A Brief history of Anti-Records and Conceptual Records

Ron Rice

Following is an excerpt of the original article. No editing was done.

1903 Thomas Edison gets the ball rolling by developing sound recordings on cylinders. This same year, the chocolate manufacturer Stollwerk creates a children’s player that reproduces music etched in grooves in chocolate.

1923 Lazlo Moholy-Nagy recognizes the unprecedented efforts of the Italian Bruitistes to broaden our perception of sound. He expands on their noise-based developments by “reinventing” the record. In an article in Der Storm #7, he outlines the fundamentals of his experimentation: “I have suggested to change the gramophone from a reproductive instrument to a productive one, so that on a record without prior acoustic information, the acoustic information, the acoustic phenomenon itself originates by engraving the necessary Ritchriftreihen (etched grooves).” He presents detailed descriptions for manipulating discs, creating “real sound forms” to train people to be “true music receivers and creators”. The importance of his work is two-fold - for his creative contribution to the aesthetics of sound and just as importantly for the questions he raises about the relationships (real and perceived) between sound artist, performance, recording medium and listener. Moholy-Nagy bypasses traditional modes of music reproduction and distribution by giving concerts at the Bauhaus school, performing with manipulated discs. In many ways he sets the stage for the vast, diverse lines of development that can be classified as “anti” or “conceptual”.

1936 Edgard Varese experiments with records, playing them backwards, varying speeds, etc.

1939 John Cage “Imaginary Landscape #1 “, a concert for two record players with variable speed, test records, piano and cymbal.

1952 John Cage “Imaginary Landscape #5, a concert for 42 records.

1964 Robert Watts (phono records): “…I made a series of spray-painted records for a Fluxus performance at the Fluxstore on Canal Street. These were played by the audience, and as the paint wore off, gradually the music was revealed.” (From Extended Play - see bibliography).

1966 Ken Friedman “Zen for Record” A reference to Nam June Paik’s “Zen for Film” this record contains no sound and offers no suggestion for the production of sound in conjunction with the record. It is silence. Various versions are distributed, with blank records and sleeves and with painted ones.

1968 Tim Ulrichs “’Schleifpapier- Schallplatten”. Thirteen discs are made from commercial sandpaper of various degrees of courseness. With blank centre labels in place, these are billed as “monosandpaper records.”

1972 Arthur Kopke “Music While You Work, Piece #1” On an otherwise traditional disc, spots of glue and scotch tape redirect the stylus, creating fragmentary music and noise. An edition of 150 copies is produced through Edition Block, Berlin.

1977 Boyd Rice begins experiments leading to the manufacture of records with looped grooves and multiple centre holes for off-axis playing — Non “Knive Ladder / Mode of Infection “and “Pagan Muzak.” These records are playable at any speed and maximum volume is suggested.

1987 Peter Lardong creates little chocolate records, playable by eating them. This same year John Berndt conceptualizes the record by scratching on a blank record as part of a performance at the Berlin Apartment Festival.

1988 Peter Fischli and David Weiss create “Schallplatte”, a selfmade, self-molded record made of Beracryl, a kind of rubber. Playable on a record player with some risk, the sound is of extremely muddled, low-fi disco music. 120 copies are made and distributed in Parkett Magazine, Issue # 17.

1989 Honeymoon Production releases “Manipulation Muzak”, also on RRR in an edition of 100 - a palm-sized chunk of raw vinyl with instructions on how to melt it, flatten it, and cut grooves in it. This year RRR releases the famous “’Montage” anti-flexidiscs by AMK. These cut up and recombined flexi’s are perhaps the most successful in the RRR anti-series, originally released in an edition of 100, then widely performed and recorded for traditional release on several record labels.

1991 Ron Lessard/RRR releases “RRR-100” Not officially part of the RRR anti-series, this is a compilation of 100 looped grooves by 100 artists squeezed onto a 7” record- Boyd Rice’s now classic technique taken to its most extreme conclusion. This superb package creates a new awareness of the listening/playback process by forcing the listener to remain seated by the turntable, subjectively determining the length of each composition and physically advancing the needle to another. Also questioned is the idea of authorship–m any of the works are plagiarized snippets of sound, and it is often difficult (with 50 tracks to a side) to determine which piece you are listening to. Tom Cox T.A.C. follows up his anti-tape series with “Cut 2 a tape kit containing an empty cassette shell, a razor blade, splicing tape, and a length of magnetic tape with sounds borrowed from the Kapotte Muziek project “Cut”. The listener is required to cut, splice, assemble and playback.

RON RICE

Was editor in chief of H23 magazine between 1971 and 1981. He was last seen Pasadena, CA entering a donut shop with a cold latte in his left hand.