kind words for oblivion by nhung nguyen!

Oblivion is a nonplace. A radio dial wandering away from the crisp enunciation of the broadcast, choosing instead to strand itself in the ambiguity of dead air. Over a fleeting 12-minutes, sound artist Nhung Nguyen avoids allegiance to anything concrete or explicitly communicative. Keyboards spiral away from any tonal centre. Voices, scrapes and gurgles arrive heavily manipulated, removed from the context that gifts them significance, bobbing like curious flotsam upon a sea of crackle and hum. Couple this with the mentions of “abandoned memories” and “lost times” in the record’s accompanying description, and the composition starts to manifest as a purgatory for forgotten experiences, occupied by sounds that have slipped through the net of remembering. It’s with masterful irony that Nguyen generates this sense of placelessness from the most grounded of source materials: found sounds, field recordings of physical spaces…

read the whole thing at: echoes and dust.

kind words for luna anfibia by lucía chamorro!

At times during Luna Anfibia, Lucía Chamorro reverse-engineers the process of composition. Instead of shaping the sounds themselves, there is a sense of tinkering with the mind and ears used to receive them: clogging the ear canals with water so that guitar loops and birdsong arrive muffled, goading the listener toward a conspiratorial paranoia that hears symbiotic collusion between the sound of chewing and the tinkle of chimes, a rupturing of stereo perception that places radio broadcasts at the left and right simultaneously. I don’t know how she manages this switch in emphasis. Perhaps it’s the way she forces me to wrestle with the familiar, tampering with everyday sound (running water, open-mouthed chewing, tapped kitchen ceramics) to create a certain shortcoming in my powers of recognition. These compositions almost resemble memories from my own day-to-day experiences, but not quite. Something is off. The lights are dimmer. The walls bend slightly. In a bid to protect those sounds that pad the perimeter of my life with the comfort of familiar sensations, I turn inward for answers instead. What am I doing differently to dislodge this experience of the commonplace…

follow the link to read the rest.

the kindness comes from attn: magazine.

kind words for ideas and techniques by lucie vitková!

Het ons nog vrij onbekende Pan Y Rosas netlabel uit Chicago herbergt een groot aantal internationale artiesten en telt inmiddels al meer dan honderd releases die uiteenlopen van experimentele, noise, improvisatie tot weirdo rock. En het mooie is; alle releases zijn gratis te downloaden. Onze interesse en honger is meer dan gewekt. Lees ook hun politieke manifest op de website, straffe toebak die er niet om liegt. ‘Ideas And Techniques’ is het werk van de Tsjechische componiste Lucie Vítková die zich volledig toelegt op de accordeon. Verwacht geen walsjes of melodieën maar een zeer experimentele benadering die de boventoon voert. Door haar minimalistische speelwijze van de accordeon is het onmogelijk om niet de vergelijking met Pauline Oliveros te maken, die toch zeker haar inspiratie geweest moet zijn. Elke compositie heeft een te volgen thema in pure, geconcentreerde vorm zodat het natuurlijke gedrag de muzikale structuur bepaalt. ‘High’ bestaat uit boventonen van de hoogste noten en haar gefluit, terwijl ‘Air’ luchtstromen laat horen uit elke hoek van het instrument. In ‘With Voice’ zijn de boventonen en haar stem de leidraad en ‘Microtonal’ is nog de meest melodieuze compositie van alles. Wapenfeit; zet ‘Ultrahigh’ zo luid mogelijk en u zult de honden uit de hele buurt martelen, laat staan kinderen. ‘Silent’ heeft geen geheimen en ‘Low’ is een luchtdrone van de allerlaagste tonen. Het is meer meditatie dan muziek, maar ook dat is geluidskunst in haar primairste vorm om de oren bij te spitsen.

Source: Ideas And Techniques | Gonzo (circus) | Muziek.Kunst.Meer.

kind words for la corporación by cecilia lópez / amanda irarrazabal / cecilia quinteros!

The collaboration of acoustic strings with synthesizer can be a challenging. Both strings and electronics are capable of great timbral range, but of qualitatively different sorts. Combining them in…

Source: AMN Reviews: Cecilia López / Amanda Irarrazabal / Cecilia Quinteros: La Corporación [Pan y Rosas pyr201] | Avant Music News

kind words for illusions by luong hue trinh!

Illusions is a remarkably varied offering for its relatively short length.  Trinh evokes sadness, melancholy, beauty, and foreboding with a plethora of instruments, recordings and electronics. Highly recommended, and hopefully one of many more to come.

Source: AMN Reviews: Luong Hue Trinh – Illusions (2016; Pan y Rosas Discos) | Avant Music News

kind words for ijereja by lauren redhead!

Ijereja is several things at once; it’s a fascinating exploration of the processes of composition, and where these processes begin and end (with the composer, the musicians; even the listener?) and an examination of music as a uniquely boundary-crossing phenomenon, belonging simultaneously to time and space, to the composer, performer and audience. It’s also, somewhat anomalously, an album, a recording consisting of one fifty minute piece, sometimes described as an opera, but comprised as much of speech, ambient noise and found sounds as of (somewhat minimalistic) music.

Source: Lauren Redhead – Ijereja | Echoes And Dust

kind words for voices by alice hui-sheng chang and jason kahn!

Source: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Jason Kahn : Voices (Pan Y Rosas, 2016) – Le son du grisli

On avait pris l’habitude de l’entendre seul et voici que Jason Kahn nous revient accompagné : heureusement, Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, est, comme ici notre Américain de Zurich, à la voix – le détail est, dans un premier temps, rassurant. Après Songline, Kahn a ainsi donc encore le cœur à chanter.

Et à chercher aussi, autrement que seul. Voix de tête contre voix de gorge, mais aussi voix de nez et même de palais, la conversation, improvisée, fait état d’intentions peut-être différentes – la voix étant le premier instrument de tous, la voici étendue comme les autres sous l’effet de l’inspiration d’Hui-Sheng Chang ; la voix étant un instrument de plus, la voici qui déshinibe Kahn davantage que les autres – mais souvent accordées.

Après celles de Songline, ce sont donc de Kahn d’autres plaintes, d’autres cris, d’autres appels, qui nourrissent un échange et, dans le même temps, le fragilisent. Comme leur parcours, ses intentions et celles d’Hui-Sheng Chang sont bel et bien différentes : parfois faites comme un Z, elles peuvent ici et là accoucher de beaux airs – pour peu qu’on goûte les rengaines bruitistes.