“Further Consequences of Reinterpretation” reviewed by Fluxeuropa

This whistling, whirring exploration of silence is at times very noisy indeed. Mostly, however, it exists in some hinterland space designed to make us feel uneasy, tapping and tugging at the senses like an icy liquid dropping slowly on to an exposed nerve. The reinterpretation made here is of Nosei Sakata’s “0.000”, a CD containing only sound outside the ranges of human hearing. Joining forces with the Portuguese sound and media artist Paulo Raposo, Marc Behrens – a renowned manipulator of field recordings, and composer of exquisite electronic soundscapes – uses previous interpretations of Sakata’s work by (amongst others) Richard Chartier, Aube, Steve Roden, Bernhard Gunter and John Hudak. These reinterpretations are further manipulated by Raposo, and then the two works – Raposo’s and Behrens’ – run alongside each other, forming a “friendly audio duel, like a ping pong match”. This produces music that you need to listen to, as opposed to music that you can’t hear. Absorbing, well-crafted, and a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be.

Stewart Gott

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