Der litauische Klang-, Performance- und Konzeptkünstler Gintas Kraptavičius alias Gintas K bringt dieser Tage ein neues Tape heraus. “Lėti”, das im Litauischen “langsam” bedeutet, enthält elf Miniaturen, gebaut aus filigranen Sounddetails unterschiedlichster Herkunft, die einer ebensolchen Vielfalt an Bearbeitungsstufen unterzogen wurden und in ihrer finalen Gestalt einer großen Wunderkammer gleichen, in der man bei jedem neuen Besuch imemr wieder neue Stilreferenzen und einiges mehr entdecken kann.
Gintas K ist seit der ersten Hälfte der 80er aktiv, zunächst als Teil des Post-Industrial-Duos Modus, ab Mitte der 90er dann mit seinen soundorientierten Soloarbeiten. Vom Label heißt es: “He became known for his sound actions, theatrical performances and conceptual art in the manner of Fluxus and now works in digital experimental and electroacoustic music, film music, and sound installations. His compositions are based on granular synthesis, live electronic, hard digital computer music, and small melodies”. “Lėti” erscheint auf CD und als Download bei Crónica.
This is my second review of the works of Gintas K, a fascinating and innovative sound artist, born in Lithuania in 1969 and a person who has generated considerable interest. As with the previous album I reviewed, this electronic music work needs a good sound system or headphones and a nice quiet environment to truly be appreciated. The title of this release, Lėti, is Lithuanian for ‘Slow’ and comprises eleven short tracks.
The first track, Bells, consists of different pitched bells and a rather strange crackly background. It starts off relaxed, and grows in intensity before fading away to silence. The middle section is rather joyous in effect.
The second track, Hallucination, starts in a slightly fragmentary fashion, but a pattern soon emerges that is present throughout the whole track, the sounds around it changes as does the pattern itself, but it is always recognisable and I tend to focus on that more than the sounds around it. The pattern is shortened towards the end of the track, but sometimes the memory fills in the rest. This quite a fascinating movement. It does portray what the title suggests it might.
Track 3, Various, starts almost organ-like and swells and pulses and grows increasingly louder. Eventually it becomes more complex as other sounds cut across and some are absorbed into this pedal note. A slow melodic figure grows around this pedal note. About half way through, the intensity of the pedal note becomes less and the music relaxes and becomes quieter, apart from the rather spiky interjections. This reminds me of some of the very early electronic music I heard in my youth and is the longest work on this disc. Towards the end of the track the music is much less dense and it fades away to a single point of sound.
Variation seems to revolve around the pedal note in the previous track and there are various short abrupt tones that suggest that the pedal is there, without it generally being so. Maybe this is just my imagination, but I believe this music leaves it wide open for you to feel or imagine what you will. Every time I listen, I hear new things and my perspective changes.
Atmosphere, is announced by a couple of guitar notes, and then a dense field is built up around that, sometimes two note patterns, sounds that are a little like whale song, again with a pedal being maintained, although this does change in pitch slightly as the work progresses. This track is certainly atmospheric, perhaps also being a statement of the atmosphere that envelopes and nourishes us all.
Savage begins with a core distorted sound that becomes the pedal around which other sounds move. This grows in intensity as the movement progresses, and in the middle grows rather menacingly and the activity generally becomes more intense. This starts subsiding towards the end and the movement ends quite abruptly.
Guitar is a short track of recorded and filtered guitar sounds that have other sounds added around them. The internal resonance of the guitar is also either captured or simulated, and the three-note guitar figure that repeats throughout the movement is the unifying factor.
Nice Pomp is interesting and varied with bell sounds and organ, and is quite melodic and relaxing. Even though the overall pulse is slow, the work is busy with many different sounds and effects that create a rich tapestry without overwhelming. In the middle, excitement bubbles over and the music becomes quite exultant before becoming calmer. Just when you think it has stopped, it bubbles up again and then rapidly subsides.
Query begins with a fairly rapid rhythmic pulse over a pedal and other sounds start growing around it, including some bell effects, some of which sound like an alarm bell. This grows in intensity and then subsides but the whisper of a pedal, maintained in the bell, remains as the music disappears into silence leaving the idea of the query behind.
