Two
old favourites, both released in 1982, that are very related for me,
almost like two sides of the same coin, as related as night and day.
Both exploring imaginary terrain, each in their own uniquely
particular way; Eno, in the studio, with instruments, detritus and
field recording, between 1978 and 1982, creating soundscape
compositions, Gilbert/Lewis/Mills, exploring a particular location
and its contents over a one month period to create similar
narratives. Eno, in his liner notes, speaks specifically about the
idea of landscape, memory, and a sense of place. He also mentions the
notion of psychoacoustic space—the idea of using recording
technology to create imaginary spaces and atmospheres: the suggestive
power of sound. Where Eno creates exterior, rural, and perhaps more
lyrical spaces, the world of Mzui is a wonderfully forlorn, and
distinctly urban interior. On Land is like a daytime hike, Mzui an
after dark dérive.
Strange
to imagine Eno's starting points of Fellini and Miles Davis until he
explains it further:
“In
using the term landscape I am thinking of places, times, climates and
the moods they evoke. And of expanded moments of memory too... One of
the inspirations for this record was Fellini's 'Amarcord' (“I
Remember”), a presumably unfaithful reconstruction of childhood
memories. Watching that film, I imagined an aural counterpart to it,
and that became one of the threads woven into the fabric of this
music.
“The
choice of sonic elements arose less from listening to music than from
listening to the world in a musical way. When I was in Ghana, for
instance, I took with me a stereo microphone and a cassette recorder,
ostensibly to record indigenous music and speech patterns. What I
sometimes found myself doing instead was sitting out on the patio in
the evenings with the microphone placed to pick up the widest
possible catchment of ambient sounds from all directions, and
listening to the result on my headphones. The effect of this simple
technological system was to cluster all the disparate sounds into one
aural frame: they became
music.
Listening
this way, I realised I had been moving towards a music that had this
feeling: as the listener, I wanted to be situated inside a large
field of loosely-knit sound, rather than placed before a tightly
organised monolith (or stereolith for that matter). I wanted to open
out the aural field, to put much of the sound a considerable distance
from the listener (even locating some of it 'out of earshot'), and to
allow the sounds to live their lives separately from one another,
clustering occasionally, but not 'musically' bound together. This
gave rise to an interesting technical difficulty. Because recording
studio technology and practice developed in relation to performed
music, the trend of that development has been toward greater
proximity, tighter and more coherent meshing of sounds with one
another. Shortly after I returned from Ghana, Robert Quine gave me a
copy of Miles Davis' 'He Loved Him Madly'. Teo Macero's revolutionary
production on that piece seemed to me to have the 'spacious' quality
I was after, and like Amarcord, it too became a touchstone to which I
returned frequently.”
Mzui's
inauspicious beginings belie the alchemy of the process and the rare,
flinty beauty of the outcome. A large factory space, in Elephant
& Castle, commandeered as the artist-run Waterloo Gallery,
was the physical terrain to hand that Bruce Gilbert, Graham Lewis,
and Russell Mills took on, with various discarded items they
encountered and put to great use. They worked 6 days a week for the
month of August 1981, developing a series of sculptures and
audio-visual environments for their own and the public's interaction.
All recorded, with many tapes given to those members of the public
who played in the space themselves. Apparently many of these willing
participants went on to explore similar territory in their own work.
It would be extremely interesting to try and track down these people
and hear their Mzui tapes: it would lend a whole other aspect to the
existing recorded document. Next to impossible probably, and, leaving
aside quality control issues, the chances of any of these tapes
having survived is most likely slim, but sometimes it's quite curious
what Facebook can turn up in terms of connecting with parts of the
past.
Like
Eno, the imaginative terrain they created on the album of edited
recordings had a very strong narrative focus and sense of place, in
which an entire environment becomes a sounding board. They played
the space. Glass was smashed and things were set on fire. The floor
was ritually polished. It became a living, breathing environment. A
backlog of exhibition opening bottles created the stock for the pile
of broken glass, which was coralled into a roped-off area after a
visit from health and safety. A former Stevie Wonder stage set of
astro turf was cut up to make blackouts. Quite surreal, and quite
Dada, in its own way. The Dada connection given voice by the
inclusion of a loop of Duchamp saying, "In spite of myself, I'm
a meticulous man", toward the end of the LP. This quote was most
likely sourced from the Duchamp interview published on an Audio Arts
tape in 1975 (original interview in 1959), which is now available,
(along with the entire Audio Arts output, thanks to the Tate) as a
podcast:
The
lo-fi nature of the Mzui recordings added
rather
than detracted from the record – giving it the urgency of
reportage. This, aligned to the resourcefulness and intelligence in
the approach to creating sonic environments, and further drawing out
these elements in the editing process, is what gives the record its
power for me – a power which hasn't dimmed since. It connects with
me like electricity. I wrote a review some years ago:
A
recent search on Google maps for Gray Street appears to show no trace
of the former warehouse. Long gone of course, swallowed up in 80s
gentrification no doubt. I used to walk near there quite a bit on
trips to London in the early 2000s (to see Wire, co-incidentally
enough), on my way down to that wonderful emporium of out-there
music, These Records, whose delightful proprieters were always so
patient with my slow trawls through their earthly delights. I never
realised the Mzui location was so near.
Praise
be to Cherry Red for having the bravery to put this out, as it
must've been as near to commercial suicide as any label would want to
go. The only other record I can think of in a similar vein would be
23 Skidoo's 'The Cullling Is Coming', itself largely a document of
live work. Though that was on a smaller sub-label if I remember
rightly – Operation Twilight. One thing that intrigued me for a
long time about Mzui was its title. So opaque and inscrutable.
Apparently it was provided by The Brothers Quay. Though an
explanation was never sought.
