New release: Monty Adkins’s “Remote Communion”

This work was commissioned for Casa Sonora curated by David Velez for the Explora Museum, Colombia, in 2020, a project during the first Covid-19 lockdown that compiled works to stream or download and play or interact with in a mobile phone.

As a child I loved singing in the bath. Singing may be a bit of an exaggeration: what I loved was finding the nodal point of the room, exciting it and listening to it resonate. Now that Covid-19 stopped us from singing together, I invite you to sing for 19 minutes in your bath with a virtual choir. 21 friends from around the world provided me each with two sung notes, recorded in their own bathrooms. I extended these to form long harmonic pads over which you are invited to improvise your own songs and melodies, tuning in and out at will.

Singing is good for you! Singing has been demonstrated to improve mental health and wellbeing. Not only it lowers cortisol and relieves stress and tension, but studies have also shown that when people sing, endorphins and oxytocin are released by the brain which reduces anxiety levels. Oxytocin also enhances feelings of togetherness which explains reports that singing also improves depression and feelings of loneliness. Singing also has a physiological effect on the body, studies have shown that after singing one has higher levels of immunoglobulin A, an antibody known to benefit the immune function of mucous membranes. Studies have also shown that singing can help people suffering from long-term chronic pain and can have a real impact on the amount of pain relief medication used by participants.

I encourage you to sing along with this piece in your bath and relax.

Remote Communion is now available as a download or stream.

New release: TAMTAM’s “Stromschauen”

The inspiration and the recordings for the piece Stromschauen (view/look current/power) were formed during walks in Berlin/Pankow in the last days of December 2020. In a situation of urban sound environment slowed down by the Covid rules and the holidays in general, various power boxes and their whirring and humming became more noticeable. The AC frequency is 50 HZ in the European electricity system, which is between a musical low G and a G sharp. This tone determines the resonant frequency when operating electrical devices like e.g. the lighting in streets or our refrigerators, that resonate in this frequency.

The starting point of Stromschauen is the manifold quotidian and mostly overheard resonances of our electricity infrastructure in interaction with their environment. Its compositional material is the sound textures found in these processes. Microtonal moods, sound aggregates at the interface of timbre to harmonics, overtone patterns, spectral layering, and rhythmic beat patterns become the musical material. The piece also acknowledges the influence of essential genres such as industrial and noise music on TAMTAM’s compositional work.

TAMTAM is the collaboration of Sam Auinger and Hannes Strobl, active on artistic research on urban living space, with a strong interest in the audible. This is approached through a longstanding practice in city studies with field recordings, producing releases, radio broadcasts, and performances. Concurrently they also produce sound installations with a focus on the audible relationship between designed architectural space and an acoustic event in interior or exterior spaces.

TAMTAM’s instrument is, for all intents and purposes, not only a sounding object that we are well familiar with. It is also the space itself where sound lives-the acoustic and psychoacoustic fields that enable us to extend our accepted senses to hear the habitual and the quotidian as something extraordinary.

Stromschauen is now available for stream or download.

Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s “Installations / Instalações” book reviewed by Field Notes

The sound artists Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais have been working together for more than two decades and have released an almost incalculable number of releases under the name @c to document their musical work. High time then for their label Crónica to also dedicate the book »Installations / Instalações« to them in order to document and comment on their audiovisual and site-specific works. The edition contains a detailed introduction to the various projects the two artists realised together between the years 2005 and 2021 in English and Portuguese as well as an essay by Raquel Castro. Most of the 210 pages, however, are filled with photographs. They were taken with a similar obsession for detail, if not pedantry, with which Tudela and Carvalhais approach their projects on a sonic, spatial and visual level. This makes for intellectually and aesthetically stimulating reading experience.

via Field Notes

Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s “Installations / Instalações” book reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Installations: LMY-7-10 (Crónica 179~2022, digital) von @c ist Musik, um dazu „Installations / Instalações“ (Crónica 181~2022 / i2ADS, 210 p Book) von MIGUEL CARVALHAIS & PEDRO TUDELA zu lesen, den beiden Crónica-Machern, deren klanginstallatives Werk da von 2005 an essayistisch und illustrativ aufgefächert wird. Die Musik entspricht der beim Fes- tival Serralves em Festa in der dortigen Kapelle. Deren kleiner, von einem großen Rund- fenster erleuchteter Saal bildet die horizontale Achse, der Turm, aus dessen dunklem Treppenaufgang Lichter an langen Schnüren herabhängen, die vertikale. Im Saal hängt ebenfalls an langen Schnüren eine horizontale Röhre. Von den Lichtern her und aus der Röhre sind dort wohl die Klänge erklungen, plinkende Harfenklänge in morphender, perkussiv bebender und vor- wie rückwärts rutschender Bewegung. Angeregt wurden die beiden Portugiesen dabei von LaMonte Youngs ‘Composition 1960 #7’ – zwei Tönen mit der Anweisung »to be held for a long time« – und ‘Composition 1960 #10 (“to Bob Morris”)’ – »draw a straight line and follow it«. Diesen Textkompositionen, in denen der Fluxus-Vogel piept, sei, so wie Cages „4:33“ die Unstille, die fernöstliche Weisheit zu entnehmen, dass, auch wenn man es noch so sehr wünscht und versucht, nichts sich stillstellen, nichts fest- halten lässt. Wie Konfuzius sagt: Das Leben und die Welt sind diskontinuierlich.

