“Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori” reviewed by Bodyspace


Hikikomori é uma palavra japonesa para designar adolescentes ou adultos que se abstêm de ter “vida social”, optando pelo isolamento e pela clausura. Para muitos, são gente que não cresceu e que nunca foi capaz de superar quaisquer problemas mentais que os afectem. Para outros, são monges dedicados que optam, do alto da sua liberdade, por fugir ao rodopio do dia-a-dia. Os hikikomori não saem de casa durante meses ou anos, não têm amigos, não têm empregos, e provavelmente não têm futuro – quando a sua única fonte de sustento, os pais, morrerem, irão com eles.

Recorrendo a um computador, a vários plug-ins e a velhos videojogos, bem como a outros tantos sons sintetizados, o galego Durán Vázquez procura, em Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori, não uma explicação para este fenómeno, mas a sua tradução em som. É por aí que pelo menos três dos temas aqui presentes têm como título “Solus Ipse”, ou solipsismo – a ideia de que para além do eu existem as experiências do eu, o isolamento e o egoísmo levado a campos extremos.

De uma primeira faixa suave, quase reconfortante e pairando pelo espaço em posição fetal, passamos para um momento mais assustador; imagens de portas e janelas fechando-se sobre si mesmas, restando ao mundo nada mais que as quatro paredes e o tecto de um quarto onde o hikikomori se deitou para fugir e, consequentemente morrer. Hiku Komuro, Hikikomori é um álbum fechado sobre si mesmo, difícil de entender para a generalidade das pessoas. E será por isso, também, que é um retrato fiel da população a quem deu uma banda-sonora, pelo menos até à introdução de “Segunda Natureza”, peça de 26 minutos que soa algo deslocada da primeira metade do disco – ou, até, à sua mais completa antítese, como se o hikikomori se abrisse e ao seu quarto em busca do “outro”. Paulo Cecílio

via Bodyspace

“Superpositions” reviewed by Vital Weekly


Maybe you have been reading Vital Weekly for such a long time that when you read the name David Lee Myers you will automatically think ‘Arcane Device’, which was his moniker from the late 80s to the mid 90s, followed by a retirement. In recent years however he revived Arcane Device, as well as releasing music under his own name, and all of that using the principles of feedback. Take the output of the mixer, put it into the input and a high piercing sound will emerge; that’s feedback. That’s what Myers does, but not just like that. He feeds his sound through ‘other processors, via a series of matrix mixers’ and he plays around in real time with the results and you could think it results in a barrage of noise, but it doesn’t. Obviously this is not the kind of music that is very ‘soft’ either, but in the eleven pieces Myers recorded in the past two years he works with a fine sensibility for textures. It owes as much to the world of serious electronic music from the sixties as it does to the world of short song structures, to avoid the word ‘pop music’. Obviously it has nothing to do with pop music, but in keeping
his pieces within the four-five minutes he explores a few sounds and a movement or two, and plays around with that, exploring the possibilities and changes before moving on to the next setting. It is at times the subtle variation of ambient music (Eno would no doubt love those self-generating sounds), with a fine rough edge and Myers doesn’t explore his materials ad infinitum, but he let’s go easily.

There is so much more to explore, I guess. I enjoyed his work back then, from the noise to the ambient side of it, and this new work is just as good. Maybe these days with a somewhat melancholic touch to it, but the gentler side, without leaping into endless variations, suits him very well. Excellent modern compositions! (FdW)

via Vital Weekly

New release: Monty Adkins’s “Shadows and Reflections”


Crónica is proud to present “Shadows and Reflections”, Monty Adkins’s new tape.

Shadows and Reflections develops from an audiovisual collaboration between Monty Adkins and the painter Andy Fullalove exhibited at Bradford Cathedral in October 2016. The exhibition comprised a series of fourteen paintings and sound that responded to the newly restored altarpiece by William Morris as well as the priceless stained glass windows in the Cathedral made my Morris’s company, which include designs by Morris, Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Peter Marshall, and Philip Webb. During the creative process, the artists exchanged sound and images on a regular basis, discussed work in progress but left each other to develop work independently.

