Didi Neidhart about NoFive
I.
How do the Upper Austrian composer Bruckner and the American rock duo The White Stripes fit together? The NoFive project wants to explore this question. After all, there is a striking similarity between a recurring theme from Bruckner's 5th Symphony and the White Stripes' world-famous "Seven Nation Army" riff.
Initiated by Andre Zogholy, a team consisting of six female guitarists, three male guitarists, a bassist, a drummer and a conductor was formed. Together they explore this riff and set pieces from Bruckner's 5th Symphony in the field of tension between high and pop culture, their respective avant-gardes and mutual transgressions.
II.
But the White Stripes song is not just any song. Before "Seven Nation Army" was voted Song of the Decade by the Jetzt magazine of the Süddeutsche Zeitung in 2009, the striking riff had already been on a long and unpredictable journey. The song was first heard as the opener of the White Stripes' fourth studio album "Elephant" in 2003.
The riff is basically very simple and consists of just seven notes. These are played on an electric guitar that is tuned to an open A major chord and is also transposed down an octave using a whammy pedal. This twist gives even a single guitar a more voluminous sound. As a result, the song became one of the last consensus hits that everyone across all genres liked, with at least one foot still deep in the rock'n'roll mud.
However, the song of the decade needed something more. For example, a chorus that could be sung without words and sounded great even from the throats of thousands of soccer fans. And that's how it turned out. The riff is said to have been used for the first time during the 2003 Champions League by fans of FC Brugge as a fight song against Rapid Vienna and later also against AS Roma.
It was Italian fans who used the melody to cheer on their team at the 2006 World Cup and ultimately made them world champions. At the same time, "Seven Nation Army" virtually became the soundtrack to this World Cup and became a kind of global folk song from which there was almost no escape.
There were also countless cover versions ranging from funk (Nostalgia 77), dub reggae (Dynamics) and classical (Vitamin String Quartet). "Seven Nation Army" was also a must for student protests, and the fact that the song is now part of the standard repertoire of every Oktoberfest band should not really come as a surprise in this context.
Now, however, it could be asked pointedly what is actually being sung and bellowed: a riff from a rock song or a melody from Bruckner's 5th Symphony?
III.
Now, taking out and cutting out and blowing up details such as a melody from a larger work is one of the genuine characteristics of almost all art between avant-garde and pop: this ranges from surrealism and Dadaism to pop art and hyperpop, not to mention all music that relies on mantra-like elements (drone metal) and trance states (whether delta blues or techno).
And it was and is formative for many varieties of minimal music, whereby it was never just about the performance itself. Analogous to Andy Warhol's concept of an art of ideas, the idea was also of decisive importance for the drone and minimal pioneer La Monte Young: Here is a chord - follow it! However, minimal here also means a certain simplicity: in the concept, in the set-up, in the idea and intuition itself.
Basically, the NoFive project is also very simple and minimal: an electric guitar ensemble of 10 musicians plus drums and a conductor, equipped with 10 identical 100-watt Marshall full-tube amps, follows the lines of flight that arise between, with and across Bruckner meets The White Stripes.
The result is a sonic hybrid that is dedicated to the experimental approaches and compositional methods of Glenn Branca, among others. Branca, who is also known to have been strongly influenced by La Monte Young, might not have played such a prominent role in the project if it weren't for an obituary of Branca written by Alan Licht, in which Bruckner is also explicitly mentioned as an influence alongside Mahler and Messiaen.
NoFive is about leaving both Bruckner and The White Stripes behind. So it's not a rehash of unspeakable "rock meets classic" attempts, but a joyful exploration of those lines of flight that usually only open up when traditional perspectives are abandoned. This also applies to the references to Glenn Branca, The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth. Although the intensive preoccupation with open tunings, to which NoFive has dedicated itself, can also be cited here as the lowest common denominator.
And of course it's all about volume and intensity! Especially with a riff like this, which Tom Maginnis writes on AllMusic's that it exemplifies "the power of tension and release", you need a sound that not only blows through your ears, but also literally goes through your body.
When European classical music decided to approach the public only in the form of seated concerts, the physical enjoyment of music was lost. Instead, someone like Wagner tried to sublimate this loss by means of the gigantomania of the Gesamtkunstwerk concept.
If NoFive is also about taking another look at the current state of the project to abolish the pigeonholing of subculture, popular culture, high culture, everyday culture and avant-garde, then the physical experience of such border shifts and permeability as well as the associated transformations has always been a specific characteristic of pop: While the head still has no exact idea of what is happening, the body is already reassembling itself and sending new signals to the brain. Ten electric guitars and ten amplifiers may therefore also be suitable for making Bruckner sound "heavy" but not Wagnerian.
Und auch wenn dies ein produktives Missverständnis wäre, würde es sich dennoch gut ins Gesamtkonzept fügen. Denn der Songtitel „Seven Nation Army“ geht ebenfalls auf ein Missverständnis zurück – drang doch der Name der Heilsarmee (Salvation Army) in der Kindheit des White Stripes-Sänger Jack White als „Seven Nation Army“ an sein Ohr.
In keeping with the multi-perspectivity of NoFive, the live concert venues should also reach a heterogeneity of social groups and thus be effective in different social, economic and cultural contexts. This ranges from festivals and concert halls to sacred spaces - and of course a soccer stadium.
Text: Didi Neidhart