“My personal definition of rock and roll is people attempting to do something that's beyond their ability to do it well,” said David First in 2010. He was talking about his band the Notekillers, and the way their instrumental music both carves out lines and spills beyond them. I don’t know if First feels the same about composition or improvisation, two forms that he’s spent as much time exploring as rock'n'roll. But much of his music bears that kind of fearless ambition—a drive to, as he also said about the Notekillers, “do stuff that pushes us to our physical and mental limits.”
As a solo artist, First pushes a wide range of forms: improvised jazz (he played with Cecil Taylor in the early 70s), sound art, audio-visual experiments, and even an opera. I’m most familiar with his explorations in minimalist composition, collected on an enthralling retropsective of “droneworks” issued in 2010 by Experimental Intermedia, the label run by drone master Phill Niblock. That alone is a lot to take in, but it turns out that amidst all these pursuits, he also applied his caution-averse ways to electronic music.
In between playing with Taylor and forming the Notekillers, First took a class in electronic music at Princeton, where he got to play a Buchla 100 modular synthesizer. It’s a complex instrument, controlled with touch-sensitive metal plates, which makes it more like “finger-painting” (as First puts it) than keyboard playing. The instrument gave First a chance to create the kind of electroacoustic works that previously could only be made by painstakingly splicing magnetic tape. And even though it was only 1976, according to First analog synths were already out of fashion in academia due to the promise of digital, so he basically had the Buchla all to himself.
Judging by the music he made, released as Electronic Works 1976-1977, First dove headlong into the Buchla’s possibilities. Each piece is dizzy with activity, as he constantly shifts gears, discovers new noises, and giddily disrupts his own flow. Unpredictability becomes its own motif, and surreal patterns emerge and vanish incessantly, giving Electronic Works a playful sense of humor. Like electronic pioneer and cartoon-scorer Raymond Scott, First knows how to inject both absurdity and drama into abstract electronics, often in the same breath.
In fact, the best pieces on Electronic Works are the funniest ones. Two tracks that First dubs “Spacey” and “Jumpy”—like outcasts from Snow White’s Seven Dwarves—bounce happily around the stereo space as if chasing own tails. The album ends with another musical character, “Moody”, which is less cartoon figure than dark cloud, fogging its blips and squiggles with wiry leads from First’s guitar. Yet even this track positively bubbles, hopping between sounds like an electronic rabbit.
That spastic, boundless energy is the aspect of Electronic Works that leaves the strongest impression. I rarely remember sequences or even specific individual sounds after I listen. What I’m usually left with is a kind of caffeinated brain buzz; once First’s relentless compositions get neurons firing, it’s tough to make them stop. That might also be what makes Electronic Works sound undated—the direct effect it has on your grey matter is powerful enough to cut through decades.
