jester saying “I have my weasel,” and laudna gasping and asking “you have a weasel?” (bonus: caduceus sighing “oh boy.” 😅) and jester bringing out and introducing “this is sprinkle.” and laudna enthusing “I love him so much.” and bringing out pâté and introducing “this is pate.” and jester exclaiming “he’s amazing!” and the two of them trading pets,,, pâté saying “hello there, nice little blue lady!” and jester saying “oh, hello there, little dead rat!” and pâté saying “you look all fancy and pirate-like.” and jester asking “do you want to ride on my hat?” and pâté asking “ooh, is that a euphemism?” and jester answering “you know it is!” 🤣
SANTIAGO ASTABURUAGA — GRADO DE POTENCIA #1 (CDR by Caduc)
www.caduc.org
This time I started with the one that said to me: you don’t know anything about this. I only came across the name Santiago Astaburuaga as the composer of the piece ‘Piezo De Escucha III’, as performed by Cristian Alvear Montecino (see Vital Weekly 970). Here he acts again as the composer of a piece, performed by a group of fourteen musicians, and their instruments include more regular instruments such as clarinet, cello, double bass, viola, bassoon, bass clarinet, snare drum and trumpet, but also lists 'no tone arm, turntable, plastic brush, diapason, laptop, no-input mixer, radio, bow, cassette case, sand-paper, industrial sanding discs, guitar and blackboard’ (some people play more than one instrument). Astaburuaga doesn’t belong to the performers, and his role is strictly as a composer. It would have been nice if we learned a bit more about the score, which I gather to be of a more graphic nature, rather than notes to be performed. I am not sure but Astaburuaga might be a Wandelweiser composer, even when this particular work is not entirely about quietness. Here it alternates between being quiet, using sparse sounds and notes and blocks in which maybe everyone is allowed to play. These blocks usually have a sustaining and orchestral feel to it. Sustaining through the use of the non-instruments, I would think and orchestral through the instruments. When things are quiet we hear all of this also, but then reduced quite a bit, and with what seems to be field recordings, or perhaps this is an outside recording? I am not sure. With the amount of instruments used there is naturally quite an amount of variation in this approach. All of this makes up quite some intense music, with lots of things happening on all levels and there is a solemn feel to the work. All of this is perhaps modern classical, but it is for once something I very much enjoyed from that world.
www.vitalweekly.net/1044.html
I hate the phrase ‘field recording’ almost as much as 'experimental’–cuz what recording isn’t all of the above in one way or another? A mic in a space somewhere; somebody seeing if something 'works’. Sounds like sound-gathering to me.
So let’s skip all of that. Losoncy passes through the world with a smartphone like the rest of us, but engages her surroundings and her device better than most. What to us might’ve been a rough night around town instead is churned up into a maelstrom of ripping wind, swarms of cops, a lost and smothered voice in the distance, and a final stop at a gallows clanging bell-like in the thick gray sky. Losoncy’s walk is audible and it ain’t no stroll. She damn-near takes flight at times. Whether it’s into or away from the chaos remains nicely oblique. A glancing wound; a wound from glances. I popped the disc out feeling cold, displaced, and abandoned, which are all fine by me. Keeps me sharp.
If you were quick enough, you caught Losoncy’s 4x cd-r set “2015” before it peaced out. After a few listens I’ve come to dig it even more than Judgement. They share means of production but 2015 runs in all directions with em: from goofy encounters with strangers after a community college shooting; to quiet lonely spaces to a pair of performances that seem to ideologically link Phillip Best, sound poetry, and motivational speaking. Losoncy’s public encounters often put me in mind of Jean Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight and Voyage In the Dark, wherein displaced heroines find theater, absurdity, commiseration and revulsion in the company of strangers. Everywhere is safe and nowhere is safe. Hooray and cheers to that!
Chris Strickland is worried. This is his first release, his five-year labor of love, and he’s afraid that people will listen to it too quietly, or not closely enough. But there’s no need to worry ~ Animal Expert is a rewarding listen.
