Archivi categoria: Confine

Musica di confine

Commute

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Description by Off Land (aka Tim Dwyer, the author):

coverLet’s go back to 2006.
I used to hate my job, the dead-end brainless work.
Even more, I used to hate my commute.
An hour by subway what would take 20 minutes by car if I had owned one.
Everyday I walked to the subway, switching lines in town and took a 2nd line to the end.
I dreamed that one day the subway would take me past the last stop, just keep going.
Or maybe I would end up somewhere else, somewhere new.
Music was my salvation, my soundtrack, those two hours each day.
With or without music the commute was a score I listened to countless times.
On two occasions, for posterity, I recorded the commute.
Now it’s 2009 and my life has changed so much.
I look back into the dust of times and accompany a soundtrack to those days of travel.
This was my commute.

The Process: Commute is an experimental concept album about commuting. The album is the length of my commute in 2006. I recorded my commute four times (2 out and 2 back), overlapping all four audio recordings into one 68 minute sound collage. This soundscape became the foundation of the composition and the subtle ambiance heard throughout Commute. Tones were designated to various sounds; watery piano for people & chimes, dulcimer drones for cars, drums for rain & subway tracks, low drones for subway cars, and synths for general ambient noise. The structure was entirely in the hands of the field recording collage. It was my conscious decision however to break Commute up into three sections. Each section represents a different leg of the commute (1 – The walk to the subway / 2 – The ride downtown / 3 – The 2nd line outbound).

Published by Resting Bell netlabel. Download from here.

  1. Commute Part 1
  2. Commute Part 2
  3. Commute Part 3

bewilderment

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coverSylvie Walder and entia non (James McDougall) are well-known names in the netlabel-world and beyond. Sylvie Walder released collaboration-albums with Phillip Wilkerson, Siegmar Fricke, and “_” (as Kakitsubata). entia non has released solo-works on test tube, IOD, u-cover, Resting Bell and contributions on compilations for duckbay and Slow Flow Recs.

On “bewilderment“ Sylvie and James create a rich and deep organic sound-cosmos. Droning background-layers, instrumental fragments, field recordings, voices, athmospheric glitches and crackles, all assembled to a breathing, living collage. Especially the first three tracks work with this sound-model. Based on Sylvie’s piano recordings, James built up an impressive ambience by processing, re-arranging and re-structuring the material. The last track “le petit lac“ is more guided by Sylvie’s piano playing with only very subtle accouterments and mastering by James. The artists cooperate together over the huge distance between France and Australia, but the result actually sounds like they have sit together in the same studio and knew eath other since their school days.

Published by Resting Bell netlabel. Download from here.

Excerpts:

Dea Varanus

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coverMatúš Mikula, aka 900piesek, è slovacco, uno dei giovani musicisti elettroacustici europei che creano una sorta di science fiction ambient con un po’ di nostalgia degli anni ’70.

L’album, dal titolo Dea Varanus, è pubblicato da Test Tube ed è scaricabile qui.

All four tracks emanate sound through a dense and foggy underwater-like world… as if we were in a different dimension. Audio data is served to you using computers and machines from another time. Referencially, this is ambient electronics circa 1970’s, while some keyboards sound definitely like Vangelis, Blade Runner period, which is actually very appropriate.

Dear listener, we recommend the use of headphones throughout this journey, as the fine subtleties of the atmospheric and environmental audio pieces you’re hearing will surely gain much detail simply because of their use.
This is a ‘vintage modern classic’, with drones. Enjoy.

[Pedro Leitão]

Excerpts: Ra

Morsure Souffle

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coverLaurent Peter è un musicista svizzero (Ginevra) più noto come d’incise, attivo nell’area elettronica /dub / free jazz / found / environmental sound. Morsure Souffle è il suo album più recente, distribuito dalla netlabel Test Tube.

Morsure Souffle, has all the audio hallmarks of a highly subtle sound collage. Released on Portugese netlabel Testube, it is at once found/environmental sound collected, collated and fused into shapes. Then moments of sound echo of improvisational jazz, or at least the stripped echoes of the oeuvre, or even semi-precise mimicry triggering found moments in the audience. Yet the action of extreme electronic manipulation is never far from the palette and the guise of nature as a backdrop to audio acoustic experimentation is as sensible a template as any. Even the sound of the chime, catching the wind, or the approximation of it combined with a sonic hum/purr and gently advancing triangle alarm is enough of a sound argument. Then there is the central track la Banquise living up to its name, a feast of noise terror, (a humorous notion in itself), mutating in to crisp audio action of imaginary violated string experiments on a vanquished piano; reason enough to display control and succinctness of digital prowess.
[innerversitysound [Cyclic Defrost] / May 02, 2009]

L’intero album è scaricabile qui. Alcuni estratti:

Music for Prague

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coverOk, un po’ di tranquillità dopo lo sforzo organizzativo del Premio Nazionale delle Arti.

Eno ha concepito questa musica nel 1998 per una installazione realizzata in collaborazione con Jiri Prihoda a Praga. Il CD risultante è stato poi venduto a un’asta di beneficenza per £ 400 nel Gennaio 2001.

