#miguel carvalhais

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 113

Síria: Boa-Língua

as kindly provided to me as a review copy by Crónica

released March 17, 2020

Catalogue number: 155

Welcome to review number 113 on Fluid Sonic Fluctuations in which today I’m featuring the fairly recently released album by Síria titled Boa-Língua. I received this album as a review copy linking to a Bandcamp download code from the Crónica label. Crónica is the label which actually inspired me to start this blog and over the last two years I’ve often featured and reviewed various Crónica releases both new and old on this blog. Just like I did with Quantum Natives I’ll give a bit of a description of Crónica both for people who haven’t checked out the previous reviews as well as keeping in line with my now even more expanded review style. Crónica is a Portuguese mixed media label founded by a group of sound artists, experimental musicians and audiovisual artists that include Miguel Carvalhais (who’s most in charge of the label nowadays and has mastered and designed many of its releases), Pedro Tudela, who both form the duo @c, an immersive sound art and abstract experimental music project that often utilises field recordings and collaged abstract musical and non-musical sounds to create immersive cinematic experiences based on a philosophical attitude to sound as well as deep listening into various sonic environments. I’ve reviewed various @c works on this blog before. Other founding members of Crónica include experimental musician Pedro Almeida (Pal) and visual artist Lia who uses custom programming to create her moving and captured abstract visuals. Quite matching in spirit to @c’s sound works Crónica’s releases form an ever-continuing chronology of sound, music and noise on various formats including cassette tape, free download, CD and limited edition vinyl releases. Crónica’s discography is a mixture of Sound Art pieces, often conceptual and free-spirited experimental music and Electro-Acoustic Improvisation as well as inventive and often enjoyable forays into composed field recordings and the more arty side of Noise. Now let’s have a look at the contents of the review copy of Boa-Língua by Síria that I received. The download I received includes the album cover artwork in good resolution, the 9 album tracks in 24-bit/44.1kHz high resolution audio as well as a PDF file that contains the album’s tracklist, credits, release description and liner notes. The liner notes by Síria herself give a good impression of the concept and sonic approach Síria used when she recorded the 9 pieces that feature on the album with improvisation that goes beyond simply performing and an element of deep introspection being key elements to this album’s development. A nice short text that you can read alongside checking out the music. What is of interest for now is the background of Síria and the other artists who contributed to the music or whose music Síria sampled / manipulated to create her music. First of all, Síria herself, is a solo project by Portuguese sound artist and experimental musician Diana Combo. As also introduced by the PDF files, Síria is an extension of Diana’s other music project EOSIN, a project that mixes Turntable Music style experimentation, field recordings and other sound sources to create at times eerie and mysterious abstract sonic images, Síria mixes this approach with Diana’s vocals which in the case of Boa-Língua she doesn’t manipulate that much but mostly works as a main thread carrying the pieces of music, often using (traditional) Folk songs or as in some pieces on this album rather expressive (wordless) vocals sometimes using an invented language. Under the name Síria Diana has released two albums on Crónica, has appeared on compilations on Tropical Twista Records and Discrepant and has created a remix for Sontag Shogun released on Youngbloods. Tiago Martins has done “post-production” of the album at his own Fisgastudio, which as I could hear it on the album consists of the connecting the songs together as well as nicely balancing out Síria’s vocals with the instrumentation of her pieces. Miguel Carvalhais did the mastering for this album, which like other masters he did for releases I previously reviewed is rather crisp and clear sounding, a notch compressed in this case perhaps though, but it does keep the vocals quite on the foreground and it’s not reducing the balance of the instrumentation of the music too much and indeed Miguel also created the artwork for this release which features photos by Síria herself of this subtly painted statue of a nude woman which is not quite matching my own interpretation of the music as you will soon notice but does form nice striking imagery that does encompass the general surreal ambience of the album quite well. Amongst the sources of songwriting, samples and recordings Síria used in her pieces we find that first song Canção do Gato is a version of a song that Tiago Pereira recorded for his continuing project A Música Portuguesa a Gostar Dela Própria which documents Portuguese folk songs as sung by local citizens through his audio and video recordings. Nos Montes was remixed by @c who have released albums on labels like Variz, Crónica, Fuga Discos and Grain Of Sound, have been featured on albums and compilation released by labels like Loop, AntmanuvMicro and Variz and are also credited on releases on Dead Motion Records, Ilse and a free Edition Der Standard release. Senhora dos Remédios is a version of a song sang by Portuguese singer Catarina Chitas and features a sample from Portuguese mixed media artist Maile Colbert. Belgian Shepherd is a remix of a track of the same title by Portuguese experimental music artist Rui P. Andrade of his 2017 album All Lovers Go To Heaven, originally released on ACR. Rui has released albums using his own name on labels such as BRØQN, Etched Traumas, Haze and Colectivo Casa Amarela, has appeared on releases on Darker Days Ahead, a compilation by Indie Rock Mag, a split EP on Enough Records. Rui’s credits includes musical work on releases on Zigur Artists, Pale Blue and Warm Winters Ltd. Rui nowadays makes music under his alias Canadian Rifles which he mostly releases on his own Eastern Nurseries tape label. Through Síria’s remix (originally released on the Island Fever compilation by Portuguese experimental music label Colectivo Casa Amarela) I’ve already caught some glimpses of Rui’s sound work and based on the strong bassy resonant noisy drone elements I heard I can tell his solo works and label output will definitely be worth checking out too. Ay Işığında is a version of a song as originally sung by Azerbaijani singer Nərminə Məmmədova. Finally, For Ghédalia and Boa-Lingua feature recordings made by Los Niños Muertos which is a duo made up of Portuguese electric guitar improviser and experimentalist André Tasso (who's also part of the big Ensemble MIA, an international collective of experimental musicians and improvisers who participated in the Encontro de Música Improvisada de Atouguia da Baleia organised in May 2016) and Bruno Humberto (a conceptual artist in a wide array of fields in contemporary arts whose works often use the location of the installation or performance as part of the artwork and who also utilised absurdism in interesting manners as part of the Gazpacho Unlimited theatre group). Now let’s dive into Boa-Língua’s music and sonic imagery.

