Art at 33 revolutions per minute

-Audio: Walter Marchetti. Coma Vigile, Alga Marghen (1998)

 Emanuele Carcano: Emanuele Carcano, publisher for Alga Marghen label, based in Milano and very much focused in the documentation of the neo-avantgarde.

-Audio: Juan Hidalgo. Offenes Trio, Alga Marghen (1959/1999)

Why is sound secondary to the art world?

I think that’s the fact that sound has not been a privileged territory. This was more within the institution context because it’s sure that for many artists and movements, sound was a central part. On one side, it was very extreme and radical exploration, so it’s not for everybody. I remember many times when I heard the Fluxus concerts or when Fluxus was launched in Paris through Domaine Poétique. People going to John Cage concert maybe were six people… It was always a very radical and esoteric thing. But the reason why afterwards, with some perspective, if you think about that, it was not put in the first place, it probably has very much to deal with economic reasons.  But I think at large, that explains why this was not so in the marketplace, and the marketplace from Pop, is central in everything. And from institutions, I don’t know, I happened to work with a museum that had an incredible video archive, and they know nothing about sound.

-Audio: Philip Corner. Memories: Performances, Alga Marghen (1963/1998)

From post-punk to intermedia

In my teenager pre-university, I got fascinated with sound in post-socialist Milano, culturally like a desert. I don’t remember what girlfriend introduced me to new wave and Joy Division and Bauhaus. That’s not the groundwork of what I do now, but there was an interest for the sound which made me start to research. The real starting point was the underground movement that happened in the 80s connected to post-industrial music. Saying it now looks very sad because I’m not that interested in that music or I don’t evaluate it very much, but there was a network in Milano of independent distribution very concealed, very hidden, but this helped because when you had to make research and you face a mysterious connection you get fascinated and you bring energies to try to know more and discover more and I got in touch with some people that later became my friends that had a music project called The Sodality and since a longer time had a connection with international people connected to mail art, specially in the UK and the United States, and I discovered this world. I started to listen to the music and started to create my own… When you are a teenager you have a collection of records. It’s again very sad to think about it but… What I realized at a certain point while being an Architecture student, I was more and more concentrating in researching into sound. This was practically taking all of my time and was a very adventurous moment. Going back in time from this post-industrial pubertarian independent underground movement, I was recognizing musique concrète, some very classic electronic music. So going from the 80s maybe to the 70s, 60s… And from that discovering an unexplored territory of sound adventurers and then realizing that where the boundary was most pushed was in the intermedia moment, in the late 50s, beginning of the 60s, and that became the focus of my publication, where contemporary artists at the time, underground then, were working with sound as a matter to investigate. And at the same time, composers, trained professionals worked into the contemporary art network. So the two categories were mixing into a general common interest of sound. And this moment was not documented at all. So all the Fluxus people, but also experimental music composers, they were, if not collaborating, they were present at the same time in the same network. So this was my evolution. And as a publisher, it was almost a natural need. I gathered and gathered and collected and made acquisitions as much as I could as a young guy. At a certain moment, I had so much information and also the connection to this people started to happen. Before it was like investigating an unknown past that didn’t belong to me. These things happened before I was even born. But all of a sudden, I could meet this people. And, naturally, there was a moment of shift when I had the need to let things go out. And I started creating a cultural association in the early 90s called Nepless, after the name of my cat, with the idea to publish improvisation within the contemporary classic. So a cultural association to do books on [Gruppo di Improvissazione] Nuova Consonaza, Musica Elettronica Viva, The ONCE Festival and AMM. This was our project. We never accomplished that, but we did one CD by Henri Chopin. We did a second CD by Vittorio Gelmetti, electronic music from Italy. He was friend of Giuseppe Chiari, very much involved in cinema. He did music for Michel Angelo Antonioni. And we did a third CD by Edgardo Cantón, also concrete music but from Argentina. But realizing this cultural association might take so long and we were two people, I needed to do my own, to be alone and to have control on the whole process of production. So at the same time, I started to work with Hermann Nitsch and I produced one CD by him and that was the starting of Alga Marghen, which in the beginning, the first year, I was like a crazy, traveling, working. If I see my diary… I always write on paper- If I look at these notes I took in 97, 98, early 2000… One day, I was with Hermann Nitsch, the day after was going to play with Henri Chopin… The people I met and the intensity of the project was really… I’m surprised I could do something like that, but again it was really a very natural, very living process. So at this point I realized I was no longer an architect.

