New release: @c’s “Installations: LMY-7-10”

Crónica’s first release for 2022 continues @c’s Installations series. “LMY-7-10” was created after the installation of the same title commissioned by the Serralves Foundation for the festival Serralves em Festa and curated by Pedro Rocha.

In two spaces contiguous to the Chapel in Serralves — the stairs of its tower and the room adjacent to the choir — the objects designed for this installation explored the space’s architecture and enticed its exploration by visitors, creating an immersive infrastructure for the diffusion of sound. The piece was structured along the two perpendicular axes of the space: the vertical tower and the horizontal room. The tower was kept dark, with the only lights attached to the speakers along the staircase. The room had a big circular window that allowed daylight in and created a continuous variation of illumination. The two spaces bled onto each other. They were two parts that balanced the listening experience and were unified by timbre, with the entire piece created from recordings of harp performed by Angelica Salvi.

This work was inspired by two of LaMonte Young’s pieces from 1960: Composition 1960 #7 and Composition 1960 #10 (“to Bob Morris”), two works that can be read more like instructions than scores, as essays on stasis and on its impossibility in a permanently changing world.

The Installations series was started with “Seis Elementos” in 2021, and will document Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s installations, a series of works that is also the focus of the upcoming book “Installations / Instalações”, to be released in February and already available to preorder.

“LMY-7-10” is now available to stream or download from the usual platforms and from Crónica’s bandcamp.

David Lee Myers’s “Reduced to a Geometrical Point” reviewed by Kathodik

Lo statunitense David Lee Myers, da metà anni ottanta armeggia con le sue feedback machines.
Prima come Arcane Device e negli ultimi anni, sempre più spesso con il suo nome.
Si è accompagnato in produzioni con artisti storici come Tod Dockstader o prossimi alla storicizzazione come Asmus Tietchens.
Suono e immagini in montaggio nei live, per un’espressione di intransigente bellezza (quando + e quando -), comunque, quasi sempre in assenza di un input generante (tuttalpiù, utilizzato come evento/start per sovrapposizioni di suono elettronico).
L’azione, è osservazione e controllo dei flussi autogenerati, quasi null’altro.
Quest’ultimo lavoro, registrato a New York fra il 2020 e il 2021 ed edito dalla portoghese Crónica, si piazza dalle parti di una stasi dronante, fissa e imperturbabile, che par quasi, una prova di superamento in libera fluttuazione dell’esosfera.
Un qui e un’ora, senza propulsione in avanti ne indietro, un microscopico punto ed il non concepibile dell’infinito.

Via Kathodik

Matilde Meireles’s “Life of a Potato” reviewed by Vital Weekly

The field recordings used here by Matilde Meireles are literally homegrown. It deals with the life of a potato, growing near Pewsey, in the Southwest of England. I had not heard of Matilde Meireles before. In her garden, she grows her vegetables, plants, and potatoes. She made her field recordings in her garden, in the soil where the potatoes were, and in her kitchen, preparing a meal. Cutting and seasoning the potatoes, we hear many birds outside to indicate the rural area where she lives. All of this appears on the first side of the cassette, which paints a rather clear picture of the events. Save for the events below the surface, those are unclear, but I am sure there are woven into this. The other side, called ‘Or 38 Metres’, is less clear about the sounds. Still, according to the information, “it explores various sounds of energy used to cook the potatoes, the potatoes’ crackling sounds as they come out of the oven and sounds of the garden in an early evening, in October when the potato season is finished” and here a more drone-like experience. You could assume that these are all heavily processed sounds, but I am sure they are not. I thought this was a great piece, with the only downside is a drum sound that kicks in somewhere. Why? Do potatoes celebrate being cooked by a little dance? I would have enjoyed it more if all had stayed on the abstract side, with that fine shimmering (simmering) quality of a kitchen with food being prepared and everything making small sounds in the process. (FdW)

via Vital Weekly

Francisco López & Miguel A. García’s “Ekkert Nafn” reviewed by NOmelody Magazine

Dos nombres ineludibles de la música experimental patria, Francisco López y Miguel A. García, elaboran un trabajo en el que estudia la estética del sonido, utilizado como materia prima grabaciones de campo procesadas concienzudamente con la intención de generar escenarios acústicos que sorprenden por su ejemplar vistosidad. 

Existen discos que se alejan deliberadamente de las conceptualizaciones clásicas que estructuran el concepto de música conocido por todos. Artistas que analizan el lenguaje del sonido, descomponiéndolo en elementos básicos con la intención de reflexionar sobre su naturaleza primaria y su constitución más básica. Este estudio preliminar da paso al genio del arte, un arte que consiste en moldear texturas e intensidades, buscando la conformación de un universo sonoro regido por las limitaciones temporales. 

Ekkert Nafn tiene mucho de esto. Los dos autores que dan a luz el disco, Francisco López y Miguel A. García llevan muchos más años de los que puedas imaginar buscando el porqué del arché sonoro con el fin de reformarlo a su antojo, creando obras abrazadas por la abstracción más sofisticada y abstrusa, como si de un cuadro de Jackson Pollock se tratase. 

Las bases sonoras utilizadas en este disco fueron extraídas de grabaciones de campo comunes que ambos artistas utilizaron de forma independiente con el fin de dar a luz perspectivas eidéticas autónomas. Esos retazos acústicos fueron como sillares extraídos de una misma cantera con los que estos arquitectos sonoros levantaron edificios completamente distintos en lo que a estética respecta. 

