Gearing up for the album release of Max Richter’s24 Postcards in Full Colour, FatCat/130701 and Max Richter have launched a splendid promo site, explaining the project’s conceptual underpinnings. Basically, each of the twenty-four tracks were composed as ringtones, only squeezed into an album format for conveniece or tradition’s sake.
The 24 postcards are not an album - but my first attempt to look at ringtones as a vehicle for music performance.
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Unlike my previous records, which I wrote sequentially from beginning to end, I have no control over how these tracks will be played back, or in what order, so they are composed as a collection of related pieces with many shared references between them – so the more of them you hear, the more they will connect.
I have made an ‘album cut’ version for the CD and vinyl releases, but that is only one way through the material – I’d expect people to find other ways to use the tracks.
The planned premiere performances will be by invited audiences at events in London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo – where the audience’s phones (having previously registered and downloaded the MP3s) will actually be performing the pieces (as a text alert) in response to text messages from me.
While it’s unlikely 24 Postcards compositions will ever work effectively outside Richter’s concept performances as actual ringtones. Despite this obvious shortcoming, these individual, short-attention-span slices of contemporary composition, by embracing our music culture’s continued evolution away from traditional, album-centric listening experiences, address some fascinating cultural issues with surprising courage and grace. Each track on 24postcards.co.uk must be individually selected, looping continuously until another choice is made — the sort of music that would live most comfortably on an iPod shuffle. With the rise of mp3s, iTunes, the iPod, and even ring-tones, it seems only a matter of time before pop culture has discarded the album for good. Richter’s 24 Postcards demonstrates effectively why there’s no reason to fear the increasing popularity of this new technology, or to expect a coinciding annihilation musical creativity with the rise of 99 cent mp3s. Music, like organic life, finds a way to adapt to changing conditions.
Of course, on the fringes of music culture, where the submersible dirigible, drone music, BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, circuit bending, and Max Richter reside, experimentation will always survive, regardless (sometimes even in spite of) conditions in the mainstream. Cdr, tape and vinyl culture continues to thrive today, despite the growing commercial dominance of track-by-track iTunes style one-hit-wonder culture. While technology hasn’t exactly democratized mass media, delivering niche culture to the masses, it does create a habitat where experimental culture can flourish comfortably — surviving like the varied, highly-specilized Galapagos tortoise populations, comfortable in isolation and obscurity.
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/news.php?id=816
Richter’s 24 Postcards in Full Colour is scheduled for release in the UK on 25 August 2008.
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