Pre-prepared music (prepared air) with live guitar improvisation.
Following my ‘The Tscherkassky Tape’, performed at Café OTO in 2023, this piece is inspired by the films of Jane Arden, particularly The Otherside of Underneath (1972) and Anti-Clock (1979). My aim is not to create a point-to-point resemblance or musical equivalent, but to simply produce an affect analogous to the films in a different medium. Through this, to further the development of my own musical vocabulary and responsiveness, in a personal drive towards the universal.
Pertinent issues: capitalist realism – capitalism & schizophrenia. What is mental ‘health’ under conditions of capitalism/neoliberalism/patriarchy/Anthropocene? No answers, just problems.
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Why use prepared air? Admittedly, I don’t read music notation. Obviously, notation is a memorialisation by the composer and a communication to the performer: therefore, a question of memory and practice. Prepared air allows for a more imprecise memory and better miscommunications. Consequently, a different type of performance/practice has to be developed in the moment (i.e. improvised). Prepared air encourages a disclosed composition, or decomposition (rather than an enclosed improvisation), to take place. The interesting possibility is that this gives access to a point where entropy and negentropy (what breaks down and what (self) organises) become indistinct.
N.O. Moore can be heard on recent releases Traktor (Shrike Records, with Iris Ederer and Eddie Prévost) and Under the Sun (Matchless Recordings, with Rachel Musson, Olie Brice, and Eddie Prévost). Upcoming is Chord (Shrike Records) and A Company of Others (Matchless Recordings).
