A Few Scenarios of Military Interference,
or Obsessive States For Mixed Cast a-moll


As an independent program "A Few Scenarios of Military Interference, or Obsessive States For Mixed Cast a-moll" was first performed April 12, 1991.

Minimalism here develops into obsessive sound and visual hallucinations, which is very typical of NAE. Music material is subjected to a peculiar abortion as a result of which both positive human emotions and all the sounds of chromatic scale have been abolished. The three left notes (gis-a-c) have become the main and the only constructive element round which sound and visual events take place. For example, a bayan-player, numb from a continuous and motionless sitting whose presence cannot be explained by common logic, from time to time turns the mask of a smiling Chippolino towards the audience and plays with stiff fingers something from Mozart or Kamarinskaya. Or a cymbals man with a bald and shining skull appears on the proscenium to make his only circus blow, and suddenly starts tap-dancing.

These short-time flashes of hebephrenic joy, which looks similar to a torture, fade away instantly, slowly plunging into usual narcotic rigidity. But it is well known that lingering in such conditions is fraught with strong destructive consequences. All the NAE scenarios develop this "clinical" way. Electro-guitar solo is a highly impressive by its destructive force episode where anti-technique principle is carried to the impossible limit: one can find no rhythm, no harmony, no verticality or horisontality -- only howls and roar which wipe off everything on their way. The culmination is represented by a powerful picture of stupendous man's sobbing and roar of percussion orchestra. And then comes complete silence and absolute rigidity. Only people in sinister onion masks on their faces continue swinging their arms mechanically, resembling Chinese porcelain little blockheads.