This year’s edition of the Electric Spring festival in Huddersfield will include performances by Derek Holzer, Annette Vande Gorne, Evan Parker / Adam Linson, Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s @c project, Nicolas Bernier, Peter Hölscher / Michael Rüsenberg, in what promise to be five days packed with excellent and demanding events curated by Monty Adkins and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.
All concerts start at 8PM and admission is free.
More information at Electric Spring’s webpage.
Firld recording exploded as a practice in experimental music during the 2000s. It has been used in the most varied ways, transcending its basic nature of “sampling” the environment, and in some inspired cases evolving a more conscious sense of recording something specific, then trying to preserve the sense of that place in subsequent uses. This video is one of those cases, and it’s the revised version of a performance held at the MADEIRADIG festival in Madeira.
Whetham took advantage of Olim being native of Madeira, and as with the best field recordings (using microphones and hydrophones), they explored a few landmarks finding small, random gems along the way. A very nice documentary about this is included in the DVD, giving the viewer a “behind the scenes” view of the recordings. It also introduces a few local perspectives and give viewers the chance to appreciate the locations of the sounds recognizable in the performance.
The recordings were composed in multichannel way (and there’s also a luxurious 5.1 version). On the visual side, Olim used a microscope connected to a digital camera, magnifying exclusively typically local objects and substances. The video signal was also set to react live to specific audio frequencies coming from the recordings. The two scales (the visual “micro” and the sound “macro”) are both interacting with “invisible” Madeira; its DNA, the magnified molecules of its own territory and its sound-propagating air molecules.
Rare chance to see Ran Slavin performing live in Hamburg. February 15th, the “Insomniac City Cycles†will be screened at the Abaton kino, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. On the following day, Slavin will perform a video concert at the KörberForum, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
On 17 July 2011, the minimalist musicians Stephan Mathieu and David Maranha performed an acoustic concert in the tennis court at the Fundação Serralves park in Porto. Stephan Mathieu played his virginals harpsichord with electromagnets, while David Maranha used violin and shruti box. The performance lasted 29 minutes and 20 seconds. The performance centred around a drone in the key of A. In February 2012 a recording of that performance is being issued on a single-sided LP by Cronica and Serralves under the name Strings.
Of course, a musical work is more than the sum of such prosaic details, and that thirty minutes does not represent the entirety of the artistic process. Why virginals and violin? Why play in the park? Why the key of A? Clearly some thought went into such decisions, they did not happen to be in the same place in the same key by chance. There was a creative dialogue which extended back over days or weeks or months before this piece was performed; as is typical with any duo performance, by the time it came to be performed, a certain number of the parameters had actually been fixed.
In fact, had this been a laptop duo performance, many more of the parameters would have been fixed. Unlike with software, when using acoustic instruments (especially ones as old as the virginals and violin), there are clearly certain variables relating to the instrument or the instrumentalist which can’t be controlled precisely – for example on a violin, exactly how hard or fast you bow on the strings, or whether you happen to catch another string as you do so. So at times in the recording of this performance you can hear Maranha’s strings creaking and groaning, squeaking and sliding over the surface of Mathieu’s ebowed virginals, these unexpected inflections appearing like disruptions on the calm surface of a lake, as if a pebble had been tossed in from the shore.
By playing outside in a public space, as opposed to in the more tightly constrained environment of an indoor concert venue, yet more uncontrollable variables appear. After just one minute of Mathieu’s shimmering sonic heat haze, there is the unmistakeable sound of wind blowing into an unprotected microphone, a fairly typical summer sea breeze rumbling in from the Atlantic Ocean. A few minutes later, an airplane roars overhead, probably carrying tourists on their way to visit the sights of Porto’s old town, with its modern buildings rubbing up against baroque architecture. Such details could probably have been prevented from being captured in the first place, or even excised later. So why weren’t they?