I never had an editorial plan, for example. One edition naturally led to another edition and then to another edition and it was really a personal experience that started to connect points. So this more or less can tell how things started and give a little perspective on the first days of Alga Marghen.

-Audio: Robert Ashley. String Quartet Describing The Motions Of Large Real Bodies, Alga Marghen (1972/1999)

Connecting the dots

As I said, the starting of publishing was a natural instinctive activity following the researches I did before. I was totally devoted to that and very quickly entering this domain. And having my personal opinion and construct my perspective through meeting and exchange of ideas. It means that in the moment I start to produce, as an instinctive need, I’m quite knowledgeable about these things. So I know about Chopin, I know about the music of Hermann Nitsch. Being in contact with all these individuals and artists gave me incredible information, but at the moment that I started, I already have quite a clear point of view. And no, there is not a strategy, there is not an editorial plan, but there is a conviction and a clear idea that this is the direction I want to go. Maybe I can reflect now that Hermann Nitsch with all his iconography or Henri Chopin… are more involving. There are other aspects that are really catching and getting your attention while other work… For example, I resisted for some time when Walter Marchetti proposed to produce Una Voz, which is the only Zaj recording existing. And I’m so glad I did because it’s Juan Hidalgo’s Un Etcétera, and it’s only the voice and Walter Marchetti every now and then opens the window on the road to make the noise of the street enter. This is a music intervention. Formally, I was less immediately fascinated by this work. It required the knowledge and the more intellectual part and, of course, it’s uncompromising work and I can recognize the complete beauty. It takes a little more time.

-Audio: Zaj. Una voz (Un Etcétera), Alga Marghen (1967/2001)

So, I started with Henri Chopin, Hermann Nitsch or Philip Corner, I published the more noise thing, the tape music from the 60s, which I think is one of the most important thing still if you think about the territory and the context where the music was created. Robert Ashley, I love everything he did. But through Walter Marchetti I met Robert Ashley and we spoke about his seminal work. It’s always what’s in the beginning of the research. As if the starting point is a more authentic, neutral, unexplored territory. With Eliane Radigue, this is more in recent years. I was more involved by Centre Pompidou in presenting some event and helping them construct their œuvres sonores archive. I was living in Paris at the time and we approached Eliane Radigue at their the request and for me it became an excuse to meet her and propose to collaborate. And what I proposed to her is to document the Feedback Works. It’s the very first work she did working in a very much musique concrète… But for me this undocumented Feedback Works was very important. So I realized this is maybe another part of the research I do and that’s important for me. As I said before, one publication led to another one. For example, Philip Corner flew to New York and met David Behrman. We just released Metal Meditations and we were working in a second publication called The Judson Years and he met David Behrman who said: “Hey, there's this guy in Italy, you should do a CD for him”. So he came back from New York with the master tape of everything Sonic Arts Union did. I did nothing for that. I can only say thank you for this. It happened like this many times. Walter Marchetti brought José Luis Castillejo and Juan Hidalgo, and Chopin and Heidsieck brought me to the Nordic Sten Hanson. It was a very much unexplored territory. It’s very different from today. In a way, when I reflect, I think Guy Schraenen was very lucky being young and alive in that moment when he could collect and gather all this incredible archive. You can not do it now. In another way, maybe in a more redefined context, I was also lucky to have the possibility to do this. It’s very different today and I’m not so positive about the publishing reality nowadays.

-Audio: Eliane Radigue. Vice – Versa, Etc, Alga Marghen (1970/2012)