Boa-Língua starts with the piece Canção do Gato which quite perfectly introduces the sonic imagery that this album conjured up in my mind which is that of a wandering soul on a mysterious journey who encounters all kinds of strange rituals and at times dystopian Industrial environments. The piece feels like we’re inside a circle watching an eerie entrancing ritual happen, with Síria’s vocals working as if they’re the chant forming the ritual itself, combined with the gong like percussion which emits a bassy and resonant but also quite wavy continuous droning and helps to create that nocturnal mysterious atmosphere. The song itself sounds more uplifting than the eerie gong drones suggests which makes for a great intriguing juxtaposition of musical elements and the filtered walkie-talkie noise like rhythm in the first half of the piece adds a bit of surrealism to the piece as it feels quite like a small undefined cloud drifting by, momentarily obscuring the ritual. Síria’s vocal performance itself also got some great details in it too, as she holds the notes of each repeated melodic phrase as if they’re looped and also giving the song a bit of sharp resonant edge, very nice to hear. Afterwards we travel into darker, more dystopian territory with Nos Montes which features Síria’s wordless vocals and various layers of (field recording) manipulations, loose percussion, warbled pitch adjusted vinyl records as well as eerie glassy crystallised textured and choppy fluttering bits of Noise swirling around in the centre of the stereo image as well as as between the left and right channels in a subtle manner. Our aforementioned wandering soul has now arrived in an Industrial landscape in which alien machinery seems to be ever whirring, squeaking and clicking, with the workers in this factory or perhaps even simply a workshop appear to be processing glimmering minerals which radiate vivid blue-tinted rainbows. Warbled voices and strangely dropping tones feel like the wandering soul is slowly getting both frightened and confused by her surroundings, her wordless singing feeling like a soft lullaby like song she sings to comfort herself. Her voice distorts and repeats as the environment changes and while the music follows more of a slow evolution of texture rather than reaching a real climax, the various details and new sounds fading in through the layers of Industrial sound make the immersive sonic experiments that much richer. Like many of the pieces on this album, Nos Montes is connected quite directly to its following piece with the jester like tambourine pattern at the end smoothly moving into the beginning of the following track Senhora dos Remédios. @c’s (remix) contribution to Nos Montes sounds a bit more metallic than I heard before from the Portuguese duo and is a bit more subtle in this case with many of the sonic layers sounding like directly from Síria herself. The depth, panning and immersive acoustic effects definitely make me think of @c’s work in a more direct manner, but I can say that this mixture of contributions to one piece of music definitely works quite seamless instead of being a piece where you can clearly hear “another artist joined as a collaborator” so excellent work in here indeed. Following track Senhora dos Remédios uses a sample by Maile Colbert (possibly a field recording) sounding like hissy wind and we can hear the return of the gong percussion from Canção do Gato at the start of the piece, blending with jester tambourine rhythm. This piece feels quite like our wandering soul has reached a more quiet part of the factory / workshop where we can only hear the hiss of pipes leading to the machinery in the main hall. Síria’s way of singing the song makes it sound quite ghostly and a bit like a lament, the stereo panned delay effect also adds this feeling of being inside the mind of the wandering soul. The second voice in the song feels like the wandering soul is imagining this second voice as a memory from a time long ago. A sweet introspective piece of music which does retain that nice Industrial edge the album has in a great manner. Belgian Shepherd then follows, a quite minimalist piece in which Síria’s vocals feature in a more subtle manner than other the other tracks on Boa-Língua. Now it feels like the wandering soul has moved to another spot in the factory, one in which distant sounds of machinery can be heard. Featuring distorted rhythmic glitch bass, a scraping mechanical resonant metallic drone, as well as burst of dust-laden steam and distant clanging metal poles and racks the Industrial landscape where our wandering soul finds herself has become a bit less archaic and morphed into a more efficient, cold and high-tech sci fi type of gears. Additional excellent details to the piece are the entrance in which high pitched glitched tones as well as a metallic violin like glassy screeches seem to introduce the wandering soul’s desperation as she’s trying to find a way out of this dark landscape, her warm wordless vocals being both cries for help and again a means to try to calm herself down and focus. A great mixture of contemporary minimalist Glitch elements and classic Industrial textures from what I can hear in the piece, Rui P. Andrade’s original version of this piece of which we’re now hearing Síria’s remix must be a fine entrancing piece of Drone / Noise work as all the textures as well as rich manipulations of the elements suggest the source material (which Síria also added on in this remix, which should be noted) definitely has some great creativity and an inspired personal touch to it too. Great work. Afterwards in Yarın the wandering soul has finally got out of the factory and returned to the mysterious ritual we saw before which has now progressed. Featuring long long resonating and decaying cymbal droning which is rich in many eerie and filtered sounding overtones as well as an additional layer of low (synth) frequencies which create a brooding rumbling foundation of the piece the ritual like nature of this piece is much darker. Yet Síria’s vocals are quite uplifting and positive sounding, with her voice overtaking the darkness more in this case than becoming encompassed within it. The double tracking of her vocals does create these curious sonic phenomena however, like her voice detaches itself from her as a separate second “out of body” entity and swirls around within the diffuse flowing liquid tonal mass of the ritual music. A few rays of sunlight are shining through the clouds of the morning to come for the wandering soul but the water drops at the end of the piece predict that the ominous events she encounters aren’t over yet, with the room acoustic of the field recording suggesting a narrow hollow space she soon finds herself in, perhaps a dungeon. Danse Macabre, the piece that follows is quite self-explanatory based on the titled. Indeed the piece feels quite like the sonic depiction of ghosts dancing around in a circle in the dark night. In this case however, it’s obviously the wandering soul who’s growing more and more confused and frightened by feelings that she can’t escape this strange world of mysterious ancient rituals and dystopian cold Industry all that easily. The piece feels quite “classic” in that it has a mostly pure Ritual Ambient sound with a lot of eerie resonant slow percussion rhythms, droning vocals and strange mouth sounds with which she creates strange laughing and screeching noises and spooky wails. However there are also little bits of crackling Noise hidden in the background as well with which Síria does underline her signature sound in this piece, they’re equally eerie in that they’re so “light” in the sonic imagery that you might even mistake them for rustling leaves or tree branches outside your house (this is especially the case on headphones). Further details that are particularly great about this piece are the highly resonant droning overtones mixed with the hollow water drops in the beginning of the piece creating some extra eerie gloom as well as the way Síria’s vocals form their own texture and intensely droning tone at the end of the piece, a very immersive listening experience once again. Ay Işığında follows with a similar kind of Ritual Ambient kind of ambience fading through the water drop sounds into nicely rising and falling waves of gong resonances backed by tinkling cymbals. Our wandering soul appears to have escaped her gloom and is now walking towards a beach with the aforementioned gong resonances feeling like the eerie gloom still surrounding her until the point that some lovely hollow, wooden like turntable needle and mechanism manipulations enter sounding a bit like rowing pans for that nice notch of surrealism in the mix. Síria performs the song Ay Işığında (as originally sung by Nərminə Məmmədova) with much positive emotion and there’s some lovely spacey delay effect on her vocals again but what I like even more about this piece is the way the piece’s subtly moving drone moves into sonic imagery involving soft “caressing” vinyl crackles and the sound of the sea, the swirling waves of water carrying our wandering soul to what appears to be an exit of the fever dream like landscapes she find herself in. The vinyl crackles also appear to hint at the subconscious meaning of “this is all just memories, you’re not actually experiencing this in real life”. Very intriguing. For Ghédalia then is a piece which is a bit more abrasive for its first half featuring screechy high pitched feedback tones but does flow into a more subtle kind of ambience afterwards. Dedicated to the cult Avant-Garde Folk experimentalist Ghédalia Tazartes the piece does indeed recall the curious kind of mixture of Noise, Folk and Tribal like elements I remember from listening to one of his albums a long time ago. This is also a piece which does move a bit out of the flow of the pieces that came before it as it features some more abstract experimentation within it. Síria is performing ornamental wordless vocals in this piece mixed with additional filtered vocal drones making for curious swirling drone around her. She also creates clicky bass drum like percussion using her mouth (though this seems to be more like a layering of two elements in fact). Curious are also the organ like tones in the first half of the piece. Whilst moving into a different kind of textural style, I can still apply my imagined imagery of the wandering soul to this piece as being a ritual she created and is performing on her own. This piece uses recordings by André Tasso and Bruno Humberto and I can definitely say that based on what I found about André, the guitar Noise elements are created by him and add some great rawness in terms of texture to the piece, very nice. Final piece Boa-Língua puts more focus on the recordings of guitar feedback manipulation as well as some sweet woodblock / stick percussion courtesy of André Tasso and Bruno Humberto in terms of instrumentation with Síria’s vocals being more like chanted mantras. The instrumental backing has a great physical touch to it in terms of texture, with the guitar also sounding a bit like an alarm; Síria’s calm vocals give the impression of our wandering soul slowly waking up in her bed in the morning with her thoughts still going through a bit of a confusing haze (the feedback instrumentation) and her wake up alarm having an oddly harsh sound to her ears. Still, she’s safe and sound and thereby we also come to our listening journey of Síria’s excellent Boa-Língua. I awards Boa-Língua a Polar Vision at the frequency of a wandering soul travelling through possibly imagined landscapes full of mysterious rituals, dystopian Industrial landscapes and a surreal experience of past memories. The album’s consistent flow of often vocal lead pieces of rich experimental music make for a great listening experience in Síria’s personal, inspired sonic world that blends “physical” Noise experimentation, Ritual Ambient influences, an inventive approach to using her voice in her music and a great feel for the cinematic side of Sound Art and texture based ambiences. This is a great recommended listen for fans of the more musical side of Sound Art, experimental approaches to Ritual Ambient, Turntable Music as well as a more varied approach to using Noise and Free Improvisation in more subtle manners. Síria’s song based approach also makes the music more accessible for listeners who aren’t very familiar with experimental music in general. Definitely get this album.