There is a sense that Mathieu and Maranha are reaching back to some sort of root. The call of that A drone is as magnetic as the pull of the past, and the pull of nature. By using acoustic instruments in an outdoor setting, it is as if they are aligning themselves with the inherent unpredictability of the natural world, as opposed to the more controllable digital world; any glowing apples here are the result of sunlight dancing through orchards. The choice of the baroque virginals and violin, and the way they deploy them, takes us back from that thirty minute performance. It takes us back through the creative decisions that led up to them, and beyond. Ultimately, their strings lead us back through around 500 years of musical history, towards something timeless: the creative dialogue between man and nature. Scott McMillan
via The Liminal
@c (Pedro Tudela & Miguel Carvalhais) will perform in Birmingham at SOUNDkitchen’s first birthday event next February 17th. The evening also includes Mecha/Orga, Anvil & Stirrup and Ben Ramsay at the decks.
Advance tickets are just £4 and are available through SOUNDkitchen’s website.
We are thrilled to present, in a coproduction with Fundação de Serralves, the new release by Stephan Mathieu and David Maranha, “Stringsâ€.
“Strings†documents the long awaited first encounter of David Maranha and Stephan Mathieu, taking place in the Tennis Court of the Parque de Serralves, in Porto, on a sun-drenched yet gusty late-afternoon in July 2011. Having discussed in advance which instruments, tuning and notes to use, the piece was accomplished as an improvisation on the violin, shruti-box and virginals, reflecting both players love for classic minimalism, but also their ability to transform this language and make it their own. The acoustic instruments were amplified through a quadrophonic system to captivating volume, that nevertheless allowed environmental sounds to permeate.
The complete 30 minutes performance of “Strings“ is now published in a limited and numbered edition of 300 single-sided 12†records, pressed on white audiophile vinyl, with sleeves featuring a silkscreen print by Pedro Tudela.
David Maranha: Violin and Shruti Box
Stephan Mathieu: Virginals and Electromagnets
Concert curation: Pedro Rocha
Live recording: Nuno Aragão
Mastering: Stephan Mathieu
Vinyl transfer: Andreas Lupo Lubich at D&M Berlin
Audiophile pressing: Pallas Group, Diepholz, Germany
Design: MC
Cover art: Pedro Tudela
Printing: Célia Esteves and Márcia Novais at FBAUP
This is a joint release with Fundação de Serralves
This release is now available for direct orders from Crónica.
Episode 55 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, February 10th.
The playlist for Futurónica 55 is:
You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir.
“FAKElessâ€, an installation by Abraham Hurtado with sound by Jan Ferreira (Mosaique) and Jochen Arbeit, is npw on display at La Conservera in Murcia.
“FAKEless†centres on the conception of a space in which we can watch emotion being constructed, the possible ways of perceiving a face and the transformation of that face through an act of presence. Although the viewer’s first impression is of digital manipulation, “FAKEless†makes no use of any kind of artifice or performative tool. It attempts to bring us close to the most intimate emotion generated by the slow, subtle movement the performers themselves produce during the action, avoiding any kind of technological process such as slow motion or still images. The installation consists of a total of fourteen black and white portraits projected from the ceiling to the floor.
“FAKEless†can be seen until the end of July.
Découverte de cet album un jour de neige. Le jardin est recouvert d’une fine épaisseur blanche. Le ciel, pas bien haut, est gris.
“Broadstairs Childrens Piano Trio†(tiré de la compilation digitale Mus*****c), se révèle la bande son idéale. “Double Exposure†regroupe des compositions des six dernières années. Janek, compositeur et artiste sonore, propose un travail d’archivage, compilant morceaux pour compilations et arrangements sonores pour des installations. Fieldrecording, vinyles manipulés, paysages sonores denses et mélancoliques, ces longues plages ambiantes sont autant de dérives sonores vers un monde forcément apaisés et apaisants. Dans ces nappes érodées, ces fragments de mélodie, on retrouve en reflets les albums instrumentaux de David Sylvian (†Approaching Silence†), le jeu mélancolique de Sakamoto, les orgues de Charlemagne Palestine et les poussières de Machinefabriek.
via Essmaa