López comienza este estudio numerándolo. Al parecer, esta fue su creación 351. En ella el artista vuelve a ahondar en la alternancia de contrastes -algo muy recurrente dentro de su extensa obra-  intercalando un sinfín de texturas volátiles y acometedoras con segmentos temporales en los que el silencio reina de manera autócrata. 

Por su parte, Miguel A. García nos ofrece un corte mesmerizante y ambiental dirigido hacia la oscuridad. “Applainessads” supone media hora definida por la congoja existencial que se desata mientras cruzamos las aguas del río Estigia. García elabora un corte consistente y magnético que sorprende por su deliberada representación.

Más allá de los juicios de valor, este disco sirve como fiel ejemplo de cara a la comprensión de la actividad creativa, partiendo de unos elementos comunes compartidos equitativamente por ambos artistas. Evidentemente, hablamos de un estudio en sí mismo. 

Ekkert Nafn fue editado en formato CD y limitado a 300 ejemplares. La producción ha corrido a cargo de López, que una vez más realiza un trabajo insuperable, esculpiendo los matices del sonido con una nitidez digna de los primitivos flamencos. No pierdas la ocasión de descubrirlo. Fernando O. Paíno

via nomelody

Miguel A. García’s “Evhiblig” reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Sein baskischer Kollege Fernando Ulzión nennt, angeregt durch MIGUEL A. GARCÍAs Evhiblig (Crónica 178~2021, digital), die Wahl zwischen the terror of silence und the terror of noise eine bloß scheinbare. Denn was den einen als Skylla und Charybdis, Pest oder Cholera, vorkommt, ist die Konfrontation mit einem Zwillingspaar oder, denkt an Vollmond und Neumond, sogar nur den Phasen von ein und demselben. Jedenfalls sind Lärm und Stille so untrennbar, dass der Anfang des einen immer das Ende des anderen bedeutet. Es ist das Zuviel oder Zuwenig, das den Schrecken und die Qual in sich trägt. Wobei ich mit Marshall McLuhans ‘hot’ & ‘cold’ zudem meine, dass heißer Druck oder kalter Sog ganz verschiedene Wirkkraft entfalten. García ist dabei auch so einer, der, während ich glaube, mich nur mal auf dem Sofa umgedreht zu haben, mit Jeff Surak „I Could Agree With You But Then We’d Both Be Wrong“ und mit Frans de Waard „Interior Sounding“ zustande gebracht hat, sein ‘Assoingintz’ an ‘Pestis Eram Vivus Moriens Tua Mors Ero’ von Miguel Souto gefügt hat und mit Piotr Tkacz & Sébastien Branche „Phassionists“ elektrifiziert hat. Er zeigte sich mit Ilia Belorukov als Wolkokrots kryptisch und mit Yann Hagimont als Soleil Satan in Brombeerhecken. Hier schwirrt er als elektronische Fliege um sirrend siffende Abflüsse und andere Attraktionen für ein Fliegenhirn. Eine metalloid perkussive und sur­rende Geräuschwelt mit dunklen Klangschatten und unerfindlichen Wellen, mit Luft- und Wurmlöchern und Klängen wie unter Wasser oder wie mit nichtmenschlichen Organen in Zeitlupe gehört, stellt für menschliche Sinne eher ein Mysterium dar. Mit Fliegenspirit jedoch kann sie als Faszinosum wahrgenommen werden. Elektrogrillen zirpen, Fliegen­schisse ploppen ins stereophon gewellte, etwas schäbige und auch wieder metalloide Klanggewebe, an dessen Ecken und Enden auch schon Asmus Tietchens oder Emerge gelauscht und rumgezupft haben. Rigobert Dittmann

via Bad Alchemy

David Lee Myers’s “Reduced to a Geometrical Point” reviewed by Loop

David Lee Myers is a New York based sound and visual artist, who since 1987 has been producing electronic music under his own name and with the moniker of Arcane Device. Today he owns a discography of 20 albums on Generator, ReR, Silent, RRRecords, Staalplaat, among other labels.

Lee Myers has collaborated with renowned artists such as Asmus Tietchens, Tod Dockstader, Thomas Dimuzio, and Vidna Obmana, among others.

The music of this legendary musician invites us to have an immersive experience given its environmental character built through different layers of sequences that are linked, while sustained drones proliferate. Despite this hypnotic experience of surround sound that Lee Myers creates, he himself declares that “I am not an advocate of ‘music for meditation’ and in fact believe that to be a completely misguided notion.” Although he does not rule out this music, he thinks that the music “seem to encourage a posture of staying in the moment.”

For this album Lee Myers is inspired by the metaphysics of Frithjof Schuon, who proposes that “you must separate your life from the consciousness of the multiple and reduce it to a geometric point before God” (the latter not linked to the Judeo-Christian tradition). This geometric point is a sign to put “Geo 1”, and so on, as titles to the four tracks of more than 12 minutes long each. Undoubtedly this is an endless journey in which timbral, oscillating and incisive sounds are perceived.

Every moment this expansive music unfolds it weaves intriguing stories by placing the listener between earth and the universe. Guillermo Escudero

via Loop