Future Music

Experimental song lovers in the UK might know Laurie Anderson most appropriate for her 1981 strike O Superman, the scary minimalist square that appearance at number two in the UK chart.

Born in Chicago and tied together to the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed, her song vocation has spanned 5 decades.

The Laurie Anderson sound has developed as she grasped new technologies, bettering instruments and program to fit her genre-defining inventive vision.

In more new times, she became Nasa's initial ever artist-in-residence and was segment of the group at the back the song is to gap rite is to Olympic Games in Athens.

Speaking to the BBC's Colin Grant, Laurie reflected on a vocation ever-defined by the technology existing to her.

"Many years ago, in the 70s and 80s, the apparatus we used was college of music equipment.

"It was delicate, and pennyless all the time, and was a garland of boxes. we put those boxes on stages - nobody else was carrying out that. They were only done is to studio."

Much of her early work was expected as segment of melodramatic performance or to go with inventive installations.

Her initial single, It's Not the Bullet that Kills You (It's the Hole), was used for an designation at the Holly Solomon Gallery in New York in that Laurie's song played from a jukebox.

Hacking instruments

Modern times have since Laurie room to remove those early constraints and bring her experimental sound to more places than ever before.

"I swore we would admire to travel with no boxes.

"What I've been carrying out in the final year is essay a lot of program to reinstate those boxes."

As good as formulating software, Laurie hacks her hardware too.

In the 1970s, she re-jigged a violin, replacing horsehair with alluring fasten that triggers audio samples when the nod touches the strings.

Another innovation entangled bettering a wooden list so it plays music… by your arms.

But her affection for bettering and enhancing technology has its limits.

"Does it unequivocally start how people make music? Yes! It does.

"Does it start it in the most critical way? Probably not.

"Although if you inquire me that on a not similar day we would probably give you a not similar answer because honestly the fact that everybody creates archives right away is both gorgeous and horrifying."

Equally horrifying, she insists, is our gratification with sub-standard song compression, quite the mp3 record format.

"First of all," she said. "Half the tools are missing.

"You would put two guitars, and the application would erase the subdivision - so the guitars were gone. It's only intolerable to listen to a record that we have outlayed for all time working on."

Her ultimate work, Delusion, heads to the Brighton Festival next month as segment of a worldwide debate and is described as a personal meditation on life, language, mental recall and identity.