After yesterday’s première in Lisbon, @c will present “Lâminas†once again today in Braga’s gnration. This performance will count with Angelica V. Salvi (harp), João Pais Filipe (percussion) and Ricardo Jacinto (cell and electronics).
Also today, at gnration’s gallery, @c will open their new installation “A/Bâ€.
Episode 187 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 3rd.
The playlist of Futurónica 187 is:
You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.
Crónica is proud to present the new release by Emmanuel Mieville, the fantastic “Juryo: Durée de la vie de l’ainsi-venuâ€.
Paris-born composer Emmanuel Mieville studied sound engineering in a film school and musique concrète at the famous GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). He has also studied ethnic instruments and played Javanese gamelan orchestra in Paris for two years.
Since his childhood, Mieville has been constantly listening to creative radio programs, something that has fueled his approach to experimental music and soundscape composition. He has produced many programs for French national radios (France-Culture and France-Musiques).
Mieville’s interest in aural perception and memories engraved in urban and wildlife environments have yielded compositions where field recordings are layered, mixed and sometimes transformed through effects. His goal is to portray a specific location, to let its blurred sonic emotions reach the listener’s ears, to perform in concert and compose the “concrete†substance of it for the listener’s benefit.
The title of this album comes from the Japanese translation of the Sanskrit word and points to a chapter of the Lotus SÅ«tra, one the most famous text of MahÄyÄna Buddhism.
All tracks, except Tanit Astarté, are drawn from this inspiration cycle, and materials include different field recordings from Asia. Recordings of Tibetan nuns from Copan monastery and FM radio in Hong Kong were used in Nyorai. Murasaki means “purple†in Japanese and was composed after a trip to Japan, and the frequent immersion onto the stages of ButŠdancers. Taisi Funeral is a recording of Buddhist chanting for a deceased person recorded in a small village of Taiwan, mingled with my own synthesis sounds. Tanit Astarté is a quotation from Antonin Artaud’s book Héliogabale, and refers to the moon goddess, as described in Phoenician myths.
“Juryo: Durée de la vie de l’ainsi-venu†is now available as a limited release CD or a download from Crónica or Crónica’s bandcamp page.
The modular synthesizer has always been a remarkable instrument: a huge panel of boxes with knobs and sliders, with components that can be replaced, converted and connected at will. I would imagine that playing such a machine is quite similar to steering a space ship, and that compulsive players of flight simulation games must have developed a great skill in operating this instrument. If I remember correctly Jos Smolders used to play these games with great zeal. That would explain his natural feeling for the modular synthesizer evidenced by his most recent album Nowhere. He toys around with various aspects of sound, as if they were pigments, and excessively flexible building materials. He kneads and paints, creates shifting shapes and colors. The album starts with irregular dry clicking sounds that bottom out and become evermore rosy-cheeked. And almost unnoticed they form melodic patterns that pop into your ears like constellations. Until the moment that Smolders covers them up with a softly pulsating whistle, and makes the clicks disappear with the masterly flick of a magician’s wrist, and an agitated voice calls out, tinny as if from a tannoy. That breaks off suddenly to be replaced by a criss-cross of glowing trails, a soft grating noise and tiny ticks that emerge on the left and right limits of your hearing range, while distorted dialog rises and subsides. In like manner each track on this album presents its own composite of shapes and colors, and sounds. A train arriving at a railway station in a cloud of hiss that has grown out of the wheeze of a panting, growling dog. A pack of slogging huskies, disappearing in a zooming tube. But also sublimated pastel sounds of an almost unbearable clarity, brushing basses. This is music of an abstract beauty, with entrancing movements and an apparently familiar vista every now and then. Rene van Peer
A modern city is an ocean of sounds, techno universe,
with its unique atmosphere, sound landscapes and environment. The album starts with the track Nocturnal Rainbow Rising, which approaches and grows on you, slowly, like the first shadows of a summer evening, and then it gets dark. Very near you can hear a sea, feel its warmth and smell sea salt, the waves wash the beach, take our dreams and return to the sea. Track Suspend in Artanis plays on the strings of our souls. It is one of the most emotional and dynamic parts of the album.
In Summer Clouds Ran Slavin takes you from your room
to the pinnacle of a hot, slow summer, but don’t sweat it.
All ten tracks of the release – make up a soundtrack for a dreamer, romanticizing inside a megalopolis, filled with hisses, whispers, dry clicks, wobbly bass, distant ambient sounds.
Black Dice is a walk around Shanghai at night, surreal memories rise from the secret pockets of Yu garden and enter your mind. Pixel Travels is one of the gems of the release, a limitless drift in ghostly boroughs, where you have never been. Slavin never composes static music, his works are very livid, pieces come together into a puzzle of dreams. Dreamzone Five Twenty Three is the last track showing a sleeping city in its darkest hour, just before the sunrise.
For those, who are familiar with Ran Slavin works, Insomniac City film (released by Mille Plateaux) and his other release The Wayward Regional Transmissions (Crónica label) this album is the second part of the trip around the cities of nocturnal world. The artwork of the album is synched with the music, as it was designed by Ran himself.