You can order Boa-Língua by Síria as a limited edition cassette tape and download from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/boa-l-ngua

#fluid sonic fluctuation #polar vision #113 #síria #Boa-Língua #crónica #march 17 #2020 #155 #diana combo #tiago martins #Fisgastudio #miguel carvalhais #tiago pereira #@c #pedro tudela #Catarina Chitas #maile colbert #rui p. andrade #nərminə məmmədova #los niños muertos #andré tasso #bruno humberto #sound art #experimental music #underground music #ritual ambient #noise #turntable music #avant-folk

[hugopaquete]

@c Espaço, Pausa, Repetição Crónica 150~2019, Tape Release date: 7 May 2019 Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais have been working as @c since 2000, publishing several albums (some of which in Crónica), composing music for audiovisuals and theatre, performing extensively, and creating site-specific sound installations. Having been invited to develop a new work for the Exhibitions Pavilion of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, to be shown from March to June 2018, around the time of the 15th anniversary of Crónica, they decided to develop a piece that would involve and reflect the label and the artists with whom it works. Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição (Sonic Annotations: Space, Pause, Repetition) was developed from sound objects provided by more than fifty artists and projects. The installation established an area for a multisensory immersive experience that incited a dialogue with the sound objects, the architectural space and its visitors. An infrastructure built from speakers, flooring, light, fragrance, and a hovering frame, set a stage for the creation of a nonlinear, generative and open algorithmic composition for computer and speakers. This area was a pivotal point for listening, but it also steered visitors to move, leaving the ideal listening point and exploring the exhibition space to discover how different perspectives over the sonic matter could be attained through its traversal. The installation was built from the exhibition space and from the idiosyncrasies and autonomy of the more than 300 sound objects that were collected, ranging in duration from under a second to more than an hour. From these, Tudela and Carvalhais developed in excess of one thousand individual sound objects and developed a physical and computational system that fuelled their anarchic autonomy, and stimulated several relationships: between different sound objects; between sound objects and space; between sound objects, space, and listeners. In this site-specific installation Tudela and Carvalhais developed music that was not projected into an environment, that was not about an environment but that rather was the environment. A music that created its own space, to which it then directed the attention of visitors, so that they were led to develop a holistic reading and interpretation of the work. They developed a music of metaphors, by using sound objects and their qualities to create new objects that serendipitously emerged during the running of the installation. Fleeting objects that could be heard by visitors or could be forever lost. The two pieces in this release were composed using the sound objects and the generative system from the installation. They are not intended as documentation of the installation, but rather aim at being listened to as new compositions created from, and after, the installation. The first piece, Espaço, Pausa (Space, Pause), is perhaps closer to the dynamics of the opening configuration of the installation, with clearly recognisable sound objects and a focus on their articulation and relationships. The second piece, Repetição (Repetition), is infused with texts in English and Portuguese that were inspired by two other spaces: Pierre Schaeffer’s monumental Le solfège de l’objet sonore (Music Theory of the Sound Object), and Pierre Henry’s House of Sounds, as documented in the photo-book by Geir Egil Bergjord (published by gilka.no). Poetically indexing sound objects, Repetição proposes their semantic reinterpretation, further extending the metaphorical constructs. Credits Composed by Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela with sound objects created for the installation Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição by Alex FX, Alexander Rishaug, André Gonçalves, Andreas Trobollowitsch, Artificial Memory Trace, Arturas Bumšteinas, Attilio Novellino, Carlos Santos, Carlos Zíngaro, Cem Güney, Dan Powell, David Lee Myers, Diana Combo, Durán Vázquez, Emídio Buchinho, Emmanuel Mieville, Enrico Ascoli, Enrico Coniglio, Astrid & Ephraim Wegner, Haarvöl, Freiband, Gintas K, Graeme Truslove, Hugo Paquete, Ifs, James Eck Rippie, Janek Schaefer, Jazznoize, Jim Haynes, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Jörg Piringer, Jos Smolders, Lawrence English, Luca Forcucci, Maile Colbert, Marc Behrens, Martijn Tellinga, Mikel R. Nieto, Mise_en_Scene, Monty Adkins, Morten Riis, paL, Ran Slavin, Richard Eigner, Saverio Rosi, Simon Whetham, Sound Meccano, Stephen Vitiello, Sturqen,Tamtam, Tuulikki Bartosik, Ulrich Mitzlaff, Vitor Joaquim, Yiorgis Sakellariou. Cover image by Márcia Novais. Installation photos by Pedro Tudela. Special thanks to Lúcia Almeida Matos and Luís Pinto Nunes. Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição (Sonic Annotations: Space, Pause, Repetition), an installation by Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais was commissioned by oMuseu and the Exhibitions Office of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto for its Exhibitions Pavilion. March 24th to June 30th, 2018.

#sound art #cronica #sound installation #noise #random #experimental art #nw media #music

[bpradaartwork]

RUTURA

FICHA ARTÍSTICA I TÉCNICA _

Direção artística _ Rui Ramos I Assistência à Direção artística _ Rolando Galhardas I Coordenação Oficina de Teatro de Serpa_ Filipe Seixas I Encenação_ Bárbara Soares, Carolina Carvalhais, Filipe Seixas, Joana Saraiva, Paulo Roque, Rolando Galhardas e Rui Ramos I Direção musical/Compositor_ Bruno Domingos I Direção musical Papoilas do Enxoé _ Patrícia Lestre I Músicos _ Bruno Domingos, João Nunes, João Soares e Vasco Nogueira I Figurinos _Cláudia Ribeiro I Assistente de figurinos _ Mafalda Costa I Cabelos e Maquilhagem _ Rolando Galhardas I Cenário e construção de adereços _ Fabrice Ziegler I Assistente de adereços _ Beatriz Prada e Maria Eugênia Cavaggioni I Desenho de luz _ Filipe Seixas I Fotografia _Fabrice Ziegler I Design gráfico _ André Batista I Coordenação vídeo _ Marco Ferreira I Vídeo _ Mairea Segui Buenaventura e André Batista I Direção de produção _ Sandra Serra I Produção executiva _ André Batista I Operação técnica _ Filipe Seixas I Montagem técnica _ António Costa, Fabrice Ziegler, Filipe Seixas, João Nunes e João Soares I Costureiras_ Clara Sertório, Isabel Costa, Isabel Graça, Lurdes Sobrado, Mafalda Costa e Maria Eugénia Cavaggioni I Catering _ Clara Sertório, Miguel Moquenco e Marisela Terra

[constancasoutinho]

Espaço Pausa Repetição (2018)

PT 

O vídeo documenta a instalação realizada pelos artistas Miguel Carvalhais e Pedro Tudela. Tentei recriar com este video, até à exaustão, o titulo da obra : ‘Espaço Pausa Repetição’. 

Space Pause Repetition

EN 

The video documents the installation made by the artists Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela. I tried to recreate with this video, to exhaustion, the title of the work: ‘Space Pause Repetition’.

[gothicandamazing]

Models: Andreia Carvalhais/ Hugo Miguel Photo: Ana Luar Vaz Clothes: Phazeclothing.com Accessories: Dark Desire

Welcome to Gothic and Amazing | www.gothicandamazing.com

[telavivcity-blog]

