“Hidden Name” reviewed by Liability Webzine

En terme d’ambient, peu aujourd’hui arrivent à faire évoluer un genre qui semble être rendu à un point de non-retour. Cela n’empêche en rien de voir nombre de disques sortir et qui ont bien souvent cette beauté glaciale et l’imprégnation d’espaces sonores infinis. Stephan Mathieu et Janek Schaefer se sont fait depuis plusieurs années déjà des spécialistes de ces plongées en apnée qui se révèlent être toujours aussi fascinantes même si, à chaque fois, on pense avoir tout entendu sur la question. Les deux hommes se sont rencontrés pour la première fois en 2002 lors du Mutek, le “festival international de musique, son et nouvelles technologies” qui a lieu tous les ans à Montréal, et se sont suivis dans différents évènements musicaux par la suite. Finalement, c’est l’année dernière, lors du Musica Genera Festival (Pologne), qu’ils ont décidé d’allier leurs talents pour un projet commun. Ils entreprennent alors de s’enfermer pendant une semaine dans un manoir du sud de l’Angleterre (le Manor Farm House qui n’est autre que la demeure John Tavener) en utilisant toute forme d’instruments qu’ils pouvaient trouver. Ainsi Mathieu et Schaefer ne se sont pas contentés d’enregistrer de longues nappes électroniques mais ont usé de nombreux instruments acoustiques en même temps que des enregistrements sonore comme la simple respiration d’un individu ou des sons environnementaux pris au petit matin.

Donc oui, Hidden Name est principalement un disque d’ambient mais pas seulement. Il intègre dans son processus des ingrédients propres aux concepts de la musique acoustique, balayant ainsi le cliché éculé d’une musique rectiligne et sans beaucoup d’âme. Hidden Camera, bien qu’introspectif, se revèle être beaucoup plus chaleureux qu’il n’y paraît. Il distille une musique enrobante qui, avec ses différences de tonalités, amène l’auditeur à se plonger pleinement dans cet univers aussi curieux qu’envoûtant. La rencontre entre Stephan Mathieu et Janek Schaefer a donc porté ses fruits. Mais pouvait-on en douter tant ils ont marqué de manière importante le genre ces dernières années en multipliant les projets les plus audacieux ?

Fabien

“The Wayward Regional Transmissions” reviewed by Gaz-Eta

Following his excellent reconstruction of Jewish culture in Cracow and industrial revolution revived in Nowa Huta on “Into The Void”, Ran Slavin continues on his quest in audio-art on his latest release. Moving smack centre into the Middle East region, he brings up ghosts of past and present. Accompanied by a booklet full of detailed aerial photographs [and regular photos too], Slavin’s sound is about the micro as opposed to the larger picture. When he mutates the bulbultarang [as played by Ahura Ozeri] on four of the album’s eight tracks, the sound is unreal. Of course, the instrument is still recognizable, but the technique that Slavin uses to cut up the sounds into little pockets of audible air is phenomenal. It’s as if one were dining at a fancy buffet but was only allowed to eat certain foods slowly, without having visibility or access to other food groups. Imagine someone playing with a fader – turning level up and down incessantly for a long span of time – while some highly rhythmic Arabic music was being played all around. Much of the sounds processed by Slavin’s electronic equipment and computer are jumpy and full of static. Large portion of this is granular and can be compared to lightly buzzing radio waves. “Shelters and Peace” features a constant flickering light beat [that actually sounds more like a light switch] that is wrapped around a scan of satellites, radio waves and various noises. The most rhythm oriented piece on the album is “DAT Beats”, which features a cut’n’paste of various street musicians playing their hearts out. Moshe Eliahu’s ud on “Jericho 6 AM” is wrapped up tight in a salad of snaps, crackles and bleeps, but in the end, still holds on to its majestic beauty. This isn’t an album for everyone. I can only recommend it to those with an accepting ear and an open mind.

