“Hidden Name” reviewed by Jazz e Arredores

O sonho antes de acordar, quando as formas começam a ganhar contornos e a consciência começa a organizar os últimos fiapos de matéria irreal. Em “Hidden Name”, Stephan Mathieu e Janek Schaefer, cúmplices de anteriores apresentações públicas, como os festivais MUTEK/2002 (Canadá) e Musica Genera/2005 (Polónia), tornam perceptível essa passagem de forma plasticamente sedutora, oscilante e circular no movimento cíclico de ampla e planante espacialização. A acção passa-se no meio das paisagens naturais e ambiente bucólico de que beneficiaram os artistas aquando da estadia conjunta no Verão de 2005 na Manor Farm House, uma cottage propriedade de um compositor de música clássica, situada algures no Sul de Inglaterra.

No local, Stephan Mathieu e Janek Schaefer usaram instrumentos acústicos e electrónicos, e gravações de campo. O som foi posteriormente tratado no York Music Research Center, estúdio em Inglaterra tecnologicamente apetrechado para o efeito. Do trabalho de composição, montagem e edição resultou uma música carregada de sugestões pastorais envoltas em finas camadas de neblina, que ora ameaça chuva eminente, ora anseia pelo sol que a há-de dissipar.

Na mistura é possível identificar estática e estalidos de discos vinyl, vozes humanas, canto de pássaros e uma infinidade de camadas sobrepostas de sons instrumentais (piano, violino, clarinete, violoncelo, flauta, acordeão, cítara, sinos…), transformados, processados e harmonizados em estúdio, via computador. Há aqui uma interessante dimensão conceptual de corpos em suspensão, que se vão transformando lentamente, texturas unidimensionais que se tornam progressivamente mais complexas ao sabor de movimentos lentos e formalmente despojados, em que o que conta sobretudo é a tensão que prenuncia algo que está para acontecer. O mistério adensa-se e permanece por desvendar, por muito que se ouça “Hidden Name”, um disco especial. Edição recente da portuguesa Crónica Electrónica, distribuída por Matéria Prima. Design de M. Carvalhais.

Eduardo Chagas

New Crónicaster: The Sound of eBay

The Sound of eBay

www.sound-of-ebay.com

A project by UBERMORGEN.COM
Sound coding by stefan Nussbaumer, visual coding by Lia, script coding by Erich Kachel

Download it here or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Story

First there was silence…
Then there was data…
But there was no story…
Just images and sounds…

Cities were built and a grid was laid on top of the topography.

Within this global grid a company named eBay became the largest marketplace, with very local marketspaces. eBay is romantic and seductive, not like the local fleamarkets in Paris (Le marché aux puces de Saint-Ouen) but sexed up a million times bigger and spherically transcended, much more effective and thoroughly commercialized. We love it! “The Sound of eBay” is the affirmative high-end lowtech contribution to the atomic soundtrack of the new peer-to-peer hypercatastrophic shock-capitalism.

The sound is cool, the machine produces masses of songs and replicates millions of times throughout the networks – flooding the net, a bubbling sea of artifical songs visualized in CONTEMPORARY teletext – a continental drift within a macromusic universal urban scape. Trash-Radio.

Forget the technology, it’s lustful entertainment, baby!

Spiritual Archives reviews Berlin Backyards

Berlin Backyards

In the creative experience of Gilles Aubry (Swiss sound artist living in Berlin) references are a recurring use of field recordings and, at the same time, an evident interest for some characters of musique concrète. Gilles deals also with electronics and computer programming, with results ranging from experimentation to improvisation, matters handled with personal interpretation and elaborative approach. His discography includes a release on Creative Sources (as SwiftMachine) and a participation (this year) to “Berlin Electronics” on Absinth Records. Moreover, he is involved in other projects (Monno, The Same Girl), author of sound installations and protagonist of live performances.

