During their collaboration as @c, Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais developed several installations, often site-specific and ephemeral works. This series of releases in Crónica is dedicated to revisiting these installation works, occasionally with situ recordings, but also further exploring the computational systems developed for the works, archival materials, and other assets, presenting new compositions that unfold from each installation. This series is accompanied by the book Installations / Instalações also published by Crónica.
The fourth release in this series is Octo _ _ _ _, after the permanent installation in Esposende, Portugal. Octo _ _ _ _ is an ensemble of modules on the dunes, standing between the city and the beachside. It is a piece that coexists with a constantly changing environment, a myriad of sounds forming a soundscape to which it also contributes. It blends with the surroundings, seeking to integrate with the existing elements, spreading over a wide area so sounds can be perceived from various perspectives and scales.
There is a whole line of field recordings that are not “found” at all; that is, they are not the result of psychogeographic wanderings, but, on the contrary, are carefully prepared and have well-defined places and situations as their object. During a three-month artistic residency in the summer of 2019 in Glenfiddich (Dufftown, Scotland), Marla Hlady and Christof Migone chose to record the sounds of a whiskey distillery, starting with two large copper stills that were recently removed. The operation to remove the stills was not the simplest, given the decidedly large dimensions of the two containers, which required the use of a crane to extract them from the roof. The swan-neck portions of the old stills were then cut by a master coppersmith and used as the main components in a kinetic sound sculpture. When moving into the spaces adjacent to the sculpture, sensors activate a series of electronic mechanisms that rotate thin metal rods on circular axes. Through these two swan-neck components, the recordings made throughout the distillery are reproduced: the water flowing through mounds, the noise emissions arising from the barrels during normal work sessions, the bottling noises and those of the liquids being moved from one part of the warehouse to another. The two ends of the tubes act like a pair of giant gramophones that amplify each of the recordings made. Some of these recordings are also superimposed and mixed. The sounds obtained by a choir composed of the distillery staff are particularly important, voices grouped according to the years of service of each of the participants. Each member of this improvised choir was asked to produce two sounds, one as loud as possible and the other extremely quiet, maintaining the vocal emission for as long as possible. The overall effect is truly impressive and the ultimate indecipherability of the sounds makes us reflect on the work and materials that come together in often surprising and inscrutable ways, distilled with great care, skill and passion. From this ingenious project all the materials, sound and physical objects were subsequently used for an installation at the Christie Contemporary in Toronto. Aurelio Cianciotta
We’re happy to announce Enrico Coniglio’s new release in Crónica, “Luci Fisse + Luci Erranti”, a work where Coniglio continues to explore sonic territories that blur the lines between ambient, drone and experimental findings. Thsi EP seamlessly builds on the sonic tapestry established in his The Grand Parade of Hostile Winds, released in 2019, and is a captivating journey through two tracks, each soundscape capturing moments of stillness and wandering illumination.
Enrico Coniglio is a guitarist, environmental sound recordist and sound artist with an interest in landscape aesthetics. Graduated in Town and country planning (IUAV), his research aims at investigating the loss of identity of places and the uncertainty of the territorial evolution, paying particular attention to the context around the Venetian lagoon. His music draws from a wide range of stylistic influences, combining elements of ambient, drone, modern classical, field recordings and electro-acoustic drifting.
Lisboa Soa è un festival di sound art, cultura dell’ascolto ed ecologia. L’obiettivo dichiarato di questa rassegna è la valorizzazione della musica contemporanea che abbia anche un significato sociale ed ecologico, in modo da produrre una maggiore coscienza ambientale e dell’impatto determinato dalla nostra presenza.
Nel 2021, dopo cinque edizioni, Lisboa Soa ha deciso di commissionare quattro composizioni ad altrettanti artisti portoghesi con lo scopo di creare qualcosa che parlasse di memoria, ma guardasse anche al futuro. Gli artisti coinvolti sono stati Joao Castro Pinto, Sara Pinheiro, Mestre André e Ana Guedes, ed il risultato finale è uscito per la celebre Crónica Records.
“Efflux”, firmato dal primo dei quattro, è un viaggio di quasi dieci minuti fra field recordings e inserti elettronici, con un finale drone un po’ cupo. “Do que Ressoa” di Sara Pinheiro, invece, segue un incedere meno lineare, ma è ammantato dalla stessa vaga sensazione di oscurità, fino al climax finale.
