Síria’s “Cuspo” reviewed by Toneshift


The collective Portuguese label Crónica has been bringing cutting edge, genre defying music since 2003 – and no signs of stopping here. This is Síria‘s debut (aka Diana Combo) and its an assortment of collaborations – field recordings, voice and vinyl records. At first, on Por Riba, (partly recorded by John Grzinich) it’s quite a soothing, almost meditative blend of silky song and lightly vibrating drone electronics, with some subtle percussion. The setting is spare and dreamy, though it seems like we are in daylight in this adaptation from a recording of Catarina Chitas by Michel Giacometti.

Her use of field recordings on A Lua da Eva emphasize that the most simple day-to-day sounds really can fit into the context and texture of a song with music by Lemures. And however fleeting and retrospective, these feel like songs to me, albeit non-traditional songs that are made up of disparate effects: from open circuits to buzzing crickets to lapping water and people speaking to each other in the background.

There’s an intense stillness to a track like Canção da Mulher Cão with its simple crackle and lightly shifting chords, her voice entering like a lullaby. It was written for performance with music by Birds of Delay and Antoine Chessex. The title translates to “Song of the Dog Woman” which offers even more mystery – is she an ancient diety, or someone who rescues strays? In her whispers that wrap between distended organ chords, there’s a relegated innocence to the hushed space.

“The lyrics and melodies emerged and took shape spontaneously and rapidly, being the fruit of a prolonged thought about what seems more banal, or more eminent, or more obscure. Only later were added the layers of vinyl records and other recordings that accompany each moment or episode of this serene tidal wave.”

Describing the sound she’s made here is pretty spot-on, though the practical and the intangible collide softly as I continue my deep listening from the luxe Raiva into the slightly more foreboding Amor de Quem where a depressed guitar hum rides low with additional vocal treatment of echoes. It’s a gray area, this unspoken love from who?

On Gloria, which flows into the previous track, Combo sings in English for the first time about “Jesus died for your sins..” being freely adapted from Patti Smith. It’s the first time where a semblance of a beat pops up, it’s a sing-song style with a chant guise. As it drifts away my standout track tacitly surfaces, Senhora do Almortão -adapted from Lavoisier‘s version of this traditional song. With music by Svarte Greiner another mystery lady materializes, and I’d like to keep it that way in all its silencing spectacle.

This same inebriating wash of meditative music continues to flow expertly into the ambience of Maremoto. With music from Luciano Cilio the ocean seems to be cresting as her echo-ey song drifts from top to mid to background, sinking into the open waves and vinyl imperfections that fade in and out. Finally on the title cut she works with one of those rare artists who aren’t heard from often enough, Joe Colley.

A dizzying piece with echoes and sound effects, mixed, layered, cut-up and collaged back together, the faded and unexpected mirroring the smooth cerebral and emotive voice. A sensual, elusive work that could be played for hours on end to sooth the daily grind of virtual savages and ward off other creeps. I’m lost in music, one of the best tapes for 2018! TJ Norris

via Toneshift

New release: Síria’s “Cuspo”


It happened as if it had been unwittingly, but wanting it.

It was the proposal to make a version of the song Gloria for a play, and to write and sing an original for another play, by the same author, that paved the way to the transformation of life episodes into texts to be sung.

The lyrics and melodies emerged and took shape spontaneously and rapidly, being the fruit of a prolonged thought about what seems more banal, or more eminent, or more obscure. Only later were added the layers of vinyl records and other recordings that accompany each moment or episode of this serene tidal wave.

The idea behind this sequence was to serve as study and sharing material for live performances. However, at the invitation of Crónica Electrónica, it was then developed for this edition, just after the project’s premiere at Passos Manuel, in Porto, in the context of Natal dos Experimentais 2017.

“To me it feels like an anchor, like instants of bridges or doors from reality to other worlds, like in those films when there is an alternation between images that the character is contemplating and images of huge nature fluids phenomena like dust winds or rivers or wind in the trees, between day and night. It inspires to make effort to learn Portuguese.” – Hugo Hyart

Síria is Diana Combo, who in this project joins her voice to the usual practice of combining vinyl records and field recordings, in a gesture of appropriationism that she has been presenting as EOSIN.

