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Interview with Keith Rowe

issue 12 :: July 2007

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INTERVIEW:

Keith Rowe

In April 2007, Keith Rowe, who co-founded the AMM ensemble (1965), toured the
U.S. East Coast with Rick Reed and Michael Haleta as the Voltage Spooks. Seven
shows in eight days. Immediately after, Rowe came with Reed back to Austin to
perform solo and duo, much as they did a few years ago. I had the pleasure of
interviewing Rowe the day after the show, and because of my contacts with him on
his previous three visits to Austin, I felt a bit of comradarie which I think generated
an interesting interview. I expect people who read this interview to be familiar with
Dan Warburton's 2001 Paris Transatlantic interview, which covers Rowe's early
career and general methodology. I have tried not to duplicate any of that material.
An interesting 1996 interview with Rowe can be found here, made during AMM's
first visit to Austin. Thank you to John Pham and Susanna Bolle for the use of their
Voltage Spooks photos from Boston and NYC.
interview by Josh Ronsen, April 22, 2007

Q: How has the tour been?

ROWE: Really great. A really great time. Socially, its been really nice, which I think is always
important. Obviously the music is important too, but I think to have really good traveling
companions, sympathetic people, I always find that important.

Q: Does that affect the music? If youre in a good mood?

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ROWE: I dont really know, because I think Ive always avoided touring with people I dont
like. I felt confident. I think it does [thinking about question]. The music left a lot of space for
each other, a lot of consideration, and I think we were all willing to come in with quite strong
ideas when we had them, but also to retire and allow the others to speak, but at the same time
keep three very individual voices.
Q: Youve talked about some AMM recordings being three solos and not a group. How do you
work to make it a group where people arent assigned a rhythm or melody situation?
ROWE: Did I say three solos or three accompanists?
Q: The interview was transcribed as soloists.
ROWE: I think the idea was closer to 3 accompanists, accompanying each other. I think what
you would find -- and I think it is true of the Spooks tour as well -- is there wasnt that kind of
soloistic mentality. People didnt tend to use soloistic vocabulary, a vocabulary which is is
already full. It doesnt need anything else. I think you already know this experience too, youll
be playing with someone.
Q: Sometimes I want to put something in the foreground and other times have something in the
background.
ROWE: Thats right. Again, when youre playing as a soloist, a solo, you are covering all the
areas in a sense. If you have three or four people doing that simultaneously, it does get full and
unnatural. I think most of us in those circumstances would draw back for a few moments. Partly
because youre not helping the situation continuing what youre doing. But also maybe what
you said in a way, that the person feels at that point the freedom to do something very soloistic.
Being sensitive to that is not a bad thing, because it gives a dynamic to the overall picture of the
music when someone does something very strong.

Q: When youre playing with people, how quick is your reaction time? When someone does
something, can you react, [snaps fingers]? Or do you have to pre-plan...?
ROWE: I think your reaction times are very fast. In fact, its a skill to have four or five
simultaneous possibilities and youre only actually utilizing one of them, and you have
something in the background that you can bring out straight away. For me, I would never try to
react in that sense. I have the capability of reacting in that sense, but I much prefer having a
schema you are running through, but a schema that has an ambiguity and open-endedness
which will automatically accept almost any other activity along side it.
Q: And you can adjust it if you need to.
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ROWE: A little bit. You could be adjusting the equalization or maybe the volume, you could
push it or make it more or less transparent, to make it work in a totality. Because obviously in
the end you are always working for the totality of what is happening rather than what you are
doing. And its much better in a way to understate what you are doing. Maybe its better to be
doing something not so brilliant but adding to the whole in a way which makes it work.
Q: When you use electronics, delays -- and I think you have one of those Loop Stations that
Rick [Reed] uses -- you set up electronic loops which are almost another level of playing in
which you control or conduct as a separate entity. Do you play that level, or let it play itself?
ROWE: I think theyre really dangerous. I think the Loop Station is a dangerous thing. I think
Rick is really good in that you dont detect he is using it. Thats the worst thing, that you can
detect it in operation. I think hiding it is best.

