“When the Days All Tip from Nests and Fly Down Roads” reviewed by Ambient Blog

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This is the second release in Crónica’s ongoing Corrolaries series, a collection of works resulting from a collaborative residency curated by Simon Whetham in Mooste, Estonia (the first was this one by Yiorgis Sakellariou).
Released as a Name-Your-Price download, they are a perfect way to discover the various ways that environmental recordings can be transformed into sound art soundscapes.

‘When the Days…‘ is constructed from Field recordings made in Mooste and its surroundings, “which was especially appealing for the contrasts between nature and derelict and abandoned structures from the soviet area. My aim was to convey the atmosphere I was absorbed in, wandering around in solitude in the landscape almost devoid of human presence.”
And that atmosphere is perfectly captured!

Environmental sound recordings can be used to re-create a certain atmosphere, if you record them well and leave them as close to the source as they can be.
But that is not the purpose of these projects, of this album. When listening to them, you hear music, not just sound.
That’s precisely what Edgar Varèse meant when he defined ‘music’ as ‘organized sound’.

via Ambient Blog

LIA + @c’s “Transcendence 115”

TRANSCENDENCE 115 from Lia on Vimeo.

In anticipation of the upcoming release of @c’s new album “Three-Body Problem”, LIA has created a video for track 5, 115 (Transcendence), that features Angelica V. Salvi in the harp.

“Three-Body Problem” is currently available for pre-order.

“Positions” reviewed by Westzeit

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“Three Modulators for Trombones” eröffnet diese Platte, eus Stück das 15:32 Minuten lang ist und in der Lage, deine Vorstellung von Musik komplett über den Haufen zu werfen. Weil auch physische Bewegung zum Konzept der Komposition gehört, wäre es nur zu interessant, einer Liveaufführung beiwohnen zu können, wo doch schon die Konserve so eindrucksvoll das Aufeinanderzu — und Voneinanderweg-Gehen — hier allerdings im eher metaphorischen Sinn — verdeutlicht. Verschränkungen klagender Nebelhörner, durchweg in tiefsten Lagen, fürwahr “mindblowing”! Der Holländer Tellinga arbeitet auch in den anderen Stücken von “Positions” mit Raumerfahrungen, so lässt er in “Truth, Exercise for a Listener” die Spieler (Posaune und Kontrabaß) durch das Publikum laufen. Wobei die Zuhörer nicht davon in Kenntnis gesetzt werden, dass die performance schon begonnen hat. “Positions, for those involved” kommt ganz ohne Musiker aus — hier wird allein das Publikum zum Akteur. Großartige KonzeptKunstMuzik, die verblüffenderweise auch als Aufzeichnung sehr gut funktioniert. Karsten Zimalla

“Against Nature” reviewed by KindaMuzik

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Stijf van de schrik overeind schieten, met de stuipen op het lijf gejaagd. De gordijnen in of een snoekduik makend naar de stereo om de kwelling de nek om te draaien… Het kan verkeren met Against Nature van Simon Whetham. De verzameling fieldrecordings van de maximale noisy soort wordt dan ook niet samengebald gebracht of meeslepend narratief langs een vloeiende lijn. Whetham hort en stoot en de voortdurende onrust houdt je waarschuwend op je qui-vive.

Against Nature presenteert geen verdichte Anemone Tube-wolken of statische drone, zoals Carl Michael von Hausswolff die kan projecteren. Simon Whetham richt zijn microfoons als telescopen op die plekken waar geluid ongemakkelijk wordt. En blijft. Daar componeert hij mee, meer nog dan met de klanken of tonen zelf. Er zit weinig muzikale logica in; dit is geen natuurlijk gegeven qua componeren, laat staan luisteren.