Tom Sekowski

“Hidden Name” reviewed by Loop

Here we have the work of two renowned musicians from the experimental scene: German Stephan Mathieu [interviewed on loop] and English Janek Schaefer. After sharing bills in several festivals and their common interest on the manipulation of sounds, they decided to work on Hidden Name in a pastoral place in the South of England. Over there they made some field recordings and used old records found in the attic of the house where they spent a week for the making of this album. Further other recordings that each one contributed to it. They create heavy layers of sound combining them with field recordings, drones and hidden melodies. All of this material is edited later at the York Music Center that was built specially to showcase loudspeaker music. The result is a stunning soundtrack for a wide open space charged with a nostalgic feeling that draws a beautiful soundscape.

Guillermo Escudero

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Bodyspace

Por altura de Essays on Radio: Can I Have 2 Minutes of Your Time?, compilação dedicada ao meio radiofónico lançada pela Crónica, bastaram a The Beautiful Schizophonic dois minutos para, através de um conto de fadas urbano, declarar uma sensação de enclausuramento e incapacidade de comunicar verbalmente: assim se sucedeu através do aproveitamento de um excerto do filme Lost in Translation em que a personagem Charlotte assumia, por insinuação e voz trémula, que a angústia a consumia à medida que se tornava mais óbvia a ruptura no (já de si escasso) diálogo sentimental que ia sustentando a relação entre ela e o seu namorado fotógrafo. Desta feita, Jorge Mantas, a mão que embala The Beautiful Schizophonic, decide-se por um empreendimento que pode contrariar o martírio existencial vivido por Charlotte: desbloqueia as vias da exteriorização munindo-se da poesia de Marcel Proust – servida subliminarmente em surdina (e nos títulos das faixas de Musicamorosa) – e de um drone que é cada vez mais a ciência pela qual deve ser ponderado a atribuição de um prémio Nobel ao autor que conhece, uma vez mais, edição da label Crónica.

Pode-se, primeiramente, até frisar os benefícios potenciais de Musicamorosa como disco em que os drones contínuos, apesar de por vezes estranhos, evidenciam a capacidade de resolver, em prol de gente com um apetite mais experimental, todos aqueles incomodativos impasses entre o aperto de mão e a consumação. É viável esperar tamanhos benefícios tónicos de um disco que, nas paisagens sonoras elaboradas, sabe conjugar componentes orgânicas e digitais enquanto gere o percurso climático de um momento ambiguamente sexual, muito à semelhança do que se encontrava latente no belíssimo Lisbon, gravado por Keith Fullerton Whitman na Galeria Zé dos Bois.

Em termos de processo, Musicamorosa resulta da examinação ponderada das propriedades de que pode um drone mais benigno usufruir se for sua intenção transparecer um estado emocional que procura um elevado encosto junto à graciosidade atmosférica dos Stars of the Lid ou Eluvium. Drone esse que conhece adequada companhia no esplendor pastoral da guitarra que, em “dans la chambre magique d’une sibylle”, se contém e depois extravasa uma acústica embrulhada, reforçando assim a ideia de que Musicamorosa ambiciona a exteriorização do sublime acumulado aos livros nas estantes e figuras femininas semi-nuas em quadros nas paredes, pretendendo também servir como complemento instrumental às confissões expostas no blog venusexaminaomeucoracao.blogspot.com, mantido pelo Jorge Mantas sob o disfarce do personagem romântico criado à medida deste universo.

