We’re very happy to announce the release of Jos Smolder’s Textuur 2 his second release in this series in Crónica. This album is part 3 in a series where Smolders investigates processes to strip sounds from their original context and slice them into tiny bits.
Each Textuur project is built up in a similar fashion. There are two groups of sound. First there are the collections which consist of samples of the original material. The other group consists of various permutations. The samples from the collections are torn apart into threads of various widths and subsequently rewoven into a new synthetic fabric. Sound is thus stripped from its original value and meaning and resynthesized into a new texture. Each permutation is the result of a fresh approach and listeners are invited to design their own permutation or permutation of the permutation.
In Textuur 3 Smolders worked from recordings of an automated customer distribution system, in Textuur 2, Smolders investigates the immersion of dance music into an electroacoustic environment.
Textuur 2 is now available as a limited release CD, and for stream or download.
Without it being explicitly mentioned, one could say that Transformation Sonor by Hannes Strobl is also very much in line with the music and sound of Eliane Radigue:
‘Transformation Sonor explores the idea of process, of the slow transition from one musical situation to another, of transformation on the threshold of equivalence and differentiation. Expressive, outward gestures that allow the sound to fade into the background are avoided. Sound by itself beyond the perception of precise chords, harmonies or rhythms is at the centre of the composition’.
Berlin-based composer Hannes Strobl performs on his electric upright bass, creating a fascinating drone together with Elena Kakaliagou on French horn. These two instruments are combined with live electronics, ‘dissolving the boundaries between instrumental and electro-acoustic music’.
In den nächsten Tagen erscheint der zweite Teil von Jos Smolders’ “Textuur”-Projekt auf Crónica. Als Grundidee geht es um die permutative Überführung tanzbarer Musik in ein elektroakustisches Setting. Dazu heißt es in den Ausführungen des niederländischen Sounddesigners und Komponisten: “With this project, I wanted to investigate the immersion of dance music into an electroacoustic environment. Like the other projects, here we first set the scene with several collections and then shred and dissolve that material.
in order to build up new sonic textures. The collections in Textuur 2 consist of the rhythmic parts as well as basic sine wave drones. The permutations are mixtures of those originals. The puncturing sounds of the various rhythmic elements encounter the heavy barrels of dense and dark sine wave drones. This periodically results in a nicely balanced soundscape, but more often one experiences brutalist clashes”. Das Album erscheint als CD und zum Download, mehr zu den Hintergründen findet sich im Begleittext auf Bandcamp.
Sometimes working under his own name and at other times working as Arcane Device, which he has done since the mid-1980s, New Yorker David Lee Myers creates music using feedback systems, most of which he makes and develops himself. On this recent album “Strange Attractors”, Myers feeds a mix of feedback, found sounds and other audio source material into a series of stereo digital delay units whose parameters Myers then manipulates in real time with low frequency oscillators, sample and hold controllers, and also good old-fashioned manual adjustments to produce four very eerie, unearthly and ever-changing soundscapes. As the album’s title suggests, the various strains of sound and noise in these tracks pull together yet also strain against each other, as if to travel their own separate paths, and a tension between attraction and repulsion develops. That tension exists all the way through the tracks, adding to their very alien quality and bringing intrigue and mystery as well. The four tracks are all very lengthy as well, none of them below thirteen minutes in duration, allowing us to dive deep into their dark terrain as their sounds lead the way.
All tracks are very different in tone and mood, and you can imagine them as soundtracks to particular visual experiences. “Equability of Powers” seems very much like a journey in space, in all its varied dimensions, both small and compressed dimensions and larger, more expansive ones. “Iniquities” is a mysterious metallic droning work, steady and penetrating, but revealing a benign side to its nature as other sounds and noises dance around the central droning spine which itself changes in tone, texture and hardness. “With Perfect Clarity” is another drone marathon but this one sometimes seems a little deranged, as if bit by bit it’s falling to pieces from within and the droning sound is desperately trying to maintain a steady direction. “Yet Another Shore” has a restful and serene quality early on as its sounds glide gracefully through (what I imagine to be) a slightly misty but not unpleasant landscape with the odd bumps here and there that cause a few skedaddles and hiccups in the journey. It does transform into something most wonderfully strange, like a humble caterpillar metamorphosing into the most remarkably gorgeous butterfly with translucent wings of constantly changing hues as they catch the sunlight at different angles. No matter how many changes the track goes through, it returns to its original restfulness as though completing a cycle.
