Twice Zonked!

Zoltán Jeney - Arupa / Fantasia Su Una Nota (Hungaroton, 1987)

2011-12-01T22:48:00.001-05:00

Zoltán Jeney is one of the many innovative composers affiliated with Budapest's New Music Studio, a highly versatile camp whose activities run the gamut from percussion pieces and chamber ensembles to various electro-acoustic excursions. Jeney's works are fascinating both for his ear for unusual instrument combinations and for his unorthodox methods of composing. Often he leaves the manner in which the composition unfolds somewhat open-ended, allowing the performers to progress as they see fit. The two side-long pieces that comprise this album exemplify Jeney's range of ideas and methods.

Jeney wrote Arupa (1981) for six to eight ship-bells, a single drum, and a sustained pitch, which here is provided by an electric organ. The drum establishes a steady tempo, which it maintains for the duration of the piece. On the ninth beat, the bells and organ enter. Jeney has devised several rhythmic formulas with varying meters for seven of the the bells, with the eighth bell serving to inform the others of the change in meter. At the start, they play in unison, but after the eighth measure, the players successively advance to the next rhythmic formula, which they will play anywhere from four to eight times. Though the process is somewhat similar to Terry Riley's In C, the use of the bells sounded in constant, rich tone leaves a much different impression. When the rhythmic bells reach the final cell, the instructive bell gives a signal and the piece ends.

Fantasia Su Una Nota (1984) is a study in contrasting ensembles. Jeney wrote the piece for two groups: the first, a group of 5 to 24 players all wielding instruments "whose sound can be influenced after is has begun to sound (e.g. strings, woodwind, brasses, etc.)"; five members constitute the second group, each playing plucked instruments or tuned percussion. Again, a continuous electronic tone resonates throughout. The first group plays only C#, working its way through twenty-four units each a minute in duration. At the beginning of each minute, a bell also tuned to C# sounds. The second group is allowed quite a bit more freedom, working through a series of twenty-seven chords, from which the five players choose one elemental note. They may improvise freely and there is no pressure for them to play on beat. Even with this looseness, the piece unfolds slowly as the second group's contribution floats against the C# soundings of the first.

Arupa / Fantasia Su Una Nota
& in .flac: 1 & 2

V/A - Dimensio (Jase, 1987)

2011-11-22T11:25:00.001-05:00

Collected here is but a tiny cross section of the electro-acoustic goings on that circulated in Finland during the late 1970s and into the 1980s. The four composers represented here all have ties to the Finnish art collective, the Dimensio Group, a multi-media outing upwards of 70 members strong with an interest in the intersections of art and technology.

Side A:
Otto Romanowski (b. 1952): Ein Blick (1985)
Herman Rechberger (b. 1947): Frühlingsrauschen (1984)

Side B:
Jukka Ruohomäki (b. 1947): NRUT 1 (1978)
Otto Romanowski: Deuxiéme image du son (1985)
Jarmo Sermilä (b. 1939): Hommage à Jules Verne (1982)

Approaches vary quite a bit here, with half the composers working solely in the electro-acoustic realm and the other half only dabbling and incorporating elements into their predominantly instrumental works. Otto Romanowski and Jukka Ruohomäki are both among the former. Romanowski is perhaps the most documented of the four, with a good deal of his computer compositions available and in circulation. His two pieces here illustration his versatility. "Ein Blick" is the more frenetic of the two, built from the manic stumbling of dense sound blocks. "Deuxiéme image du son" is almost graceful by contrast, meticulously amassing swells of organ-like tones. Jukka Ruohomäki is a student of Erkki Kurenniemi, an innovator of tape music in Finland. Ruohomäki's "NRUT 1" is a workout in interlocking loops of laughter, often giving way to incidental rhythmic chunks.

For both Herman Rechberger and Jarmo Sermilä, the works presented here are representative of only a small portion of their output. "Frühlingsrauschen" is one of only five pieces Rechberger created solo for tape, though he wrote several more incorporating tape and instruments. "Frühlingsrauschen" is many layered, seemingly of both electronic and unidentifiable instrumental sources, very much evocative of its Sinding-penned namesake. Jarmo Sermilä is perhaps the most prolific and diversely occupied of those presented here, with a catalog of solo, orchestra and chamber works, choral pieces, and structured improvisations, as well as a number of electronic pieces. His "Hommage à Jules Verne" submerges throat singing and trumpet into a gradually collapsing wave of electronic sound.

As with the Elektroakustische Musik Aus Finnland, it's astonishing how little overlap Dimensio holds with the other available collections of out there Finnish works. Certainly, there is even more to be found.

Dimensio
& in .flac

Michael Pisaro & Greg Stuart on Broken Music, 10/23

2011-10-21T22:24:00.000-04:00

This Sunday, composer/guitarist Michael Pisaro and percussionist Greg Stuart will be performing on my radio show Broken Music. They will be playing the Beckett pieces (8a – 8e) from Pisaro's Harmony Series and discussing a bit in between. The show airs Sunday, October 23, from 2 - 3pm EST on www.wxyc.org and at 89.3 FM for those in the Chapel Hill, NC area.

Twice Zonked on FB

2011-08-30T10:41:00.001-04:00

Not sure whether I did this to make me feel obligated to post more or to make you feel less obligated to check this page, but I made a Twice Zonked page on the facebooks. So far it seems that my posts magically will appear there. Do with it what you will.

V/A - IMEB Opus 30, vol 2, 1984-1999 3xCD (Le Chant du Monde, 2003)

2011-08-30T10:12:00.000-04:00

Picking up where the first volume left off, IMEB Opus 30, vol. 2 covers the next sixteen years of IMEB history. Important to note that this volume comes on the opposite end of that paradigm shift from tape and analog over to computers and digital. Make no mistake, the framework of computer music is being built in the decade prior, but here those mechanisms are in full force. The processes heard here are dizzyingly complex, produced for once in real time rather than over an arduous wait, and yet there remains distinct ties to the aesthetics of the Group's early years.

Disc 4: 1984-88
1 Lothar Voigtländer - Hommage à un poète (1984)
2 Dieter Kaufmann - Le ciel et la terre (1985)
3 Yves Daoust - Il était une fois… (conte sans paroles) (1986)
4 Françoise Barrière - L’or (1987)
5 Takayuki Rai - Sparkle (1988)

Very difficult to pick a highlight from the first batch, with each piece setting out for far different aims than the next. Dieter Kaufmann's piece is perhaps the oddest, an ode to childhood constructed from recordings he and his 10 year old son Ulrich made during their travels, a far cry from the Ferrari travelogue. Takayuki Rai delivers a gripping piece as well, this one for computer processed bass clarinet and tape. The pieces by Yves Daoust and IMEB co-founder Françoise Barrière both carry a strong narrative arc, Daoust's residing in a world of fantasy, while Barrière draws on a clear sense of human hardship.

Disc 5: 1989-93
1 Robert Normandeau - Jeu (1989)
2 Rainer Boesch - Pierres (1990)
3 José Manuel Berenguer - Ob-lectum (1991)
4 Gerald Bennett - Rainstick (1992)
5 Eduard Artemiev - I would like to return (1993)

Curiously, there is much to compare among the works in this second disc. The three middle pieces by Boesch, Berenguer, and Bennett are each meditations on a central object--stones, a voice (and in its words, Claude Shannon), and a South American rainstick. Each of the works draws on human action and transforms in a way that keeps the tactile or vocal elements intact, never allowing computer processes to obscure that physical presence. The bookending pieces by Normandeau and Artemiev are both free-associations. Normandeau's "Jeu" almost serves as a thesaurus entry on the notion of "play", recited off the top of his head.

Disc 6: 1994-99
1 Patrick Kosk - Plastique sans titre (1994)
2 Charles Dodge - Fades, Dissolves, Fizzles (1995)
3 Francisco Kröpfl - Winds (1996)
4 Nicola Sani - Non tutte le isole hanno intorno il mare (1997)
5 Horacio Vaggione - Agon (1998)
6 Åke Parmerud - Les flûtes en feu (1999)

Most interesting to me about these final six works is how each shows a distinct slowing of pace from the previous selections and a focused attention on how one organizes sound. It's almost as if the excitement over how much can be done with computers has worn off, moving on to the challenge of how it can be done well. Kosk and Dodge aim in their works here to bring a personal order to their disparate materials. Individual instrumental elements are bound in a mesh of manipulation as Kröpfl (voice), Sani (clarinets), Vaggione (percussion), and Parmerud (flute) offer varying stances on how deeply one's building blocks should be concealed.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3

V/A - IMEB Opus 30, vol 1, 1970-1983 3xCD (Le Chant du Monde, 2003)

2011-08-10T19:54:00.006-04:00

Founded in 1970 by Françoise Barrière and Christian Clozier, the Institut international de musique électroacoustique de Bourges (née Groupe de musique électroacoustique de Bourges) has played host to a diverse array of electronic composers, publishing their works largely via the Le Chant du Monde label's Chrysopée Electronique series, organizing concert events, and promoting the ongoing sound research that makes electronic music possible. For the most part, the many electronic music studio camps are difficult to truly characterize, with IMEB no exception. Given the many nations represented among its roster and their varied activities, the closest I can come to an IMEB worldview would be to welcome with open arms all practices electronic. The two volumes of IMEB Opus 30, celebrating the Institut's first thirty years, certainly serves as proof to that claim. The series offers one representative track for each year of activity, showcasing the diversity of the group and the depth of its creativity.

Disc 1: 1970-73
1 Christian Clozier - La discordatura (1970)
2 Luís María Serra - Abismos (1971)
3 Alain Savouret - Tango (1972)
4 Wlodzimierz Kotonski - Les ailes (1973)

These entries covering the first four years of IMEB are of a largely electro-acoustic nature, with each composer all but obliterating the instrumental sources. Founder Clozier's "La discordatura" dismantles an already frenzied flock of violins. Entries by Argentinian Luís María Serra and Polish composer Wlodzimierz Kotonski tackle piano work with starkly contrasting form, Serra determined to leave the instrument's integrity largely intact and Kotonski rendering it a mere trigger. Alain Savouret's "Tango" nestles somewhere between their two approaches, waiting only briefly before whisking the Farfisa stabs into far dreamier realms.

Disc 2: 1974-78
1 Pierre Boeswillwald - Toccatanne no 2: qui est là? (1974)
2 Sten Hanson - Le nom des 7 nuits (1975)
3 José Vicente Asuar - Affaires des oiseaux (1976)
4 Zoltán Pongrácz - Variations boucles (1977)
5 Jack Body - Musik anak anak (1978)

The approach quickly broadens over the next five years. Pierre Boeswillwald's "Toccatanne no 2" delves into the intersection of natural and artificial, making short work from a percussive array. The piece is notable for its use of a profound GMEB creation, the massive console and speaker configuration known after several renamings as the Cybernéphone. "Le Nom des 7 Nuits" is Sten Hanson in top form, offering a murky but engaging text-sound romp. The three works that follow each exhibit a striking level of imagination. Chilean José Vicente Asuar works primarily with bird sounds, variespeeding some 50 different bird songs into a entirely new entity. The always impressive Zoltán Pongrácz offers a study in loops, first operating in the synthesized realm, gradually introducing repetitive segments of folk instruments and various industrial sounds. Biggest treat here might be New Zealander Jack Body, who turns to childhood as a starting point, first crafting a monkey chant from singing children, then using the sounds of delicate toys to build an evershifting dreamlike soundscape.

Disc 3: 1978-83
1 Barry Truax - Ascendance (1979)
2 Lars-Gunnar Bodin - Épilogue, rhapsodie de la seconde récolte (1980)
3 Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux - Constellation I (1981)
4 Georg Katzer - La flûte fait le jeu (1982)
5 Fernand Vandenbogaerde - Cyclanes (1983)

With the exception of the Georg Kratzer piece, the remaining selections reside primarily in the electronic realm. Kratzer's piece is an impressive one, with the flute creating all the textures being used and its envelope dictating levels in the modulating equipment. Barry Truax's opening work is a glacial, slow motion multi-oscillator pile up. The next piece is unmistakably the work of Bodin, frequently building with a frenzied pace. Another crowd pleaser, Canadian Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux carefully ascends into the filter spirals of her piece though some more twisted sweeps emerge toward its close. The collection closes with Vendenbogaerde's "Cyclanes", piecing together simple signal fragments via complex arrays of processing.

While the pieces presented over this fourteen year span may not form a Unified Theory of IMEB-ness, they do present an overview of the studio's fascinating history, highlighting in particular the approaches of a diverse gathering of composers spanning the globe.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3

Note: Original upload had horribly jumbled tags, carrying over into some confusion within the post. New links have been provided and the post adjusted accordingly.

Paul Lytton, David Toop, Max Eastley, Paul Burwell, Annabel Nicolson, Evan Parker, Hugh Davies, Paul Lovens - Circadian Rhythm (Incus, 1980)

2011-06-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

I will be the first to admit that I approached this album with equal amounts of fear and excitement. Each and every one of the names I knew were people who have shaped my notion of what music could be. It was when I counted all the names involved that I truly began to worry. I should have known better, but in imagining these eight together, a creeping dread emerged of how disappointed I would be were I not completely bowled over. And so this record sat on my shelf for well over a week. Two items on the back cover finally persuaded me to take the plunge. The first was the list of each player's role in the performance:

Paul Burwell: percussion; Hugh Davies: live electronics; Max Eastley: self-designed automatic instruments and other small home-made instruments; Paul Lovens: percussion & singing saw; Paul Lytton: percussion & live electronics; Annabel Nicolson: charcoal, sparks, branches, twigs, fire, pine needles, draughts, smoke; Evan Parker: saxophones, etc.; David Toop: flute, alto flute, bass recorder, piccolo, home-made & found instruments.

