Elliott Sharp: Tectonics-ERRATA

Elliott Sharp: Tectonics-ERRATA

As a child I was fascinated by everything that was futuristic and electronic. My Tectonics project may have its roots here. I read science fiction books from a young age and had aspirations of becoming a scientist. Whoever grew up in the USA in the XNUMXs was constantly and unscrupulously bombarded with propaganda about »scientific progress«. My father designed microphones and loudspeakers, so I saw them every day.

Music was also always present: classical piano lessons – I almost died from it – and later classical clarinet. I then amplified my clarinet with home-made fuzzbox distortion devices, and equipped with this, I played Jeff Beck solos at the first band performances.

In 1968, at seventeen, I came to Carnegie-Mellon University Pittsburgh on a grant from the National Science Foundation to work on switching systems for a project called Spelltalk (which recorded the sound curves of phonemes on film; an opto-electronic device "read « them and translated them into language-like sounds).

I spent a lot of my time in the workshop experimenting on an Ampex seven-track tape and building fuzz boxes and ring modulators for the electric guitar I had just gotten. Every night, between midnight and 4am, I DJed for the college radio station, WRCT. Thanks to the well-stocked library I found there, I was able to broaden my musical horizons beyond Jimi Hendrix and country blues, towards Xenakis, Gamelan, Stockhausen, India, John Coltrane, Ba Benjelle Pygmies, Ornette Coleman, Ligeti, Korea, Harry Partch, Albert Ayler and much much more.

Then, when the Vietnam War raged and a large part of scientific research drifted into the sphere of influence of the Department of Defense, I knew that my calling would be music. While studying anthropology at Cornell University, I listened to Robert Moog's lectures on synthetic sound generation and played in various psychedelic and free jazz bands.

At Bard College and graduate school at the University of Buffalo, I worked with EML and Moog synthesizers and the Music IV programming language. I began developing projects combining analog sequencers and synthetic drums. I also mixed improvisations on guitars and clarinets/saxophones: here I was able to use special playing techniques and then process the sound with modulators, filters and echo effects.

These trials also led me to building new instruments: slabs, pantars and violinoids, double-necked fretless guitars, and extended-range eight-string basses. In the conceptual area, I have drawn on chaos theory and fractal geometry for my music, algorithmic experiments, acoustic phenomena - all under the heading "ir/rational music".

Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, I began immersing myself in hotspots like the Mudd Club, Tier 3, and Danceteria. I basically lived with one ear in an avant-garde-formalist world and with the other in a strange mixture of no-wave punk rock and what I heard in late-night dance clubs. In 1986, when it was easy to get hold of an Atari ST computer and M software, I came up with my Virtual Stance project. I wanted to create harsh, harsh soundscapes with polyrhythmic synthesizer grooves that are very techno-like.

At Virtual Stance performances, I combined the live electronic processing of samples and sequences with MIDI-supported processing of my guitar, saxophone and clarinet playing. This is documented on the LP Virtual Stance (Ear-rational, 1988). The second episode of Virtual Stance was called Looppool (Ear-rational, 1988); mentally, she moves further in the direction of alienated dance rhythms, extraterrestrial atmosphere and free improvisation. In 1989, I integrated the Buchla Thunder into my hardware system, which allowed me to massively manipulate the sound in real time, literally at my fingertips.

In 1994 the project got a new name: Tectonics. And, more importantly, I switched to an Apple machine, which is smaller and more powerful. The first Tectonics CD came out in 1994 on the Atonal label. The Rollins Band's bassist, Melvin Gibbs, and the vocalists Dorit Chrysler and KJ Grant presented themselves here with aggressive electro rhythms and a futuristic, extremely fast dub reggae.

The project continued to unfold, and a second recording, Field & Stream (Atonal & Knitting Factory, 1996), incorporated jungle rhythms and techniques, although the source material I used was very far from typical breakbeats. The eight-string bass guitar was used at the live concerts, as well as various electronically adapted brass instruments and a Powerbook with the programs M and Cubase (later LiSa and Max / MSP).

The third Tectonics CD, Errata (first released by Knitting Factory, 1998) digs deep into chaos and glitch music, distorted timbres and insanely twisted rhythms. Tectonics has performed in Berlin, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Brussels, Lyon, Zurich, Kyoto, Ljubljana, Bern, Vienna and Manaus (in the Brazilian state of Amazonas).

Elliot Sharp
Translation: Michael Herrschel