Review – Francisco Lopez, Untitled #228

Along with Anaphoria’s latest release ini itu kindly sent me a copy of Francisco Lopez’ Untitled #228, another 250 copy vinyl album. It might be my imagination, or perhaps the fact that I’m not listening to everything these days over critical studio monitors, but vinyl does seem to sound so much warmer. That’s what I enjoyed most about this album – no harsh sounds, everything well balanced and finely equalised.

I found myself on first litening doing a lot of sound source identification and singling out the techniques used to separate the various strands of material on side A. This is a 22 minute track composed from a range of representational material, field recordings in other words, carried out in Indonesia. In terms of getting the best out of his resources, selecting and combining, Lopez has an excellent technical ear. After several listens you come to appreciate what a fine musical ear he has as well.

Music made from environmental sound. The concept is very simple and Lopez keeps his work simple, this in my opinion being his greatest strength as a composer. For example he likes to let things run, to allow the material to develop itself, giving the ear time to take in the spectral and dynamic complexity of the evolving sounds. This is done with great skill – I’ve heard some fairly monotonous results from less able composers using similar approaches.

Musicality in general and in particular a sense of orchestration began to assert themselves. At times, both background and foreground layers would reveal repeated tonal figures or emphatic percussive passages. A particularly lively knitting needle click-clack sort of sound came and went throughout the mix, layered at one point with a ‘real world’ drum figure. All overshadowed by a shifting texture of recordings of  voices speaking announcements through loudspeakers, again captured from various ‘real-life’ contexts.

The music fades to a very tiny buzzing sound, a bluebottle on cocaine. This builds slowly and meticulously to reveal, again, a counterpoint of well separated layers, including a watery whooshing sound, encouraging all sorts of narrative responses in the listener, mine being a particularly stormy night in a bothy somewhere in the Scottish Highlands .

Side B is fairly straightforward for those with a background in acousmatic music. Here, according to the sleeve notes, Lopez is offering us a ’spectral take on gamelan’. It would stand up well against other pieces in the idiom. There’s nothing original or radical here, just  a very beautiful and well considered use of the source material, offering us a slow crescendo of complex inharmonic spectra as the sounds of the processed struck metal percussion reveal their sonic riches.

So far, so good. A thoroughly enjoyable album which I’d strongly recommend to anyone. But I have some serious reservations about some of the claims made on the sleeve notes. We are told, for example, that ‘his reflection on the phenomenology of the act of listening has led him to develop a form of ‘absolute musique concrete’, paralleling the richness, complexity, slow changes and extreme level dynamics of nature. It also leads him to detach his pieces from narrative developments, referential associations of sounds with reality, and psychological resonances. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: a sound is a sound is a sound is a sound’.

Emotion could be considered as a form of psychological resonance. Does Lopez mean that we should attempt to suppress our emotional response to music, more specifically to his music?

There are several problems here. If a sound is a sound, etc., we’d all report the same experience after listening to music made from representational material, which we don’t. We’d never be able to play Chinese whispers either. So somebody is confusing poiesis with esthesis (check it out).

There’s something Newtonian about this particular claim. Perhaps it’s an attempt at certainty, even determinism, in the very uncertain and chaotic world of the making and reception of sound and music.

Review – Anaphoria, Footpaths and Trade Routes

Everyone has some music in them. Getting it out seems to be the problem. I wonder how many aspiring musicians have spent fruitless years attempting to master an instrument, or perhaps even composition, when they might have followed Lou Harrison’s advice, which goes as follows: build an instrument of your own, just the one will do nicely, then tune it to one of the many wonderful just intonation scales or modes and finally play it. It’s simply the most satisfying thing. That advice incidentally, minus the just intonation bit, is now being followed by a generation of new improvising musicians who fashion their own electro-acoustic tools for performance.

Kraig Grady is one of the leading musicians in the field of justly intoned music played on hand made instruments. To build one instrument takes time and application. To build an orchestra of tuned strings and struck percussion instruments takes courage, commitment and artistic vision. But in the end you get the music out of you; original, unique and very beautiful on the ear.

To arrive at a complete understanding of the music of Kraig Grady by means of emulating his achievements is a task which will occupy you for several years. You will never regret the undertaking: a journey through instrument building, justly intoned scale construction, microtonal composition, improvisation and ensemble playing, a deeper appreciation of non-Western musical idioms and their aesthetic leanings, to name a few of the landmarks.

