Week Two: UbuWeb Sound

Taylor Dupree
Live in Madrid
May 25, 2005

Recorded live in Madrid, Spain, the artist has focused on using a minimalist approach.  Taylor appears to be playing specific tunes on a piano to a live audience.  As he is playing, there is a faint sound in the background of the audience often times heard coughing, sniffling, or at times making sudden movements.  There is a bit of static in the background, but I believe he intends to do it to invoke his surroundings to the listener.  Although there are mellow tunes being played, his minimalist approach allows for the listener to create their own melody.  While I was listening to it I began to create a storyline in my mind as to what he was attempting to invoke with the sounds.  I found that it was a tense feeling, one of despair that I had trouble making sense of.  To a friend who I shared the piece with he said "It sounds like a piece from a horror movie."  I was intrigued, the more the artist added to the melody, the more I was intrigued to hear.  I was the audience and he was the orchestrator of the piece.  Although horrified by the sound I was in tuned to wanting and expecting more from him. However intense the feeling became, the more I listened.  And then I had it!  The artist is attempting to captivate the place in our mind that keeps us (the viewer) from watching and waiting.  A very human instinct that we ourselves question at times.


Allen Ginsberg
Vajra Mantra
April 15, 1972

Unlike the piece above, the artist has incorporated the tune of a mantra within a melodic rhythm.  Although I have no clue what the speaker is saying, it appears as though he may either be giving praise (mantra) to what I would assume is God.  It is a very intense and drawn out clip of what appears to be the same sentence repeated.  When I looked up the definition of vajra it states that it's meaning comes from a Sanskrit meaning either Thunderbolt or Diamond.  Mantra straight from Wiki states "syllable, word, or group of words that are considered capable of "creating transformation" (cf. spiritual transformation).^[1] Their use and type varies according to the school and philosophy associated with the mantra."  From the recording the vocalist appears to have strong and a rhythmic feel-like a thunderbolt.  However, it is also captivating and beautiful like a diamond.  Perhaps with this sound, the artist is attempting to invoke the beauty that is found within praise towards otherly worlds or even beings.