Stockhausen, the original crate digger/sampler/art school oddityu
I was listening to Kreuzpiel and Zyklus as I was reading the article. So that I could experience Stockhausen all the more as I explored his work.
I really enjoyed his discussion about sampling, and tales of visiting the musee de L’homme to sample different ethnological instruments. It was likely revolutionary in his day but for us,a generation raised on MPcs and Emcees, and hip hop and electronic music, his brand of sampling is rather old hat.
Even though Stockhausen has this real art school purity and approach to rhythm and tonality, dismissing repetition and “chords that sound nice” as hackneyed or boring, he and many of the artists he mentions, sych as Senfi and Webern, all share the same crare digging sensibilities as the kind of musicians Stockhausen doesn’t particularly care for.
I call him the original crate digger because in many ways, he’s the proto-snob, the original hipster DJ, thumbing his nose up at the familiar “or western,” forever in search of the new and authentic, and much more driven by the idea of exploration than of creating or enjoying anything simply for it’s aesthetic value.
Zyklus is pretty cool though.