Saturday, February 24, 2007

Lawrence Weiner - Niets Aan Verloren/Nothing to Lose (1976), NWW List

Alternatively spelled (correctly or incorrectly) as Laurence Weiner, Lawrence Wiener, Laurence Wiener, etc...I have almost no info on this guy but I do know that this is one of the most interesting and puzzling sound-text compositions I've ever heard: The piece is continuous, ending on one side and restarting on the other. It consists of various people (mostly a woman and a man) spewing off various overlapped phrases (backed by a repetitive music box), most of which are very broad, general, undoubtedly metaphorical questions that could be applied to any part of life ("Is there justification for the mess?" "Does one collect when one passes go?" etc.) and various other responses that seem to be more like musings or additional information to these questions rather than real answers ("Niets Aan Verloren...Nothing to lose. Nothing gained, nothing lost...") But this is all so thick and complex that it takes several listens to really be able to hear everything going on throughout the whole thing. Just as puzzling as the structure and the purpose of the piece is the difference between each side - side B starts off exactly the same as side A and takes minutes to even become slightly different than the composition on side A, but ends being quite off kilter from the first side. It makes one wonder why the artist decided to create his piece in this fashion, as well as whether both sides are seperate compositions or just one long one.

This is one of the most unique things I've ever heard, and one of my favorites from the NWW List. If there's any album on this blog that needs more information, it's this one - I'd love to know more about the motives behind this madness, but then again, I could see how someone else might not be as enthusiastic about this one as I am...

Try it

Also: I think (but am not sure) that there are multiple Laurence/Lawrence Weiners...there are at least two; one of which who is an artist but has worked with sound on occasion, and this one...but there may be even another that works with music too. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is just an FYI to avoid confusion...

10 comments:

Recursos para tu blog - Ferip - said...

Very interesting!

Saluditos desde Argentina!

musicgnome said...

Hot Dog!!!!

J. said...

http://dadaradio.blogspot.com/2007/02/in-english-so-all-you-suckers.html

Anonymous said...

MegaUpload is being a Mega Pain-in-the-ass. I click on the link. Next page says "File is temporarily unavailable". Try again, this time the page has the 3 letters U enter in the box. wait 45 seconds, click download file, wait wait wait. Nothing.

musicgnome said...

Post whatever you want, in whatever format you perfer, whenever you want.

I just don't understand how people complain about getting things for nothing. And, when those "things" are IMPOSSIBLE-TO-FIND, amazingly original recordings, I become utterly dumbfounded.

Let me offset the others by saying, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU...

Anonymous said...

Thunderperfectmind : I wasn´t talking about you ... enough said ...and thanks for the music ...I don't have any problem with you site ...

RĂ¡dio Dada

Anonymous said...

hi, great blog, but the link seems to be dead for this one...
Thanks

thunderperfectmind said...

Radio Dada - My bad, then...So what was the point of posting that link? To tell people about mutant_sounds? I'm already very aware that his site works how it does, and I'm completely fine with it.

graham - the link works fine for me...if it says "the file is temporarily available", then try again in a couple minutes. I'm not sure what else could be wrong with it, could you specify if it's still not working?

thunderperfectmind said...

and I can't forget...thanks for the comments musicgnome (and anybody else) :)

DDV said...

lawrence weiner is a conceptual artist who often uses phrases and/or words in his work. recordings like this one are pretty rare though, so thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_weiner