Si tratta di una lunga traccia ambient (un’ora di musica) in cui varie linee melodiche in loop con durate diverse vengono sovrapposte casualmente, nel classico stile della musica generativa di Eno. Il risultato sonoro è simile a Music for Airport, ma privo di loop sensibili e con la differenza che qui gli interventi sono ancora più radi. Ne risulta un insieme che evolve molto lentamente, sempre diverso ma sempre uguale.

Ve ne proponiamo un estratto di circa 15 minuti.

Brian Eno – Excerpt from Music for Prague (1998)

paint

Sleeping in the Forest

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Ben Stepner costruisce atmosfere meditative tramite chitarra e computer. Semplice ambient music, sotto molti aspetti banale, ma vengo sempre colpito dal potere della consonanza.

Qui non si parla di tonalità e nemmeno di modalità, ma solo di sovrapposizioni di armonici che a volte (non a tutti) inducono uno stato di relax.

Sleeping in the Forest è distribuito via Soundcloud.

Un brano come esempio:

  • Ben Stepner – 05

La chitarra nel 21° secolo

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Spectra: guitar in the 21st century è una interessante compilation pubblicata dalla netlabel quietdesign.

I musicisti rappresentati sono in gran parte sconosciuti ai più, ma tutti sono impegnati ad estendere le possibilità di questo strumento spesso grazie anche all’inserimento dell’elettronica. E secondo me questo è uno dei casi in cui l’elettroacustica di confine supera nettamente la ricerca “accademica”. Mentre quest’ultima è ancora impegnata a porsi il problema dell’inserimento dell’elettronica in composizioni in gran parte acustiche, con relative problematiche come la standardizzazione della partitura, questi tipi, ai quali vanno sicuramente affiancati anche musicisti come l’Hans Reichel di qualche post fa e personaggi come Fred Frith, invece, agiscono.

Certo si può obiettare che forse il loro livello di progettualità è scarso, ma quando esiste la ricerca sonora, la progettualità la segue; è solo questione di elaborare delle idee a partire dai materiali sonori.

Gli artisti coinvolti sono:

  • tetuzi akiyama
  • cory allen
  • erdem helvacioglu
  • jandek
  • kim myhr
  • duane pitre
  • sebastien roux
  • keith rowe
  • mike vernusky

Alcuni estratti:

Music for Airports reloaded

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coverBrian Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) played a very important part in the concept and development of ambient music. One could say that ambient music is not a music to be listened to, but a music to be heard, as a subliminal background creating a soundscape for various places or buildings. Supermarkets and elevators are usually places where a poor music is played, one calls it muzak. Brian Eno’s idea was to conceive a sophisticated musical soundscape instead of this anonymous FM music, and he chose airports as the best places where such a music could be heard and understood, creating an unusual and quiet sonic background among all the noises and announcements of a airport terminal.

Music for Airports is a masterpiece, with its subtle piano tracks, its complex electronic treatments, its choral parts, and its slow and organic development.

In 1998, Point Music, a label directed by Philip Glass, released this amazing interpretation of Music for Airports by Bang on a Can: Robert Black (bass), Lisa Moore (piano, keyboards), Evan Ziporyn (clarinet, bass clarinet), Maya Beiser (cello), Steven Schick (percussion), a choir of female voices and additional musicians playing pipa, flute, horn, trumpet, trombone, violin, cello, mandolin and mandocello.

This chamber music ensemble plays Eno’s compositions with fidelity and creativity at the same times. The acoustic instruments create a rich harmonic soundscape and add a very original touch to the original recording.

This peaceful, quiet and slow music is very evocative and poetic: the cover version is as beautiful as the original…

Excerpt from Brian Eno – Music for Airports 1.1 – played by Bang on a Can

Via Just Another Garden

Fragilità come sorgente di tutte le cose

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coverThis is one of those releases that floods me with metaphorical insights.
In the beauty of breakage we find some of the answers for our deepest questions.
When something breaks, we are able to perceive it as what truly is, a collection of pieces of different shapes and sizes. Ian D Hawgood gives us four pieces of these ruined goods. Beginning with incessant timing of a vertical sound along a sea of soothing horizontality.

If frailty is the source of all things, then we ought to go back to it. All the abundant arrogance and destructive strength present in human beings has brought us to irreversible situation, into a mood that swings like the weather, each time faster and more bipolar. I believe “Her name was frailty” implies The Earth. Whenever we observe The Earth from a distance, in this case from an astronaut’s point of view, we can understand how far from reality we have strayed. The construction and sounds of this album allows me to, not only returning to a point of frailness, but also to activate a particular type of mental stimulation that empowers my psyche conceding me thoughts about restoration. Now, restoration implies an active participation in bringing the past back to life, in this case from broken to whole. This release definitely modifies my tiny rat heart.

Thanks Ian… or should I say ‘Ion’, an atom that has acquired a net electric charge by gaining or losing one or more electrons.» – Sebastian Alvarez

Excerpts:

Listen to/download the whole album