Máquina Magnética reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Gustavo Costa, einer der Köpfe des Sonoscopia-Kollektivs in Porto, der als Drummer mit acoustic & electro-mechanic percussion schlagwerkt, hat sich seit den frühen 90ern vom schlimmen Finger mit Genocide und Malevolence zum engagierten Free Jazzer und Improvcrack gemausert, mit Red Albinos, Radial Chao Opera oder Lost Gorbachevs („From Neoliberalism to Totalitarian Capitalism“), als Most People Have Been Trained To Be Bored, in der Bandbreite von Martin Bladh bis Jamie Saft, von Vitor Joaquim bis Gonzo Almeida, mit dem er als Ikizukuri sogar im Trio trommelt. Nach „Entropies and Mimetic Patterns“ (Sonos020) als couragiertem Alleingang, zeigt Máquina Magnética (Crónica 176~2021 / Sonoscopia, Sonos021) ihn zusammen mit den beiden Crónica-Machern Pedro Tudela &Miguel Carvalhais, die man als das Computer-Duo @c kennt – live gehört zu MÁQUINA MAGNÉTICA noch Rodrigo Carvalho mit generative visuals + interactive lights. Unterhalb der audiovisuellen Dimenson dominieren der Zusammenklang des Manuell-Organischen mit dem Synthetischen und der Input des Spontanen in kompositorischer Nachbereitung. Denn die sechs Tracks entstanden im Studio-Mix aus zwei elektro-akustischen Improv-Sets, wobei Costas Tockelbeats und rauschende Becken morphend und gestaltwandlerisch noch einmal vertieft mit den Computersounds verschmolzen wurden. In Soundscapes, die wie im Traum oder wie unter Wasser gedehnte Bewegungen suggerieren, mit dongenden Schiffswrackklängen, kratzigen Impulsen, knattrigen Pixeln, klapprigen Kaskaden und Strudeln. Costa traktiert Metall und Holz zu Herzschlag-Tamtam, Knisterspuren hüpfen über Becken und Gongs. Klänge flattern und dröhnen, Finger trappeln, Sticks tanzen über die Felle, impulsiv umsurrt und bespritzt, rau beknarrt, wobei der @c-Computerclub nicht weniger agil pollockt, zischt und wummert. Zu gedämpftem Pulsen morphen Dröhnwellen, singen Metallkanten, schnurren Automaten, Geräusche knistern, ploppen, werfen knattrige keine Wellen zu wetzendem Bowing auf dröhnendem Fond in zuletzt aufhellender Tönung. Ein Mensch-Maschinen-Ballett am digitalen Fliegenpapier des Anthropozän. Rigobert Dittmann

Máquina Magnética reviewed by Vital Weekly

Here we have two labels from Portugal, from the same city even (Porto), and both labels deliver musicians to the project Maquia Magnetica. Sonoscopia’s boss Gustavo Costa on drums, Cronica boss Miguel Carvalhais, teaming with his @C mate Pedro Tudela. They are both on computers. Rodrigo Carvalho is the fourth player, “on generative visuals and interactive lights”. He might not be on the CD, but images grace the cover. This group has played a few concerts and a few studio recordings, and all of this went into the pieces on this CD. This release is not a documentation of a show or the result of studio recording, but, at least that’s what I gather from the information, a document of their shared interest in playing free music. However, the music is not necessarily pure, free improvisation but a restructuring of sounds. If you will, this music is part of the musique concrète tradition. That means there is an organisation within the improvisation here. At least, that’s how I see this, and maybe I am wrong. With Costa using a fair share of electronics, the music has throughout an electronic character, in which the drums only sparsely sound like drums. There are quite a few drone and drone-related sounds to be noted, and another assumption is that Tudelo and Carvalhais also apply real-time processing. The characteristic hectic of improvised music (well, it is not a rule, of course) is only partly present here. Maybe it is due to the post-recording editing that this was changed, but it might also be inherent to their way of playing this music. I found this CD to be a slow grower. Every time I played this, I heard something more and noted the structures they created within the music. This release could appeal to those who like improvisation and those for whom that is too weird, but whose heads are all turned to musique concrète. (FdW)

via Vital Weekly

New Release: Máquina Magnética

Máquina Magnética was born from the meeting of four experimental artists with consolidated practices across both solo and collective work: Gustavo Costa, drummer, percussionist, and one of the heads of the Sonoscopia collective, on acoustic and electro-mechanic percussion; Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais, of the @c project and the Crónica label, on computers; and Rodrigo Carvalho, of the Openfield and Boris Chimp 504 collectives, on generative visuals and interactive lights.