The Insomniac City Cycles

https://telavivcity.co.il/?p=5547&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr The City that never sleeps The Insomniac City Cycles https://telavivcity.co.il/?p=5547&utm_source=SocialAutoPoster&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Tumblr Nocturnal Rainbow Films presents: The Insomniac City Cycles Synopsis A man with a bullet wound wakes up with memory disorders in an underground parking lot in Tel Aviv. As he struggles to recall recent events, a woman wakes up in a Shanghai hotel from a similar dream. A fragmented conversation with a pet shop owner on the phone sets off an abstract mystery in Tel Aviv and Shanghai. Through a fragmented stream of events, the film explores anxiety and instability between two strangers on the phone. Insomniac City has been initially commissioned for the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2004 but gradually mutated into a longer film with narrative elements. It is a project that from its inauguration has set out to be worked on in continuous stages in chapters resulting in a full length film [70 minutes]. It is a single channel film and also a 3 channel video-sound installation. “Ran Slavin’s The Insomniac City Cycles work vacillates between reality and the imagination, wakefulness and sleep, and creates an affinity between the psyche and the urban sphere. The film’s fragmented, frenetic and haunted urban topography may be likened to a map of the human soul. The emotional condition of this work’s protagonist, which makes it impossible for him to escape into the realm of sleep, represents an existential state. Paradoxically, this state of continuous wakefulness resembles a dream, or rather a nightmare, in which it is impossible to tell the difference between truth and fiction. When he wakes up in a parking lot with a bullet wound in his shoulder, he cannot remember how he got there, where his pistol is, and whether he is the victim or the murderer…” Directed and written by Ran Slavin Nocturnal Rainbow Films Cast: Lee Trifon, Adi Gilad, Yaniv Abraham, Irad Mazliah Crew Dialogues co-written with Monika Bielskyte Line Producer; Lior Ianai Lighting; Nimrod Golan Sound mix; Itzik Cohen Sound editors; Itzik Cohen, Omri levy, Ran Slavin Voice of man in pet shop: Ohad Naharin Dressing; Maayan Goldman Makeup; Dorit Cohen Underwater camera; Alain Daniel Cinematography, editing, sound design, post production: Ran Slavin With tracks by: Charlie Megira - "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"; Words & Music by Gabi Abudraham, performed by Rami Gabay, Shai Nobelman Boaz Goldberg, Gabi Abudraham Fact Records @c - "61" Composed and performed by: Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela Cronica Records Third World Love - "Clouds" Composed and performed by Yonatan Avishai, performed by Avishai Cohen, Omer Avital, Daniel Freedman and Yonatan Avishai Assal Records/NMC The Circular Ruins w/ Off The Sky - "Through Solid Shadows" Composed and performed by Jason Corder and Anthony Paul Kerby DataObscura Records Klimek - "Ruined In A Day (Buenos Aires)" Composed and performed by Sebastian Meissner Kompakt Records Ran Slavin - "Dreamzone 537" Composed and performed by Ran Slavin From "Nocturnal Rainbow Rising" Cronica Records Ran Slavin - "Black Dice" Composed and performed by Ran Slavin From "Nocturnal Rainbow Rising" Cronica Records Ran Slavin - "Nocturnal Rainbow Rising" Composed and performed by Ran Slavin From "Nocturnal Rainbow Rising" Cronica Records Ran Slavin - "Interior / Exterior 1+2" Composed and performed by Ran Slavin From "Insomniac City" Mille Plateaux Records Ran Slavin - "In From" Composed and performed by Ran Slavin From "Insomniac City" Mille Plateaux Records The film was produced with the support of Cinema Project, a joint project of The Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts & the Recanati Foundation. Supported by the Cultural Administration at the Israeli Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport and the Israeli Council for Cinema Supported by the Israel Lottery Council for the Arts A Nocturnal Rainbow Production Filmed in the cities of Tel Aviv and Shanghai Thanks: The Rabinovich Foundation for the arts - Cinema Project, Israel Lottery Council for the Arts, Sheraton Tel Aviv, Giora Einy, Alon Garbuz, Yoav Abramovich, Yoav Barkai, Danny Spaer, Daniel Shabtai Milo, Itzik Cohen, Omri Levi, Irad Mazliah, Avi Banon, Monika Bielskyte, Ohad Naharin, Shiri Slavin, Sigal Barnir, Yael Moria, Rei Elbaz, On Air, Michal Shalit, Keren Arnaldes, Bernd Lennartz, Achim Szepanski, Itai Meir, Shablul pet shop, Shlomit Slavin, Ritsko, All the crew, Oded Horowitz - Orlando Films. Special thanks to Daniel Shabtai Milo, Monika Bielskyte A very special thank you to Itzik Cohen ____________________________________________ For theatrical and festival screenings contact: [email protected] __________________________________________________ Likes: 23 Viewed: 1981 source #City #Cycles #Insomniac #telavivbeach #telavivmap #telavivmuseum #telavivweather #tel-aviv TEL AVIV - THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS #BESTTelAvivhotelaccommodation #Uncategorized

[noise-rm]

Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição from Miguel Carvalhais on Vimeo.

Sound installation: LED lamps, metal structure, loudspeakers, sound and electric cables, computer, carpet, fragrance.

March 24 to June 30 2018, Exhibitions Pavillion, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto.

An installation by Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais, developed from sound objects by guest authors. The artwork establishes an area for a multi-sensory immersive experience that dialogues with the architectural space and the permanence of the visitor. Speakers, flooring, light, fragrance, and a hovering frame create an infrastructure for three sound pieces for computer and speakers, to be presented for one month each. These are fed by the contributions of the guest artists, articulated in non-linear, generative and open algorithmic compositions.

Commissioned by oMuseu and Exhibitions – Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto.

- Project coordination: Lúcia Almeida Matos - Deputy Coordinator and Production: Luís Pinto Nunes - Research: Luís Pinto Nunes, Miguel Carvalhais, Pedro Tudela - Production assistance: Isabel Gonçalves - Artists, sound objects: Alex FX, Alexander Rishaug, André Gonçalves, Andreas Trobollowitsch, Artificial Memory Trace, Arturas Bumšteinas, Attilio Novellino, Carlos Santos, Carlos Zíngaro, Cem Güney, Dan Powell, David Lee Myers, Diana Combo, Durán Vázquez, Emídio Buchinho, Emmanuel Mieville, Enrico Ascoli, Enrico Coniglio, Astrid & Ephraim Wegner, Haarvöl, Freiband, Gintas K, Graeme Truslove, Hugo Paquete, Ifs, James Eck Rippie, Janek Schaefer, Jazznoize, Jim Haynes, Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, Jörg Piringer, Jos Smolders, Lawrence English, Luca Forcucci, Maile Colbert, Marc Behrens, Martijn Tellinga, Mikel R. Nieto, Mise_en_Scene, Monty Adkins, Morten Riis, paL, Ran Slavin, Richard Eigner, Saverio Rosi, Simon Whetham, Sound Meccano, Stephen Vitiello, Sturqen, Tamtam, Tuulikki Bartosik, Ulrich Mitzlaff, Vitor Joaquim, Yiorgis Sakellariou - Frame: Luís Albuquerque Pinho, Luís Pinto Nunes, Miguel Carvalhais, Pedro Tudela - Speaker stands: Miguel Carvalhais, Norberto Jorge, Pedro Tudela - Exhibition equipment setting: Carlos Lima, Jorge Garcez, Tiago Cruz - Fragrance development: i-sensis perfume design – Eduardo Oliveira, Paula Gomes - Photographic documentation: João Lima - Video documentation: Patrícia Viana Almeida - IT support: João Rodrigues - Communication: Communication office, FBAUP - Graphic Design: Márcia Novais - Education: Education office, FBAUP - Technical staff: Ernestina Dias, Miguel Rodrigues - Sponsors: Crónica, Garcia e Albuquerque – Arquitectos - Acknowledgements: António Ferreira, João Azinheiro, Luís Albuquerque Pinho, Marta Rodrigues, Rosi Avelar, FBAUP team, directions of Licenciatura em Artes Plásticas, Licenciatura em Design de Comunicação, Mestrado em Estudos Artísticos, Doutoramento em Artes Plásticas.

[alltheirsisters]

[escrevi-em-ambar]

Pedro Tudela e Miguel Carvalhais - 6 elementos

Sala de Exposições da Reitoria da Universidade do Porto 4.10 - 6.11.16

Tutela nasceu em Viseu, em 1962, vive e trabalha no Porto (acho eu) e foi meu professor em 2014. Sobre Carvalhais: nasceu no Porto em 1974 e apresenta-se, no seu site, como designer e músico. Ambos são professores na FBAUP.

Não tenho nada a dizer. Se calhar só sou sensível a coisas pseudo-poéticas. E pronto, que se lixe.

