Historical "Ghosts"

The chapter on Robin Rimbaud, aka "Scanner", was mildly interesting. His statement: "My work has always explored the relationship between sound and architectural space and the spaces in between information, places, history, relationships, where one has to fill in the missing parts to complete the picture." seems to sum up the ideas behind his work for me. I looked up some more information about the Scanner and his career and he entered into his later status as dance music innovator through other "avante garde" music styles and experimental film soundtracks. I was first exposed to the Scanner in a documentary I watched about electronic music about 8 years ago but I wanted to find some examples of his work to refresh myself. I couldn't find the "Esprits de Paris" he writes about in the chapter but he has some good work that I did find. His work is more cohesive as "traditional" dance music than many of the experimental musicians we have read about in Sound Unboand, and really quite good...





I also looked up "the cut up method", and William S. Burroughs, who popularized the technique. The cut up technique is achieved literally by taking works and cutting them up, reassembling in new ways. I am posting a 7ish minute clip from a movie of Allan Ginsberg interviewing Burroughs, which demonstrates the cut up method and has some interesting visual "mashup" techniques also. This is a literary technique that I had not heard of previously and it certainly ties into the music technique of sampling other people's work and recombining to make something new and different. The passage that Burrough's reads over the clip is quite intersting, though gritty, and is a "portal" into the historical flavor of "beatnickery" and the mindset that accompanied this brand of artist. The somewhat morbid, angst-ridden, junkie-punk lifestyle seems to lend itself well to the literary style of the cut up...