ahorton <ahorton@vt.edu> wrote:

I'd really like to see a non-rude, non-confrontational yet honest question

that goes something like this:

"Ms. Mori, don't you feel that it's misleading to mask all of your musical

endeavors with faux-highrbow language? You've simply used drum machines and

samplers, and more recently MAX MSP, to make music- and yet, you insist on

using lines like 'I extrapolate binary systems of sonic fragments to further

explore the multiethnic diaspora', when in reality it would be more correct to

say 'I bash buttons and make interesting beats."

This isn't to accuse or to be hostile- i'm a huge fan of Mori's work- but I

feel that her approach to explaining what she does is symptomatic of a real

epidemic of faux-highbrow posturing in the modern improv world. If DJ Shadow's

comfortable accounting for his genius with "I just bash the buttons on my

sampler until it sounds dope", then surely someone like Mori (working in the

same fashion) should be comfortable doing the same, without having to "talk

herself up."

I'm late on this because of a computer meltdown that's not quite fixed yet.

Unless you've found a portal into Mori's head, you really have no idea what she thinks about when she's "bashing the buttons." Many (though certainly not all) people using max/msp have highly developed metaphoric structures for the patch system. Mori may be one of these people.

If you're "a huge fan" of the music, I don't see why it should matter how Mori explains/describes/rationalizes her methods of creating that music. I can think of lots of work that I love for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with what the artist claims to be doing.

And, to address David Beardsley's comment, I don't know of any composer/performers who got grants from the roughly 50 grant panels I've been on in the last 20 years who didn't have a very strong advocate speaking about what the work sounded like. Work samples are always weighted much more strongly than artist statements and project descriptions for the very reason that many artists, and not just in music, have difficulty describing what they do in a way that communicates as well as their art work does.

I would suggest if you really do find Mori's explanations so offensive,and really do find the work so appealing, that you simply stop reading her liner notes and interviews and just listen the music. The music, after all, is the main point of what she does, right?

Bests,

Herb