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Crónica 011 Ran Slavin: Product 02 (2004) Reviewed format: CD album released on Crónica I'm back rather early now with the next review in my Fluid Label Focus series on the Crónica label. This time I have for you an early release back from 2004 in the Product series on the label, titled Product 02 by Ran Slavin. This album in the format I'm reviewing features the 15 tracks (of which track 10 is a seperating silent track [Product Silence] on CD as well as an 8 page booklet featuring photography and artwork as well as two texts detailing the Product series concept, the sonic inspiration put into the music on this album by Ran Slavin and an appreciation by label owner Miguel Carvalhais. On the back of the jewelcase you can find the tracklist and album credits. As described in the booklet the Product series' concept is to take the "split" format of the vinyl LP format (two sides featuring the music of a full album) and translate this to the digital format by splitting up the tracklist of the CD into two "sides" (or mini compilations as its called in the text) which both form two seperate pieces of the album. The goal is that these two piece also work together to form one "Product" rather than a collection of seperate pieces forming the album. In the case of Ran Slavin's Product release the two parts forming the album are titled Tropical Agent and Ears in Water. Tropical Agent starts with track 1 Dirty Needles. Dirty Needles features a glitchy sound in which various music samples, vinyl crackle and bit-crushed down pitched mechanical sounds are blended together to create an abstract kind of soundscape or ambience. Indeed Ran Slavin's music on this album is the kind of music that is more like fading in and out of various sonic situations and environments rather than tracks featuring clear melodic patterns or progression. The lo-fi mechanical clanging sounds are the main focus in here for me , as the music samples and vinyl crackle scatter around in abstract manner, the Industrial clanging seems to be a clearer focus point than the melodic bits. A great track to start with, plenty of classic Glitch goodness in here. If You Should is a more subtle, mellow and quiet piece, featuring what sounds like a Middle Eastern string instrument, violin samples and filtered piano samples. Combined with the vinyl crackles and low mechanical sounds the music feels like the ambience of a quiet workshop of handcrafted products late at night as the owner and few employees continue carefully working on their handcrafted objects. Search For Compassion continues the vinyl / Glitch themed sonic signature but with a more drone based ambience. After several choppy vinyl sample manipulations at the start the piece moves forward as a contuous mellow fragmented drone that near the end gets accompanied by high pitched synth notes chiming into the fuzzy cloud of sound. Nice deepness in this one. U Think U Know Who U Are uses a resonator effect to create strong metallic droning percussive sounds. Pretty sharp sounds they are and the piece is a bit more simple in texture than the tracks before but it's still got a pleasant feeling to it and the reverberated ambience at the end gives a nice conclusion to this track. Silent Siren however is a better track, the looping harp samples and shifting low pitched sounds add a kind of mystery in the music that feels pretty cinematic, like people waiting in the living room of their house for something special to happen. Indeed Ran Slavin is in fact an artists in various media, film, video art as well as experimental music, so it's no wonder that his work carry abstracted imaginary storylines within them. The violin melody in the second half of the track is a great juxtaposition with the other sounds in the track that blends sonic images together like overlaying one scene with another on that's half-dissolved. On Guitar String/Empty Streets aleatoric randomized guitar sample melodies float through an ambience of (indeed) streets in field recordings, the guitar string sounds are emphasized quite a lot which adds these mechanic sounds to the mixture. Mysterious eerie droning tones add a strange kind of "foreboding feeling" in an otherwise quite abstract sounding melodic ambience piece, sounds good. Triggers of Violence is one of the louder pieces on the album and features spiky sounding chopped up glitchy guitars and droning resonances in more recognizably melodic patterns (albeit still in one key only). It's one of the more active pieces on the album, freely scattering glitches, recording noise and other artifact sounds around to create a mechanic structure of metallic sound, very nice. Desert Rain sounds quite like its title describes, it's got "rainlike" vinyl crackle loops, that are quite rhythmic as well, sounding almost like percussion. Soft continous droning instrument samples (including guitar) are placed in a pretty deep big space, ghostly washes of sound float through the ambience too and the track has a nice hypnotic Middle Eastern vibe to it. Flat Tire at the Dead Sea features more kinetic glitching guitar patterns as well as quite a lot of cool stuttery sonic manipulations with all sample chops tumbling through the stereo sound field into wide delays as well. A fun piece of abstract music that also features some chops of what sounds like percussion too. Afterwards we have 30 seconds of [Product Silence] and we move to the second half of this Product album Ears in Water. The first track of which is Vista Plain, which is more intense than the tracks before, a wash of fuzzy hissy droning sound and vinyl crackles as well as guitar samples. The drone has rhythmic mechanic looping sound to it and there's a lot of variation in the filtering as well as additional guitar samples in the piece which introduces the rather different sound of the Ears in Water part. Vista Plain is calm in its drone structure but sonically rather progressive with all the manipulation going on. Girl in Water features chopped and glitched vocals by Lin Chalozin Dovrat and sounds a bit more technical in its atmosphere, more futuristic with the choppy short glitch sequences, rather abstract tone sequences and granual style intense sound stretching. Great sound manipulations in here, nice piece. On Untitled #1 you can hear what sounds like little bass as well as a resonating sound, like coming from the inside of an electronic appliance as well as samples from a man's voice. Strange but intriguing sonic experience this is, sounds very alien. Untitled #2 has a more synthetic sounds to it with more synths and technical glitches in it. Starting with quickly chopped samples, high synth effects, reversed bells and more elements situated mostly in the high end of the frequency spectrum the piece slowly moves into an organ like drone and synth percussion gets added as well. This second half becomes quite purely electronic, a nice piece with a different sonic siganture we have here. Great vibe. Final track Piano moves back a bit to the sound of earlier tracks, a fuzzy vinyl sound is within the piano samples though the whole is chopped up in a melodic progression in faster tempo than before. Quite an upbeat and pleasant short atmospheric ending piece to this album. Product 02 by Ran Slavin is a quite varied album of cinematic and often abstract experimental ambiences and atmospheric melodic progressions. The two halfs of the album, in line with the concept of Crónica Product series give the approach to music a nice twist after the first half, enabling the listener to discover the relations between the sounds in the various tracks and the general abstract element of the music allows you to imagine situations and environments conjured up by it. A great listen for people looking for cinematic experimental music spread over various tracks as well fans of more melodic oriented glitch music and vinyl sample manipulations. CD available from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/product-02

#cd #independent music #Crónica #underground music #2004 #glitch #drone #ambient #cinematic #album #ran slavin #product 02 #Fluid Label Focus #experimental music

[hugopaquete]

The sound installation "Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição" by Pedro Tudela & Miguel Carvalhais celebrating the 15th anniversary of Crónica! It's located in Porto at Museu - Faculdade de Belas Artes Universidade do Porto and is open till June 30. Happy to have contributed with some recordings amongst a lot of other great artists from the Crónica. http://www.fba.up.pt/…/anotacoes-sonoras-espaco-pausa-repe…/

#sound installation #new media #music #noise #sound art

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Crónica 019

Francisco López & Miguel A. García: Ekkert Nafn (2019)

Reviewed format: review copy of CD Album as kindly provided by Crónica

Welcome to another new review in the Fluid Label Focus series on the Crónica label in which today I’m reviewing an album that I received as a review copy on CD from Crónica quite by surprise. With many review copies nowadays coming in in digital format through the email or other ways, finding an extra review copy in my physical package of a release I didn’t review yet was a very nice gift. Indeed this album, titled Ekkert Nafn by Francisco López & Miguel A. García was also the exact kind of album I had actually been subconsciously waiting to check out for quite some time, with the last time I’ve checked out López work being through a CD release in a very arty package that I ordered from the quality but unfortunately by now closed Experimedia mail order store so seeing his name on this album already gave me high expectations as through my always ongoing interest in underground and experimental music the glimpses of descriptions of his sound always left me intrigued. Indeed through the ever-growing interconnection by networking with an ever growing number of artists and labels that I review I’ve already come across Miguel A. García’s name as well, but didn’t know yet what kind of sound his material has. Through Ekkert Nafn I found out however that these two Spanish sound artists and experimental musicians have a lot in common in terms of their approach to composing, manipulating and performing with sound but through subtle cues there is a kind of division between the two artists audible on this album, although when listening to this album in full, the transition from López’ piece to the track by Miguel A. García is so seamless that the compositions become one piece, one continuous experience. And while before writing my reviews I always read the release descriptions and refer to them somewhat too, the more compact text on the back cover which doesn’t reveal a lot is in this case also enough to be able to get into these pieces, as like López also said in an interview before, not knowing what these sounds are sourced from is often better than having this knowledge to get into the compositions with a completely fresh mind and no pre-formed expectations in your mind in advance. So that’s also the approach I will take with this review, as much interpretation of the compositions without too much reference to possible recognisable sounds. Before I get into the compositions, I’ll talk a bit about the artwork of this release on CD, as always. The CD of Ekkert Nafn comes in a nice compact cardboard gatefold sleeve with artwork by Raul Dominguez and the signature Crónica design by Miguel Carvalhais. The front cover is quite fitting to my impression of the sound works on this album themselves, abstract paint-like swipes of white and purple-ish colour combined with blue dots puncturing these textures appear over a dark nocturnal background which matches the rather mysterious nocturnal ambience I’m getting from the pieces, strange glimmering sounds appearing in front of you in the dark quiet night. In the middle you can see the artist names, album title, Crónica logo and catalogue numbers in uppercase type in a nice contemporary labelling style. The spine follows the familiar Crónica style again, artist names in normal uppercase type, album title in bold and label name, catalogue numbers + year in regular style again over a black background. The back cover is black as well, listing the track list plus track timings, creation dates and locations, copyright data, links and album credits in serif type. Inside the gatefold you can find more artwork (which is especially focussed around the aforementioned holes in which lights and shapes peeking through). The CD itself is housed in a round die cut in which it can slip in and out. The CD features signature Crónica design, black background, with a pretty bold border around it and shows the Crónica logo in transparent style, catalogue numbers, artist names and album title and the CD logo.

