David Lee Myers’s “Reduced to a Geometrical Point” reviewed by Loop

David Lee Myers is a New York based sound and visual artist, who since 1987 has been producing electronic music under his own name and with the moniker of Arcane Device. Today he owns a discography of 20 albums on Generator, ReR, Silent, RRRecords, Staalplaat, among other labels.

Lee Myers has collaborated with renowned artists such as Asmus Tietchens, Tod Dockstader, Thomas Dimuzio, and Vidna Obmana, among others.

The music of this legendary musician invites us to have an immersive experience given its environmental character built through different layers of sequences that are linked, while sustained drones proliferate. Despite this hypnotic experience of surround sound that Lee Myers creates, he himself declares that “I am not an advocate of ‘music for meditation’ and in fact believe that to be a completely misguided notion.” Although he does not rule out this music, he thinks that the music “seem to encourage a posture of staying in the moment.”

For this album Lee Myers is inspired by the metaphysics of Frithjof Schuon, who proposes that “you must separate your life from the consciousness of the multiple and reduce it to a geometric point before God” (the latter not linked to the Judeo-Christian tradition). This geometric point is a sign to put “Geo 1”, and so on, as titles to the four tracks of more than 12 minutes long each. Undoubtedly this is an endless journey in which timbral, oscillating and incisive sounds are perceived.

Every moment this expansive music unfolds it weaves intriguing stories by placing the listener between earth and the universe. Guillermo Escudero

via Loop

New release: Miguel A. García’s “Evhiblig”

“Is it possible to choose between the terror of silence or the terror of noise? Is emptiness more intoxicating? Does presence welcome us into its bosom, or does it expel us, usurping our place? The boundaries, if there are any, are blurred and, like false doubles, interchangeable. Sound and silence are conjoined twins. Those same noises with which Miguel A. García has been working compulsively are shadows of absences, and the silences are emergency exit doors to who knows where.

His music is an attempt at discourse, intuited in murmurs, that wants to be silenced. It is a rope barely tied somewhere, although it is inevitable that it is already loose and falling. But it maintains its tension; it even vibrates, although perhaps they are parables of recollection. The problem lies in detecting the end, distinguishing beginning and ending, knowing whether one wants to begin or to end, going somewhere, or staying still.

Miguel A. García builds sound sequences like a hermetic architect, an orate trapped in his decomposed cosmos that, like an abysmal worm, seeks to catch its tail to devour itself and disappear. Restlessness and restlessness. His order is his logic. And it is in this unravelling or its impossibility that lies the enjoyment, in a flow that may seem fortuitous, but that is inescapable.

Miguel A. García has been working with electronic music for more than two decades: from the most abrasive dynamics of power electronics and the noise music of his beginnings as Xedh, through free improvisation in multiple collaborations with a large number of artists (Seijiro Murayama, Sebastian Branche, Jean-Luc Guionnet…) to focus in recent years on electroacoustic composition, generally accompanied by acoustic instrumentation in ensembles of variable formation. A path of purification of his own language, a stubborn work on the same waste materials that have become his lexicon, an absolutely non-transferable voice.” (text by Fernando Ulzión)

This piece was originally commissioned for the exhibition Audiosfera. Experimentación sonora 1980-2020, curated by Francisco Lopez for the Reina Sofia museum in Spain.

“Evhiblig” is now available for stream and download.

Jos Smolders’s “Submerge-Emerge” reviewed by Nieuwe Noten

Voor het bijna twee uur durende ‘Submerge-Emerge’ liet Smolders zich eveneens inspireren door een kunstwerk, nu het gedicht ‘Un Coup De Des Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard’ van Stéphane Mallarmé. Al veertig jaar is Smolders gefascineerd door dit gedicht, maar pas na meer onderzoek naar de achtergronden, was hij in staat om er ook muzikaal iets mee te kunnen. Daar hoorde bij dat hij in dezelfde tijd werkte aan een album met als basis de veldopnames die hij de afgelopen jaren aan zee had gemaakt en waar hij ineens van merkte dat die ook in dit project bruikbaar waren. Het hele proces dat alles bij elkaar vijf jaar in beslag nam, beschrijft hij op de site van Crónica, boeiend om te lezen. Een paar opmerkingen pik ik eruit, omdat die goed duidelijk maken waar de worsteling lag: “So, I thought, perhaps I should not try and get to the bottom of what is actually written down? Maybe I should just let myself be taken into the maelstrom of thoughts that are presented?” Verderop geeft hij zelf het antwoord: “I concluded that it was an operation as much impossible as it was futile. Some things just cannot be translated from one art form into another without compromise or corruption.”

