Das neue Album “Closing Our Eyes” von Philippe Petit erscheint am 1. April bei Crónica. Es vereint elektronische und akustische Elemente zu einer Serie von Kompositionen, die laut Label dazu anregen sollen, eigene innere Bilder entstehen zu lassen. Petit setzt damit seine Auseinandersetzung mit Klang als viefältiges Ausdrucksmittel fort und entwickelt die Ansätze früherer Arbeiten weiter, darunter seine Bearbeitung von Mahlers erster Symphonie oder sein Konzept von Cordophonie, das sich auf die klanglichen Möglichkeiten von Saitenschwingungen konzentriert.
Auch hier bleibt sein Umgang mit akustischem Material von besonderer Sorgfalt geprägt, wobei elektronische Verarbeitung nicht als Verfremdung, sondern als Erweiterung und Neuausrichtung genutzt wird. Für “Closing Our Eyes” setzt Petit eine vielseitige Kombination aus präpariertem Klavier, Daxophon, analogen Synthies, elektrischem Psalterium und Perkussion ein. Das Album erscheint als CD und zum Download.
Sin dai suoi primi anni di attività, Kunrad, artista olandese di stanza a L’Aia, ha creato composizioni e installazioni per restituire valore ai suoni più quotidiani.
Si inserisce in questo stesso solco anche la sua ultima fatica discografica (uscita per Crónica Records), “Kleine Geluiden”, che in italiano si potrebbe tradurre con “piccoli suoni”.
Ad alimentare la produzione, ancora una volta, c’è la grande passione per i field recordings: l’obiettivo è quello di catturare suoni sfuggenti e piccoli frammenti di tempo tramite l’uso di un ampio set di microfoni.
L’esperienza di “Kleine Geluiden”, nella mente dell’artista, dovrebbe somigliare a quella di un libro: l’ascoltatore è chiamato a pensare, immaginare e inventare nuove storie nei suoni, nelle pause, nei momenti più intensi come in quelli più morbidi.
L’apertura è affidata a “Brass & Sand”, in cui si distinguono in maniera limpida le vibrazioni e il suono della sabbia, anticipando il potenziale evocativo dei titoli come in “Stones & Water”, per celebrare le increspature dell’acqua e il suo percuotere la roccia.
Si sviluppa in tre movimenti diversi, invece, “Water & Paper Suite”, una sorta di campionario delle possibili interazioni tra l’acqua e la carta, mentre in chiusura c’è “Bridge & Hammer”, un pezzo dall’atmosfera più urbana che intende riflettere sui suoni delle strutture e dei luoghi (e magari anche dei non-luoghi) che attraversiamo su base quotidiana.
“Kleine Geluiden”, come un po’ tutta la discografia di Kunrad, rappresenta un ascolto decisamente poco convenzionale: è un’occasione di scoperta e riflessione, un esperimento pienamente riuscito, ma destinato a una nicchia. (Piergiuseppe Lippolis)
Qadira, she who is capable, is both the title of this album and an apt moniker for Argentinian cellist Cecilia Quinteros. Over the past decade and a half this Buenos Aires native has played with creative music luminaries in her native land as well as European artists. She has performed compositions commissioned for her, in avant-garde jazz settings and accompanied dancers in interdisciplinary concerts. Hence, she has always imbued her works with these various influences and experiences and the cinematic Qadira is no exception. Similar to her 2023 release Narel, the current one is partly composed and partly improvised suite for solo cello and electronics.
Opening with a resonant drone Quinteros sets a haunting ambience. She uses her extended bowing techniques on the cello to create a spiritual melody that the electronics buoy. The mysticism continues with the spontaneous second movement. The cello reverberates in the enveloping silence fusing elements of the baroque and the modern. This motif repeated throughout forming a sort of an interlude in between longer segments.
Quinteros is well versed in the western classical canon as well as the nuances of free improvisation. Here the two merge to create something that is more than just the sum of them. On Qadira 3, a melancholic composition, Quinteros strums a guitar and evokes the sounds of an exalted hymn echoing in a futuristic temple. This naturally evolves into Qadira 4 a vibrant and pastoral improvisation with ethereal “dancing” strings while, simultaneously, flirting with dissonance. Adding another intriguing dimension to the performance is Qadira 7. This extemporized piece has an eastern spirituality with Quinteros accompanying her emotive chanting with chiming percussion. The finale meanwhile returns to the contemplative quasi-symphonic harmonies of the opening track bringing this brilliant and absorbing recording full circle.
