“Product 06” reviewed by Gaz-Eta

Sixth in a series of Product releases on the Portuguese Cronica label, “Product 06” features a variety of artists firmly rooted in the electro-acoustic / laptop / experimental side of the spectrum.

Polish composer Pawel Grabowski says this about his piece “But I’m Not” which opens this compilation: “But I’m Not is just one, 20 minutes long track combining voices, field recordings and broken electronic sounds. It was recorded the day before I moved in to a new place, with most of my stuff laying around in boxes, the only thing that I had unpacked was my laptop and those few sounds that I used for composing this piece. The whole music was recorded that very last night in this candlelit room…” The elongated piece is a continuum study in space sounds – what sounds like asteroids slowly drifting in the sky is actually Pawel appropriating voices. What resembles creaking doors is Pawel experimenting with twisted sounds on his laptop. Truly a haunting and mesmerising take on one man sitting in an empty room, alone at night. Portuguese journalist/musician Jorge Mantas, who goes under The Beautiful Schizophonic moniker delights with a ten-part suite “Love Songs for a Psychoacoustic Girl”. Made up of short vignettes that tickle and tease the ears, laptop-processed sounds are windy, shifting and mostly subtle. They run the gamut from tickling drain pipes to gurgling, bubble-drifts to gloom-and-doom appropriations and high-pitched cricket sounds. Though the piece works well as a stand alone, at the end of the suite you’re left gagged and unsatisfied and pleading for more.

Finally, we arrive at the closing “Natureza Morta” by sound/media artist Paulo Raposo and visual/sound artist James Eck Rippie. Nothing on this 19 minute piece suggests that drones are not crucial in the duo’s creative thought process. In fact, the luscious landscapes these two come up with turn out to be like a layered sea of winds, like a caressing ocean full of good tides. Actual wave sounds in fact seem to have made the final mix. In addition, muted jackhammer blows appear, along with cave-like sounds and ethereal samples from short-wave radio. Yet another fine piece to add to the collection of drone-induced library.

Tom Sekowski

“Product 06” reviewed by Blow Up

Arriva al sesto capitolo la serie Product, collana dell’etichetta portoghese Crónica che mette a confronto artisti sonori e visivi da più parti del mondo.

Nell’occasione i graffi grafici di Casey B. Reas fanno da trampolino alle divagazioni foniche di Pawel Grabowski, The Beautiful Schizophonic e James Eck Rippie + Paulo Raposo.

Di questi ultimi il contributo più efficace, natura morta con rumore d’ambiente per giradischi e processing elettronico, alla cui riflessività rispondono le più brute distese di suoni trovati, frequenze radio, onde sinusoidali etc. di Grabowski e la sedicente atmospheric laptopia di The Beautiful Schizophonic (suo anche il quicktime movie allegato), dark-ambient lovecraftiano/lustmordiano fuori tempo massimo. (6/7)

Nicola Catalano

“Product 06” reviewed by Infratunes

Sixième compilation de la série Product initiée par le label Cronica electronica, celle-ci rassemble 4 projets soucieux de varier le propos d’une ambient expérimentale parfois trop rigoriste. L’enjeu, pas impossible, demandait pourtant d’autres efforts.

Ouvrant le bal, Pawel Grabowski imbrique field recordings et drones, reverses et larsens, dans le but d’illustrer cette étrange fatalité, qui veut qu’un citoyen Polonais installé en Irlande ne peut avoir d’autre état d’esprit que celui du désespoir. N’apportant rien de plus à ce qui a déjà été fait dans le domaine, But I’m Not n’a pourtant rien à envier à l’Ariane de Jorge Mantas (The Beautiful Schizophonic), qui réécrit sur effets de masses une nouvelle bande originale au film Eraserhead.

Se contentant de quelques souffles rapportés (Elektra, Nadja) ou d’une promenade en méandres obscurs (Lorelei), Mantas termine en conciliant une nouvelle atmosphère pesante et une chansonnette, légère et hors sujet, extraite du film La captive (Aquatica). Impeccable de lourdeurs, donc, jusqu’au bout.

Pour effacer ses maladresses, il faudra au Product convier les aînés : le Portugais Paulo Raposo et l’Américain James Eck Rippie. Sur Natureza morta, le duo mêle avec inspiration la musique concrète, le field recording et des inserts électroniques choisis. Installant sans y toucher une progression récréative, les deux hommes démontrent que l’Ambient, même expérimentale, a d’autres cartes à jouer que celle, assommante, de l’affliction sans âme.