I’ll talk a little more about these features later. For now, all I can say is that anyone with an interest in new original music should buy a copy of Grady’s latest album, Anaphoria, Footpaths and Trade Routes, released as a 250 limited edition vinyl LP by ini itu.

This is more than just another release. I consider Kraig Grady’s music to be more like an initiation into an incredibly beautiful sound world of integrity, depth, charm and mystery.

I assume, and I say this from experience, that touring with such large and heavy resources is difficult and costly. This leaves the option of solo and collaborative shows in and around where the instruments are located, and of course the production of recorded music. Here we have the latest in a line of excellent releases by Grady and his fellow musicians and artists. I own several and recommend them all.

In other words you really want to have a copy of this album. To own a limited edition copy on vinyl is particularly gratifying, given the currently favoured modes of new music distribution.

What you will hear on this album are three pieces of original music in just intonation played on hand built metallophones, tuned to scales devised by Erv Wilson, one of just intonation’s most revered theorists. The particular scale at the forefront of these pieces is the meta-slendro. You can follow up for yourself the whys and wherefores of this and other scales (this might occupy you for the next decade or so as I found to my cost!) on the Anaphoria site. In simple terms the meta-slendro is built on tones, which ,sounded together, create difference tones which are also part of the scale. The arithmetic is simple (I understand it!) if you take time to grasp the basics. As a compositional or improvisational tool, such a scale might seem to suffer from harmonic limitations compared to a tempered 12 tone system. But these and other scale systems offer immense variety and versatility. Played on metallophones they also allow the composer or improviser to explore musical flavours associated with gamelan and similar idioms.

Music in just intonation offers not only some of the most beautiful music you will hear anywhere, but also some of the most disgusting. On the plus side you have the beautiful music of Kraig Grady and one or two others, usually artists who have devoted their lives to the practice. On the other side I’m thinking of some of the stuff that goes around on retuned midi synthesisers, which sets out to demonstrate something theoretical and which sounds out of tune, badly so, in its attempts to emulate various harmonic modulations. There ought to be a law, etc…..

I know from following Grady’s work over many years and from frequent correspondence that there are several strands to his compositional process. He has a very good understanding of the technical aspects of the scale systems, something approaching a scientific approach to the complexities. Erv Wilson’s work, from which Grady draws most of his resources, is dense and difficult. Much of the raw research is in need of interpretation or helpful commentary for the non-specialist. Next, less well documented perhaps and more an assumption on my part, much of Grady’s work will have been improvised in the making, both in solo and in ensemble settings, at many stages of ‘composition’, before a method of organising the tones comes into play. The actual compositional method(s) used are of great interest, a range of techniques related to minimalist cell permutations, tintinnabulation and gamelan structures. In some cases a series of rigorous arithmetical and geometrical transformations are applied to the scale’s logic.

The resulting music has warmth, elegance and human appeal, as opposed to some of the dry sterile justly intoned music out there which drifts off eventually into demonstrations of various acoustic phenomena. This is because the music is played on physically sounding instruments as opposed to those disgusting midi machines. In addition metallophones are inherently inharmonic, they have their own character deficiencies so to speak, so any theoretical reliance on accurate difference tones arising will be compromised somewhat from the outset as the metal bars wobble according to their own unpredictable harmonic nature.

Finally, all of this is wrapped in narrative, myth, folklore, fantasy, fact and the stuff of dreams, principally by means of the Anaphorian connection. Grady seems to bury his character in the spaces and places of Anaphoria, out of which various characters (real or imagined?) seem to emerge and recede. He seems to have created his own personal or small collective mythology, a place where history meets nature. Strangely, I’ve never questioned the concept, if that’s what it is. It seems to have its own logic and explains much of the underlying musical aesthetic.

Kraig Grady’s output has a lot in common with gamelan in being practically tied up with shadow puppetry, with story telling and with the investigation of transcendental phenomena. This functional aspect of Grady’s work, playing for theatre, is to my mind responsible for the integrity of the music. Like Stravinsky who throughout much of his career worked with touring ballet, Kraig Grady makes work for collaboration with other performative art forms. He sets up his own performances across several media. In this he is both very modern and very ancient. But the music will tell you this in its own way.

