This is the first work I hear by Pedro Rebelo, who studied in Edinburgh music and architecture. He did “participatory projects involving communities in Belfast, Mare, Rio de Janeiro, Portugal and Mozambique”, sound installations and concerts. For this work, he uses recordings he made at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Braga, Portugal. A place for research, where he followed those involved “working on a project in the area of food safety”. He recorded the sonic environment, which later resulted in a sound installation piece and a further exploration that is this cassette. I can’t say to what extent Rebelo uses sound processing or if all of this is perhaps just a collage of sounds tape on-site. Also, I have no idea how much of this uses repetition in the form of samples or loops. In both cases, I would think there are some processing and some use of loops. I might be wrong of course. To say this is a collage of sound is not far from the truth. And a great collage this surely is. There are lots of machines sounds here, whirring, buzzing, sawing off electrical charges all around; from a giant hall of machines into a small freezer. Rebelo takes both macro and micro shoots of the place (maybe even nano shoots), which in their combined state deliver a beautiful piece of electro-acoustic music. Some sounds are shifted around and return in other places, some only have a brief existence. This is industrial music without being very industrial I guess. The two pieces, together about thirty minutes, are well-made, changing throughout, never resting or overstaying their welcome; two fine slabs of concrete music. (FdW)
In a time where human contact is restricted for safety reasons, contact in this work takes place by — literally — listening closely to the sounds of objects which are very much part of my domestic daily life. During April 2020, I collected a series of sounds around my house on Sunnyside Street (Belfast, NI) including a wide variety of textures captured with different types of contact microphones, and multiple layers of electromagnetic interference caused by the growing use of electronic devices and the internet. These recordings form the basis of an exploration of the micro and extra-human sounds produced by the physical and virtual objects such as the radiator, the kettle, the shower, or the internet. Sunnyside intertwines these elements to reinforce repetition, discovery, detail and loss of perception of time that characterises the experience of many during our current life in confinement.
Matilde Meireles is a recordist, sound artist, and researcher who makes use of field recordings to compose site-oriented projects focused on sound. Her projects often have a multi-sensorial approach to ‘site’ which draws from her studies and experience in areas such as field-recording, site-specific visual arts and design.
She completed a PhD in Sonic Arts at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast. She was also appointed as a Research Fellow on several projects at Queen’s examining the role that immersive technologies can play in the development of new digital narratives.
Her work often highlights collaboration and participation as catalysts for a shared understanding of place, developing project-based or long-term collaborations. Matilde is also part of OSSO Colectivo, an interdisciplinary collective based in Portugal.
Even in Kruger National Park (South Africa), a huge subtropical area, crossed by many rivers and by the Tropic of Capricorn, hosting the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga, it is possible to identify a sharp division between natural and constructed landscapes. The latter are definitely smaller and made almost exclusively to allow the tourists to visit these locations and enjoy a unique landscape. In contrast to the European landscape, where this difference is softer and the countryside is largely the result of an anthropic adaptation, here indigenous nature, inhospitable for human beings, is preserved as it actually is. Tourists are confined within some highly delimited areas, often with high fences and high-tension electric enclosures. As it also usual in any park, there are souvenir shops, restaurants and shelters for the tourists, and several rest areas. Philip Samartzis and Eric La Casa recorded the sounds of Captured Space over ten days. Because of the strict regulations of the park, which the two artists initially ignored, every audio recording concerning the open spaces was made on a vehicle, or inside the environments they lodged in during the night. Most of the time the sound was “far†from the field recorders, but eventually for the project this turned out to be a great creative possibility, rather than a limitation. The duo could physically report the reality of an uncontaminated yet claustrophobic space, where human beings are just passing by, while animals paradoxically are more free than the exotic mix of people who are constrained by their environment. The work by Sarartzis and La Casa might look controversial, due to the way it was made, but it depicts a “non-ordinary realityâ€, by showing a quite regulated context. The final result is some brilliant and rich recordings, cleverly spatialized and full of unconventional sounds. Aurelio Cianciotta
Composed with materials generated by Miguel A. GarcÃa and Oscar Martin in a meeting in the town of Apodaka, in Alava, Basque country, in the year 2015, this electroacoustic piece was originally released by the label Rhizome.s. Never completely satisfied with the result, during this confinement, Miguel A. GarcÃa decided to revise it, reworking the mix, giving another dimension to the sounds and being more precise in the dynamics. Kularrate is constructed from purely electronic sounds, a mix of the usual no-input mixer by Miguel and the digital sounds of Oscar Martin (a.k.a. Noish), which were later manipulated and composed by Miguel. The result is an electro-acoustic piece, with rough sounds, like rust, that paradoxically was created in a completely rural environment, with the only distraction of some children that all the time were curious about the process. The atmosphere of the piece is a little dark and dense, with slight tints of threat… maybe a warning for those children to let us work quietly in our sound laboratory.
