After the recent release of Aiear, we’re now immensely happy to present the second and final part of the Clould cycle, in a limited-release CD with a 16-page booklet.
The title Clould convolutes the words cloud, hinting at humankind’s fascination of supposed supernatural beings that lived in clouds or created them, and could, a potentiality. Historical mythologies are placed in the context of 21st century airborne mass transport that propels large groups of human beings — passive by force — through a space that once belonged to mythological beings and energies. And to the clouds, of course. The Clould cycle of electroacoustic music pieces and its preamble Aiear together consist of 95 minutes of music, five microstories, the libretto for its fifth movement, a number of aerial photographs and text charts, and a performance concept including the first three movements. This CD features the complete five movements of Clould, composed between 2011 and 2023.
Clould is composed with sounds from inside airplanes and airports recorded in various ways: from the check-in luggage, with electromagnetic sensors, from the onboard entertainment system, or just straight with normal mics. Voice recordings from in-flight announcements have been processed until machinic chimeras appear — the ultimate disembodied voice. By fragmenting such recordings down into individual syllables and recompiling them into new, sometimes unintelligible fantasy sequences of various interconnected and orchestrated voices, phantom words and sentences can be heard. As the Clould cycle is based on an English language understanding, a libretto-style transcription of the final 5th Movement reveals English words and onomatopoetic exclamations. This dedicated system very loosely refers to the concept of bījamantra (or bījākṣara: seed syllable) used in Tantric Hinduism and Buddhist Mysticism, in which certain syllables, like “oṃ” for example, contain sonic essences that make manifestations of a certain element, entity, or deity.
Clould is now available as a CD, download or stream.
Marc Behrens was more active with releases a long time ago, the first decade of this century and the last half of the decade before that, but these days may have shifted his work into sound installations – who knows? Maybe he releases his music online mostly. There is a ‘preamble’ release for ‘Clould’, called ‘Aiear’, also for Cronica Electronica and both deal with “airborne mass transport that propels large groups of human beings – passive by force – through a space that once belonged to mythological beings and energies”. Behrens made recordings inside aeroplanes, from the in-flight announcements, check-in luggage, electromagnetic sensors and whatever else you can catch soundwise on the 24-hour-a-day entertainment centres that are airports and aeroplanes. To be honest, I (BW) have checked my collection, and all I can find from Marc is two tracks on samplers, and that’s it. So, everything I’m hearing is a first for me. And even though I’m always looking for concepts behind releases – and lots of people thankfully send them when they send us their stuff – this is an example of an idea where I can only place the concept on sound creation of composing techniques. I can’t really place this album in the perspective of what the album is about. According to the notes, “as the Clould cycle is based on an English language understanding, a libretto-style transcription of the final 5th Movement reveals English words and onomatopoetic exclamations. This dedicated system very loosely refers to the concept of b?jamantra (or b?j?ks . ara: seed syllable) used in Tantric Hinduism and Buddhist Mysticism, in which certain syllables, like “om .” for example, contain sonic essences that make manifestations of a certain element, entity, or deity.” But then there is the actual product: a CD with 74 minutes of pure sonic poetry. Five movements – two about six minutes, two about 12 minutes and a long 37-minute final movement – create a lovely atmosphere of faded voices, building drones, and slight noisescapes… But most of all, this CD hits surrealistically. And in that perspective I give you men’s dream of flying. Stories of Icarus, who flew towards the sun when the wax melted through the heat, and he lost his wings. As well as the flying machines of the Middle Ages, men probably dreamt about flying ever since a cave dweller saw an ancient bird and thought about catching and eating it. And it only took so many thousands of years and now we can whenever we want, depending on whether we have the money to pay for it. If you would have told that to a cave dweller … That’s the surrealism I’m talking about. (BW/FdW)
Miguel A. García and Àlex Reviriego have long careers in experimental music, free improvisation, electronics and the most risky metal. In recent years they have collaborated in various projects with other musicians, but this album is their first project as a duo. García and Reviriego act as guides, like Stalkers, on a sonic journey divided into four seasons.
If on other occasions their sounds have been impregnated with those dark Lovecraftian worlds so dear to both of them, on this album the music seems imbued with metaphysical science fiction. The sounds come from infinite spaces pregnant with fundamental philosophical questions.
