I finally got my hands on the new collection of Tony Conrad’s writings. As expected it’s full of beautifully concise and provocative articulations of things I’ve long been trying to express in my own work. His brief 2003 essay “Sacred Harp Heterophony” is one of these. The other is the even shorter “On 60 Cycles”, his 1972 program note for Rhys Chatham’s Dr. Drone in Concert. My favorite bit:

We take 60-cycle power out of the wall and do different things with it for the purposes of our own gratification… But the true tonic of our social lives, though it does lie above fusion, has been handed down to us principally through the primary machinations of the primitive machines. Sixty cycles is a compromise between the desires of motors and transformers and the reactance of long-line power transmission. Throughout our lives we hear with unresponsive insouciance the groans of the machines, ineffectively complaining on the long electromechanical wave band of their 60-cycle burden. Their wavelength is buried down there with the whistlers; one wave spans our continent. The revenge is simple: 60 cycles is the ideal killer frequency for biochemical life-forms. (pp. 106)

With his art and activism Conrad brought together acoustic and emancipatory concerns in a way that continues to inspire. Rest in Power.