Now onto the pieces themselves, as I mentioned, listening to both pieces by Francisco López and Miguel A. García in sequence on this album does give a listening experience that feels more like one continuous piece rather than two solo works (Untitled #351 by Francisco López being track 1 and Applainesads by Miguel A. García being track 2) and this isn’t entirely surprising as the back cover states that both artists based their pieces on the same batch of source sounds that they also collaborated on within the creation process of that sound set itself. There is definitely a cross of sonic material on this album but while reading this description might make you wonder if that doesn’t render the compositions very similar to eachother, that’s not really the case. Instead the pieces compliment eachother. For a start, let’s look at López’ piece Untitled #351. Lopéz takes on a very dynamic, varied and intriguingly alien approach to his sound world and composition, giving us sounds we think we recognise but bringing these into very mysterious situations. Glimmering mechanical sounds backed with low sub bass pulsations often give the impression of some kind of strange abstract moving structure of particles glowing and twisting in front of you, in the dark night. This “night” suggestion is one I got from both pieces because the sound is very focused in a certain direction in the stereo field, often leaning to centre or a bit more to the right of the stereo field, this mixed with the curious separation in frequencies of the sonic spectrum in which the low end is very low, while other sonic energy floats in the mid-high - high end of the spectrum but has some quite prominent resonant frequencies sticking out quite a lot. Very quiet sections, quite lowercase are also prominent in López’ piece, with a quiet listening environment or headphones being a true requirement for this piece to be able to actually hear everything within it as the piece can vary from louder sections of at times, industrial styled sections of composed sound rhythms and metallic pulsations to very soft, sub-bassi sections of soft tones and tonal elements. This constant variation in manipulation, blend of sonic textures and at times surprisingly musical ways of handling sound through repeating rhythms or tones creates a listening experience that feels like a very nice fresh approach to soundscapes and the Sound Art field in general as while the sonic images are audibly rooted in concrete real-world sounds, the glimmering, glitchy, at times punchy rhythmic pulsations, bass throbs, metallic “percussion” textures and high frequency details together form an ever changing sonic landscape that moves from intense bright activity to sections of very subdued “hidden sounds” at the edge of the threshold of hearing, which creates a great depth, progression and “story line” to the piece which makes it a very memorable, inspiring immersive listen which I highly recommend. Because of the adventurous structure of the piece I also don’t want to spoil how this piece progresses but I can tell it’ll definitely give you whole fresh new perspective on how powerful and also fun sound art and composed soundscapes can be. Applainessads, Miguel A. García’s piece follows up López piece in a great way through a more drone based continuous kind of flowing soundscape which is more high end based in terms of sound spectrum and which features plenty of eerie strange sounds, some of which are recognisable as nature sounds, like crickets and wind. It forms a great extended coda to Untitled #351 with its mixture of nature sounds blended with metallic textures and resonating droning tones. But also this piece does feature its own kind of rhythmic elements in the form of hollow “drop” like sounds that appear quite distant, like water drops reverberating in a damp wet cave. I’d say this piece feels quite a lot like an examination of strange dust particles in the night air turned into a subtly evolving soundscape, like a brooding mostly continuing ambience of metallic resonant ghostly textures that feels both oddly alien and strange but also comforting organic and natural at the same time. Its differing compositional and textural style definitely does make it obvious as being a distinct different piece from López’ composition but the coherent metallic resonance that is also audible in López piece connects both together for a seamless experience and thereby forms an awesomely unique layered sonic journey that feels quiet at times and yet also so close in front of you.

Ekkert Nafn by Francisco López & Miguel A. García is definitely a very strongly recommended album and one of the best Crónica releases from this year as well. A thrilling, immersive and highly detailed sonic journey of concrete sound bordering on recognisable musical elements that unpredictably flows from one event to another and conjures up awesome nocturnal images of subdued or more “open” mystery through the mixtures of nature sounds, metallic mechanical sounds, resonances, sub bass rhythms and lush high frequency details. A highly recommended release for anyone into the composed side of soundscapes, sound art and fans of Drone, Industrial as well as perhaps Noise will also find familiar elements in these pieces to enjoy and with such expertly crafted textural compositions this is an album to re-listen many times. Definitely go check out this album.

Limited Edition CD and Digital Album are available from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/ekkert-nafn

#limited edition #cd #crónica #2019 #soundscapes #sound collage #field recordings #glitch #lowercase #nocturnal #immersive #francisco lópez #miguel a. garcía #Ekkert Nafn #fluid label focus #album review

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Crónica 018

@c: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição (2019)

Reviewed format: review copy of Cassette Tape as kindly provided by Crónica

Welcome to the 18th review in my ever continuing series on the Crónica label in which today I’m reviewing the new @c album Espaço, Pausa, Repetição which was released early this month. The album forms a bit of an anniversary for the label, being release 150 in total and also at the same time celebrating the 15th anniversary of the label (in 2018 that is) and even without reading the description of this release you can also, in a way, guess that from the 1, 5 numbers of the 150 catalogue number (if you use some maths and imagination). I’ve reviewed earlier works by @c on this blog before in which the Portuguese Sound Art / Electro-acoustic music duo used field recordings mixed with various other object, human and other concrete sounds as well as instrument recordings and music snippets. This album marks a different approach for @c however as the duo behind @c and Crónica (Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela) use more than 300 sound objects by a big selection of artists whose music and sound works have been released by Crónica to create the two compositions on this album, which I received first in digital form as review copy but after Miguel also kindly wanted to send me a physical review copy of the actual cassette tape version of Espaço, Pausa, Repetição I obviously gladly accepted to give the album a listen again and see what listening experience I would get through the analogue split up tape format. Espaço, Pausa, Repetição is an album that is linked to the piece Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição that @c created through an invitation for new work from the Exhibitions Pavilion of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. This piece wasn’t an installation version of the two compositions on this album but actually an installation independent from the compositions on this album but it did use the same sound objects as source for the (aural) composition of the piece which besides the aural part also featured fragrances that were custom designed for the installation as well as a minimalist abstract designed frame and floor that together with bright light formed a kind of surreal subconsciously intruding total immersive experience of sound, light and fragrance which must have emitted an intriguing unique ambience as also the compositions on this album have a very non-linear, at times quite dadaist and varied pointy structure to them in which sonic materials are blended in such ways that beside their tonal or percussive, metallic, dissonant qualities they also have the ability to constantly change our perception, connection to the source of the sounds and even manipulate or create new thoughts and pictures in our minds. Inspiring sonic material indeed. Before I dive into the two pieces on this album, I’ll talk a bit about the presentation of the tape version itself. The cassette tape comes in a standard clear norelco case which showcases the lovely design work of this release rather well. The front cover (which is more expanded in the digital version) features design by Portuguese designer Márcia Novais who’s also created plenty of more vibrant typographic designs, often in poster form which you can find on her site. The cover image is derived from the original poster for the 2018 exhibition that featured Anotações Sonoras: Espaço, Pausa, Repetição and features the three capital letters from the words forming the title of the album in ever increasingly condensed strong type. An infinity symbol refers to the Repetição (repeat) part as being an infinite recursive type of cycle but can also refer to the fact that both for the installation and the compositions on this album a generative system was used to create the arrangements of sound, with a theoretical infinite number of combinations. The curling circles floating over the capital letters both add a nice kind of dynamic feel to the picture but could also refer both to the sound particles’ at times scattered arrangement as well as the organic movement of sound adding “light” to at times quiet moments in the compositions. A strong cover artwork which works as well on the smaller cassette tape format as well as the digital version of the release. The spine features the artist name and album title in Miguel Carvalhais’ signature Crónica uppercase type with the artist name in thinner type than the bold title. Besides this text aligned to the left, you can find the Crónica logo, catalogue number and release year (with a ~ creating a divide between the number and year). On the small back flap of the J-card you can find logos of the organisations that supported the installation and subsequent album release of this work by @c, backed with an extension of the cover image as a background. The cassette tape itself is in a bright white colour shell with on side A, the artist name and album title in the same style type as on the spine and side B featuring the Crónica logo, catalogue number and release year pressed in the same design too. On the flap of the J-card underneath the tape you will find the track division per side as well as track lengths, album credits, a shortened description of the original installation, artwork credits and thanks, copyright info and a link to the Crónica site. The back of this flap also features a nice black and white photo of the side of the installation, mostly showing the frame that was used but other than that the J-card is white, so the design is definitely quite minimalist but thereby also doesn’t spoil too much before listening.