Máquina Magnética explores the synergies and boundaries of each artist’s territory, intersecting the organic, the mechanical and the synthetic; studio and live recordings; free improvisation and composition; musical gestures and acousmatic sounds; audiovisual performance and visual music. These tensions build a cathartic space for performance developed across six pieces in an album recorded and mixed between two live settings — O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon and gnration in Braga — and two studios — Sonoscopia and Crónica, both in Porto — in an ongoing creative process.

Tracklist:

A (9:35)
B (4:12)
C (6:30)
D (5:02)
AA (4:11)
BB (6:47)

  • Joint release with Sonoscopia, Crónica 176~2021 + Sonos021
  • Executive production by Sonoscopia. 
  • Recorded at O’culto da Ajuda (Lisboa) by Miguel Azguime, gnration (Braga) and Sonoscopia (Porto). 
  • Mixed at Sonoscopia and Crónica. 
  • Mastered at Crónica.

Máquina Magnética reviewed by Radiohörer

Das aus Portugal stammende Label Crónica ist mein Geheimtipp, wenn es um experimentelle elektronische Musik geht. Das Projekt @c hatte es sogar mal unter meine Top Ten eines Jahres geschafft. Das Projekt „Máquina Magnética“ ist ein guter Einstieg ist die Klangwelt von Crónica. 

Máquina Magnética entstand aus dem Zusammentreffen von vier experimentellen Künstlern, die sowohl als Solisten als auch als Kollektiv tätig sind: Gustavo Costa, Schlagzeuger, Perkussionist und einer der Köpfe des Kollektivs Sonoscopia, mit akustischer und elektromechanischer Perkussion; Pedro Tudela und Miguel Carvalhais, vom Projekt @c und dem Label Crónica, mit Computern; und Rodrigo Carvalho, von den Kollektiven Openfield und Boris Chimp 504, mit generativem Bildmaterial und interaktivem Licht.

Máquina Magnética erforscht die Synergien und Grenzen des Territoriums eines jeden Künstlers, wobei sich das Organische, das Mechanische und das Synthetische überschneiden; Studio- und Live-Aufnahmen; freie Improvisation und Komposition; musikalische Gesten und akusmatische Klänge; audiovisuelle Performance und visuelle Musik. Diese Spannungen bilden einen kathartischen Raum für die Performance, die sich in sechs Stücken auf einem Album entfaltet, das in einem fortlaufenden kreativen Prozess in zwei Live-Settings – O’culto da Ajuda in Lissabon und gnration in Braga – und zwei Studios – Sonoscopia und Crónica, beide in Porto – aufgenommen und gemischt wurde. © Crónica

Hier kommt eine Komponente dazu, die oft in den Veröffentlichungen von Crónica etwas zu knapp kommt. Ein Rhythmus oder etwas, das einer sein kann. Dazu kommen noch jede Menge geschickt eingesetzte Loops und so entstehen Soundcapes, die sehr fesselnd, ja fast hypnotisch sind. Im Video dazu sehen wir noch eine weitere faszinierende Komponente. Das alles ist in sich geschlossen, kompakt und spannend.

via Radiohörer

Yiorgis Sakellariou’s “Degti” reviewed by Against the Silence

Ένα έργο αποτελείται από μια ιδέα η οποία ξετυλίγεται στο χρόνο για να μας τυλίξει σε ένα δικό της χώρο εντός της. Στην πειραματική μουσική, όπως και στα εικαστικά, πολλές φορές οι νέες ιδέες που παρουσιάζονται μόνο νέες δεν είναι. Λογικό, θα έλεγε μια κυνική φωνή εφόσον έχουν παιχτεί όλα. Ο κυνισμός είναι, όμως, η απαρχή της ήττας και κάθε δημιουργία που βγαίνει από το σκοτάδι είναι σαν να πιάνει τα πάντα από την αρχή.

Ο δημιουργός Γιωργής Σακελλαρίου επισκεπτόμενος το εργοστάσιο βότκας Degtine στο Βίλνιους όπου μένει, αντιλήφθηκε ότι υπάρχει ένας ολόκληρος κόσμος ήχων ο οποίος δεν παραπέμπει απλώς σε ένα βιομηχανικό μοτίβο. Μια αόρατη αύρα συνέδεε εργάτες και μηχανές κάνοντας ένα μέρος όπου πέρα από υπεραξία και προϊόντα, παράγει μια δική του τυχαία και φαντασματική ζωή. Όντως, ακούγοντας τη σύνθεση του πειραματιστή “Degti”, μπαίνεις πραγματικά σε ένα κόσμο υπερβατικό πέρα από την κούραση των εργατών και τα ντεσιμπέλ των μηχανών. Το έτερο “Be Pavadinimo” αποτελεί ένα στρόβιλο εξωτερικών ήχων και ηλεκτρονικών κυμάτων που πατά πάνω στα άγνωστα ηχητικά βήματα μιας φύσης που όσο νομίζουμε ότι φθίνει, αυτή μας καταβροχθίζει. Κάτι μηχανικό υπάρχει στη φύση και κάτι φυσικό στις μηχανές, με τη μουσική να είναι ο σύνδεσμος τους.

via Against the Silence

New release: Monty Adkins’s “With Love. From an Invader.”

