TONY CONRAD is one of the few artists whose interviews and writings are as consistently rewarding as his work. None of it is easily digested, though. Last year he told an interviewer that at 65 he’s been thinking about the value of listening to old recordings versus making new ones and that he increasingly sees himself as an “animator”–someone who encourages other artists. He’s played that role teaching video and film at SUNY Buffalo and as a mentor to more than a few experimental musicians, but he’s not fading into the background just yet. In the past decade or so, as he’s reemerged, there’s been a resurgence of interest in his early experimental films and his rigorous, hypnotic drone music, played primarily on amplified violin. The Table of the Elements label has released archival recordings of his earlier pieces, including some of his work with a group that included La Monte Young, John Cale, and Angus MacLise, as well as his 1973 collaboration with Faust, Outside the Dream Syndicate. It’s also released the megalithic four-CD set Early Minimalism, which contains four of my desert-island discs; I can’t think of any music better suited to such a place. Conrad’s last local performance was in 2001 at Loyola University; his latest release is Bryant Park Moratorium Rally (Table of the Elements), a piece from 1969 in which he takes a field recording of an antiwar rally and juxtaposes it with a television broadcast about it. It’s mesmerizing listening, and proof that his current interest in culture jamming and contextual juggling has been with him all along. –Monica Kendrick
