You both gave quirky shapes to your melodies, making fascinating unison phenomena that ride above complex and/or atmospheric rhythmic backgrounds. I’m more interested in imagining how you put music down on paper or into a sequencer or mixer than to suggest similarities. Pardon me if it seemed I was suggesting imitation. So….I brought up Zappa because you & he seem to have followed parallel paths, as though it was something in the air or in the zeitgeist.
Thank you John! My commentary feels like two dimensional oblique observation at best, whereas you saw it and continue to live it up close. Tumblers from the Vault can be obtained here. And their self-effacing approach to composition is quintessentially Canadian. This is such a Canadian story, don’t you find? If they were Americans or Brits, they’d be much more famous. They opted to foreground the lyrical and poetic content of their compositions rather than their innovative techniques. Instead, they blended these sounds in a holistic way, allowing the acoustic and electronic textures to create one organic voice.
I want to quote directly from their press release:ġ) One modest task of Tumblers from the Vault is to reinstate Syrinx to their place in the wider canon of groundbreaking music so their story can be appreciated beyond the limits of Canadian notorietyĢ) Unlike so many turn of the ‘60s experiments fusing rock and pop music language with new technology, Syrinx was never excessive in expressing their vision of what electronic music could offer. Of course I should be careful to credit all three of the members of Syrinx, a tuneful and rhythmic treasure. The same secure melodic gift is there in his Stationary Ark music, as it is in the Tumblers CDs. JMC seems more secure, less anxious about the need to seem brilliant, and so more confident as he gives us music that is at times pleasant and tranquil.
SYRINX MUSITION FULL
While I love Zappa he is guilty of some of the most effete artsy writing, admittedly full of wit & unpredictability. What’s clear when I think of S & S, in context with Syrinx is simply that JMC manages to be accessible. I’m hopeful that the opera will eventually get a full production. You may recall that a few years ago I interviewed JMC when workshopping his opera Savitri and Sam with a libretto by Ken Gass.
SYRINX MUSITION SERIES
Many millennials grew up listening to JMC’s music for The Stationary Ark, a regular series on TVO. Mothersbaugh, Zappa & JMC made music that was considered legitimate as serious or classical music, yet also had credibility in the pop music realm. I’m reminded also of Mark Mothersbaugh, whose work is boldly post-modern in his playful use of sounds and textures. Nobody talked about crossover in 1970, but that might be a relevant concept for composers making music that seemed to bridge cultures or disciplines. What Zappa and JMC have in common is a classical background. There are also melodies that remind me a bit of Frank Zappa, although not nearly as jagged or angular. I’m not interested in questions of who influenced whom, not when so many musicians seemed to get to the same sort of sound. Some of their music resembles the pattern music of Philip Glass, which is especially interesting when one realizes that his first big recordings happen later. I had never heard or felt anything quite like that. I think it’s fair to say that Syrinx were ahead of their time, and even now have a remarkable freshness to their sound.Ĭomposer, musician, innovator, teacher John Mills-CockellĪt times you’re hearing something resembling world music, with melodic turns and chord changes suggestive of other cultures and musics. The only thing I can compare this to is my first experience of Walter Carlos (later Wendy Carlos) via A Clockwork Orange. My headline comes from my first encounter with Syrinx, namely “Tillicum” a piece used as the theme for a CTV series called “Here Come the Seventies.” I had such a serious obsession with the opening theme, that sometimes I’d stop watching the show after I’d heard the theme. At times I could tell that there was electronic music, but it was rarely foregrounded, instead blending into a mix. I recall getting lost in the sensations without understanding how they did it. When I first heard this music I was moved, excited, but also stirred by the ambiguities of the music. Hindsight has a way of being 20-20, to fill in gaps of understanding. Or maybe it’s just that I see depths I never noticed when I first encountered them. Composer & synthesizer pioneer John Mill-Cockell (aka “JMC”)īut while they’re understood to be a band I think it’s a misnomer to think of their compositions simply as pop music.Syrinx can be understood as a pop music band, comprised of three people Tumblers from the Vault tumbled into my life, a Syrinx retrospective of the years 1970 -1972.