Grisli

“Product 06” reviewed by Touching Extremes

Sixth in the “Product” series, here comes a beautiful split CD which is rather different from the usual criteria of this ever-so-surprising label, being mostly centred around hypnosis and bewitching soundscapes, with engrossing effects on the psyche as a primary consequence. Ireland-based, Poland-born Pawel Grabowski presents a long composition called “But I’m not”, where obfuscated resonance and electronic haze ensure a lot of room for the mind to roam; his music springs from pretty unrecognizable sources, a malleable yet quite mysterious matter generating what’s the most static piece on the album. Portuguese Jorge Mantas (The Beautiful Schizophonic) who – like Grabowski – has had a recent release on Belgian ambient label Mystery Sea, here offers his most accomplished work to date; “Love songs for a psychoacoustic girl” is made of ten interesting episodes where voices, environmental sounds and samples – even from thrash and death metal – find a unique confluence into an alien marine atmosphere in which subsonics and haunting repetitions get their due space without overstaying their welcome. But the disc’s masterpiece is “Natureza morta”: James Eck Rippie’s fascination with turntables playing looped snippets of classical music is finely balanced by Paulo Raposo’s puzzling digital disturbance and attentive processing. The couple takes our hand to lead an uncomparable dance towards oblivion, forgetting everything else around in almost 20 minutes of blissful indetermination.

Massimo Ricci

”Lengvai / 60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz sound” reviewed by Monochrom

Gintas K presents both the most exciting and the most tedious example of what the label calls “experimental digital post techno” on this double release. But it is also sort of like the victory of the organic and naturally flowing musical structure over the completely structural and structurally constructed approach towards music. But, let’s get things straight beforehand and say first things first.

“Lengvai”, CD one in this double back, consists of five richly structured and multilayered pieces of evolving sounds that build, grow and rise from various subtle sounds into impressive walls of sounds, building up a beat and a groove together with an exciting transition of noises, however small they might be at the beginning, into big parts of accomplished electronic composition. Gintas K keeps the balance between the minimal monotony and the flourishing growth of sounds perfectly while he also keeps an eye on the development of the overall track. Within these rather long tracks (except for the title intro track) you suddenly find yourself groving to beats so tiny and reduced that they are almost inaudible. A stroke of genius far above the multitudes of superficial electronic acts within the cologne school of minimal techno and thereby probably the best electronic whatever release up to now.

From the strictly noise turned to percussion complexity of “Kalgrinda”, where sharply cut white noise, digital clicks and other ticks form a post electronic rhythm group constantly shifting and changing beat patterns, adding complexity and syncopation, to the long winding bleeps and peeps turning into harmony of “Koto” or “Early Set”, Gintas K shows one of the most audacious yet most harmonic approaches to sound experiments within this genre. When the electric guitar sounds in “Kalgrinda” add the opposing layer to the more and more frenzied percussions it is clear that the aim is a fusion of old and new approaches, forfeiting various styles and ways for blandness and conceptually going straight for the main pathway – even if the result is richly masked and adorned. Especially when that track turns into a burning thunderstorm of percussive noise after about a quarter of an hour before dissolving into nothing quite quickly. It is sharp, witty and keen on one side and natural, organic and harmonic at the other side, both at the same time, with a sharp does of eclecticism to round things up.

The other CD in this package is a completely different thing, though. It is exactly what the title says: 60 times 60 seconds of static electronica, changing after exactly sixty seconds into the next groove, layer, beat or whatever it will be. I never had much of anything for those legendary loop records, where every single line on a vinyl record was a single loop, and things like these. The single pieces don’t get their time to evolve, they stand next to each other like commodities on a supermarket shelf, with no life or development of their own. The transition from one to the next is arbitrary and sharp. Maybe some people like that. With a fitting dose of masochism, it is imaginable. On the other hand, lots of people like lots of things and even more things are imaginable. Anyway, in my book this kind of arbitrary strictness doesn’t count for anything, even if it is theoretically appealing and consequently executed.

Fortunately, “Lengvai” is over sixty minutes of great electronic experiments that sounds nothing like experiments and completely able to stand on its own. It bridges a wide area of electronic noise and groove without ever straying to far from its core concept, so that it has compositional precision and overflowing natural abundance at the same time. That may sound like opposites, but every good piece of art has its paradoxes and inherent discrepancies.

