Musical History

Musical History
Essay written for the release of the album The Eternal Dice by Sergio Calderón & Céli Lee
2020

In the late 1980’s, at school, some of my classmates used to listen to bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers or The Clash. They weren't bad, but for me Jerry Lee Lewis sounded far more radical and more forward. As a child I became obsessed with the music made around or before the 1950s, especially early Rock & Roll, the stuff coming from Sun and Chess Records. The sound of those albums which I first listened to via lousy compilations on my cheap monophonic tape player sounded very real. For a ten year old they seemed to come from another place, far beyond the small town where I grew up in Santander, Spain. In a town like this, conservative, small minded, a cultural desert, music plays a more important role than in a city like London, where music is mostly an outlet, a topic, the latest trend. Time doesn't change things in places like Santander. Preconceived ideas get passed through generations, from father to son. Children live, think and dress in the very exact way as their parents. Among this uniformity one can also find the strangest types. Characters that couldn't adapt to that conformism, but they also couldn't rebel against it. In places like this you could encounter people that would work weekends delivering pizzas with a scooter in order to earn money to buy music gear and ordering expensive John Zorn CD's from Japan, or weed dealers that would also copy you tapes from The Stooges, independent music distributors with day jobs in metallurgy factories, third rate artists with a first rate knowledge of art, third rate bands making first rate cover versions on their live shows or third rate surfers with third rates bands making the most horrible music. Also you'd find fake blondes, almost all the women in Santander in those days were fake blondes, maybe they still are.

Eventually I saved enough money to get my first hi-fi, a cheap one, at least it had two speakers and a turntable. The first vinyl I ever bought was the banana album by The Velvet Underground. It was my first year in high school, a classmate with the unlike name of Rubén García López was also into the Velvets. Rubén really had his own style. With a very bad case of acne, he used to wear very strange shirts. It looked like he got them from a sale in a pawn shop, but then, we didn't have pawn shops in Santander. He introduced me to other bands, like King Crimson. We became pals. One day, he brought to class a copy of Silence by John Cage. That got me interested in the New York School and later, Fluxus. It was like discovering the world. I began creating music without any equipment or musical knowledge, by just thinking about it and writing it down. Between classes, I plotted with Rubén concepts for minimalist compositions. We documented some of them on his four track tape recorder. He on sax tenor and myself on guitar.

Somehow we stopped working together and I began my own experiments with tape. Very conceptual. I remember one called “Is There Anything Outside of FM?”, a long piece of drone recorded by skimming through the AM band of my radio. Eventually, I began to cut and paste music from other sources, mixing and manipulating popular music with my own percussion experiments (Madonna singing along the sound of breaking glasses) or mixing whatever was trendy with my favourite composers (Lali Puna with Wim Mertens).

By the early 2000s I was living in Barcelona. I was experimenting with electronic music. I got in touch with a record label in Belgium, they called themselves Subliminal Tape Club. They were interested in selling some of my music, on-line, as MP3. In those days releasing a digital album was seen as something very low brow. In the same way on-line dating was seen as for losers. I didn't have any problem with any of that. I recorded, produced, mixed and mastered my first album on my own, in my room. Listenned today, it's difficult to classify, it reflects what was going on in my inner world during that period. EP2 was released under the alias of HUH? in 2004 via my website 3rdM (The Third Mind) and Subliminal Tape Club. I never got any money from them. EP2 had only one good review and it felt nice to be appreciated.

In 2007 I moved to London. I was focusing on experimental short films, which I wrote, produced, directed, animated, photographed and edited on my own. I also composed the music and sound design. In 2009 I met Céli Lee, my partner. We have been working together on multiple projects. In 2015, I formed a band with Céli. We came up with a new method. To create music as a medium for knowledge and self-knowledge. To create without being attached to any preconceived idea. Nothing should be taken for granted. Nothing that had been learned before, developed before from somewhere else, including ourselves was relevant. To not quote from any tradition, to not belong to any genre or any accepted idea. To make music in order to become more sensible and receptive, to communicate better. To notice something we hadn't noticed before. To create something new, that changes us. Music “for me”, “for us”, “to know”. During a trip to Japan, in Kamakura, in front of Yasujirō Ozu's grave, we decided to call ourselves MU (nothing). It felt appropriated.

We played with limited gear, both of us on guitar, with a few effects. We did two tours in Japan, in 2016 and 2017, with some shows in Europe and in London. We played in China too. We also did the soundtrack for some of our films and installations. Some of them performed as live shows. We were creating a total work of live music and film. It was nice.

We did a lot of recordings around that time but we never got to put out most of it. We only released the soundtrack of the video installation "STEREO" and live recordings from our 2016 Japan tour, "L'Impossible". We envisioned our records as artworks. Signed, made in very limited editions, in CD-r with a one-of-a-kind calligraphy made by Céli of 無 (MU). Sometimes including artworks or a one-of-a-kind photograph. We sold them in our gigs, some shops in Japan and via our on-line shop, ENTERTAINING VIOLENCE.

In 2018, inspired by a series of drawings by Céli Lee, 變形記 or "A Journal Of Transform", we created thirteen new instrumental compositions. We released the music as a companion of Céli's art book.

"A Journal Of Transform" wasn't anything like we did before with MU. We were exploring music further and growing in our music vocabulary. Also, it wasn't only guitar based, we were introducing percussion and other instruments.

For the next two years we dedicated ourselves to writing and composing our next album. For the first time we were writing songs. It was a big departure. We wanted to create a complete work drawing from our own nature, in relation to culture. To create new music from what's currently missing in popular culture. A work classic and radical, utilising genres, iconographies and traditions which we explored freely, transcending clichés. Music that we would like to listen to in this era.

In 2020, we released The Eternal Dice under our own names, “Sergio Calderón & Céli Lee”. It was written, performed, recorded, produced, mixed and mastered on our own, in our London apartment. We also made a music video, the photography and the album artwork, even our own website. It came out in vinyl and digital download via our own imprint, ENTERTAINING VIOLENCE. If you, the reader, have the opportunity to hear it, I hope you enjoy it.

London, Autumn 2020