“No Earlids” ha una struttura ancora più articolata e, insieme con “Splicing_archives”, vuole inserirsi in una narrazione volutamente straniante, perché la presa di coscienza non può che passare per lo shock e una profonda riflessione collettiva.
In questo senso, “Lisboa Soa – Sounds within Sounds” è un disco complesso e politico, che non può essere compreso realmente senza conoscerne le premesse e le idee alla base della sua creazione. (Piergiuseppe Lippolis)
Chi ha giocato al primo ”Silent Hill”? Un videogioco del 1999 che si incentra sull’orrore psicologico, in cui un uomo si ritrova in una città fantasma, dove accadono cose inquietanti nella nebbia. “Silent Hill” è stato apprezzato anche da David Lynch, tanto per dire che di che atmosfere parliamo.
Miguel A. García, che si fa chiamare anche Xedh, è un direttore artistico di eventi di musica sperimentale, come lo Zarata Fest. Vive a Bilbao, e qui ci porta nelle viscere del suono con “Eraginie”, uscito per Crónica Records, album formato da quattro tracce di field recording. Il primo brano, “Vri seg” ci ambienta in un ipotetico videogioco, ambientato fra detriti spaziali. Frammenti di materia che vagano nel vuoto.
Anche la successiva “Harmattans” è così, ma c’è un fluido costante, che funge da collante degli elementi. Non c’è ritmo, ma micropulsazioni che rendono dinamico lo sviluppo acustico. Nei 14 minuti, gradualmente, accadono tante cose diverse, verso la fine si sentono in lontananza tasti di pianoforte, in mezzo a segnali radiofonici. “Roh” è un fangoso assemblaggio di battiti, sembra di ascoltare un organismo vivente dal suo interno, nei processi chimici e cellulari. Infine, “Stellaire” ci riporta quel “fluido” del secondo brano, un liquido cristallino in mezzo a ceneri di rumori sbriciolati.
È un viaggio intenso, scorrere e lasciarsi scorrere da questi suoni. Un’esplorazione della materia, di cui siamo composti e circondati, tradotta per l’udito. (Gilberto Ongaro)
Another splendid work by Bruno Duplant, one of my current personal favourites of enigmatic and sometimes minimal composition. His Sombres Miroirs (CRONICA 188-2022) is, by his standards, positively teeming with activity and events, and in this floating richness we can hear everything from backwards orchestras to uncertain cosmic gyrations – planets spinning or nebulae drifting into the distance. Profound, too, are the thoughts of the composer himself who conceived and executed this fascinating suite in two parts; he muses, not without some melancholy, on such deep matters as nature, humanity, civilisation, and the fate of the planet. What perceptions does he come away with? “Dark in my eyes and embittered in my heart,” comes the stern reply. The overall effect of the composition isn’t intended to induce unhappiness, however, and he takes things as a cosmic cycle where “hope and despair [move] in ever-recurring successions”. More than once, these “dark mirrors” put me in mind of my beloved Ligeti, showing Duplant can successfully deliver the micro-tonal thing without straying into ambient gloop or soppy drone. I wonder if it really is orchestrated, or made with tapes and keyboards? Either way, a beautiful work for gazing into the abyss at the heart of everything. Glory be! (13/07/2022) Ed Pinsent
Quite nice short tape experiments from Morten Riis on his cassette Lad Enhver Lyd Minde Os Om(CRÓNICA 186-2022). He did it using modified four-track cassette recorders and his own home-made synths, although the press notes are a little short on specifics, and refer us to mysterious processes such as “media and the human-object participatory democracy”. I suppose this may mean something about the opportunities afforded by technology which have opened up his creative imagination to some degree. The main compositional device appears to be a form of layering, where he makes so many noises and textures that we can’t discern where the original tapes might have been sourced. A painter, blending colours on a canvas, may hope for similar results. There’s a muffled and disjointed quality to the results which is not unpleasant; the title refers obliquely to the possibility of one sound reminding us of something else. I like the brevity of these pieces, but the album doesn’t amount to much more than a series of sketches, vaguely suggestive of other possibilities. Riis comes to us from his studies at Aarhus, and has published on the subject of mediation in sound. (13/07/2022, Ed Pinsent)
Defining itself as a festival of sound art, ecology and auditory culture, Lisboa Soa seeks to value contemporary artistic creation, but assigning it a social and ecological context, of direct intervention in space, encouraging the participation of different audiences through installations and sound performances, auditory education workshops, debates, lectures and tours focused on the sense of hearing. The purpose of Lisboa Soa is to encourage listening to better understand the place we occupy, and to raise awareness of the impact of human presence on the planet.