The album does need fairly deep listening as some sections can be very quiet, but you will be rewarded with a very rich sonic experience full of lively energy and adventurous curiosity. A very strange attraction indeed.
We’re very proud to present a new release by Hannes Strobl, Transformation Sonor, a composition that explores the idea of process, of the slow transition from one musical situation to another, of transformation on the threshold of equivalence and differentiation. Expressive, outward gestures that allow the sound to fade into the background are avoided. Sound by itself beyond the perception of precise chords, harmonies or rhythms is at the centre of the composition.
Fine spectral textures and slow glissandi, continuous transitions from one sound state to another, unfold. The overlapping spectral sound fields, rhythmic beat patterns and microtonal layers become a metaphor for space and time.
Hannes Strobl works as a musician, composer and sound artist based in Berlin. The essential starting point of his music is the sonic potential of the electric bass guitar and the electric upright bass. Its characteristic expressive repertoire is expanded through the use of advanced playing techniques in combination with live electronics, dissolving the boundaries between instrumental and electro-acoustic music. One important focus of his compositional work lies on musical expression forms against the backdrop of urban sound spaces. On the other hand on installation works, where the starting point lies in the relationship between sound and architectural space. Since 2000 Hannes Strobl has been developing this concept together with Sam Auinger in the project TAMTAM. In collaboration with David Moss and Hanno Leichtmann the project DENSELAND was founded in 2008 and with Reinhold Friedl the project P.O.P. (Psychology of Perception) in 2012.
Roel Meelkop’s career as a sound artist stretches back some 40 years since he started the post-industrial project THU20 with four other musicians in the early 1980s, and later decided to dedicate his career to investigating sound and music while studying visual arts and art theory at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Among other things, his discography as a solo artist and collaborator with others (including Kapotte Muziek with Franz de Waard and Peter Duimelinks) is staggeringly huge, and Meelkop’s recorded output since 2022 has been consistently steady and prolific. “Viva in Pace” is one of two solo albums Meelkop released in 2023, and its title (in English translation from Italian, “Live in Peace”) expresses an anti-war theme and Meelkop’s own frustration that, as one person out of billions living on Earth, he has very little control or influence over global events and the processes and decision-making that lead to outbreaks of conflict and war between nations or groups of nations.
Organised in four parts, of which three are quite lengthy, “Viva in Pace” is dominated by synthesisers though Meelkop makes use of electronics, modern and vintage, in parts. The album has a very minimal presentation in which passages of quiet or even silence are as important as bursts of angry noise or insistent drone. Listening to the four tracks, I do get the impression the album is bursting with conflicting tensions and feelings, all related to Meelkop’s own state of mind and anger when he recorded this work over 2022. What is the role of the artist or musician in situations where the world appears to be heading inexorably towards war because some parties with their own agendas, backing and manipulating governments and politicians, plan to profit financially from the outbreak of conflict? How can artists, musicians and others try to lead people back to the path of peace when everything appears to be against them? There is a lot of anger and despair in the music, especially in “Viva in Pace II”, there is loneliness and frustration, but there also seems to be some hope and a determination to keep going, to keep trying, if only to keep one’s head clear of confusion and one’s spirits from falling into depression.
Accordingly the album can appear uneven, starting very loudly on “Viva in Pace I”, maintaining a steady flow of noise and drone on “Viva in Pace II” and then going quiet or introspective on the remaining tracks with more fragmented sounds and noises. The album doesn’t exactly end on a triumphant note but perhaps the point of the work ending as it does is that we as individuals who care about the state of the world must make our own decisions as to what appropriate actions we should take to protest the directions and decisions politicians and other so-called leaders are taking and making that are dragging nations – and us – into unnecessary wars, violence and mass deaths.
Subscribers to Neural magazine will find an exceptional object attached to its centrefold: a 7” flexi disc. This is the result of a joint effort from Crónica and Neural to celebrate thirty years of Neural and twenty of Crónica. Thirty artists contributed 9-second pieces to a one-of-a-kind compilation that will be available exclusively in this analogue format.