Varied and cohesive, provocative yet accessible, Qadira is a continuation of Quinteros’s unique musical journey. If anyone can forge various genres into a singular, stimulating opus it is Quinteros. She is indeed “capable” exhibiting both finesse and elegance all the while not shying away from experimentations. The result is bold and sublime.
Hrayr Attarian
Qadira is now available to download or stream from Crónica!
If the world were a little quieter, perhaps we’d hear it breathing. Kunrad, the Dutch artist who listens more intently than most, has spent years amplifying the hushed murmurs of everyday materials – water, paper, brass, and stone – transforming them into poetic gestures of sound. “Kleine Geluiden” (“Small Sounds”) is not just an album but a collection of sonic vignettes, each one an invitation to hear what usually goes unheard.
Kunrad’s background in composition and sound art has always leaned toward the tactile. His installations and performances have turned bridges into carillons, rainfall into percussion, and the chaotic tumble of metal tubes into a kind of aleatoric symphony. Here, removed from their original context, these sounds take on a new existence, unmoored from the mechanisms that created them.
The album opens with “Brass & Sand”, a piece that conjures the image of a forgotten brass band slowly dissolving into grains of time. The vibrations of metal resonate with a ghostly warmth, while sand – seemingly an inert, passive material – becomes an active participant in the sonic landscape, whispering, shifting, intruding.
“Stones & Water” is a lesson in controlled randomness. Rocks meet liquid with percussive intent, each splash and ripple a carefully placed note in a composition that never quite settles. There’s a meditative quality to it, as if the elements themselves are engaged in a quiet dialogue, unaware of being recorded.
The “Water & Paper Suite” stretches across three movements – “Prelude”, “Daily”, and “Convergent” – each one revealing a different aspect of this unusual pairing. Water, usually an agent of dissolution, interacts with paper in unexpected ways: dripping, smearing, saturating, reshaping the material’s sound. The pieces feel both intimate and expansive, like eavesdropping on the physical world in the process of change.
The album closes with “Bridge & Hammer”, perhaps the most kinetic of the set. Here, Kunrad’s fascination with site-specific resonance comes to the fore, as the bridge itself becomes an instrument, its percussive strikes ringing out like an urban gamelan. It’s a reminder that even the structures we walk on daily contain hidden voices, waiting for the right ear to hear them.
Listening to “Kleine Geluiden” feels like stepping into an alternate reality where objects speak in hushed tones and the smallest disturbances ripple outward with profound significance. Kunrad doesn’t demand attention; he merely suggests that perhaps we’ve been listening wrong all along. This is music for the patient, for the curious, for those who understand that a single drop of water can, in the right circumstances, sound like a waterfall. Vito Camarretta
Diffraction explores the idea that emptiness and form are inextricably linked. Every sound emerges in interaction with the silence that precedes and follows it. Yet even in supposed silence, something remains audible—a faint murmur, a subtle vibration, an echo of the surroundings. Pauses here are not empty spaces but active forms that shape the context for the next sound. Silence is understood as a form-giving presence, constantly interacting with the sounds and shaping the structure of the music.
The title Diffraction refers to the physical phenomenon where sound waves are deflected by obstacles and scattered in new directions. In a similar vein, the sounds in this work undergo dynamic transformations—they break, flow, and evolve in an ongoing, ever-changing process.
Diffraction invites us to perceive sound not merely as a linear sequence but as a living event, as a dynamic process. In the oscillation between silence and sound, stillness and activity, an exploration unfolds that probes the boundaries between physical reality and subjective perception.
Some albums come across as something subtle and almost unnoticeable. Not in a negative way, on the contrary.
Kunrad’s new cd released by the Portuguese label Crónica is a great example of how a sound art modal can be blended with art installation and field recording.
It is an important aspect of his work – he has the Bachelor of Music in Composition for Electronic Music at the University of the Arts Utrecht, and the Masters of Music at the Interfaculty ArtScience in The Hague. Kunrad lives and works in The Hague.
Keine Geluiden is an affirmation of every day rituals. Each tracks has a corresponding title with every day objects and elements. They encourage curiosity through their form – use of field recording with the right dosage and a bit of electronics – all in good measure.
In a art gallery environment such dosage lays out a great ground for a person to participate – it’s a delicate balance between attentive listening and observation of the whole scenario set up for a tracks which are, when you make a short comparison – quite long for a label of electroacoustic experimental and electronics.
Definitely one of the albums that have both great resonance and balance between the form and the functionality.
