“Roha” reviewed by Amusio

cronica105-2016_520
Mit Roha (Crónica) entzieht sich Andreas Trobollowitsch jener formalen Vorgaben, die seine bisherigen Veröffentlichungen, darunter auch die mit Nörz und Acker Velvet, aus einer dezidiert elektroakustisch generierten Perspektive argumentieren ließen. Seine Manipulationen von primär improvisierten Ausgangsmaterial bringt den Klangforscher hier nun in die Nähe dessen, was gemeinhin als „Musik“ verstanden und rezipiert wird. Ein Zug, der Irritationen schürt. Ein Vermögen klarsichtiger Auswahl und Edition.

Das Klavierchen (Klavirzinho) fasst zum Abschluss von Roha zusammen, was zuvor zum taktisch klug eingesetzten Spielball von Negation, Paraphrase und Geltung eingesetzt wurde. Entgegen allen Ernstes wird hier endlich aufgelöst, was Andreas Trobollowitsch zuvor boykottierte. Denn selbst wenn Tracks wie das dunkel ambitioniert monumentalisierte Tapco oder die begrüßenswert verheerend getakteten Ssbeat und Zain kognitiv verwertbare Gefälligkeiten anregten, so reihten sie doch Verkapselung an Verkapselung, um ihren autonomen Flow gegen die Vereinnahmung des formalen Passepartout zu wappnen.

Um im Bilde zu bleiben: Roha biedert sich weder dem Kataster- noch dem Kartellamt an. Seine analoge Verfassung sowie die damit einhergehende Lebensnähe zelebriert geistige Tiefe in der Verlaufsform. Ihr zu folgen mag an der individuellen Logik des Hörers scheitern. Sich ihr zu entziehen gelingt freilich nur unter Aufbereitung ostentativen Widerwillens. Stephan Wolf

via Amusio

New release: Andreas Trobollowitsch’s “Roha”

cronica105-2016_520
ROHA is the first solo album by Andreas Trobollowitsch.

Previously a member of the duos Nörz and Acker Velvet, he produced two highly acclaimed albums, released through Schraum (Berlin) and Monotyp Records (Warsaw), and in collaboration with David Schweighart, he composed the soundtrack for the 1920’s cinema series Digi Wave for the Filmarchiv- Austria.

As in his previous works, the production process of ROHA is based on improvisations to be used as basic materials. The actual pieces, as heard in the album, were developed by a later process of selecting, combining and cutting these basic materials. Although using a similar approach, the works in ROHA are considerably more straightforward, rawer, and rhythmical than his previous endeavours.

Focused on the colour of sound, ROHA oscillates – in the field of electroacoustic music – between experimental, minimal and metal music. Each piece has its specific and clear compositional idea, which makes them accessible, without forfeiting surprising twists. From somewhat exotic instruments to the no-input mixing desk, this album is mechanical, while remaining intensely human and analogue, not including any digitally-produced sounds.

Some of the pieces start from a single sound-source: 1’11” from feedback produced by a electric bass; zain from double bass; klavirzinho from a piano loop that gradually transforms until almost disappearing in a wall of sound; in ratt, ssbeat and i.ii. the textures are far more complex and orchestral, with high and low pitches, strenuous squeaks from where minimal melodies emerge; tuul is based on unexpected cut-ups, while tapco blends several recordings of double bass with white noise and drums that not only provide rhythm as also sonic complexity.

Highly detailed and thorough, ROHA is a very organic album, built from diverse materials, in a densely textural patchwork.

“Against Nature” reviewed by Tiny Mix Tapes

cronica103_520
If field recordings are often the attempt to freeze-frame nature in all its everlasting purity, then Simon Whetham’s latest album of manipulated ambient is decidedly Against Nature. Conceived as part of his ongoing project to record certain environmental sounds and then allow incidental disturbances to creep into their engineering/mixing/production, the Londoner’s new collection of five aleatoric pulsations explores not only our collective need to return to nature whenever we crave a more solid foundation for our liquid selves, but also our collective failure to find anything but the “nature” we construct and reconstruct with each renewed visit.

In other words, Whetham isn’t Against Nature per se so much as against that simplistic concept of “Nature” as some eternal and immutable entity. Drawn-out gusts of atmosphere and static like “Against Nature [1]” are him vainly miking some isolated nook or cranny in the hope that its isolation will preserve it from change and disruption. Instead, the supposedly objective recording of its sound (including distant clanging and the faint rippling of fire) is infiltrated and undermined by the subjective particularities of his equipment, of an abrupt tear at the five-minute mark and the resulting whiteouts that come to refigure its “naturalness” with the whims and eccentricities of man-made gear.

On the one hand, this qualifies the album as a deconstructionist comment on naturalism, on how all “dispassionate” and “neutral” illustrations of nature are always pervaded by human ideology. On the other, the clattered volleys and muted shufflings of, for example, “Against Nature [3]” allow for a biological or naturalist reading of their own, insofar as the randomness with which Whetham permits them to develop corresponds to the randomness through which natural selection and evolution themselves occur. The cut’s squeaked yawns and grained buzzing move almost haphazardly, ultimately altering their natural source material in much the same unplanned way that genetic mutations alter theirs.

