Signifying Something with Safie Flato

(This episode was originally broadcast April 25, 2017)

G Lucas Crane speaks with Steve Flato on today’s episode of Signifying Something. Crane is a sound artist, performer, and musician whose work focuses on information anxiety, media confusion, and new performance techniques for obsolete technology. He is one of the co-founders of the experimental art and performance space the Silent Barn, located in NYC. He makes collages of reconstituted sample-based sound using the medium of cassette tape and has been in bands such as Woods, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice. His solo work is released under the name Nonhorse.

Crane and Flato discuss playing with time and the nature of an instrument based on recordings of previous events; how people continue to use technology that is useful to them regardless of whether it’s “obsolete” or not; the importance of creating encounters with yourself in a performative setting; the diaristic nature of Crane’s sample library; associations with sound; listening and playing as two discrete modes of interacting with his material; musical problem solving; achieving a trance-like state during a performance; performance conventions in experimental music and otherwise; imperfection within the context of looping; tradition and vocabulary in what is usually considered “non-traditional” music; and what art can achieve beyond the expression of the author.