Alguém como Madonna, que o mundo mais devasso conhece pela promiscuidade celebrada durante a fase Erotica / Na cama com…, escrevia no seu livro Sex que apreciava pillow talk quando bem feita. Musicamorosa satisfaz os requisitos afrodisíacos da mais desejável pillow talk, crendo que pode ser espremida poesia às tais falinhas mansas que se segredam intercaladamente na cama. Jorge Mantas adapta à sua vontade esse conceito de estímulo, silenciando a complicação dos recursos verbais e, dessa forma, simplificando a mensagem que mais desembaraçadamente transita sob a forma de linguagem universal de drones envolventes na sua fluência circular, frequências aurais que serviriam idealmente ao flirt telepático entre Charlotte e Bob Harris de Lost in Translation, sobreposições formadas em espiral que sumarizam a sexualidade cerebral conforme observada por Björk em “Enjoy”, produzida a meias com Tricky e incluída em Post. Tudo isto sem sequer deixar de parte a cortesia e permuta de situações – e o jogo daí resultante – que se descobre ao momento em que o herói romântico cede a palavra à musa Cécile Schott (mais conhecida por Colleen), para que ela – com toda a classe do continente Europeu – possa declamar Proust no seu próprio quarto em Paris.

Pelo título que escolhe para si, Musicamorosa quase suplica que decorram debaixo da manta os desenlaces a que incentiva por meio da sua estética declaradamente horizontal. E convenhamos que existe qualquer coisa de infinitamente nobre no poeta que exercita solitariamente a sua verve zeloso de que os outros possam aproveitá-la acompanhados. Até que alguém se decida a inventar uma quinta estação, não existe melhor temporada que o Outouno para testar intimamente a eficácia a essa bênção que mereceu o conveniente título de Musicamorosa.

Miguel Arsénio

“The Wayward Regional Transmissions” reviewed by Octopus

Artiste multimédia, touche-à-tout de la création digitale et de l’ouverture acoustique, l’israélien Ran Slavin s’est entouré de ses compatriotes Ahuva Ozeri, joueuse accomplie de bubultarang, sorte de cithare indienne à trois cordes, et Moshe Eliaha, joueur d’oud, pour définir les contours floutés de cet étrange voyage sonore. A la fois épique et évanescent comme une traversée fantômatique du désert rajasthani poussée par les vents, The Wayward Regional Transmissions transporte l’auditeur entre abstractions click’n’cuts et colorations orientales vagabondes sans sacrifier une once de cohérence à l’ensemble du disque. Plus que simplement méditatif, le résultat sonore s’avère étrangement intuitif tant les lignes harmoniques ainsi créées combinent fragmentations digitales et introspections instrumentales avec une profondeur troublante. Un exercice d’équilibriste sur un fil de cyber-sadhu.

Laurent Catala

“Hidden Name” reviewed by Cyclic Defrost

Strewn together during a stay at a Manor Farm House in the South of England, Hidden Name invents its own mythic past. Its swooning, woody tones and swathes of haunting, echoing noise wipe away time’s contributions and seek out original memory, a universal stillness, a tantalizing quiver of immobility.

Seductive subtleties are present in the manners in which clusters of piano, flute and cello form new tonal configurations while always seeking union with a sky of pealing electronics. Compositions such as ‘Fugue’ have the fluid motion and expansiveness of the sea, as it cradles digital debris and bells that toll and reverberate. Other pieces, especially ‘Quartet For Flute, Piano And Cello’, maintain this fluttering delicacy and pendulous musing while at the same time embracing a grim eloquence, as the gurgling electronics pick up some grit and grime from the guttural, sibilant scraping of a violin. Such moments stand out as fleeting nightmares in an album that otherwise breathes with audible regularity.

Pieces on a whole are short, yet compositionally measured so as to convey an enriched sense of depth and vividness. At just under two minutes in length, ‘Belle Etoile’, with its clanking piano refrain, is slowly filled out by incidental sounds and light digital nicks and scratches, until all of a sudden the heavy beating of rain reveals that one is caught outside in a wide-open pasture of red-singed autumn gardens. ‘The Planets’, meanwhile, is a voluptuous twenty-minute composition which is draped in tender ambience and flickering, theremin-like pulses that continue to divulge these solemn, graceful themes.

