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Sexus Plexus Nexus | The Rosy Noise for Guitar {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 01​:​19​:​57]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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S e x u s P l e x u s N e x u s

| T h e R o s y N o i s e F o r G u i t a r |

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:19:57] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"Metal Machine Melgacian Music? An exciting alliteration. But it's much, much more than that.

´I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.´ (John Cage - The Future of Music: Credo - 1937)

´Noise music is a category of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles, and sound based creative practices, that feature noise as a primary aspect. It can feature acoustically or electronically generated noise, and both traditional and unconventional musical instruments. It may incorporate live machine sounds, non-musical vocal techniques, physically manipulated audio media, processed sound recordings, field recording, computer generated noise, stochastic process and other randomly produced electronic signals such as distortion, feedback, static, hiss and hum. There may also be emphasis on high volume levels and lengthy, continuous pieces. More generally noise music may contain aspects such as improvisation, extended technique, cacophony and indeterminacy, and in many instances conventional use of melody, harmony, rhythm and pulse is often dispensed with.

Contemporary noise music is often associated with extreme volume and distortion. In the avant rock domain examples include Jimi Hendrix's use of feedback, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and Sonic Youth. Other examples of music that contain noise-based features include works by Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Helmut Lachenmann, Cornelius Cardew, Theatre of Eternal Music, Rhys Chatham, Ryoji Ikeda, Survival Research Laboratories, Whitehouse, Cabaret Voltaire, Psychic TV, Blackhouse, Jean Tinguely's recordings of his sound sculpture (specifically Bascule VII), the music of Hermann Nitsch's Orgien Mysterien Theater, and La Monte Young's bowed gong works from the late 1960s. Genres such as industrial, industrial techno, lo-fi music, black metal, sludge metal and glitch music employ noise-based materials.´

This is an entirely composed work for guitar, all we hear are guitars (by overlapping).

What I can add, after a very instructive prologue, is a proof of admiration.

We are aware that many musical languages coupled noises to their backbones. Contemporary classical music, jazz, rock and several of the countless ribs they have. But what is relevant is that there´s not always a greater conjunction of these intersections. The Noise is caged in a stylistic approach. A musician whose pedestal is a genre as Industrial, for example. He can be noisy and we will have a sum of this device with his sonic dialect and that's it. Perhaps for this reason, perchance for this homogeneous trend: some results - the opposite of what we hear here - are extremely repetitive, monotonous, tedious, ... , without inventiveness and dynamism.

[I would like to address the wide horizon with regard to ´repetitive, monotonous, tedious, ... , without inventiveness and dynamism´, nay - what part of people who consider themselves artists (or artful dodgers?) - with the help of accessible technology; a total lack of discernment and self-criticism or even unscrupulous cleverness; a public unprepared to reference them and a thirsty market for disposable proposals - produce today. Produce, not create, produce. Part more than doubtful, I say en passant.

I take the theme to pronounce me. By the way, I will do it through the mouths and words of two Brazilian artists who behave as mature, lords of their creations, experienced, serious breeders... In the end: adults - or rather, grown Picassian children! You will understand...

The formidable Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar, recently gave the following statement to the press: ´The art has lately assumed a negative attitude, and artists seem to want to punish the spectator. In the São Paulo Art Biennial, for example, saw a work that was a lot of hanging dirty cloths. That's not an art exposition, it's just something regrettable. Art exists not to mistreat anyone, it exists because life is not enough.´

The Melgaço own once made the restless comment (I will try to translate it): ´Much of the art, for decades until now, seems to want to test our patience. - Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up, Picasso told us. The real problem today is that many artists - or whatever should be called - did not remain - I shall call - grown Picassian children (i.e., in fact adults creators) but kept all childness things that might collect. Art exhibitions seem more kindergardens and playgrounds... The new Rule of infantilism. Mediocre ´canon´ which incidentally plaguing much more than the art perimeters. Everyone should have set an end to it - long ago. Leastwise: the faction of the public who claims aesthetic jurisprudence and capacity ´to separate wheat from chaff´; the artists themselves who refuse to play the role of stuffed animals or buffoons; people yet ethical who hold the reins of cultural universe etc. But not seem to be interesting for the milling of the art market that happen. The more everything is seen as a mere object of stultified consumption and gelid investment, none of this will change. The more the market - including mercenaries-artists, as used to say Plínio Marcos - manipulates people (the wealthy investor, for the most part, ignorant of art to the general public regarded as a cattle) through the tricks from this Dictatorship of Infantility, more the Puppet Logicity will remain in vogue. In this context, we need a new urgent and rumbustious kind of pandemic infanticide. At least for the adult world back to reign and yes, lots of grown Picassian children - if you please, not dummies - would be welcomed.´]

