{"id":10347,"date":"2019-04-18T20:05:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=10347"},"modified":"2019-04-18T20:05:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:05:09","slug":"haarvol-xoan-xil-lopezs-unwritten-rules-for-a-ceaseless-journey-reviewed-by-aural-aggravation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=10347","title":{"rendered":"Haarv\u00c3\u00b6l + Xo\u00c3\u00a1n-Xil L\u00c3\u00b3pez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Unwritten Rules for a Ceaseless Journey\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reviewed by Aural Aggravation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Useful points worth noting by way of a preface: Unwritten Rules for a Ceaseless Journey<\/p>\n\n\n\n

documents three pieces composed for dance, commissioned by Ballet Teatro for the play Revolu\u00c3\u00a7\u00c3\u00b5es (Revolutions) by choreographer N\u00c3\u00a9 Barros. The in three parts are designed to embody formal idealisations of the three decisive layers of time \u00e2\u20ac\u201d past, present, and future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three tracks each span around fifteen minutes, and the first, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSomething\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Missing (Utopian) begins with elongated, scraping drones\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and continues onwards with ominous hums that swirl and eddy around a barely-audible hissing buzz. A rolling organ while emerges from a clamour of shuffling intangibility to provide a vague semblance of form and instrumental musicality, but the it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sad and sinister in equal parts, conveying a sense of loss while reminding us that the past is dark. The muttering voices, inextricable individually: are those the voices of the dead?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems entirely fitting that the pieces should melt into one another: time always transitions seamlessly, and in terms of life lived, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to appreciate the fact that every passing second is stacking up the record of time past as the present slips away instantaneously. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also fitting that the present, as represented by \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Pulsating Waves (Reality)\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 flattens into an indistinguishable mid-range hum that groans and sighs and whispers. Metallic sparks hiss way off on the horizon, forever out of reach. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sense of emptiness and despondency about this inhospitably bleak sonic wasteland, even as it swells into an altogether smoother, denser, broader droning hum. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the sound of absence, a dulled absence that lacks dynamism or detail. So much positive, pro-mindful life-coaching material and contemporary self-help verbiage tells us that we should live in the moment; but the fact of the matter is that the moment is invariably empty, bleak, depressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Look Back, Run (Trauma)\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is solid advice: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s impossible to retreat to the past, or to recreate it, despite the booming nostalgia industry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suggestion otherwise. To commit too much time to reflection is to lose oneself to the past and deny the possibility of progress; but, to run to the future without due attention to history is to be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. There is a balance to be found. The album\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final track suggests a certain degree of balance: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slow, its form emerging from dragging pulsations drawn out in bowed strings \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or ersatz assimilations thereof \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which gradually diminish into a rumbling gust of wind, blowing grey, blurred particles into a formless mass. The future is, and will forever be indistinct, unclear, as unpredictable as the weather, fashion, and our fragile emotions. And in the dying minutes, it crumbles to a cloud of grey obscurity, lacking shape, form, and tonality, a vaporous viscosity of\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what? Uncertainty. Murky, messy, abstraction. What the future holds, we know not: the present is unsettled, dangerous, turbulent. The present is well out of hand, and the future yet more so. Christopher Nosnibor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

via Aural Aggravation<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n