The three tracks are: Zephyros, Hierophone A341 on side A and Ostaelo on Side B. Zephyros is described as ‘an example of a celebratory ritual meditation based on one of the sixteen winds’ This wind is described as ‘light winged and with a subtle and shifting delicateness’. Comparisons are drawn between the winds and states of being, natural forces and human emotional states are considered as sharing common subtle material properties. This to my mind fits well with a music which has such a powerful physical and emotional appeal. In simple terms Zephyros is absolutely gorgeous, a ballad of sorts, gentle, introspective. It feels to be searching in its improvised manner. What I like about this track is the feeling of the music being played as opposed to a composition being rendered. The metallophone in this work is warm, shimmering, engaging. The music makes use of space and silence, allowing the decay of tonal structures to merge and generate their own clearly perceptible harmonic structures.

Zephyros contrasts with Hierophone A341 (an extract) with its percussive pulse, fragments of human voice chanting, various emerging and receding layers of tonal sound, that omnipresent background shifting drone as the combination tones do their work. When I first listened to this piece I heard ,or imagined I heard, something of the representation of a Native American Indian ritual. Not that I would know about these things from experience, but the mind does wander around various cultural territories when exposed to this music.

Ostaelo, the longest track, is an uncompromising piece; muscular and relentless in its forward motion. It contrasts with Zephyros in that the metallophone has a different timbre, more like large bells than tubes, and the combination tones are clearly heard as structurally important elements in the work. The low end is incredible. I haven’t put this through a software spectrogram, but we’re talking here about some serious lower chakra activation. I was reminded of the metal percussion in Xenakis Pleiades, more in the spirit of the work, the feeling of instruments being performed as opposed to a piece being played, and the specific choice of hand wrought metal for its unique properties. Variety and interest are maintained throughout by careful dynamic contrast and subtle variations in the duration of sounded tones.

There are some nut-crunching dissonances in all three pieces which Grady exploits with relish. These structural features give the music an edge which cuts through any tendency towards more amorphous ambient forms. I would say, however, that both sides of the sign ‘dissonance’ need an overhaul in the context of just intonation music played on metallophones.

I love this music because of the challenges it presents. Despite the fact that many in the academic community have declared microtonality to be dead and buried, except as a tasty spice to be sprinkled here and there, the music of Grady and others takes us out of our narrow parochial frame of reference and reminds us of the wealth of non-Western forms. The mode of production of the instruments themselves is a challenge to convention. Boulez was said to have turned his nose up at Partch’s hand made orchestra. If this is true, he will have scorned the majority of instrument makers around the world who ‘roll their own’. Then there is the rejection of 12 tone equal temperament for valid and well considered reasons allied to the establishment and successful exploitation of an archive of alternative tuning systems. And the work is still in its infancy. I’m drawn also to the collaborative potential of this kind of music, in particular with with certain electronic forms.

But perhaps the most exciting feature of Grady’s music is its simplicity, which we all overlook so often in our individual and collective desire to gather, consume and achieve.

I would recommend serious consideration of Lou Harrison’s advice to build an instrument, to tune it and to play it. You might not be able to modulate freely around the cycle of fifths or to play Bach fugues (after several year’s practice) but you will be doing something musical of great beauty which is both original and unrepeatable.

Finally, I would offer the view that Kraig Grady’s music has much in common with some of wonderful drifts in new non-academic music. His music is based on the exploitation of limited resources, produced ‘locally’, on the creation of a unique sound world and on reductive approaches to musical organisation, including an investigation of structural uses of silence. His musical voice is one of the most vital and essential in these first decades of the 21^st century.

Felicity Ford’s Domestic Soundscape

Some time ago a few sound artists decided to exchange CDs of recent work and to offer feedback on each other’s work. Felicity Ford, whose blog The Domestic Soundscape documents her work fully, is one such artist. I was privileged to have the opportunity to listen to a selection of her recent work, most of it unreleased.

The tracklist consists of 18 pieces, taking in a range of items: features for various radio shows, Sonic Postcards, self-penned songs, jingles, experimental podcasts and pieces such as ‘a mix of washing up technique interviews’.

Broadly speaking it all fits well into the radio art box, allowing for broadcasts and podcasts,  but much of the individual pieces would be equally suited to installation and fixed media release.