Max Schaefer

“Hidden Name” reviewed by Vital

Ah two busy bees, Janek Schaefer probably more at the forefront than Stephan Mathieu, but both are always to be found somewhere. This is not the first time that they work together. In 2003 they released a work that was made in a hotel room in Montreal, together with Radboud Mens and Timeblind (see Vital Weekly 379). In ‘Hidden Name’ they also work physically together, going to Manor Farmhouse in Child Okeford to find there a piano, clarinet, cello, flute, trumpet, accordion, sitar, singing bowls, bells, voices, games and records, plus of course, being both dedicated lovers of field recordings, the surrounding itself. Afterwards the work was edited into what is now present on this CD, eleven tracks, and it damn hard to tell what is what here. There might be crackles of vinyl, or the squeaking of a door, but the vast majority is made up of densely layered patterns of recordings of the instruments. They are woven together in such a way that it is hard to tell what is what here.

However it seems that roles are this: Schaefer plays anything to do with field recordings and records and Mathieu’s part is playing the instruments, but also processing the latter inside the computer. Mathieu does what he does best: wave them together into a finely woven cloth of sound, that feels warm and cosy. Schaefer’s addition (or starting point, depends on how these things should be seen) works very well, it makes both a contrast to Mathieu’s work, but it’s at the same time it gets soaked into the music, and makes a natural companion. This is a major tour de force of eleven beauties. Great stuff from great minds.

Frans de Waard

“The Wayward Regional Transmissions” reviewed by Blow Up

Ran Slavin è un artista multimediale di Tel Aviv che si occupa di musica, cinema, video arte e installazioni; ne ricordiamo un buon CD qualche tempo fa ma ha prodotto soprattutto lavori per performance live e d’arte contemporanea. In “The Wayward Regional Transmissions” presente otto trace in cui media perfettamente estetica avant-glitch e folk mediorientale; non pensiate perè ai glitch-pop e glitch-folk tanto in voga qualche anno fa. Qui tutto è estremamente sommesso e intimista, la catarsi elettronica è un mero strumento attraverso cui si lasciano evaporare campioni di corde (e, in un paio di pezzi, sublimi straniti vocalizzi femminili) che ondeggiano come odalische in uno spazio aperto, desertico, annichilito da un caldo soffocante. Solo a tratti le ritmiche prendono corpo (DAT Beats) ma anche allora tutto è funzionale alla rappresentazione di un universo in cui ipermodernità e tradizione si sfocano e sfumano, quasi metafora di quel conflito tra spinte al futuro e dolorosi rigurgiti della memoria che affligge le civiltà di quelle terre

Stefano I. Bianchi

“Hidden Name” reviewed by Chain DLK

After meeting at the MUTEK Festival in 2002, sharing the bills on various festivals all over the world and a previous collaborative effort in 2003 along with Radbound Mens and Timeblind (“Quality Hotel” out on the Mutek label), Stephan Mathieu and Janeck Schaefer decided to spend some days together in the home of a classical composer in the English countryside and there they recorded a huge amount of material that they later reprocessed and assembled in York Music Research Center. Basically Mathieu plays all the instruments and Schaefer does all the field recordings and in most of the tracks you can recognize both artist’s distinctive trademarks but sometimes the symbiosis works so well and results in a new, unorthodox glitch-psychedelia. The highlight here is the sixth track called “Quartet for Flute, Piano and Cello”, where you can hear pops and crackles of a worn-out vinyl over a complex sound patchwork somehow resembling Ehlers’ “Plays” series. Due to its amazing sound quality it surely sounds better through loudspeakers rather than headphones. Recommended.

Andrea Vercesi

“The Wayward Regional Transmissions” reviewed by Goddeau

Kort na de Tweede Wereldoorlog suste Europa zijn geweten door een opgejaagd volk eindelijk zijn land terug te geven. Dat land, zo liet een oud en heilig boek weten, behoorde hen toe omdat hun God het hen geschonken had. Dat die grond intussen door iemand anders ingenomen was, was niet meer dan een vervelend euvel dat dra uit de weg zou worden geruimd.

