Alvin Lucier
I Am Sitting in a Room

THE REVIEW

Autumn 1979, late evening, parents proclaiming that this house is not a hotel, brother inquiring about the fate of the new bass strings. I slip between the three, close the door to my room, and with a single motion, I throw myself onto the bed and simultaneously turn on the amp, put on the headphones, and drop the needle on the record. The Matrix yet to come can just polish my boots... Marco's father has a mine of jazz records from Scott Joplin to Miles Davis. He lent me an LP, saying it's an electroacoustic experiment or something like that, anyway "not jazz." I try it. A single track divided into two sides, dated 1970, USA pressing, with a guy claiming to be sitting in a room recording the sound of his voice on a recorder, then re-recording the result onto another, and so on, 32 times. By the end of side A, it becomes clear that the guy WANTS to get somewhere, relying on the environment he's recording in, with its dimensions, emptiness, and echo, distorting and slightly changing each time what's been recorded before. By the end of the second side, it has turned into a dark melody of just three notes, deriving from the continuously replayed statement. Three notes. After endless re-recordings, spoken text is now a chant of three repeated notes. Perplexed, I return the LP to its owner. It took me years, but I found it again, on CD, the Holy Grail of Art, not of Music, neither Classical, nor Rock, nor Electronic. Now I know I have listened to the point of no return of what can be defined as Music, and at the same time, defies any definition at all. A Work in which the Artist kindly explains the Creation Of His Artefact. The Democracy Of Sound through its own distillation. Or perhaps Professor Lucier, much like Andy Warhol elsewhere, has been pulling our leg for fifty years.