My first impression is that all the work is extremely well produced, enviably so. Overt he years I’ve come to hold most public radio in high contempt, yet I still take for granted the clean dry voices and the slick production techniques where music and incidental sound complement the speaker, smothering you in a cottonwool fuzz of reactionary attitudes, socio-political contradictions and the assumed shared views between us and the ‘doxosopher’ (selon Bourdieu). It’s in the gaps between these contradictions that radio art such as Ford’s might have best effect.

A central theme in Ford’s work would seem to be everyday sound, a specific focus being the sound of everyday domestic appliances. This is a project involving several artists in the investigation of the sonic properties of domestic appliances and everyday household routines. I think that this type of investigation is courageous – there is an omnipresent risk here that the theme, the everyday, sticks to the presentation so tightly that the work becomes mundane. I said ‘risk’ because for the most part the range and diversity of Ford’s work taken as a whole helps to sidestep the problem, leaving us with an impression of colour and vitality.

My interest in discourse around the everyday centres on specific periods, artists and writers: loosely knit groups such as  the ‘ethnographic surrealists’ and individuals such as Walter Benjamin. I also pursue, when I can, an interest in innovative interpretations of writers such as Marx, Deleuze and other French thinkers and commentators. From this foraging I’ve found that much sound art of the radiophonic variety tells you as much about the artist and his or her attitudes as it does about the concerns of the artist’s work.

Above and beyond the themes and topics, I became very interested in considering the totality of the work as an ethnographic study, probably unintended by the artist. In particular, from the ‘everyday’ treatment of the material I drew myself  a clear image of a specific Western artist in a specific artistic and social milieu. I might have even caught a whiff of a certain’ English-ness’, with all the implications of class and attitude that an outsider reads into such encounters. I bring this to the fore because, despite a shared material infrastructure, Britain for all its size is nation of great diversity, all the more interesting because of this. The accents, the nuances of the conversations, the treatment of the material; these and other features lend dimensions to the work that public broadcasting will never be able to inhabit.

Finally, Felicity Ford likes knitting. At the risk of pushing comparisons, there is something of the knitted garment in these works, something of the very British wooly patchwork jumper that your Auntie might knit for Christmas; unique, cosy, engaging, full of character. Visit her site, or, even better, exchange some of your own work and listen for yourself.

Review – Will Guthrie and Mark Wastell

Resonant Frequencies

Will Guthrie and Mark Wastell

Friday 6 November 2009, 7.30pm

The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses, Kinnaird Head, Fraserburgh

The Scottish town of Fraserburgh, aka The Broch, would be the least likely place to host an evening of experimental music, with the possible exception of a Boer stronghold in the old Orange Free State. I need to say something about the Broch for two reasons: first of all I like to provide a social context which is important to my way of thinking about all music; secondly, I want the reader to appreciate the incongruity of the juxtaposition that took place on a wet and windy night on this bleak edge of the known universe.

I played a gig in Fraserburgh once, many years ago. An aspiring rock god/axeman, I always fancied the lifestyle. As we were setting up, a pretty girl approached me from behind, smashed me with her fist on the side of the head and screamed ‘youze are fu**in’ shite’. From there things began to slide downhill. The evening was, however, of anthropological interest – the male pack were in attendance, waiting to see if I would retaliate, ready move in for the kill. I denied them the pleasure of the endgame. None of the band went to the toilet that night.

Today, things seem to have slipped even further downhill. Because of the waning fishing trade, Fraserburgh suffers disproportionately from the effects of large supplies of cheap and nasty heroin, drink, petty and violent crime. Grey skies and cold north winds ensure that the town will never attract large numbers of tourists. But it has one significant saving grace and for that one redeeming feature I’d recommend a visit next time you’re up North. Fraserburgh has the most amazing museum you will ever visit. The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses at Kinnaird Head, location of the first working Scottish lighthouse, is a testament to the ingenuity, innovation and determination of Scotland’s finest engineers. It is populated by numerous optical structures, bits of lighthouse innards, the eyeballs, irises and retinas if you like, along with strange optical illusions and refractions. In fact, the structures are similar to what I imagine to be the ideal sound editing softwere – a 3D holographic affair where you can walk in and around the representation of the sound at various stages of its emerging envelopes, editing and modifying by touch. With such a wealth of  applied knowledge and research into waveforms and their amplification, this was to be a fine place indeed for sonic experimentaton.  And you couldn’t have chosen a finer pair than Will Guthrie and Mark Wastell to provide the music.

