q: That’s a different way of working with visual material than... you make compositions usingelements from people’s paintings. How do you interpret those elements? For example, thecompositions for MIMEO.ROWE: Last night I did something based on the Rothko paintings in the room in London, andin Houston. In MIMEO we’ve also done versions of Rothko in a different way. Looking at aRothko, I think of two elements, the high pitch and the low pitch, the upper part of the frame,[and the lower]. The instructions are always simple for these painting works, at least for Rothko,the hard, hard Rothko, without any consultation from the other people you hit either a very highfrequency or a very low, and without any sense of degradation or deviation, hold that pitch at avery loud volume for an hour and then stop. So it is like being inside a 747 engine [laughs]. Forme, it was to express something that’s almost hidden in Rothko, the terror, the sheer terror of thepainting, the terror of the process and the way the process partly causes suicide. All thedifficulties of making that, for him. I think Rothko reopened things, like Feldman, very soft andgreen, and I think a romanticized version of it, and understandably so. And we have a soft inRothko, which is the same instruction choose a high or low frequency and play it incredibly softfor an hour. The Caravaggio we used,“The Taking of Christ,” (1602) which was a lostCaravaggio and only recently rediscovered. It is too complicated to explain now, but there isscheme involving John Tilbury as the Christ figure, the acoustic instrument surrounded byelectronic ones, and the electronics betraying the acoustic instrument. John Tilbury is actuallybetrayed inside the piano [Cor Fuhler performing directly on the piano strings], his ability tomove is restricted. But not aggressively, no one is trying to stop him.

Q: Is he aware of this, like Christ, does he know the betrayal is coming?ROWE: We talked about it, but I'm not sure. I thought he was, but maybe I didn't make it clear

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enough. I gave him drawings of the hands. In the painting the hands of Christ are fairly uniformin composition, which is usually interpreted as resignation, and I encouraged John to use thathand. In the performance I imagine he must have known, because we had a press release, and itwas in the program and we had a press conference the day before. John was there; we alldiscussed it. The last painting project with MIMEO we did, we just finished it and it will bereleased in a few weeks is based on Cy Twombly.

As you know, Twombly was a cryptologist in the army and part of that he had to be able towork under difficult circumstances which involved being in the dark. And you know the legendof painting blindfolded and using the wrong hand... I thought about how we could do a versionof that in MIMEO, so what I got people to do was each person in their home take a 60 minuteCD-R and put onto this about 2 minutes of music, 2 minutes of sound, spread over the one hourof time, and while doing this, think about what the others could be doing, but obviously notknowing, and to be considerate of the other people, and think about Cy Twombly's paintings.Everyone then sent their CD-R to Marcus Schmickler, who piled them on top of each otherwithout listening to them, and then sent the master, having not listened to it, to the record label[Cathnor], who agreed to print it without listening to it. So the label boss, Richard Pinnell, hisidea is to go to [Sound] 323 and buy it over the counter and listen to it.Q: Can the people at the plant listen to it, to master it?ROWE: I don't want to make a fetish of it, but the idea was that none of us should listen to it.So it is like taking the blindfold off and you have the work.Q: Are you playing blindfolded, or with the wrong hand?ROWE: AMM was often played [lost to tape change], and in the Scratch Orchestra we had apiece called “Houdini Rite” where you’re all tied up with rope. For example, you could doRachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with John Tilbury at the piano with his hands tied behindhis back.Q: Was he playing backwards?ROWE: He tried [laughs].Q: Rothko and Caravaggio are interesting together because of their intensities, Caravaggio’sblack backgrounds and Rothko’s color fields. Do you see a link between that?