On the 17th March 2020, one week before the UK national lockdown, Yan Wang Preston decided to photograph a single rhododendron tree every other day at half an hour before sunset, for a year, with sounds from the site recorded by Monty Adkins and Yan Wang Preston each month. The rhododendron was introduced to the UK by colonial botanists in the late 19th century as an ornamental plant, it is now seen as a highly invasive species by ecologists. Many of the rhododendron species currently grown here are originally from China, Yan’s motherland. Living as an immigrant in a country going through Brexit and COVID, Yan felt a strong personal connection with such invasive plants. They remind her of her homeland as well as the complex perceptions around nature, national identities, landscapes and migration.

The area, Shedden Clough at the outskirt of Burnley, was an open-cast limestone mine 400 years ago. Nearly 200 years ago the local landowners planted rhododendron and beech here, in an effort to change it to a hunting estate. Now it is an “ecological wasteland”, colonised by these non-native plants and by sheep-grazing farms. Hidden in the heartland of the South Pennines, the local landscape is simultaneously post-industrial and post-colonial. Yet the ecology can also be said as being cosmopolitan. This particular rhododendron tree happens to have a natural shape of a love heart. An alien species sending out love. As such it is a rich metaphor to anchor considerations of landscape and identity.

The repetitive photographic act over a year allows nature to run its own course. This has been the year of the global crisis caused by COVID-19. To date, over three million people have died from the virus. A natural disaster has also become a political issue, in which racial tensions re-surface over and over again. Yet the rhododendron carries on with its own rhythm of growing, flowering, seeding, and growing again. The art piece is therefore becoming a space: a context for us to consider such political issues within the context of nature. The fact that this nature is made of unwanted species further complicates the issues at hand.

Monty Adkins is a composer and performer of experimental electronic music. He primarily creates digital audio works and installations. Since 2008, his sound works has become increasingly minimal and introspective, characterised by slow shifting organic instrumental and concrete soundscapes, focusing on encouraging a deeper immersive listening experience. Using a reduced sonic palette, he draws together elements from ambient, minimal electronica, acousmatic and experimental electronic music often combining instrumental and electronic sound. His works have been performed at and commissioned by leading international festivals and institutions (including INA-GRM, IRCAM, BBC Radio 3, SpACE-Net, ZKM Karlsruhe, Sonic Arts Network, Visionas Sonoras, Bourges Festival, Akousma, IOU Theatre, and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation) and released on labels worldwide including Audiobulb (UK), empreintes DIGITALes (Québec), Crónica (Portugal), Signature (France), Eilean (France), Cryo Chamber (USA) and LINE (USA).

Yan Wang Preston is a photographic artist interested in the intercultural connections between landscape imagery, ecology, identity and migration. Her work has won many international awards such as the 1st Prize, Syngenta Photography Award and the 1stPrize, Professional Landscape, 2019 Sony World Photography Awards. She has exhibited widely and internationally at venues including Fotofest Biennial 2020, USA, Gallery of Photography Ireland, the 56th Venice Biennale and Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum. Preston’s monographs are Forest and Mother River (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2018). She received a PhD in Photography at the University of Plymouth in 2018 and currently lectures at the University of Huddersfield, UK. She is originally trained in Clinical Medicine in Fudan University, China.

“With Love. From an Invader.” is now available for stream and download.

New release: @c’s “Installations: Seis Elementos”

During the twenty-plus years of their collaboration as @c, Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s work has spanned composition and performance but also, and prominently, several installations, often site-specific and ephemeral works that have at most been documented with short videos. Crónica’s latest series of releases is dedicated to systematic documentation and revisitation of these installation works. Its goal is not only to record in situ registrations of the works — although in some cases that may be the selected approach — but rather to revisit recordings, the computational systems developed for the works, archival materials, and other assets, and to present new compositions that unfold from each of the installations. The first release in this series is Seis Elementos (six elements), after the installation of the same title that was shown at the Rectory of the University of Porto in 2016.