Vijf jaar werk, maar je hoort het er wel aan af. De integratie van veldopnames met elektronica is hier ronduit subliem en Smolders slaagt er op prachtige wijze in zijn gedachten te verklanken in een volwaardige compositie voor elektronica. Wat vooral opvalt is de spanning die hij in de compositie weet te leggen, juist door die zeer geslaagde combinatie van veldopnames en elektronica. Stukken als ‘Plate 1 en 2’ zijn in alle opzichten een lust voor het oor. Op een aantal momenten gebruikt Smolders regels uit het gedicht, voorgelezen door Valerie Vivancos, bijvoorbeeld aan het begin van ‘Plate 4’. De wijze waarop hij die regels verweeft in zijn muziekstuk, sterk elektronisch bewerkt, is een ander voorbeeld van de doordachte wijze waarop hij hier te werk is gegaan. Prachtige voorbeelden van hoe Smolders spanning in zijn werk brengt zijn ook ‘Plate 6’, ‘Interlude 4’ en het slotstuk ‘Interlude 10’. Diep doordringende klanknevels worden hier ons deel.

via Nieuwe Noten

Dan Powell’s “Four Walks at Old Chapel” reviewed by RNE 3 Atmosfera

Dan Powell es un artista sonoro que utiliza grabaciones de campo, electrónica hecha a mano y percusión afinada. El foco principal de su trabajo es explorar lugares que tienen una resonancia personal particular. Ha participado activamente en la improvisación electroacústica en Londres y Brighton, especialmente con Gus Garside en The Static Memories y Chris Parfitt en Nil. Actualmente actúa como parte de Muster con James O’Sullivan.
Old Chapel Farm es una aventura de vida, una comunidad que tiene como objetivo acercar a las personas a los fundamentos de la existencia humana: la creación de alimentos y el refugio. Es un puente que avanza hacia una forma de ser más nueva y más sostenible en un mundo densamente poblado y que cambia rápidamente.
Dan Powell y su familia han estado visitando este lugar cada año desde 2011. En 2017, Powel decidió crear una pieza sobre Old Chapel Farm como parte de su serie que se centra en la experiencia personal de un espacio. En su viaje de 2018, su hija Bea y él recolectaron objetos que encontraban alrededor del  lugar y los reunieron en una choza de balas de paja suspendida sobre un arroyo en un valle boscoso que los dueños de la granja pusieron a su disposición para que los usaran. Grabaron pequeñas actuaciones con ellos, cepillándolos, raspándolos y frotándolos para producir una amplia gama de sonidos íntimos. También hicieron grabaciones de campo, incluido el uso de un piano que había estado expuesto a los elementos durante algún tiempo.
De vuelta en el estudio en Brighton, Dan Powell arregló los sonidos grabados en un nuevo trabajo. “Quería intentar comunicar algo del misterio y la revelación que he experimentado en mis visitas, y las conexiones que siento con la tierra y las personas que encuentro cuando visito la granja.

New Release: Mad Disc

Material Composition 1 and 2, start from the mysterious timbre of a beautiful Rin Bell, played solemnly, in a ritualistic fashion. Over the development of the pieces, delayed electronic sequences, rhythmic patterns of metallic percussions, synthesized sounds with industrial overtones and a wide range of other sounds are modulated, revealing several new patterns in a stratified acoustic landscape. 

Material Compositions intersects genres such as jazz, techno, or folk, approaching them as forms that are able to mutually contaminate each other. The results blur boundaries and develop an emotional, cinematic, and meditative listening experience, with intoxicating and dazzling tones with many high-order overtones and electronic sounds, an intricate and complex soundscape.

Mad Disc is a solo project by Takamichi Murata, a composer, drummer, and percussionist working in Nagoya and Kitakyushu, Japan. Murata was involved in several bands, including his own, and he is engaged in a wide range of activities, having collaborated with several other improvisers and composers.

This album further comprises three remixes, by Murata’s collaborators Toru Kasai, Koutaro Fukui, and Ryoko Ono, the first of these is also included in the limited release tape edition.

Tracklist:

  1. Material Composition 1 (21:46)
  2. Material Composition 2 (09:23)
  3. Material Remix: Toru Kasai (08:49)
  4. Material Remix: Koutaro Fukui (05:08) (extra track in the digital version)
  5. Material Remix: Ryoko Ono (07:48) (extra track in the digital version)

Takamichi Murata: Drums, Percussion, Electronics, Synthesisers. Recorded at Tokuzo by Satoru Kono. Mixed by Ramza. Remixes by Toru Kasai, Koutaro Fukui, and Ryoko Ono. Mastered at Crónica.

Máquina Magnética reviewed by Silence and Sound

Collectif formé par Pedro Tudela (électronique), Miguel Carvalhais (électronique), Gustavo Costa (percussions) et Rodrigo Carvalho (vidéo), Máquina Magnética est un projet qui fait se rencontrer les approches musicales de chaque artiste, appuyé par des projections aux allures cinétiques. 

Sur Máquina Magnética, organique et électronique repoussent les frontières, créant des espaces futuristes flirtant avec un futurisme sombre, où pulsations tournoyantes et expérimentations parasites se cèdent la place et se superposent, volant aux dessus de paysages urbains dévastés.

Chaque élément trouve son espace, happant les silences dans des grouillis de glitchs poussiéreux traversés de nappes coupantes comme des vents glacés. 

Máquina Magnética compose des zones accidentées aux imprévus permanents, surprenant l’auditeur à travers ses narrations souterraines et ses éclaboussures de lumière, volant en rase-motte sur des pistes enfouies dans des histoires dystopiques aux dangers menaçants. Superbe. Roland Torres

via Silence and Sound