Het gaat Whetham om de akoestische vingerafdruk van een plek, die hij wil vangen. Ook richt de geluidkunstenaar zich op rupturen, deconstructies en vestigt hij de aandacht op handelingen. Wat hij doet, is een activatie van de ruimte in geluid; schraap, schuur, kras, enzovoorts. Ook volgt hij die beweging, dat ‘in gang zetten’, op door extreme versterking, inclusief de nodige vervormingen, al dan niet via de elektronische weg. Doel: geluidkunst die verwarring, mogelijk ook het nodeloos ingewikkelde, en vooral het ongekende probeert te verkennen. Daar is niks tegennatuurlijks aan, maar de uitnodiging tot reconstructie die van deze aleatorische composities uitgaan, is zodanig het tegenovergestelde van vloeiend dat het Whetham ook niet zal verbazen als maar weinigen zijn puzzel willen leggen. Sven Schlijper

“Gamelan Descending a Staircase” reviewed by Revue & Corrigée

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Dans cet album, le compositeur lituanien Arturas Bumsteinas annonce clairement par son intitulée l’oeuvre procède de deux sources. La source sonore réside bien sûr dans l’utilisation des gamelans indonésiens, enregistrés au Musée ethnologique de Dahlem, à Berlin. La source d’inspiration, elle, fait référence à um tableau de Marcel Duchamp, Nu descendent un escalier nº 2 (1912), qui offre une décomposition du mouvement dans un esprit cubiste. Celle-ci est ici traduite par lá déstructuration do matériau sonore, plongeant laudateur dans un univers à la fois luxuriant informel et erratique, d’une cinquantaine de minutes.
La version digitale de cet enregistrement est agrémentée d’un second titre d’une douzaine de minutes, Sad Young Man on a Train, renvoyant à une oeuvre, éponyme, de Duchamp. Le matériau en est ici le clavecin préparé, les sonorités déstructurées y étant-tendues par une sort de drone… Pierre Dur

New in the Corollaries series: Simon Whetham’s “Contact”

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This is the third 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.

Contact
noun
ˈkɒntakt/
1. the state of physical touching.
2. the action of communicating or meeting.

It is thought that objects are relatively unaffected by time, in some way atemporal, whereas human action is temporally unstable or ephemeral. Perhaps to test this theory, to counter it, we need to intervene, to cause objects to vibrate, to resonate, to act.

When causing an object to make sound, to resonate and vibrate, or even when listening to it, we are in some way allowing it to speak. But in this, are we making audible an internal sound from within ourselves? Or at least making audible an intended action? If so, then which voice is the one that is heard — that of the object or that of the intervener?

What then occurs when a number of creative individuals respond to a space and the objects within?

There would undoubtedly be some dialogue, a conversation between all those present, even if being included simply means listening and experiencing the events unfolding. This may even be the initiation of a dialogue that continues infinitely, being transferred between the individuals, the objects and the space, and from them to other individuals, objects and spaces.

In this work, you will hear dialogue such as that described above, but in listening to the piece, you will also be part of that dialogue. You will have emotional responses, interest and disinterest as the conversation unravels, and you will of course have questions, but do not allow yourself to be frustrated by this. After all, the conversation has just begun…

Composed by Simon Whetham.
Composition combines recordings of performative group activity in southern Estonia during the international art residency Active Crossover: Mooste, April-May 2015.
Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais.
Cover photo by Eamon Sprod.

Futurónica 163

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Episode 163 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, April 1st.

The playlist of Futurónica 163 is:

  1. Francisco López, El dia anterior a la emergencia de los adultos de magicicada (1993) (2014, Presque Tout (Quiet Pieces: 1993-2013), Line)
  2. Francisco López & Jorge Reyes: Tlaloc (1991/2015, Tlaloc, Terraza)
  3. Francisco López, Untitled #274 (2015, Untitled #274, Important Records)

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

“Roha” reviewed by Le son du grisli

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Je dois avouer que le « basé à Vienne » Andreas Trobollowitsch (la moitié d’Acker Velvet, que je ne connaissais pas, & de Nörz que j’avais déjà entendu) m’a fait asseoir et m’a inspiré du respect dès le premier titre de son (pas long) Roha (pourtant, c’était comme un drone sourd, rien que ça, qui me tournait autour…).

