Mit DRUMMING GP haben wir noch ein Ensemble aus Musikern, die sich für Neue Klänge und Improvisatorische Elemente interessieren, hier allerdings auf perkussiver Grundlage. “For Percussion” (Crónica) heißt denn auch die CD mit Stücken der Crónica-Gründer Pedro Tudela & Miguel Carvalhais. Die beiden konstruieren schon seit vielen Jahren avancierte Musik unter dem kryptischen ProjektKürzel @C, hier sinnieren sie intensiv über die Abhängigkeiten von Computermusik, Elektronik und Perkussion. Mein Favorit ist das knisternde Stück “58 – for two marimbas & two computers” (bitte fragt mich nicht, was zwei Computer können, das nicht auch einer schafft, aber vermutlich geht es um die performative Anordnung), aber auch die übrigen Nummern bilden hochinteressante KlangVersuche ab. 5
Many years in the making, this album collects works created for or with Drumming GP, a percussion ensemble founded by Miquel Bernat, a world-class performer and teacher. “For Percussion” gathers pieces that intersect @c’s experimental and computational approaches to music with Drumming GP’s mastery of performance and percussion.
Tracklist:
63, for percussion, synthetic percussion, electronics (2006, revisited 2022) (8:27)
58, for two marimbas & two computers (2006, revisited 2022) (20:34)
88, for stones, objects, microphones, electronics (2010) (7:13)
66, for sampled standing bells, computer (2008) (10:12)
88R, for computer, synthetic percussion (2022) (10:00)
63L, for percussion, synthetic percussion, samples (2007) (7:38)
Credits:
Composed, mixed & mastered by: Miguel Carvalhais + Pedro Tudela.
Drumming GP artistic direction: Miquel Bernat.
63 performed by Rui Rodrigues, João Miguel Braga Simões, Saulo Giovannini, Miquel Bernat. Recorded by Süse Ribeiro at Café Concerto do Teatro Campo Alegre, Porto.
58 performed by Nuno Aroso and Miquel Bernat. Marimbas recorded by Paulo Pintado and Rui Pintado at Indústria Rock, Penafiel, and mixed by Miquel Bernat.
88 performed by Nuno Aroso, João Tiago Dias, Miquel Bernat. Recorded at Auditório de Espinho, and Universidade Católica do Porto.
63L performed by Pedro Oliveira, Rui Rodrigues, Nuno Aroso, João Tiago Dias, Miquel Bernat. Recorded at Teatro Viriato, Viseu, 19 January 2007.
“For Percussion” is now available as a limited-release CD or as a download or stream.
I don’t think I ever met David Lee Myers, formerly known as Arcane Device and active since the mid-80s. His work centres around using feedback systems, most of his own making. Over time, this system was expanded, and Myers also used other sounds next to the feedback. By using delay systems, LFO and all sorts of controllers, Myers manually controls the output and calls this “Time Displacement Music’. This new CD has four lengthy pieces, from thirteen to nineteen minutes. Don’t be distracted by the word ‘feedback’, as Myers’ music was never about harsh noise, not even in his earliest days. His music works in many directions, from a pop-like point of view to lengthy ambient excursions. ‘Strange Attractors’ is in the latter category. In each of these pieces, there is a subtle tension of sounds in seemingly some kind of stasis and slight variations within that non-movement. Hard to explain, but it works well. The human element and the manipulation of sounds; all sound very lively; this is not your typical drone record, far from it. It all creeps and crawls, like watching with a microscope at several insects. Sounds are magnified, and we seem to be reaching their core, but for all we know, there are many more layers. The music is dark, so we may not see these layers. Myers says something about working late at night on this music, and that’s a reasonable time of the day to play this release, preferably at a moderate volume. Not to be played quietly, certainly not loud, but in a comfortable setting, and you sit back and do nothing. Just enjoy the mere presence of sound. Great release, but I expected nothing less. (FdW)
Die heute aus den beiden Soundartists Miguel Carvalhais und Pedro Tudela bestehende Gruppe @c bringt Ende des Monats eine CD mit Kompositionen heraus, die von dem renommierten Percussion-Kollektiv Drumming GP unter der Leitung von Miquel Bernat umgesetzt wurden und in der Mehrheit auch direkt für dieses geschrieben wurden.
Wie der Titel impliziert, sind die sechs zum Teil ausladenden Tracks, von denen einige bereits auf anderen Veröffentlichungen oder live zu hören waren, ganz auf perkussive Elemente zugeschnitten und überschreiten dabei in ihrer Radikalität jede Grenze gängiger Genrevorstellungen. Als primäre Klangquellen fungieren neben traditionellen Perkussionsinstrumenten auch Steine und andere perkussiv eingesetzte Objekte sowie Elektronisches unterschiedlicher Art. Das Duo, dessen Arbeit auf Discogs als “developed in the cross-section of three complimentary approaches to sound art and electronic music: algorithmic composition, concrete sounds and improvisation” beschrieben wird, hat die Arbeiten komponiert, und nach den Aufnahmen abgemischt und für die vorliegende CD gemastert. Sie erscheint beim hauseigenen Label Crónica. Ausführliches zu den Hintergründen des Albums findet sich auf Bandcamp, wo es auch digital erworben werden kann.
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s Withering Field is an essay on manmade violence over earth’s ecologies and natural environments, on the threatening of the Global South created by Western modernism, and the impending catastrophes looming. Withering Field is a sonic narrative developed around these events of displacement and dispossession, developed through fieldwork and field recordings made in what are currently denominated of Special Economic Zones of South Asia. It delineates transitions of indigenous habitats dislocated from their natural settings, forced to gearing fast towards a contemporary urbanisation, a process rendered within a mode of criticality and questioning, incorporating sonic elements collected from the sites to facilitate a context-aware listening, which creates the space for in-depth reflections on the intricate processes that affect indigenous communities, endanger their memories and erode cultural practices.
Withering Field was published as a CD in 2022. This recording documents the live performance of the work in progress at Sonorities Festival, Belfast, in 2015.
Eine verwandte SoundÄsthetik pflegt auf seiner CD “Terra” (Crónica) der gleichfalls aus Italien stammende CelloElektroniker LUCA FORCUCCI. Eine gute halbe Stunde interessanter Anstrengung zwischen Noise und Elektroakustik.
For »Terra,« Luca Forcucci collected field recordings in Los Angeles, the Brazilian city of Recife and Beirut. The Berlin-based composer and sound artist presented them, together with a graphic score, to the cellist Noémy Braun and the percussionist Lucas Gonseth, who, together with Forcucci on live electronics, fleshed out the music over three days for a subsequent performance, which is documented on this album in five pieces. The transformational work process obviously feeds off the conceptual superstructure and shapes it aesthetically: All the different elements on »Terra« seem to be constantly in motion, rubbing up against each other and finding a strange harmony in the supposed sonic chaos. This is the sound of an earth whose modus operandi sometimes elude comprehension.
