Well, me dears, one
would think a thread like this would suck me right in now, wouldn't one?
Problem is, this is what I do all day long--think and write about current compositional trends and techniques. So this is perhaps not as alluring as you might think. Plus, the more I write and think about these things, the more I feel I know so very little. I could natter on for pages about each of Rojo's words, and at the end, I would feel like I'd not so much scraped the surface of things as merely looked at it and said "Yep, that's the surface, all right."
But I had once, in a fit of extreme silliness, proposed to Rojo that I do a thread on the turntable as instrument, so maybe if I say a few things about turntablism now, I can duck out of that proposal!
I first heard Christian Marclay, who was playing turntables before any rap or hip-hop DJs had gotten ahold of same, in 1982 at the Olympics Arts Festival in L.A. It was amazing. He had about a dozen turntables on a large table (you know,
Tafelmusik) and stacks and stacks of vinyl. He plunged right into things, too, setting several turntables going, setting needles down on records (some at the very end where the clicks and swishes are), touching their edges to alter their speed or spinning the platters manually, rocking some of the platters back and forth like pop artists now do, scraping the needles laterally across the surface of the records, ripping one record off and slapping another one on.
It was not only musically exciting but quite an enjoyable theatrical experience as well.
Since then, I've not only collected all the Marclay I could find, but have ferreted out other turntablists (like the very tasty Busratch) and have even found out one or two little tid bits about earlier uses of turntable, including that the first turntable concert was in 1930, put on by Paul Hindemith and Ernst Krenek as I recall. I recently listened to my recording of Stockhausen's
Hymnen, which I had not listened to for quite a number of years. And what do you know? He uses turntables extensively in that piece (set of pieces).
Turntable music is not all scratches and wobbly sound and clicks and pops, either, though it certainly is all of that. There's a really delightful collection on Amoebic (AMO-VA-01), 18 cuts from 16 different musicians, all radically different from each other. You may have trouble finding this in a store, but electrocd has it on their site:
http://www.electrocd.com/en/boutique/amoebic/par_annee/
electrocd is a large Canadian site of new music, mostly electro-something as you have already guessed from their name!
