optometryofthespectacle:I got some Mao era Chinese operas on vinyl todayBrian Eno - China, My China
optometryofthespectacle:I got some Mao era Chinese operas on vinyl todayBrian Eno - China, My China - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76qPMv1tCfIPartly inspired by such operas, Brian Eno made one of the greatest albums of his early glam period: Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Eno described the title as embodying “the dichotomy between the archaic and the progressive. Half Taking Tiger Mountain – that Middle Ages physical feel of storming a military position – and half (By Strategy) – that very, very 20th-century mental concept of a tactical interaction of systems.” Important Listening. A Moment: The minutes after a break up next to the army parade grounds. A fitting setting to stage the end of a relationship that had long ago been reduced to tactical maneuvers in an unacknowledged but brutal campaign of psychological struggle. It is the beginning of a rupture in my pathetic life-world but at this present second it has not been historicised as such. Not until I choose to play this song as I walk away from the set (Burning Airlines Give You So Much More - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c5-nw8rzcw) does the moment begin to take on any significance. Only through a song about a Maoist lover leaving for China can I begin to conceptualise this moment (To join the students and go to work in the fields? He somehow cannot imagine her planting rice all day. (If indeed the song is ‘about’ anything given the compositional praxis utilising (controlled) chance integrated error. Eno’s lyrics begin as glossolalia, and words are then found to fit the shape of these abstract vocalisations (See K. Schwitter’s Ursonate http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/schwitters_kurt/Schwitters-Kurt_Ursonate-Merz-No.-24_1932.mp3). Conceptualisation at this moment takes the character of singing along with Eno and crying. But already it has been transformed into a scene from some romantic comedy and has been degraded. -- source link
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