The second was Evan Parker's note: "The music on this record has been selected from tapes of a thirteen hour concert given at the London Musicians' Collective from July 29 - 30 1978, as part of David Toop's Music/Context Festival. Our original intention had been to play for a whole day." Knowing then that the group had the restraint to conclude the performance nearly halfway to its intended duration, that many of the instruments were of such a delicate nature, my curiosity surged enough to finally warrant a listen.

The performance captured moves slowly and carefully, more an ongoing sound environment than the caterwauling group blow out that one might expect from an ensemble this size. The confluence of acoustic and electronic instruments, as well as traditional and home-made, is seamless and captivating, with each timbre and texture carving out its own space in the recording all the while blurring a clear notion of who did what. Many of the players aim for the higher registers, delivering long, unfurling tones, some steady and others warbling, that hang in the room before sinking into the next. Meanwhile, an underbed of clanging, percussive activity scatters below, a punctuating hit emerging here and there but never escalating to a full rumble. The sum is immersive without ever being overbearing. The performance is not presented chronologically; the only indication when each section occurred over the 13 hours is an out of sequence numbering of each excerpt, the first constituting the album's second side.

I do not regret prolonging my first listen, as my informed expectations helped to create a mental image of the record's happenings. Perhaps owing to the planned length of the performance, there is a patience and commitment to the ideas that translates well in the recording, with an implicit satisfactory nod each time the group moves on. In fact, in the brief account of the performance in Toop's Ocean of Sound, he attributes the premature conclusion of the date to "running into a wall of exhaustion and an overwhelming feeling that there was nothing more to add. In hindsight, I think there were too many distractions and too many players."

Circadian Rhythm
& in .flac

Additional reading:
David Toop's London Musicians' Collective archive
Clive Bell's compiled musings on the London Musicians' Collective

Eduardo Polonio - Obras Electroacústicas 1969-1998 5 x cd (Edición Antológica, 1998)

2011-05-23T16:43:00.000-04:00

Over the three decades worth of material presented here, Spanish composer Eduardo Polonio gathers his varied explorations of tape and synthesis, to which he has been devoted since 1969 when he all but abandoned acoustic instruments. Previously, Polonio studied composition and counterpoint at Madrid's Royal Conservatory of Music. He soon immersed himself deeply in electronic composition, working closely with the Phonos Laboratory and the Alea Laboratory, becoming a member of the Alea Música Electrónica Libre. Although his associations with the Esplendor Geometrico camp and Horacio Vaggione might pepper one's expectations, these works are unmistakably of Polonio's singular style and approach. Easily misunderstood as haphazard, his synth and tape constructions operate under a rapidly shifting logic, only settling briefly into stasis before another series of twists and turns.

Each of the five discs are devoted to eras of Polonio's career. The two pieces dated to 1969 on the first disc, "Para Una Pequeña Margarita Ronca" and "Oficio", showcase his early forays into tape work, both built around frenetic, bobbing waveforms. Two longer Polonio works from the 1970s appear, built on alternately frantic and lush sequenced synth splat courtesy of a gang of early mass market keys, serving as a prominent reference point for the remainder of Polonio's output. Though he never stays the same course for long, the manic, shifting figures and dense swarms of tones remain integral components throughout his catalog. Impressive is the guitar piece "Valverde" (1981) for its ability to conjure cascading figures not unlike those on his synth pieces with just José-Manuel Berenguer's arpeggiated phrases and a delay system. Throughout these five discs, we find the constantly evolving vision of an unsung visionary.

Obras 1 - 3
Obras 4 - 5

Matsuo Ohno - The World of Electro-Acoustic Sound & Music (King, 2005)

2011-03-17T16:35:00.001-04:00

Matsuo Ohno is another Japanese composer of unparalleled imagination, most commonly associated with his tape-based sound production for the animated version of Astro Boy, airing from 1963 until 1966. The three volumes collected here team those productions along with several other works across his career. He began as a freelance sound designer, inspired by surrealist film and NHK broadcasts of Stockhausen.

The first volume, Astro Boy / Yamatoji / Yuragi / and the Others, is dedicated largely to the television sound work for which he is most known. Armed with radio transmitters, reel-to-reel machines, echo, and eq, Ohno and his then assistant, the equally innovative Takehisa Kosugi, crafted a slew of warped bursts used for various cues and transitions throughout the cartoon series along with the various pieces of Astro Boy background music, each futuristic minature bizarre in its own way. Included as well are several musique concrète works from the 1980s and '90s. Most impressive of those is Yamatoji A, a deep tape piece built from Ohno's own recordings of bonsho and Tibetan recitations.

I Saw the Outer Limits / The War in Space pairs two of Matsuo Ohno's soundtrack productions from 1977-78, each reveling in the intergalactic splurt that is unmistakably Ohno. The titles throughout I Saw the Outer Limits are almost as entertaining as the cosmic warble Ohno produced. It is only appropriate that "A Brief Tour of the Solar System and Interplanetary Space" would give way to "A Slightly Longer Tour of the Galaxy and Interstellar Space", both pieces ranking among Ohno's deepest and spookiest sound worlds. The material for The War in Space appear to be both transition music and sound effects, among them Ohno-crafted explosions and laser fires, as well as some extended space war scenes. The filter use is a bit harsher, opening blasts often giving way to stasis-heavy washes. One can't help but wonder if the film might have been relocated to space after Ohno unveiled his sound work.

The closing disc, Memory in the Beginning, compiles a recent gathering of pieces, dating all from 2004. Ohno spent much of 2002 and 2003 in and out of medical centers, emerging in '04 with a drive to craft new material. Again, there is no mistaking Ohno--though the recordings hold a clarity missing from the earlier pieces, the woozy echoes and spiraling, otherworldly ripples are in full effect. New to these pieces are a penchant for rhythmic chattering and a somewhat baffling heavy use of flanging, which Ohno owns as only he can. The creativity found in these modern pieces is every bit as infectious as that of his early days as a sound designer.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Jo Kondo - Standing / Sight Rhythmics / Under the Umbrella (CP2, 1981)

2011-03-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

These deceptively simple compositions demonstrate the blossoming of Japanese composer Jo Kondo's ideas over a short period in the early 1970s. Kondo initially described his style as Sen no Ongaku, translating that roughly as Linear Music. At its foundation is the use of a steadily unfolding melody, with little in the way of variation in rhythm, dynamics, and timbre, and a limited pallet of pitches, focusing not on the individual character of each note, but on how the notes interrelate.

Standing (1973) is a somewhat more sophisticated take on his linear approach, utilizing three disparate instrument groups--in this case, marimba, flute and piano--rather than his usual one or two. Arranged in an interlocking, hocket-like form, the three instruments sound in close succession, the flute and piano essentially shadowing each step of the marimba. After selecting the tones, Kondo arranged them in a random sequence, forming a shifting tonal center rather than an actual key. On occasion, a tone will repeat, disrupting the steady back and forth rocking onto which much of the melodic line unfolds. As the piece progresses, rapidly echoing tones emerge, which, because they are performed on instruments of varied timbre, have the effect more of a stutter than a cascade. Kondo composed the piece for Sound Space "Ark", an ensemble specializing largely in contemporary Japanese pieces; appearing here are three of its members, Aki Takahashi (piano). Hiroshi Koizumi (flute), and Yasunori Yamaguchi (marimba).

Aki Takahashi appears again on Sight Rhythmics (1975) for solo piano, distilling onto one instrument a piece originally intended for violin, steel drum, banjo, electric piano, and tuba. The piece features a more intuitively determined, pointillist approach to melody, which presents with much more subtlety on this piano rendition than in its ensemble form. In reducing the instrumentation, Kondo's melodic approach to the seemingly repetitive figures is revealing, giving way to near imperceptible variations that get lost in the ensemble version.

The closing Under the Umbrella (1976) marks a number of departures for Kondo, the most immediate being that this is his first piece for untuned instrumentation. The work calls for 25 cowbells, with the pitch and range determined by the five performers, and one low gong. Structurally, the piece differs in how conceptually different each movement is, some focusing on the rhythmic cells formed through the interlocking arrangements, others on the resultant melody in spite of the more ambiguous pitch of the instruments. With each movement, Kondo demonstrates a number of different effects that occur due to the specific timbral nature of the cowbells. Although the cowbells create a sound world much different than the previous pieces, the result is distinctly a Kondo creation.

Standing / Sight Rhythmics / Under the Umbrella
& in .flac

V/A - Elektroakustische Musik Aus Finnland (Edition RZ, 1989)

2011-03-08T13:03:00.002-05:00

Fascinating collection here, following that less traveled road to tape music by way of Finland. Of the four composers featured here, I knew only two, Patrick Kosk and Harri Vuori; of those I have only previously heard Kosk. These five pieces are bound by time and location, having been produced in the early to mid 1980s at the Yleisradio electronic studio in Helsinki, Finland. Despite emerging at the dawn of the computer age, these works are undeniably borne of tape, conjuring for me much more welcome images of the previous decade.

1 Patrick Kosk - Transmissions In A... (1981)
2 Petri Hiidenkari - Kräftig Und Bewegt (1985)
3 Harri Vuori - Nagual (1986)
4 Tapio Nevanlinna - You Offer Me Out Of Water The Sun (1985)
5 Petri Hiidenkari - Kreuzwege (1987)

Opening is Kosk's side-long Transmissions in a..., a filter-heavy growl with only a hinting of metallic sourced clank, calling to mind the actions of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe a decade later. The two pieces by Petri Hiidenkari are quite different. The first, Kräftig Und Bewegt, seems at times to be something of an ode to the locomotive and displays Hiidenkari's knack for combining natural acoustics with his studio manipulation. His other work, Kreuzwege, closes the collection, bending and expanding sharp clicks in a manner that would make Raaijmakers proud. Though I knew of Harri Vuori mostly for his ensemble works, his piece here has me hoping is much more to uncover. Nagual is a fast-paced montage built from wave after wave of vivid sound chunks. Equally captivating is Tapio Nevanlinna's You Offer Me Out of Water the Sun, a kinetic piece constructed from slapdash shards of glass and creaky wood, kind of a proto-Bryan Ruryk.

The collection unwittingly fills in those gaps in chronology between Love Record's Arktinen Hysteria collections of 70s avant Finnish sounds and the current crop from Fonal, 267 Lattajjaa, and the like. My one hope is that there is more to be found.

Elektroakustische Musik Aus Finnland

Rolf Julius - (Halb) Schwarz (X-Tract/Edition RZ, 2001)

2011-01-23T10:09:00.002-05:00

Sad news circulated this weekend about the passing of Rolf Julius. Julius' work was among the first to spark my interest in sound art and it continues to be a touching point when trying to make sense of the subsequent works I have encountered. After the Early Works disc, (Halb) Schwarz is probably my favorite. Like most of his other Small Music pieces, the material here carries with it the strong sense of being in suspended animation. The biggest difference is his tendency on this one to dip into those lower registers, so that the sounds aren't just twinkling over head but swarming throughout the room. I read a quote once by Julius: “For a long time I’ve been thinking about how to create spaces into which one can retreat, where one can find quiet, where one can see, hear, where one is able to concentrate, where one is isolated from the world around but still is able to participate in it…by means of art or music or both." There can be no doubt that he fulfilled that goal in these and his other works. Each piece feels like a small cove listeners can kneel down and poke their heads into, with sounds so fragile you fear one wrong move could send the entire space out of balance. In every strangely comforting piece, his presence is felt.

Links removed

Ilhan Mimaroglu - Face the Windmills, Turn Left (Finnadar, 1976)

2011-01-18T14:04:00.000-05:00

The recordings on Face the Windmills, Turn Left date as some of Ilhan Mimaroglu's earliest works at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. The Turkish-born composer came to Columbia-Princeton in the early 1960s, working largely under the mentorship of Vladimir Ussachevsky. While Mimaroglu and Ussachevsky share very little aesthetic common ground, there can be no mistaking a shared technical prowess. Mimaroglu's transformations here are fascinating, mangling both natural and electronic sources with a pace and logical all his own. The majority of these works are built from single sources, which Mimaroglu often renders nearly unrecognizable. "Bowery Bum" (inspired by the spiraling line drawings of Jean Dubuffet) and "Prelude No. 11" are both built from the carefully amplified sounds of rubber bands. However, where "Bowery Bum" wears its unmistakable tape sounds with pride, "Prelude No. 11" presents as the work of a virtuoso rubber bandist, if ever there was one. Oddly, the purely electronic pieces such as "Agony" and "Prelude No. 14" seem the most likely to conjure real world images, however bizarre and absurd those images might be.

Face the Windmills, Turn Left

Christian Zanési - Le Paradoxe de la Femme-Poisson (INA-GRM, 1998)

2010-11-05T17:25:00.000-04:00

Christian Zanési is one of my favorites among the later generation of GRM affiliates. He's at his best when exploring the more ethereal side of tape music, particularly in his ability to travel and inhabit space along the stereo spectrum. Le Paradoxe de la Femme-Poisson is his soundtrack to a Michel Kelemenis dance piece of the same name, which he realized at the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale in Marseille, France. The piece takes heavy cues from Homer's sirens, with Marjolaine Reymond's dreamy "mermaid" voice often dominating the sonic background. However, much of Zanési's touch here seems highly influenced by human movement, his sounds very acrobatic in nature. In addition, there is a very strong, albeit surreal, sense of place to the piece. While Le Paradoxe... is not his best (For me, that honor belongs to Stop! L'Horizon), the work certainly plays to his strengths and proves that imagination is still a strong presence in tape music.

Le Paradoxe de la Femme-Poisson
& in .flac

Pierre Schaeffer - L'Œuvre Musicale 4 x cd (INA-GRM, 1990)

2010-11-02T16:12:00.003-04:00

The four discs collected here cover the bulk of Pierre Schaeffer's concrète works (and act as addendum to my previously posted three disc version). The set begins with his pre-tape days when he composed using multiple turntables mixing sound effects recordings direct to lathe. The earliest recordings here were created in 1948 while serving as radio engineer for Radiodiffusion Française and are built from sounds ranging from locomotives and whirligigs to pots, pans, piano, and percussion. Each of those collages eventually made their way onto the air. His "Suite Pour 14 Instruments" is an amalgam of orchestral sounds rendered far beyond their original context.