The first two tracks refer to Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky’s film; to that distant and immense ocean that transforms itself; a transcendental entity superior to the human. Machines evolving into animal beings, creating their own rhythms and their own mating codes.
The third theme transports me to 2001 — A Space Odyssey, it is a pinnacle of gliding electronics impregnated with the best Ligeti, impeccably structured. A joy of balance and restrained tension and at the same time it has an essence linked to the terrestrial rhythm, the dawn, the origin.
And we end with the final question: the questions that surpass our intelligence, the unknown. The last theme is the dizzying uncertainty, the sea, again the thinking and immeasurable ocean in which the ship disappears, vanishes, lost and searching, always searching.
Can we say that nature is aggressive? That the cosmos is cruel or capricious? The control of the flow of sound is the alchemy of music.
Ulzion
This is a sad record. Of a cold and clean sadness. Sounds of the past heralding an unmitigated disaster.
When I started to work on it by myself, I was trying to avoid the somehow melancholic and postromantic tone of my recent releases and develop a more impersonal and empty language. More ancient.
I always thought of feedback as one of the definitive instruments, absolutely perfect in its clarity and simplicity. Like the harp, the clarinet or the female voice, I could listen for hours to a few no-input mixer tones and never get bored. Far from an issue, the lack of the human gestural component enhances the icy and imperturbable character of its electrical nature.
I met Miguel A. García at the parking lot of the old Artiach cookie factory, just a few minutes before of the Phicus soundcheck at Zarata Fest. I liked his slightly harsh and sullen attitude from the first minute. Every time of the many we’ve seen each other since, being as a part of an ensemble playing one of his compositions, performing at one of his festivals or simply talking, the impression of being in front of a unique and relentless artist just got reaffirmed.
Without a doubt, Miguel is one of the best listeners I ever met and an ideal collaborator. Listening to the record now, time after its completion, it’s hard for me to tell apart the contributions of each other. I recognise “my” sounds entangled in processes I recognise as totally his own, and at many times I had to go back to my drafts to see if certain developments were already there or if Miguel, with virtuosic ear, unearthed them from among my raw materials.
But I alone am dull and stupid. Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea, Without direction, like the restless wind (Lao Zi)
When I sometimes write that people like Bruno Duplant (or Celer or Machinefabriek) appear almost every week in Vital Weekly, I am doing this in a loving and joking way. I like their music, and there’s an abundance out there, so what’s not to enjoy? I say this fully, realising I’m not the one buying all this work. My ‘difficulty’ is finding different approaches to writing about their music. That’s not to say their work is the same all the time, even when the devil is in the details. Duplant’s work, so he claims, is intended to be narrative and fictional, in the same way he approaches his photography, often used as covers on his releases. Other keywords are ‘phantasmagorical’, ‘ancestral’ and ‘secret universe’, or ‘how to make the music a bit mysterious’. He uses organ, double bass, percussion, electronics and field recordings. In some way, I am unsure how (analogue treatment? digital? combination of both?), and he finds a minor different approach every time. In listening to the ghosts, as the translation of his new CD could read, I think Duplant chooses a more fragmented approach to his sounds. They appear like ghosts in the wind and mist, popping out of the shadows and disappearing simultaneously. It’s tough to recognise any of the instruments, not because they have been cut to short length, but because they have been rendered and processed in such a way that they don’t sound like a double bass or organ or percussion; they are residue’s of that, ghostly appearances, if you will. Significantly, when suddenly, voices drop in. As with many of his releases, there are two pieces, almost 23 minutes each (intended for a cassette release? I am guessing here), and both are similar approaches in composition and processing techniques. It’s an album in two parts rather than two pieces. In a way, it’s all very electronic music, ando dipping into the world of modern composition, but with that additional weirdness. It’s another excellent album! (FdW)
Airplane noise interrupted my early outdoor sound recording attempts in the forests around Frankfurt. And so, after a while, I figured I would kick the pastoral, turn the concept upside down, and specifically record the airplane noise instead.
