blog.Crónica

La radio, premier médium de grande diffusion, quelque peu oublié sous l’hégémonie télévisuelle, connaît um regain d’intérêt, notamment grâce à l’internet. Le label portugais Crónica, rend hommage à la radio en permettant à una quarantaine d’artistes de donner leur vision de ce mode de diffusion populaire. De GEneral MAgic à Stephan Mathieu, chacun exprime son propre univers en utilisant des enregistrements radio qui sont ensuite manipulés pour alimenter de courtes pièces électroniques. L’excellent Tilia, en utilisant un discours de G.W. Bush lors des obsèques d’un soldat tué en Irak, souligne l’épuration que la radio effectue lorsque le geste no compte pas dans l’expression et que le seul timbre de voix peut trahir son émetteur. De la techno light de Cancer à la musique concrète liquéfiée de Ok.Suitcase, les variations sont nombreuses. Les célébrités underground (Pita, Pimmon, Pure, John Hudak) côtoient les activistes de la péninsule portugaise (Vitor Joaquim, Paulo Raposo, Gintas K,…). La plupart de ces essais alimentent la thèse du label et de son manager Miguel Carvalhais selon qui la radio est le premier médium ayant permis d’expérimenter le bruit blanc, voire la pratique de la musique et du récepteur radio en tant qu’instrument. Un disque, amendé d’un DVD, qui se veut aussi un hommage appuyé à John Cage qui le premier avait ainsi utilisé les postes de radio, en 1951.

Jérôme Langlais

S’appuyant sur quelques constats évidents et interrogations simples; la radio est le premier média mondial; la radio est um médium saturé où tout survient simultanément, une multitude de couches dont on devine l’existence, tapies dans l’ombre maus sur lesquelles on est sans contrôle. De plus la radio est productrice de bruits blancs, de micro-événements électro-acoustiques, expérimentaux (le brouillard qu’on note entre deux recherches de plages).

Les réflexions de Crónica portent sur ces éléments de passade, entre transitions musicales narratives et détails de brouillards sonores confus et aux formed ambivalentes.

Il y a évidemment en arrière-plan, un hommage appuyé aux Imaginary Landscappe #4 for 12 radios de John Cage. Maître étalon s’il en est de la recherche sonore contemporaine.

Julien Jaffré

Essays on Radio: Can I Have Two Minutes of Your Time? is curated by Porto based media artist Miguel Carvalhais. Each of the 39 tracks, from contributors such as Freiband, Pita, Heimir Björgúlfsson and Carvalhais himself, clock in at the two minute mark, primarily so as to invite as many artists as possible, it seems, rather than aesthetic concerns. These brief “essays” are spun from the thesis that radio, as the longest surviving electronic medium, is in danger of being taken for granted, un-marvelled at. Yet not only was the radio mostly likely the first place where people were first exposed to white noise, it is an ideal instrument for the avant garde (as John Cage, on Imaginary Landscape # 4 and Stockhausen on Hymnen among others, recognised – the very twiddle of the dial is an indicator of both chance and simultaneity). Moreover, its every emissions amount to a “vast text” in both literal and, according to Maurice Blanchot, metaphorical space. Radio’s output is something which should be availed of and engaged with.

Opener “Oidar” by Longina functions as a signature tune for this idea, its banks of sound looming like Hubble clouds and taking a life of their own. Others like James Eck Rippie apply the notion practically. He manipulates vinyl recordings of old radio broadcasts in combination with turntables used as radio receivers to capture random broadcasts and frequencies. Elsewhere, contributions range from the musical to the amusical, the siren-luring to the dispensable. But there are many highlights. Lawrence English spins a line of crackle through what sounds like a dismal parlour room enlivened only by the chimes of a Grandfather clock – radio as a reactivator of dead bourgeois air, you might surmise. Stephan Mathieu weaves an elaborate, silvering awning of pure, serene noise, while Pimmon’s Ears That Hear features muffled fragments of momentous radio announcements across floating the ether, occasionally twisted inside out by intermittent spatial glitches. Overall, this is electronica that benefits from having a contextual purpose.