Where these early works clearly function as experiments for Schaeffer, once Pierre Henry joins in as his assistant, the music takes on both a playfulness and a refinement of detail that eventually became landmarks of the French approach to musique concrète. The processes became increasingly laborious, and those who once flocked to Schaeffer's studio to work in this new medium became disillusioned by the demand and patience that the work required. Schaeffer and Henry worked together for eight years amassing a daunting sound library, some of which never fully materialed. Included here is an Henry work from 1988, created in homage to Schaeffer using fragments of their Orpheus 51 and 53. Though Schaeffer retired from music in 1960, he returned to sound studies in the late 1970s, eventually revisiting some early works. Those too are collected here, and the bridge in time is event as Schaeffer breathes new life into his early techniques while also incorporating a more defined sound. Included as well are the results of Schaeffer's studies of psycho-acoustics, presented here as the two part Le Trièdre Fertile. The newly included fourth disc gathers interviews and assorted radio material as well.

mp3s, 320 kbps
Les Incunables (1948-1950) & Les Œuvres Communes (1950-1953 Et 1988)
Les Révisions (1948-1952) Et Œuvres Postérieures (1957-1979) & Documents (1948-1990)

flac
Les Incunables (1948-1950)
Les Œuvres Communes (1950-1953 Et 1988
Les Révisions (1948-1952) Et Œuvres Postérieures (1957-1979)
Documents (1948-1990)

James Tenney - Selected Works 1961-1969 (Frog Peak, 2001)

2010-10-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

Tenney is different things for different people. Some know his writings, others his piano work, others his percussion pieces. He was also one of the early proponents of computer music. The first couple tracks here are tape pieces, one of them a mangling of Elvis' "Blue Suede Shoes". Often he uses computer algorithms to determine different parameters of the sound. He used those same stochastic processes to dictate a player piano scroll, also heard here. The last track is one of my favorite bits of electronic music, using Shepard tones to simulate a continuously rising note. During my college radio days, I used to play this during talk sets and it made every pause in speech extremely difficult to overcome. The magic is in how, despite the processes sometimes coming off as technical and formal, Tenney pulls each piece off in ways that are engaging and even funny. He is without question a master of all his crafts.

Selected Works
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Andreas Oldörp - Lotos (Nur/Nicht/Nur, 2008)

2010-10-07T17:15:00.000-04:00

Andreas Oldörp is a German sound artist active since the mid 1980's who is fascinated, as many other sound artists are, by the interactions of sound and space. For his Lotos installation--created as part of the Klang Zeit Festival of 2008--Oldörp fitted the chapel of the Dominican Church in Münster with several glass cyllinders, into which he feeds gas burners. The ignition creates a singing flame, producing a variety of overtones as the vibrations and exhaust sound within the pipes.

This recording documents Oldörp and four other sound artists and improvisors as they interact with the Lotos installation. Notes are not made as to how the contributors crafted their sound, but a glance at each artist's past work helps decipher what is heard. Oldörp begins the disc with intermittent complimentary timbres that could easily be additional singing-flame pipes. Rolf Julius contributes fragile tinkling and gentle sonorities that most likely are from electronic sources. Instrument builder Stephan Froleyks conjures frenzied tones at first before ascending to an unidentified whistle that flitters amidst the dense hum of the installation. The disc closes with the duo of Poul Naes and violinist and Zeitkratzer member Burkhard Schlothauer as they unify quite transparently with the Lotos. Though crafted from several different dates over the installation's run, the disc is sequenced continuously.

Lotos
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Gunner Møller Pedersen - Et Lydår, A Sound Year (Danachord, 1982; Dacapo, 2001)

2010-10-05T17:13:00.002-04:00

Gunner Møller Pedersen belongs to the second generation of Danish makers of tape music, leaning more on the spacier Else Marie Pade end of the spectrum than the sputtering Jørgen Plaetner-styled one. Though delightfully excessive in its own right, Et Lydår displays much more respect for day-to-day responsibilities than some of his other works. Et Lydår is essentially an aural calender. Pedersen created a thirty minute piece representing each month of the year, amounting to six (!!!) discs of music. It's easy to consider this completely out of hand, until you realize you've lived an entire year in just six hours. That kind of savings doesn't come cheap. Originally conceived for quadraphonic sound, here it is condensed into a measly stereo. I'm far underqualified to speak to the month-to-month changes in Denmark, but he could have easily veered into the overly literal yet did not. "February" does conjure an icy expanse, while "June" is surprisingly pastoral. On the whole, each piece maintains an impressive balance of imagery and abstraction. He's clearly well-humored enough not to overdo things by accident.

Et Lydår
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Ramon Sender - Desert Ambulance (Locust, 2006)

2010-09-25T11:20:00.001-04:00

A better-late-than-never missive from the early days of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, conjured from near nothing at the hands of co-founder Ramon Sender. Though set to tape in the early 60's, these recordings only emerged some four years past. In its infancy, the SFTMC was something of a hodgepodge affair, with much of its equipment arriving via generous nods of an interested representative from nearby Ampex. The opening piece, "Kore" (1962), embodies that kitchen sink approach; Sender crafted it in the attic studio manipulating tape speed by hand, with scraped piano strings and the improvised sounds of several Conservatory chorus members. The spacey, jump-start squeak and squiggle leave little remnant of the source intact. On the flip side is one of Sender's most recognized works, "Desert Ambulance" (1964), an audio-visual collaboration with projections by Tony Martin (a still from which serves as the album's cover). The work was written for Pauline Oliveros on accordion, its score a tape piece broadcast over headphones that propels Oliveros' imaginative playing. The playful tape work that the audience hears is built from plundered music snippets and a variety of other sounds, all triggered by a Chamberlain Music Master.

Desert Ambulance
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Iannis Xenakis (Perf. by William Winant) - Psappha 7'' (Dolor Del Estamago, 1995)

2010-09-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

Psappha is one of only a few solo percussion pieces (possibly only two?) devised by Iannis Xenakis. Although specific instruments are left up to the performer's discretion, Xenakis intended the piece for groups of wood, skin, and metal instruments. In lieu of standard notation, the score is divided amongst those intended timbres.

Score via iannis-xenakis.org
The piece relies largely on layered patterns that span the timbral range. The density of the patterns vary greatly and some sections call for great force from the performer. Much like Conlon Nancarrow's player piano pieces and maybe more aptly Stockhausen's Zylkus, the piece places significant demand on the performer. One particularly daunting section calls for 25 hits per second. There is a certain level of problem-solving required before the piece can even begin. San Francisco-based percussionist William Winant rises to the occasion in this 1995 recording. Winant has most admirably tackled pieces across the new music spectrum from the likes of Cage, Tenney, Reich, Stockhausen, and Feldman.

Psappha

As if the technical demands weren't enough, there is also a groove and finesse to the piece. The following video is of another performance of Psappha courtesy of the excellent Steven Schick, whose torso fully embraces the piece's groove. Schick too has immersed himself deeply in Xenakis's percussion works.

Christina Kubisch - Sechs Spiegel (Edition RZ, 1995)

2010-08-03T11:36:00.001-04:00

Sechs Spiegel (Six Levels) captures forty minutes of an audio/visual installation by the always imaginative Christina Kubisch in Saarbrücken, Germany. In the organ gallery of a Baroque church, Kubisch mounted six slates on the parapet before the organ's pipes. Each slate was coated in a luminescent pigment which shimmered in response to the fall of light in the gallery.

Paired with each slate is the sound of a drinking glass finessed into vibration. It is unclear whether a photosensitive connectivity between slab and sound existed, or if the resonances played out continuously with any synchronicity between it and the light play merely imagined. There does seem to be an ebb and flow to the sound document, giving way to both harmonious and dissonant passages. The installation ran from mid December, 1994, until the end of January, 1995.

Sechs Spiegel
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Joe Jones - Xylophone (?, 2004)

2010-07-13T11:58:00.001-04:00

Another glorious mechanized symphony from the maestro Joe Jones, this time scored for xylophone alone and captured in a 1976 performance. Over its thirty-one minutes, the dizzying chimes wind up and down, sometimes hanging briefly on a note but rarely settling into much of a pattern beyond that up and down. Once accustomed to the automatons, I find myself listening more to the spaces in between, honing in especially on a bumping that may be accidental or might even be an unsteady drum. Its timing against the steady ringing of the xylophone cannot help but bear similarity to the Javanese kendhang, though I'm sure I am making a bit more out of what's there. The accompanying diagram sheds some great insight into how Jones constructed his instruments and why they played the way they did.

Xylophone

Bill Fontana - Ohrbrücke - Soundbridge Köln - San Francisco (Wergo, 1994)

2010-07-08T10:04:00.001-04:00

If one idea prevails through much of Bill Fontana's recorded work, it's the notion of transporting sound, of taking what's heard in many places channeling them into one. His Soundbridge pieces work in a similar fashion to his Sound Maps, pooling together sounds from geographically distant locations. For Ohrbrücke, Fontana juxtaposes sound maps of Cologne and San Francisco, broadcasting them then via satellite to numerous radio stations across Europe and the US. The resulting sound mass was not entirely owed to happenstance. During the broadcast, the six Romanesque church bell towers in Cologne performed a piece of Fontana's design. For listeners in Cologne, this allowed a unique experience dependent on one's proximity to any one bell tower. Simultaneously, and beyond Fontana's control, the fog horns along the Golden Gate Bridge sound, introducing tones that interact and at times interfere with the sounding of the church bells. The bulk of the work's impact is first felt as these collisions occur--and as the overlapping of the two cities is most obvious--which in turn makes the less active moments equally engaging as the listener attempts to pry apart the cities' sounds.

Ohrbrücke - Soundbridge Köln - San Francisco

V/A - The Pioneers: Five Text-Sound Artists (Phono Suecia, 1992)

2010-06-07T10:47:00.002-04:00

Try as I might to contextualize text-sound composition, I get caught in a domino chain of chicken-egg scenarios that begin with sound poetry and musique concrète and end around Futurism, Dada, and the Lettrists. Factor in my limited knowledge of any of the above and the result more like a dizzying walk around the peak of a mountain. Tape music genealogy aside, its key features are clear. Johannes Bergmark, in his excellent and illuminating chapter from Aural Literature Criticism (RK editions, New York 1981), identifies text-sound composition as featuring:

(1) The use of non-semantic oral language information.

(2) Time manipulation.

(3) Polyphony.

While those elements conjure a clear line to sound poetry, the execution and overall soundspace share more similarities with other tape music realms. Thumb through a backlog of Revue Ou or past Text-Sound Festival lineups and there is no doubt of rampant cross-pollination.

Text-sound in its preliminary rounds was a largely Swedish phenomenon. The Pioneers hones in on the five key practioners: Lars-Gunnar Bodin, Sten Hanson, Åke Hodell, Bengt Emil Johnson, Ilmar Laaban. Brought together their works display the full scope of text-sound; taken individually it is clear how many ways those main elements may manifest themselves. Hanson and Laaban's works here are focused most on language and its transformation into linguistic shrapnel. Their approaches are best distinguished by how they incorporate tape: for Hanson, tape unlocks the time line, phrases stretch, repeat ad infinitum, and crumble; Laaban turns tape into a pupil-dilated chorus. With Hodell, Johnson, and Bodin, voice and tape divide their interests. It's not uncommon with any of their works to briefly lose sight of any semblance of language, only to have it reemerge, having formed the backbone all along.

Pioneers disc 1 [rs]
Pioneers disc 2 [rs]
Pioneers 1&2 [mu]

Jonty Harrison - Évidence Matérielle (Empreintes DIGITALes, 2000)

2010-04-26T15:33:00.000-04:00

The second collection of works by Birmingham based composer Jonty Harrison finds him at odds with his instincts. In the liners, he confesses himself to be under the spell of a dichotomy first brought to light by Barry Truax, torn between honoring Schaefer and turning the other cheek. To some extent, the conflict is understandable: he has such a keen ear for climbing into sounds that the result is engaging whether he intertwines them in a narrative or sends them spiraling off into an abstract region completely devoid of context. The majority of the works here take the second route with the oldest, "Klang" (1982), perhaps the most successful. The piece is constructed from a catalog of recordings Harrison made of a pair of peculiarly resonant casserole dishes. He feels obligated to note that this is not a piece about casseroles, but rather the sounds of casseroles. As the piece progresses, I find myself consumed with seeking out the remnants of the casserole soundings, in effect reverse engineering the piece. To my ears, Harrison is at his best when he's playing with how far a sound can go while leaving slivers of its reality intact.

Évidence Matérielle

V/A - Histoires Invisibles (GMVL, 1991)

2010-04-19T07:07:00.000-04:00

Coming a good fifteen years after the group's inception, Histoires Invisibles offers six snapshots of activity from the Groupe Musiques Vivantes de Lyon. Marc Favre and Bernard Fort founded the GMVL in 1975 and in the decade that followed staged hundreds of events showcasing the ongoing developments of electro-acoustic music in France. While there is a certain reverence for France's tape music history at play here, each composer succeeds in doing so in a very forward-thinking fashion. Minjard and Garcia seem most in touch with France's acousmatic roots, while Fort and Mutschler navigate furthest into unidentifiable realms. Prior to finding this collection, I had not connected the associations of several of these composers. In listening to them in succession, there's a clear sense of a community of musicians each coming from a similar place and finding their way to a location more their own.

