"Doom just welds the floatation tank shut"--Drew Daniel on Morton Feldman, bongwater and blood

Drew's 2003 manifesto places Doom Metal firmly and unselfconsciously in the 20th century avant-garde. It defines the canon of Satanic Minimalism via 80's synth-pop band the Human League's "The Black Hit of Space." It's about an imaginary single in a completely black sleeve that becomes so popular that it actually charts into the negative numbers, sucks in all other music and stops time itself.







Originally printed in Bridge 2003.

The concept of 'tempo', as meaning the structuring of time in music, is almost destroyed in Feldman's music: in his music the measurement of time, the perception of metre and rhythm becomes practically impossible. In Untitled composition metre has lost its traditional meaning, it just serves as a tool that makes it possible to determine the duration of the notes. This implicates that the listener has to listen to this music with a different attitude than he is used to do. The concept of music as a language that can be molded into a logical, linear form has been put aside by Feldman. To him composing was no longer the ordering of sounds in time. Feldman's works are about the unfolding of individual sounds in total freedom, not hindered by metre - an instrument to order sound in a time structure.

--Liner notes to Morton Feldman - Untitled Composition for Cello and Piano