One of the best ways to understand the inner workings of a musical event, the material processes, technical parameters, social circumstances and musical considerations, is to take part in setting up the gig. Which is what I did, beginning with loading the van and driving to the venue in the company of  the technical team:  beautiful Agnes of the Pink Leotard from Paris and the indispensible Aled Edwards.

On arrival we were well received by the curator/director Virginia Mayes-Wright who mucked in with the lifting and setting up. From one perspective the museum is on three levels, so we had Mark Wastell more or less inside one of the compound lenses at ground level with his percussion: Chinese gong, bowls and crotales, along with harmonium. Will Guthrie set up his table of magic tricks on the second level overlooking the ground floor with Edwards on the desk behind to take care of feedback and any other unwanted intrusions. The upper level was free to navigate as a viewing platform.

I was impressed by the clear acoustics of the space(s), which might have something to do with the pitched ceiling allowing the sound to travel freely across all dimensions without any obvious colouring from reverberation. Apart from the sound of rain outside, there was  little else in the way of unwanted noise from fans or generators.

Review – Burkhard Beins and Bill Thompson

Burkhard Beins and Bill Thompson

Thursday 5 November 2009, 8.00pm

Suttie Centre, University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen

I’m back in the Borders tapping away at the keyboard, having just been to Aberdeen for a few days, an experience that I find unsettling and comforting in equal measure. Because I was born and raised there (against my will of course and probably as a result of some residual bad karma – why would anyone choose to come from a cold grey fishing town on the North East Coast of Scotland?), I can say whatever I like about the place. I can’t be sure but I have a feeling that this is a common law right shared across all races, creeds and colours: whilst remaining reasonably respectful about the birthplace of others you can say what you like about your own. This can, however,  lead to internecine strife; my father, an ex-Lord Provost, will tolerate no criticism of the ‘Deen. We frequently ‘enjoy’ a full and frank exchange of views.

Yes, Aberdeen has its faults. When I was a lad, it was a dour, dull, grey fishing town – then the oil came. Now its filled with the wrong type of people on the wrong sort of income. Redeeming features: the hinterland, the University music department, in particular Pete Stollery, one of the finest individuals (and composers) that you’re likely to meet, the light (north of Stonehaven you enter the Nordic climatic zone), and last but not least the SOUND festival where this year they had the good sense to let Bill Thompson curate and host three days of experimental music concerts. I want over the next few days to review three of these events.

Here’s what I know of the two artists. Bill Thompson, originally of Austin, Texas, is a close personal friend, a musical colleague and one of the most affable and charismatic musicians I know. He works very hard and covers all the angles. I’ve worked with him many times over the last few years and have been privileged to have intimate insights into his work, to understand the details of his ongoing practice, his commitment to what might be called the avant-garde, to free improvisation and to finding his niche and setting out his stall in the increasingly populated free improvisation village.

Prior to meeting Burkhard Beins and working closely with him and the other musicians I only knew what I had read online.  Now resident in Berlin, he has a solid reputation and his CV tells us that as a ‘composer/performer, working in the non-academic fields of experimental music, he is known for his widely abstracted use of percussion instruments in combination with selected objects’

Review – Enantio_Dromia

Thanos Chrysakis, Wade Matthews, Dario Bernal-Villegas

Enantio_Dromia

Meta

I did something unusual in preparing to review this album. I didn’t find out the meaning of the title, Enantio_Dromia, until after I had listened to the music several times. Unlike some who suffer from Hellenologophobia, I gravitate towards Greek terms, in particular philosophical terms which were established originally in one or another form of the Greek language. It must be nice to be Greek. I mean I’d like to be able to become a Greek person when it suited me and then return to being Scottish in case anyone missed me. That way I could maybe get a bit closer to all those powerful Greek words, the signifiers, and their signified philosophical concepts, which I’m sure are reduced in the translation.

I wish I had been able to understand the title simply by reading it. That would have addressed my most pressing need as I listened to the music, which was to understand something of the conceptual background. In this work the forces of intent and intelligence are palpable at every turn. The album is as beautifully crafted as you’ll find anywhere. It is stunning in its clarity, exquisite in its palette of sounds and in its inexhaustible invention the listener will want to return to the music many, many times. I’m no expert (if there is such a thing), but I’ve been round the block several times and with that experience I will set this album down as a benchmark, that is until I listen to something better in a similar idiom.

