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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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