Op de Bandcamppagina van ‘Écouter les fantômes’ zegt Duplant over zijn werk: “My music is intended to be narrative and fictional. I do the same in my practice of photography (zie de hoezen van deze albums, red.) and writing. I never try to transcribe reality. This doesn’t interest me in any way. What, on the other hand, interests me, fascinates me, is, as in ‘Écouter les fantômes’, to create a sound fiction with the aim of trying to transcribe a phantasmagorical, ancestral and secret universe which has always been fascinated and/or frightened us”. Oude opnames, inclusief ruis en vervorming, dat is wat we horen aan het begin van deze opvallende compositie. Alsof we luisteren naar de geesten, zoals de titel vrij vertaald naar het Nederlands luidt. En ook in deze compositie vermengt Duplant die oude grammofoonopnames, inclusief alle vervormingen met onder andere industriële geluiden, noise – met name aan het einde van het tweede deel – en veldopnames tot een surrealistisch aandoend geheel. Een bijzonder boeiende compositie, volledig rechtdoend aan de titel. Ben Taffijn
Matilde Meireles è una sound artist e ricercatrice musicale, con un focus particolare sui field recordings e un gusto per i progetti che mettono al centro i luoghi nei quali vengono realizzati.
Considera casa il Portogallo tanto quanto l’Irlanda e l’Inghilterra e da poco è tornata per Crónica Records con “Loop. And Again.”, un lavoro che è parte di “X Marks the Spot”, un progetto più ampio in cui il materiale sonoro è servito per mappare i box usati per le telecomunicazioni nella città di Belfast tra il 2013 e il 2019.
“Loop. And Again.” rivisita e reinventa i field recordings utilizzati proprio per quel progetto: Matilde Meireles ci invita ad allargare la nostra percezione delle vibrazioni sonore all’interno di un contesto urbano.
Il disco, tre brani per circa tre quarti d’ora di durata complessivi, comprende registrazioni realizzate con microfoni e sensori elettromagnetici per cogliere tutti i suoni dell’ambiente intorno ai box. Altre registrazioni sono state realizzate sul fiume Lagan, nell’Irlanda del Nord, con l’ausilio di due idrofoni.
A suo modo, nella sua complessità sperimentale, l’ambient di “Loop. And Again.” è un modo altro per conoscere una città su piani più meramente sensoriali, superando il consueto rapporto fra architettura, storia e natura. Sicuramente destinato a una nicchia di ascoltatori, il nuovo album di Matilde Meireles sarà in grado di affascinare senza fatica chiunque abbia familiarità con la musica ambient meno convenzionale. (Piergiuseppe Lippolis)
It’s new release day, and our last in 2024, introducing Philippe Petit’s “Attractive Apesanteur“, a prelude for a forthcoming release in 2025! Season’s greetings, everyone; see you in January!
Nagrywanie, słuchanie, ruch, rytm. Istnieje wiele śladów, które tworzą nieskończone możliwości łączenia w nowe jakości. Ślady, nagrywanie, czas, częstotliwość. Powtarzanie i pamięć. Alan Burdick pisze, że „Złota era ucha nigdy się nie skończyła (…) Trwa, zasłonięta hegemonią wizualności”, ale „Historia ucha” rozbrzmiewa w zapomnieniu.
Marcin Dymiter– muzyk (gra w projektach emiter, niski szum, ZEMITER oraz innych, efemerycznych formacjach; wcześniej związany z zespołami Ewa Braun, Mapa, Mordy), autor nagrań terenowych, instalacji dźwiękowych i słuchowisk, muzyki do filmów, wystaw i spektakli teatralnych. Prowadzi autorskie warsztaty dźwiękowe oraz działania przybliżające ideę field recordingu. Autor cyklu nagrań Field Notes. Niezależny kurator związany z festiwalami Wydźwięki/Resonances (Galeria El, Elbląg) i Control Room (Gdańsk). Wspólnie z Marcinem Barskim był pomysłodawcą i kuratorem „Polish Soundscapes”, pierwszej polskiej wystawy prezentującej zjawisko field recordingu. W 2020 roku został zaproszony do udziału w światowej wystawie sound artu Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020, która odbyła się w Madrycie, w Museo Reina Sofia.