Well absorbed the content of preceding paragraphs, we will continue:

Taking up the issue of Noise Music in focus. The Noise can often be caged in a stylistic approach. A musician whose pedestal is a genre as Electronica, for example. He can be noisy and we will have a sum of this device with his sonic dialect and that's it. Perhaps for this reason, perchance for this homogeneous trend: some results - the opposite of what we hear here - are extremely repetitive, monotonous, tedious, ... , without inventiveness and dynamism.

However, rarely a composer and instrumentalist, advancing toward the Noise Music, will break down barriers (like limits, vulnerabilities...) and establish a more complex panorama, interpenetrated, eclipsed.

S e x u s P l e x u s N e x u s

| T h e R o s y N o i s e F o r G u i t a r |

is one of those praiseworthy cases. Highly recommended.

Otacílio Melgaço establishes multiple frames to loudness, layers flirting with some of the most expressive musical styles. Sometimes pragmatic, sometimes enigmatic.

There minimalist aspects that are recurrent in noisy odysseys but other aspects arise: there explicitness of atmospheres, colors, dynamics, intensity, timbre overlays, ...: substantially raising the level of such proposal.

Citing three niches and three offspring worthy of attention:

>> Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music - from a r-o-c-k-e-r context;
>> Pat Metheny´s Zero Tolerance for Silence - from a j-a-z-z-y context;
>> Xenakis, Stockhausen, La Monte Young ... avatars of the
´c-l-a-s-s-i-c-a-l´ music world; shredders of influences; several works to mention...;
>> O.M. is able to move along this ´triumvirate´ and beyond. Probably toward an experimental station.

´Art is sort of an experimental station in which one tries out living!´ (J.C.)

After S.P.N. - and the excitement, vivacity, challenge, arcanum that are so inherent... If we all ´escape with life´ (videlicet: deeply absorbed the instigations of a dense work), we´ll be able to pervade/permeate this stupendous Melgacian sound friction and - beyond the Cagean ´station´ - achieve a chronic type of experimental state. A more avid and electrical state of mind!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

Post Scriptum >>> "This dandy phonograph record has the cover art more LUSTFULLY ELEGANT I've ever seen in my entire life." (P.S.P.)

"´The Rosy Crucifixion, a trilogy consisting of Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus, is a fictionalized account documenting the six-year period of Henry Miller's life in Brooklyn as he falls for his second wife June and struggles to become a writer, leading up to his initial departure for Paris in 1928.´

The Melgaço rhizomes still vast.
The excitement of the Miller saga wins as track the Noise Music. There would be a better analogy?

´Like much of modern and contemporary art, noise music takes characteristics of the ´perceived negative traits´ of noise and uses them in aesthetic and imaginative ways. In common use, the word noise means unwanted sound or noise pollution. In electronics noise can refer to the electronic signal corresponding to acoustic noise (in an audio system) or the electronic signal corresponding to the (visual) noise commonly seen as 'snow' on a degraded television or video image. In signal processing or computing it can be considered data without meaning; that is, data that is not being used to transmit a signal, but is simply produced as an unwanted by-product of other activities. Noise can block, distort, or change the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication.´

A metaphor for life and Henry's literature, I guess.

From the parallel that I can draw between the titles, there´s a possible and intriguing conclusion.

Instead of ´Cruxifixion´: ´Noise´.

Was Melgaço suggesting that the Noise is a form of ´crucifixion of musical Note´ (if understood and used conventionally)? Crucifixion is a form of slow and painful execution in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead. Would be an interesting allegory to express the rites of passage that differentiate the awake current composers from those already ´hostages of the overpast´. Hostages: I refer to those who, regardless of style or epoch, remained anachronistic and reactionary, of course. I hope that each of us, instigated by Otacílio, can take own conclusions.

Changing slightly the angle, as a further matter: we are facing a sensual Noise Music!