So, in order to find out what Enantio_Droma might mean I turned to good old Wikipedia (scorned by many academics, but I don’t have a Greek dictionary, forgive me) which tells me that Enantio Dromia is a principle associated with Jung, amongst others, whereby any force produces its opposite, an extreme is opposed, and balance restored; not dissimilar to the concept of ying and yan though Jung is referring more specifically to conscious tendencies. The concept helps to explain so many processes, including certain musical processes; it is a fascinating metaphorical construction, or organising principle, for musical composition. In my investigations into, and correspondence with, contemporary composers and sound artists, I’m discovering that some of the best, in my opinion, have chosen to lean very heavily and very deliberately on psychological, philosophical, scientific and anthropological principles as a means of organising their music. Nothing new in this, I concede, but there’s a freshness and vitality to some of this contemporary work which is very exciting.
Except for the names of the musicians and what they play there are no sleeve note and no track titles, just a sequence of (Roman) numerals and a very important phrase:-

all music improvised

The musicians are: UK-based Greek composer, percussionist and improviser Thanos Chrysakis on laptop and electronics  (rototom on one track), Wade Matthews, a French-born American who lives in Madrid, on digital synthesis and field recordings, and Dario Bernal-Villegas, originally from Mexico City, on percussion. Matthews edited and mastered the album. In other words a band, a studio album by three seasoned improvisers. I’ve never met any of them, but I know of Chrysakis’ work from seeing his name pop up around the electroacoustic circuit.

Coming back to the ‘all music improvised’ statement, I can only say that the level of musicianship is astounding. Yes, there are moments when hordes of sonic furies are unleashed, there are hints of self indulgence, but you get that with John Coltrane and nobody seems to object. What I find interesting about this album is that the combination of instruments, the palette of sounds chosen, the feeling of human beings playing together (as opposed to machines playing) give the impression that this kind of music has been with us for centuries, like some types of traditional music, yet still remains fresh and vital.

There are six tracks, four at around the 6:00 – 8:00 mark, the other two at around the 12:30 mark. On each listen, something new reveals itself and similarly you have to devote time to the music because on further listening, the creativity and depth in the interplay and improvisation become more evident. I’m particularly reminded of the best examples of acousmatic music.

Review – Y.E.R.M.O: From Gold Falls a Bad Rain

Y.E.R.M.O

From Gold Falls a Bad Rain [32:36]

Those lads at Idiosyncratics Records state in their demo policy:-

For the coherence of the project, we are not interested in releasing electronica, breakcore, drum and bass, electro-pop etc. (although these forms can be very nice indeed!).

This tells me: a) that they know what they don’t want and b) that they have considered their aesthetic. Alongside that, this release confirms that they most certainly do worship at the Church of Massive Textures.

Y.E.R.M.O. are Xavier Dubois and Yannick Franck. Yannick Franck is involved with the running of Idiosyncratics Records, though From Gold falls a Bad Rain is released on Humpty Dumpty Records. Their work is well documented online, they have a lively and busy MySpace site  and they appear to be working successfully in cross-disciplinary contexts – their collaboration with conceptual and visual artists Nadine Hilbert & Gast Bouschet for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale (running till November 2009) confirms this.

There are so many similarities between From Gold Falls a Bad Rain and Hatchling, which I reviewed recently. The Idiosyncratics demo policy is working well and one might reasonably posit a sense of community with a shared aesthetic in the making. Here, then, as with Hatchling, the listener will be amply rewarded for time taken to listen patiently and with concentration.

Before I dive in, I’m going to have a flutter at a probable scenario where Y.E.R.M.O and Hapsburg Braganza both do a lot of live work (in fact I know this to be the case), where their recorded mixes are very much ‘best versions’ of possible live performances. Linearity of structure, slow layering and monolithic blocks of sonic textures, typical features of Hatchling, are also evident in this release. I tend to associate this type of structural approach with artists who work a lot at the sharp end of live work and who consequently take their live experience into the studio. The ideas might have been initially discovered or explored in an actual performance, or worked up as a studio mix to be finalised later. Whatever the case, I’m pretty sure that in both cases the composition, the putting together, was done largely by ear, which is a good thing in my book.