“Lengvai / 60 x one minute audio colours of 2kHz sound” reviewed by Balsas.cc

Gintas K (Gintas Kraptavicius) – one of the most renown artists in Lithuanian sound art and experimental electronics scene – had crossed another one nomadic circle through international internet and physical collaboration networks, and in spring of 2006 exported his new release. It‘s a double CD „Lengvai“ (eng. „Easily“) and „60 x One Minute Colours of 2kHz Sound“, presented by acknowledged Portugese label „Cronica“. The CD mirrors the developement of Gintas K style for nearly ten years – style, that is dense of kaleidoscopic post-techno rhythms (from hypnotic ones to those nearly inviting to dance), organized by compositions, based on strict and precisic logic. In a swinging pendulum manner his tracks balance on the boundaries of pure electronic minimalism and overloaden mass of sound, conveyor of synthetic noise. Melodic tunes, gainning uncommon variations and loaden by continuously growing tension, are thrown into the axis of constant rhythmic dynamics. Frequently pure sinewaves and wiggling of the air, sensed by the skin, in Gintas K music ties the high pilotage of sound amplitudes and turns the psycho-sensorics of the listener into the instrument of resonating acoustic adventures.

The Portugese label „Cronica“ is known as a label, specialising on digital experimental electronics and is quite well known in international catalouges of digital sound. Among it‘s releases are works by such famous sound artists as Frans de Waard, Paulo Raposo, Marc Behrens, Pita, Pure, Stephan Mathieu and others. The double CD by Gintas K is a nice discovery along another one path through the up-to-date digital sound aesthetics.

The structure of the release is quite unusual and gripping. It‘s a combination of two conceptually and musically differing CD‘s. The first one – „Lengvai“ – is rather typical for Gintas K style (called „Easily“, the album sounds really easier in comparison with his earlier works). From the very begginings – minimalistic intro presented in a track „Lengvai“ – lucid and bright atmosphere covers all five tracks. Masterly organised and leisurely prolonged rhythmic strands are developed in two longer tracks „Ilgiau ilgiau“ and „Kulgrinda“ (ancient Lithuanian word that describes a path in the middle of swamp). In „Kulgrinda“ the merry-go-round of the sound gets acceleration of rhythmic windings and makes speakers swing from intense mass of melodic sound, twisting around hypnotising chords of overdriven electric guitar (excerpt). However „Koto“ brings back minimalistic and ascetic pureness of synthetic minimalism (excerpt). „Early Set“ – the longest one – consistently dives through all over the scale of dynamics. From slowly running up rhythms of pure frequencies (excerpt) towards another one massive flashpoint – this time the last one. One of the paradoxes of the composition – after sensitively developed paths, leading towards the culmination, unexpected turns are following. This break of compositional stereotypes makes a listener a bit confused and tricked, but step by step compulsive intertwining of musical motives appears.

The second CD „60 x One Minute Colours of 2kHz Sound“ is a conceptually integral work, that consists of sixty compositions that are one minute long. They‘re all based on 2kHz frequency sound, which gets static transformations in every track or, speaking metaphorically, in every colour of pure 2kHz frequency. This CD is not designed for the easy listening. However it‘s full of variety – from microscopic silent passages to physically effective and sometimes almost unbearable frequencies. When listened to at home it can become a sound instalation for space. A possible recipe of listening here can be borrowed from Sachiko M: „Use your head as an instrument“. Moving around the chamber space you hear differing sound (which is quite static in a composition itself). The sound material of this CD was used in sound, light, and space instalation, that had been set up for the festival of electronic music „Jauna muzika 2004“ (Young Music 2004, Vilnius). On the other side, listening to „60 x One Minute Colours of 2kHz Sound“ leads to astonishing time perception. So what at least could be said as a summary sketch for the „60 x One Minute Colours of 2kHz Sound“ is that a spectrum of sixty colours of one frequency offers intensive acoustic experiences, unfolding during careful and quite meditative listening.

Tautvydas Bajarkevicius (aka audio_z)

“King Glitch” reviewed by Black

Release 18 und 19 des portugiesischen Labels Cronica Electronica beweisen, wie unterschiedlich doch Arbeiten im eigentlich doch sehr eng gesteckten Feld, was man gut mit “Glitch-Electronic” betiteln möchte, sein können. BJÖRGULFSSON und OHLSSONs “King Glitch” wirkt verspielt, teilweise sogar mit poppigen oder zumindest Songstruktur ähnelnden Anleihen, die Arbeiten von FREIBAND/BOCA RATON hingegen bewegen sich teilweise fast an der Hörschwelle, arbeiten mit sehr minimalen Strukturen und einfachen Sounds. Interessant, beide Werke gegenüber zu stellen und zu vergleichen, aber auch einzeln große Gebiete, um immer mehr Details zu entdecken.

