Circles of influence
“In terms of digestible nuggets of Harry Partch recommendations to listen to, I’d say the ‘Eleven Intrusions’ are a good introduction.
My dad recommended it to me while we were out record shopping. I thought it was fucking weird. I literally hadn’t heard anything like it before and I think that’s what was so striking. It sounded completely cosmic and exotic. On the cover was this bearded old man, but I put it on and found this rich exotic sound.
Harry Partch was just really before his time in a lot of ways. He’s interesting to me because he swayed between two different worlds: the first one being very free. So he spent a lot of time in the (great) depression as a hobo, and that partly was because he was gay and it was more of a liberal kind of society. He was constantly wrestling with wanting to be accepted by that world at the same time as disagreeing with most of how it worked.
He put out his own music; that must have been in the ’40s and ’50s. He thought performances should look physical. In terms of classical music he really did want to change things and just had the simple logic of if you want to make music, you might as well make the instruments with which to write your music on. It’s another way of giving yourself your own sound, which loads of people do now.
He did a lot of work around micro tonality. Audibly, he found forty-three pitches within one set of twelve notes on the piano, and then he spread it across an organ. He basically adapted some instruments - the guitar, the viola - to fit this new tonality he’d organized, and he demanded physicality - they’re built in mind of performance. So first of all, they look brilliant, and second of all, some of them are built for performance. Like the ‘Cloud-Chamber Bowls’ are hanging and they’re spread quite far away from each other so that when a person plays it they have to move around and it’s quite physical and looks exciting and sounds exciting.
He had really cool names for his instruments as well. He had instruments called ‘The Cry’ and ‘Bloboy’. ‘The Cry’ is a tall thing you can bend; I guess it sounded like a cry. ‘Bloboy’ is basically built out of bellows; it sounds like a steam engine. ‘The Boo’ is a series of six bamboo cut to different lengths to fit the different intonation. He’s got the ‘Mazda Marimba’, which is made out of Mazda light-bulbs. He’s got a ‘Spoils Of War’, which is lots of inert bombshells and bits and bobs.
I think part of him going fruit picking, harvesting and riding the trains was because he was interested in what people had to say and wasn’t so interested in high society and literature and media and any of that stuff. He had a freedom there. He did a lot of handy work for money and places to stay, which therefore built up his carpentry skills, which enabled him to make these instruments. As much as it was a difficult time, that’s where he collected a lot of his skills, lyrics and philosophy.
Also, he doesn’t quite fit into classical music and it also doesn’t quite fit into pop or rock or folk music either. He’s really in his own world.”
Read more Circles Of Influence features from Andrew Weatherall, Mathew Herbert and Gravenhurst.
My dad recommended it to me while we were out record shopping. I thought it was fucking weird. I literally hadn’t heard anything like it before and I think that’s what was so striking. It sounded completely cosmic and exotic. On the cover was this bearded old man, but I put it on and found this rich exotic sound.
Harry Partch was just really before his time in a lot of ways. He’s interesting to me because he swayed between two different worlds: the first one being very free. So he spent a lot of time in the (great) depression as a hobo, and that partly was because he was gay and it was more of a liberal kind of society. He was constantly wrestling with wanting to be accepted by that world at the same time as disagreeing with most of how it worked.
He put out his own music; that must have been in the ’40s and ’50s. He thought performances should look physical. In terms of classical music he really did want to change things and just had the simple logic of if you want to make music, you might as well make the instruments with which to write your music on. It’s another way of giving yourself your own sound, which loads of people do now.
He did a lot of work around micro tonality. Audibly, he found forty-three pitches within one set of twelve notes on the piano, and then he spread it across an organ. He basically adapted some instruments - the guitar, the viola - to fit this new tonality he’d organized, and he demanded physicality - they’re built in mind of performance. So first of all, they look brilliant, and second of all, some of them are built for performance. Like the ‘Cloud-Chamber Bowls’ are hanging and they’re spread quite far away from each other so that when a person plays it they have to move around and it’s quite physical and looks exciting and sounds exciting.
He had really cool names for his instruments as well. He had instruments called ‘The Cry’ and ‘Bloboy’. ‘The Cry’ is a tall thing you can bend; I guess it sounded like a cry. ‘Bloboy’ is basically built out of bellows; it sounds like a steam engine. ‘The Boo’ is a series of six bamboo cut to different lengths to fit the different intonation. He’s got the ‘Mazda Marimba’, which is made out of Mazda light-bulbs. He’s got a ‘Spoils Of War’, which is lots of inert bombshells and bits and bobs.
I think part of him going fruit picking, harvesting and riding the trains was because he was interested in what people had to say and wasn’t so interested in high society and literature and media and any of that stuff. He had a freedom there. He did a lot of handy work for money and places to stay, which therefore built up his carpentry skills, which enabled him to make these instruments. As much as it was a difficult time, that’s where he collected a lot of his skills, lyrics and philosophy.
Also, he doesn’t quite fit into classical music and it also doesn’t quite fit into pop or rock or folk music either. He’s really in his own world.”
Read more Circles Of Influence features from Andrew Weatherall, Mathew Herbert and Gravenhurst.