Miguel A. GarcÃa, also known as Xedh, is an artist resident in Bilbao who works on the field of experimental music and sound art. Trained in Fine Arts, he works on electroacoustic composition and improvisation, using sources obtained from the manipulation of electrical devices, sometimes mixing these with sounds of acoustic instruments and field recordings.
Oscar Martin is a sound artist, independent researcher and programmer. His practice could be understood as a knowledge device where art, science and technology hybridize and converge from an unorthodox and experimental approach. From the sound dimension, his pieces propose to encourage active listening and expand our perception through the psychoacoustic experience of the phenomenon of the emergence of structures and patterns at the limits of chaos and order.
Tracklist:
Kularrate (25:38)
Composed by Miguel A. GarcÃa
Original sound materials by Miguel A. GarcÃa & Oscar Martin
It’s a funny need to want to introduce an artist in every blog-post but by now I can safely assume that Rutger ‘Machinefabriek‘ Zuydervelt needs no further introduction. And, with over 60 albums released since 2009, Bruno Duplantshould need no introduction either – although I must confess his name is not very familiar to me. Shame on me, it seems!
Their first collaboration album, created from ‘field recordings, instruments and processing’ is released on the Crónica label. The two (+- 22 minute) tracks ‘of pure sound exploration’ were created without ‘long discussions or conceptual heavy-handedness’ – so they may be viewed as ‘improvised’ somehow, even though they were created by swapping sound files.
The fact that each artist’s contribution is indistinguishable shows that they are well-matched. This is not a ‘first you – then me’ mix: both tracks feel like a complete composition.
The French titles reflect the current times, even though the sounds were recorded in 2019: L’Incertitude means Uncertainty. The first track Le Doute (doubt) is full of haunting suspense; the second is called L’espoir (hope) and is indeed more peaceful even though some incertitude remains lurking underneath.Â
SÃria ist das Projekt der portugisischen Elektronik / Perkussionsmusikerin und Sängerin Diana Combo.
Boa-Lingua ist Ihr zweites Album nach dem 2016 erschienenen Debüt und ist eher zufällig entstanden, denn die Aufnahmen stammen von Übungen und Sessions, die nicht zwingend zu einem Album führen sollten. Die Musik der Portugiesin ist ein dunkler elektronischer Soundscape. Drones drehen sich um sich selbst, wabernde Soundteppiche ziehen auf und eine melancholische Stimmung umkreist den Hörer. Allerdings arbeitet sie sehr akzentuiert. Hier ist nichts überladen, nein die Geräusche, Perkussionen und Sounds sind eher wie ein elektronischer Post Rock arrangiert. Die Stücke atmen alle sehr viel Luft, obwohl trotzdem am Ende ein dichter, den Hörer umspannender Sound entsteht.
Das liegt vermutlich an den ausgefeilten Arrangements der Stücke, die dem Hörer sehr viele Feinheiten zum Entdecken anbietet.
Gekrönt wird dieser spannende Sound durch den Gesang der Künstlerin. Dieser klingt sehr fremdartig, wird oft elektronisch verzerrt und unterliegt viel Hall und wirkt auf mich, der die Worte nicht verstehen kann, mehr wie ein zusätzliches Instrument. Das Timbre erinnert durchaus ein wenig an die große Lisa Gerrad die ebenso wie die fremdartigen Vocals durchaus auch an deren Band Dead Can Dance erinnert.Â
Allerdings bewegen sich alle 9 Stücke im eher sakralen und düsteren Bereich, euphorische Klänge kommen hier nicht wirklich auf.
In Gesamtheit ist Boa-LÃngua eine sehr gelungene Kombination aus spannender (Post)Elektronik und fesselnder Gesangsarbeit. Musik wie Gesang zieht den Hörer, der sich auf diese Atmosphäre einlassen kann, tief in seinen Bann.
Eine solch ausgefallene Produktion erfordert natürlich auch eine ausgefallene Veröffentlichungsform. Entgegen dem Vinylboom hat man sich hier jedoch nicht für dieses Medium, sondern für das eigentlich längst vergessene Medium „Musikkassette“ entschieden. Das wird natürlich nicht zu einem Verkaufshit führen, aber dafür ist diese sensible und emotionale Musik sowieso nicht gemacht. Daher ist die wunderschön gemachte MC auf nur 100 Stück limitiert, für alle anderen Interessenten gibt es das Album als Download bei Bandcamp. Wolfgang Kabsch