"Tony Conrad is a pioneer, as seminal in his way to American music as Johnny Cash or Captain Beefheart or Ornette Coleman, one of those really savvy old guys whom all the kids want to emulate because their ideas, their style are electric and new and somehow indivisible."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Influences
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber; the High, Lonesome Sound of Bill Monroe.
Sounds Like
"...It's easy enough to make romantic claims for an artist like Tony Conrad. He's one of those guys. Ur-Sixties. Quintessential cult figure. Resident outsider. Rebel angel. The minimalist who came in from the cold. He's got the kind of immaculate credibility that can't be bought and can't be sold. [And how else, otherwise, could he have persevered?] Rumbling under the cultural radar since the Kennedy Era, Conrad is at once first cause and last laugh, a covert operative who can stand as a primary influence over succeeding generations, while pretty much conducting most of his business in obscurity. That is, until about 10 years ago, when the Table of the Elements label finally blew his cover for good. And because he'd kept such a low profile, when Conrad did pop up, the impression made was a good deal more spectacular by sheer dint of surprise. Who, exactly, was this guy? It was an unusual weekend in Atlanta, Georgia, when people began to ask - again. Conrad was having one of his first "coming out" parties, and despite some of the odd circumstances, it could not have been staged more memorably. The Manganese Festival, which doubled as a kind of avant-garde debutante ball for Table of the Elements, went down April 23 and 24, 1994, at the exact same time as Freaknik, the "spring break" for students from the circuit of predominantly black colleges. Atlanta became an urban version of Daytona Beach for three days, with traffic grid locked, boom boxes shouting, and provocatively ample derriere-shaking for mile after mile along Peachtree Street - the main stem that runs into the heart of "The City Too Busy To Hate." The festival was sequestered in a complex of art galleries off an industrial side street intersecting Peachtree (and thus, cut off in such a way that anyone who managed to drive in could not possibly hope to drive back out until the traffic jam subsided many, many hours later). This was ideal, for anyone hoping to maximize the singular nature of the experience. You could check out any time you liked, but you could never leave. Perfect for a first encounter with Tony Conrad. He cut a curious figure, Tony did, in his bowler hat and his shorts, prowling the premises with a video camera, documenting the goings-on as if at some family reunion. In a sense, it was: The gathering tribes included Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth, electric harpist extraordinare Zeena Parkins, avenging Japanese guitar hero Keiji Haino, the anarchic artistes of Faust - Conrad's long-ago collaborators on "Outside the Dream Syndicate" - and the then-unknown, now-ubiquitous wonder boy Jim O'Rourke. Pioneering British improv trio AMM was in the house, as was New Zealand's rare-to-such-shores Gate. This was an unusual assortment of performers, a Lollapalooza for fringe-dwellers, and a model for further electrical storms - such as the All Tomorrow's Parties festival - that would light up the skies into the new millennium. By the time Conrad finally came to perform, sandwiched between the jet-engine decibel bath of Haino and the ritualized freak-out of Faust, even those not in the know were primed for a paradigm shift. The city was in a gridlock, as surely as if suffering a collective panic attack or celebrating a coup d'etat. What better moment to pump up the volume, and tune in to those strange frequencies?..."
"Tony Rocks" (excerpt)
Steve Dollar
New York City
2003
TONY CONRAD (b. 1941) is one of the most compelling figures in 20th century music, a profoundly influential composer whose radical styles resist textbook definitions and challenge accepted notions of the minimalist canon.
At the core of Conrad's legend is his work as a violinist, in which primal, enveloping drones create an oscillating ritual theater. In 1962 he co-founded the groundbreaking ensemble known as the Dream Syndicate. Wielding a drone both aggressively confrontational and subtly mesmerizing, he and his collaborators -- including La Monte Young and future Velvet Underground co-founders John Cale and Angus MacLise -- created some of the most revolutionary music of that – or any -- decade. Utilizing long durations, precise pitch and blistering volume, Conrad and co. forged a "Dream Music" that articulated the Big Bang of "minimalism." However, the many rehearsal and performance tapes from this period were repressed by Young, becoming the stuff of legend.
Following the dissolution of the group in 1966, Conrad played a pivotal role in the formation of the Velvet Underground, then refocused his efforts on experimental film and video; his 1966 masterwork The Flicker is considered the cornerstone of the Structural Cinema movement. Musically, he resurfaced only briefly, to jam with German krautrock progenitors Faust on the 1972 LP Outside the Dream Syndicate, a work of explosive prophecy that to this day retains an undiminished power to startle and excite.
In 1994, Conrad addressed two decades of silence by directing his own ensemble, with the guidance of producers Steve Albini (Bush, Nirvana, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page) and Jim O'Rourke (Stereolab, Sonic Youth, Wilco). The result, Slapping Pythagoras, was as thrilling, vigorous and downright antisocial as any great rock album, and established Conrad's relevance and influence for a new generation of listeners.
In 1997 Tony Conrad completed a ten-year return expedition to the site of the entombed Dream Syndicate fragments to unearth the losses; from them he reconstituted and regenerated the epic 4xCD boxed set, Early Minimalism. Reaching back through time, Conrad wove a mobile narrative over and under minimalism: making music out of history, and history out of music.
Finally, in 2000, these efforts achieved a critical mass, with the controversial release of actual tapes from Conrad's original Dream Syndicate days. Recorded in 1964 and unheard since, Day of Niagara: Inside the Dream Syndicate topped numerous year-end "Best Of" lists and was lauded as "the most historically significant music release of the last 20 years."
The present decade has seen a series of releases that confirm Conrad's indefatigable creative legacy. These include field recordings, piano compositions, film soundtracks, and electronic compositions, as well as his documentation of early, seminal efforts by John Cale (now a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame) and the late filmmaker and performance artist Jack Smith. Taken together, these comprise a remarkable body of work, and celebrate the wild breadth of a spectacular 40-year career.
Quintessential cult figure; resident outsider; rebel angel; Tony Conrad's got the kind of immaculate credibility that can't be bought and can't be sold -- and how else, otherwise, could he have persevered? Rumbling under the cultural radar since the Kennedy Era, Conrad is at once first cause and last laugh, a covert operative who can stand as a primary influence over succeeding generations.
"Tony Conrad is a pioneer, as seminal in his way to American music as Johnny Cash or Captain Beefheart or Ornette Coleman, one of those really savvy old guys whom all the kids want to emulate because their ideas, their style are electric and new and somehow indivisible." Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Conrad invents a new musical language ... unbearably intense and gloriously ecstatic." The Wire
Tony can't respond directly to your inquiries, but thanks you for your enthusiasm and support.
Experiencing you're performance at All Tomorrow's Parties in L.A. seriously was life changing. you made the floor fall out bellow me.
and not to mention hanging out with you after and watching Richard James run around back stage with a couple of dwarfs and a drunk'n couple screwing on a chair, helping you with your equipment and then watching the boredoms was of course such thrill that most people don't believe me when I tell them about it.
anyways i hope Lament Youngs hidden treasure of the past will someday be found and released for people who care more about reality then secrets.
maybe it's too much too ask. But do you remember me? We've both been playing at the Ruin festival in Vienna last year. It was a pleasure meeting you back then. And it is a pleasure to have you as a myspace friend.
Thank you for your contact ... we have all been 'long admirers' of your work, and would like to endorse the comment posted by Graham Bowers on March 16th.
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