Avevo da poco raccontato il secondo capitolo di “A reassuring elsewhere”, un rassicurante altrove di Philippe Petit (che rassicurante non è…), e già l’artista ha già fatto uscire un nuovo lavoro: “A divine comedy”, uscito per Crónica Records. Dante Alighieri non finisce mai di ispirare gli artisti di tutti i tempi. La sua musica concreta, pronipote di Pierre Schaeffer, affronta stavolta l’interpretazione dei versi del sommo poeta, trasformando le bolge in suoni e rumori.
Non è la prima volta che Petit prende spunto da una “discesa”. Nel 2019 aveva pubblicato “Descent into the maelstrom” (http://www.musicmap.it/recdischi/ordinaperr.asp?id=7191), cioè discesa nel vortice. E, dopo gli esperimenti sul perturbante dell’altrove con il suddetto doppio album, e il cyberpunk sui generis affrontato nel 2020 assieme al chitarrista-pittore Michael Schaffer (http://www.musicmap.it/recdischi/ordinaperr.asp?id=8047), sembra che voglia tornare “a casa”, nel suo personale caos.
Eccoci a riascoltare tanti rumori modificati, note minacciose di pianoforte (come in “Purgatorio, Canto II”), nonché lamenti di voci dei dannati, come in “The Descent”, dove un urlo affannato e disperato ripete: “No… no… nooo… nooo!”. La prima parte del disco, all’inizio della discesa, è caratterizzata da frammenti vocali asettici. Una voce femminile, come ripresa da un diffusore in aeroporto, ripete: “For whom the bell tolls, for whom the bell tolls…”. In “Within the Corridors of Hell”, ascoltiamo frammenti vocali in giapponese, inglese e anche in italiano, riportando versi della Commedia, a volte riordinati in prosa. Ma è tutto sbriciolato e confuso.
Tutto è stato concepito come un’esperienza, l’ascolto dev’essere immersivo, e chi ascolta è invitato dallo stesso Philippe Petit, a far caso alle proprie impressioni e reazioni. “Purgatorio, Canto III” è un lungo momento di drone music, con suoni dilatati all’estremo. Se le prime tracce infernali, sono ovviamente opprimenti e senza speranza, quelle per il Purgatorio sono solo misteriose e indecifrabili, a tratti lynchane.
E il Paradiso? Anche quello non comincia in maniera rassicurante, descritto in due tracce. Il cammino fa inciampare fra detriti elettronici. Dopodiché, sembra (sensazione mia) tutto un susseguirsi di porte d’acciaio che si aprono, per poi arrivare a delle sinistre campane, e altri suoi tintinnanti che poi si liquefanno. La prima delle due tracce finisce con alcune note di marimba, forse l’unico momento tranquillizzante. La seconda traccia torna ad esplorare, tranciare e far oscillare diversi rumori, anche in maniera distorta; ma verso la fine i suoni, prolungati, giungono a creare un’armonia, in tonalità all’apparenza minore. Forse, in quel momento stiamo rivedendo le stelle?
Se Inferno e Purgatorio sono abbastanza condivisibili, l’interpretazione del Paradiso può dare impressioni contrastanti. Come sempre accade con Petit, il verdetto spetta a chi ascolta. Cosa ci sentite voi? (Gilberto Ongaro)
Somewhere in the past, I am trying to remember when or on which occasion I wrote in a review something about granular synthesis being sampling on a microcellular level. And I wondered where granular synthesis ends and sampling begins. The whole micro/macro approach of dimensions can be drawn into this discussion, and with a nice glass of wine and a few creative minds, you could probably end up spending night after night on subjects like these. And why am I regurgitating this thought? Well, in the promo text of the new album by Jos Smolders, he refers to something that is about the same but in a different context. ‘Pierre Schaeffer investigated where sounds start and end and where the applicability of sounds start and end. Schaeffer introduced the term objet sonore as an object with a sonic quality of its own. In addition, he also defined the objet musicale, which is the state after the sound object is manipulated and transformed into a musical entity.’ The text continues: “One could say that the objet sonore is the raw material and the objet musicale the intermediate or the final product.” These thoughts formed the basics of what will be a trilogy/triptych of textures. And no, “Textures And Mobiles” from 2004 is NOT the first in the series, so it’s not a tribute to Cage’s “ASLSP,” where we have to wait another 20 years for part 3. And yes, this is #2, but relax, breathe in, breathe out. You haven’t missed #1; it will simply be released later. In one hour, Jos covers the spectrum of different styles. As far as you can go with ‘objets musicale’, this album is a professor lecture, if there ever was one. It features beautiful sound structures, musically intense compositions, and variations from minimalism, drone, experiments, and ambience to even—dare I say it—techno-ish things. Two essential tracks, Collection 1 and 2 and Permutations A through J, complete a full hour of what we like about Jos’ music. To conclude: The minimalist sounds we hear aren’t minimalist. It’s not a particular frequency singular waveform or a standard white or coloured noise … Hell no. Jos knows what he is doing sound-wise, and in its minimalism lies the strength of its complexity. Or the other way around, but believe me, it’s really hard to design sounds that sound simple on the outside but so complex on the inside. Knowing Jos and having seen him perform live on several occasions, I can only say he excels in his field of expertise. Gorgeous release. (BW)
This album is part 3 in a series where I investigate processes to strip sounds from their original context and slice them into tiny bits. By doing this, sounds are separated from their source and as such severed from what they originally represented. What’s interesting and challenging for me in the project is to find the crossover area where representation disappears, and the sound becomes an abstraction. Where this is varies depending on the original sound. Already in the 1950s, Pierre Schaeffer investigated this and introduced the term objet sonore as an object that has a sonic quality of its own. In addition, Schaeffer also defined the objet musicale, which is the state after the sound object is manipulated and transformed into a musical entity. One could say that the objet sonore is the raw material and the objet musicale the intermediate or the final product.