I don´t know more examples that lecherly are so (and do not confuse, Netcitizens, the meaning that I adopt here) sensacionalist! In other words, full of sensational stimuli. Stimulated sensations. In my concept, Sensacionalist as consequently a synonym for Erotic. Erotica (from the Greek ἔρως, eros ´desire´) is any artistic work that deals substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing subject matter. So Erotica has high-art aspirations... The Noise Music of Otacílio Melgaço is, therefore, sensational. Sensualized. Sexualized.

Mostly, I believe, by the mystery that hides and reveals sometimes subtly... Is transcendently Erotic, not pornographic. Is a libidinous epiphany, not another vampiric din.

Even (how can I say?) in ´high Noise Music´, this seems unprecedented. In Noise Music in general this seems unheard because usually the musicians prefer express or an extreme or the other: or pyrotechnics smelling teen spirit (in version subordinate to explicit horseplay, dirtiness, roughness) or the marasmus endless, caducous and dystopic (castrated, unsexed, eunuch).

´For Plato, Eros takes an almost transcendent manifestation when the subject seeks to go beyond itself and form a communion with the objectival other: ´the true order of going...to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps...to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty´.

Modern French conceptions of eroticism can be traced to The Enlightenment, when ´in the eighteenth century, dictionaries defined the erotic as that which concerned love...eroticism was the intrusion into the public sphere of something that was at base private´. This theme of intrusion or transgression was taken up in the twentieth century by the French philosopher Georges Bataille, who argued that eroticism performs a function of dissolving boundaries between human subjectivity and humanity, a transgression that dissolves the rational world but is always temporary, as well as that, ´Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself´. For Bataille, as well as many French theorists, ´Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest...eroticism is assenting to life even in death.´

In short: think the Melgacian prism was provided with enough Dionysian sensuality; Platonic (absolute) beauty; Bataillean eroticism. The cover art is a clear indication based on Gustav Vigeland sculptures - magnificently crafted by Melgaço (designer). Miller's work also suggests the same. But only a keen musician could either emphasize this as having the ability of such sonic achievement. Besides feel on a space odyssey - another mastery generated by O.M. -, all these noises and other sounds mated; all this brings up an exciting phenomenon for my libido. I hope for all listeners. Libido is very important to our links with art. So much for the act of grasping it as for enjoying it. Because we are referring to an enjoyment,
something orgasmic. After all, there are more noisy phenomena that the sexually entwined? (Perhaps that's why there is, in front image of the phonograph album, purposeful and posh Gaussian blur. Is Otacílio and his unbeatable secret metaphors? I suppose so.)

And the Rosy Noise?

Rosy, Pinky.

´Pink noise or 1⁄f noise (sometimes also called flicker noise) is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (energy or power per Hz) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal. In pink noise, each octave (halving/doubling in frequency) carries an equal amount of noise power. The name arises from the pink appearance of visible light with this power spectrum. These pink-like noises occur widely in nature and are a source of considerable interest in many fields. The distinction between the noises with α near 1 and those with a broad range of α approximately corresponds to a much more basic distinction. The former (narrow sense) generally come from condensed matter systems in quasi-equilibrium. The latter (broader sense) generally correspond to a wide range of non-equilibrium driven dynamical systems. The term flicker noise is sometimes used to refer to pink noise, although this is more properly applied only to its occurrence in electronic devices due to a direct current. Mandelbrot and Van Ness proposed the name fractional noise (sometimes since called fractal noise) to emphasize that the exponent of the spectrum could take non-integer values and be closely related to fractional Brownian motion, but the term is very rarely used.´ There´re many clues as how O.M. was clever in that denomination.
Fractal noise; quasi-equilibrium; inversely proportional; visible light; power spectrum etc.

´Miller’s close friend Lawrence Durrell was severely disappointed in Sexus. In a letter dated September 5, 1949, he wrote that Miller was lost ´in this shower of lavatory filth which no longer seems tonic and bracing, but just excrementitious and sad.´
´I am trying to reproduce in words a block of my life which to me has the utmost significance – every bit of it,´ Miller responded. ´Since 1927 I have carried inside me the material of this book. Do you suppose it's possible that I could have a miscarriage after such a period of gestation? ... But Larry, I can never go back on what I've written. If it was not good, it was true; if it was not artistic, it was sincere; if it was in bad taste, it was on the side of life.´

S e x u s P l e x u s N e x u s

| T h e R o s y N o i s e F o r G u i t a r |

is good, is true, is artistic, is sincere, transcends tastes and, especially, I s O n T h e S i d e O f L i f e!