Aiear was planned as a field recording project since 1996. In 2023 I resumed the project and composed the piece as a preamble to the Clould cycle. Aiear and the five movements of Clould together consist of 95 minutes of electroacoustic music, five microstories, the libretto for its fifth movement, a number of aerial photographs and text charts, and a performance concept including the first three movements. The title Clould convolutes the words “cloud”, hinting at humankind’s fascination of supposed supernatural cloud beings, and “could”, a potentiality. Historical mythologies about supernatural beings that supposedly lived in clouds or created them are placed in the context of 21st century airborne mass transport. Such air travel propels large groups of human beings — passive by force — through a space that once belonged to mythological beings and energies. And to the clouds, of course. The title Aiear is a convolution of the words “air” and “ear”.
While I composed Clould with sounds from inside airports and airplanes in flight, including disembodied voice announcements, Aiear is based on the sounds of airplanes just taken off or descending in order to touch down, recorded from the ground. In those phases the jet turbines produce various glissandi, unnerving when looking for quietness, but interesting when carved from the full recorded sound spectrum and used as elements for the composition — dismechanized engine noises, complementary to disembodied voices.
Aiear is now available as a download or stream. Clould is available as a pre-order.
Síria is back! After the two fantastic albums Boa-Língua and Cuspo, Diana Combo’s Síria is back with two new tracks, Mahe Man, composed with Jeremy Young after the Persian song Bote Chin by Ali Akbar Sheyda, and Mau Jeito, composed by Kaveh Sarvarian and remixed by @c.
Philippe Petit took up on a truly epic endeavour – both Dante Aligheri’s Divine Comedy and Gustave Dore illustrations for this classic work have been an inspiration for his newest work beautifully released as a double cd by Portuguese label Crónica based in Oporto, Portugal.
It is a long set of narrative pieces which Philippe has masterfully reorganised and put together by using different compositional techniques. Using all sorts of musical inputs such as electronics, prepared piano, some modular synths (?), spoken word he managed to tell the story of Divine Comedy in his own individual manner, as an experimental landscape of curiosities and details that highlight the dramatic narratives of this classical work. On the other hand – his own impressions from Gustave Dore’s work put this album into a completely different orbit of something analytical – treating graphical work of the illustrator on an equal level with Dante’s work.
Highly nuanced and complex work that has its own individual taste. And as in all Petit’s work – it gets only more and more interesting track by track.
Ten album jest drugą częścią serii, w której badam procesy usuwania dźwięków z ich oryginalnego kontekstu i cięcia ich na małe kawałki. W ten sposób dźwięki zostają oddzielone od swojego źródła i tym samym oderwane od tego, co pierwotnie reprezentowały. To, co jest dla mnie interesujące i stanowi wyzwanie w tym projekcie, to znalezienie obszaru, w którym reprezentacja znika, a dźwięk staje się abstrakcją. Gdzie to jest, zależy od oryginalnego dźwięku. Już w latach 50. Pierre Schaeffer badał tę kwestię i wprowadził termin objet sonore jako obiekt, który ma własną właściwość dźwiękową. Ponadto Schaeffer zdefiniował również objet musicale, który jest stanem po manipulacji obiektem dźwiękowym i przekształceniu go w byt muzyczny. Można powiedzieć, że objet sonore jest surowcem, a objet musicale produktem pośrednim lub końcowym.
Zacząłem czytać teksty Schaeffera w 1981 roku, po wysłuchaniu Symphonie pour un homme seuli uświadomieniu sobie, że dzikie eksperymenty dźwiękowe, które przeprowadzałem w moim małym mieszkaniu, miały historię sięgającą późnych lat czterdziestych. Szukając więcej informacji, znalazłem tylko jeden francuski tekst, który dostałem z biblioteki. Skserowałem wszystkie strony i zacząłem czytać, powoli, powoli, ponieważ nie poświęcałem zbyt wiele uwagi na lekcjach francuskiego w szkole średniej. Zawsze uważałem, że idea dźwięku oderwanego od jego fizycznego źródła jest kłopotliwa. Ilekroć słuchałem muzyki konkretnej, wciąż rozpoznawałem źródło dźwięku ze wszystkimi jego fizycznymi i psychologicznymi konotacjami. Więc jaki rodzaj gry był tutaj rozgrywany? Najwyraźniej nie do końca „załapałem”. Ale uwielbiałem słuchać nagrań i przez lata tworzyłem swój własny styl muzyczny.
