I wonder just how angry Mr. Eric Satie (the turn of the century composer) would be if he were allowed to live and see what has become of his legacy.
Mr. Satie, well perhaps, was first and perhaps foremost in asking for and then making music like…err…as furniture to fill a place and make it for living. And then he was gone and more people, maybe, read about it in a magazine and then made music for rooms or music in rooms to make a room. And there are many many less known than Mr. Satie, so, perhaps, he may not even have known … even given the fantastic chance to see.
O. Blaat makes rooms of music by making music of a room. This is how I read once when I read about her once, in a magazine. Before and since that article she has made abstract rooms of sound by recording the little taps and crinkles of coat check halls, tables and chairs, and feet in a museum, and then arranging them in a computer, and then amplifying the arrangement to make the room all over again.
This is her first real record and it comes in two parts. Part one, Gaze, is comprised of duets and collaborations with others, including Kaffe Matthews, DJ Olive, Iku Mori, who may have tickled or tortured old Mr. Satie. These pieces are big worlds made up of little sounds taken from the big world, and are as fascinating when they are all one hears as when allowed to stand up like little tables and chairs. The pieces are composed with a deft ear tuned by emotional need and crafted by skilled hands focused on function and form.
In the cochlea, part two, was made at home but was meant for no space at all. These pieces exist as hallucinations but are very real stimulations of the deep insides of the ears. These are rare meditations for a contracted space when experience allows a grand expansion of sensation. The deep bass solidifies the body, limiting the universe to corporeal boundaries and shifting perspective from a speck in the eye of grandness to grandness looking down at the speck.
This recording is a thrill for those still walking the world, but how will the dead feel about it?
Frankly, they’re quite dead.
BB