The release Nocturnal Rainbow Rising is available for free download. Enjoy!
via Data.Wave
Nicht zuletzt als Partizipant eines französischen Gamelan-Orchesters unterstrich der aus Paris stammende Emmanuel Mieville seine breit gefächerte Kenntnis fernöstlicher Musiktraditionen. Nun verweist schon der Titel seiner Veröffentlichung – Juryo: Durée De La Vie L’Ainsi-Venu (Crónica) – auf die mannigfaltigen Verquickungen, die sein akademisch der musique concrète zuzuschlagende Forschergeist angeht. Handelt es sich bei „Juryo“ doch um einen ins Japanische übertragenen Sanskrit-Begriff aus dem Lotus-Sutra des Mahayana-Buddhismus. Und bei der CD um ein Paradebeispiel für eine geographisch definite und zugleich entbundene Konfrontation mit (aus okzidentaler Sicht) exotischen Klangquellen.
Fernöstliche Mystik – Religion und Kultus – für Außenstehende zumeist nur im folkloristischen Modus erfahrbar, unterzieht Emmanuel Mieville einer „konkreten“ Kombinatorik, die weniger der aufklärerischen Dokumentation geschuldet ist, als vielmehr der Möglichkeit, einer partiellen Erschließung, einer Annäherung durch die Verfremdung zweiten Grades – auf der Grundlage von Field Recordings. Tibetische Nonnen (Bhikkhuni) treffen auf Hong Kong-Radio, taiwanesische Threnodien aufs japanische Buto-Tanztheater.
Der mit neun Minuten kürzeste Track (Tanit Astarté) findet bei Antonin Artaud (Héliogabale) zwar einen zeitlich-geographisch abweichenden Bezugspunkt (beim Mondkult der Phönizier), doch mag man auch diese Information nur beiläufig hinnehmen. Um weder den Mangel an Vorwissen noch die Ahnung des gebotenen Beziehungsreichtums als eine Form von Bildungsballast empfinden zu müssen, der ein unbefangenes Zuhören eventuell nur zu erschweren vermag. Emmanuel Mieville heißt zu einzigartigen Erlebnissen von Klang und Raum willkommen. Stephan Wolf
via Amusio
And finally Luca Forcucci, of which no information was yet available. His cassette was composed and mixed in places INA-GRM, Electronic Music Studio TU (Berlin) and Atomic Lady (Earth). Maybe his composition ‘The Waste Land’ is inspired by T.S. Eliott’s poem of the same name, about the decay of life, and listening to the title piece I am sure it might very well be about the decay around us (and with the current state of affairs, the decay is in full force). Forcucci is someone who takes field recordings and processes to quite an extreme level, without making it all too noisy. The title piece is especially a dark beast of crumbling sounds; acid rain or a polluted river sound like the input. Or perhaps it was all recorded below a pile of dust? It sounds quite good; it is very intense with all its dark toned sounds.
Gintas K, from Lithuania, who has been around for many years, has used no field recordings on his new release. Instead he uses ‘digital synthesis’. I am not sure if an input of any kind is needed here, but maybe it is all in some sort of feedback process, where sounds bounce back and forth against each other. In recent years I have not always been enamoured by his work, mainly because so much seems the same really, and this cassette is no different. Much of what I hear on this one, I also heard before from him. The digital sound processing that can be sweet and melodic (well, not too melodic of course), scratchy, hissy, noisy or looped so that it becomes a rhythm. Think Fennesz, think Alva Noto, think serious computer music and Gintas K does all of that. Every release by him is actually quite good, but it also a bit too much on a repeat mission for me. I wish for something new to happen in his world.
Music releases by Paris born and based composer Emmanuel Mieville are quite apart (Vital Weekly 803 and 1000 for instance) and has a strong emphasis on field recordings and this one is no different. Mieville had training in sound engineering in a film school and later on at INA-GRM, but also played in Javanese gamelan orchestra for two years. He records also sorts of environments and treats them, layers those processed bits together and collages them into a composition. Each of his releases is a bout a specific location. The title of his latest release comes from “the title of this album comes from the Japanese translation of the Sanskrit word and points to a chapter of the Lotus SÅ«tra, one the most famous text of MahÄyÄna Buddhism”. Recordings for the four pieces on this album have been made in Asia, such as Tibetan nuns from Copan monastery and FM radio in Hong Kong, as well as Buddhist chanting for a deceased person and inspired by Bhutto dancers. In all four of these pieces, Mieville uses a fair amount of original sound sources, as in to be recognized by the listener; the chanting, percussive music, radio static and maybe overall street/field recordings, which are treated extensively by him using mostly digital techniques. As such his music stays quite close to the more traditional work of acousmatic composers and this would be easily something that could have been released by Empreintes Digitales, even when I am too much of uninitiated listener to judge if Mieville applies all the proper composing techniques that one ought to apply in that world. I quite enjoyed it, and that’s especially due to the fact that we hear so many of the original field recording, culminating in the final piece, ‘Taisi Funeral’, with its abstract organ like sounds and singing and bell sounds; it sounds like this was a straight recording of a death rite and not a mix of various sound sources. This was altogether an excellent release.