In the composition process Adkins was particularly drawn to the layering and textures of Fullalove’s paintings as well as their use of colour. He also found a correlation between the use of light in Fullalove’s paintings and the ways in which light streams through the stained glass windows of the cathedral, providing coloured halos and auras around concrete architectural forms in the building. Adkins was particularly interested in the ways in which the quality of light imperceptibly changed within the building over time.

In the two parts of the work Adkins wanted to induce a sense of mediation, contemplation and reflection. He wanted the sound to be constantly, though in some instances imperceptibly, changing so that one remained mindful of the music rather than allowing it to drift in to the periphery of one’s consciousness. He was reminded of Alan Wallace’s description of Samatha meditation as a “contemplative technology” designed to calm and stabilize the mind and to cultivate “attentional stability and vividness”, and intends the music of Shadows and Reflections to cultivate a similar state. For Adkins, the focusing on a single organ timbre over an extended duration encourages a more attentive perception as the ear is drawn in to the micro-fluctuations within each of the extended phrases. One’s sense of time is dilated and there is a sense of envelopment within the soundworld.

Organ samples performed and recorded by Monty Adkins.
Mastered by Dominique Bassal.
Cover art by Andy Fullalove.

Shadows and Reflections is available as a limited-release tape and as a digital download.

“Shadows and Reflections” reviewed by AmbientBlog


With his impressive back catalogue, Monty Adkins has become one of my favourite artists (if you’re not familiar with his work, don’t forget checking out Four Shibusa, Rift Patterns, Borderlands and Unfurling Streams).
So it’s great news when two new albums are released almost simultaneously:

The first of these two is Shadows And Reflections, released on the Crónica label in a cassette and download version.
(No CD version to my regret, since I think this album deserves a ‘proper’ release with a better sound quality than the cassette tapes can offer. But, judging on their latest releases, tape is the medium of choice currently for Crónica.. Of course ordering the tape also includes a high-quality download too).

The album presents two 20 minute tracks (Sounds of the Shadow and Sounds of the Sun), built from organ samples performed and recorded by Monty Adkins. On first listen this could be classified as drone music, but in fact a lot is happening in the layering of the organ sounds, and the pieces build up to a climax in a way that defies the strict definition of ‘drone’. (Not that this matters in any way, though)

“In the two parts of the work Adkins wanted to induce a sense of mediation, contemplation and reflection. He wanted the sound to be constantly, though in some instances imperceptibly, changing so that one remained mindful of the music rather than allowing it to drift in to the periphery of one’s consciousness. For Adkins, the focusing on a single organ timbre over an extended duration encourages a more attentive perception as the ear is drawn in to the micro-fluctuations within each of the extended phrases. One’s sense of time is dilated and there is a sense of envelopment within the soundworld.”

There’s no mention of what organ is used for the recordings, but there’s a strong association with the timbres of a church organ. Which would be appropriate, because these pieces were created for a multimedia exhibition at the Bradford Cathedral to interact with fourteen paintings by Andy Fullalove (as well as with the light from the stained glass windows in the Cathedral). An example of Fullalove’s work can be seen on the album cover.

Listening to this music (with the acoustics of the large cathedral it was played in) while enjoying the interaction of the paintings with the ever changing light must’ve been a moving experience. When listening to it in your private surroundings, the visual part is missing of course. But it’s still a moving experience anyway. Peter van Cooten

via AmbientBlog

Futurónica 200


The last episode of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Manobras (91.5 MHz in Porto, 18h30) and Rádio Zero (21h GMT, repeating on Tuesday at 01h) airs tomorrow, September 1st.

The playlist of Futurónica 200 is:

  1. Coil, Things We Never Had (2004, Black Antlers, Threshold House)
  2. Coil, Free Base Chakra (2000, Constant Shallowness Leads To Evil, Eskaton)
  3. Coil, Batwings (A Limnal Hymn) (1999, Musick To Play In The Dark, Vol. 2, Chalice)
  4. Coil, The Dreamer Is Still Asleep (1999, Musick To Play In The Dark, Vol. 1, Chalice)
  5. ELpH vs Coil, Ended (1995, Worship the Glitch, Eskaton)
  6. Coil, Light Shinning Darkly (1992, Stolen and Contaminated Songs, Threshold House)
  7. Coil, Love’s Secret Domain (1991, Love’s Secret Domain, Torso)
  8. Coil, The First Five Minutes After Death (1986, Horse Rotorvator, Force & Form)
  9. Coil, Tainted Love (1984, Scatology, Force & Form)

You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.