1 Jean-François Minjard - Peur Dans L'Escalier
2 Marc Favre - Le Beau Corps D'Éther
3 Marc Lauras - Quel Carnage!
4 Bernard Fort - Le Jardin De La Reine
5 Xavier Garcia - 6 Regards Sul L
6 Xavier Garcia - 6 Regards Sul L
7 Xavier Garcia - 6 Regards Sul L
8 Xavier Garcia - 6 Regards Sul L
9 Xavier Garcia - 6 Regards Sul L
10 Xavier Garcia - 6 Regards Sul L
11 Pascal-Florian Mutschler - Haute Tension

Histoires Invisibles

Pierre-André Arcand - Eres + 21 (Avatar / Ohm Editions, 1997)

2010-02-08T17:31:00.000-05:00

Closing five laps in the Eres series and Arcand and his Macchina Ricordi have barely broken a sweat. If anything, they've hit a confident stride and are now refining their form. Arcand gives his voice a bit of a break here, opting instead for several Ricordi-induced manglings of bowed somethings (may be violin, may just be a piece of metal), tubing, and his sounding book. In each, there is a period of development as Arcand presents the base elements-- be they the fluttering of the bow or a deep, throaty burst--then a stacking and piling occurs, until Arcand peels back the elements to their essential form in conclusion. The sole vocal piece, "Chamomix", could almost count as showboating on Arcand's part, managing in its eleven minutes to run the gamut of his chosen modes and doing so in dizzying stereo. There is something magnetic in how each piece builds (and that's not meant as a tape pun). Arcand manages over the course of this and the first and second installments to establish a process and get inside it without ever being trapped by it.

Eres + 21

Mieko Shiomi - Fluxus Suite (?, 2002)

2010-01-28T14:47:00.002-05:00

Aside from one clever piece for marbles and piano from the Fluxus Anthology 30th Anniversary box, these recordings are the first I've heard of Mieko Shiomi on her own (She is also a founding member of Group Ongaku). And that's somewhat appropriate, as these recordings come 10 years after those and act as a 40th anniversary gift to the original Anthology. The disc is an encyclopedia of Fluxus participants and in itself a nice Fluxus exercise: Shiomi has set up rules for the overall structure (detailed below in her notes) and interjected where appropriate details that represent each subject. The piece "George Brecht", for instance, is built from sounds not unlike dripping water. "La Monte Young" is a sustained chord built from the notes A, E, and G. What else would "Ben Patterson" be built from but the sounds of a double bass?

Fluxus Suite

If that weren't enough, here is a brief read by Dick Higgins, just for some context in simple terms.

André Almuro - Dépli (Elica, 1999)

2010-01-25T16:20:00.003-05:00

It's probably safe to call Mr. Almuro an unsung hero. And while his scantly available catalog certainly provides reason why, its contents offer ample argument to the contrary. Not long after the conclusion of his apprenticeship to Pierre Schaeffer, he began crafting in what could easily be called the Almuro aesthetic: sparce pieces built from limited sound elements, often timbrally altered percussive sounds, slowly paced and coated thick in reverb and tape echo.

While Dépli does not quite meet the mark of his earlier two releases (both of which have been recently Creel Pone'd), the fourteen years spanned in this release show how Almuro adapted to changes in technology and how he responded to a variety of sonic circumstances. For evidence of the latter, hear on "Terae Incognitae" how Almuro melts a 60 voice choir into a murky inferno. The two bookended pieces are woozy and lumbering pieces that sound almost contemporary despite a vintage of twenty years or more.

Dépli

V/A - Computer Music Currents 5 (Wergo, 1990)

2010-01-06T17:16:00.004-05:00

Computer Music Currents is a wide spanning series of computer music composers from all over the globe. This edition compiles work from the early to mid 80's by five composers--Denis Smalley (New Zealand), Mesias Maiguashca (Ecuador), Gareth Loy (US), Kaija Saariaho (Finland), and Jonathan Dean Harvey (UK)--each exploring in their own way how timbres are transformed with tape and computers. The most recognizable here is probably Smalley, whose work with the GRM is practically a catalog of tape-transformed bells and chimes. Here he works with taped sounds inspired by ceramic chimes, with other tones noting the beginning of a new section in much the same way at the bell to turn the page in a children's storybook tape. Maiguascha I was unfamiliar with. His piece here is derived largely from instrumental sounds, transforming cello and percussion with great depth and form. Loy's "Nekyia" is a stereo mixdown of a furiously spiraling quadraphonic piece from 1980 that I'd love to hear in all of its four-channeled glory. Saariaho is another name I did not previously know, though her catalog of work is expansive. Her piece for tape begins with an undulating sine wave receiving treatment via the left and right channel, each similar in general form with careful differences in the overall shape. The collection closes with Harvey's "Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco", a piece inspired by and built from the sounds of a cathedral bell juxtaposed with a rehearsing boys' choir, taking great measures to preserve the realness of his muse yet surrounding it with digital facsimiles that swarm through the space.

Computer Music Currents 5

Bow Gamelan Ensemble - Great Noises that Fill the Air (Klinker Zoundz, 1988)

2010-01-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

Way back in 1983, percussionist Paul Burwell, artist Anne Bean, and sculptor Richard Wilson pooled their interests and abilities in a great mass they called the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, named after their residing section of London. On first introduction, I took issue with their claim of this as a gamelan, with only the slightest similarities being the tinkering of the Javanese and the bombast of Bali. Their approach incorporated an unholy din of clanging junk and various instruments of their own design, coupled with a pyrotechnic prowess that would strike fear in the heart of any fire marshall. If nothing else, their overall impact certainly rivals that of the finest from Bali. Now I see the name as more of a convenience than anything--catchy as it might be, the Bow Junkyard Orchestra Trans-Media Exhibition and Firework Display demands a few more breaths than most would allow.

Their recorded output is scant. Great Noises that Fill the Air was their second and, as I best I can tell, final full length. It unravels as a series of events dedicated to the soundings of various items: the three flail on a pair of marimbas, set off a rapid succession of snap-n-pops followed by a chorus of car horns. Saws, whistles, hubcaps, sirens all make their way into the trio's hands. With help from students from Bretton Hall, they conjure on "Massed Percussion" what could easily be mistaken for a Balinese orchestra. What I found most exciting was their use of self-designed pyrophones, instruments that sound off when fire is emitted. Without the visuals, I'm baffled as to what apparatus when combined with a flame would produce this deep swell.

Great Noises that Fill the Air

I'd be remiss not include some visual material from the group, as sound was only a portion of their aim. This video is of a reunion performance in 2002, with the three performing on Richard Wilson's tugboat portion, the Slice of Life.

Eliane Radigue - Elemental II (ROSA, 2005)

2009-12-03T13:17:00.003-05:00

At the beginning of the decade, Kasper T. Toeplitz approached Eliane Radigue in hopes that she would write an instrumental piece for him to perform live. Though this breaks somewhat from Radigue's usual mode as a composer, she accepted and presented Elemental II to him in 2003. Toeplitz performs the piece here on an electric upright bass routed directly into a Max/MSP patch. Though the shape of the piece to a degree lacks Radigue's overall careful and delicate touch, the subtle ebb and flow here is very much of Radigue's design, as is the opening subsonic rumble. Being unfamiliar with Toeplitz's previous work, it is difficult to determine how of his own musical vocabulary is present here, particularly with the degree to which processing has augmented his instrument.

Elemental II
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Demetrio Stratos - Cantare La Voce (Cramps, 1978)

2009-11-23T14:28:00.004-05:00

One more entry from the Nova Musicha series. Demetrio Stratos is most known for his work with seminal Italian prog band Area, but also conducted expansive vocal research in phonetics and ethnomusicology. Cantare La Voce is his second solo entry, deeply reliant on his limber vocal range and mutliphonic abilities. The opening "Investigazioni" showcases Stratos employing both diplophony and triplophy, though it's alleged that he could even produce four simultaneous voices. For Stratos, maximizing the voice's potential, freeing it of all natural restraint, had political and psychological implications. Elsewhere on the album, Stratos layers his voice work in ways reminiscent of tape music, though rest assured it all originated from his chest and throat.

Cantare La Voce

Miguel Angel Coria - En Rouge Et Noir (Cramps, 1976)

2009-11-09T17:11:00.002-05:00

A baffling prepared piano vignette by way of Cramps' Nova Musica series, pounded out by an otherwise unheard of maestro by the name of Miguel Angel Coria. Not quite sure how Coria has rigged his piano, but it almost sounds as though a rake head was laid inside. Alternately sparse and frantic, Coria varies between dizzying sweeps and runs, stumpy chords, and a repetitious hand-and-peck typist approach. Progressively, the vibes grow weirder, as what are either tape treatment or ghost tones emerge and Coria's playing becomes less and less frequent. Comes as a whole or in easily rearranged pieces.

En Rouge et Noir

Mixed Band Philanthropist - The Man Who Mistook A Real Woman For His Muse And Acted Accordingly 7" (Hypnagogia, 2003)

2009-11-09T16:39:00.000-05:00

Might be the puritan in me, but I'm a bit bashful about offering this up. Starts off fine, just a tumbling ball of TV snippets, giggling children, and leftover cartoon effects. Then a minute and a half in--out comes the weiner jokes, and it's Benny Hill subbing for Vicki Bennett on Do or DIY. The pace is such that once they start coming, it's an outright flood. The flip side keeps up the pace, still rough and tumble but does so with a sense of decency. These two sides date back to 1983, a year or so prior initial work on The Impossible Humane.

The Man Who Mistook A Real Woman For His Muse And Acted Accordingly

Luc Ferrari - Unheimlich Schön (Metamkine, 1993)

2009-10-21T18:15:00.004-04:00

This 1971 piece from the late Luc Ferrari marks another contribution from an elder statesman in the Cinéma pour l’oreille collection. As with Radigue's Biogenesis, this is a piece that diverges from the path most often identified as the author's. He begins with a deep breathed refrain by Ilse Lau, "Unheimlich schön"--roughly translated as "terribly beautiful"--which repeats on, as a steady breath and an increasingly prominent room tone swamps the phrase. Fragmented echoes begin to crowd the short line, until one can hardly distinguish the voice from the echoes. The piece bears an uncanny resemblance to Robert Ashley's She Was a Visitor, so much so that it could act as Ferrari's response to that piece in mirrored form.

Unheimlich Schön

Terry Fox - Insalata Mista cs (Edition S Press, 1982)

2009-10-20T16:35:00.001-04:00

Sadly lacking a cover for this one, but this candid shot will surely suffice. My original plan was to share this last Thursday, as it marked one year since Mr. Fox's passing. Having missed that deadline, I see no better time than the present.

The material here gives a fine view of Fox on the run in the 1970's, as his interest in the sonic nature of spaces was just in bloom. It begins with a duet with Joseph Bueys for pipe and glass, the closing of an hour long performance where the pipe is rapped upon and aimed at windows, its echo then used to find dead spots in the panes. Once found, the pane is then broken, continuing until all panes are shattered.

Numerous samplings of Fox's long string works are featured, from springy pieces to the dense timbrel exercises most common to long string investigations. More surprising are the anomalies, like the excerpt from Fox's 1977 piece "Culvert", a warbled head scratcher if ever there was one. Another highlight is "Lunar Rambles", an audio snippet from a five part video series wherein Fox arrived unannounced at various locations in downtown NYC and conducted a brief performance on a bowed steel disc and a metal bowl.

Insalata Mista

While on the subject of film, the fine folks at Ubu recently posted the following early video work by Fox, Children's Tapes, a tight framed series of simple household experiments set on a table top.

François Bayle - Jeîta / L'infini Du Bruit (Magison, 1999)

2009-10-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

Always took this to be Bayle's back-to-nature work, but the line is blurry as to where natural sounds end and his transformations begin. His works often have a spaciousness to them, but here there is a genuine sense of space, of sound bouncing off walls. Part of this is due to much of the sound material--the tinkerings, gusts, droplets, and chirps--being recorded at the mouth of a cave, making the distinction between what's real and what's Bayle very confusing. The opening piece, Jeîta, was initially released in 1970 as part of the Prospective 21e Siècle series with the great silver covers. The two that follow, L'infini du bruit and Jeîta-Retour were both completed in 1999.

Jeîta / L'infini Du Bruit

Eliane Radigue - Biogenesis (Metamkine, 1996)

2009-09-21T16:22:00.004-04:00

This 1973 piece by Eliane Radigue stands out on surface level as being very unlike her work before or after this period. The sources are essentially acoustic and a far cry from the technology she most often sought: with a stethoscope and a microphone, she recorded the heartbeats of her son, her pregnant daughter, and the rhythms of her yet to be born grandchild.It was during this time that Radigue was truly immersing herself in the ARP synth, and shortly prior to her brief sabbatical from music to further hone her interest in and devotion to Tibetan Buddhism. Though seemingly in contrast with her penchant for waveforms, the resulting pulses stir at a pace all too familiar from her electronic work. As with her ARP creations, her role here is to never interfere, merely to seek out the waves and allow them to do as they wish.

Biogenesis

Max Neuhaus - Four Realizations of Stockhausen's Zyklus (Alga Marghen, 2004)

2009-09-21T16:07:00.003-04:00

Perhaps the biggest regret people having regarding Max Neuhaus' life is how little of it was captured to tape. I certainly am guilty of this lament and would without a doubt leap at an opportunity to hear any uncovered remnants of the late mastermind's work. Still, there is a certain magic to his concise representation, as if there really weren't much more one could ask him to do to prove himself. In fact, I dare say you could reduce his recorded output to these recordings of Stockhausen's No. 9 Zyklus for One Percussionist and his Fontana Mix-Feed and walk away downright impressed with and even intimidated by Neuhaus. Both are powerful testaments to his mind, with Fontana Mix-Feed showing his more practical side and Zyklus giving insight into his composure under pressure.

Stockhausen composed Zyklus in 1959 to be performed in percussion competitions, with its debut realization given by Christoph Caskel the same year. The piece is built around a spiral bound score with no defined start or orientation--the performer would choose where to begin and whether to read left to right or right to left--set to end when one meets back at the beginning note. To perform it, a twenty-one piece array of percussion instruments is set up in a circle, corresponding to the same spiral that forms the score. Though intended to be performed spontaneously, the three performers at the time who had successfully played Zyklus did so by making the decisions in advance and working out their own score.

