Pedro Rebelo’s “Listen to me” reviewed by Vital Weekly

This is the first work I hear by Pedro Rebelo, who studied in Edinburgh music and architecture. He did “participatory projects involving communities in Belfast, Mare, Rio de Janeiro, Portugal and Mozambique”, sound installations and concerts. For this work, he uses recordings he made at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Braga, Portugal. A place for research, where he followed those involved “working on a project in the area of food safety”. He recorded the sonic environment, which later resulted in a sound installation piece and a further exploration that is this cassette. I can’t say to what extent Rebelo uses sound processing or if all of this is perhaps just a collage of sounds tape on-site. Also, I have no idea how much of this uses repetition in the form of samples or loops. In both cases, I would think there are some processing and some use of loops. I might be wrong of course. To say this is a collage of sound is not far from the truth. And a great collage this surely is. There are lots of machines sounds here, whirring, buzzing, sawing off electrical charges all around; from a giant hall of machines into a small freezer. Rebelo takes both macro and micro shoots of the place (maybe even nano shoots), which in their combined state deliver a beautiful piece of electro-acoustic music. Some sounds are shifted around and return in other places, some only have a brief existence. This is industrial music without being very industrial I guess. The two pieces, together about thirty minutes, are well-made, changing throughout, never resting or overstaying their welcome; two fine slabs of concrete music. (FdW)

via Vital Weekly