Where is EAI best discussed

[Uli]

I really dig the poll feature.

It always interested me what most people think.

[walto]

It's an interesting question, and I hope more people will vote. It's not exactly a consensus with 10 for speakout, 5 for alley.

[Gary Sisco]

Maybe, but consensus ain't majority rule, either. I'm all for democracy. Consensus is tyranny.

[walto]

Interesting. I'd say that majority rule is often tyranny and that consensus represents an attempt to reach a result that is (at least partly) acceptable to (pretty much)everyone. Kind of the Quaker approach.

In America (though not everywhere, thankfully) "majority rule" generally means that 50% of the population gets 100% of the representation.

[Paul B]

c

[Pete C]

According to the polls, there are more JC posters who think EAI belongs in The Alley than Americans who are opposed to the war.

[Dr Dave]

Electro-acoustic improv. It just sounds really weenie to me.

[Gary Sisco]

Doc -- Who cares what you think is weenie? (Just kidding, but it might be nice, or at least polite, if you heard some of the music before commenting....)

Walto -- Thanks, but I was in way too many peace movement and antinuke movement meetings to think "consensus" has anything over majority rule. What it normally amounts to, in the end, unless you're dealing with a very small group of people with similar thinking, is simply finding something, anything, that everyone can agree with. And that always ends up being the lowest common denominator.

No thanks.

I'd rather go with democracy, so long as the minority can still speak their minds and organize accordingly to *try* to persuade others over to their side.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally posted by Dr Dave
Electro-acoustic improv. It just sounds really weenie to me.

It's TOTALLY weenie. Dude, have you ever seen Olewnick? Or me?

[Gary Sisco]

Yes, both.

[Dr Dave]

OK: As best I have been able to determine, "EAI" is a marketing term devised to benefit the roster of Erstwhile Records. Beyond that, it seems a term so vague as to include almost anything. For example, "Private Psychedelic Reel," a bone-crushing techno tune by the Chemical Brothers and incorporating computer-generated sounds with a live clarinet improvisation fits the EAI description. It also fits the various Erstwhile artists. I must say, I enjoyed reading the review of Bruce Russell's work:

"Things go exhilaratingly awry on Russell's last album, Painting The Passports Brown (Corpus Hermeticum). He thatches coarse feedback patterns over tape loops of sullen drones and chiming thumb piano. On one track, the latter loop, accidentally played backward, spurs him to some especially inspired guitar mangling that sounds like a robot gargling bolts."

I think I could do business with these people!

[Brian Olewnick]

Um, I can't think of exactly when I first heard the term "electro-acoustic improvisation", but it had to be at least in the mid 80s, probably in reference to AMM or similar music, at least 15 years before the advent of Erstwhile records. And I'd surprised if it wasn't in use well before then.

[Dr Dave]

See, I've been manipulated by Erstwhile!

[Ron Thorne]

I'll readily admit to not being completely "up to speed" with respect to EAI, but I voted, nontheless. It is a democracy here, afterall.

Having said that, if this poll doesn't also appear on Speak Out, something's wrong with the methodology.

[Gary Sisco]

Doc -- There are *lots* of other eai labels. More than anyone can keep track of. Electroacoustic has been a term on the STN banner, also, since before there was an Erstwhile at all. It is a flagship label, though, IMHO. It is to eai what BN was to jazz in its glory daze.

[clinthopson]

I vote for Speak Out.

Probably belongs in the Reynolds sub-thread.