Neuhaus, being Neuhaus, took the bait and did it right. His notorious problem solving ability came into play, working out the necessary techniques, but never the actual sequence of performance. One can only be so nimble minded. He first performed the piece for his graduation recital from Manhattan School of Music. At least a year separates each of these four performances, each starting at a new point within the score, each with a pace all its own. You can hear how Neuhaus' approach and confidence in playing the Zyklus evolved over time, though in each there lies a spontaneity by far serving the piece justice. The corresponding dates and locations are as follows:

1. Wergo Records Studios, 1963
2. Carnegie Recital Hall, NYC, 1964
3. West Deursche Rundfunk Studios, Cologne, Germany, 1965
4. Columbia Records Studios, NYC, 1968

Zyklus

Pierre-André Arcand - Eres + 16 (Avatar / Ohm Editions, 1995)

2009-08-31T17:22:00.003-04:00

Nine more steps through Arcand's Eres series, this time transporting his looping processes into a live setting. Beginning with the spiraling scrawl of his sounding book, he then launches into a diatribe in French that his Macchina Ricordi subsequently dices and scatteres until left with a brigade babbling "blah blah blah" in a cadence befitting of tree frogs. The adrenalizing leap onto the stage manages to elevate Arcand's sound processes, revealing a grit and immediacy not always felt in the first seven pieces. With the macchina in tow, he conjures a swirling storm of chuckles and a dizzying blitz of unidentifiable reeds. Arcand delves into throat works that would no doubt delight Henri Chopin, guttural to the point that one finds bubbles in the belly.

Eres + 16

Francois Bayle - Erosphère (INA-GRM, 1990)

2009-08-31T17:22:00.000-04:00

Easy to get confused here, as this is not Bayle's 1982 Erosphère LP (which it so happens the fine folks at Mutant Sounds posted here), but instead the flagship voyage collecting Bayle's complete works onto cd. Rather than feature Erosphère in its entirety, it contains one fourth of the original album, the 1978 piece Toupie Dans Le Ciel along with another piece from 1978 titled Tremblement De Terre Très Doux.

Tremblement De Terre Très Doux captures one of Bayle's long standing fascinations, the soundings of metal objects, here largely a metal marble and chimes of some sort. These sounds travel in and out of the foreground, sometimes submerged in flittering manipulation and other times unadorned. Bayle juxtaposes real and artificial space in a seamless fashion, his sounds unfolding at a energetic but serene pace. Toupie Dans Le Ciel builds sparse melodies from a succession of swelling figures, and atop that steadily vibrating upper figures are laid. With only minor variation, these two elements float the five movements with a depth and pulse that stunningly anticipates Wolfgang Voigt's Gas at its most gentle stride.

Erosphère

Jonty Harrison - Articles Indéfinis (Empreintes DIGITALes, 1996)

2009-08-28T11:46:00.001-04:00

These early glimpses into the sound works of UK-based composer Jonty Harrison showcase his longstanding playfulness with sound and form. Harrison is a champion of listening inside sounds, enabling him the rare ability to transform without dampening the integrity of his sources. The eleven suites of … et ainsi de suite… explore a vast sonic space at the center of which lies the chime and clatter of a pair of wine glasses. Similar explorations on the sounds of balloons and air itself factor into subsequent recorings here. That play on the recognizable sound figures into much of Harrison's work, as the unraveling of his processes reveals a strangeness in the real that one can carry over into day-to-day listening.

Articles Indéfinis

Aki Onda - Don't Say Anything (EWE, 2002)

2009-08-20T23:25:00.004-04:00

A slight break in form from Onda's Cassette Memories work, at times swapping out field recorded moments for real instruments. Onda sampled or taped trumpet by Steven Bernstein, tuba by Marcus Rojas, string work from David Fiuczynski and Eyvind Kang, and the percussion of Yoichi Okabe, Yasuhiro Yoshigaki, Jyoji Sawada, and Kumiko Takara, then reconstructed, laying out the pieces in a manner similar to his other work. Onda based the overall vibe of the work on his the perceived intimacy and obsession in the photographs of French poet Pierre Louÿs, with Onda hoping the capture the transporting qualities of the photos. Save for a lull in "Mellow" due largely to shockingly uninspired sound selection, the pieces unravel in a very inviting way and capture the attention. Kang's rich violin overtones on "Dance" and the percussive outburst the closes "Naked" would certainly make the highlights reel.

Don't Say Anything

Åke Hodell - Verbal Brainwash And Other Works (Fylkingen, 2000)

2009-07-24T16:29:00.000-04:00

Madness runs rampant in the works of Åke Hodell. Hodell became interested in sound and its relations with the voice after an injury soured the fighter pilot's opinions on the military. He's most at home in a swirl of farm sounds, explosives, and the fancy footwork of an auctioneer. The text-sound pieces here, dating between 1963 and 1977, tout Hodell's many splendors, a bizarre middle ground of the absurd and the political without even the slightest hesitation to drive the point home a thousand times over. Hodell is deeply intimate with the exponential relation between how many times something is repeated and how hilarious it can be. And he's managed to transpose that to how impacting and poignant an idea can become. Only he knew what separated these text-sound works from his radioplays, but there is an undeniably theatrical thread to each piece. Only he could think to tell the history of the great 20th century wars through the sounds of its ammunitions.

The trouble that Hodell brews within his works is best viewed through his eyes. One need turn only to his notes on "Mr Smith In Rhodesia" to truly grasp that this is a man in a world all his own:

My composition Mr Smith in Rhodesia was written during the late fall of 1969 and was recorded in the beginning of March 1970, at EMS (Electroacoustic Music Studio) and at the Swedish Radio. We needed five black children around 11-12 years of age for the recording, but this turned out to be impossible. Therefore, we contacted the English school in Stockholm and found five white children of the same age group. They were to read some simple texts in genuine Oxford English; this was important because black children in English-speaking African schools were indoctrinated through the use of Oxford English and its built-in political values, not least in relation to the colonial belief in the justification of the apartheid system.

The children came to the Swedish Radio one afternoon. Under the guidance of an Englishman, they recorded the texts on tape. So that they wouldn´t be bored in the studio, we gave them lemonade and biscuits. They were of course also paid for their work. Imagine our surprise a few weeks later when we found out about the scandal caused by this recording. When they returned home, the children told their unknowing parents that they had been a part of a composition which was directed against Prime Minister Ian Smith´s white dictatorship in Rhodesia. The parents were shocked, turning first to the British Embassy in Stockholm, then to English newspapers and the BBC.

The Daily Telegraph put the news on its front page, where a creative reporter was allowed to write the article. The five children, whose age had now sunk to 6-7 years old, were bribed by candy and later tricked into appearing in an anti-American opera at the Modern Museum in Stockholm. At the end of the opera, they were placed in front of a wall and forced to say, "Mr Smith is a murderer." The reporter neglected to mention that the children also said, "Mr Smith is our friend and father", "Mr Smith gives us food and clothing" etc.

The Swedish tabloids reported the scandal in large headlines. The British Embassy protested to the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation (SR), after which SR´s program director at the time, Nils-Olof Franzén, explained in an interview that the recording would be destroyed, which it was. Fylkingen, which was co-producer of the recording, was not satisfied, and financed a new recording in England involving children whose parents were quite positive towards the political content of the piece. This is the version which was presented at Fylkingen´s and the Swedish Radio´s festival at the Modern Museum in April 1970. In spite of this new recording, the piece had since then been banned from transmission on the Swedish Radio, but from this performance on, the ban was lifted.

It wasn't until I played this on the radio only to have the girl taking over for me storm away muttering "This is driving me crazy that I realized how deeply I adore this man.

Verbal
Brainwash and
Other Works

Pierre Bastien - Eggs Air Sister Steel (In-Poly-Sons, 1996)

2009-07-20T18:02:00.007-04:00

Here in one fell swoop, Pierre Bastien pays tribute to Charles Ray, Thelonius Monk, and Brian Eno. While I think there is a misconception as to what extent his Mechanium orchestra are involved in his works, there is no denying that Bastien's ear for song is unlike any other. In keeping with the title's plan on Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, Bastien offers thirteen variations on a basic theme with aid from the Mechanium and several musicians on piano, accordion, strings, and percussion. Where the mechanized instruments are what people hone in on with Bastien, his knack for pairing eastern and western instruments into imaginative song forms is certainly worth equal attention.

Eggs Air Sister Steel

Laurent Pernice - Humus - Musiques Immobiles 5-15 (Monochrome Vision, 2004)

2009-07-20T16:57:00.004-04:00

French composer Laurent Pernice recorded these ten pieces in Marseille between 1999 and 2001. He began each with a simple process, toying with an instrument until he arrived at some sound or approach that stepped beyond that instrument's usual parameters. Passages from these experiments are then looped and processed, creating undulating masses that lie on the brink of stasis. Though Pernice begins primarily with acoustic sources, the outcome sounds unmistakably electronic. The pieces that incorporate dips into extremely low frequencies are particularly effective, carrying an energy less present in many of these hovering works.

Humus - Musiques Immobiles

Christine Groult - L'Heure Alors S'Incline (Metamkine, 1993)

2009-07-20T16:27:00.006-04:00

A favorite from the Cinéma pour l’oreille series here, realized by GRM alum Christine Groult in 1991 as an homage to Luigi Nono, who had passed shortly prior. Groult has great pacing and dynamics throughout, building at first from what seems to be softly blown flute with an emphasis on the breath. As momentum builds, the softness of the breath sounds fall to a much rougher texture. Over the course of nearly nineteen minutes, Groult shifts from gentle to abrasive to deep and glacial, closing with an almost pastoral passage. Each development is done with a carefully executed fluidity that works more to draw the listener in than send the piece bursting outward.

L'Heure Alors S'Incline...

Mirror - Pedestrian / Nocturne 7" (Three Poplars, 2000)

2009-07-07T17:59:00.004-04:00

The second release on Heemann and Chalk's Three Poplars label bears the distinct honor of being the sole Mirror 7" (to my knowledge at least). What more, the A side "Pedestrian" features Chalk engaged in straight guitar passages, guiding the track with mbira-like loping figures. Underneath there still lies that current of atmosphere supplied by Heemann's synth work. On the B side, "Nocturne" is filled with sustained tones the likes of which populate their longer sides. Often the use of near stasis sounds has the effect of disorienting the listener to the lapse of time. Where this is usually sought during longer works, Heemann and Chalk use it here to widen the impact of a shorter piece as the mass shifts from an initial rumble into slightly higher registers.

Pedestrian / Nocturne

Joe Colley - Project for an LP (Edition ..., 2004)

2009-06-19T09:18:00.003-04:00

A fun act of chance operations provides the fodder for both an installation and recording project by Sacramento-based Joe Colley. Beginning with two identical mini discs, populated with ten brief noise fragments, five extended blocks of sound, and five silences of varying length, Colley set the players to random and fed their signals into another recorder, with each player occupying its own stereo channel. This recording became the source for an installation, wherein three turntables equipped with a test press of the minidisc recordings were each situated amidst a pair of oscillating fans. The fans act on the turntables in two ways: they push the tone arm to and fro, resulting in an additional level of randomization of the material and more prominently in the scraping of the stylus across the LP surface; additionally, the tone arm amplifies the fan motors, resulting in an all-pervading hum. Two recordings of the installation were made, one by Eric La Casa as he wandered around the room, undoubtedly inflicting his own mode of hearing on the document, and another by Colley himself, sitting back and presumably basking in his decision-less freedom.

Project for an LP

Pierre-André Arcand - Eres + 7 (Avatar / OHM Editions, 1992)

2009-06-17T00:07:00.004-04:00

These are the first in three installments from Quebecois sound artist Pierre-André Arcand's Eres series, the flagship expedition for two of his self-made instruments. Primary vehicle here is his Macchina Ricordi, a modified recorder that accomodates both the tape loops and simultaneous overdubbing that enable his impromptu modernization of Revue OU lineage sound poetry. Sometimes added to this are tones produced by his sounding book, a small metal box played by scribbling on its surface with a microphone heard most prominently on the beginning two pieces. These frantic washes provide a sound bed for Arcand to lay his guttural ululations, which become alternately scattered and hypnotic via the macchina ricordi's capabilities. In addition to voice, Arcard unleashes the macchine on what most likely is a violin, dicing the scrapes with anything but a precise cut.

Eres + 7

Ora - Morgendämmerung 10" (Die Stadt, 2004)

2009-06-04T12:27:00.002-04:00

Though originally conceived as a project by Andrew Chalk and Darren Tate, for these recordings Ora is the latter incarnation of Tate and Colin Potter--the same duo who later became Monos. Assisting them on "The Sun Sheds a Golden Tear" are Lol Coxhill and Daisuke Suzuki. The piece is built from recordings of a storm, expanding the sonic artifacts of wind and rain into a densely murky sound mass on top of which eerie but gentle tones emerge. The second piece, "The Impregnable", is built from a more monolithic mass, augmented by delay-swept time distortions and growing progressively more harsh. Both of these 1997 recordings were originally featured on their 1999 cd-r New Movements in G, but excluded from the two Ora retrospective cds.

Morgendämmerung

Gilles Gobeil - La Mécanique des Ruptures (Empreintes DIGITALes, 1994)

2009-06-03T13:34:00.003-04:00

Gilles Gobeil's first collection of recordings covers a range of his electro-acoustic material dating between 1985 and 1993. Despite the broad time frame, the pieces are bound together by Gobeil's magnetic draw to bursts of sound, frequently of an industrial source or the Ferrari-esque door slam. His sonic events first present themselves as little windows into a scene, until some element leaps through the glass and leaving the prior sounds in a spiral of shards. This approach certainly makes for an action heavy listening experience, something that might exhaust some though I prefer work like to veer a little on the side of mania. A few pieces feature Suzanne Binet-Audet performing on an early electronic instrument called the ondes martenot, similar in sound though not construction to the theremin.