I started reading Schaeffer’s texts in 1981, after hearing Symphonie pour un homme seul and realizing that the wild sound experiments that I had been doing in my small flat had a history that went back to the late 1940s. Searching for more information, all I found was a single French text which I got from the library. I xeroxed all the pages and started reading, slowly, slowly, because I had not been paying much attention during French classes in high school. I have always found the idea of sound removed from its physical source to be problematic. Whenever I listened to musique concrète, I still recognized the sound source with all its physical and psychological connotations. So, what kind of game was being played here? I didn’t quite ‘get it’, apparently. But I loved listening to the recordings and through the years crafted my own musical style.
In Textuur my objet sonore is not a three-dimensional object. It is a representation of something else, like a word, or a (endless) rhythm or a (endless) sine wave. The objet musicale is a (two-dimensional) surface. A surface with a texture. In my view the surface is completely immaterial but does present surface related characteristics, like smooth, rough, abrasive, uneven, adhesive, punctured, wet, et cetera.
The idea of music as a representation of a surface arose from reading Carl Andre’s Yucatan poem series which he wrote in 1971-72. In true style of concrete poetry, Andre presents us with blocks of words in black and red carefully distributed over the paper surface. What struck me most about the poems is that the letters and the words seem to sink back into the visual form. Depending on their focus the reader either watches an abstract shape or reads words and letters. I found this very interesting because the (sound of the) human voice, words, meaning and representation often play a significant role in my work. Here a visual artist and one-time poet seemed to work with the same idea from a different perspective. Writing to Andre, I almost got in a heated argument with him because he strongly disagrees with being named a representative of concrete poetry (as I assumed) and when I made a remark to that effect, he metaphorically slammed the door in my face. Well, anyway.
After deciding on the imagery of surface as objet sonore I have long thought about how to translate my interpretation of Yucatan to a musical dimension. In fact, the whole of 2021 and a decent part of 2022 was spent on thinking, experimenting, collecting, and discarding. Then, late 2022, I visited an exhibition of the works of Josef and Anni Albers in Den Haag. Although I primarily went to see Josef Albers’s paintings, the works of his wife Anni sparked the idea that I could use “weaving” as a way of producing the sounds I wanted. At least it was a metaphor that showed me a path out of my conundrum. A fabric shows a pattern on a surface but zooming in one can still see the original threads. Threads can be anything, of any width, any length. Weaving can be as loose and as dense as you need.
Structure
Source material for Textuur 3 is the recording of an automated customer distribution system that I encountered in a New York Whole Foods store. The voice was not unpleasant, had a certain musicality and rhythm to it. Customers were standing in line, staring at their phone, or actually being on the phone. The voice came from an overhead speaker system and was accompanied by a colourful screen underlining the next register. In a sense it caused me to think of how customers had become cattle, albeit not in a slaughterhouse but as actors in a consumerist trap. After the actual recording the album continues with nine permutations. These permutations each follow their own rule of threading and present a new (non)woven surface.
Textuur 3 is now available to stream or download via the usual channels. Textuur 2 is now available for preorder.