KUNRAD arbeitet als Klangkünstler in Den Haag mit Metall, Papier und Lehm und bei seinen Installationen etwa mit 1.000 kleinen Messingröhrchen, ins Wasser geworfenen Steinen oder Gummihämmern mit einer Brücke als Klangskulptur. Das hört man als ‘Brass & Sand’, ‘Stones & Water’ und ‘Bridge & Hammer’ auf Kleine Geluiden (C 230), neben der 3-teiligen ‘Water & Paper Suite’. Als Feier der kleinen Dinge, als Ohrwürmer, die dem Stofflichen abgewonnen werden. Mit zu Beginn sandkornfeinem und hagelig perkussivem Zauber, beim Brückenschlag zuletzt in dongend schwankendem und trossig schellendem XXL. Am See unter summenden Insekten, zwitschernden Vögeln und Aquafauna, drüber weg Flugzeuge, dran vorbei Züge, mit blubbrigem und rauschend aufgewühltem Wellenwurf als ‘Wassermusik’ mit Stock und Stein und bloßer Hand und finalem Crescendo, nach dem wieder Frieden einkehrt. Auch mit geknülltem, gerissenem Papier in großen, knistertauglichen Bögen und Säcken lässt sich ein Höllenlärm und blitzgewittriger Bühnenzinnober veranstalten, ein papierkriegerisches Hörspiel in drei Akten und ohne Worte. Akt 2 übergießt das Papier wie mit Gießkannen mit regnerischem Prickeln, Plattern und Rauschen. ‘Convergent’ als 3. Part erhöht den Prickel- und Rauschfaktor zum Platzregen – ‘wie aus Eimern’. Nach 10 Min. lässt das nach, es plattern nur noch große Tropfen wie von der Traufe und patschen monoton zum verrinnenden Guss. [BA 128 rbd]
For Percussion is a collection of six electronic tracks with various acoustic elements incorporated into the recordings. Some of these tracks were recorded live during performances from 2002 to 2008, while others have been recently revisited in 2022. The electronic components and core compositions were created by @c a duo composed of Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, artists on faculty at the Fine Arts College at the University of Porto in Portugal. The percussion is all performed by members of Drumming Grupo de Percussão a Portuguese percussion ensemble founded and directed by Miquel Bernat.
The music takes heavy influence from artists like Luigi Russolo as well as composers as Edgard Varèse Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Frank Zappa. One of my favourite tracks “66, for sampled bells, computer” is reminiscent of a slower paced, modernised trance version of the opening to “Poème Électronique.” In “88,” the composers incorporate various microphone elements and placements to affect the recording a la “Microphone 1.” Finally, Zappa’s references are evident in the first and final tracks, both in style as well as some direct references: take a listen to “Buffalo Voice” from Zappa’s
Civilization Phase Ill for the vocal addition at the very end of this album.
It is difficult to differentiate the original source material performed by Drumming GP with what has been modified or digitally created from @C. The electronic and acoustic components work well together to create a seamless soundscape of sonic explorations. This is done exceptionally well with track “88,” a recording using stones scratching and scraping objects, into “88R,” a remixed version done entirely electronically. Even though they use the same source material, there are little-to-no comparable sounds between the two; however, @C creates something hauntingly similar with a unique, tech-driven aural landscape to encounter.
Although these experimental compositions may not be for everyone, this album generates eclectic effects utilizing wide-ranging sonic interesting, thought-provoking digital alterations and additions, For Percussion provides a timbral spectrum worth investigating in experimental electronic music.
Some years ago Miguel A. García informed me he was starting to work with string ensembles and classical players, directing musicians who can sight-read music to play his scores or execute directions in music devised by him. This represented quite a departure from his usual solo work with laptops, mixing desk, and processed recordings.
I keep hoping to get sent a CD of the “new” sock-it-to-em García approach, but today’s record Eraginie(CRÓNICA 206-2023) doesn’t seem to be representative of it. Instead, it’s four tracks of very grainy and granular processed noise, which suggest he hasn’t yet traded in his Apple Mac for a conductor’s baton. The label are hoping to wow the audience with García’s new hi-fi approach, telling us he’s turned his back on all that home-made distorted messy noise that he used to trade in, and has created a record fit to be broadcast on any art gallery PA system, the better for its sedate audience to savour the subtle tones and textures and delicate glitchoid experiments. A number of fellow creators have provided “additional raw sound sources” for him to create this record, namely Pedro A. Mirones, Maite Mugerza, Garazi Navas, Schahram Poursoudmand, Alex Reviriego, and the American Jeff Surak of Zeromoon.
Sadly, I found little excitement or tension in these slow grey stretches of digital combines, and I miss the days when my favourite Spaniard from Bilbao would send me genuinely shocking and unsettling records of home-brew noise. But maybe I’ll learn to love this low-key mode of Miguel’s – after all, better to be served a cucumber cocktail than given a digital slap in the mush. Ed Pinsent