Q: I didnt look at your setup last night, so I didnt see if you were using it.
ROWE: I was, but I have a half-sized one of Ricks. The RC-20 has a reverse. I use the RC-2.

Q: The reverse seems like the best feature...

ROWE: [laughs] Well, I think that is true. For a lot of people the reverse is the feature they
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really like. I think the problem with that is that it becomes a kind of trap. I would say one of the
things that always needs to be avoided in music is affectation. And I think these have the
possibility of becoming an affectation.
Q: Where it becomes recognizable what it is?
ROWE: Well, it drives you towards making convincing, interesting music, and then I think it
becomes almost a crutch. Im not saying it is, but there is a danger. The test of that is to not have
it, then you see how much youve come to rely on pressing this button for an effect. I think that
will continually take away from the process of making music.
Q: When you use electronics, do you experiment to find something to use, or do you use them
because you want a certain feature?
ROWE: The thing is, the electronics, and Im not absolutely sure about this, allow for a degree
of abstraction in music which somehow I never felt was there with acoustic instruments. Maybe
it is only the difference between lyrical and hard-edged abstraction, but there is something about
the abstraction which really attracted me right from an early age. I think with the abstraction,
because you dont have a lot of the other craft/technique elements with electronics, you can
have a degree of fluidity in what youre doing which I really enjoy. I think electronics allows a
modular approach to music as human performance and to reroute stuff not only completely fresh
before you start but also during the performance. David Tudor was the great genius at that.
Q: With his matrix switcher...
ROWE: Yeah. We do it differently with 1/4 jack leads.
Q: Do you rehearse with different orders of the electronics [plugging the electronics in different
orders]?

ROWE: No, I never do. I usually have an idea about it, I have a book. I would think I wonder
if I put the telephone pickup coil into the Loop Station? What is the possibility of that?
Q: And then you do that during performance?
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ROWE: No, I get the idea sitting on the bus of waking up in the morning or cooking. I'm
constantly churning stuff over. And then I try to remember it long enough to write it down. I
forget loads of stuff. I might in the afternoon during sound check, I might try it. But the sound
check is part of the playing. But I wouldnt rehearse it to death. I dont sit at home... I never
never never at home put stuff on the table and rehearse.
Q: I dont know if you remember, but when you [and Toshimaru Nakamura] gave the
workshop [in Austin], it was in 2002 or 2003, you admonished us for fidgeting around on our
instruments at home. You said it cheapens the sound or the musicROWE: The relationship. It dilutes the relationship between you and the instrument.
Q: Because it is no longer a special relationship?
ROWE: I think it becomes very informal. It has the potential to become very lazy and you
teach your muscle memory bad habits. The possibility of bad habits creeping in, unless youre
very strict, just laying back on the sofa playing away.
Q: Because you are not devoting all of yourself to playing?
ROWE: Exactly. I think it is the concentration. But thats just my quirk. Im sure people
stumble across stuff by doing that.
Q: Im guilty of that.
ROWE: What? Stumbling across or...?
Q: Both. But just keeping the calluses [on fingers] up...
ROWE: Because I dont play the guitar like that, calluses are not an issue. I try to strip the
music of all of the craft elements.
Q: You never use your fingers to fret notes?
ROWE: Very, very rarely. I did last night, a little bit. I wanted to make a sound, more like
human sounds, just rubbing the strings with fingers, but there is no pressure, a very light touch.
In fact, its a very light touch because the guitar is amplifying, with contact microphones. Its
also laying flat on a table which is resonating as well, the whole surface is vibrating, so the
lightest touch on the strings can make a thunderous sound.
Q: I always loved the story about the Japanese Zen Master who could produce vibrato just from
varying the blood pressure in his fingers.
ROWE: I have my own version of that in my pan scrubber period, when I used, for about
four years, a stainless steel wool pad. If you crank up the pickup very high so each sound is
really magnified and you put the pad on the pickup and hold it really still, you can hear the
blood coming through. If you can control the blood flow by holding your breath or slowing
down. A couple of times I have used that notion of hearing the blood flow. And the brillo pad
on the pickup is not Zen [laughs], but it is an idea reminiscent of that.
Q: Rick used to play guitar and that was one of his techniques.
ROWE: I stopped doing it. I remember playing in Berlin in a small club and I think there were
three sets. I was setting up my table and I looked down and I saw -- Im not joking -- fifteen
brillo pads on various tables. So I threw mine away and havent used any since.
Q: What are you using the laptop [a G4 PowerBook] for?
ROWE: It come from an old idea. Obviously it is a found object, you can treat it like an object
like anything else, and it has very rich possibilities outside of its normal music [capabilities]. I
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was inspired by a quote from Nicolas Poussin, a painter from the 1600s. I mentioned him last
night [in his spoken introduction to his solo set].