Matilde Meireles’s “Life of a Potato” reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Mit Life of a Potato (Crónica 180~2022, gelbe C-30) macht Dr. MATILDE MEIRELES das Leben und Wesen einer ordinären Grumm’bere, wie wir in Unterfranken sagen, hörbar. Als Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow an der University of Oxford im Projekt ‘Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism’ (SONCITIES) sind Scholle und Knolle eigentlich nicht ihr Thema. Allerdings hat es sie gelegentlich schon aufs Land gezogen, etwa zum Slieve Gullion oder in die Marble Arch Caves in Nordirland – sie hat in Belfast promoviert. Dort, wo Spuds und Crisps immer noch angesagt sind, hat sie wohl auch von An Gorta Mór gehört, der Irischen Kartoffelpest 1845-49, in der eine Million verhungerten und zwei Millionen vorm Verhungern flohen (‘Thousands are Sailing’ sangen die Pogues, und Primordial von ‘The Coffin Ships’) – eine Ungeheuerlichkeit, die noch in „Black 47“ und „Arracht“ nachhallt. Meireles, die von zuhause Batata portuguesa und Batatas ao murra kennt, spielt mit Klängen, die sie von einem Acker bei Pewsey in Wiltshire ausgrub: Mit holzigem Scharren und Beben, eisernem Klacken, dumpfem Kollern, der Regen plätschert, Vögel piepsen. Und sie bereitet was zu essen, schneidet rohe Kartoffeln, Tauben gurren, ein kleines Flugzeug brummt, Krähen krächzen, Spatzen tschilpen. B-seits wummern und pulsen Wellen auf dröhnendem Fond, gebackene Kartoffeln britzeln und brutzeln zu monotonem Klopfen und einem groovigen Loop, mit Schlagzeug sogar, und auch die Vögel hört man wieder piepsen und flattern, den Flieger brummen. Kartoffeln haben Augen, aber seit wann haben sie Ohren? [BA 114 rbd]

via Bad Alchemy

New release: Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s “Installations / Instalações” book

Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais collaborate as @c since 2000. They have released and performed extensively, often collaborating with other artists and collectives in a practice marked by radical experimentalism with computational sound. In 2003 they established Crónica, a label dedicated to experimental music and sound art, that they since run.

Since 2005 Tudela and Carvalhais have also been developing sound installations, the majority of which are ephemeral works lasting for the duration of an event or festival. The book Installations / Instalações documents nineteen of these works, offering a detailed look at them through visual documentation and texts by Carvalhais and Tudela and Raquel Castro, sound art curator and artistic director of Lisboa Soa.

This book is complemented by a series of releases that Crónica began publishing in 2021 — the first two being Installations: Seis Elementos (Crónica 174~2021) and Installations: LMY-7-10 (Crónica 179~2022) — and that will document these works by dedicating one album to each.

  • Book, 210 pages
  • 155 x 230 mm, softcover
  • 140 images
  • First edition of 500 copies in English and Portuguese
  • ISBN: 978-989-9049-13-0
  • Co-published by i2ADS
  • Main sponsor dstgroup

Table of contents:

  • Installations (2005, 2021), Miguel Carvalhais & Pedro Tudela 
  • Instalações (2005, 2021), Miguel Carvalhais & Pedro Tudela
  • Listening to Geometries, Raquel Castro
  • Escutando Geometrias, Raquel Castro
  • Divisor/4 (2015)
  • M.M.M.M. (2014) 
  • 30×1 (2005)
  • Respiro (2014) 
  • LMY-7-10 (2016)
  • Respiro (2015) 
  • Noventa e Três (para Colönia) (2012) 
  • Sulco (Medida de Corte) (2019)
  • (Re)Verso/Flexo (2018)
  • Octo____ (2019)
  • S(o)al (2021) 
  • CX LUX (2017)
  • Vento (2018)
  • Casa (2021)
  • Becoming- (2016)
  • A/B (2017)
  • 6 Elementos (2016)
  • T/B (2021)
  • Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição (2018)
  • Studies / Estudos

Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais’s “Installations / Instalações” book reviewed by Vital Weekly

The next one is also a book, also (a bit of) a problem. This time, the text is in Portuguese and English, so that’s not the issue here. I like to think our principal interest is sound; we can hear on whatever sound carrier (don’t send your VHS tapes, please, or 8-track cassettes). Reading about sound already gets a bit more complicated, especially when it comes to theory. Still, in the case of Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais ‘Installations’, we deal with an art catalogue. You may know them as the duo @C, of whom we reviewed various releases over the years. They are a laptop duo rooted in field recordings, acoustic sound and improvisation. Another interest of theirs is the creation of installations. Since 2005 they did a few, and they are documented in this 210 pages softcover book, with 140 images, plus texts describing these and a more general introduction. It is undoubtedly a fascinating read, and the installations look fantastic, but it is not the ‘real’ thing. We miss a great deal of the experience, the sight and the sound. There are now two releases on the Cronica Bandcamp page that deal with two of these installations, and I strongly recommend playing these while flipping/reading this book (links below, they’re both ‘name your price downloads’). I know you’d still miss out on the visual side of the experience, but at least there is something to hear when looking at the pictures and reading the text. (FdW)

via Vital Weekly