W Textuur mój objet sonore nie jest obiektem trójwymiarowym. Jest przedstawieniem czegoś innego, jak słowo, (niekończący się) rytm lub (niekończąca się) fala sinusoidalna. Objet musicale jest (dwuwymiarową) powierzchnią. Powierzchnia z teksturą. Moim zdaniem powierzchnia jest całkowicie niematerialna, ale ma cechy związane z powierzchnią, takie jak gładka, szorstka, ścierna, nierówna, przyczepna, przebita, mokra itp.
Pomysł muzyki jako reprezentacji powierzchni zrodził się po przeczytaniu serii wierszy Yucatan Carla Andre, które napisał w latach 1971-72. W prawdziwie konkretnym stylu poezji, Andre przedstawia nam bloki słów w czerni i czerwieni starannie rozmieszczone na powierzchni papieru. To, co najbardziej uderzyło mnie w tych wierszach, to fakt, że litery i słowa wydają się zatapiać z powrotem w wizualnej formie. W zależności od skupienia czytelnik albo ogląda abstrakcyjny kształt, albo czyta słowa i litery. Wydało mi się to bardzo interesujące, ponieważ (dźwięk) ludzki głos, słowa, znaczenie i reprezentacja często odgrywają znaczącą rolę w mojej pracy. Tutaj artysta wizualny i poeta zdawali się pracować nad tym samym pomysłem z innej perspektywy. Pisząc do Andre, prawie wdałem się z nim w ostrą kłótnię, ponieważ zdecydowanie nie zgadza się z tym, że został nazwany przedstawicielem poezji konkretnej (jak przypuszczałem), a kiedy zrobiłem uwagę na ten temat, metaforycznie zatrzasnął mi drzwi przed nosem. W każdym razie.
Po podjęciu decyzji o wykorzystaniu powierzchni jako objet sonore długo zastanawiałem się, jak przełożyć moją interpretację Jukatanu na wymiar muzyczny. Właściwie cały rok 2021 i znaczną część 2022 spędziłem na myśleniu, eksperymentowaniu, zbieraniu i odrzucaniu. Następnie, pod koniec 2022 roku, odwiedziłem wystawę prac Josefa i Anni Albersów w Den Haag. Chociaż przede wszystkim poszedłem zobaczyć obrazy Josefa Albersa, prace jego żony Anni wywołały pomysł, że mogę użyć „tkania” jako sposobu na wytwarzanie pożądanych dźwięków. Przynajmniej była to metafora, która wskazała mi drogę wyjścia z mojej zagadki. Tkanina pokazuje wzór na powierzchni, ale w powiększeniu wciąż można zobaczyć oryginalne nici. Nici mogą być dowolne, o dowolnej szerokości i długości. Tkanie może być tak swobodne i tak zwarte, jak tego potrzebujesz.
W tym projekcie chciałem zbadać proces zanurzania muzyki tanecznej w środowisku elektroakustycznym. Podobnie jak w innych projektach, w tym przypadku najpierw ustawiamy scenę z kilkoma zestawami, a następnie rozdrabniamy i rozpuszczamy ten materiał, aby zbudować nowe tekstury dźwiękowe. Kolekcje w Textuur 2 składają się z części rytmicznych oraz podstawowych dronów sinusoidalnych. Permutacje są mieszankami tych oryginałów. Przebijające dźwięki różnych elementów rytmicznych spotykają się z ciężkimi beczkami gęstych i ciemnych dronów sinusoidalnych. Okresowo skutkuje to ładnie zbalansowanym pejzażem dźwiękowym, ale częściej doświadczamy brutalistycznych starć.
We’re very happy to announce the release of Jos Smolder’s Textuur 2 his second release in this series in Crónica. This album is part 3 in a series where Smolders investigates processes to strip sounds from their original context and slice them into tiny bits.
Each Textuur project is built up in a similar fashion. There are two groups of sound. First there are the collections which consist of samples of the original material. The other group consists of various permutations. The samples from the collections are torn apart into threads of various widths and subsequently rewoven into a new synthetic fabric. Sound is thus stripped from its original value and meaning and resynthesized into a new texture. Each permutation is the result of a fresh approach and listeners are invited to design their own permutation or permutation of the permutation.
In Textuur 3 Smolders worked from recordings of an automated customer distribution system, in Textuur 2, Smolders investigates the immersion of dance music into an electroacoustic environment.
Textuur 2 is now available as a limited release CD, and for stream or download.