In a letter he wrote I who make a profession of mute things, which always struck me as a
fantastic way of describing the role of an artist. There is an inherent muteness about things that
an artist brings out the possibilities from muteness. With the computer I use a telephone pickup
coil and try to explore all of the sonic debris the keyboard throws up, and also the Bluetooth
[wireless] mouse. Last night I had the pickup coil on top of the mouse and operated it as a
mouse, say to launch a program, Reactor, and didnt take any audio from that. The mouse
chatters [to the computer]. Positioning the pickup coil on top of the keyboard then I am able to
pickup this chatter. Then if I run that through the Loop Station and run it through the PS-3 and
change the pitch...
Q: You pick up the hard drive sounds?
ROWE: Yeah, in fact, its just one of those things I just do once. When I was fresh into using
it, it [went into standby mode] halfway through the performance and the whole motor went
[makes winding down noise], but very gracefully, absolutely beautiful. So at the end of the
performance I turned it off by holding down the power button and had the pickup where I
reckoned it produces sound. Fantastic. But that could become a signature sound so I hope I
would never do it again.
Q: I dont know about your Mac, but some models have a built-in microphone and I have seen
people use it in performance.
ROWE: Mattin.
Q: Aaron Russell did something really beautiful where he bowed the shell of the laptop and this
was picked up by the mic.
ROWE: Bowed laptop. The bowed laptop ensemble [laughs].
Q: Do you use that feature at all?
ROWE: No. For me that is someone elses idea. I would try never to steal or appropriate
someone elses idea. I would always want to work it out myself.

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Q: Are you using the computer programs like Reactor, are you making computer music?
ROWE: I dont very much. When I first got it, I tried using it but it was so slow. Maybe it was
just me, but it seemed really really slow.
Q: It is almost like you have to compose something in advance. Or you can improvise with premade material.
ROWE: I wouldnt rule out using the sound capabilities at some point, but just at the moment I
find it slow.
Q: And you still prefer direct manipulation.
ROWE: Yeah. I dont suppose I will do that forever either. There is lots of other stuff which is
equally interesting. CD players or iPods, use the platter from the iPod, one of them that has a
hard drive [as opposed to flash memory]
Q: I have read instructions how to send music signals to hard drive motors to turn the actual
spinning of the hard drive platter into a speaker.
ROWE: Yeah. I like the exploration. The result, whatever comes out, comes out. Portable
telephones, cell phones, the array of information coming out.
Q: How do you approach playing with someone new? Youve played with Rick once before.
Have you ever played with Michael?

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ROWE: I had about two years ago in Maryland. We did a performance of [Cardews] Treatise
together. Obviously when you play with someone for the first time, you usually have an idea of
what theyre about.

pages 94-115 of Treatise

Q: Cause youve heard their stuff?