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ROWE: That’s right. Particularly in a Rothko. I think Rothko said the ideal viewing distance iseighteen inches from the surface of the canvas. Eighteen inches and you’re totally immersed init, it is an intense viewpoint, there is nothing else in your world when you are that close to it. So



the high volume comes from that in a sense. For the question of the color in Caravaggio, wetalked a little about that fact that Caravaggio hardly ever used blue in his paintings, which is oddgiven where he lived [Rome], but what we worked on more was the black and white, thecontrast, the tonal quality of the painting rather than the dramatic. In fact, what we used, if youlook at “The Taking of Christ,” it’s almost like a photographer’s flash, a scoop photograph of anarrest. It’s almost a 1600’s version of some famous person being arrested. So, slightlyhumorously, we used flash guns in the performance to trigger interference in the radios. It’s atechnique that Jérôme Noetinger particularly used over the years. The flashes replicated thattechnique of painting, that very hard tonal quality.Q: There is a Caravaggio in Fort Worth, if you ever go there. It’s an early one, the one of thegirl stealing the boy’s ring.ROWE: His paintings often have tricksters and card sharps [actually, “The Cardsharps” is theCaravaggio at the Kimbell -Ed.], people stealing something.

Q: There’s always a sense of story, not just people displayed.ROWE: That was one of the things about the taking of Christ, is that you have a sense ofanimation of the profiles. In fact, everyone is in profile except for Christ. You can imaginemaking an animated film of the hands. And in the painting there are references to earlier works,the fleeing nun on the left hand side is taken from an earlier painting.Q: Have you thought about turning your paintings into music?ROWE: In a sense, I’ve always considered what I do on the guitar as an act of painting. At thevery least the process of painting.Q: The physical gestures?ROWE: No, the process from the ground upwards. For example. in the world of musical arts, Ican change... and I think this is one contribution in our area of music, I think in the world ofmusic generally speaking, originality is not something on top of the list. If you go toconservatory, originality is not what music is about. Not a particularly good idea, I think. In rockand roll you have a little notion of originality, you try to find the new sound, but there is also alot of copying, a lot of product. But in the music we make, there is much more a notion oforiginality. Finding your own voice is a major part, and for a lot of people, the most importantpart. So I think I had that idea right from the start, certainly in the early to mid ‘60s. I thoughtmy primary responsibility was to find a new angle for the instrument, like in painting, searchingfor a new angle. That’s what you do in art school. I’ve always considered what I’ve done ispainting, and for me it is the perfect painting, there is no commodity, it can’t be traded like apainting can. Improvisation was a perfect way of making a painting, so I could be concerned



with all the issues of painting.

Q: Does that imply that an improvisation is one distinct thing that you build up through layers orthrough time?ROWE: Yes. There is a slight problem there because if you line ten or fifteen Rothkos up, youcould say they all look the same, like oak trees all look the same. But the trees are all different,and I think improvisations can be like that. I think that is quite legitimate to have theimprovisations to be very same-y. And you might not have always caught me saying that, at onepoint I might have said that they should all be different. But I think there should be thatpossibility. When you go to hear a Haydn string quartet, there are no surprises, are there? Interms of newness. People listen for the exquisite exposition of the quartet. They have a Haydn-esque quality to them, they’re always Haydn. Same with Schubert. Maybe we have in ourmaturity, as a group of people working on this music, as a community, what we have to thinkabout this issue of newness, of freshness, and maybe there is also room for repeating something,what you’re getting involved in is the exquisite nature of this exposition rather than the newness.It still seems to be in the air where everyone needs to be creating new stuff all the time. I haveno dogmatic stand on this, I’m not thumping the table, but it does seem to me that we should bethinking about it.Q: How much new music do you listen to? I’m sure people send you things all the time. In fact,I’m about to give you something.ROWE: Quite a lot. I think it is still vibrant, the world that we’re in, people are working hard,very conscientiously. Of course, there are some people who think we’re going through a crisisat the moment. In a way, if we do have a problem, we need more people who have spent time inclassical music, as opposed to the people who have been brought up on rock and roll. One ofthe important things in AMM was the inviting of classical performers. This was important forus. I think it true of our whole scene. We badly need people who have another kind ofperspective.Q: What about from other cultures?ROWE: Oh, there are many from painting, aren’t there? Voltage Spooks, three people from artschools, art backgrounds. Just last night, two or three people I talked to were art students. Itseems there is a lot when it comes to people involved in the visual arts. I think there is a realconnection between the visual arts and the way the visual arts have developed and this type ofmusic, this approach to music.Q: And other geographic cultures, the Middle East, for example?ROWE: Well, that will come, presumably, because we saw the effect the Japanese had on thescene, pretty dramatic, almost as dramatic as the G3 computer appearing.Q: I was surprised to find there was a lot of performance art from Japan in the 1950’s, which israrely discussed.ROWE: I think there were a lot of interesting developments around, from Italy, Japan, peoplelike Kosugi, and Toshi Ichiyanagi. I think there have been a couple of movements which havepassed us by, I think we could have derived more from them, like Fluxus. I think we’re still verymuch orientated towards a traditional way of performance.