Except for a few acknowledgements there are no sleeve notes but I did notice that the work has been mastered. The relevance of this will become clearer as I discuss the work in detail.

Review – Hapsburg Braganza: Hatchling

Hapsburg Braganza

Hatchling [40:26]

Yannick Franck of Idiosyncratics Records kindly sent me two albums to review.  This is a review of the first, Hatchling, a recent release by Hapsburg Braganza, with the second, From Gold Falls a Bad Rain by Y.E.R.M.O, to follow.

Assumptions

Here’s what I’ve learned from the sleeve notes. Hapsburg Braganza, a.k.a. Phil Begg, is a Newcastle based artist. Piecing together the clues, he seems to be connected in some way to the Culture Lab at the University. Normally you’d expect someone from that background to like fiddling around with sound/noise-making gadgets and devices and to like doing this in live performance, all of which seems to be the case.

The sounds on the album have been sourced from: Indian harmonium, cymbals, acoustic guitar, piano, acoustic/concrete sounds, field recordings (shore of Crummock Water, Honister Pass summit, Rigg Beck, Jesmond Dene pet cemetery. Given the short textual clue,

To the exorcism of ghosts and escaping from cities

I’m assuming some sort of personal exorcism, an autobiographical programme/agenda, with obvious advantages to physical and spiritual health in getting out of the Toon (fine city though it is) over to the Lake District  from time to time. Or (and I’m not being facetious) has his dog died I wonder, given the prominence of Jesmond Dene pet cemetery as a sound source and its apparent representation at the end of the work?

Approaches

In reviewing, as in all things, there are many ways to skin a cat. The timeline approach is not my favoured strategy, but with an album like this,  quite linear in its perception, and possibly in its conception, it would seem to be a good way of getting the best out of the work with its many good points and well crafted features.

First of all I’d say that that the work merits careful listening. You’ll be amply rewarded, especially over headphones. I’ll confess that my first listening attitude wasn’t at all satisfactory. I decided to lie flat on the sofa and listen without any preconceptions or note-taking. I fell asleep, or, more precisely I drifted in and out of a half sleep as the music took me here and there. This is no bad thing. I’ve found reference to two separate and distinct cultural traditions which claimed that all good music must fulfil any or all of three criteria in order to pass for good music – it had to make you laugh (I assume this includes dance), cry or sleep.  The medieval Islamic scholar Al-Farabi was quite clear about this as were the Celtic bards. But my drowsiness was more to do with a long cycle and a big lunch…

The Music

This album takes its time, so you have to be patient. It’s a textural work with very little in the way of figures or gestures. The first minute presents a very slow and beautiful crescendo with some interesting spatial attributes (headphones will bring these out best). A slow and gentle pulse of broadband noise establishes itself as a ground, with gestural iterations emerging at around 2:10. Later, around 3:40, pulses arrive from various sources (presumably these are the concrete sounds), then creaks, hints of static and crackle, resonance, hums and drones emerging and receding as contrasting figures. A gentle and considered polyphony, well separated. You might decide at this point that the message has been delivered and that it’s time to move on, but as I said, patience will be rewarded.

All new sounds are carefully introduced. Another interesting feature, deliberate or not, is the fact that a balance is struck, to my ears at least, between interest in the source of the sounds and interest in the sounds’ sonic features. This gets to the heart of what mimetic or representational material is all about.

We have, therefore, a good concrete introduction, up to around 6:00. In taking his time, the composer introduces each new sound with care, then lets them find their level in the emerging mix.  Foreground and background are well configured and a ‘tight’ spatial ambience establishes itself in the first 3 -4  minutes (studio created, yet threatening to break out in to an outdoors ambience).  In works like this I’m always sniffing out a sense of narrative. There’s a creaky door which of course has metaphorical  implications – perhaps an escape to the country – as well as purely sonic implications; in this case the sound offers interesting similarities and contrasts with its neighbours, enhancing the overall musicality at work. A feeling of human initiated activity makes itself felt quite prominently at around 5:00, though any narrative implications dry up soon after. Structurally speaking we’re dealing with the tried and tested technique of enabling contrasting textures to build into slow measured layers where any looping is long enough to pass notice. This established we’re left to comment on the choice of sounds and to my ears these are well chosen, well separated and well placed in the mix.