ROWE: Yeah, but just recently I played with a laptop musician I knew nothing about. He did
the first set and I did the second set and then we did a brief collaboration, so I got an idea from
that, but sometimes people for their solo set have a completely different approach to live
improvisation, probably good, too, I think. But it was odd because his solo set was very
convincing, but when it came to the improvisation [with me], I think what Ive been saying
now, I really think the computer wasnt fast enough, or whatever he was doing, wasnt fast
enough to interact in a sense. I felt he was running a program and I was decorating it. There is a
natural kind of tentative nature, I think that is one thing that obviously happens, you both try not
to get in each others way, try not to step on each others feet, try to leave space for the other
person. And that can lead to a tentative and weak environment, and so much so that on this
occasion after ten minutes I thought, either Im going to sit here and make a completely
pathetic evening of music, or I can push it, which I did. The kind of overplaying I wouldnt
normally do. But that just woke the relationship up and I think I gave him the confidence to
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come back at me and [he thought] hes making a lot of noise, so I can. I think sometimes not
to make a lot of noise, not to have a lot of activity you have to have confidence. It has always
seemed to me, you have to be more confident in what you do to be able to use less material and
the more material you use can be a feature of insecurity. It doesnt have to be; Im not saying it
is a mechanical relationship but I think it is often the case, people over compensate. The danger
is playing too much so that youre not sensing the actual environment youre in. For me, the
most important things that you find in the room, in the space, is continually changing. Like last
night in the first half, the space was a certain kind of space and then after intermission, as I sat
down to play I felt that the space was very different. Not good or bad or anything like that, but
just a different kind of feel of space, a tactile sense of space.
Q: In relation to being in back of the room and watching Rick and then coming to the front of
the room?
ROWE: Partly it is the psychology of the people there which you can obviously sense, you can
sense the kind of attention people are bringing to it. When youre primarily using visual
material, because we are primarily visual animals, the concentration of the [audience] is visual,
and in fact when there is no visual there seems to be a process around the irises, scratching
around, looking to derive information, which is not there. And what one would think would
happen that the ears become more active, but the ears begin to close down. But if you have a
visual image and a high volume. The ears are closing down from the volume and also closing
down from the eyes taking most of the concentration. So I think that needs a particular kind of
awareness from [the audience]. So often the intermission is totally different. I just sense it was
different. And that was why I choose to talk a little to try to negotiate that different. And then
playing, the first five minutes is just exploring the space, bringing up a soft drone as a way of
probing and when it came back, I knew that what I had done was to pull peoples concentration
in the sound. I think prior to that it didnt feel very good. They were still trying to locate
themselves in the space. A performance is a collaboration between everyone who is there and
the room itself, the quality of the room, the expectations of the people and their actual
concentration; it seems to be tangible.
Q: Youve played in the room twice before, plus given a workshop, you have a history with this
room. Have you ever played to video like Rick did?
ROWE: I just did a tour of Portugal with a video artist from Oslo. Its hard.
Q: To make music that fits the video?
ROWE: Well, I can do that easily. He uses a lot of flicker, generated flicker images,
nonobjective images so they are abstractions. We each have an analog monitor on our tables.
And what I do is use different pickup coils and radios, like long-wave radios, most television
monitors you will pick up the monitors process, where it is trying to hold the image in sync
around the edge of the screen, you can pick that up very strongly. You can explore the top part
of the monitor, you get a very hard-edged sync with the flicking image. He then takes a an
audio feed which he puts into his Doppler which changes the flicker rates which then change
the sound. So we have a loop. Its a very hard-edged electronic sound. Its quite punchy.
Sometimes Ill break away from that and do something contrary. It gets very intense.
Q: And you run this through your effects?
ROWE: Yeas. We were given some money by a Norwegian arts association to spend a week
away to experiment with the relationship between radio waves and monitors. It gave me a big
headache at the end [taps on table]. But its wonderful to combine short-wave possibilities,
exploring the different aspects of the sync locking, very extraordinary sounds.
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Q: Thats a different way of working with visual material than... you make compositions using
elements from peoples paintings. How do you interpret those elements? For example, the
compositions for MIMEO.
ROWE: Last night I did something based on the Rothko paintings in the room in London, and
in Houston. In MIMEO weve also done versions of Rothko in a different way. Looking at a
Rothko, I think of two elements, the high pitch and the low pitch, the upper part of the frame,
[and the lower]. The instructions are always simple for these painting works, at least for Rothko,
the hard, hard Rothko, without any consultation from the other people you hit either a very high
frequency or a very low, and without any sense of degradation or deviation, hold that pitch at a
very loud volume for an hour and then stop. So it is like being inside a 747 engine [laughs]. For
me, it was to express something thats almost hidden in Rothko, the terror, the sheer terror of the
painting, the terror of the process and the way the process partly causes suicide. All the
difficulties of making that, for him. I think Rothko reopened things, like Feldman, very soft and
green, and I think a romanticized version of it, and understandably so. And we have a soft in
Rothko, which is the same instruction choose a high or low frequency and play it incredibly soft
for an hour. The Caravaggio we used,The Taking of Christ, (1602) which was a lost
Caravaggio and only recently rediscovered. It is too complicated to explain now, but there is
scheme involving John Tilbury as the Christ figure, the acoustic instrument surrounded by
electronic ones, and the electronics betraying the acoustic instrument. John Tilbury is actually
betrayed inside the piano [Cor Fuhler performing directly on the piano strings], his ability to
move is restricted. But not aggressively, no one is trying to stop him.