La Mécanique des Ruptures

Keith Berry - The Ear That Was Sold to a Fish (Crouton, 2005)

2009-05-31T00:09:00.004-04:00

The Ear That Was Sold... is one of a handful of texturally intricate releases that British sound artist Keith Berry has issued either of his own name or as Brown Bunny. Delicate and deliberate in pace and seemingly low on events, the nine pieces here unravel in much the same way as stray notions do when one is on the brink of sleep. The body of each piece here is filled by a drifting drone mass underneath which a gentle rustle of incidental events occurs. Each of the nine is constructed with a rare level of patience and concentration, resulting in a rather subtle but interconnected whole. The disc was issued in a small box containing several blue flower petals, revealing a refreshing fragrance upon its opening.

The Ear That Was Sold to a Fish

Hands To - Nahza (Manifold, 1996)

2009-05-14T10:27:00.003-04:00

Hands To was an early project of Jeph Jerman, occurring roughly alongside his participation in City of Worms. At its most embryonic state, the recordings were sampler and tape based, though as Jerman's interest in the acoustic interactions of objects manifested itself, so too did Hands To drift in that direction. Nahza came during that latter stage, built from a string of recordings made in various environments where man-made objects interact with one another at the hands of Jerman. Though the actual objects used remain unidentified, the sounds seem to be the result of friction and striking and tend to convey sources of metal and stone. The recordings were made with a significant gain level, allowing the sonorous nature of the environment in which they were made become a part of the listening experience.

Nahza

Philip Corner - Playing with the Elements (Edition Lebeer-Hossmann, 1985)

2009-05-08T11:00:00.004-04:00

Something slightly out of character here from Philip Corner, whose non-instrumental works tend more often toward explorations of metal objects, these find Corner either in nature boy mode or in the lab/kitchen. The first was recorded by Bill Fontana, with whom Corner has frequently collaborated, and features an upclose rendering of several rocks being rubbed together along with Corner's breath as he guides the rocks along. Certain works from Akio Suzuki comes to mind, as well as more recent interests by Jeph Jerman among others. The two recordings that follow deal with applying heat to objects. The first captures boiling water, with the proximity of the microphone creating a rather immersive sound environment that steadies as a rolling boil is reached. The final is of the heating of stone to make terra cotta and is far more gentle a listen. Corner issued these recordings in a decorative box that also featured a small cloth bag containing several stones, a card insert, and the scores to these works.

Playing with the Elements

Bill Fontana - Australian Sound Sculptures (Edition Block, 1988)

2009-05-04T17:58:00.003-04:00

Another document of the always innovative Bill Fontana, here presenting in reverse chronological order two works from his formative recording experiences in Australia. The first is an installment in his Acoustical Views series of pieces, similar in many ways to Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns in its pooling of eight locations into one. Inherent to these works is a notion that consistently appears in Fontana's work, that of "hearing as far as you can see." The second piece, recorded in 1976, marked the point when Fontana's interests shifted toward this eight channel aural perspective. These recordings of Kirribilli Wharf in Sydney are built with eight microphones inserted into cylindrical holes in the whart, producing percussive sounds as the waves close the openings. Fontana then replayed this recordings in various settings around Sydney, several years later playing them as part of an exhibition at the Whitney.

Australian Sound Sculptures

Pierre Schaeffer / Pierre Henry - L'Œuvre Musicale (INA-GRM/EMF, 1998)

2009-04-29T08:37:00.002-04:00

The three discs collected here cover the bulk of Pierre Schaeffer's concrète works, beginning with his pre-tape days when he composed using multiple turntables mixing sound effects recordings direct to lathe. The earliest recordings here were created in 1948 during Schaeffer's days as radio engineer for Radiodiffusion Française and are built from sounds ranging from locomotives and whirligigs to pots, pans, piano, and percussion. Each of those collages eventually made their way onto the air. His Suite pour 14 instruments is an amalgam of orchestral sounds rendered far beyond their original context. Where these early works clearly function as experiments for Schaeffer, once Pierre Henry joins in as his assistant, the music takes on both a playfulness and a refinement of detail that eventually became landmarks of the French approach to musique concrète. The processes became increasingly laborious, and those who once flocked to Schaeffer's studio to work in this new medium became disillusioned by the demand and patience that the work required. Schaeffer and Henry worked together for eight years amassing a daunting sound library, some of which never fully materializing. Included here is an Henry work from 1988, created in homage to Schaeffer using fragments of their Orpheus 51 and 53. Though Schaeffer retired from music in 1960, he returned to sound studies in the late 1970s, eventually revisiting some early works. Those too are collected here, and the bridge in time is event as Schaeffer breathes new life into his early techniques while also incorporating a more defined sound. Included as well are the results of Schaeffer's studies of psycho-acoustics, presented here as the two part Le Trièdre Fertile.

Disc One: Les Incunables 1948-1979
Disc Two: Les Œuvres Communes 1950-1953 & 1988
Disc Three: Les Révisions 1948-1979 / Les Œuvres Postérieures 1957-1959 & 1975-1979

Steve Roden & Brandon LaBelle - The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm (Meme, 1999)

2009-04-23T18:48:00.004-04:00

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm is the first of several collaborations between Roden and LaBelle that include another cd and co-editing the excellent sound art anthology Site of Sound. The album, released by the lost but not forgotten Meme label, is among the strongest either has been involved in, and very much a synergistic merging of their aesthetics. These in studio improvisations are culled from indoor sounds that Roden procured and outdoor sounds that LaBelle sought on hands and knees. LaBelle's contributions are entomologically inclined, capturing the minutiae of water bugs, spiders, and ants in macro-amplified glory. Roden coaxes waves from a variety of ways, gently scraping the insides of a bowl, steadily tapping a small gong. This merging of inside and out then is in perfect keeping with the album's title, sharing its name with the following poem by Wallace Stevens:

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

-- Wallace Stevens

The House Was Quiet And The World Was Calm

Steve Lacy - Straws (Cramps, 1977; 1997)

2009-04-23T12:06:00.003-04:00

Straws finds the magnificent late saxophonist Steve Lacy in a variety of semi-solo scenarios, each paying tribute to people and musicians dear to him. He opens with an homage to Art Tatum built around a theme from Vincent Youmans' "Get Happy" that quickly spirals as Lacy is often wont to do. There is but one more outright solo piece, loosely a ballad for his dear Irene. The remaining pieces find Lacy in interesting territory, a pair of sax-celeste duets and two pieces where Lacy plays along to prepared tape recordings. The celeste pieces are fascinating in the sonic space that the celeste leaves for Lacy's sax, this floating bed of sound that ties up the higher ranges. The first tape piece is culled from recordings of three clarinetists and two saxophonists testing reeds, the second Lacy hesitantly calls a "poème sonore", built from construction sounds and several layers of improvised saxophone. Unfortunately, these recordings come from the 1997 reissue of the album, and as such the piece "Feline" appears in a curiously truncated form that preserves the intertwined ascensions of sax and celeste but omit Lacy's solo.

Straws

Noise Maker's Fifes - Soundscapes Of The Inner Eye (NMT Productions, 1995)

2009-04-23T11:42:00.005-04:00

The first of several cd releases, following a slew of cassettes, from the Belgian duo of Geert Feytons and Timo van Luijk finds them in what for Noise Maker's Fifes is familiar territory: eerily dense soundscapes built from collages field sounds and a mix of home made and traditional instruments that hover in the sonic area like an airborne toxic event. Though typically of fluctuating dimensions, these recordings from 1992-3 feature only the founding pair, just before the group broadened into the transmedia conglomerate that stands as their legacy. Each vignette unravels gradually into delicate drifts of environmental blur and rustles and screeches, rarely tethered to rhythm for a feel more akin to drifting in and out of consciousness. Knowing that they only got better, it's tough to shake how incredibly good they are here.

Soundscapes of the Inner Eye

Denis Dufour - Dix Portraits / Douze Mélodies Acousmatiques (Motus, 1997)

2009-04-21T00:40:00.003-04:00

A pair of mid 80's pieces here from INA-GRM associate Denis Dufour each finds him paying tribute in some way to fellow composers. The first (though titularly the second) is done in response to Michel Chion's Dix Études de Musique Concréte, a loose play on melodies constructed from acoustmatic elements, be they the tumbling of resonant objects, a child's song, or the head or tail end of various instruments. His Dix Portraits, each dedicated to one of his well admired peers, are drawn from a trio of synthesizers and tape and occupy a slightly more narrow sound space that the previous piece. That scaling back works to his favor, as the reduced elements bind the pieces while Dufour's sonic prowess broadens its scope.

Dix Portraits / Douze Mélodies Acousmatiques

Andrew Chalk & Brendan Walls - This Growing Clearing (Three Poplars, 2004)

2009-04-20T23:53:00.003-04:00

While the personal tendency for Chalk collaborators will generally veer toward Christoph Heemann, there are several other pairings of his that strike a stirring note (and sometimes even a few). Here Chalk teams up with a gentleman from Australia by the name of Brendan Walls, who might be most recognized for his work with Gregg Turkington for the Golding Institute's Final Relaxation. The recordings here were presumably assembled via postal exchange and take the form of a series of rises and falls for two simultaneous sound sources. The fragility of these two pieces should come as no surprise, though it is rare for a Chalk project to veer so often into the lower registers.

This Growing Clearing

V/A - Sleepers (Finnadar, 1985)

2009-04-15T00:54:00.005-04:00

Sleepers is a collection of lullabies from Ilhan Mimaroglu's Finnadar label. As such, the pieces are gentle and often hushed, with the most notable exception coming from Mimaroglu's own rhythm machine-ushered sleepsong. The other all arc is toward vocal pieces, with exceptions made for the occasional flute and clarinet. Annea Lockwood earns the award for Most Germane, with her three piece chorus providing dulcet tones of soothing, repetitive syllables of Samoan. Pauline Oliveros provides one of her always fascinating deep listening exercises with audience participation. As is often the case with these pieces, beautiful results emerge from her simple, introspective instructions: "Hum the sound of pleasure as if you were serenading your best loved infant...play with the MMM sound by adding vowels and dipthongs between the M's using any repetitions or prolongations...stay open to your own sensations and imagine gradually expanding your awareness to sensing your surroundings..." The piece is performed by the Queens College Choral Society.

A1 Doris Hays - Hush
A2 Annea Lockwood - Malolo
A3 Ilhan Mimaroglu - Sleepsong For Sleepers
A4 Daniel Goode - The Red And White Cows
B1 Tom Johnson - Lullaby
B2 Pauline Oliveros - Lullaby For Daisy Pauline
B3 Alison Knowles - Mantra For Jessie
B4 Ann Silsbee - Go Gentle

Sleepers

François Bayle - Camera Obscura - Espaces Inhabitables (Magison, 2000)

2009-04-15T00:23:00.002-04:00

Camera Obscura - Espaces Inhabitables is the fourteenth entry in Magison's Cycle Bayle series, François Bayle's personal interrogation of his activities over the last four decades. The material on this disc is among his earliest works--Camera Obscura dates back to 1976 while Espaces Inhabitables from 1967 may be his first in depth work--each incorporating up-close examination of relatively fragile sounds, tinkling glass, ping pong balls, footsteps, simple instruments. Bayle performs what could be likened to sonic origami on these sounds, conscious of their fragility and intent on preserving that throughout the process of transforming them. Rarely is it discernible which sounds are synthetic or natural. His sonic processes leave a hint of realness intact, at times turning the listening of these pieces into a guessing game.

Camera Obscura - Espaces Inhabitables

Bill Fontana - Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns (KQED, 1982)

2009-04-13T17:41:00.002-04:00

There is a certain longing for omnipresence in Bill Fontana's soundworks. His Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns expresses this perfectly. He places eight microphones at well chosen points around the San Francisco Bay, then broadcasts them at Fort Macon Center by the waterfront. As the fog horns call, there is a slight delay from any given microphone, thanks to the sonic displacement due to the speed of sound. From Pier 2's signal, a listener can experience all eight perspectives simultaneously, essentially creating an aural map of the bay.

Images are from www.resoundings.org
Landscape Sculpture with Fog Horns

David Maranha - Piano Suspenso (Sonoris, 1998)

2009-04-13T16:18:00.003-04:00

Solo outing for Osso Exótico-affiliated mastermind David Maranha, or rather it's a mechanized quintet for piano with Maranha the sole living constituent. For his contribution to a Electronic Arts Performances Series in Troy, NY, Maranha with bow in hand and his four-strong fleet of motors took to the insides of a piano for some churning drone action. His motorized system maintains a delicate balance where even the slightest shift ushers in a dramatic change in timbrel activity, residing somewhere along the lines of Remko Scha's take on Lubomyr Melnyk's continuous or Charlemagne Palestine's strumming music.

Piano Suspenso

Terry Fox - Berlino / Rallentando (Het Apollohuis/Apollo, 1988)

2009-04-12T18:21:00.001-04:00

Two different applications of the long strings at play here. The first is a collage featuring piles of found sounds, mostly industrial actions, strung along a three piano wire tapestry. Fox has this knack for conjuring from long strings sounds that typically belong in the electronic realm, typically by giving a hard wap to slack strings, but on this he also opts for the taut and sonorous as well. The second installment features Fox manning three wires and Jan Van Riet, Paul Panhuysen, and Mario Van Horrik on either cello or doublebass. The lineup is essentially the Maciunas Ensemble with Fox pinch-hitting for Leon van Noorden. Their soundmass here could easily be mistaken for the biggest air organ known to man.