Je suis donc resté assis et j’ai écouté la suite. Toute la suite. De 1 à 8. Des pièces électroacoustiques qui donnent du rythme et de la boucle (pour ne pas dire de la « répétition »), dans le bizzaroïde en planque, dans le piano d’un autre âge qui souffrète d’accords carrés, et même dans le métal qui gangrène !

Lui qui joue de tous les instruments sauf quand il se sert de la batterie de David Schweighart ou de la contrebasse de Manuel Brunner (un titre pour chacun), comment Trobollowitsch fait-il pour donner le change d’une piste à l’autre ? Après écoute, j’en ai conclu que son instrument de prédilection est le piano. Comment expliquer la place que prennent le rythme et l’électronique dans son jeu ? A tel point qu’on pense à Radian ou Heaven And alors que l’Andreas est seul et bien seul. Et nous seul (aussi) avec nos questions. Mais si bien avec ! Pierre Cécile

via Le son du grisli

“Everything Emanating from the Sun” reviewed by Chain DLK

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“Everything emanating from the Sun which is Divine Love is called spiritual; everything emanating from the sun which is fire is natural.”. Greek electronic music composer Yiorgis Sakellariou took the first sentence of these lines by which Swedish scientist, mystic, theologian and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg tried to explain the link between spiritual world and natural one – he used the term ‘correspondence’ or ‘relation’ to describe it – as well as the Divine in his essay “Life in Animals and Plants”, a sort of revisitation of Christian belief of Creation by means of ideas, which were close to Neoplatonist outlook, as a title for this release, the first one of Corollaries, a new series by which Portuguese label Cronica is going to compile some works that got produced during the Active Crossover: Mooste, the last (but not least) residency of Active Crossover, a sort of permanent cross-cultural laboratory British sound artist Simon Whetham established in Tallinn, Estonia in 2009 in order to search new performative sound-focused strategies and possibilities for a series of workshops and sessions, where a selection of sound artist could check new working methods – an interesting idea that got hosted in many different locations such as England, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Norway, Argentina and Australia and got already documented by a compilation on Cronica in 2012 -. On that occasion, MoKS studios and space opened his gates to the brilliant Greek sound artist, known by field recordings fans for many interesting essays of digitally manipulated environmental sounds that he sometimes performed in completely dark places – I like to think he tries to emulate the “veil” of Pythagorean akousmatikoi, in order to let listeners focus on sounds without any other sensory distractions -; he didn’t make this 31 minutes and 13 seconds lasting field recordings-based composition as an aural postcard of his experience in Estonia, but it seems that his amazing way of compressing and decompressing concrete sounds got inspired by an idea that Igor Stravinski expressed in 1941, according to which natural sounds cannot become music until they are put into order and organized as “conscious human act”, even if he can’t explain the reason of the time-stretching, the pitch-shifting and the filtering of the sounds grabbed at Mooste. According to his own words, “it is about effectively placing sonic events in time and not submitting to any kind of pre-fixed rules about recorded sound”. The dilation over time intervals of sounds is maybe the most relevant aspects: the first similarity I noticed is the one with some experiments on overdubbing of tapes that many performers tried and if you play this composition by changing tempo, what could sound like the slowed noise of a train could turn into the obsessive mechanical hammering of a power loom for example. At the end of his introductory words, Yiorgis returns to Stravinsky’s thoughts by stating that maybe the conscious human act that he required could simply be the act of listening: “this activity, potentially profound and meaningful, establishes a form of communication between the listener and the environment but remains a personal experience. Music, besides making a connection to the cosmos, additionally sets a relationship between human beings, it is a social construction. As a shared activity, music brings together composer and listeners in a transitory time and space.”. His words could even summarize the spirit of Active Crossover… Vito Camarretta

via Chain DLK