Gentle Fire

Gentle Fire: An Early Approach
to Live Electronic Music

One inherent problem with writing about the history of any musical genre is the fact that mere words utterly fail to describe the auditory aspects and leave you with only a half formed sense of what is being talked about. There are, however, moments of overlapping familiarity such as when the author talks about working on a concert during his time under Stockhausen when such names as John Cage and Merce Cunnigham come up. Davies’ mention of how he was at times only a couple weeks more advanced than his students he was teaching highlights the ability of electronic musicians to learn new technologies and how the field was in such utilization of emergent technologies that having a total access to information allows for a leveling effect to take place amongst the practitioners of electronic music where one’s own motivation can be the driving factor behind being ‘cutting edge’. One other distinction I find interesting is the ability of many members of Gentle Fire to play multiple instrument types which indicates a trend toward cross-pollination of talents yet at the same time limit’s the ability for virtuosity in one instrument. This situation seems to be a growing trend towards a bricolage appropriation of techniques and generative abilities both technologically and acoustically.