Now, onto the two compositions themselves, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph these compositions have both rather unique structures as well as the ability to intrude within your mind through these varied and at times quite humorous sounds that flow from one to the other in unpredictable manner. First piece Espaço, Pausa (on side A of the tape) is probably a piece that might be a bit hard to get into at first listen as unlike other @c pieces it features many different sounds that often only occur once and follow a very abstract path with many of the sounds as being more rhythmic, metallic and resonant rather than featuring tones or recognisable droning ambience. Fear not however, this piece is a very rewarding listen as its kinetic structures of object sounds, instrument samples, electronic equipment sounds and much more offer intriguing, at times multi-layered sonic images that are very nicely panned in the stereo field, making for colourful dynamic sonic events in which some sound sources are recognisable but you’re also sometimes left wondering what some of these sounds actually are. The first half of the piece can be considered the most “fragmented” dynamic part of the piece as it features mostly separate sonic events that range from metallic rhythmic object sounds both twinkling and clanging in terms of texture, sometimes featuring gated reverb. Continuous paths of sound do also occur in this half but they’re still not falling into the category of recognisable drone ambiences necessarily. I feel this half is mostly comparable to a midnight stroll through the night and noticing all kinds of small short sounds around you, it has a nocturnal feeling to it with the huge amount of sounds scattering and shifting all around you in a kind of vacuum of silence as the space in which these sounds occur is quite diffuse, undefined and varies a lot from sound to sound throughout the piece. More often than not, the sounds are more recognisable as the originals than sounding manipulated which also makes the piece a hybrid between sound composition and a generative showcase of the various original sounds as a kind of tribute to all the artists who contributed to the pieces. This hybrid of composition and tribute is mostly apparent in this first half of the piece in which the scattered style of sound placement leaves quite a lot of separation of the sounds intact within the stereo space. The second half is when the composition moves into a more dense direction as whirring, noise, industrial sounds and metallic elements form an intense ever evolving soundscape of mechanical sonic movement that sometimes gets interrupted by glitchy choppy short collages of sounds. It’s this second half when the separate sonic elements also start to interact with each other more at times forming short melodic or rhythmic snippets (or longer patterns) of sound flowing into each other or cutting off other elements in the mix. @c always keeps a more distanced approach to the sonic material however and while the second half is denser with sound and movement the generative system still leaves a lot of the sounds themselves quite true to the originals. This first piece perfectly showcases that in @c’s and Crónica’s releases themselves the mixture of concrete sounds, manipulations and creation is always one in which artists respect their source material as a guide towards their sonic goal or if we look at the more improvisatory works, a sonic possibility. The fact that the sonic material works so well combined in the composition also shows the consistency in curation of Crónica and the infinite sonic awareness and inspiration these artists all have with @c’s compositions showing their strengths in building abstract sound collages and soundscapes that immerse you in fictional events and environments that feel human yet also at times quite alien through intriguing inventive sonic pictures. Second piece Repetição (on side B of the tape) juxtaposes the sonic elements with a male voice speaking phrases in both English and Portuguese which causes some curious combinations of the phrases and the sounds that follow. The piece follows quite a similar structure to Espaço, Pausa in that its first half is more choppy and fragmented sounding than the second half which features some more longer continuing industrial sonic elements and field recordings. This second piece is however in my opinion a bit stronger than Espaço, Pausa as the unpredictable nature of the pacing of the phrases and sounds that follow creates an effect of listening to a dadaist radio play. The connection between words and at times quite quirky combinations of sounds, whirring, squelchy, at times even a bit cartoon like sonic elements makes the piece quite directly engaging with the listener and there is a bit more of a recognisable compositional logic to grab on. Like mentioned in the description of the release, this piece is more like cataloguing the various sonic elements through abstract descriptions but the continuous flow of ever changing colourful textures is definitely very fun to listen through as even on second, third and more listens you’ll still be surprised by all the movement within the piece, dynamic, mixed source textures scattering and flowing through the stereo field, a great listening experience and on the cassette tape format it offers a nice “throwback” contrast to the more abstracted first side, indeed reminding me of the musique concrete works of Pierre Schaeffer though in modern hi-fi format in this case. So, a great piece to finish this album with definitely.

Espaço, Pausa, Repetição by @c forms both a tribute to the Crónica labels ever continuing legacy and strong artist roster of international sound artists and experimental musicians through a big batch of sound sources provided by them for these pieces and the original installation as well as generatively created compositions that follow @c’s path of inventive and immersive sound collages and soundscapes that don’t necessarily manipulate the sounds as much as blend and move them within the sonic space to create new situations, sonic events that can trigger curious sensations and images and thoughts in your mind and also hit you out of the blue with at times funny sounds that also adds playfulness to the mixture. Both pieces on this album take you on an extended journey of sonic adventure and while second piece Repetição is a bit stronger in its connection of the sounds themselves within the compositional structure, the more abstracted piece Espaço, Pausa is also a very rewarding and intriguing listen which also offers some crisp warm industrial ambience in its second half. I’d say that this release can very well be a great introduction for anyone who’s discovering Crónica for the first time as the great mixture of elements from all the artists featured as well as the execution of the compositions themselves is both a great example and independent work of Crónica’s ever continuing sonic journey crossing the boundaries of sound and music in exciting inspired and intriguing ways. A great release which I can definitely recommend to fans of sound collages and soundscapes in general as well as fans of Electro-acoustic (improvised) music. Check this out.

Limited Edition Cassette Tape and Digital Album are available from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/espa-o-pausa-repeti-o

#limited edition #cassette tape #crónica #2019 #sound collage #soundscapes #electro-acoustic #field recordings #immersive #spoken word #@c #Espaço Pausa Repetição #fluid label focus #album review

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Crónica 017

Haarvöl + Xoán-Xil López: Unwritten Rules of a Ceaseless Journey (2019)

Reviewed format: review copy of Digital Album as kindly provided by Crónica

Welcome to the 17th review in the Fluid Label Focus series on the Crónica label. Today I have for you another recent release on the label that I finally got to this month. This is the new collaborative album by Portuguese experimental group Haarvöl and field recordist and sound artist Xóan-Xil López, titled Unwritten Rules of a Ceaseless Journey. This album features three long pieces for dance that were created for the play Revoluções (Revolutions) by choreographer Né Barros. As always, Miguel Carvalhais from Crónica kindly sent me an advance review copy, in this case of the digital version of the album. The Bandcamp download I got here features the 3 album tracks in high resolution 24-bit/48kHz audio, as well as a high resolution version of the album cover (in a wider 3259x2965p resolution as also used on the packaging of the physical CD version) and a PDF file. The PDF file (in my review copy it’s the promo version) features the album cover as well as additional artwork by Rui Manuel Vieira of Haarvöl, design of this release is by José Carneiro. Besides the artwork, as with many Crónica release you will find a lot of details on the release including the tracklist, credits and a description of the album and the various pieces. I read the full PDF file before listening and the texts per track are admittedly quite complex and oftentimes abstract, so they do require some background knowledge and reading to fully comprehend but even if (like me) your strength isn’t in the academic part of arts and music and concepts within them there’s quite a few recognisable reference points in the texts and names and literature mentioned to reference. As is also mentioned in the description of the album, the three pieces all depict three layers of time, past, present and future which also an interesting aspect of the concept behind the music, though for me personally these time layers were clearer as a difference in textural build up and sonic patterns between the three pieces and the “human sounds” within the music gave hints to passing time. It is definitely interesting to re-listen the pieces and reference details within them to the text in the PDF file but a great quality of the music is also that on its own the inherent effect it has on the imagination and subconcious are very strong, so let’s have a look at the music itself in the next section.

