Minimalism was the first live → ↑ → project. Bluntly labelled, it approached Minimalist music not as a transcendental practice, but as an unforgiving and undeveloping manifestation of static music. Approached with Duchampian zeal and Warholian perversity, it announced → ↑ →'s modus operandi as a quixotic meld of severe experimentalism and intellectual playfullness. Minimalism took the non-humanist route and revelled in the nothingness one could become by playing such music.
Ralph Traviato, Philip Brophy, Alan Gaunt & Anthony Montemurro - Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, Melbourne © 1977Compositions & keyboards - Philip Brophy
Guitar - Anthony Montemurro (1977-1978); Leigh Parkhill (1978-1981)
Synthesizer - Alan Gaunt (1977-1979); Maria Kozic (1979-1981)
Saxophone - Ralph Traviato
Recording engineers for EP - Jon Campbell & Chris Wyatt
Melbourne - Clifton Hill Community Music Centre; Latrobe University
Melbourne - White House Café; Victorian College of the Arts; Clifton Hill Community Music Centre; Melbourne State College; Preston Institute of Technology; St.Kilda Alternative School; Burwood Teachers College
Adelaide - Experimental Art Foundation
Melbourne - Old Wool Exchange; Universal Workshop; Guild Theatre; Crystal Ballroom; Oz Print Gallery
→ ↑ → (aka MINIMALISM) - 7" EP released
3RRR - Live to Air concert
Adelaide - Adelaide Fringe, Focus Club
Melbourne - Clifton Hill Community Music Centre; The Met
Sydney - City Studio
→ ↑ → (aka MINIMALISM) EP - included on the Muzak Rock & Minimalism compilation LP - Present Records, Melbourne
Poster for the self-titled EP © 1980The Minimalism set was developed in the midst of Punk's early stirrings. History tends to portray Punk as yet another youthful, energetic, radical social phenomenon - endlessly remembered by withered 'I-was-there' media hustlers - but it was just as restrictive, jingoistic, dogmatic and anti-intellectual as everything it claimed to destroy and debunk. Its saving grace was its connection to performance art and a pretentious flaunting of politicised thought. In such an environment, Philip envisioned his take on Minimalist music as perfectly not fitting in to the dominant 3-chord brigade of wild-youth expressionism. The key influence - as with all → ↑ → projects - was the ideas of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. The Minimalism project is best viewed as Duchamp writing distilled slivers of pop music, with the resulting compositions performed by 4 clones of Andy Warhol. Repetition, anti-humanism, insularity and dilettantism governed all. For Philip in particular, the most entertaining recourse to radicalism was to be as normal and nothing as possible.
Anthony Montemurro, Ralph Traviato, Alan Gaunt & Philip Brophy - White House Café, Melbourne © 1978(...) On the whole, minimalism is a comparative concept - only taking in a productive meaning when related to a concept of 'maximalism' (i.e., the similarities to and differences between Philip Glass and Arnold Schoenberg). Our view of Minimalism is one based on the problematics of the History of Music, as the relationship between Glass and Schoenberg is first and foremost historical rather than musical. Minimalism looks at the ultimate basics of the History of the Western Diatonic Tonal Systems (the music grammar and language that we have all been brought up on), focusing on the effects of a single repeated melody; very slow volume fade-ins and fade-outs; single notes held for long periods of time; etc. Thus the music is not the result of experimenting with minimal procedeures to generate a stylistic type of music that can be categorized as "minimal". Our minimal music is more concerned with looking at basic harmony through a microscope. A simple way of describing it then is music in extreme close-up."
Philip Brophy, Ralph Traviato, Anthony Montemurro & Alan Gaunt - Latrobe University, Melbourne © 19771. One Note Song (-)
2. The Sound of Music
3. Variety Thru Maths
4. E
5. I'm Overcome By The Weight Of Things
6. Only Quantity Counts
7. Propaganda
8. Ear It Is
9. Off-Screen Space
10. Presence Of The Present
11. Entertainment Diversion
12. When The Saints Come Marching In
13. One Note Song (+)