Alva Noto, Frank Bretschneider, Signal, Mika Vainio, Pomassl, Gintas K, Buben, Pavel Ambiont, I/DEX, Love-Fine, CM Von Hausswolff, Spit It Out, F.R.U.I.T.S., Zavoloka, Alois Huber and many others will be performing at the First Experimental Music and Media Art Festival in Minsk, Belarus. Crónica’s own Gintas K will perform on Saturday 28 February at the club Fabrique.
More info at intouch-fest.h-a-z-e.org
Franke, Neumann, Schmidt, Weinheimer: INNEN & AUREN
The piece INNEN & AUREN is a mixed and edited version of the concert INNEN & AUßEN, that took place as AlulaTonSerien.Konzert #35 at the New Building of the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Dec. 15, 2007. Neumann, who edited it, translated the spatial experience of the live concert to this stereo version. The chronological order of the concert was kept, but condensed. No sounds or effects were added.
For the original concert, the four performers created a set-up, which took place in three rooms inside the gallery and outside the gallery. Each of the four performers had his own position and function within the set-up and with each position made a certain statement about the relationship between inside and outside.
The set-up included: a microphone outside of the gallery (Franke, outside), speakers behind a glass wall, microphone in room 1, feed from Franke and computer (Neumann, room 1), speakers outside the gallery and in room 1, two headphones in room 3, microphone, sine wave generator, feed from Franke and computer (Schmidt, room 3), four speakers in room 1, one speaker outside the gallery, violin, bass flute with internal microphones and electronics (Weinheimer, room 1).
Stunning net release by the Portuguese label Crónica is the result of musician/designer from Denmark Morten Riis’s creative work. His album Digital Sound Drawings is a real finding for people who are fond of phenomenon in electronic music which is accepted to be called ‘glitch’. As Riis himself admitted, he is not interested in creating electronic music using the standard capacity of program facilities. He searches for that very moment when a computer error doesn’t yet cause the collapse of the system, but it already makes the machine give unpredictable and that’s why absolutely unique result.
In Digital Sound Drawings the scheme of direct conversion of digital pictures into audio data is used. It means that the musician actually painted the sound for this not long 6 tracks. As a result we have very amusing pictures of clicks, drones, squeak and gritting which balance on the verge of hearing threshold. Together they produce only total recalibration of auditory system. The real chance to feel as if an experimental object in this activity. Especially when while the album’s playing you look at the spectrogram and oscillogram of the signal you understand that you are influenced by some new sound system. Or rather some subsystem hidden inside the structure of any complicated sound. When I was listening to Digital Sound Drawings first very loudly, several times I felt hot and cold. The same was the organism’s reaction to the abrupt amplitude changes and to the general unnatural audio surrounding. I must admit that for many people the album will seem to be a sharp and maybe unpleasant collection of sounds. This is a very complicated work, not dry, dirty noise or predictable collage of loops. For those who’ll be imbued with this album contains something more – new sounds, new emotions and the change of world-view…
via soundproector
Pure is Austrian born and Berlin based Peter Votava, who stepped into the music business somewhere in the beginning of the nineties. Since then, he has released many CD’s and 12†vinyls – his roots actually lie in DJ culture and as such he has established himself already in the hardcore/techno scene. In the mid nineties he was also half of Rave party darlings Ilsa Gold, but nowadays Pure concentrates on the more experimental side of the sound spectrum. A path that culminated in a collaboration with Austrian artist Erich Berger, in 2006. As Terminal Beach they presented their audiovisual performance The Heart Chamber Orchestra: a piece for orchestra (12 musicians equipped with ECG sensors) that uses the musicians’ heartbeats to form a computer generated score for the orchestra in real time (and a visual environment along the way). Besides all this, Pure also continued to produce his solo works. Ification, which is out now on the Portugese Crónica label, is his latest offering.
Ification counts 7 tracks and starts off with an intro titled FIRE. At first I wasn’t too sure what to think of this track: its necessity went beyond me and the mention that Atari Teenage Rioteer Christoph De Babalon delivered the guitar recording didn’t impress me either. After reading Vital Weekly’s verdict on the record it does seem to make a bit more sense: it’s abrasive shreds of distorted guitar assault do indeed pave the way for the audible contemplation presented in the second track (AFTER THE BOMB). As if the shells dropped from my ears.
From here on, Pure presents us more explorations into the dark and gloomy regions of sound. APPROXIMATION has a certain bombastique that reminds me of Wagner. Not only because of the slowed down horns: the whole track seems to be composed on a skeleton that indicates a classical approach. Well and successfully executed I’d might say, making it one of the best tracks off the album.
I think the only disappointment here is SONOMATOPEIA. Alexandra von Bolzn’s vocal contributions, or Pure’s processions thereof, do not really have the ability to bleak out William Bennett’s or Kevin Tomkins’ contributions to the Power Electronics genre – although the press release tends to make you believe otherwise. And might I add: a tad bit too much BBC sound effects on display? Well, at least according to my taste that is.