David Stubbs

O ritual repetia-se ocasionalmente. Quando, aos sábados, as cabeças andavam pelo ar e as garrafas de cerveja tinham já passado à condição de tara perdida, o mais necessitado dos “junkies” de ruído ajoelhava-se perante um rádio Blaupunkt. Entre a testa contra as colunas e uma franja colada ao rosto, procurava pela mais enervante frequência AM e suplicava por “distorção ao máximo”. Podia até ali estar um John Cage ou um Damo Suzuki em estado embrionário, mas não. Viviam-se os anos de glória do fuzz e, sem disco da Sub Pop à mão, o pretenso criativo recorreu à rádio como último recurso para satisfazer a sua carência. Essays on Radio: Can I Have 2 Minutes of Your Time? – a compilação que comemora dois convertedores anos de Cronica – segue o percurso inverso: parte da rádio como pretexto para a exposição de trinta e nove exercícios metodicamente variados (e diversos nas perspectivas que proporcionam) em torno da matriz. As noites de sábado nunca mais serão as mesmas.

Numa altura em que é cada vez mais assinalável o fosso entre frequências submissas à ditadura das playlists e rádios (a maioria delas on-line) dispostas a tratar o ouvinte como um ser inteligente e não como uma esponja, a mentalidade de guerrilha volta a fazer sentido associada ao meio. Desde sempre disposta a desafiar bases instauradas, a Crónica proporciona dois minutos de antena a cada um dos locutores (prata da cada e convidados de honra). A oportunidade acaba por se revelar propícia a manobras de retaliação (tilia bombardeia sem clemência o discurso formatado de George Bush), reaplicação de matéria alheia (Cáncer pega nos samples de rádio que já conhecíamos aos discos de Manu Chao e elabora o seu próprio spot publicitário), elegias a emissoras de elevado potencial nostálgico (Ran Slavin homenageia a década de 50 em “Golden Twilight Moments”). Há glitch trepante (ou não fosse a rádio uma abundante fonte dessa matéria) e toda uma sectorização de frequências esventradas a ambos os extremos do audível. Volta a Crónica a prestar serviço público na disponibilização de um formato que condensa uma memória tão incalculável quanto a da rádio.

As ondas hertzianas não precisam de passaporte. Parecia ser essa uma das reivindicações políticas dessa incontornável instituição da electrónica que dá pelo nome de Muslimgauze – palavra de código do entretanto falecido Bryn Jones. Isto porque em “Baghdad” (pertencente ao disco com o mesmo nome) se escutam várias línguas – incluindo o português – conglomeradas numa conspiração a acontecer mesmo nas barbas da autoridade e censura. Um disco da Crónica aparenta quase sempre uma aura de clandestinidade gloriosa. Inteligentemente, a editora portuense desafiou os seus guerrilheiros a camuflarem-se com a duração conveniente a um sucesso de rádio (os tais dois minutos fáceis). Perante a digestibilidade do objecto, quem for “duro de ouvido” tem a tarefa facilitada e trinta e nova sintonias à escolha. Freddie Mercury tinha razão. Alguém ainda te ama, rádio.

Miguel Arsénio

Pour sa 20ème sortie, Cronica propose une compilation conceptuelle. On n’en attendait pas moins de la part du pointu label portugais. Comme le suggère le titre, le concept tourne autour de la radio, thème choisi à l’heure de la multiplication des canaux de diffusion, comme étant le plus ancien medium électronique, le seul dépourvu d’images et que l’on aurait un peu tendance à oublier alors qu’il est bel et bien vivant. Ce sont 39 artistes qui ont travaillé sur le sujet, fournissant chacun un morceau de 2 minutes, soit un moyen de fêter les deux ans du label et de joliment sous-titrer cette compilation “Can I have 2 minutes of your time ?”