This new disc issued by Crónica exactly shows the side of Aubry devoted to (re)construct environmental recordings (this is what happens listening to the eight untitled tracks of the album).
Despite the use of multiple sources taken from various locations in Berlin, their perfect assemblage makes “Berlin Backyards” a work surprisingly uniform. In fact the pieces could be considered eight movements of a suite because of the continuity that each gives to the previous one, almost like a single recording from a single source. All the material has been treated to produce an indistinct mass of spatial sound, obtained with a fusion of daily life moments captured from the natural/animal world or extracted from the human living. Through his narration of what is around us, Aubry provides passages of musique concrète at highest levels.

via Spiritual Archives

What’s this blog for?

Every now and then we need to (re)think how we communicate.

For a few months now, we’ve been considering the idea of creating a blog, something that could focus on the day-to-day news of Crónica and the artists with whom we work, keeping the main website for more permanent information and listing of releases. So, very soon, blog.cronicaelectronica.org will be the place for small and somewhat irregular news on all fronts of activity — new releases and podcasts, of course, but also related releases in other labels, events and anything else we may find interesting. The old feed will be kept exclusively for the podcasts, that will nevertheless also be announced here.

We’re still fine-tuning everything, so please be patient :)

“Täuschung” reviewed by Etherreal

Peu d’infos disponibles à propos de Davor Mikan, si ce n’est que l’artiste qui sort cet album sur le fameux label portugais est autrichien. A l’écoute de Täuschung que l’on considérera jusqu’à preuve du contraire comme son premier CD, le lien avec ses compatriotes de chez Mego nous apparaît comme tout à fait naturel, dans un registre plus proche de Pita que de Fennesz.

Avec ses 38 minutes pour 31 pistes, Täuschung possède déjà un petit quelque chose d’expérimental. Compilation de vignettes synthétiques, de tentatives musicales ou bruitistes, mélange de musique mathématique et de synthèse graphique, à moins que ce ne soit l’inverse. Mis à part quelques rares pièces de 2 à 4 minutes, pour la plupart regroupées en fin d’album, cet album ne semble être qu’un regroupement d’idées et expérimentations menées pendant 4 ans sur divers outils informatiques, idées se résumant en fragments de 10 secondes à 1’30. Ca laisse peu de temps, et a posteriori on se dit que si toutes ces idées avaient été développées et agencées en pièces réellement composées, on aurait pu obtenir ici un album à la fois intéressant et sensible.

Cela dit, bien que dominé par tous les glitches et autres data errors possibles et inimaginables, l’album de Davor Mikan n’est pas pour autant complètement dénué de sensibilité, mais l’Autrichien a l’art d’achever ses morceaux dès qu’une mélodie pointe le bout de son nez (Gespenster Und Lippenstift, Ein Komplettes Drama) et de se moquer de nous en donnant à l’un de ces morceaux un smiley pour titre ( ; o). A la manière de Fennesz, ces mélodies sont régulièrement salies (Cleaning My Graves I), ou hachées, fracturées, enchevêtrées dans des amas de glitchs bruitistes sur les magnifiques : o, s ou Riss, complètement cachées même derrière un mur de micro-bruitages électroniques (Das Gewitter Hat Sich In Eine Bahnhofshalle Zurückgezogen, Ein Tag).

En dehors de ces tentatives mélodiques, l’Autrichien laisse la part belles aux souffles grésillants, saturations, crépitements, frétillements, larsens et crissements, cassures brutales, entre-chocs métalliques, s’essayant à la musique électro-acoustique contemporaine sur Schon Halb Verwest et proposant quelques moments de répit en diminuant le tempo et les agressions sonores au profit de la douceur de notes limpides de laptop sur Glattes, Vince, ou encore Der Eisverkäufer Explodiert Einfach.

Certes pas inintéressant, Täuschung laisse quand même une impression de pas fini. C’est un peu dommage puisque tous les éléments nécessaires à un bon album sont présents, mais peut-être que Täuschung arrive un peu trop tard.

