Underneath the overlapping narrative of established musical innovators can be found an even more complex web of figures less well-known but just as crucial to the advancement of recorded sound. Tony Conrad is one such contributor; although we lost him to prostate cancer on April 9 his art, wholly ahead of its time and spanning from experimental film and video to robust drone-based early minimalist musical settings is destined to span centuries. For years the highest profile doorway into Conrad’s sound world was his 1973 collaboration with influential Krautrockers Faust, and Outside the Dream Syndicate’s fresh reissue on LP/CD provides an easy opportunity to get acquainted with an avant-garde master.
Like a lot of folks, my first exposure to Tony Conrad came in relation to the Velvet Underground. Specifically, the entry-point related to his participation in the Theater of Eternal Music aka the Dream Syndicate, a ’60s minimalist group featuring La Monte Young, his wife Marian Zazeela, Conrad, original VU drummer Angus Maclise, and John Cale.
For many Velvets fans Conrad’s name is of little more than trivial concern, with the book that named the group reportedly belonging to the filmmaker/musician, but for a small pocket of devotees the work of the Dream Syndicate; slim, mysterious and commercially unavailable for decades, represented an unattainable object of desire.
By the time the bootleg tape-sourced Inside the Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day of Niagara was issued to much controversy in 2000 by Table of the Elements, the same label had already released Early Minimalism Volume One, a 4CD set of ‘60s material, Slapping Pythagoras, a ’95 recording with contributions from John Corbett, Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs, and the initial ’93 repressing of Outside the Dream Syndicate, so much of the intrigue surrounding Conrad had dissipated.
What remained was sonic invention that remains bracing up to this very moment. It can be heard through the severely subpar audio of Day of Niagara and shines through in much sharper clarity across Early Minimalism, but the best place for curious rock fans to start is with the record that essentially put Conrad on the musical map.
Instigated by Faust producer Uwe Nettelbeck, cut under a German roof of some sort (cited variously as a farmhouse, a schoolhouse, and a hippie commune) after Conrad hopped a flight based on a tip from a German filmmaker, and released by Caroline in Europe only in 1973, Outside the Dream Syndicate has always felt like the beneficiary of either fate or a string of unusual good luck, especially since the resulting album tanked (naturally); today it endures as a work of massive historical importance, standing amongst the finest intersections of expansionist rock and the undiluted avant-garde.
The principals deserve co-billing, though Faust, a much-loved band responsible for a sting of defining Krautrock masterpieces, does an admirable job of reining in their expressiveness to aid the drone-potency of Conrad’s violin. “From the Side of Man and Womankind” finds drummer Werner “Zappi” Diermaier and bassist Jean-Hervé Péron laying down an indefatigable pulse for Conrad to glide over, which he does for over 27 minutes.
While it’s tempting to describe the rhythmic framework as unchanging, that’s actually inaccurate; Diermaier and Péron do remain close to the pattern launched at the outset, but their essential humanity insures subtle variations in the delivery as well as deliberate adjustments that guide the in-tune listener to fruitful pathways.
Overall, the dual throbbing of bass guitar lines up with the kick (or tom) drum and gets offset with the clack of the drum sticks as catgut against strings envelops their progression in gnawing, hovering tones. The byproduct finds the occasional cymbal crash and deeper violin resonances having a powerful impact on the ear; toward the end of minute 25 comes a change in Péron’s bass that can be downright gripping.
But the personal epiphany circa 1993 concerned the relationship between Conrad’s playing and Cale’s wildcard input to the Velvet Underground first two albums; having been hipped to their involvement with the Theater of Eternal Music, upon hearing “From the Side of Man and Womankind” an immediate alteration of historical perspective took place.
It’s worthy of note that when Pickwick Records desired a live band to promote The Primitives’ ’64 single “The Ostrich” b/w “Sneaky Pete,” the players assembled were singer and co-writer Lou Reed’s pals Cale on bass, Conrad on guitar, and Walter de Maria (like Conrad, soon to be an artist of considerable standing) on drums. Though they didn’t play on the actual 45, “The Ostrich” is wonderfully bent enough to make one pine for uncovered TV footage of this bunch tearing it up on a weekday afternoon teen dance broadcast.
Side two of Outside the Dream Syndicate holds “From the Side of the Machine,” a 26 minute piece utilizing more elastic playing from Diermaier and Péron as their bandmate Rudolf Sosna adds to the atmosphere on keyboard/synth. The role of Conrad’s violin also expands, and the track has always struck me as an exquisite mood piece (ever mounting tension, sustained periods of transcendence) ultimately as cinematic as anything by Faust’s countrymen Popol Vuh.
If this seems in line with Conrad’s reputation as a filmmaker, it’s important to understand him as belonging to a very different tradition of the moving image. His most famous film is 1966’s The Flicker, which consisted of a health warning, a title sequence, and then alternating black and white frames for roughly 30 minutes, eventually producing a stroboscopic effect (hence the name and the alert to those with the potential for epileptic seizures).
The Flicker may read like a nightmare to those requiring their movies to provide at least a semblance of story, but like many of his peers in experimental film Conrad was getting at something elemental in the form by divorcing it from the content of narrative or even the parameters of photography. By separating sound from song, he attempted something similar in his music; doing so may have placed him on the fringe, but as outlined above and found in the grooves of Outside the Dream Syndicate, the margins can present a liberating freedom and aren’t at all a bad place to be.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