Track 10 is entitled Ambient. This music grows from nothing and a chord emerges, again with a pedal note underneath. On this CD, the pedal note seems to be a frequently used device. In this movement it comes and goes but there is always one present in one or another register. There is a bubbly background and the music is quiet and reflective.
The final track, Bonus Sound, grows like a swarm of bumble bees that create the pedal around the note A. The sounds around it that grow in the middle suggest a melody, but every time I listen, the melody seems to slightly change with my awareness.
This CD is not something that everyone would appreciate, but again there are rich rewards for those that do. The Gintas K works I’ve heard impress me because they are free from gimmicks or pretentiousness and are honest. There seems to be a unifying factor and sense of purpose that leads you gently but purposely, but does not thrust itself upon you. I did enjoy this journey. Geoff Pearce
We’re proud to release Gintas K’s new album, Lėti, 16 years after Gintas’s first release in Crónica, the now classic Lengvai / 60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz sound and after several other encounters in compilations, collaborations, and four albums. Lėti, Lithuanian for slow, is a set of 11 short pieces created from recording and improvising in studio followed by extensive mixing and editing using software. Further details on Gintas K’s creative process are as usual scarce, but Lėti can be seen as expressing his affectionate side, and as fitting in a corpus of albums with similar emotional undertones, with 2016’s Low (Opa Loka), 2013’s Slow (Baskaru) and 2009’s Lovely Banalities (Crónica).
Gintas K is a Lithuanian sound artist and composer active since 1994. He became known for his sound actions, theatrical performances and conceptual art in the manner of Fluxus and now works in digital experimental and electroacoustic music, film music, and sound installations. His compositions are based on granular synthesis, live electronic, hard digital computer music, and small melodies.
Lėti is now available as a limited-release CD, download or stream!
Matilde Meireles is a recordist, sound artist, and researcher who makes use of field recordings to compose site-oriented projects. Her projects often have a multi-sensorial approach to ‘site’ which draws from her studies and experience in areas such as field-recording, site-specific visual arts and design.
Her latest album is an in-depth study of potato in culture.
In her own words:
“The potato has travelled a long way from its native lands in South America. The starchy tuber, brought to Europe by the Spanish in the late 1600s, slowly settled to become a key ingredient in most European countries’ traditional diet. As with many other vegetables, plants, and spices from elsewhere, we forgot the origins of the potato. We made them our own because food is an inherent expression of social identity. It tells stories, and evokes nostalgia, belonging, and wellbeing. Yet, the food system of the current times is desperately unsustainable. Like the potato, many other fruits, vegetables, plants, and animals travel far and wide daily, blurring territories, and playing an accidental part in the immeasurable impact of the politics of food production. The potato is an incredibly resilient element whose history traverses time and location, and its historical traces have very different socio-political nuances in the places I call home: Portugal, Ireland, and now England. It also grows seasonally in our garden and is a tasty tuber part of a rich sonic ecosystem. This seemed like a good starting point for a new project.”
The field recordings and the processing show a close touch with the whole structure of growth as well as culinary aspect of it. An interesting study of how every day life staple has so many references and a range of small mysteries that we, as listeners have to go through to understand aspects of our lives, that seem obvious.
Mad Disc est le projet solo du musicien japonais Takamichi Murata, batteur et percussionniste. Impliqué dans plusieurs groupes, dont le sien, il a collaboré avec de nombreux improvisateurs et compositeurs. Dans Material Compositions, il joue non seulement de la batterie et des percussions diverses, mais fait intervenir l’électronique et les synthétiseurs pour retravailler le son.
