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Milan Knížák & Opening Performance Orchestra — Broken Re/Broken (October 28th, 2015)

Milan Knížák & Opening Performance Orchestra — Broken Re/Broken (October 28th, 2015) Milan Knížák & Opening Performance Orchestra — Broken Re/Broken (2015)
•≡≡•     “In 2008–9 we transferred the original recording from vinyl records into digital form. As we did so, we weren’t interested in the precise, clean fidelity offered by the digital world, which fundamentally causes the fine structure of natural sound to be lost. Instead we were seeking the opposite: the world of errors and distortion, which remains hidden when digital audio is manipulated to be maximally accommodating for the listener. The transferred audio recording was digitally destroyed, shattered and uncompromisingly freed from all its original attributes. No melody, no rhythm, no harmony — this is fraction music”. •≡≡•     Opening Performance Orchestra, Re/Broken Music
•≡≡•     Milan Knížák + Opening Performance Orchestra revisiting Broken Music at Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, 2014.
Genre: Experimental/Electronic/Fraction music
Location: Mariánské Lázně ~ Prague, Czech Republic
Album release: October 28th, 2015
Record Label: Multiphla / Ampersand / Sub Rosa
Duration:    78:00 
Tracks:
Part one
1.)    Broken Music / 45 min.
•  Milan Knížák (with Phaerentz)
•  turntables & broken vinyls, CD players & CDs, cassette players & cassettes, keyboard
Part two
2.)    Re:Broken Music / 33 min.
•  Opening Performance Orchestra
•  5 laptops & fraction music (broken section, re:broken section, fraction section)
•≡≡•  A highly controversial figure in the Czech Republic, Milan Knížák is mostly known in America for his membership in Fluxus in the 1960s–1970s. A performance artist, Knížák is an art renegade who was banned by the Communist regime and kept in the fringes because of his political activism and art terrorism.
•≡≡•  After the Velvet Revolution, he was given the presidency of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Although not really a musician or composer, he deserves a place in music history; he pioneered cut–and–paste techniques with lathe records later picked up by avant–garde turntablists like Christian Marclay and Martin Tétreault. Knížák grew up in Marienbad (now Mariánské Lázně). After being thrown out of various Prague universities and art schools, he came to New York and associated himself with Fluxus, a group of postmodern conceptual artists (Yoko Ono was the best–known member).
•≡≡•  Knížák’s performance art pieces usually involved very down–to–earth human activities turned into absurd gestures (like adults playing childish games in the middle of the street). His search for the ultimate desacralization of art took a new turn in the mid–‘60s when he began to paint, break, scratch, and alter LPs in every possible way (including cutting them and pasting unrelated pieces together). These works stand as both art pieces and playable scores. He extended the concept to printed scores — erasing notes, changing bar sequences, pasting unrelated passages together, etc. Recordings of his mutilated records were released by the label Multiphla in 1979 (reissued on CD by Ampersand).
•≡≡•  Back in Europe in the late ‘70s, Knížák continued to create and lecture, even though he was persona non grata in Czechoslovakia and kept making enemies with his agit–prop antics and flammable politic statements. A friend of Václav Havel, he became one of the many members of the artistic community to take part in the first government of the liberated Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As president of the Academy of Fine Arts, he was the source of many scandals, buying his own works with the institution’s money and self–curating major exhibitions of his works. He later became director of the National Gallery in Prague.
•≡≡•  Milan Knížák and Opening Performance Orchestra revisit Knížák’s 1979 Broken Music in Berlin, 2014.
•≡≡•  Part one, “Broken Music,” features Knížák with Phaerentz performing with turntables and broken records, CD players and CDs, cassette players and cassettes, and keyboard.
•≡≡•  Part two, “Re:Broken Music,” features Opening Performance Orchestra performing with five laptops and “fraction music (broken section, re:broken section, fraction section).”
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Milan Knížák & Opening Performance Orchestra — Broken Re/Broken (October 28th, 2015)

ALBUM COVERS XI.