Albums: Songs, John Maus

There are two artists with the name John Maus: (1) John Maus (born February 23, 1980) is an American composer and political philosophy and theory instructor at the University of Hawaiiʻi at Mānoa. Born and raised in the small town of Austin, Minnesota, his first experiments with music were at an early age--in his band the Janitors and by playing guitar for his church. In the early noughties he performed with Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, and more recently has released some rather excellent self-produced albums of his own: "Songs" (2006), and "Love is Real" (2007).

www.myspace.com/johnmaus Free tracks can be downloaded at his label's website, www.upsettherhythm.co.uk/johnmaus.shtml. (2) John Maus is the real name of a member of the sixties band The Walker Brothers. He is more properly known by his professional name, John Walker. INTERVIEW When asked to discuss his influences, John Maus (1) replied (without a hint of irony): "From the Greeks through the medievalist's music is the science of melody, coming about through ratio not the instinctus naturalis.

It is not until Tinctoris - the fifteenth century Flemish theorist and composer - that we think music as something left to the judgment of the ears. It is not until the Renaissance that auctoritas - the authority of the Fathers - is interrupted, allowing innovation and inspiration to become the measure of musical significance, and music, that is, how and from where it comes about, to acquire something like its modern explanation. All this suggests that every one of these discourses on the coming about of music, including our own 'critical' discourse, is inadequate.

They are the perpetuation of themselves and the (discursive) regime of which they are a necessary element, not a genuine thinking of the 'coming about' of music. Moreover, the listing of 'musical influences' always oppresses music as cultural capital, as a means of cultural class distinction. What is significant is precisely what discourse is inadequate to oppress, the hors-texte transformative power of music and its counter-constructivist suggestion that discourse is not the horizon of what there is.

That the discourses regarding the coming about of music have transformed through time suggests that there has always been something true of music that none of these discourses could oppress, otherwise one of these discourses would have, once-and-for-all, held-sway. 'Songs' is entirely my fidelity to this 'something true of music,' as it is singularly manifest in the current situation, this is what 'influenced' me in its making, and this is from where it 'comes about.' To what extent my background played a part in the coming-about 'Songs', as I said, remains an open question. I once saw a television program about a certain kind of plankton that lives two thousand meters beneath the ocean in a pitch black freezing world that has been visited by humans less than outer space has.

These plankton used bioluminescence to communicate, or to ward off predators or something. Tiny flashes, like stars, travel through the endless immensity of high pressured timeless shadows, singing their fluorescent songs: now a flash, then darkness. I mention this television program because the dark world it showed was much like the ice fields where I grew up, on the darkest evening of the year, only the vague twinkle of tiny farm houses appeared in the distance.

Though, I think these environmental impressions from my youth manifest themselves much more directly in-terms-of my experimental music interests, not my pop music interests. For instance, when passing through Boone, Iowa on the back of a train car, I went over the Kate Shelley High Bridge, the highest train bridge in America, beneath me as I looked out over the fields I saw an ocean of fire flies: now a flash, then a darkness (now a sound, then a silence). This visual metaphor is much more indicative of Christian Wolff than of The Sensations Fix." // Excerpt from Musique Machine Interview, "I think We're Alone Now" (2006-05-19)

Similar to 0 things you like: