Monday 20 April 2020

Four Horsemen ‎– "Canadada" (Griffin House ‎– IPS 1004) 1974



What is it that when you see an unkempt beard with long hair wearing hippie clothing doing performance poetry, one automatically thinks...'Smartarse'!?
Here we have four Hippie Smartarse's enthusiastically showing us how smart they are.
This includes Steve McCaffery, who went on to do some less showy-offy sound poetry that bordered on minimalism.
This sounds like a bunch of university graduates who thought they were the only persons on the planet to have discovered Hugo Ball's Dada manifesto......hence the Cana-dada title.
Just to rub it in there is a 'dedication to the memory of....' printed on the sleeve.
This is a bad case of Borderline Performance Art Disorder, or B.P.A.D.,as a music Psychologist would abbreviate it.Its up there with 'Contemporary Expressive Dance Syndrome' (C.E.D.S), as the ultimate cringe. After a few years, performance art got its act together and dumped the well-read hippies,and smartened up their approach,dumping the really annoying show-off stuff, and making it into something less about themselves and more about the art......nah!They still exist,but there's certainly less of them.
At least The Four Horsemen were trying something different,and rejected guitars and drums.It was just the approach to it that needed honing somewhat.Like a spot of de-hippification for starters.


Tracklist:

A1 From Beast
A2 Matthew's Line
A3 Allegro 108
A4 Seasons
B1 Coffee Break
B2 Theme
B3 Monotony
B4 Michael Drayton
B5 In The Middle Of A Blue Balloon


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the Underwhich tapes -- and thanks for the Horsemen! This was my gateway drug to experimental audio...

snoopy said...

Sorry again, but missing track A4.

Jonny Zchivago said...

@snoppy....just reupping it wirh track 4 as of 26/04/2020

snoopy said...

oh my god, what a bunch of self-serious fruit loops. The guy breathing desperately into the flute makes it worth it!