Material Composition 1 commence par le timbre limpide d’une clochette “rin”, instrument rituel bouddhiste, qui donne tout de suite à la pièce sa belle solennité. Des sonorités électroniques accompagnent la clochette, formant des motifs obsédants. Peu à peu se développe un univers sonore tout à fait étrange, fascinant, dans lequel les sons synthétiques, les percussions métalliques prennent comme une vie autonome. Une lente pulsation anime la première longue pièce, de plus de vingt minutes. Material 1 est un curieux mélange entre musique expérimentale post-industrielle et musique rituelle un peu folle, la clochette rin utilisée très intensivement pour créer un fond d’harmoniques cristallines foisonnantes. D’autres percussions dépaysent davantage, nous entraînant d’abord vers une atmosphère doucement extatique, mais la fin est un long crescendo d’une puissance trouble ponctué par quelques frappes percussives méditatives. Takamichi Murata réussit une œuvre d’une rare beauté ! Material 2, plus expérimental, a la brutalité de certains apologues zen, entre free jazz et métal, constamment en ébullition, batterie déchaînée et rugissements synthétiques : quel contraste avec le morceau précédent ! Je suis moins enthousiaste, mais impressionné par ces neuf minutes magmatiques.
La suite de l’album donne à entendre trois remixes, respectivement par trois collaborateurs du compositeur, Toru Kasai, Koutaro Fukui et Ryoko Ono. Toru Kasai réutilise la clochette “rin”, propose une version ambiante à l’onirisme grandiose, avec de lentes volutes veloutées dans lesquelles circulent des nuages électroniques et des drones : séduisant, et impeccable ! Koutaro Fukui revient aux percussions, et surtout aux sons sales, troubles, pour une version techno MAGISTRALE, à frémir, les amis ! J’en suis à regretter la relative brièveté du morceau, d’une splendeur apocalyptique, d’une densité noire fulgurante. Quant à Ryoko Ono, il nous propose une version rock-punk-free jazz survoltée, tout en frappes frénétiques de la batterie, avec une clochette “rin” hallucinée, d’énormes vagues ramassées de sons électroniques, dans la lignée de Material 2. Une vraie folie sonore, chuintante de crissements, de mille traits acérés échappés d’une boule en fusion.
Un disque pour les oreilles solides, c’est évident, mais les amateurs de musique hypnotique, mystérieuse, d’une densité acérée, seront ravis. Décapant et revigorant, avec une palette étonnante de paysages sonores, splendidement travaillés !
Persistent Disequilibrium is based on a set of new musical instruments where finger mounted piezo pickups are used with transducers on vibrating plate-like objects to explore resonances by touch. This creates a feedback loop where sonic vibrations pass through the material to be investigated and are not transmitted through the air. The direct contact let us come very close to the vibrating objects, and the low frequency rumble inherent in the objects is teased out and amplified in the feedback loop, creating haunting resonances and deep vibrating spaces. Various vibrating materials have been explored, such as metals, plastics, wood, ceramics, concrete, glass, bioplastics, even human bones in a living body. Closed loops of the audio feedback circuit resonate by amplifying background noise, singing on frequencies determined by the vibrational modes of the objects the sound is passing through. Contact microphones are attached to bones in the performer’s hand, enabling an embodied and direct interaction with the feedback loop. Including the body parts of the performer in the feedback circuit creates a new method of embodied sound production and allows an intimate performative control over the expressive nuances of the performative environment instigated by closely spaced vibrationalmodes of the instrument. The performer’s finger acts as a filter in the feedback circuit, and variations in performative gestures (pressure, angle, touching with the nail or the flesh) can thus selectively bring out different potential resonances of the object.
A feedback network is a chaotic system with resonances as attractors. The high sensitivity to initial conditions makes it very responsive in performance. Brandtsegg has worked on various kinds of maps of the pitch space of these instruments, uncovering the resonant topography of the vibrating objects. Even though such maps will rarely indicate anything absolute about the space, they will often give relational cues for the performer, aiding in the “where do we go from here?” conundrum of unstable situations. For the basic feedback mechanism, very simple audio processing was used with just compression and equalization and no adaptive filters. On some of the tracks, this was extended with live convolution and ring modulation techniques, blending the performer’s voice into the feedback loop and thus creating further diversions of textural resonances.
Øyvind Brandtsegg is a composer and performer working in the fields of computer improvisation and sound installations. He has a deep interest in developing new audio processing methods for artistic purposes, and he has contributed novel extensions to both granular synthesis and convolution techniques. Brandtsegg has participated on more than 25 music albums in a variety of genres. Since 2010 he is a professor of music technology at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway.