Ceux qui connaissent le label peuvent imaginer le résultat. Une bonne partie des artistes présents sont bien sûr des artistes déjà édités chez Cronica, label orienté abstract-glitch ou ambient-noise, selon les goûts, et qui reprend un peu les choses là ou Mego les a laissées… C’est l’occasion de retrouver @c, Tilia, Ran Slavin, Autodigest, O.Blaat, Boca Raton, Heimir Björgúlfsson & Jonas Ohlsson, Freiband, ou Durán Vázquez pour n’en citer que quelques uns dont nous avons déjà pu parler. D’autre part, on trouve quelques “stars” qui viennent enrichir ce tracklisting, avec justement General Magic ou Pita (puisque nous comparions Cronica à Mego), Pure, Pimmon mais aussi des artistes que l’on n’attendait pas ici comme Stephan Mathieu, Steinbrüchel, ou John Hudak.

D’un point de vue purement musical, pas de grosses surprises ici. On retrouve les expérimentations en tout genre propres à ces artistes (drones, sifflements stridents, bruit blanc, sinusoïdes, silences), mais on retrouve aussi leur talent qui permet de rendre tous ces bruits sensuels, poétiques, mouvementés, riches et enrichissants. Par contre on ne saura se prononcer sur la réussite de cette compilation puisque très vite le concept est oublié. D’un côté les artistes composent en nous faisant oublier cette réflexion de départ sur le medium “radio”, de l’autre ce qui devait faire l’intérêt du disque passe au second plan…

En fait on aura plaisir à naviguer entre les deux choix, appréciant les expériences ambient minimales autant que les samples d’émissions de radio, le zapping d’une fréquence à l’autre, ou la dimension politique lorsque Tilia zoome sur un discours de Bush.

Encore une fois Cronica nous bluffe. Expérimental et sensible, abstrait mais terriblement ancré dans notre époque, la musique de ce label, de ces artistes, nous parle et nous laisse sans voix.

Fabrice Allard

The Portuguese label Crónica is now 2 years old, and they’re celebrating this with a new release which is available as a CD and a DVD. The CD (can’t say much about the DVD) has 39 tracks that are each 2 minutes long. In a time of webcasts and internet-based information traffic it’s a very nice idea to have a compilation dedicated to the good ol’ radio. As can be expected a lot of the artists use this a little too literary (lots of radio hiss, frequency hopping and short attention span sound trickery) but it does make for a coherent listen and there’s more minimal electronic tracks then could be expected. Not sure what the point is of collecting tracks on the theme of radio though, and the small essay in the booklet doesn’t clarify it much either, though it does give a sympathetic impression of the people behind this. Includes some very nice tracks from Random Industries, General Magic, Stephan Mathieu and Freiband, as well as many other (…)

RM2

This is the second compilation of this label that already turns two years publishing to artists of the experimental electronic music. Thirty nine are the musicians showing in two minutes time their vision on the radio. This medium in spite of the technological advances that some could foretell a happy end, still prevail as a efficient way of communication, and it was a sound source through people I the past become aware about noises that were produced by the radio waves; interferences and hummings.

Most of the artists have been released in the Porto based label, like Longina, Paulo Raposo, @c, Pure, Cáncer, Tilia, among others, in as much also are selected guest musicians in this compilation: Pita, Boca Ratón, Ákos Garai, Pimmon, Lawrence English and Random Industries, to name a few.

The radio waves, voices and hummings are the sources that are used and processed. There is an interesting recording with a speech of G.W. Bush that justifies the husband’s death to his wife with his typical and confused arguments [the content was more outstanding than the recording itself]. Other messages in different languages and field recordings are appraised in this comp that we are in many different places, and give us the idea of being in the ‘global village’.

The compilation also comprise a DVD with amazing videos by Isabel Abreu & Rita Barbosa, Antmavuv, Tina Frank [from the Mego team], Lia [who works alongside @c], Ran Slavin, and many more.

Guillermo Escudero