Acoustic ecology, the discipline that inspired the festival since its foundation, places listening at the centre, and this is also the focus of Lisboa Soa: to shift attention to the ears and to create conditions, spatial and temporal, that are conducive to the act of listening attentively. One of the main goals of Lisboa Soa is to bring the audience to iconic spaces and create auditory experiences that guide visitors through these spaces, while at the same time provoking a reflection on the involvement of human beings with the environment, with others, with the city and how it all connects through sound.
In 2021, after five editions — one of them particularly intense, during a year of pandemic and restrictions — Lisboa Soa decided to “listen backwards”, commissioning four compositions to four Portuguese artists, who delved into the festival’s sound archive to create new interpretations and meanings from it. This album is created from these compositions: it is a work about memory, with an ear to the future.
Raquel Castro
João Castro Pinto started his activity as a composer and performer of experimental music and as a sound and intermedia artist in the second half of the 1990s. His production comprehends the domains of soundscape composition, live electronics improv, electroacoustic and acousmatic music and radio art. He graduated in Philosophy from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and is currently completing his PhD, on the composition of soundscapes, at the Portuguese Catholic University. agnosia.me
Efflux was composed through the sound exploration of the selected samples, favouring contrasting approaches. Some sounds were extremely processed, until they became unrecognisable, others were filtered and isolated from their environmental context, however, maintaining some of their spectromorphological profile, and, finally, sounds from concordant and discordant sound families were added. Efflux presents a varied sonic flow of frequencies, amplitude dynamics, between quasi-silence and dense volume, discrete and continuous sounds.
Sara Pinheiro is a sound designer for cinema and video art, acousmatic composition and multi-channel live performance. She graduated in Sound for Cinema at the School for Theatre and Cinema in Lisbon, and in Sonology at the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Her PhD, at the School of Music at Bangor University, crosses the areas of Concrete Music with sound design for cinema. She currently resides in Prague where she works as a sound designer and cultural agent, both as a member of the live coding group k-o-l-e-k-t-i-v and the “REGARDLESS” manifesto.
Do que Ressoa looks for the spaces of the meantime, the arrivals and departures before and after concerts/installations, the wait, the oscillation, the resonance of intermediate moments as in a temporal suspension of a memory that I do not have.
Mestre André works as a field-recordist, performer, composer and sound artist for film, dance, performance and theatre. He has composed electro-acoustic sound work for multi-channel systems under the alias O Morto, improvised electronic music as Alacrau and produced beats as Notwan. He works with the bands Jibóia and Banha da Cobra. André is a beekeeper involved in the ecological thinking of aesthetics in natural contexts, his work reflects on an ecological thinking of creative practice and aesthetic relationships within natural human and nonhuman contexts. Within this subject, he recently published the article “Towards a Rewilding of the Ear” in the Organized Sound journal and has been developing the installation series Dwelling Poetics of Dystopia.
No Earlids is the (de)compositional result of sounds from various editions of Lisboa Sounds through the ears that recorded them. The de-composition process was entrusted to intuition in choosing moments from among dozens of hours of recording with the aid of the memory of the moments themselves. Not only intentional moments but also “backstage” moments, in an indiscriminate listening, without blinking.
Ana Guedes lives and works between Portugal and the Netherlands. Her artistic practice explores the plasticity of sound in formats such as performance and installation, interconnecting temporalities and narratives, archival notions, historical, social and political perspectives. Ana Guedes attended the Calouste Gulbenkian Music Conservatory in Braga, graduated in Sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, obtained a Masters in Artistic Research from the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, in the Netherlands.
Splicingarchives integrates fragments of Lisboa Soa’s archive of sound performances. Performances from different editions of the festival are referenced, coexisting as fragments of different filtered voices, processed using analogue tape loops, synthesisers and pipe organ, recorded in the analogue music laboratories Willem Twee Studios in The Netherlands. Jen Reimer & Max Stein (2017), Tomoko Sauvage (2018), Santa Melódica Orchestra (2019), Ana Guedes & Lisboa Soa archives, organ+ tape loops + synth (2021-2023).
“Lisboa Soa, Sounds Within Sounds” is now available as a limited-release CD, download, or stream from Crónica.
