Emiter’s “Repetition and Memory” reviewed by Anxious

Nagrywanie, słuchanie, ruch, rytm. Istnieje wiele śladów, które tworzą nieskończone możliwości łączenia w nowe jakości. Ślady, nagrywanie, czas, częstotliwość. Powtarzanie i pamięć. Alan Burdick pisze, że „Złota era ucha nigdy się nie skończyła (…) Trwa, zasłonięta hegemonią wizualności”, ale „Historia ucha” rozbrzmiewa w zapomnieniu.

Marcin Dymiter – muzyk (gra w projektach emiter, niski szum, ZEMITER oraz innych, efemerycznych formacjach; wcześniej związany z zespołami Ewa Braun, Mapa, Mordy), autor nagrań terenowych, instalacji dźwiękowych i słuchowisk, muzyki do filmów, wystaw i spektakli teatralnych. Prowadzi autorskie warsztaty dźwiękowe oraz działania przybliżające ideę field recordingu. Autor cyklu nagrań Field Notes. Niezależny kurator związany z festiwalami Wydźwięki/Resonances (Galeria El, Elbląg) i Control Room (Gdańsk). Wspólnie z Marcinem Barskim był pomysłodawcą i kuratorem „Polish Soundscapes”, pierwszej polskiej wystawy prezentującej zjawisko field recordingu. W 2020 roku został zaproszony do udziału w światowej wystawie sound artu Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020, która odbyła się w Madrycie, w Museo Reina Sofia.

Producent muzyczny. Słuchacz i uczestnik warsztatów muzycznych i warsztatów improwizacji w kraju i za granicą, między innymi prowadzonych przez Le Quan Ninha, Andrew Sharpleya, Johna Butchera, Robina Minarda i Wolfganga Fuchsa. Stypendysta Uniwersytetu Sztuki w Berlinie, finalista konkursu Netmage International Multimedia Festival w Bolonii. Stypendysta Marszałka Województwa Pomorskiego oraz Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego (2011), Fundacji Wyszehradzkiej (2012, 2023). Członek Polskiego Stowarzyszenia Muzyki Elektroakustycznej.

via Anxious

Simon Whetham’s “Successive Actions” reviewed by Chain DLK

Simon Whetham’s “Successive Actions” is not so much an album as it is a murmuring labyrinth of discarded whispers, a requiem for obsolete machines played on their own brittle bones. In this latest iteration of his “Channelling” project, Whetham transforms the detritus of consumer technology – motors, mechanisms, and malfunctions – into an orchestra of decay, reanimated by sound and amplified into mesmerizing disarray.

The concept itself reads like a speculative fiction plotline: sounds once captured from mundane phenomena – wind rattling through cracks, doors groaning their final goodnight, traffic sighing in perpetual migration – are funneled into defunct devices. These technological ghosts, startled into sputtering life, produce new sounds, their rhythms simultaneously organic and mechanical, random yet precise. It’s the sonic equivalent of sending dead stars into resonance, their echoes colliding in the void.

From the beginning, “Successive Actions” immerses listeners in a sequence that feels both procedural and chaotic. Opening track “Action” unfolds like the flick of a circuit breaker, a quiet initiation to a process whose repercussions ripple outward. Tracks like “Reaction” and “Overreaction” hum and stutter, their soundscapes alternately serene and volatile. “Redaction” seems to erase itself as it plays, its fragmented tones suggesting memory dissolving into static, while “Compaction” compresses dense textures into bursts of claustrophobic intensity.

The interplay of texture and structure reaches its peak in “Contraction,” a six-minute epic of mechanical tension that breathes like a collapsing lung, and “Distraction,” whose jittery rhythms evoke a machine unraveling its purpose. The closing track, “Protraction,” leaves a faint sonic residue, as if the machines are slipping back into silence, their revolt unfinished but indelible.

Whetham’s artistry lies in his ability to coax emotional resonance from ostensibly lifeless materials. His works are sound sculptures, tracing the hidden vitality of malfunction, the poetics of disintegration. There is a grim irony in the process: technology, once destined for precision and utility, now repurposed as a chaotic muse. It is a reflection of the modern cycle – creation, obsolescence, reinvention – told through reverberations.

The album’s title, drawn from Dirk Raaijmakers’ “The Art of Reading Machines”, frames this interplay of cause and effect, where the discarded becomes an agent of further disruption. “Successive Actions” is not only a meditation on sound but on the very nature of systems, entropy, and the human tendency to repurpose what we abandon.

Simon Whetham, a veteran of environmental sound art, brings his signature approach to this project, combining field recordings, improvised techniques, and an alchemist’s touch for revealing the secret lives of sound. Having performed internationally and curated sonic explorations such as “Corollaries”, Whetham remains one of the most innovative artists in his field, continually bridging the gap between the ephemeral and the tangible.

Listening to “Successive Actions” feels like eavesdropping on the afterlife of machines, their language strange yet familiar. It is music for a world we are both leaving behind and constantly re-encountering – a symphony of friction, failure, and fleeting renewal.

Essential for: fans of experimental sound art, those curious about the intersection of technology and decay, and anyone looking to experience music as an act of poetic transformation. Vito Camarretta

via Chain DLK

New release: Miguel A. García & Coeval: “Laliguras”

Coming close to the end of 2024 but not winding down in any way, we’re thrilled to present a new release by Miguel A. García and Coeval, their second collaboration in Crónica after last year’s Huncill.

