Only Paul Miller is pretentious enough to attempt this: make a remix album of the entire Sub Rosa catalogue. If I had to guess what the Subliminal Kid’s favorite record label might be Sub Rosa comes to mind, as does the thought that Mr. Miller would categorically reject the notion of ‘favorites’ on wordy, theoretical grounds. Put myself in right context and I would do the same, but the dork in headphones at the end of the day still has his favorites. One of which is, in fact, Sub Rosa, and when I glanced at the contents of this mix disc my neurons pumped transmitters. To my slight disappointment the ‘mix’ in question ends up being something more of an academic list. Still, given my love of original material, I can’t dislike what amounts to forceful spin of the rolodex that is my brain.
I’m being vague. The selections here amount to nothing less than a roll call of twentieth century experimental music and literature. A roll call as complete as you could hope to fit in eighty minutes and still have the results be comprehensible. Roughly two camps of music emerge: drum-n-bass/electronica (e.g. Scanner, Bill Laswell, Mouse On Mars) and snobby white person improv/20th and 21st century ‘classical’ (e.g. David Shea, David Toop, Morton Feldman), with a few notable excursions into world music and hip-hop. In other words, anything a pagan spirit can shake a stick at. Literary contributions are just as central as musical ones. A theme of this record could be that music and literature are one and the same. Bill Burroughs, Gertrude Stein, Antonin Artaud all make appearances. Sometimes it’s just spoken word. Other times it’s all music. More often than not two or three artists are layered together. At its best the musical sounds and the spoken words compliment each other. As is the case with Bill Laswell’s “Oscillations (Vedic’s Live Pop Remix)” mixed w/ Scanner’s “Biological Closure” + Freeform vs. Michael Mayer mixed w/ Kurt Schwitters’Ursonate. Yeah.
But how do you fit a whole label catalogue on one album, especially one as intellectual and refined as Sub Rosa, and retain a meaningful listening experience? You don’t, but there are two approaches one can take towards a truncated synopsis: formless mash-up or telephone phonebook stricture. Miller opts for stricture. We’re treated to some beats, or a minimalist permutation (usually on a tuned percussion instrument), and then a vocal clip. It’s quite dry and rather routine. Perhaps Sub Rosa should give this disc away as a label sampler? Given Miller’s back catalogue I know he’s far more capable than just fading from one record to another.
Besides, the literary selections are the things that really tickle my fancy. I own all the musical selections (or things that sound like them), but I don’t own any original source recordings of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, or e.e. cummings. The latter’s rendition of “Let’s From Some Loud Unworld’s Most Rightful Wrong” is haunting and up lifting to a key. Cummings’ voice gleams as if he’s phonetically annunciating a language he does comprehend, but whose pronunciation he has mastered. A most rightful wrong indeed. Even Patti Smith’s contribution, “Morning High,” is surprisingly coherent throughout its duration. Something she achieves rarely in her verse.
Music is the art form that helps me forget about life; poetry is the art form that makes me glad to be alive. Rhythm Science: two art history seminars and a year’s subscription to the Wire in one convenient tablet. Marcel Duchamp and Tibetan chant standard. It’s hard to go wrong.
Stylusmagazine.com