Q: Is he aware of this, like Christ, does he know the betrayal is coming?

ROWE: We talked about it, but I'm not sure. I thought he was, but maybe I didn't make it clear
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enough. I gave him drawings of the hands. In the painting the hands of Christ are fairly uniform
in composition, which is usually interpreted as resignation, and I encouraged John to use that
hand. In the performance I imagine he must have known, because we had a press release, and it
was in the program and we had a press conference the day before. John was there; we all
discussed it. The last painting project with MIMEO we did, we just finished it and it will be
released in a few weeks is based on Cy Twombly.

As you know, Twombly was a cryptologist in the army and part of that he had to be able to
work under difficult circumstances which involved being in the dark. And you know the legend
of painting blindfolded and using the wrong hand... I thought about how we could do a version
of that in MIMEO, so what I got people to do was each person in their home take a 60 minute
CD-R and put onto this about 2 minutes of music, 2 minutes of sound, spread over the one hour
of time, and while doing this, think about what the others could be doing, but obviously not
knowing, and to be considerate of the other people, and think about Cy Twombly's paintings.
Everyone then sent their CD-R to Marcus Schmickler, who piled them on top of each other
without listening to them, and then sent the master, having not listened to it, to the record label
[Cathnor], who agreed to print it without listening to it. So the label boss, Richard Pinnell, his
idea is to go to [Sound] 323 and buy it over the counter and listen to it.
Q: Can the people at the plant listen to it, to master it?
ROWE: I don't want to make a fetish of it, but the idea was that none of us should listen to it.
So it is like taking the blindfold off and you have the work.
Q: Are you playing blindfolded, or with the wrong hand?
ROWE: AMM was often played [lost to tape change], and in the Scratch Orchestra we had a
piece called Houdini Rite where youre all tied up with rope. For example, you could do
Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No. 2 with John Tilbury at the piano with his hands tied behind
his back.
Q: Was he playing backwards?
ROWE: He tried [laughs].
Q: Rothko and Caravaggio are interesting together because of their intensities, Caravaggios
black backgrounds and Rothkos color fields. Do you see a link between that?

