Music As Primarily Art

Recently learned Rutherford Chang died last year. Some readers of this forum probably saw profiles on him in NYT, Dust & Grooves, BBC, or several others about his massive collection of The Beatles ‘White Album’ (over 3000 copies before he died) that he showcased in a gallery. Super interesting concept in that copies were catalogued by their barcode and ranged varyingly in their condition. He later superimposed images of some of the covers (above) and the recorded vinyl, which begins in sync and slowly unravels into noise.

Reminds me of Basinski’s ‘Disintegration Loops’ in a way. I’m wondering what other projects are out there that delve more into the conceptual side of art.

Obligatory Basinski video given the recent 9/11 anniversary…

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I love this. Rutherford was my wife’s long-ago ex. I was never lucky enough to meet him, but we went to a retrospective of his in Beijing last spring (which included a room-sized replica of his store in lower Manhattan where his We Buy White Albums project took shape) and it was amaaa-zing.

Besides Basinski, another project that comes to mind is the band Yacht? I feel like Claire and Jona (who are also friends of ours) are artists as much as they are “musicians.” But surely there are many others

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