Berlino / Rallentando

Toshiya Tsunoda - O Respirar Da Paisagem (Sirr, 2003)

2009-04-12T14:57:00.000-04:00

When Yokohama-based Toshiya Tsunoda documents sound, he does so on a microscopic level. Recognizing that at the center of any sound is vibration, he records those vibrations which don't readily or easily emit sounds. Often imploring contact microphones, his recordings often explore the Helmholtz resonances, those vibrations created as air moves into a cavity, to some extent the effect of pressure changes as air exits and returns. Where architectural acoustics might use Helmholtz resonance to minimize standing waves, Tsunoda instead exploits them and amplifies them. His recordings are presented relatively unaltered, sequenced with sudden cuts between sonic events.

O Respirar Da Paisagem divides its material between the use of contact mics and small omni-directional microphones. The sounds originate on a boundary, often between indoors and outdoors as in "Cicada and Window", documenting a dialogue between continuous cicada drone and a steady creak of window. Although the recordings present little input from Tsunoda, they are testament to his uncanny sense for setting and its sonic potential.

O Respirar Da Paisagem

Jean-François Laporte - Mantra (Metamkine, 2000)

2009-04-09T16:00:00.005-04:00

Another entry in the Cinéma pour l’oreille series, this one from French-Canadian Jean-François Laporte. I approached Laporte's explanation of this massively buzzing mass of sound with trepidation, but having listened nearly as many passes as he took to make the recording, I no longer question his veracity. Mantra's evolving, monolithic mass is culled from close recordings of a cooling condenser at a hockey rink. This is confirmed during the initial firing up of the compressor. As the piece progresses, Laporte travels around the compressor, documenting its components and its varied timbrel qualities. He shapes the sound in a way one might in an electronic study, using PVC tubes to sculpt the high frequencies and metal covers to add resonance for volume boost. Laporte insisted that this be done in one take, as a single breath mantra of continuous but evolving nature, and without a doubt his meticulousness and patience comes through tenfold.

Mantra

V/A - Electronic 2000 (Philips, 1971)

2009-04-08T17:58:00.005-04:00

Philips threw this together as a highlights reel of their subsidiary Prospective 21e Siècle's forever untouchable Electronic Panorama box, a four LP look at tape music innovators from Paris, Tokyo, Utrecht, and Warsaw. In its truncated form we find François Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani as the representatives from GRM, Toshiro Mayuzumi on Radio NHK's behalf, Luctor Ponse, Milan Stibilj, and Jos Kunst for team U of U, and Krzysztof Penderecki as the sole entry from Warsaw. Personal standouts come from Kunst, Parmegiani, and Bayle, whose rock concrète is just about perfect. Mayazumi as well gives a fine showing with his cackle fest. Certainly, this is not to say the remaining pieces are clunkers. But if you're more inclined toward the high momentum wall bouncing sorts, the aforementioned four are a fine starting point. Save the other three for your cool down.

Electronic 2000

Roger De La Frayssenet - Kitnabudja Town (Metamkine, 1997)

2009-04-07T01:45:00.002-04:00

Never could track down the story as to why Lionel Marchetti felt compelled to release this under the name Roger De La Krayssenet. Maybe he thought this musical essay in collage form was a drastic enough break from character that he could something of a double duty, Tony Clifton-style stunt. Something just doesn't fit. Why go through the trouble of citing your references, only to sign someone else's name and give them the grade? Especially when you turn in the same essay ten years later with a new title. Whatever the case, this scrambling of classic radioplay and concrète, ethnic musics, rock and pop hits, and previous entries in the Metamkine catalog is a head scratcher for sure and something Marchetti should have taken pride in from the get go. Perhaps Marchetti simply felt that he had already taken up his fair share of Metamkine real estate. I'm not one to speculate.

Kitnabudja Town

Fabio Fabor - Aleatoric Piano Collages (Vedette, 1970)

2009-04-07T01:19:00.003-04:00

This one's a bizarre entry for Italian library producer Fabio Fabor. Every so often he just got the jones to get out there. Mind you, not too out there. His Aleatoric Piano Collages is fairly evenly spread amongst somewhat lazily prepared piano, inner piano workouts, and electro-acoustic treatments. His piano preparations mostly amount to a thin wire over a few notes, resulting in oddly engaging buzz. His typical electronic treatment is either a swamp of reverb or echo. The soundboard action is a bit more involved, incorporating hand dampening, rakings, and some downright cathartic haphazard banging around. There's just something fascinating to how half-hatched his ideas are, like he wants to try out these ideas he just heard about but doesn't want to damage the piano. I keep listening expecting to hear a gasp and a shriek when he plucks a string too hard.

Aleatoric Piano Collages

Michel Chion - On N'Arrête Pas Le Regret (INA-GRM, 1996)

2009-04-06T17:33:00.003-04:00

One of Chion's more whimsical works, On N'Arrête Pas Le Regret is built from three pieces all dealing in some way with childhood. Spanning thirteen years of work, the trio of works function as an ode to his formative years and to the influences of Debussy, Bartok, and Schumann, respectively. The pieces are built on easily flowing narratives and reflect Chion's prowess with short form works. The opening "Sambas Pour Un Jour De Pluie" is built on an interlocking of synth pulse with spiraling violin glissando, with a story loosely reflecting the experiences of a small child sitting at a kitchen table unraveling underneath. "La Machine À Passer Le Temps" is purported to be Chion's first concrète piece, a steady flow of plinkings from glasses, strings, and other objects. The titular piece is classic Chion, five scenes meticulously structured but deeply immersed in his playful approach to sound. The teaming of these three pieces really cater to Chion's knack for invoking a place or idea with vivid and imaginative strokes.

On N'Arrête Pas Le Regret

Nuno Canavarro - Plux Quba (Ama Romanta, 1988; Moikai, 1998)

2009-04-03T18:20:00.004-04:00

Portuguese composer Nuno Canavarro crafted this singular sonic vision some time in the mid-80s, though it wouldn't be too far a stretch to note its imprint in the varied electronic output from the late 90s on. He begins with a repeated tone, sliced apart more or less down the center several ways, which after a few minutes reveals itself to be a single piano note. The treatment is gentle in tone, but slightly haphazard. He never seems to cut right down the center, sometimes crinkling that note at several points before its end. And this continues throughout. There are broad expanses of tones that wouldn't be out of place on top of a thump a la Gas, though rarely is there anything remotely resembling a beat. He takes simple vocal passages and turns them inside out, always with a delicate care that is meticulous despite having no interest in preserving its original identity. Elsewhere he crafts intricate harp phrases over an undercurrent of crumbling atmospheric sound. All in all, Canavarro crafted a one-time journey into a playful and lovely sound world.

Plux Quba

Philip Corner / Alison Knowles / George Brecht - Fluxus (Wergo, 2001)

2009-04-03T17:09:00.002-04:00

Collected here are three radioplays from three Fluxus affiliates, Philip Corner, Alison Knowles, and George Brecht. Each piece is built from a simple element and features a text recited by the author and sometimes others. Corner's piece is an homage to Erik Satie, built from a sparce two chord piano figure and a recitation that teeters along the stereo field. Knowles' piece, which she delivers along with Brecht, Hanna Higgins, and Jessica Higgins, is built from a long list of bean names on top of a bed of violin glissando and actual tossed about beans. And Brecht gives a play in four languages, derived from a Zen Buddhist text by Seng Ts'an.

Fluxus

Rolf Julius - Small Music

2009-04-03T16:08:00.002-04:00

Parts of the idea behind German sound artist Rolf Julius' small music borrows from John Cage's notion of small sounds, sonic artifacts subtle enough that the listener cannot distinguish between the sounds and the environment. His installations disguise the source of the sound in various ways, often in a manner where physical aspects of the sounds reveal their source. He has buried small speakers with ash inside flower pots so that sound waves disturb the level soil, thereby visualizing the sounds. Speakers have been used to displace a spread of paint on a canvas. He has even crafted eyeglasses with speakers in place of lenses.

The four volumes of his Small Music series document the sonic aspects of these installations, thin spreads of tones and environmental sounds shifting together. The idea behind each is generally simple and verging on stasis, with the focus generally on the texture or, as Julius likes to put it, the "surface" of the sound. He often incorporates miniature buzzings, pulses, and chirps, sometimes in rapid washes that amass to one solid sound rather than thousands of tiny ones.

Rolf Julius - Small Music, Vol. 1: White-Yellow-Black (Small Music, 1994)
White-Yellow-Black

Rolf Julius - Small Music, Vol. 2: Klangbogen (Small Music, 1995)
Vol. 2: Klangboden

Rolf Julius - Small Music, Vol. 3: Music for a Garden (Mattress Factory, 1996)
Three matrices of predominantly electronic sound, created for a permanent outdoor installation with the garden designed by Winifred Lutz. The garden installation is featured at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA.
Vol. 3: Music for a Garden

Rolf Julius - Small Music, Vol. 4: Tanz Für Zwei Blaue Rechtecke (Edition RZ, 1996)
Vol. 4: Tanz Für Zwei Blaue Rechtecke

Mika Vainio, Pita, Charlemagne Palestine - Three Compositions for Machines (Staalplaat, 1997)

2009-04-03T15:14:00.002-04:00

Looks like we got ourselves a little transgenerational music machine throwdown on our hands. During the 1997Masterclass Festival at the Hague, Mika Vainio, Peter Rehberg, and Charlemagne Palestine each took a crack at one in an array of instruments designed by C. Schlaege. Though a picture would speak a thousand words on the instruments at use, the sounds serve only to speculate on their nature.

Pan Sonic half Mika Vainio performs on the Rustler, whose whirring and grindings suggest the instrument features some configuration of motors and pistons. Midway a glassy ascension of tones appears, the orientation of which seems baffling. We find Mego-honcho Peter Rehberg on the Schellenbaum, a part of which most certainly is the instrument on the cover. A chorus of ringing bells opens the piece, before giving way to a syncopation of taps and clicks not at all unlike a typewriter aping "It's Time for the Percolator". Elder statesman Charlemagne Palestine appears with the Siren, producing dense clusters of tones that stack higher and higher, producing a cascade of waves and harmonic beating. The album concludes with Vainio and Rehberg in a duo for sounds sourced from a typewriter under which an unidentified hum is laid.

Three Compositions for Machines

Akio Suzuki - Stone (Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, 1994)

2009-04-01T19:34:00.004-04:00

These recordings, released along with a book by the same title, feature Akio Suzuki on the iwabue, a stone flute that has spanned several generations with his family. The stone is covered in naturally sculpted holes which produce a variety of tones when blown on. Evidence dating as far back as the 15th century cite the holed stone as a defender against nightmares and witchcraft. For the majority of the pieces, Suzuki crafts slowly evolving cycles built on largely continuous sound with the occasional trill as he alternates between openings. Additionally, there are some percussion pieces wherein Suzuki both slides and rapidly dances the stone against various surfaces.

Stone

Christian Zanési - Stop! L'Horizon (INA-GRM, 1996)

2009-03-31T22:28:00.008-04:00

Christian Zanési is a French composer who studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique under the tutelage of Pierre Schaeffer and Guy Reibel. For the last two decades he's held close affiliation with the GRM while also maintaining a studio of his own. The three pieces presented here are stereophonic workouts intent on establishing, in Zanési's words, "a physical connection with the listener: that vibrant, organic being." In execution, this amounts to wide, dynamic sound environments doused in cavernous washes, interspersed with modulated breaths and not quote identifiable chirps and tinkerings. Played at a reasonable clip, Zanési succeeds in his aural goal, generating a sound field that deeply captivates the ear.

Stop! L'Horizon
& in .flac

Franco Battiato - Clic (Bla Bla, 1974; BMG, 1998)

2009-03-31T11:33:00.004-04:00

Can't argue with a somewhat indirect ode to Stockhausen from the inimitable Franco Battiato! Though only some of the signature Battato elements are present--the lush VCS3 giving both dense waves and undulating arpeggatios, heisted classical elements, the clever use of concrète and minimalist touches, his lovely singing voice--the result is unmistakably Battiato. In place of the juicy guitars and heavy drum grooves, we find shortwave radio workouts and moments resembling sound poetry. Particularly fun are the synthesized bagpipes tying together "No U Turn". While his knack for grooves is certainly missed on this release, his imagination shines through on these stylistic exercises.

Clic

Jed Speare - Cable Car Soundscapes (Valient, 1982; Folkways, 1983)

2009-03-31T01:01:00.003-04:00

Inspired by R. Murray Schaeffer’s The Tuning Of the World, Jed Speare set out to document the decline of the San Francisco cable car. Beginning with a third part field document of the familiar sounds of the cable car, first with the rumble and hum inside the cabin, then the sounds along the tracks, concluding with the rapture of bells as the conductor alerts passersby of the cable car's approach. He then interviews several passengers and conductors, shedding light on the previous sounds. He concludes by tying the three together in an impressive tape piece. Very much approaching Tony Schwartz territory until the concluding piece, which takes him several steps beyond any semblance of documentation.

Cable Car Soundscapes
Liner notes

Makoto Kawabata - Musique Cosmique Electro-Acoustique (Qbico, 2002)

2009-03-31T00:44:00.003-04:00

Among his fondest early musical memories, Makoto Kawabata cites transmissions from NHK Radio of Stockhausen. Of particular interest were the frequencies Stockhausen tended toward, which Kawabata likens to a long-lasting ringing in his own ears since childhood. This small part of his history certainly softens the blow of Musique Cosmique Electro-Acoustique, a zap and splat heavy affair that calls to mind Acid Mothers Temple stripped of everything but the ultra cosmic synth work. Except there are no synths to be found here: the sounds were all conjured by direct contact with effects pedal circuitry.

Musique Cosmique Electro-Acoustique

Trevor Wishart - Audible Design (Orpheus the Pantomime, 2002)

2009-03-29T20:01:00.002-04:00

Along with his book on sound transformation Audible Design: A Plain and Easy Introduction to Sound Composition, York by way of Leeds sonic arts legend Trevor Wishart included an audio companion demonstrating some of the detailed techniques in action. Though the book itself is scantly available, Wishart has posted a complimentary essay that might give some context to the madness contained within.

