Thursday, May 1, 2008

Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings-Propellers In Love,LP,1986,Germany/USA




Arnold Dreyblatt (b. New York City, 1953) is an American composer and visual artist. He studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier and media art with Steina and Woody Vasulka. He has been based in Berlin, Germany since 1984. In 2007, he was elected to the German Academy of Art (Akademie der Künste, Berlin).
In his installations, performances and media works, Dreyblatt creates complex textual and spatial metaphors for memory which function as a media discourse on recollection and the archive. His installations, public artworks and performances have been exhibited and staged extensively in Europe. "Dreyblatt's project, maintains its edge--and its importance for the rethinking of identity, history, culture, and memory--by refusing to retreat from or transcend... ...public, archival traces." - Jeffrey Wallen, Hampshire College.
Among the second generation of New York minimal composers, Arnold Dreyblatt has developed a unique approach to composition and music performance. He has invented a set of new and original instruments, performance techniques, and a system of tuning. His compositions are based on harmonics, and thus just intonation, played either through a bowing technique he developed for his modified bass, and other modified and conventional instruments which he specially tuned. He originally used only a steady pulse provided by the bowing motion on his bass (placing his music in the minimal category), but he eventually added many more instruments and more rhythmic variety.
Dreyblatt's mother, Lucille Wallenrod (1918-1998), was a painter.
From Wikipedia
"Dreyblatt's ensemble, consisting of altered, adapted, and prepared instruments are in just intonation and play drones or repeated tones, setting up heady resonances with a contiually changing and complex matrix of overtones. By adding drums and other percussion, and by writing fast, sometimes furious tempos, Dreyblatt avoids the dreamy and sometimes stultifying effect that is a part of so much drone music. The entire six-part title track is lively and vibrant. High Life is similar in spirit to La Monte Young and Alvin Lucier, with its nonstop drone and lavish array of overtones to inspect and exult in."
-Option Magazine
"Arnold Dreyblatt’s ensemble performed a bright, colorful work for winds, strings, guitars, cimbalom... ...an essentially minimalist impulse and a spirit that’s multi-cultural: its heavy drum beat and the freewheeling, almost manic quality of its string and wind writing made parts of the work seem a stew of primitive, ritual musics, both Asian and African.“
-The New York Times
Need to say more?A masterpiece of contemporay music!
get it here

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting this HEAVY jam. this is some of the best shit that came out of the whole la monte school.

much of his discography is downloadable from his site
http://www.dreyblatt.de

Anonymous said...

Just found your blog...lots of very cool stuff from my past on here...

Two I have been searching for...

Blue Daisies "Wilt"

Tupelo Chain Sex "Spot the Difference"

Anyone know where to pick 'em up?

Neu Mejican

Anonymous said...

Hey, great site!

I checked this post out a while ago, but haven't left a comment until now.

This post was my first introduction to Dreyblatt's music, and I've bought 3 of his other albums since then.

As a professional new music composer, I was startled that I hadn't heard of this guy until finding your site.

So much great music. Thanks!