Fabrice Allard

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Touching Extremes

Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela recorded these files from 2002 to 2007, assembling the result in a multi-faceted patchwork that fuses improvisation, electronic, sampladelia and musique concrete. Surprisingly, after a couple of headphone sessions – in which, admittedly, this writer admired the quality of the studio work and the clever methods of combination applied by the duo – I gave the CD a try in my overall favourite listening setting: tranquil evening, open windows, moderate volume. The music became a great active ambience: incredibly rich, complex, full of chiaroscuro yet flowing without obstacles, sounding extremely natural to the ears. In a word, rewarding. To achieve this effect, @C taped several among the musicians with whom they had an artistic relation in the above mentioned time span (most names are not really familiar to yours truly, though Neil Davidson and Raymond MacDonald are well known in this place). Not that you can spot someone, as the timbral personalities get thoroughly mashed by a “quest for the unidentifiable” that makes Carvalhais and Tudela define them as “sampled guests”, although they also describe this work as a homage to the involved artists. So what does all this mean in terms of sonic manoeuvre? The definitive picture is one of technical excellence, a little less heart (but it’s not mandatory for this kind of stuff) and the will to discern deeper implications in something that, in all probability, is not containing them. It does remain a very good release, whose real value is not explicable on a single listen. This record needs persistence and attention.

Massimo Ricci

Limited release: Unique Clouds by Miguel Leal

Unique clouds

Kant, I think, only looked at the sky in beautiful weather.
M. Serres

Clouds have always been objects of fascination with their arrogant complexity and their role as catalysts for the imagination. There being no way to precisely measure them or restrict their behaviour to a deterministic regime, they have been frequently seen as amorphous or formless objects, monstrosities or aberrations of nature, signs of the random noise of the world.

Clouds are always in a transitory state and for this reason we say that they do not have permanent qualities. In short, clouds do not have qualities and it is absurd to individually catalogue them.

Unique Clouds presents a limited series of 10 stamps. Each stamp includes a single drawing that can be reproduced unlimitedly, on any media, in any colour and in any position. Indeed, these stamps are unique works that can generate an infinity number of multiples.

Continue reading “Limited release: Unique Clouds by Miguel Leal”

New release: Is That You?

Is That You? cover

As its 35th installment, Crónica is pleased to add to its well curated catalogue TU M’s “Is That You?”

“Is That You?” invites you to become a solo protagonist in an imaginary soundtrack. While embracing you in an ocean of orchestral delight, the delicate arrangements and the overall amplitude of the piece’s resonance carry you across a 23 minute drama full of beauty and intrigue.

Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli’s improvised recordings stem from carefully written evocations of orchestral brass and wood colors which are later reprocessed live. TU M’s performance is yet another level of evocation, building concurrent arrays of sound flux full of instrumental warmth and vivid organics.

TU M’ are meager in words about their music, but this sparseness finds a balance in the expressivity of their music.

Continue reading “New release: Is That You?”

“Täuschung” reviewed by Gaz-Eta

Austrian sound artist Davor Mikan is not someone I’m all too familiar with. His main purpose in the musical realm is to develop music through a series of algorithmic variables. He admits he uses generative graphic-tools along with granular synthesis in order to transform sound. The pieces on “Täuschung” were developed over the span of four years. What’s most interesting is Mikan confesses to forgetting what his original ideas were behind these pieces. Any emotions associated with this music is lost four years after they were initially made. In listening to the thirty one short tracks within this CD, one gets a sense of total chaos. Strangeness of the sounds is eerily evident everywhere. From the glitches that are incongruent through to the blasts and sudden variations in speed, timbre and tone. Blasts, spurts and extreme shifts in direction is what makes this album unpredictable. From lo-fi, harsh glitches through to imminent confusion, I can only recommend this album to the fans of hardcore noise.

Tom Sekowski