It’s precisely through this error-prone working method that Whetham launches his deepest attack Against Nature. In the crackled, ever-shifting trickles of “Against Nature [4],” he declares that nature, quite apart from the people who would change and appropriate it for their own ends, is always changing and re-appropriating itself. The track’s accidental waves of electrical interference and distortion are the perfect counterpart to a nature that’s accidentally distorting itself as it duplicates its own DNA. Via all the uninvited noises and fractured bursts, the composition paints the picture of a nature that, far from being a reassuring locus of constancy, is the model par excellence of inconstancy, as well as all the Godlessness that comes with it.

Yet in the end, what’s interesting about the album on a musical level is its reminder that art can never innocently depict the world without changing it at the same time. The faulty, cavernous vibrations of “Against Nature [5]” explicitly underline how the listener’s experience of the environments traced by Whetham is bluntly adjusted according to the defective media he employs. The disquiet that the piece’s fizzed, secluded humming incites in this listener contingently influences her perceptions, and even if the particular places represented aren’t actually modified by their representation, she and how she will treat similar places in the future nonetheless are. This goes some way to refuting the view that music does nothing but signify the natural spaces and social domains it claims to guiltlessly mirror. It also goes some way to refuting the view that, despite being an often lonely and desolate listen, Against Nature isn’t without importance and meaning. Simon Chandler

via Tiny Mix Tapes

“Gamelan Descending a Staircase” reviewed by Lizard

Gamelan Descending a Staircase
Opisanie muzyki zawartej na najnowszej płycie litewskiego kompozytora nie jest łatwe. Przy obcowaniu z większą częścią jego dorobku bardzo ważna okazuje się być znajomość kontekstu w jakich dany utwór powstał. Bez tego dość ciężko nakreślić charakter samej muzyki. Z jednej strony powinna ona bronić się samodzielnie, bez względu na okoliczności. Jednak kiedy dla samego artysty źródła inspiracji są równie istotne co efekt końcowy jego pracy, to chyba i słuchacze mogą czuć się rozgrzesze- ni. Czynniki, których znajomość na pewno pomoże docenić Gamelan Descending a Staircase to obraz Marcela Duchampa Akt schodzący po schodach nr 2 i indonezyjska muzyka tradycyjna. Trzecim elementem ukła- danki jest wizyta kompozytora w berlińskim Muzeum Etnologicznym, która miała miejsce w 2013 roku. To właśnie podczas niej udało się zarejestrować materiał, który trafił na Gamelan. Pięćdziesięciominutowa kompo- zycja zupełnie jak obraz Duchampa składa z się wielu nachodzących na siebie ścieżek, przenikających się w bardzo płynny, ale jed- nocześnie pozbawiony wyraźnego kierunku sposób. I tak jak przy każdym spojrzeniu na obraz można dostrzec jakiś nowy, pominięty wcześniej szczegół, tak Gamelan Descending a Staircase z każdym kolejnym odsłuchem pozwala zwrócić uwagę na coś innego. Nie ma dobrej czy złej interpretacji, wszystkie są tak samo trafne.

Futurónica 161

futurónica_161
Episode 161 of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Manobras (91.5 MHz in Porto, 18h30) and Rádio Zero (21h GMT, repeating on Tuesday at 01h) airs tomorrow, March 4th.

The playlist of Futurónica 161 is:

  1. Yiorgis Sakellariou, Everything Emanating from the Sun (2016, Everything Emanating from the Sun, Crónica)
  2. Richard Eigner, When the Days All Tip from Nests and Fly Down Roads (2016, When the Days All Tip from Nests and Fly Down Roads, Crónica)

You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.

New in the Corollaries series: Richard Eigner’s “When the Days All Tip from Nests and Fly Down Roads”

cronica104-2016_520
This is the second release in the series Corollaries that will span 2016, compiling works resulting from Active Crossover: Mooste, a cross-cultural collaborative residency curated by Simon Whetham and hosted by MoKS, in April and May 2015. All works are composed from material compiled in a collective archive during the project.

When the Days All Tip from Nests and Fly Down Roads consists exclusively of Field Recordings made by various sound artists and myself during our residencies at MoKS in Mooste, Estonia for the Active Crossover project curated by Simon Whetham and John Grinch.

The piece is constructed from sonic discoveries made during the expeditions of Mooste and its surroundings, which was especially appealing to me for the contrasts between nature and derelict and abandoned structures from the soviet area. I chose recordings of rain resonating two large scaled plastic tubes, a gurgling stream, wire fence set to motion by the ever changing winds, startled geese flying over and frogs singing their songs embedded into the natural soundscape of rural Estonia, amongst others.

My aim was to convey the atmosphere I was absorbed in, wandering around in solitude in the landscape almost devoid of human presence.

When the Days All Tip from Nests and Fly Down Roads is now available as a free download from Crónica or cronica.bandcamp.com.