This tape could only be made thanks to the support, enthusiasm and inspiration that I have received from certain people, places and times. Life with its ups and downs has provided the matter and tools to transform sadness, rage, indignation and sense of stagnation into songs. It became a fulltime job, because “Joy is the most serious thing in life”. (Almada Negreiros)

Tracklist:

  1. Por Riba (04:10)
  2. A Lua da Eva (08:32)
  3. Canção da Mulher Cão (07:02)
  4. Raiva (05:36)
  5. Amor de Quem (04:13)
  6. Gloria (04:46)
  7. Senhora do Almortão (04:54)
  8. Maremoto (03:32)
  9. Cuspo (07:56)

Credits:

  • Por Riba: adapted from a recording of Catarina Chitas by Michel Giacometti, harmonium and cymbals played by me and recorded by John Grzinich.
  • A Lua da Eva: with music by Lemures.
  • Canção da Mulher Cão: with music by Birds of Delay and Antoine Chessex; written for the theatre performance Nova Criação presented at TNDMII in 2016, a co-creation by Ágata Pinho, Lígia Soares, Sónia Baptista and me; from the song O Amor é um Gajo Estranho, by Pop Dell’Arte.
  • Raiva: with music by Lemures and Antoine Chessex.
  • Amor de Quem: with music by Svarte Greiner and Antoine Chessex.
  • Gloria: adapted from Patti Smith’s song, with music by Los Niños Muertos (André Tasso and Bruno Humberto), produced and edited by me; written for the theatre performance O Fosso dos Heróis, by Ágata Pinho, presented at TNDMII in 2015.
  • Senhora do Almortão: adapted from Lavoisier’s version of this traditional song; with music by Svarte Greiner and cymbals played by me and recorded by John Grzinich.
  • Maremoto: field recording found on the web and music by Luciano Cilio.
  • Cuspo: with music by Joe Colley.


Cuspo is available as a limited-release tape and as a download.

Vacuamoenia’s “Panphonia” reviewed by A Closer Listen


Seeing, goes the theory, necessarily modifies what is being seen. That’s not even considering the effects of perspective, which is to say the mental articulation of meanings and associations in a particular language about whatever’s under observation. If field recording could be said to be in large part about enjoying the silence of the world, Vacuamoenia’s project turns that principle on its head, bringing the absence of the human to bear as a matrix upon which the meanings of the world’s silences rest. By means of a deep exploration of abandoned Sicilian villages mostly built during fascism’s period of hold over Italy, the collective comprised by an academic and a musician constantly suggest that listening is not as ‘passive’ as convention might dictate. Instead, listening is part of a communicative network that passes not only through the technical (equipment, positioning, and so on) and the personal (the artists’ criteria for selection) but also through the historical (music, after all, is all about time).

The main question, I believe, is what exactly shapes these sounds? The howling wind grazing the walls of empty rooms, the crackling of unseen objects moving, the drones emanating from materials contracting and expanding as the temperature rises and lowers, the distant buzz of storms funneled beneath crumbling archways and broken doors reclining upon rotting furniture… The naturalist stance, which treats these sounds as the interactions between objects, does not manage to cover the entire spectrum of their implications, which are born instead from the geographically specific mixtures of culture and history, interpreted and changed constantly by those of us who, even at a distance and through myriad mediations, listen with the intent to both experience and understand. Just like all these places, by virtue of being seen, are shifting in meaning, so do their sounds. Not in vain is the first track called “Chinmoku”, a Japanese word that conceptualizes a silence that does not break communication but is actually integral to it, the spaces between notes that make their very existence possible. The silence of these villages in decay is the source of both new and old landscapes, the dialogue between the vitality of the human-made with the vitality of the physical world taking back what the former has claimed.

“Panphonia”, which basically means the “sound of everything”, picks up water trickles and metallic pangs, a vast droning wind underlining the hollowness of these towns, a void paradoxically brimming with histories of violence, the emptiness a signal of their symbolic wealth. The “Music for a 24h Environment” takes a similar, cyclical approach to listening, which, like seeing, we never really stop doing, forever changing the meaning of the world around us. What shapes these sounds is not only the fallen fragments of buildings and the tree roots bursting from beneath the streets, it is also the processes behind them, the earthquakes and the economic crises, the hopes and the disappointments of a population in movement. In other words, it is a series of human absences, of silences, what truly produces an experience of the world’s meanings because there is, simply put, no world as it is. Panphonia, the sound of everything, serves as a reminder that even at a distance we constantly, irrevocably, participate. (David Murrieta Flores)

*Note: If you can read Spanish, I widely recommend reading this interview with the collective.

via A Closer Listen

Monty Adkins’s “Moeror” reviewed by Ambientblog


With its 21’27” length this is not a full Monty Adkins album, but we will not complain about that – especially since Atkins and Crónica offer this single track EP as a free download (as they call it themselves, but I prefer Name Your Price and suggest to leave a donation to the artist and the label).

Moeror is Latin for ‘sorrow’ or ‘grief’, and is dedicated to the memory of Jóhann Jóhansson. There’s a nostalgic, contemplative piano theme looping over a slightly distorted noise background, but it’s not a repeating loop. At times, the loop changes, starts repeating a part of the theme. The material repeats, “sometimes exactly, at other times with additional processing or temporally shortened.”

Adkins is examining and re-examining every single detail of the loop, over and over again, wondering why “repetition is so psychoemotionally enticing even in melancholic works.”
The answer to that question is hidden in these timeless 22 minutes.

via Ambientblog