New release: David Lee Myers’s “Superpositions”

Witness the common phenomenon of feedback such as produced inadvertently through poorly configured microphones and loudspeakers in public amplification situations: the sound coming from the speakers finds its way back into the microphones and produces an uncomfortable squealing sound. The component elements are electronic and acoustic, the latter involving air movement and vibration of physical objects. But internal electronic feedback is quite a curious animal, something distinct from electroacoustic feedback. It can operate – feed back – eternally, but make no sound; vibrate no air, reach no ears. It is this silent marching of electrons, antlike, about some elaborate roadway perhaps only known to themselves which is so fascinating to an artist.

The introduction of the early guitar effects devices was the real opening of an interest in sound and music for me. The initial impression of an Echoplex tape-delay (ca. 1966) still reverberates, as it were – I put down my guitar and focused on this thing itself; who needed a guitar now? A sound goes in one end and comes out the other, somehow transformed into a modified clone of itself; partially the same, but evolved. And it is significant that this transformation is a manipulation of the sound’s time-path. Most audio effects boxes – and all of those which interest me most – are based on manipulations of time, that strange entity which even the most advanced scientific analyses have yet to explain convincingly. Since childhood this inexplicable thing called time has puzzled and excited me, and in the effects device the question comes forth along with a satisfying aesthetic pleasure. Further, the concepts of time manipulation and feedback come together in the ancient ourobouros symbol which was intended to speak of several things at once: self-referral (consciousness), recurrence, and eternity. Feedback is far more than a public address system in misalignment; it is a core principle of universal importance.

DLM

David Lee Myers (aka Arcane Device) releases his latest album of Feedback Music, titled Superpositions. These pieces have been created through the use of specially configured electronic components, none of which are designed to produce sounds on their own. Rather, audio processors are wired so that their inputs are fed their own outputs, as well as the outputs of other processors, via a series of matrix mixers. The whole assemblage is played as a real-time instrument, producing tones and patterns ranging from subtle sound washes to cacophonous deluges. Superpositions is a meditation upon the unseen forces and energies inhabiting the subatomic world.

David Lee Myers finds his sounds in the off-screen space of feedback networks. By patching the output of an electronic audio device, such as a mixing board, back into its input, Myers is able to conjure and navigate within this space… He takes snapshots of the sonic entities populating these spaces then arranges them into etheric photo-mosaics.

Kim Cascone

David Lee Myers is a sound and visual artist living in New York City. Since 1987 he has produced electronic music via his custom ”Feedback Machines“ under his own name, as well as Arcane Device. Myers has had dozens of recordings released by Starkland, ReR, Generator, Line, Silent, Pogus, RRRecords, Staalplaat, Monochrome Vision, and many other labels. Collaborations have been produced with Gen Ken Montgomery, Thomas Dimuzio, Ellen Band, guitarist Marco Oppedisano, Dirk Serries, and noise maestro Merzbow. Two Albums were created with legendary electronic pioneer Tod Dockstader, and four others with Hamburg’s master sound manipulator Asmus Tietchens, with a fifth in progress. Myers has performed his sounds and visuals at New York’s Generator, The Kitchen, Roulette, Experimental Media Foundation, the Knitting Factory, Clocktower, MoMA/PS1, Outpost Artists Resources, Trans Pecos and Silent Barn, as well as the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, and the Boston Museum of Modern art, among others.