Anyhow, with Ification, Pure delivered another great collection of tracks that soothingly resonate inside your skull. Purification of the soul? I’ll let you decide on the supine ending.
via Earlabs
Alors que nous avions laissé Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tedula (aka @C) sur une belle collaboration en début d’année avec Vitor Joaquim sur le label Feld, les revoilà de retour au bercail pour un nouvel album qui s’annonce aussi sobre et mystérieux que sa pochette. En fait @C est assez fidèle à lui même. On reste dans une abstraction sonore totale où le click’n’cut est partout présent et qui se complait dans un minimalisme inquiétant et des formes très urbaines. Pour autant les deux hommes ne sont pas des adeptes du tout électronique. Ils n’hésitent pas à faire intervenir, comme sur 61, des voix, des percussions, une guitare, un saxophone ou un violoncelle électrique. Ces interventions sont, comme il se doit, d’un ascétisme confondant venant mettre du relief sur des nappes froides et épaisses. Enregistré entre 2006 et 2008 aux quatres coins du globe ce disque est largement axé sur l’accident sonore et une volonté de non répétition des séquences. Nous avançons donc dans ce disque dans une stricte inconnue dont le point d’orgue est tenu par ce long 61 qui s’avère être des plus surprenant.
Quoi qu’il en soit @C fonctionne comme n’importe quelle formation de musiques improvisées. Le modus operandi semble être identique et la volonté de repousser les frontières du monde connu est manifeste. Mais ici on rencontre tout de même le même type d’effort aperçu sur De-Tour, l’album enregistré avec Vitor Joaquim. @C suit donc la même logique, explore avec une conviction identique les possibilités permises par leurs instrument. Doit-on en penser pour autant que le duo se borne à faire à chaque fois le même disque ? Non, à partir du moment où chacune de leur réalisation seront les représentations d’une cohérence artistique forte, il n’y aura pas à douter du travail des deux hommes. Ainsi sur Up, Down, Charm…le caractère abstrait de chacune des plages est produit de manière qui ne laisse aucun doute sur leur profond engagement. Comme beaucoup de leurs collègues qui oeuvrent dans les sphères, Carvalhais et Tedula expérimentent en se souciant d’être au-delà du simple bidouillage. C’est sans doute ce qui fait la différence.
Fabien
Veteran electronicist Pure is someone I associate with the Mego label, but his new release Ification is out on the Portuguese label Crónica. As far as I can make out, he hasn’t played a note of music himself but recruited various fine European avant musicians to contribute samples of their instruments, which he has proceeded to rework into a meandering, mulched-up digital soup. Martin Brandlmayr, Anke Eckardt and Alexandra von Bolzyn are among those sampled, the latter notable for contributing her ’screams’ to ‘Sonomatopoeia’ and ‘Iron Sky’. A lot of the CD is a little too over-processed for my tastes, but I like the noisy guitar bursts of Christoph de Babalon on ‘Fire’, and ‘Iron Sky’ also has moments of considerable menace in its fizzing, subliminal layers of stern minimalism. Perhaps ‘End’, which uses a bass guitar sample, is the most successful, offering nigh-on 16 minutes of highly testing minimal deep drones and coming on like the refrigeration unit of Beelzebub himself. Striking cover art is by Jan Rohlf, depicting a gigantic venting tube such as you attach to a tumble dryer, bursting forth its intestines on inner gatefold. Ed Pinsent
Lithuanian sound artist and composer Gintas K returns to Cronica with a selection of self-confessed Lovely Banalities – a set of beautiful auditory trifles, often rather short and lacking in any defined sense of structure. These are more like objects, loitering around in the ether and establishing loop-based sequences like ‘Q’ or the strange and otherworldly ‘Music Box’. Elsewhere, the watery modulations of ‘Before When’ brings to mind the sort of digital experiments heard on Pita’s album for No Fun – but only for a couple of minutes, before Gintas halts proceedings and re-boots with some other slice of electroacoustic meandering. Far more interesting than its title would have you believe, this album is a rather entertaining, unstuffy piece of microsound.
via Boomkat
“Lovely Banalities†is the second release in Crónica from Lithuanian sound-artist Gintas K, after the much acclaimed double CD from 2006 “Lengvai / 60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz soundâ€.
“Lovely Banalities†presents fourteen short pieces — a collection of miniatures, impressions, sketches, innuendos and errors — inspired on the exceptionality and suprisingness of the quotidian, on the extraordinary everydayness.
Gintas K draws analogies between these pieces and Modest Mussorgsky’s suite “Pictures at an Exhibitionâ€, mapping fourteen individual moments, ready to be visited by the listener. The pieces of synthesized digital music are contrasted with evocative field recordings, captured in Gintas K’s hometown of MarijampolÄ—, during a windy summer Sunday afternoon. These are sounds of lovely and quotidian moments, unremarkable sounds that are an evocation of forgotten and rediscovered feelings, of small and precious things from the past that still hover in the air, that remain in the streets, somewhere in the grass. The field recordings weave the pieces together, guiding this auditory visit. “Lovely Banalities†thrives by its apparent formal and structural simplicity, but this simplicity — as in everyday life — is an illusion.
“Lovely Banalities†was composed by Gintas K. The lovely cover art was created by David Muth. It was designed and mastered by MCarvalhais.
You can listen to C2 or Lovely Banalities, read the Press-release, buy the CD directly from Crónica, or download through Boomkat or Zero Inch.
The Beautiful Schizophonic will perform live on Valentine’s Day, saturday 14th February, at Sport União Colarense, Colares. On the bill there’s also a romantic dinner, F. W. Murnau’s masterpiece Aurora screened with live soundtrack by Hugo Claro and dj set by City Forest. Ticket includes tea and home cookies, starts at 6:30 pm.