Producent muzyczny. Słuchacz i uczestnik warsztatów muzycznych i warsztatów improwizacji w kraju i za granicą, między innymi prowadzonych przez Le Quan Ninha, Andrew Sharpleya, Johna Butchera, Robina Minarda i Wolfganga Fuchsa. Stypendysta Uniwersytetu Sztuki w Berlinie, finalista konkursu Netmage International Multimedia Festival w Bolonii. Stypendysta Marszałka Województwa Pomorskiego oraz Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego (2011), Fundacji Wyszehradzkiej (2012, 2023). Członek Polskiego Stowarzyszenia Muzyki Elektroakustycznej.
Simon Whetham’s “Successive Actions” is not so much an album as it is a murmuring labyrinth of discarded whispers, a requiem for obsolete machines played on their own brittle bones. In this latest iteration of his “Channelling” project, Whetham transforms the detritus of consumer technology – motors, mechanisms, and malfunctions – into an orchestra of decay, reanimated by sound and amplified into mesmerizing disarray.
The concept itself reads like a speculative fiction plotline: sounds once captured from mundane phenomena – wind rattling through cracks, doors groaning their final goodnight, traffic sighing in perpetual migration – are funneled into defunct devices. These technological ghosts, startled into sputtering life, produce new sounds, their rhythms simultaneously organic and mechanical, random yet precise. It’s the sonic equivalent of sending dead stars into resonance, their echoes colliding in the void.
From the beginning, “Successive Actions” immerses listeners in a sequence that feels both procedural and chaotic. Opening track “Action” unfolds like the flick of a circuit breaker, a quiet initiation to a process whose repercussions ripple outward. Tracks like “Reaction” and “Overreaction” hum and stutter, their soundscapes alternately serene and volatile. “Redaction” seems to erase itself as it plays, its fragmented tones suggesting memory dissolving into static, while “Compaction” compresses dense textures into bursts of claustrophobic intensity.
The interplay of texture and structure reaches its peak in “Contraction,” a six-minute epic of mechanical tension that breathes like a collapsing lung, and “Distraction,” whose jittery rhythms evoke a machine unraveling its purpose. The closing track, “Protraction,” leaves a faint sonic residue, as if the machines are slipping back into silence, their revolt unfinished but indelible.
Whetham’s artistry lies in his ability to coax emotional resonance from ostensibly lifeless materials. His works are sound sculptures, tracing the hidden vitality of malfunction, the poetics of disintegration. There is a grim irony in the process: technology, once destined for precision and utility, now repurposed as a chaotic muse. It is a reflection of the modern cycle – creation, obsolescence, reinvention – told through reverberations.
The album’s title, drawn from Dirk Raaijmakers’ “The Art of Reading Machines”, frames this interplay of cause and effect, where the discarded becomes an agent of further disruption. “Successive Actions” is not only a meditation on sound but on the very nature of systems, entropy, and the human tendency to repurpose what we abandon.
Simon Whetham, a veteran of environmental sound art, brings his signature approach to this project, combining field recordings, improvised techniques, and an alchemist’s touch for revealing the secret lives of sound. Having performed internationally and curated sonic explorations such as “Corollaries”, Whetham remains one of the most innovative artists in his field, continually bridging the gap between the ephemeral and the tangible.
Listening to “Successive Actions” feels like eavesdropping on the afterlife of machines, their language strange yet familiar. It is music for a world we are both leaving behind and constantly re-encountering – a symphony of friction, failure, and fleeting renewal.
Essential for: fans of experimental sound art, those curious about the intersection of technology and decay, and anyone looking to experience music as an act of poetic transformation. Vito Camarretta
Coming close to the end of 2024 but not winding down in any way, we’re thrilled to present a new release by Miguel A. García and Coeval, their second collaboration in Crónica after last year’s Huncill.
Laliguras is a wonder of “nuances, progressions, regressions and contradictions” in the words of Ulzion in his text about García’s and Coeval’s music.
The eight tracks of Laliguras are now available to stream or download from Crónica.