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ROWE: Thats right. Particularly in a Rothko. I think Rothko said the ideal viewing distance is
eighteen inches from the surface of the canvas. Eighteen inches and youre totally immersed in
it, it is an intense viewpoint, there is nothing else in your world when you are that close to it. So
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the high volume comes from that in a sense. For the question of the color in Caravaggio, we
talked a little about that fact that Caravaggio hardly ever used blue in his paintings, which is odd
given where he lived [Rome], but what we worked on more was the black and white, the
contrast, the tonal quality of the painting rather than the dramatic. In fact, what we used, if you
look at The Taking of Christ, its almost like a photographers flash, a scoop photograph of an
arrest. Its almost a 1600s version of some famous person being arrested. So, slightly
humorously, we used flash guns in the performance to trigger interference in the radios. Its a
technique that Jrme Noetinger particularly used over the years. The flashes replicated that
technique of painting, that very hard tonal quality.
Q: There is a Caravaggio in Fort Worth, if you ever go there. Its an early one, the one of the
girl stealing the boys ring.
ROWE: His paintings often have tricksters and card sharps [actually, The Cardsharps is the
Caravaggio at the Kimbell -Ed.], people stealing something.

Q: Theres always a sense of story, not just people displayed.

ROWE: That was one of the things about the taking of Christ, is that you have a sense of
animation of the profiles. In fact, everyone is in profile except for Christ. You can imagine
making an animated film of the hands. And in the painting there are references to earlier works,
the fleeing nun on the left hand side is taken from an earlier painting.
Q: Have you thought about turning your paintings into music?
ROWE: In a sense, Ive always considered what I do on the guitar as an act of painting. At the
very least the process of painting.
Q: The physical gestures?
ROWE: No, the process from the ground upwards. For example. in the world of musical arts, I
can change... and I think this is one contribution in our area of music, I think in the world of
music generally speaking, originality is not something on top of the list. If you go to
conservatory, originality is not what music is about. Not a particularly good idea, I think. In rock
and roll you have a little notion of originality, you try to find the new sound, but there is also a
lot of copying, a lot of product. But in the music we make, there is much more a notion of
originality. Finding your own voice is a major part, and for a lot of people, the most important
part. So I think I had that idea right from the start, certainly in the early to mid 60s. I thought
my primary responsibility was to find a new angle for the instrument, like in painting, searching
for a new angle. Thats what you do in art school. Ive always considered what Ive done is
painting, and for me it is the perfect painting, there is no commodity, it cant be traded like a
painting can. Improvisation was a perfect way of making a painting, so I could be concerned
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with all the issues of painting.

Q: Does that imply that an improvisation is one distinct thing that you build up through layers or
through time?
ROWE: Yes. There is a slight problem there because if you line ten or fifteen Rothkos up, you
could say they all look the same, like oak trees all look the same. But the trees are all different,
and I think improvisations can be like that. I think that is quite legitimate to have the
improvisations to be very same-y. And you might not have always caught me saying that, at one
point I might have said that they should all be different. But I think there should be that
possibility. When you go to hear a Haydn string quartet, there are no surprises, are there? In
terms of newness. People listen for the exquisite exposition of the quartet. They have a Haydnesque quality to them, theyre always Haydn. Same with Schubert. Maybe we have in our
maturity, as a group of people working on this music, as a community, what we have to think
about this issue of newness, of freshness, and maybe there is also room for repeating something,
what youre getting involved in is the exquisite nature of this exposition rather than the newness.
It still seems to be in the air where everyone needs to be creating new stuff all the time. I have
no dogmatic stand on this, Im not thumping the table, but it does seem to me that we should be
thinking about it.
Q: How much new music do you listen to? Im sure people send you things all the time. In fact,
Im about to give you something.
ROWE: Quite a lot. I think it is still vibrant, the world that were in, people are working hard,
very conscientiously. Of course, there are some people who think were going through a crisis
at the moment. In a way, if we do have a problem, we need more people who have spent time in
classical music, as opposed to the people who have been brought up on rock and roll. One of
the important things in AMM was the inviting of classical performers. This was important for
us. I think it true of our whole scene. We badly need people who have another kind of
perspective.
Q: What about from other cultures?
ROWE: Oh, there are many from painting, arent there? Voltage Spooks, three people from art
schools, art backgrounds. Just last night, two or three people I talked to were art students. It
seems there is a lot when it comes to people involved in the visual arts. I think there is a real
connection between the visual arts and the way the visual arts have developed and this type of
music, this approach to music.
Q: And other geographic cultures, the Middle East, for example?
ROWE: Well, that will come, presumably, because we saw the effect the Japanese had on the
scene, pretty dramatic, almost as dramatic as the G3 computer appearing.
Q: I was surprised to find there was a lot of performance art from Japan in the 1950s, which is
rarely discussed.
ROWE: I think there were a lot of interesting developments around, from Italy, Japan, people
like Kosugi, and Toshi Ichiyanagi. I think there have been a couple of movements which have
passed us by, I think we could have derived more from them, like Fluxus. I think were still very
much orientated towards a traditional way of performance.
Q: Last year you worked with Bill Thompson in Scotland. Hes one of our friends who moved
away. What did you do with him?
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Interview with Keith Rowe