Here we go again

prognostications

The London based sonorazzi are at it again. We need a half hour video by the self appointed priesthood to tell us something that should by now be bleeding obvious – sound art in galleries sounds like sh*t. Some of it looks good which is why it finds a place in a visual arts institution. Some artists make a handsome career out of deceiving us into thinking that nicely presented speakers on a wall constitutes ‘high’ sonic art. As for the sound, some of it might have sounded good to the artist in the studio, but in the end it travels badly and can’t compete with bad acoustic design, coffee machines and slamming doors in reverberant chambers. A hell of a lot of it doesn’t work; the curators aren’t technically up to the job.

Of course I have the solution, but I’m not telling any of you lot because someone will nick my idea, same as A. Gormley, who stole my stylites idea for his London plinth thingy. All will be revealed in due course.

Don’t you just love the bit about ‘key’ artists, curators and institutions. The guardians of sacred knowledge.  In the meanwhile, look out for further  prognostications from the sonorazzi:-

A documentary on sound in the visual arts world

Total runtime: 30min, 2009

Sound in Context is a short documentary exploring the unique practice of sound within the visual arts world. Through conversations with a number of key art institutions/galleries, artists and curators working with sound in the UK and abroad, Sound in Context allows practitioners to discuss some of the issues of presenting and exhibiting sound in the gallery and contemporary art domain.

Interviews with:
Seth Cluett (artist), Benedict Drew (artist/curator), Barry Esson (director, Arika), Anne Hilde Neset (deputy editor, The Wire), Hans Ulrich Obrist (co-director, Serpentine Gallery), Mike Stubbs (director, FACT), David Toop (writer/curator), Richard Whitelaw (programme director, Sonic Arts Network)

Produced by: Jonathan Webb and Ashley Wong for Sound and Music

View full video here: http://www.soundandmusic.org/activities/samlabs/soundincontext

Review (2 of 2): dialogues inspace | event 2 | pianos plus, Edinburgh 2 Oct ‘09

Time: 20:00 – 23:00

Location: inspace @ Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh

Street: Crichton Street

Town/City: Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Lauren Hayes (piano+) – Transients

A collective shift of position followed by a perfect volte-face, and the audience was facing the innards of a prepared upright piano at the back wall and a laptop next to the pianist’s stool. A young woman, dressed in neutral grey, sat at the piano and began her performance.

My orchestration book tells me that the piano is a percussion instrument. Stravinsky seemed to think so and Lauren Hayes certainly agrees. This piano had been well prepared; we were treated to a collection of precisely chosen timbres, an unusual blend of uniquely wooden yet pianistic sounds. Very simple in other words. Whatever she did at the piano was obviously being processed on the fly by the computer (a Maxpatch most likely) and sent back into the mix, again according to tightly controlled compositional parameters. I asked Lauren briefly about this after her performance and she let me know that she had the whole thing as tight as a nut.

The music was wonderful. Nothing extravagant, just excellent pacing, flow and overall dynamic shape. Asynchronous rhythmic loops, iterations, wooden taps and knocks, almost ethnic, layered up clearly and effectively. But the key for me was that she was doing more than enough physically at the keyboards to make the audience feel that this was a performance, in real time, regardless of any computer processing on the fly. She moved well over the instrument, never exaggerating, but with a fine sense of presence, at first quite gently, then, with what looked like the end of a broom handle, more energetically, banging and tapping all areas, eventually getting underneath the sound board and bashing away at its underbelly.

The choice of sitting with her back to the audience was well considered. You could see what was important – the guts of the instrument, the arm and body movements of the performer.

As I said, the timbres, rhythms and mix of the iterations had great integrity, legitimacy (a ‘natural’-ness) about them, offering plenty of interest to engage the listener, in short, musicality. There was only one point where a clearly synthetic timbre of fluctuating spectrum pushed through and spelled ’software intrusion’. I made a point of asking her about this specific sound and she knew immediately what I was referring to, stating that it was clearly intended. Problem solved.

The laptop screen was clearly visible to all. Was this part of the performance? Most visible were two Arabic numeral counters, one that might have been seconds and another which jumped from small to large numbers seemingly at random. I suppose that being able to see the screen encouraged you to think about the metrical/temporal structure of the music as it unfolded, but my guess is that it was conveniently placed for the performer to see as a score, a sequence of markers for the player to follow, just to check that all was running smoothly.

All in all an inspiring and confident performance of excellent music.