“Ma La Pert” (Used 3 times)

ISSUE Project Room's annual Darmstadt Institute — which borrows the name (if not polemic) of the famous incubator of post-WWII difficult music — runs throughout the month of June, with imports like John Moran & Saori, Terre Thaemlitz (aka DJ Sprinkles), and Jennifer Walshe; Darmstadt stalwarts like TILT Brass, Claire Chase & Rebekeh Heller, and the Wet Ink Ensemble; and some revivals of underrepresented American artists such as David Borden's Mother Mallard Portable Masterpiece Co. and Larry Austin. Almost all of these artists are represented in the mix directly to the right of these words, in works ranging from late-70s pieces by Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. – one of the first-ever synthesizer ensembles, counting Robert Moog and David Tudor among its members – to an improvisation by inimitable pianist Thollem McDonas, recorded last year in the Can Factory.

We'll continue adding to this mix, as we excavate more recordings from the seemingly endless ISSUE archive, and feature tracks from artists once or twice a week. For now, though, check out the full Institute schedule and, if you're in town, check us out.

If someone were to keep score of people who have performed at ISSUE, Tony Conrad would be at or near the top. And yet even though he performs almost monthly, guessing what a single performance will be like is a futile game—one we’ve long stopped playing and have never learned the rules to. In the past year he’s dispensed plastic recorders to the audience, bowed strings of beads tied to the bridge of his amplified, fretted, spraypainted black violin, used auto-tune, looping pedals, multichannel overhead clicking sounds, a string quartet, endorsed psychedelic drugs, and had a book written about him.

This is just a selection of those things, some of which are old to the archive and some of which are newer. His performances as Ma La Pert with Jennifer Walshe have already been written about, but check out the two segments from the September 9, 2009 program that featured art historian Brandon Joseph reading from his book, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage. These two segments—Tony’s song, “Sexual Vulnerability,” and his live set—are just a small slice of much of his work. A larger mix, including the Ma La Pert performance and XXXMacarena, is after the jump.