Laliguras is a wonder of “nuances, progressions, regressions and contradictions” in the words of Ulzion in his text about García’s and Coeval’s music.

The eight tracks of Laliguras are now available to stream or download from Crónica.

Bruno Duplant’s “Écouter les Fantômes” reviewed by Music Map

Credete ai fantasmi? Se sì, questo disco può spaventarvi. Altrimenti, può affascinarvi. L’artista francese Bruno Duplant è un compositore e polistrumentista che si è fatto conoscere nel campo della musique concrète. Tradotto: la musica concreta non utilizza né note né ritmi. Elabora suoni e rumori per restituire una parvenza di realtà oggettiva, per l’appunto concreta.

Fin qui possiamo pensare di creare simulacri di oggetti, tramite l’elettronica. Può sembrare di ascoltare bottiglie, vasi, macchinari industriali eccetera. E se invece decidessimo di far sentire qualcosa di incorporeo, come i fantasmi? Ecco che “Écouter les fantômes”, uscito per l’etichetta portoghese Crónica Releases, fa questo. In due tracce, entrambe di venti minuti, Duplant ci porta tra sinistri suoni umanoidi, voci distorte e deformate, rumori legnosi, note di fisarmonica… Ogni strumento sappia suonare, ogni risorsa sappia utilizzare, Duplant la piega all’obiettivo di dar l’impressione d’esplorare il paranormale.

Segnali di radar, sibili, voci che cantano provenienti da altre epoche su nastri traballanti, graffi e scricchiolii, il fruscio del vento: tutto ci pervade, e ad un certo punto ti dimentichi di chiederti come ha fatto questo suono qui, e come ha ottenuto quel rumore lì. Vorresti razionalizzare per difesa, ma alla fine ti lasci andare al fascino della fantasia del compositore. Del resto, lo dichiara Duplant stesso nel comunicato: la realtà, il realismo non gli interessa, e preferisce creare una fiction sonica.

Grazie a questo espediente narrativo dei fantasmi, possiamo avvicinarci alla musique concrète, da sempre considerata tra le più difficili da ascoltare, per i non iniziati. Non è neppure un discorso di avanguardia: se mettiamo da parte le teorie, basta solo ascoltare, praticando un ascolto attivo. Non importa se credete o non credete agli spettri: tramite questo spunto narrativo, li ascolterete! (Gilberto Ongaro)

via Music Map

Matilde Meireles’s “Loop. And Again.” reviewed by Loop

Researcher and sound artist Matilde Meireles focuses on using field recordings to compose about various ecosystems such as complex aquatic ecologies, the resonances of everyday objects, local neighbourhoods and the architecture of radio signals. Her work is presented in concerts, installations, record releases, community projects and academic publications. She holds a PhD in Sonic Arts from SARC (Sound and Music Interdisciplinary Research Centre) at Queen’s University Belfast.

‘Loop. And Again’ – her fourth album on Chrónica – is part of X Marks the Spot, a wider project that used sound to map specific telecommunications boxes – only those emitting an audible drone – in the city of Belfast between 2013 and 2019.
The field recordings captured from these boxes reveal the circuits and pathways that are woven in Belfast by drones and how the contacts and encounters of the people who inhabit it are articulated in this way.

These high-frequency drones are accompanied by urban noises such as car horns, water flowing through the streets, or voices wandering through the city. This ambience is subtly processed by Meireles through his electronic devices.

‘Cross Parade‘ with Fingal, Bronagh, Paul and Tullis’, which closes this album, includes some recordings that our protagonist made during her stay at Fingal, Bronagh and Paul’s house, near Cross Parade, in Belfast, as well as several trombone improvisations by Tullis Rennie that are coupled with the background drone that acts as a tapestry across the album.

Matilde Meireles shows the sounds that go unnoticed in the city, but through her sound recordings, she relays the interactions of how we inhabit the city. Guillermo Escudero

via Loop

Simon Whetham’s “Successive Actions” reviewed by African Paper

Crónica bringen eine neue CD des britischen “Environmental Sound Artist” Simon Whetham heraus. “Successive Actions” ist eine Wiederholung einer größeren kinetischen Soundperformance-Projektreihe, in der laut Label “verschiedene aus veralteter und weggeworfener Verbrauchertechnologie geborgene Motorgeräte durch das Abspielen von Tonaufnahmen aktiviert werden.

Dadurch entstehen wiederum neue Klänge aus den Geräten, die mit verschiedenen Mikrofonen und Techniken verstärkt werden”. Der Titel stammt aus Dirk Raaijmakers The Art of Reading Machines als Begriff für Massenproduktionsprozesse. Ferner heißt es: “Die über die Geräte abgespielten Aufnahmen sind daher Aufnahmen anderer Geräte, die in früheren Versionen von Channelling verwendet wurden, in denen die verwendeten Klänge scheinbar banale Klangphänomene waren, die im Alltag unvorhersehbar und unregelmäßig auftreten, wie vorbeifahrender Verkehr, Wind, schließende Türen. Jetzt verursachen die Geräusche von Geräten, die nicht richtig funktionieren und ihre Programmierung abbrechen, weitere Aktionen und Störungen”. Das Material  wurde bereits bei zahlreichen internationalen Festivals und Veranstaltungen präsentiert. Das Album ist auch zum Download erhältlich. 

via African Paper