[Thom Holmes]: In 1984, guitarist Robert
Poss (Band of Susans) put together the band Western Eyes to record a punchy
collection of rock songs for Trace Elements Records. Poss, no stranger to rock
gear, effects boxes, and recording techniques could have produced the album
himself, but instead asked his friend Nicolas Collins to do the honors. Collins,
who studied with electronic music pioneer Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University
in the early 1970s, had by this time already established himself as an important
composer of experimental music using interactive electronics. Collins was not
the most natural choice for producing a rock album, but the collaboration produced
remarkable results. Most interesting was the way in which Collins used the mixing
panel to modify and shape the overall sound texture of the band. Western Eyes
was a rock band but the recordings were not mixed like any rock band I had ever
heard. The recording levels for each instrument varied radically from track
to track. Sometimes the drums were in the forefront of the sound and the vocals
barely audible. Other times the guitars or vocals took center stage, but almost
none of the music was mixed or balanced in a conventional sense. Collins used
experiment to jog the brain into hearing familiar sounds in interesting new
ways.
I had never heard anything like Western Eyes and the same can be said for every
solo work that I have heard of Collins. Even within the context of the most
experimental forms of American music, Nicolas Collins somehow manages to find
a loose corner of the carpet to turn up, revealing yet another nuance about
the experience of music that had never quite been explored previously. As a
university instructor and head of the Department of Sound at the Art Institute
of Chicago, he represents the next generation of American composer-tinkerers
who learned how to make their own electronic music instruments from Lucier,
David Tudor, and David Behrman. Collins teaches a course in “hardware
hacking” and has written the textbook Handmade Electronic Music: The Art
of Hardware Hacking (Routledge, 2006). The book is a landmark for many reasons.
There are times in the history of any art form when its key visionaries set
down in words the underlying construction of their media. Collins has done just
that not only with his book, but with his continued work in the development
of performance oriented electronic music and installations.
Sled Dog, hand-scratchable hacked CD player©
Simon Lonergan