With three tracks totaling one hour, Animal Expert is no pop product. Instead, it’s a study in compositional direction and tonal contrast. The disc opens in…
Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer’s windblown recordings portray the inner life of their instruments. In the case of Vantage/Cordonedm, that’s a pair of prepared pump organs and various tape players manipulated to produce a bristly, granular stream of noise thick with debris; the clamor is evocative of industrial materials and broken mechanical bits like buzzing plastic frames, frayed wires, rusted brass reeds and over-stuffed bellows emitting air from all the wrong places. Their sound is broken and weathered and pocked with imperfections, but carefully controlled and recorded too, deliberately filled with the gritty life of distorted noise and malfunctioning equipment.
Coppice’s musical approach epitomizes what its name suggests: development, reduction and reuse. Among Cuéllar and Kramer’s numerous undertakings, past endeavors have included a performance on the Baschet Brothers’ Aluminum Piano at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; a special exhibition of resonating sculptures made from galvanized steel, glass, foam and copper; and a handmade 12 CD-R redwood boxed set that doubles as a reed instrument thanks to the brass tube running through its center. As different as the works are, all three are part of the duo’s Vinculum project, something they refer to as an “archive of sonic artifacts.” Those artifacts include pre-recorded sounds and compositional strategies that are as useful in one discipline as they are in another. Appropriately, the title connotes unification, though usually of the mathematical or anatomical sort. Musically, it describes how the duo goes about its work, both stylistically (how many bellows and electronics duos can you name?) and structurally.
For example, each of the 12 CD-Rs in that boxed set, which are also available in made-to-order sets of three, contains a single track altered to highlight a particular kind of noise. Listeners are encouraged to play those discs simultaneously, but it’s not as if they come with an instruction manual describing exactly how they should be heard. You can play them one at a time or in tandem. You can put them on in separate rooms. Or you can combine them all on your computer, adjust the levels, and create a custom Vinculum mix of your own. If it sounds like fun, try it. There’s no wrong way to approach the music and nothing is forbidden.
As if to prove that point, Cuéllar and Kramer slip one of those discs, Vinculum PC-1 04.01 003:57, into Vantage/Cordoned at some point during “Soft Crown.” Its presence will go unnoticed by anyone unfamiliar with the series, but just knowing that it’s there changes the way that Coppice’s music feels. It puts the stress on process rather than completion and softens the ordinarily firm line between work-in-progress and final product, making the album less of a destination and more of a way station. It’s a place where new techniques can be tried out with older, more familiar ones, where wheezy drones can be tied into knots with wobbly tape effects, and muffled recordings — of heavy winds, conversations or heavy construction — can be made to move both backward and forward in time simply for the sake of testing those waters. Assuming that the sounds are just as flexible as the machines that make them possible, why not reuse the sounds, too?
Some might call that process remixing and wonder why anyone should find it so unique. In the case of Vantage/Cordoned,it comes across more as recycling than as remixing. The music, as fascinating and physically impressive as it is on its own, points away from itself and underscores the systems that bring it to life. Those systems are modular and endlessly adaptable, capable of producing way more variety than any one performance, installation or album could contain, so Coppice makes music that emphasizes that fact. Sounds are processed and reprocessed, instruments are broken down and rebuilt with new functions, and previously recorded material is given new life as part of a new composition. The music begins with these core elements andgrows from them the way a tree grows up from its roots. It’s also limited by those elements, but that’s what pruning is for.
Even if you’ve never heard another one of their recordings, that organic sensibility comes across in the way Coppice handles its compositions. They’re loose and free-flowing, seemingly improvised and ramshackle, as if held together by duct tape and Elmer’s school glue. That messiness is part of what makes them so mesmerizing; it generates tension and lends them an impossible sheen, like watching someone build a house of cards on a moving bicycle. We can enjoy the spectacle while it lasts, even if Cuéllar and Kramer eventually demolish it for the sake of something new.