Q: Last year you worked with Bill Thompson in Scotland. He’s one of our friends who movedaway. What did you do with him?

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ROWE: I worked in a festival right in the center of England called Darby, and we did Treatise,some sound recording, "Pondlife" with Lee Paterson, very interesting. And later in the year, inNovember, I went to Bill’s sound conference in Aberdeen. I went up and played with 2musicians from the Indian subcontinent, Rohan de Saram [cello] and Rajesh Mehta [trumpet],and that was actually very different to be playing with them. Raga is a very different way ofapproaching the instrument than the normal, European improviser.Q: I imagine they were more familiar with Western traditions than you with Indian traditions.ROWE: Absolutely. Rohan spent his whole life in the Arditti String Quartet, so he knows allthat inside-out, backwards, upside-down, reverse. Rajesh has a multi-arts discipline, deeplyrooted in the Indian tradition, too. Which, the Indian tradition, SriLankin improvisation hasalways been a very strong part of the culture, hence a very strong part of the classical music,too. For them, improvising is very normal.Q: Indian improvisation has certain restrictions, just like our improvisations, a raga uses aparticular scale, uses a particular rhythm at the beginning and a different one at the end...ROWE: I think our restrictions are obviously different, but are equally important. I think therestrictions are more important than the freedoms, in a way. One restriction which I would go sofar as to say is absolutely essential is that there should be a reason for everything you do. In theworld of painting, the expression would be every brush stroke has to be justified. Somehow, inour music, we seem to be terribly wasteful, we have lots of stuff which isn’t absolutely needed.Q: I know you are influenced by Jackson Pollock. How is the flicking/splattering of paintjustified? Or was it just the passion behind his actions?ROWE: The genre, not always--some of the drip works are just one or two lines, almost likecalligraphy. Take John Coltrane with the “sheets of sound,” I don’t feel there is any superfluousmaterial in there at all. He put into it what it needed to have that sensation that he wanted. I thinkit is always like that. All I am saying, we should think about that a bit more. We should thinkabout justifying everything.

