Rashad Becker live in Porto

RashadBecker_Poster
Next Friday, the series of concerts curated by Filho Único in Culturgest in Porto will present a performance by Rashad Becker.

Rashad has built a worldwide reputation as the mastering and cutting engineer on a host of electronic dance and experimental music albums. He began making music in the 1980s, experimenting with mixing audio tapes, while also recording his friends and other musicians; yet the first record of his own music, the remarkable Traditional Music of Notional Species Vol. I only came out last year. This album is a compendium of bold and innovative sound constructions, moulding assertive electronic sounds into seductive and fierce organic forms, which will feature at his national première at Culturgest Porto.

Rashad has previously released in Crónica the piece “take me to your lead out”, in the compilation “No End of Vinyl”.

New release: Mathias Delplanque’s “Transmissions”

Transmissions
Crónica is very proud to present a new album by Mathias Delplanque, “Transmissions”, a series of compositions based on recordings of sounds produced by various industrial machines.


Parts 1 and 2 are based on loom sounds recorded by Mathias Delplanque in 2008 at the Musée du Textile of Cholet (France).

Part 3 and 4 are based on machine-tools sounds recorded by students at the Lycée Technique Livet (Nantes, France) in 2009 and 2010, in the shape of a workshop conducted by Mathias Delplanque.

“Toujours une machine couplée avec une autre”

Written & produced by Mathias Delplanque between 2008 and 2014. Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais.

Mathias Delplanque would like to thank Miguel Carvalhais and the Crónica Electrónica team, Aude Leguennec from the Musée du Textile of Cholet, Jeanmichel Jagot from Arty Events, Gilbert Plouhinec and Claude Briantais from the Lycée Livet, Mélanie Legrand from Stereolux, the students of the Lycée Livet, without whom this album wouldn’t have been possible.

“Transmissions” is now available directly from Crónica in a very limited CD release, and available as a digital download from Crónica’s bandcamp page, Boomkat and several other retailers.

Futurónica 122

futurónica_122
Episode 122 of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Manobras (91.5 MHz in Porto, 18h30) and Rádio Zero (21h GMT, repeating on Tuesday at 01h) airs tomorrow, September 5th.

The playlist of Futurónica 122 is:

  1. Machinefabriek, Doepfer (2013, Doepfer Worm, Entr’acte)
  2. Jorge Peizinho, Elegia a Amílcar Cabral, 2ª versão (1978, Elegia a Amílcar Cabral, Strauss)
  3. Miguel Isaza / Mise_en_Scene, Selected Fragments 1 (2014, Selected Fragments, Impulsive Habitat)

You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.

LIA presents “The Unfolded Collection” at Sedition

InsideTheDiamond
The Unfolded Collection features three computer-generated artworks: The Lonely One in the Autumn (with a soundtrack composed by @c), Inside the Diamond and Not Even Love Will Tear Us Apart, which were performed by LIA in real-time and recorded exclusively for Sedition as high-definition videos.

NotEvenLoveWillTearUsApart
This series explores the possibilities of communicating concepts like love, poetry and time through the language of code and computer aesthetics. Through their evolving forms, shapes, movements, colours and textures, the artworks unfold abstract environments and crystalline structures creating a unique sense of exploration of the artist’s vision.

TheLonelyOneInAutumn
Austrian artist LIA is considered one of the pioneers of software and net art and has been producing works since 1995. LIA has exhibited internationally including at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, 2014; Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2009; and the Design Museum Holon, Israel, 2012. LIA has also received numerous awards, including Digital Graffiti Curator’s Choice Award, 2014; Prix Ars Electronica, Honourable Mention, 2007; Diagonale Film Festival, Innovative Cinema, First Prize, 2006; and Prix Ars Electronica, Award of Distinction, 2003.

The Unfolded Collection can be previewed at Sedition.

New podcast: Ephraim Wegner

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One piece of music was transferred to the pin roller of a music box and used as a starting point for the composition of 3024000. An audio recording of the box is divided in three parts of equal duration (A, B, C) correlated by simple overlapping.

The position of the playback moves through 4 seconds of material in 45 minutes. For every played-back position, linear grains are generated, with a duration of 12,5 msec: 320 grains per second for part A, 160 grains/sec for part B and 640 grains/sec for part C. In addition, the pitches of the three parts are changed depending on the basic material.

Minimum differences in tone pitch or divergences in the phase of the basic material can lead to clearly audible interferences. Bigger sound intervals form chordal structures and the density of partial tones originated by initial impulse cause tonal inharmoniousness.

3024000 is a musical journey through a brief theme that is magnified 765 times, layered and mingled into a completely new work.

Download here or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

“Meubles” reviewed by The Sound Projector

Meubles
Another fine item from Arturas Bumšteinas, already noted earlier this year with his concept album themed on “Sleep”. For Meubles (CRÓNICA 081-2013), he’s enlisted a small ensemble of players from Poland and elsewhere, called them the Works and Days Ensemble, and commissioned them to perform the three suites of music. Meubles is a concept album about “furniture”*. By way of underpinning the project theme, each musician was asked the poignant question “If music could be furniture, which piece of furniture it would be?” Their replies – all very imaginative, individual and personal in their interpretation of this vague and open-ended question – result in an almost surrealist catalogue of objects, including a wine cabinet, a stove, a bed, a window, and (my personal favourite) a Billy bookcase from Ikea. It’s my guess that these responses have been the basis for the score of the Meubles suite. I’m all in favour of using unconventional methods to fuel the generation of music. If Stockhausen could write prose instructions for his players for Aus Den Sieben Tagen, then why can’t Bumšteinas get his players to concentrate on a piece of furniture to help them focus on the music production? As the Ensemble perform their (semi-improvised?) parts, the instruments – brass, strings, piano, guitars, percussion and organ – all wrap around each other with the intimacy of a fitted carpet lying snugly in place in a well-appointed room. There are no patterns or melodies that I can discern, but the continual music does hang together in a very harmonious and pleasing manner; no hideous discordant moments await the listener. Slow and syrupy it be, but certainly not formless drone. It’s nice to hear such concord and agreement between people, and it all conveys the pleasant sense of stability that you might associate with a good armchair. From November 2013.

* The astute reader will of course be aware of Erik Satie’s furniture music, where the idea was to provide background music for specific events and occasions in salon society, such as drinking tea or playing croquet. Satie’s work is commonly taken, perhaps wrongly, to be the forerunner of ambient music. No doubt Bumšteinas is aware of this too, but he makes no explicit connection to Satie with this composition. Nor to Bill Nelson’s Red Noise, I might add. Ed Pinsent

via The Sound Projector