ROWE: I worked in a festival right in the center of England called Darby, and we did Treatise,
some sound recording, "Pondlife" with Lee Paterson, very interesting. And later in the year, in
November, I went to Bills sound conference in Aberdeen. I went up and played with 2
musicians from the Indian subcontinent, Rohan de Saram [cello] and Rajesh Mehta [trumpet],
and that was actually very different to be playing with them. Raga is a very different way of
approaching the instrument than the normal, European improviser.
Q: I imagine they were more familiar with Western traditions than you with Indian traditions.
ROWE: Absolutely. Rohan spent his whole life in the Arditti String Quartet, so he knows all
that inside-out, backwards, upside-down, reverse. Rajesh has a multi-arts discipline, deeply
rooted in the Indian tradition, too. Which, the Indian tradition, SriLankin improvisation has
always been a very strong part of the culture, hence a very strong part of the classical music,
too. For them, improvising is very normal.
Q: Indian improvisation has certain restrictions, just like our improvisations, a raga uses a
particular scale, uses a particular rhythm at the beginning and a different one at the end...
ROWE: I think our restrictions are obviously different, but are equally important. I think the
restrictions are more important than the freedoms, in a way. One restriction which I would go so
far as to say is absolutely essential is that there should be a reason for everything you do. In the
world of painting, the expression would be every brush stroke has to be justified. Somehow, in
our music, we seem to be terribly wasteful, we have lots of stuff which isnt absolutely needed.
Q: I know you are influenced by Jackson Pollock. How is the flicking/splattering of paint
justified? Or was it just the passion behind his actions?
ROWE: The genre, not always--some of the drip works are just one or two lines, almost like
calligraphy. Take John Coltrane with the sheets of sound, I dont feel there is any superfluous
material in there at all. He put into it what it needed to have that sensation that he wanted. I think
it is always like that. All I am saying, we should think about that a bit more. We should think
about justifying everything.
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Interview with Keith Rowe

