Last Friday morning, during my fourth show with Ambient Transience, I received my first real life hater-call on the request line.\u00a0 Being the sensitive shmuck that I am, I couldn\u2019t help but take it to heart.\u00a0 \u201cCan you, like, play something with lyrics?\u201d — the young woman\u2019s tone clearly indicated she was unaware of the simplistic beauty of early avant-garde musicians; she was not one to appreciate the pleasure in such repetition, as the avant-garde genre\u2019s aim came to be.\u00a0 So here\u2019s my late and probably pointless rebuttal to my first complaint call.<\/p>\n
Professor Pultz, my art history professor teaching art from 1945 to the 1980s, began playing Steve Reich\u2019s \u201cCome Out\u201d at the start of class last Monday.\u00a0 Although the majority of my classmates continued to chatter for the first three minutes of this looping sonata, I couldn\u2019t help but become entranced by the repetition of words; each statement of the phrase \u201ccome out to show them\u201d created a new beat, in turn building a unique momentum with each recurrence.<\/p>\n
The artists of the identically named artistic movement intermingled with such musicians as Steve Reich, Terry Riley and John Cage, among others.\u00a0 John Cage\u2019s involvement in many of Robert Rauschenburg\u2019s simple imprints represented the defined connection within the movement.\u00a0 The influence of simplicity within ready-made objects, as utilized frequently with the avant-garde artists, compelled the music with little to no true musical elements to it.\u00a0 Such movements encouraged its audience to look beyond what is bluntly put in front of us, and notice the beauty of everyday occurrences.<\/p>\n
These mid-century musicians undoubtedly influenced my ambient saviour, Brian Eno, and his desire to find alternative forms of beauty in the most minimalistic fashion possible.\u00a0 Eno takes avant-garde music one step further, by layering single tones to create his ambient complexity.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, dear listeners, don\u2019t take what you hear on my show at surface value, but please try to be conscious of what the lack of music really symbolizes, for the method of production for the music may prove to be more valuable than the music itself.<\/p>\n