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Tony Conrad
Slapping Pythagoras
1995

Table of the Elements
[Vanadium] TOE-CD-23
Compact disc, poster, obi

Tony Conrad is one of the most compelling figures in 20th century music, but it was this 1995 Table of the Elements release that defiantly established his relevance and influence for a new generation of listeners.

Conrad's previously obscure past is now well documented. In 1962 he co-founded the groundbreaking minimalist ensemble informally known as the Dream Syndicate. Wielding a drone both aggressively confrontational and subtly mesmerizing, he and his collaborators—including La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, John Cale and Angus MacLise—created some of the most revolutionary music of that—or any—decade. A chasm continues to widen between Conrad/Cale and Young/Zazeela and their starkly differentiated philosophies, as Young refuses any and all access to their extensive and collective archive of recordings.

Following the dissolution of the group in 1966, Conrad played a pivotal role in the formation of the Velvet Underground, before refocusing his efforts on experimental film and video. However, he did briefly and momentously reappeared to jam with German group Faust on the notorious 1972 LP, Outside The Dream Syndicate (also available as a double-CD on Table of the Elements). For another two decades, this remained his only available studio recording.

In 1994, Table of the Elements devised a daring approach to return Conrad to the recording studio and afford him an opportunity direct a new ensemble gathered from Chicago’s burgeoning post-rock scene. Over the years, Conrad had repeatedly groused that Faust’s producer Uwe Nettlebeck had mixed him soft on Outside the Dream Syndicate, which in Conrad’s words, made him “sound like a hippie.” With some prescient determination, the label arranged for Conrad to record at Electrical Audio, with engineer Steve Albini.

Albini had just rattled the music industry by refusing to dilute his raw, bellicose mix for Nirvana’s In Utero: His was a studious and methodical close-mic’ed attack that eschewed commerce for aural iconoclasm. While it freaked out the suits in Los Angeles, this sensorial vérité was delightfully attuned to Tony Conrad’s personal aesthetic. The sessions, piloted with crackerjack brilliance by producer Jim O’Rourke, finally captured with harrowing accuracy the Scrape und Drang of Conrad’s relentless and epic performance idiom. 

The ultimate result was 1995’s micro- and macroscopic landmark, Slapping Pythagoras. It is as exhilarating, vigorous and downright antisocial as any great rock album—which is exactly what it is. Slapping Pythagoras reconfigures the lost dream music, addresses nearly thirty years of silence, and confirms Conrad as a giant in the soundscape of American music.

“In the beginning there was the Drone, the primordial, mind-splitting hum generated by the strings, keyboards and revolutionary lost-chord Zeitgeist of 60's group the Dream Syndicate ... Slapping Pythagoras is the sound of stasis in excelsis, the fluid microtonal Om of Conrad's violin resolving into deep pools of rich, alien harmony."
Rolling Stone

"Tony Conrad is a pioneer, as seminal in his way to American music as Johnny Cash or Captain Beefheart or Ornette Coleman, one of those really savvy old guys whom all the kids want to emulate because their ideas, their style are electric and new and somehow indivisible."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Conrad invents a new musical language ... unbearably intense and gloriously ecstatic."
The Wire

“Slapping you Pythagoras, it makes me feel I’m rising, like watching falling water.”

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OWN THE ARCHIVE

(Posted by Within Things, May 18, 2023)

From 1993, US recording label Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

The label’s carefully cultivated archive now contains over 15,000 CDs and LPs, an impossible quantity to logistically or financially maintain. Rather than “recycle” the majority of these modern sound and design artifacts, Table of the Elements is making them available to the public via Within Things.

From rich bundles of obscure recordings, exclusive printed material, and limited quantity “holy grails,” Within Things is excited to help connect this important archive to the public. We’re very honored to collaborate with a label that helped define a path and inspire what we do, long before our store even existed.

Click the image above to be taken directly to the Table of the Elements section on our site, and stay posted for the announcement of limited offerings via our newsletter.

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"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

"The music made and cultivated by such artists as Tony Conrad, Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Charlie Feathers, Dock Boggs, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Derek Bailey, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Keiji Haino, Arnold Dreyblatt, Charley Patton, Harry Smith, and scores more, is at once among the most radical and deeply rooted of the 20th century, transcending time and place through the agency of the vibrating string, the resonance of the drone, the terrifying beauty of electric amplification, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the revelatory genius of cranky individualism. 

"How does someone begin to represent that in a visual manner? The trick involves some old-fashioned alchemy. Everyday commodity has to be constructed as both miniature museum and theater. No longer a mere object, it now becomes a site in which one can endlessly indulge a sense of wonder, love and, yes, obsession. It’s not often that someone can cast an influence on a broader design aesthetic — think Blue Note in the 1960s, with its hip Reid Miles album covers — but as this sizable body of work took shape, that’s exactly what happened.”

—Steve Dollar

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism [are] beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, [the label] produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions – not ossified museum objects.”

—Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©2024 Table of the Elements ®2024 Table of the Elements Archive. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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