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

Monty Adkins’s “Shadows and Reflections” reviewed by Rockerilla


Il tempo, il paesaggio, le immagini e le sensazioni da essi veicolate continuano a essere al centro delle creazioni di Monty Adkins, che in due lavori paralleli applica un a ne approccio sinestetico alla composizione ambientale. A Year At Usher’s Hill mette in luce il pro lo più emozionalmente accogliente del sound artist inglese, racchiuso in undici placide tracce incentrate su brevi loop e stille armoniche echeggianti in un ambiente sonoro ariosamente ovattato. La dimensione spaziale permane elemento decisivo dell’espressione di Adkins, de nita da semplici note pianistiche e decompresse texture organiche, dalle quali prende forma un’impressionistica ambience orchestrale. Pressoché in contemporanea l’artista inglese propone due lunghe tracce su cassetta, realizzate in collaborazione con il pittore Andy Fullalove. Come gli strati di colore danno forma a un’immagine, così Adkins lungo i venti minuti ciascuna di Sounds Of The Shadow e di Sounds Of The Sun dispiega una sequenza di chiaroscuri sonori sotto forma di esili drone e risonanze incorporee. I temperati contrasti che ne risultano si so ondono nelle spire di un’ambience espansa e profondamente meditativa, propellente liquido. Raffaello Russo

Graeme Truslove’s “Intuited Architectures” reviewed by Bodyspace


Enquanto arte, a arquitectura é uma das mais antigas da humanidade. Primeiro existiram as casas e os templos, «meios com vista a uma exteriorização: a cabana, a habitação do deus, pressupõem habitantes, homens, imagens de deuses» [Hegel, Estética]. Milénios depois, a arquitectura ganhou a sua própria teoria, com De Architectura de Vitrúvio: as construções deveriam apoiar-se em três princípios básicos – solidez (firmitas), utilidade (utilitas) e beleza (venustas).

Na arquitectura intuída de Graeme Truslove, que assina aqui um novo disco pela Crónica que mais age como compilação – todas as peças foram compostas entre 2004 e 2010 -, a teoria passa pela junção de dois extremos opostos: a composição electroacústica num meio fixo, e a improvisação livre. Por outras palavras, Intuited Architectures é uma pergunta: como se fundem duas linguagens diferentes?

A resposta estará a cargo do ouvinte, que provavelmente será o único que conseguirá avaliar, de forma independente, se o artista conseguiu realizar aquilo a que se propôs. O que esse encontrará em Intuited Architectures é uma mistura de sons electrónicos e analógicos, como gigantescas construções sonoras erguendo-se no vazio, tijolo sobre tijolo e cimento sobre cimento de forma a que o edifício final – a peça – possa perdurar no tempo. Sólido, útil e, até, ocasionalmente belo. Paulo Cecílio

via Bodyspace

Monty Adkins’s “Shadows and Reflections” reviewed by Chain DLK


“Shadows And Reflections” aims for ‘a sense of meditation, contemplation and relaxation’ as it develops sonic ideas originally created for an audiovisual exhibit at Bradford Cathedral in 2016 that drew inspiration from the restored altarpiece and stained glass windows of the cathedral. Designed for the cassette format, it’s two twenty-minute pieces of warm, comforting, eventless drone soundscape with a decidedly ‘empty church’ feel.

This is simple, floating ambience that can’t help but induce a sense of steady calm. The evolution of the tones is imperceptibly glacial. The second piece “Sounds Of The Sun” has an ever so slightly more tubular, metallic resonance to it, but I may only think that because my brain started to adapt to the noise level as its new normal.

Thankfully it’s available digitally too, as the often soft and subtle soundscape can’t really benefit from tape hiss- it’s a very purist bit of soundscaping that’s pleasantly soporific and attention-avoiding. Stuart Bruce

via Chain DLK

“Stikhiya” reviewed by RNE 3 Atmosfera


Stikhiya es el Nuevo trabajo del compositor de música electroacúsitica Yiorgis Sakellariou, miembro del centro ateniense para la investigación de la música contemporánea y de la música electroacústica helena.
Stikhiya es la palabra usada por el poeta ruso Aleksandr Blok del siglo XX para describir el valor fundamental de la inmediatez primitiva. Contrario al intelectualismo y la racionalidad, Stikhiya emerge de las experiencias holísticas orgánicas y se percibe como una fuerza insondable y sin forma que crea asombro e inspira mitos.
Cuando la música es experimentada como Stikhiya, su poder catártico abre reinos expandidos de la realidad y conduce a lo que Iannis Xenakis ha llamado una “verdad inmediata, rara, enorme y perfecta.

“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