“Juryo: Durée de la vie de l’ainsi-venu” reviewed by Neural


The connections between the radio-drama and the experimental music should be an object of study. Some mature reader may remember the strong relationship between these fields, especially during this age where the offline fetishism re-activates forgotten or obsolete formats. The Paris composer Emmanuel Mielville studied sound engineering in a cinema school and later learned the basic concepts at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), a main institution for this unconventional culture. His current approach is the natural consequence of this training course. Juryo: Durée De La Vie De L’Ainsi-Venu recalls in the title one of the most famous Buddhist texts, the Mahayana, and recalls many quotes of collage technique, a tradition deeply rooted in all the Asian culture. It’s the perfect closure of the rim: the embracing and exotic sounds tell about some stories, and the album seems a travel of the imagination and mind. The field recordings are the object of manipulations and mixes. The weaves are narrative and enchanting: for example, the audio captures from the Copan monastery, the FM modulations of a Hong Kong radio or the Buddhist funeral singing in a small village in Taiwan. There are sounds of synthesis too (like in “Tanit Astarté”) or erudite Artaud-like quotes to Héliogabale, the moon godness or to the primordial Phoenician myths. Contemporary tastes are mixed to contemporary caesura, large space is left to different knowledge and suggestions, no need of any “tabula rasa” but skillful attempts to make centrifuges with the use of different techniques and theories. In Mielville the sound perception and the memories cut in the urban environments are the basis of the following stratification. The sound overlaps might be now out of focus and irregular, now clearly designed, but anyway they are the “concrete” substance the listener should get and represent his personal way to think of the sound as something unmeasurable and suggestive, a vibes travel which always refer to his passion for the radio medium. The release elevates the catalogue of Crónica Electrónica, a label since ever focused on this music genre and on the evolution of the sound concepts and landscapes. Aurelio Cianciotta

via Neural

Futurónica 199


Episode 199 of Futurónica, a broadcast in Rádio Manobras (91.5 MHz in Porto, 18h30) and Rádio Zero (21h GMT, repeating on Tuesday at 01h) airs tomorrow, August 18th.

The playlist of Futurónica 199 is:

  1. Otomo Yoshihide, Untitled (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)
  2. Francisco López, Untitled 113 for Iannis Xenakis (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)
  3. Construction Kit, Glitchè (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)
  4. Antimatter, Untitled (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)
  5. Zbigniew Karkowski, Doing by Not Doing (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)
  6. Ryoji Ikeda, Per Se (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)
  7. Merzbow, Untitled (2002, Iannis Xenakis – Persepolis + Remixes Edition I, Asphodel)

You can follow Rádio Zero’s broadcasts at radiozero.pt/ouvir and Rádio Manobras at radiomanobras.pt.

“Digital Junkies in Strange Times” reviewed by RNE 3 Atmosfera


Tenemos el último trabajo de Ran Slavin “Digital Junkies in Strange Times”, un disco de 59 minutos que contiene tan sólo 4 tracks con duraciones que oscilan entre el minuto y medio y el universo sonoro de 41 minutos del tema “Moonlight Compilation”. Nosotros esta noche os proponemos un pequeño montaje en el que escucharemos un extracto del tema que abre el disco “Turbulent Sphere” y que originalmente en el disco dura 13 minutos.
A Ran Slavin ya le hemos escuchados en varias ocasiones en Atmósfera, es un artista de múltiples facetas que trabaja principalmente con video instalación, sonido y cine. Su obra explora la ficción y las formas y narrativas a través de la instalación de video y sonido y puede ser interpretada como una expansión de formas cinematográficas, usualmente utilizando la posproducción y las sensibilidades de composición como herramientas de subversión y realce.
El trabajo de Slavin abraza a menudo la tensión entre el hecho y la ficción, lo sobrenatural y lo mítico, la historia y el futurismo y obliga al espectador a vagar más allá de la realidad y lo inmediato, en un prisma de la superposición digital.