Sound Propositions

Patrick Nickleson is the author of The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art, Music, and Historiography in Dispute, an academic study that radically reconsiders the origins and boundaries of musical minimalism. Uninterested in searching for the earliest work of musical minimalism, or even in doing the admittedly necessary work of expanding the canon to include lesser known but equally important figures, Nickleson instead underscores a different set of shared traits that he sees in (early) minimalism: the importance of collective authorship, often collaborating in a form of “bandness”; the priority of recording to tape over written scores; and distinguishing between “(early) minimalism” and the later canonization of Minimalism as we know it since the early 1980s. In addition to the book, we discuss searching for obscure records online, our shared love of Constellation Records, and the influence of Tony Conrad. Read more, including a tracklist, at www.acloserlisten.com TRACKLIST Godspeed You! Black Emperor -