CS

“Essays on Radio” reviewed by Autres Directions

Agé de deux ans, et fort de 19 références, le label portuguais Cronica a su séduire les amateurs de musiques électroniques expérimentales et bruitistes, du moins ceux qui réussissaient à se procurer leurs disques. De notre côté, la joliesse de Tilia nous avait charmés mais la plupart des compilations éditées par le label, nous avait parfaitement ennuyés.

Essays On Radio : Can I Have 2 Minutes Of Your Time célèbre l’anniversaire de la structure avec 39 artistes qui proposent tous un titre d’environ 2 minutes (de 1’56 à 2’02), titre inspiré par / – réflexion sur la radiophonie. Sur le papier, le disque cumule les invités de marque (Stephan Mathieu, Pure, Pablo Reche, Tilia, Pita, Pimmon). Cependant le format écourté des compositions suggère un grand zapping radio alors que le nombre de participants permet difficilement de s’attarder sur le travail de tel ou tel artiste.

Les intervenants se sont pour la plupart concentrés sur la saturation liée à la compression radiophonique et propose des variations plus ou moins bruitistes, plus ou moins découpées, de sons divers, dans la moindre intention mélodique ou même rarement fluide. La radio, c’est violent, c’est bien connu. On remarque facilement dans cette avalanche de travaux l’œuvre de Tilia qui utilise un sample vocal, Pal et Ran Slavin qui apaisent avec des compositions tranquilles et ambiantes, les sinusoïdes saturées de Christine Fowler ou les signaux électroniques de o.blaat, les grésillements de Autodigest, la poésie atmosphérique de The Beautiful Schizophrenic…

Evidemment indigeste sur la longueur, Essays On Radio compte son lot de confirmations et de découvertes. Bref, réservé encore une fois aux auditeurs confirmés, qui seront peut-être intéressés par un deuxième volume au format DVD.

Stephane

“Happiness Will Befall” reviewed by Octopus

Lawrence English ou l’art de cultiver les paradoxes, tel pourrait être le sous-titre d’un album étonnant. Car de toute évidence, la musique de l’artiste australien n’évoque jamais les plages pour surfeurs ou les zones infestées de crocodiles de son pays. A cent mille lieues de là, c’est dans les contrées froides et brumeuses que cet ami de DJ Olive, Tetuzi Akiyama et Janek Schaefer nous entraîne (alors que le disque est produit à partir de sons et de souvenirs collectés en Asie Pacifique) et de temps à autre, des rumeurs hostiles et effrayantes, sorties d’un lagon hanté de monstres carnassiers, évoquent plus un marais putride d’Estonie qu’un atoll polynésien de carte postale. Quant à savoir si vous aurez envie d’y replonger souvent, vous êtes le seul à connaître la réponse.

Fabrice Vanoverberg

“Happiness Will Befall” reviewed by Loop

This is the debut album on Porto’s Crónica Electrónica label of Lawrence English, a musician, writer and sound artist who is based in Brisbane, Australia. In his works he plays guitar, software design, field recordings, cassettes, turntables and other electronic devices. His sound approach it’s related with concrète musique, minimalism and noise. He creates spectral soundscapes and the improvisation is a method of work to explore new sounds.

He’s discography comprise eleven albums, plus a diverse of sound installations outputs and curated exhibitions worldwide. He has worked with outstanding artists like David Toop, Scanner, Oren Ambarchi, Marina Rosenfeld, DJ Olive, Philip Samartzis, Toshio Kajiwara, Tetuzi Akiyama, Janek Schaefer, among other artists.

The six tracks on ‘Happines Will Befall’ have from very noisy textures to minimalist spaces. ‘Adrift’ hold heavy keyboard notes that create certain tension. The environmental guitar of English hook trembling guitar on ‘Two Weeks I’ll never have again’, as well as heavy noise. This bordering dirty sound is the texture of ‘Within of glass’, alongwith drones as a background, in addition to guitar experimentation. In a clean atmosphere, only with keyboard notes and imperceptible sounds are on ‘I’ve been happy like this’. Treated voices, sounds from the sea to the distant spot, the noise of a train wagon passing, micro digital percussions, are the soundscapes on ‘Parallel [midgap]’. The last track ‘Relocated [UTC]’ it’s my favourite one, so delicate, with only few keyboard notes.

Guillermo Escudero