Morten Riis’s “Lad enhver lyd minde os om” reviewed by Neural

This is the first solo release from sound artist Morten Riis, since 2009’s Digital Sound Drawings, a project that focused on the visual waveforms of songs, featuring six songs that were composed by converting a series of images into audio. Riis continues this conceptual engagement that questions how, in an era of ready-to-use software, a composer can produce music in a way that is attentive to the specificity of the media used. Riis relies on homemade synthesizers and modified 4-track cassette recorders. In doing so, it is possible to observe how engaged he is with the contemporary and inescapable relationship between sound creation and technology. The Danish artist modifies and experiments with instruments and the recording process, resulting in a complex work in which different melodic structures are superimposed on each other to create new sounds, noises and textures. This release is accompanied by Lad den samme lyd minde os om (Let every sound remind us of), 25 unique loop cassette tapes handmade by Riis which contain the original material of the compositions. This project is endowed with a sense of loss, a perception that is unconventional but with which we unconsciously develop a strong sense of familiarity. Even within the deconstruction of the work, emotionality does not lose its charge and is full of a yearning nostalgia, of forgotten narratives and existential metaphors. By forcing the mind to think outside the box of musical conventions, the artist undertakes a sort of journey through time and lets ‘every sound remind us of it’, bringing back a sense of excitement through the now obsolete and almost useless tapes. The overall result is very impressive – comforting us with what can be created with redundant media forms. Aurelio Cianciotta

via Neural

@c + Drumming GP‘s “For Percussion” reviewed by Westzeit

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

via Westzeit

New release: @c + Drumming GP’s “For Percussion”

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:

  1. 63, for percussion, synthetic percussion, electronics (2006, revisited 2022) (8:27)
  2. 58, for two marimbas & two computers (2006, revisited 2022) (20:34)
  3. 88, for stones, objects, microphones, electronics (2010) (7:13)
  4. 66, for sampled standing bells, computer (2008) (10:12)
  5. 88R, for computer, synthetic percussion (2022) (10:00)
  6. 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.

David Lee Myers’s “Strange Attractors” reviewed by Vital Weekly

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)

via Vital Weekly

@c + Drumming GP‘s “For Percussion” reviewed by African Paper

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.

via African Paper

New release: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s “Withering Field Live“

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.

Withering Field Live is now available for download or stream.