{"id":8191,"date":"2016-03-16T10:19:38","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T09:19:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=8191"},"modified":"2017-01-01T18:02:56","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T17:02:56","slug":"roha-reviewed-by-tiny-mix-tapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=8191","title":{"rendered":"\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Roha\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reviewed by Tiny Mix Tapes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cronica105-2016_520\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the real-world sounds are transformed into elements that make up some part of a musical experience, and this is a kind of appropriation of their identities\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Even in a piece in which the source sounds are so heavily processed as to be unrecognizable\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the fact remains that specific sounds are being used, and by extension, the specific and unrepeatable moment in time when those sounds were produced and recorded. When viewed in this light, it seems clear that the use of concr\u00c3\u00a8te materials in a composition dramatically diminishes the comfortable separation between life and art.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Rose White on musique concrete<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andreas Trobollowitsch is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who makes music from improvised and edited found sounds in an accomplished balance of musical and conceptual narrative. Roha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s peculiar mise-en-sc\u00c3\u00a8ne is perfectly realized, like its cover art, as an aestheticized and reconstructed ideal of creaking industry and discarded instrument, which actively eschews the roughage of its samples to produce highly musical musique concr\u00c3\u00a8te.<\/p>\n

Andreas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pieces make no attempt to conceal the industrial and rusted-over origin of their sounds. Instead, through careful editing and composition, Trobollowitsch exposes their artistic potential, the sheer, sometimes minuscule tonal-melodic options available within existing factory systems \u00e2\u20ac\u201d radiators, swinging gates, grinding gears, all singing a little, even if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just one note \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and builds passionately with those tools, adding live drums in sections but otherwise composing entirely with found sound. Picking up on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153micro-melodies\u00e2\u20ac\u009d buried within the physics of interacting machinery \u00e2\u20ac\u201d really, a series of improvisations by Trobollowitsch spliced into rhythmic loops \u00e2\u20ac\u201d he composes a variety of conceptual pieces in various styles, ranging from the minimalistic and industrial to drone to angular works for prepared piano, each time foregrounding the bizarre behaviors of his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153instruments\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and their relationships in aural space.<\/p>\n

Similar to macro photography, Trobollowitsch can use his abilities as a sound editor to pluck interesting elements from their context and meaning and transform them into abstractions of color, texture, and space. This exemplified well on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ratt,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where skittering drums and squeaky wheels form \u00e2\u20ac\u0153metal music\u00e2\u20ac\u009d literally, with lateral percussion passes and intermittently melodic bursts produced by sliding scrap that seem more the product of gravity than performance. Whatever the original source of these sounds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ratt\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reassembles them into a metal rodent.<\/p>\n

This is more than metaphor; the side effect of using organic, unaltered samples is the very convincing illusion of an interacting musical mobile, as if Trobollowitsch built a Rube Goldberg device and called it a song. Roha is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153natural\u00e2\u20ac\u009d acousmatic music: there are no digital alterations to the samples, only edits of recorded sound; the reverb and shape of the sample source is left intact. As such, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153memories\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of these devices \u00e2\u20ac\u201d their implied original purpose, the physical manner in which they probably function \u00e2\u20ac\u201d survives somewhat in the execution of the samples. After removing them spatially from an origin point, Trobollowitsch is able to construct surreal landscapes of cooperative, inadvertently musical machines.<\/p>\n

Roha evokes a dirge played with brushes and factory radiators (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153tapco\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), dark post-classical pendulums (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153ssbeat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), ruined player pianos in an soulful and broken cycle (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153klavirzinho\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), densely textured drones that precariously shift between dissonance and progression (\u00e2\u20ac\u01531\u00e2\u20ac\u212211\u00e2\u20ac\u009d,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153zain\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), and overall a mildly queasy yet deeply dynamic, fascinating world of acousmatic interactions in a reanimate environment of rust. Roha invites multiple listens and examinations, as each errant squeak signals a fascinating dichotomy, a musical present and a history of loss. Adam Devlin<\/em><\/p>\n

via Tiny Mix Tapes<\/a><\/p>\n