Date of Premiere Issue : Spring 2003
Editor : Darren Bergstein
Associate Editors : Marc S. Tucker, Marc Weidenbaum
Art Directors : James Reeves (Red Anenna), Stephen Baker (Red Antenna)
Publisher : Darren Bergstein
Dimensions : 10 3/4" x 8"
Frequency : 6 issues per year
Country of Origin : New Jersey, USA
Website : www.ei-mag.com
Statement
peripheral vision - evolution rush
Here, across the river from New York City, still (and to hell with what anyone says about it) the greatest metropolis in the world, as winter's iron fist clamps tighter around the office firmament, I indulge in a momentary respite from listening - to Micro Blue, a superb compilation on the wonderfully-coined Plop label - and contemplate, on the ever of this issue's publication, the nature (and necessity) of change.
On many occasions I've been sent to snort when someone complains how they're adverse to change, how they wish that things, people, the world, would stabilize, concretize, stay fixed. It's truly a foolish notion really, since the passage of time and the very course of life generates and mandates change. Certain facets of society - marriage, steady employment, child-rearing, regular consumerism, etc. - provide anchors of sorts that bind us to our daily routines, give the appearance that how we live our lives day in/day out is a perpetual cycle fraught with only minor distractions. But it's utter nonsense, because human existence is literally guided by myriad streams and currents that serve to alter the design of our lives in any number of infinite directions: our hobbies, social interactions, financial pictures...well, you get the point.
And what the hell does all this have to do with a new magazine focusing on electronic music, experimental, avant-garde, and unclassifiable? Simple. Here at e/i, we want to be a catalyst for change.
The more cognizant of you out there may have noticed that the quality of contemporary music journalism is at a decidedly low ebb. Writing about music hasn't so much become (as coined by Elvis Costello, often attributed to Frank Zappa, and quoted countless times) like dancing about architecture than a means to either bulk up a record collection, seek a byline for hackwork, or become a house organ for advertisers. Of course, this condition extends into all fields of musical journalistic endeavor, rock and jazz included (the jazz magazines, with perhaps one exception, are particularly execrable in this respect - the writing, reviews especially, acts as little more than a tipsheet engineered for the purpose of extracting juicy marketing blurbs, most of which are wholly meaningless). There seems to be a noticeable lack of passion about both music and music writing; whatever previous standards existed have shifted uneasily over the years, become assembly-line and cookie-cutter, bereft of ideas, expression, nuance and intelligent wit. Oh, and I neglected to mention the absence of criticism. That's history, too.
And the likeliest culprit responsible for this linguistic mess? Why, the internet, boys and girls. Though spotty journalism is endemic of the lion's share of print publications, the very webpage construction has resulted in a voluminous amount of inept graphic design, and even worse, an farrago of creative typing masquerading as 'writing.' Yes, yes, the wonders of the Web are a joy to behold, it opens up a communicative bandwidth the likes of which mankind has never seen, information accessible by one click of the mouse is staggering, yada, yada, yada...the ramifications of all this certainly aren't lost on me, and I revel in much of it myself, but that is not the point of discussion here. Pandora's box has been opened to admit the tired, the eyestrained, the carpal-tunnel-syndromed, and all to largely gracelss, inabled effect.
As a bunch of passionate writers who care deeply about the sonic realms we slum in and how we caligraphize the sensations music engrains upon us, our objective with e/i is to illustrate in a magazine - a graceful artfom, one that retains a keen element of authenticity which to glean obscure objects of desire - why we seek out, listen to, collect, archive, discuss and argue music produced with the same technological apparatuses that drive the 'Net, music that blurs lines, takes chances, confounds the war, and ushers in change.
This is the link mutually shared by the artists nestled within this issue's contents. From the smallsound environs favoured by Kim Cascone to Morton Subnotnick's pioneering pixillations in aural sculpture, the thread common between them requires a single, pointed demand from the participant: reorient your ear. Reorient your listening perception enough to accomodate opening files of differing musical expression, files explored, coerced, dragged to the trash, and then pram-zapped into bracing new forms.
More tellingly, along with these morphogenetic artists go concerning changes in the record industry, changes that will ultimately benefit those imbedded in deviating microgenres, grassroots CD-R networks, and even the dogged vinyl subculture. Fact it, the systems operators trawling away in isolated basement studios and compartmentalized performance spaces are the ones who continue to make the brashest noise. Merge an aggressive entrepreneurial spirit with the artistic jones to produce - this is how a 'movement' is born. At heart this is an attitude that helps to energize, dynamicize and upset the pecking order. It's what art lives for, and it forces those who make and shake to act.
Back here on the sideslines, across from the aforementionedc bustle of gotham, e/i aspires to wax dedicatedly, intelligently and passionately about art born of electricity and moxie, to entice those of you reading our pages to see what the fuss, all the noise, is about.
Come along with us as we storm the studio.
Darren Bergstein