http://www.rohandesaram.co.uk/

http://www.rajesh-mehta.com/



Q: And thing brings us back to your admonishments against fidgeting. I forget the actual wordyou used [in the Austin workshop].ROWE: Roland Barthes’ expression was “the petty digital scramble.” [laughs]Q: I’m sure you’ve read "Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism."ROWE: [laughs]Q: I haven’t done my own translation from the French, but it seems he is attacking you forhaving a personal style, listening to the people you play with and releasing CDs.ROWE: I would have to admit, I haven’t read the French version. I only read it the day beforeit was released. I got an email from Mattin the afternoon before the release and said this title itcoming out and hoping I wouldn’t be offended. So I wrote back and said, I wouldn’t beoffended if it were intellectually coherent. And then he sent me a link to the text and I readthrough it pretty quickly. I felt intellectually irritated and annoyed, insulted by the lack of rigorin the discussion. Particularly that he used “Stockhausen Serves Imperialism” as a launching padfor this in the title. If you read Cornelius’ essay, whether if you agree with it or not is anotherissue, if my memory serves me right, why he says Stockhausen serves imperialism is thatStockhausen 1) detaches himself from the progressive avant-garde, 2) in the manner of thenotation changes the relationship between him and the performer, and 3) goes around talking alot of mumbo-jumbo, which maybe has something to do with religion. There are some realissues there, about whether you detach yourself from the progressive avant-garde, what doesthat mean, why would you do that, what are the consequences of doing that? The way youchange your relationship through the notion with the performer? I can see how the concepts ofarrogance, godliness, I’m not saying fascism, but you can see the issues there. there are issues tobe discussed, whether you agree or not. And then the whole thing of justifying your work andthese kind of extraterrestrial backgrounds, again there is something to be discussed. I think thereis something there. When I read the [Mattin] I felt it was really cheap, nasty stuff. Maybe Ishouldn’t say this, but sometimes I think it is not me they are getting at. I wish they were morehonest. I think they are having a go at Jon Abbey [Erstwhile Records], partly because he’sAmerican and partly because he spent his own money on promoting a label. I see much more todo with that than anything I’ve done. Personally, I don’t think I have served imperialism. If Ihave, I would like to see the evidence.Q: Not more than any of us do.ROWE: Not any more or less than the next guy.Q: This is something I think of myself, but I going to point my finger at you, but having anApple laptop, using these electronic devices, releasing CDs... there is no alternative mode todoing that kind of stuff. Having an Apple laptop means there are people in Singapore or whereever who are getting paid a dollar a week to make these components. There is no way to getaround that if you want access to this advanced technology. Do you ever think about thoseaspects?ROWE: Of course, and in fact [my] last solo CD, “Harsh,” was about that, was about theability of harshness in our genes, the slave labor, the harshness of that is invisible. I think ourlives implicated in a way. Clearly. In Nantes, there is quite a strong movement for Linux, anti-Bill Gates, anti-Macintosh. Downloading, only using open-source software.Q: But you still have to run that on chips which you can’t make yourself.

ROWE: No, but in the end, they would say you have to do the best you can. I really don’t have

http://www.mattin.org/recordings/Keith_Rowe_Serves_Imperialism.html

http://www.ubu.com/historical/cardew/cardew_stockhausen.pdf

http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/



a problem with it either way, within limits, of course. I think maybe both of us would not buysoftware from a company which we knew was contributing to an Italian Fascist march orsomething. I think there probably are things we could do if we know, but it’s a big mess. Youjust have to do the best you can. If you don’t run an Apple Mac, you’re taking a risk there...Q: If I want to be a progressive Leftist, do I have to carve my own instrument? Generate myown electricity? I don’t have answers for myself.ROWE: No, like you, I’m aware of what the issues are. I’m also aware that one can deludeoneself into thinking that you’re making a some very big statement about it and actually itwouldn’t matter a hill of beans. I can see that possibility too. Maybe in the comfort of your ownhome, you can feel very righteous in a sense. It’s like coming to America, because primarilybecause of the war in Iraq. But then I look at it differently. I come to Austin, Texas in a way tosupport the people who I want to support in that culture, which is actually in opposition to a theculture that supports the war, those families, those political institutions. I think to do a VoltageSpooks tour with these guys in seven cities supports those alternative cultures. I feel that’s whatI will do. I really understand the other view, not to come to America. You have to make achoice. I’m not going to be sanctimonious about what I’m doing.

In June, Rowe returned to Texas, to perform at the Rothko Chapel in Houston.Loren Connors and then Rowe performed solo sets I cannot describe. Being in theRothko Chapel with 160 other lovers of music, hearing Rowe exceed himself,hearing Connors' beautiful phrases and shimmering chords was a magicalexperience. The show was arranged by Dave Dove, the trombonist and teacher.

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