Een slordige zestig jaar later is dat euvel nog steeds niet verholpen en worden begrippen als “martelaar”, “terrorist” en “legitieme verdediging” met in bloed gedrenkte woorden geschreven. Het onbegrip, de woede en de haat die aan beide kanten blijven opflakkeren vinden hun weg naar het dagelijkse leven en worden nu en dan vertaald naar geschriften en andere kunstuitingen. De vraag stellen of het ook maar iets betekent, is ze cynisch beantwoorden.

Op The Wayward Regional Transmissions stelt Ran Slavin ze toch, zij het verborgen en omfloerst. De audiovisuele kunstenaar confronteert op dit album traditie met moderniteit en laat ze in een utopische dialoog met elkaar treden. In niet minder dan de helft van de nummers (“Village”, “Wayward Initial”, “The Silence” en “Hagali”) werkt Slavin samen met Ahuva Ozeri, die in Israël bekend werd met haar traditionele klaagliederen in de traditie van Mizrahit-muziek. Maar het dagelijkse leven in Tel Aviv sluipt duidelijk binnen, want maar al te vaak weerklinkt in de nummers de grimmige realiteit.

Glitch en electro domineren “Village” zo sterk dat elke verzoeningspoging tussen Slavin en Ozeri op voorhand dreigt te mislukken. In de andere nummers weten beide stijlen elkaar echter wel te vinden en is er sprake van een echte kruisbestuiving. Zo ademt “Wayward Initial” paranoia en vervreemding uit, niet ondanks maar dankzij Ozeri, en klinkt “Hagali” op een hedendaagse manier net heel tijdloos. Ook “The Silence” weet met zijn vervreemdende karakter te boeien, en de klanken die Ozeri uit de bulbul tarang (een Indisch snaarinstrument) weet te halen, vloeien wonderwel over in Slavins clicks and cuts.

Moshe Eliahu tracht in “Jericho 6 AM” met een ud iets gelijkaardigs te verwezenlijken maar hier is de grootsteedse angst te sterk aanwezig om aandacht te besteden aan iets anders dan kille electro. Wanneer Eliahu ten langen leste toch gehoor krijgt, klinkt zijn stem zo ver weg dat alleen de echo nog weerklinkt. Nergens anders weet Slavin het onbestemde gevoel van een constante dreiging beter op te roepen: het geluidentapijt barst van de motieven maar geen van hen schreeuwt luidkeels om aandacht. Elke gil weerklinkt alleen binnen het eigen hoofd.

In schril contrast hiermee staat het opgejaagde en opgefokte “Kiosk In Furadis”, dat een popsong door de mangel haalt in wat klinkt als een frenetiek switchen tussen pop, drum ’n bass en statische ruis. “Shelters And Peace” daarentegen grossiert in onbestemde geluiden en klikkende ritmes. Het nummer zweert bij de herhaling van leidmotieven die op een afwisselende geluidssterkte en toonhoogte te horen zijn. “DAT Beats” haalt een gelijkaardige tour de force uit maar gooit er schijnbaar willekeurig allerlei stoorzenders en vaag herkenbare geluiden (vooral stemmen) tussen.

Het werk van Ran Slavin floreert vooral binnen de besloten en veilige kunstwereld, en ook The Wayward Regional Transmissions richt zich in de eerste plaats op die doelgroep. Maar net zoals het een illusie was om te geloven dat de staat Israël zich zonder kleerscheuren zou oprichten, is het naïef om te geloven dat Slavin in zijn cocon kon blijven functioneren. Bedoeld of niet, Slavins werk kan niet worden losgekoppeld van de dagelijkse onzekerheid die zijn thuisland teistert. Het geeft aan The Wayward Regional Transmissions onbewust een meerwaarde, ten goede of ten kwade.

Jurgen Boel