Seis Elementos was created from found materials, with physical elements recovered from the deposits of the University of Porto, and sonic elements found in databases and in the artists’ archives. These elements were the starting point for a creative process that involved the occupation of the room and the development of an open work of construction during which the piece was shaped by the context, by random events, coincidences, and articulations. The outcome of this was a physical body constructed out of valchromat, glass, LED lamps, steel cables, loudspeakers, sound and electric cables, audio DVDs, and multichannel sound that expanded through the room and from where sound radiated, resonating with space. This structure was the foundation for a network of matter, events, and rhythms that was open to the visitors’ exploration and interpretation.

The installation was shown from October to November 2016 and was documented in a video by Patrícia Viana Almeida. This work was commissioned for the event Space, Body, and Well-Being, head curator João Paulo Vilas-Boas, curated by José Carlos de Paiva and Luís Pinto Nunes.

“Installations: Seis Elementos” is now available for stream and download.

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

David Lee Myers continues his legend with the meditative suites of “Reduced to a Geometrical Point”. Noise music, at least for the aficionados, can be seen to be the other side of that ambience coin. At first grating, it eventually gives way to something far different, a trip of sorts. While David Lee Myers may not be a household name for noise heads, his work as Arcane Device certainly serves as some of the best noise music to come out of the 90s. Featuring some truly abrasive textures Arcane Device managed to land some records with RRR Records run by Ron Lessard, another legend within the US noise community. With this album David takes his lessons learned from those old projects to reconfigure them into a transcendental experience.

Uneasy buzzing opens the album up with “Laurentia”. With an eerie ominous tone about it, the drone extends off into the infinite. Volume needs to be watched for he does take things further than one would expect. Over the course of the piece, it begins to shift into lighter textures, featuring rather exquisite fragments of melody. Quite mystical “Pannotia” brings the tension down to reside within a strange, looping groove. “Gondwana” mixes both the harshness and the airiness in, never neatly settling into either. Easily the loudest and most industrial churn radiates from the extended shapes of “Pangea”.

“Reduced to a Geometrical Point” features an exquisite take on a unique combination of ambient and noise, in a way that only David Lee Myers, an individual well versed in both, can do. 

via Beach Sloth

New release: David Lee Myers’s “Reduced to a Geometrical Point”

I am not an advocate of “music for meditation” and in fact believe that to be a completely misguided notion. However, I have observed that some audio constructions seem to encourage a posture of staying in the moment. This has proven to be a fascination over time. As I began the present sonic explorations, a quote from metaphysics scholar Frithjof Schuon kept coming to mind: “You must detach your life from an awareness of the multiple and reduce it to a geometrical point before God.” Certainly, Schuon was not referring to any particular Judeo-Christian vision of a supreme being, but rather, whatever ultimate creative force of the universe which must exist. So becoming “reduced to a geometrical point before God” was a concept that resonated for me while working on the pieces. 

That said, as the tracks developed I, as usual, gave them temporary working titles, in this case, Geo 1, etc. After a time I suddenly realized that the designation Geo implied a reference to our Earth and that this could suggest an additional meaning to the music. There is this geometrical point, but also the greater context of the world at large. Could these sounds remind one of the microcosmos and macrocosmos simultaneously? I hope not a pretentious assertion. — DLM

Tracklist:

  1. GEO 1 Laurentia (17:24)
  2. GEO 2 Pannotia (12:04)
  3. GEO 3 Gondwana (14:22)
  4. GEO 4 Pangaea (16:15)

Feedback matrices, oscillator banks, and multi-processing by David Lee Myers. Recorded at Pulsewidth NYC, 2020–2021 and mastered at Crónica. Artwork by DLM.

David Lee Myers is a sound and visual artist living in New York City. He has had over thirty recordings released under his own name and also as Arcane Device by Starkland, Crónica, Generator, ReR, Line, Silent, Pogus, RRRecords, Staalplaat, Monochrome Vision, and many other labels. Collaborations have been produced with Gen Ken Montgomery, Thomas Dimuzio, Ellen Band, guitarist Marco Oppedisano, and Dirk Serries (VidnaObmana). Two Albums were created with legendary electronic pioneer Tod Dockstader, and with Hamburg’s master sound manipulator Asmus Tietchens five projects have been released. Myers has performed his sounds and visuals at New York’s Generator, The Kitchen, Roulette, Experimental Intermedia, Knitting Factory, Clocktower, MoMA/PS1, Outpost Artists Resources, Trans Pecos and Silent Barn, as well as the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Boston Museum of Modern art, among others.