Q: And thing brings us back to your admonishments against fidgeting. I forget the actual word
you used [in the Austin workshop].
ROWE: Roland Barthes expression was the petty digital scramble. [laughs]
Q: Im sure youve read "Keith Rowe Serves Imperialism."
ROWE: [laughs]
Q: I havent done my own translation from the French, but it seems he is attacking you for
having a personal style, listening to the people you play with and releasing CDs.
ROWE: I would have to admit, I havent read the French version. I only read it the day before
it was released. I got an email from Mattin the afternoon before the release and said this title it
coming out and hoping I wouldnt be offended. So I wrote back and said, I wouldnt be
offended if it were intellectually coherent. And then he sent me a link to the text and I read
through it pretty quickly. I felt intellectually irritated and annoyed, insulted by the lack of rigor
in the discussion. Particularly that he used Stockhausen Serves Imperialism as a launching pad
for this in the title. If you read Cornelius essay, whether if you agree with it or not is another
issue, if my memory serves me right, why he says Stockhausen serves imperialism is that
Stockhausen 1) detaches himself from the progressive avant-garde, 2) in the manner of the
notation changes the relationship between him and the performer, and 3) goes around talking a
lot of mumbo-jumbo, which maybe has something to do with religion. There are some real
issues there, about whether you detach yourself from the progressive avant-garde, what does
that mean, why would you do that, what are the consequences of doing that? The way you
change your relationship through the notion with the performer? I can see how the concepts of
arrogance, godliness, Im not saying fascism, but you can see the issues there. there are issues to
be discussed, whether you agree or not. And then the whole thing of justifying your work and
these kind of extraterrestrial backgrounds, again there is something to be discussed. I think there
is something there. When I read the [Mattin] I felt it was really cheap, nasty stuff. Maybe I
shouldnt say this, but sometimes I think it is not me they are getting at. I wish they were more
honest. I think they are having a go at Jon Abbey [Erstwhile Records], partly because hes
American and partly because he spent his own money on promoting a label. I see much more to
do with that than anything Ive done. Personally, I dont think I have served imperialism. If I
have, I would like to see the evidence.
Q: Not more than any of us do.
ROWE: Not any more or less than the next guy.
Q: This is something I think of myself, but I going to point my finger at you, but having an
Apple laptop, using these electronic devices, releasing CDs... there is no alternative mode to
doing that kind of stuff. Having an Apple laptop means there are people in Singapore or where
ever who are getting paid a dollar a week to make these components. There is no way to get
around that if you want access to this advanced technology. Do you ever think about those
aspects?
ROWE: Of course, and in fact [my] last solo CD, Harsh, was about that, was about the
ability of harshness in our genes, the slave labor, the harshness of that is invisible. I think our
lives implicated in a way. Clearly. In Nantes, there is quite a strong movement for Linux, antiBill Gates, anti-Macintosh. Downloading, only using open-source software.
Q: But you still have to run that on chips which you cant make yourself.
ROWE: No, but in the end, they would say you have to do the best you can. I really dont have
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Interview with Keith Rowe

a problem with it either way, within limits, of course. I think maybe both of us would not buy
software from a company which we knew was contributing to an Italian Fascist march or
something. I think there probably are things we could do if we know, but its a big mess. You
just have to do the best you can. If you dont run an Apple Mac, youre taking a risk there...
Q: If I want to be a progressive Leftist, do I have to carve my own instrument? Generate my
own electricity? I dont have answers for myself.
ROWE: No, like you, Im aware of what the issues are. Im also aware that one can delude
oneself into thinking that youre making a some very big statement about it and actually it
wouldnt matter a hill of beans. I can see that possibility too. Maybe in the comfort of your own
home, you can feel very righteous in a sense. Its like coming to America, because primarily
because of the war in Iraq. But then I look at it differently. I come to Austin, Texas in a way to
support the people who I want to support in that culture, which is actually in opposition to a the
culture that supports the war, those families, those political institutions. I think to do a Voltage
Spooks tour with these guys in seven cities supports those alternative cultures. I feel thats what
I will do. I really understand the other view, not to come to America. You have to make a
choice. Im not going to be sanctimonious about what Im doing.
In June, Rowe returned to Texas, to perform at the Rothko Chapel in Houston.
Loren Connors and then Rowe performed solo sets I cannot describe. Being in the
Rothko Chapel with 160 other lovers of music, hearing Rowe exceed himself,
hearing Connors' beautiful phrases and shimmering chords was a magical
experience. The show was arranged by Dave Dove, the trombonist and teacher.
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Contact:
Josh Ronsen
joshronsen (ate) yahoo (dote) com
2001 Brentwood
Austin, Texas 78757 USA

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