As mentioned before, Unwritten Rules of a Ceaseless Journey consists of three long pieces, each of which is around 15 minutes long and while each of the three pieces can work as an independent work if listened on their own, there’s also a great consistency in the music even though the three pieces definitely differ from each other in quite major ways (referencing the various phases of time). In terms of overall sonic signature, I’d say that Something’s Missing (Utopian) is a shifting at times quite noisy haze of textures, glitches and often metallic manipulated field recordings, The Pulsating Waves (Reality) goes for a more Industrial Drone sound, though it’s not as noisy as the first piece and Don’t Look Back, Run (Trauma) is the most minimalist in terms of composition, being mostly centred around a repeating Drone motif and filtered resonances. The album begins with Something’s Missing (Utopian). This piece moves through various phases, mixing field recordings, drones and glitches together to create a deep immersive and ever evolving soundscape that freely moves from fluctuating resonances to more tonal focussed moments in time. High frequency shimmering pulsations throughout the piece add a great metallic shine to the music and the glitches add some vibrant rhythmic elements to the mixture which are also very well blended into the sonic image. The piece has a very dense kind of layering within it in which field recordings, the drones and glitches are blended in such a way that there’s these audible edges between the sounds and the sonic layers seem to both intertwine and all be clearly audible as separate parts of the mix of the piece. The evolution of the music in the piece throughout is also very focussed on both textural contrasts and balance and the sounds used are also often not easily discernible in which sources they come from with the metallics in the field recordings and some of the resonances in the drones adding a layer of “artificial” sonic energy in the piece but this also makes it feel quite magical and wholly original and new. I love how the music’s combination of concrete sounds and textures also at times creates new wonderful organic sounds from material that is often coming from very human sources and the combination of both tonal pulsations and scattering glitch elements is quite unique and offers a great new take on Drone music that I haven’t heard before. The buzzing climax near the middle of the piece and the distorted organ like drones in the second half are highlights in the piece too. Indeed there’s a lot of things going on in these pieces but even with this many layers and changes throughout the music always stays consistent and not hard to grasp and most importantly never gets to a point of staying idle and “looping it out” which is a risk of Drone music if an artist would get too minimal with his / her approach. The very good mix and master on the piece also makes me feel this music could work great in multi-channel surround installation form as there’s a great depth and spatiality to this pieces, very good. In the next piece The Pulsating Waves (Reality), the music moves into a more “Industrial” like direction, so to speak, with quite a lot more focus on field recordings of machinery and metal clangs, as well as buzzing electricity like whirring sounds though the drones remain too, albeit in more subdued filtered form. With fuzzy human sounds of distant voices and crowds as well as some great vocal samples pitched in various hissy resonant tones the music moves into a contemplative introspective ambience. The buzzing electrical sound reminds me of the Mosaique album Shattering Silence (also on Crónica) that I reviewed last year but in this case there are mysterious resonances and distant sounds from the field recordings which again lead to a bit of a climax near the middle of the piece but also get quite intense in the finale of the piece in which an array of machinery sounds and heavily resonant flanged metallic sounds are combined with even more noisy mechanical sounds to create an ending that’s both intense but also quite hypnotic with its ever shifting overtones and resonances. The Pulsating Waves (Reality) definitely has more of a general Industrial ambience to it than the first piece but the gradual but also very varied composition of sonic elements also does give it a bit of a minimal Glitch kind of feeling in the middle of the piece with the droning tones accompanying the whirring sounds in subtly stuttering way. Again, definitely an awesome piece of music this one and while it’s quite Industrial, the piece has a very intriguing sense of introspection and tranquil peace to it too though the calm drones and fluctuating resonances throughout, feels quite like an atmospheric aural version of a panoramic time-lapse of a factory, intense mechanical sounds but also a sense of rest in your mind. Final track Don’t Look Back, Run (Trauma) is the most minimalist composition on the album, with a strings like droning tone forming a repeating pattern throughout almost the entire piece. The field recordings are much less recognisable as well, with many of the elements in the piece being very resonant, metallic or high frequency. Glimmering delayed elements, additional filtered drones as well as filtered distant noise change and evolve within the piece overtime, always moving in a new direction while the main droning tone keeps moving in an irregular rhythm. Indeed it’s an especially great quality of all three pieces on this album and of course of Haarvöl and Xoán-Xil Lopéz themselves that even in the most minimalist piece on the album, there’s such a rich variety of both organic, metallic and other sculpted sonic elements as well as constant evolution of the composition that the music always stays intriguing throughout and never stops moving forward in the extended length of the pieces. A great closer to an awesome album of music.

Unwritten Rules of a Ceaseless Journey by Haarvöl and Xoán-Xil López is definitely an awesome strongly recommended album, that is one of the best releases on Crónica and also of experimental music in general so far this year. The richness of textures and completely original sound that these artists create together on this album breaks the borders of soundscape and Drone music in a great new way that makes the music so well suited to many re-listens as well as these pieces will always sound new and different, even with every new repeated listen. There’s just so many layers and details of evolution in sound in the pieces to be discovered that it’s amazing how well balanced the pieces are all are considering how densely packed with layers most of the pieces are. I would especially recommend this album to fans of soundscapes, field recordings and Drone (Ambient) music but also if you’re into Industrial and even Glitch you’ll find plenty to enjoy in this music, it’s very rich music. So go check out this album for sure, you won’t regret it.

Digital Album and Limited Edition CD are available from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/unwritten-rules-of-a-ceaseless-journey

#digital download #album #crónica #2019 #field recordings #soundscapes #drone #industrial #glitch #vivid #haarvöl #Xoán-Xil López #Unwritten Rules of a Ceaseless Journey #fluid label focus #underground music #experimental music #album review

[fluidsf]

Davor Mikan: Täuschung (2007) Reviewed format: review copy of CD released on Crónica as kindly provided by Miguel Carvalhais through post. Hello once again, I'm back with this month's part of my Crónica review series. This time I got for you this album by Davor Mikan titled Täuschung, released in 2007. The 31 track album has a running time of only 38 minutes but is definitely packed with fun minimalist electronic experiments and glitchy goodness. This CD is housed in a clear jewelcase with tracklist and credits listed on the back as well as an 8 page booklet that features photos of various evergreen and other quirky looking kinds of trees in different colours, similar to the Christmas tree on the front cover, really fun little addition to the musical content of this release. Now, Täuschung definitely reminds me a lot of the approach in composition to Further Consequences of Reinterpretation by Paulo Raposo & Marc Behrens that I reviewed earlier. Here we also have 31 tracks that are mostly very short bits, less than a minute long and most of them vary in sound material from track to track, the sounds on here are often glitchy, minimalist and subtle. Not entirely lowercase really, but rather soft most of the time. Unlike the aforementioned album however Mikan's sounds are more distorted and a bit more abrasive and humorous at times. Most of the album consists of bursts of glitches, Noise and various mangled sounds, sometimes synths, sometimes guitars or manipulated vocal sounds. It's not an album that really wants to sound "logic", rather it jumps from track to track, always giving us a new burst of weird quirky sounds that are most of the time abstract, crushed and distorted. The album's structure in terms of pacing of the pieces is rather curious as while many tracks jump from one to the other, there's sometimes some silence in between them. This album does feel like one big piece of music in that sense, with all different parts being connected in some way, but how exactly is definitely completely up to the personal interpretation of the listener as Mikan definitely never gives you clear guides as to a pattern or recurring theme. This completely freewheeling approach does result in an always suprising collection of tracks however and while the abstract nature and short lengths of the tracks make for a listen that feels pretty odd and perhaps unclear, the completely off the wall and jumping sound of the album is always fun and original, rarely recycling sounds from earlier on and always going in a different direction. An album to replay many times to uncover more sounds from its exciting mixture of constantly changing sounds and textures. Amongst the many short tracks there are a few longer piece however that I'll discuss a bit now. The first of these is Schon halb verwest which features some sweet Noise manipulations, strange harmonic tones and manipulated guitar as well as some sudden burst of percussive noise in the right channel. It sounds a bit like a degenerated electro-acoustic piece taken from a heavily corrupted file, mad but cool music. Dunkelnder is pretty quirky with its many pitch down / pitch up speed effects, mechanical, whirring sounds and also, typewriter sounds as well as a typewriter bell sound that made me laugh a bit while listening to this piece. This track does have some melodic fragments in the beginning put through Vocoder but most of the track is really based around mechanical sounds, synth and speed manipulated sounds and resonances. Wild piece, but very fun too. Ein Tag is the piece on here that is the most melodic (relatively speaking), with a simple two note pattern droning in the background, that sounds a bit like a mangled electric organ, combined with a tumbling glitched guitar pattern. This gets combined with an ever more crazy growing haze of chaotic noise and screeches until the climax at the end, really wild and intense, nice one. Täuschung by Davor Mikan is a short but sweet wild ride of an album that is full of glitchy noisy music that is abstract but also subtle in quirky ways, ever changing and evolving and is definitely good to relisten again and again to uncover all the various sounds popping up in this album. A curious unique and personal album and a good recommended listen. CD is available from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/t-uschung

#cd #independent music #crónica #underground music #experimental music #2007 #glitch #noise #album #davor mikan #täuschung

[noise-rm]

Weaving from Lia on Vimeo.

Weaving (2018, generative application)

When weaving, structure is built out of the iteration of a few relatively simple basic processes. Complexity emerges and generative potential is bred. In LIA’s Weaving, formal minimalism and procedural restraint are braided into an open-ended, shifting, gnarly, and mesmerising composition.

Weaving and computation first converged when Charles Babbage was inspired by the Jacquard Loom to use punch cards for recording information. Jacquard’s cards stored a notation for the motion of the loom, a choreography from which weavings would be produced. Babbage’s cards stored software, data and code. Data to be fed to the Analytical Engine, or data output by it. Most significantly, they could also store program data that would put the Engine in motion, so that it could compute, or as Ada Lovelace put it, “weave algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”

The roots of software are therefore also to be found in weaving and particularly in the Jacquard Loom, a machine that transcoded patterns and movements, that transferred control and structure from human bodies and minds to machines. And that while doing this, not only automated processes, as it reclaimed agency.

// Text: Miguel Carvalhais