→ ↑ → – → ↑ → [7''] (1980, Innocent)

Minimalism was the first live → ↑ → project. Bluntly labelled, it approached Minimalist music not as a transcendental practice, but as an unforgiving and undeveloping manifestation of static music. Approached with Duchampian zeal and Warholian perversity, it announced → ↑ →'s modus operandi as a quixotic meld of severe experimentalism and intellectual playfullness. Minimalism took the non-humanist route and revelled in the nothingness one could become by playing such music.

 
The Minimalism set was developed in the midst of Punk's early stirrings. History tends to portray Punk as yet another youthful, energetic, radical social phenomenon -endlessly remembered by withered 'I-was-there' media hustlers- but it was just as restrictive, jingoistic, dogmatic and anti-intellectual as everything it claimed to destroy and debunk. Its saving grace was its connection to performance art and a pretentious flaunting of politicised thought. In such an environment, Philip envisioned his take on Minimalist music as perfectly not fitting in to the dominant 3-chord brigade of wild-youth expressionism. The key influence -as with all → ↑ → projects- was the ideas of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. The Minimalism project is best viewed as Duchamp writing distilled slivers of pop music, with the resulting compositions performed by 4 clones of Andy Warhol. Repetition, anti-humanism, insularity and dilettantism governed all. For Philip in particular, the most entertaining recourse to radicalism was to be as normal and nothing as possible.

 
"On the whole, minimalism is a comparative concept -only taking in a productive meaning when related to a concept of 'maximalism' (i.e., the similarities to and differences between Philip Glass and Arnold Schoenberg). Our view of Minimalism is one based on the problematics of the History of Music, as the relationship between Glass and Schoenberg is first and foremost historical rather than musical. Minimalism looks at the ultimate basics of the History of the Western Diatonic Tonal Systems (the music grammar and language that we have all been brought up on), focusing on the effects of a single repeated melody; very slow volume fade-ins and fade-outs; single notes held for long periods of time; etc. Thus the music is not the result of experimenting with minimal procedeures to generate a stylistic type of music that can be categorized as "minimal". Our minimal music is more concerned with looking at basic harmony through a microscope. A simple way of describing it then is music in extreme close-up." [SOURCE: PHILIPBROPHY.COM]

 

 

Label: Innocent – none 

Format: Vinyl, 7", 33 ⅓ RPM, EP, White Label 

Country: Australia 

Released: Mar 3, 1980 

Style: Minimal, Experimental 

 

Tracklist:

A Only Quantity Counts 

B One Note Song + Most Things Don't Really Matter 

 

Notes:

There are no catalogue numbers for Innocent releases #1-5+7. This is the 7th label release in an edition of 300. According to official Innocent 1981 catalogue: "Two pieces dealing with Minimalism. Music in extreme close-up." Comes in a normal glossy sleeve. Label on A-side has arrows stamped, label on B-side stamped: Thirty Three & A Third R.P.M. Side:A. (sic!) 

This release is also known as "Minimalism" because the music comes from the Minimalism project. 

 

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