Performed and composed by Øyvind Brandtsegg.
Recorded at NTNU Music Tech, Fjordgata, Trondheim by Øyvind Brandtsegg.
Mixed by Øyvind Brandtsegg.
External ear: Maja S.K. Ratkje.
Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais at Crónica.
Cover photo by Jeremy Welsh, taken at an exhibition developed at Surnadal Billag by the group Pixels.Frames.Beats.Drones (Jeremy Welsh, Apichaya Wanthiang, Øyvind Brandtsegg, Tijs Ham, Trond Lossius).
This work was commissioned for Casa Sonora curated by David Velez for the Explora Museum, Colombia, in 2020, a project during the first Covid-19 lockdown that compiled works to stream or download and play or interact with in a mobile phone.
As a child I loved singing in the bath. Singing may be a bit of an exaggeration: what I loved was finding the nodal point of the room, exciting it and listening to it resonate. Now that Covid-19 stopped us from singing together, I invite you to sing for 19 minutes in your bath with a virtual choir. 21 friends from around the world provided me each with two sung notes, recorded in their own bathrooms. I extended these to form long harmonic pads over which you are invited to improvise your own songs and melodies, tuning in and out at will.
Singing is good for you! Singing has been demonstrated to improve mental health and wellbeing. Not only it lowers cortisol and relieves stress and tension, but studies have also shown that when people sing, endorphins and oxytocin are released by the brain which reduces anxiety levels. Oxytocin also enhances feelings of togetherness which explains reports that singing also improves depression and feelings of loneliness. Singing also has a physiological effect on the body, studies have shown that after singing one has higher levels of immunoglobulin A, an antibody known to benefit the immune function of mucous membranes. Studies have also shown that singing can help people suffering from long-term chronic pain and can have a real impact on the amount of pain relief medication used by participants.
I encourage you to sing along with this piece in your bath and relax.
The inspiration and the recordings for the piece Stromschauen (view/look current/power) were formed during walks in Berlin/Pankow in the last days of December 2020. In a situation of urban sound environment slowed down by the Covid rules and the holidays in general, various power boxes and their whirring and humming became more noticeable. The AC frequency is 50 HZ in the European electricity system, which is between a musical low G and a G sharp. This tone determines the resonant frequency when operating electrical devices like e.g. the lighting in streets or our refrigerators, that resonate in this frequency.
The starting point of Stromschauen is the manifold quotidian and mostly overheard resonances of our electricity infrastructure in interaction with their environment. Its compositional material is the sound textures found in these processes. Microtonal moods, sound aggregates at the interface of timbre to harmonics, overtone patterns, spectral layering, and rhythmic beat patterns become the musical material. The piece also acknowledges the influence of essential genres such as industrial and noise music on TAMTAM’s compositional work.
TAMTAM is the collaboration of Sam Auinger and Hannes Strobl, active on artistic research on urban living space, with a strong interest in the audible. This is approached through a longstanding practice in city studies with field recordings, producing releases, radio broadcasts, and performances. Concurrently they also produce sound installations with a focus on the audible relationship between designed architectural space and an acoustic event in interior or exterior spaces.
TAMTAM’s instrument is, for all intents and purposes, not only a sounding object that we are well familiar with. It is also the space itself where sound lives-the acoustic and psychoacoustic fields that enable us to extend our accepted senses to hear the habitual and the quotidian as something extraordinary.
The sound artists Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais have been working together for more than two decades and have released an almost incalculable number of releases under the name @c to document their musical work. High time then for their label Crónica to also dedicate the book »Installations / Instalações« to them in order to document and comment on their audiovisual and site-specific works. The edition contains a detailed introduction to the various projects the two artists realised together between the years 2005 and 2021 in English and Portuguese as well as an essay by Raquel Castro. Most of the 210 pages, however, are filled with photographs. They were taken with a similar obsession for detail, if not pedantry, with which Tudela and Carvalhais approach their projects on a sonic, spatial and visual level. This makes for intellectually and aesthetically stimulating reading experience.
