Re: essential loop recordings

[Andre LaFosse <altruist@earthlink.net>]

Hi again Terry,

You said,
>> I think my Terry Blankenship - Entering The
>> Silence CD was unique for 1985, and my Trance Godz
>> Trance World CD from 2000 used looping in a way 
>> that no one had did before.

I asked,
> Could I ask you to expand on this, and provide some
> details as to what you really feel most strongly are
> the unique aspects about them?

And you replied,
> I can't. If you can't hear it I can't explain it to
> you. 

Terry, every track of yours I've heard has featured rubato E-bow drones
that ebb and flow in shifting layers. Now, I consider myself reasonably
well-versed in the concept of guitar looping, and I've heard many, many
guitarists and bassists do the ambient ebowed drone thing, and I really
don't hear anything in your particular use of this technique that
dramatically sets it apart from countless other examples of ambient
looping I've heard.

> I'll see if I can
> dig out some reviews from when those recordings first
> came out. They got some amazing reviews at the time.

I'm delighted that you've gotten good press for your work, Terry, but
what I'm asking you to do is to place your work in the proper historical
context of a technique which MANY people other than yourself and Robert
have been using for at least 35 years.  

If these reviews can do that, then I'd be happy to look at them, and
perhaps educate myself as to subtleties that I might be missing.  If
they're simply praising your music, then I'm glad you're getting
recognition for your work, but that doesn't negate the historical
reality of the situation, regardless of whether you or any of your
reviewers might have been aware of the greater context of what other
people have been doing for five decades.

> Listen to my track "Fire Dance". 
> http://www.mp3.com.au/track.asp?id=8223
> 
> The fact of the matter is that I was doing this before
> everyone except Fripp and Eno. Whether anyone is aware
> of it or not.

Terry, "Fire Dance" is dated as being made in 2000. and I hear some
layered Ebowed guitar loops floating around some dance rhythms.  If you
honestly think no one other than yourself has looped Ebow guitar between
"No Pussyfooting" and your 2000 track, or even done that with dance
music as a foundation, then you're in very desperate need of an education.

If, instead, you're referring to the 12-year gap between "No
Pussyfooting" and "Entering the Silence," then you're still wrong. 
Terry Riley's "Rainbow in Curved Air" came out five years before the
first Fripp and Eno record.  Other people from the San Francisco Tape
Music Center, like Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, and Morton Subotnick
were doing very similar work concurrent with Terry, and continued to do
so afterwards.  

David Torn started looping around 1975, ten years before your solo album
was released.  Jazz guys like Jaco Pastorious, David Friesen, and Les
McCann were doing it in the '70s.  Paul Dresher put out an album with
guitar looping on it in 1983
(http://dresherensemble.org/recordings/pdrecordings.html), and had other
 tape looping work dating several years before that.

Terry, you're a very good musician, and you have an impressive resume. 
But if you want to come onto a six and a half year old looping mailing
list and offer up your own albums as examples of "essential loop
recordings," you really need to put them into a proper historical and
technical context if you want to be taken seriously.

> If anyone else was attempting anything
> even close back then, I certainly wasn't aware of it.

Here are a couple of historical essays written by people who have done
their homework:

http://livelooping.com/researchpaper/index.htm

http://www.audiomidi.com/classroom/software/loops_part1.cfm?cpid=70

Both of these are written by guys who have listened to many, many hours
of looping, culled from the mid-sixties to the present day.  

You yourself say that until you joined this list a month or so ago, you
didn't even know anyone other than yourself and Robert have done this. 
Not being aware of a few decades of history doesn't mean that it doesn't
exist.  

If you want to be recognized as some sort of pioneer of looping, I
would very respectfully ask you to make at least a cursory effort to 
place yourself into the existing, well-documented historical basis
that already exists.


Anyway...  

--Andre LaFosse
http://www.altruistmusic.com