Divorced from its text, the recording acts almost like a bizarre and incoherent book on tape. Wishart divides each chapter into sections, revealing the near endless array of digital media tricks up his sleeves. Simple vocal inflections are run through a gauntlet of audio processes, warping pitch, timing, and sonic character. Though not quite the same without the book's guide, those wishing to give their best Wishart imitation should investigate his Sound Loom software.

Audible Design

Hervé Castellani - Deux Silences (Metamkine, 1997)

2009-03-29T19:51:00.003-04:00

Another entry in Jérôme Noetinger's Cinéma pour l’oreille series, this one comes via French composer and Hameçon co-founder Hervé Castellani. Two somewhat short missives here, the first built from the sounds of engines, a thunderstorm, and squeaky cart wheels, with several rises and falls before giving way to an almost too present organ swell. The second calls on a twisting of bird calls and tea kettles that eventually stretch into an upper range drone with hints of third ear action. Plenty of false stops in both, each also tied together by the use of water sounds.

Deux Silences

Dick Raaijmakers - The Complete Tape Music of Dick Raaijmakers (Donemus, 1998; Basta, 2006)

2009-03-26T13:34:00.004-04:00

Over the course of nearly forty years, Dutch forever-innovator Dick Raaijmakers produced an unspeakably imaginative catalog of tape music that depicted a unique soundworld devised from his singular vision. His earliest pieces are constructed from simple techniques using tape, filters, and modulations, but the results betray that ease of creation, instead conveying complex field of concept and associations. Many of his pieces were created over a short time, which, through his thorough understanding of cause and effect with tape, came out sounding intricately constructed through endless labor.

Just as essential as his techniques were his sounds. Though often his building blocks were sine tones, Raaijmakers also found sonically intriguing sources, which in turn responded well to his approach in the lab. Among his tool and muses were action-heavy piano attacks, short wave and telegraph feeds, a game of ping pong, and early examples of samples, pulled from the works of Berio, Edith Piaf, and events of nature. On their own, the sounds are captivating, but with Raaijmakers at the helm they take on a vastly different light. It is Raaijmakers' ability to get inside his sounds, to stretch them, tear them, turn them on their sides, that turns them into something magical.

The material in this box covers a wealth of activities, sound for films and theatre, and stand-alone sound works. As different and varied as they may be, they all carry an unmistakable energy that is entirely Raaijmakers'. He remained dedicated to the simplicity of his earliest studio, rarely straying beyond an array of reel-to-reel machines and an arsenal of filters, and in doing this he has instilled in his works a human touch that gives realness to his fantasy world of sound.

Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3

Space Machine - Modular Series, Models 101, 102, 201, 202

2009-03-26T13:07:00.003-04:00

Space Machine serves up Maso Yamazaki's polar opposite to Masonna, springing half out of cosmic curiousity and half out of physical necessity. Maso has long collected early synthesizer equipment, so it was but a natural extension to journey deep into space. Among his fleet are a EMS VSC3, Roland System 100 & 100M, PAiA 4700 Modular, Doepfer Modular, as well as a Maestro Echoplex Ep-3. Space Machine is often a solo venture, though recorded instances have also featured Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro) on Model 101 and Makoto Kawabata for Model 102.

Model 101 - Dimension Degenerator (P-Tapes, 2004)

Model 102 - Orbit Vector Generator (P-Tapes, 2004)

Model 201 - Space-Time Echo (P-Tapes, 2005)

Model 202 - Zone of Avoidance (P-Tapes, 2005)

Modular Series, Models 101, 102, 201, 202

Graham Lambkin - Poem (for Voice & Tape) (Kye, 2001)

2009-03-26T12:43:00.002-04:00

Graham Lambkin, "Faces"

Graham Lambkin has involved himself in all matters of visual and audible activities for what is eerily coming close to two decades. Bands were his mode of operation for much of the 90s, when you could find him at the helm in the Shadow Ring, Footprint, and Tart, as well as often rearing his head on Idea Fire Company releases and performances. The last several years have seen Lambkin drifting out on his own or at most in duo settings, and this album is among the earliest of those. The idea is a streamlined one: atop a stream of running water (a common motif for Lambkin), most likely a gentle rain, a recording of some recitation by Lambkin is played. However, the tape is played incredibly slow, rendering his voice enormously low and indecipherable. His enunciations become lurching tonal masses and the room sound takes on deep droning.

Poem (for Voice & Tape)

Tony Schwartz - The New York Taxi Driver (Columbia, 1959)

2009-03-25T15:00:00.002-04:00

Another masterwork from the always brilliant Tony Schwartz, this among his earliest. He hopped in the back of New York's taxis, mic in hand, setting to tape a wild array of stories and musings, editing to portray the drivers as modern day sages. A narrator sets the tone and subject, then it's left to the drivers to set the listener straight. Where works like A Dog's Life made possible what is commonly viewed as NPR-style radio-journalism, The New York Taxi Driver set the stage for Taxi Cab Confessions.

The New York Taxi Driver

Christian Marclay - Footsteps (RecRec, 1989)

2009-03-25T10:47:00.003-04:00

Christian Marclay is one of those for whom the line between sound and art is completely invisible. Take Footsteps, for instance: Marclay makes a one-sided LP comprised solely of footsteps, first steadily paced walking in hallways of The Clocktower in NY, then Keiko Uenishi's tap dancing feet are added as well. One its own, an interesting idea, though it doesn't quite have legs.

Next step: line the floor in one of the Shedhalle galleries in Zurich with the entire pressing of said LP. For visitors to reach the next gallery, they must walk through, in the process embedding the footstep-filled LP with even more footprints, as well as scratches and the remnants of dirty shoes. All the while, the record is never played.

Once the exhibition concludes, each record is its own entity, shaped and morphed by its presentation as an object, not a sound work. But the sound work itself tells the tale of its former life in an aleatory fashion. Certainly, the case could be made that its presentation here removes the work from its own lifespan. Perhaps then it's best to view this as merely a portrait.

Footsteps

Gianfranco Pernaiachi - Sillabe D'ombre (Edipan, 1991)

2009-03-24T20:54:00.005-04:00

Gianfranco Pernaiachi is a Rome-born composer with a keen sense of space and silence. His phrasings certainly call to mine the patience and dedication to each note that make much of Feldman's work so compelling. He often ascends just above the threshold of audibility, where the listener can bear witness to the full life of each note. In addition to composing, Pernaiachi is also a poet, with many of his writings taking on life as dialogues within his pieces. To this he often ties electronic treatments that he often grants far more soundspace than his acoustic instruments. Where a piano might take on the character of a water droplet, the accompanying sweep of filtered echo grows more like a mighty gust of wind. Juxtapositions of this sort pull the listener inside his works and carry his sounds around the room.

Sillabe D'ombre

Pietro Grossi - Battimenti (Ants, 2003)

2009-03-24T18:19:00.003-04:00

Italian electronic maestro Pietro Grossi composed Battimenti in 1965, using 94 near frequencies sectioned into groups of 2, 3, 4, or 5. The overlapping and interfering frequencies create a shimmering bed of sound, rich with harmonic beatings and deep overtones. The piece progresses additively, beginning with a study for two simultaneous sounds and growing from there. Originally considered just the building blocks for a latter piece, Battimenti stands on its own as a profound forerunner to later minimalist activities.

Battimenti

CCMC - aCCoMpliCes (Victo, 1998)

2009-03-24T17:55:00.003-04:00

CCMC in this incarnation is the improvising trio of Michael Snow, Paul Dutton and John Oswald (they were much larger in number and varied in clientele some twenty years prior), recorded here during a slew of live performances beginning in the summer of 1996 and covering three more performances. The dates find Snow largely behind the piano and synth and Oswald forgoing any plundering in favor of a particularly guttural alto sax. Dutton remains true to his rep as Canada's favorite vocal acrobat. Despite the scattering over time, there is a surprising level of fluidity between the pieces. Oswald and Dutton mesh particularly well, sputtering as if the two are leeching back and forth off the same pair of lungs.

aCCoMpliCes

Malcolm Goldstein & Matthias Kaul - Christian Wolff: Bread & Roses (Wergo, 2003)

2009-03-24T13:22:00.005-04:00

Four Wolff-penned workouts, dished out via violin, percussion, voice, and hurdy gurdy by Malcolm Goldstein and Matthias Kaul. Despite the title, the bulk of the material here stems from Wolff's 1964 game composition For 1, 2 or 3 People for any instrument, dividing their interpretations into three sections with the remaining pieces--Exercise 27, Bread & Roses, and Edges--interspersed as dividers.

The score of For 1, 2 or 3 People is comprised of loose sheets distributed to the player which contain symbols indicating that the players should either wait for another sound to begin and play until it stops; start anytime, hold until another sound begins, and finish with it; start at the same time as the next sound, but stop before that sound; or start anytime, hold until another sound begins, and continue until after that sound has stopped. As well, directions are made as to the type of sound, 22 types total. The piece is highly demanding of the performers, but Goldstein and Kaul shine in light of such requirements. Of particular delight are the renditions tackled largely with voice, for the added physical demands that the score could impose.

Bread & Roses

Solid Eye - When The Snowman Starts To Talk (Senseworks, 1997)

2009-03-24T12:35:00.003-04:00

Third or so missive from LAFMS luminaries Solid Eye, the warp and warble trio of Joseph Hammer, Rick Potts, and Steve Thomsen. Following their previous overlaps--i.e. Dinosaurs with Horns and Swan Trove--gives an indication of the direction, but as is to be expected with this lot, little stock can be put on expectations. They wade in a pool of sound that is both murky and colorful, rife with Hammer's expertise with the tape, Potts' ability to render instruments unidentifiable via various household accoutrement, and Thomsen's ear for the absurd. The resulting improvised collages dish up the cosmic schmaltz as if the kettle were bottomless.

When the Snowman Starts to Talk

Hermann Nitsch - Harmoniumwerk Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 (Cortical Foundation, 2000)

2009-03-23T15:21:00.003-04:00

Harmoniumwerk occupies a rather atypical facet of Vienna Actionist Hermann Nitsch. In general, his music is a mere component of a larger being exploring ritualistic endeavors and bloodstained excess.
Harmoniumwerk is without a visual element and the only excess is in volume, as Harmoniumwerk covers 40 volumes of organ works recorded on his own organ at Prinzendorf Castle. The result is a surprisingly gentle (particularly for Nitsch) and beautiful work that slowly explores the sounds that inhabit the castle. Each piece is harmonically rich with an intimacy owed largely to the bareness and directness of the recording, allowing even the soft click of the keys to remain.

Harmoniumwerk Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4

Francis Dhomont - Frankenstein Symphony (Asphodel, 1997)

2009-03-23T14:51:00.003-04:00

A high momentum, stitched-together mash of personal and student works from Dhomont, a heavyweight in the INA-GRM arena. The project began when a compilation curated by Dhomont was proposed, to which Dhomont scoffed. Perhaps objecting to the removing of context that a compilation can impose, he opted instead to assemble a new context for a selection of otherwise dislocated pieces. Scrapping together parts from 22 composers in total, Dhomont created a four part work with no filtering, only cut and splice assemblage, resulting in a potent but disruptive work that functions well beyond the sum of its parts.

Frankenstein Symphony

Eric La Casa - The Stones of the Threshold (Ground Fault, 1999)

2009-03-23T14:30:00.002-04:00

One of many great recordings from Parisian Eric La Casa, an often claustrophobic look at the relationship between the sounds of the world and the microphone. The album is bookended by pieces comprised solely of field recordings--of water and fire, urban sounds, gusts of wind, and human utterings--and these represent La Casa at his most striking. His recordings have a knack for capturing every sonic artifact of an encounter, down to the interwoven sounds of wind that fill the otherwise lack of sounds, and bringing them viscerally into the forefront. Any faint murmur, barely audible, can be counted on at any moment to emerge as a great rumble, and this is part of the excitement to his recordings.

The Stones of the Threshold

Aki Onda - Cassette Memories

2009-03-20T16:19:00.004-04:00

For many years now, Aki Onda has been among the many proponents of the resurrection of the cassette. One of his most noted contributions to this cause is his Cassette Memories series of performances and recordings. Culled from two decades worth of sound diaries, Onda has taken to re-constructing and re-imagining personal and public memories through his cassette collages, in essence producing an improvised reality. He has resigned himself to site-specific solo performances, reserved for spaces with their own specific memory. This makes for a synergistic effect where, in his own words, "Memories make memories."

Onda thus far has produced two entries in his recorded Cassette Memories series. Their shape is more meticulously crafted than his performances. When recording, Onda is able to cover several years worth of tapes and subsequently memories in a matter of seconds, though he is often more inclined to juxtapose several memories and let imagination take hold.

Aki Onda - Ancient & Modern: Cassette Memories Vol. 1
Phonomena Audio Arts & Multiples, 2003
Liner notes

Aki Onda - Bon Voyage!: Cassette Memories Vol. 2.
Improvised Music from Japan, 2003
Liner notes

Else Marie Pade - Face It (Dacapo, 2002)

2009-03-19T00:21:00.003-04:00

More from the Danish queen of the tape, this one differing rather significantly from Et Glasperlespil in its more pronounced use of concrète elements and the near-presence of a narrative. Three pieces here, the first, "Symphonie Magnétophonique", an absolutely outrageous tape collage from 1958, following closely on the tails of her introductory tape piece "Syv Circler" (as found on Et Glasperlespil). Following are a pair of text-sound pieces: the whimsical, forty-three minute (!!!) adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Mermaid", also from 1958, and her 1970 titular piece, a bizarre anti-Nixon march bearing shades of Åke Hodell. Really a blue ribbon showing through and through. Waiting patiently for more of her material to fall from the sky.

Face It