A Sheltered Life::Atmen gibt das Leben::Bright Size Life..." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - According to Danish noise and music theorist Torben Sangild, one single definition of noise in music is not possible. Sangild instead provides three basic definitions of noise: a musical acoustics definition, a second communicative definition based on distortion or disturbance of a communicative signal, and a third definition based in subjectivity (what is noise to one person can be meaningful to another; what was considered unpleasant sound yesterday is not today).

According to Murray Schafer there are four types of noise: unwanted noise, unmusical sound, any loud sound, and a disturbance in any signaling system (such as static on a telephone). Definitions regarding what is considered noise, relative to music, have changed over time. Ben Watson, in his article Noise as Permanent Revolution, points out that Ludwig van Beethoven's Grosse Fuge (1825) "sounded like noise" to his audience at the time. Indeed, Beethoven's publishers persuaded him to remove it from its original setting as the last movement of a string quartet. He did so, replacing it with a sparkling Allegro. They subsequently published it separately.

In attempting to define noise music and its value, Paul Hegarty (2007) cites the work of noted cultural critics Jean Baudrillard, Georges Bataille and Theodor Adorno and through their work traces the history of "noise". He defines noise at different times as "intrusive, unwanted", "lacking skill, not being appropriate" and "a threatening emptiness". He traces these trends starting with 18th-century concert hall music. Hegarty contends that it is John Cage's composition 4'33", in which an audience sits through four and a half minutes of "silence" (Cage 1973), that represents the beginning of noise music proper. For Hegarty, "noise music", as with 4'33", is that music made up of incidental sounds that represent perfectly the tension between "desirable" sound (properly played musical notes) and undesirable "noise" that make up all noise music from Erik Satie to NON to Glenn Branca. Writing about Japanese noise music, Hegarty suggests that "it is not a genre, but it is also a genre that is multiple, and characterized by this very multiplicity ... Japanese noise music can come in all styles, referring to all other genres ... but crucially asks the question of genre—what does it mean to be categorized, categorizable, definable?" (Hegarty 2007:133).

Writer Douglas Kahn, in his work Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (1999), discusses the use of noise as a medium and explores the ideas of Antonin Artaud, George Brecht, William Burroughs, Sergei Eisenstein, Fluxus, Allan Kaprow, Michael McClure, Yoko Ono, Jackson Pollock, Luigi Russolo, and Dziga Vertov.

In Noise: The Political Economy of Music (1985), Jacques Attali explores the relationship between noise music and the future of society. He indicates that noise in music is a predictor of social change and demonstrates how noise acts as the subconscious of society – validating and testing new social and political realities;

II - Henry Valentine Miller (1891 – 1980) was an American writer. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), Tropic of Capricorn (1939) and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy (1949–59), all of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors;

III - Ferreira Gullar is the pen name for José Ribamar Ferreira (born September 10, 1930), a Brazilian poet, playwright, essayist, art critic, and television writer. In 1959, he was instrumental in the formation of the Neo-Concrete Movement. Gullar was considered one of the most influential Brazilians of the 20th century by Época magazine. In October 9, 2014, Gullar was elected as a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters;

IV - Plinio Marcos de Barros (1935 - 1999) was a Brazilian writer, author of numerous plays, mostly written at the time of the military regime. He was also an actor, director and journalist.

Plinio Marcos was translated, published and staged in French, Spanish, English and German; studied in sociolinguistics theses, semiotics, psychology of religion, drama and philosophy in Brazil and abroad universities. Received major national awards in all activities embraced in theater, film, television and literature;

V - Gustav Vigeland (1869 – 1943), né Adolf Gustav Thorsen, was a Norwegian sculptor. Gustav Vigeland occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors, both in the power of his creative imagination and in his productivity. He is most associated with the Vigeland installation (Vigelandsanlegget) in Frogner Park, Oslo. He was also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
Wikipedia was the main source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.

credits

released January 1, 2015

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design [O.M., after Vigeland] | production | direction}

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
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Minas Gerais,
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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