INTERVIEWS
Realizing what a phrase costs - John Tilbury Talks to Keith Rowe by Keith Rowe (September 2017)
Radu Malfatti/Keith Rowe Interview by Jon Abbey (2/28/2011)
Radu Malfatti/Keith Rowe Interview by Jon Abbey (2/28/2011)
ESSAYS
Borders Disappear - Jürg Frey's l’âme est sans retenue composition series by Yuko Zama (September 2017)
The ErstWand Series - Composition of Time, Absence of Place by Marc Medwin (February 2015)
Membrane – Window – Mirror (The folded worlds of Toshiya Tsunoda) by Michael Pisaro (February 2015)
Last a Lifetime - The Lambkin / Lescalleet Trilogy by Matthew Horne (April 2014)
Listening at the Limits - Environmental Sound in Onkyô and Wandelweiser by David Grundy (April 2014)
About Mr. Q and his Tour to Europe by Taku Unami (April 2014)
Convergence/Divergence - Dystonia Duos, Sinter, Touching by B.W. Diederich (March 2013)
Invisible Narratives - Vanessa Rossetto by Matthew Revert (March 2013)
A Mountain of Music - Kevin Drumm in 2012 by Mark Flaum (March 2013)
People Don’t Like Music ...But Can't Do Without Noise by Gil Sansón (March 2013)
Silence, Environment, Performer - Beuger, Frey, Malfatti, Werder, Pisaro by Yuko Zama (March 2013)
Wandelweiser by Michael Pisaro (Summer/Fall 2009)
Field Recording and Experimental Music Scene by Toshiya Tsunoda (7/7/2009)
Soba to Bara by Ami Yoshida and Toshimaru Nakamura (4/9/2009)
EL007 by Keith Rowe (1/29/2009)
AMPLIFY 2008: light by Yoshiyuki Kitazato (11/20/2008)
Two Worlds by Taku Sugimoto (1/6/2006)
A Philosophical Approach to Silence by Taku Sugimoto (11/11/2005)
The ErstWand Series - Composition of Time, Absence of Place by Marc Medwin (February 2015)
Membrane – Window – Mirror (The folded worlds of Toshiya Tsunoda) by Michael Pisaro (February 2015)
Last a Lifetime - The Lambkin / Lescalleet Trilogy by Matthew Horne (April 2014)
Listening at the Limits - Environmental Sound in Onkyô and Wandelweiser by David Grundy (April 2014)
About Mr. Q and his Tour to Europe by Taku Unami (April 2014)
Convergence/Divergence - Dystonia Duos, Sinter, Touching by B.W. Diederich (March 2013)
Invisible Narratives - Vanessa Rossetto by Matthew Revert (March 2013)
A Mountain of Music - Kevin Drumm in 2012 by Mark Flaum (March 2013)
People Don’t Like Music ...But Can't Do Without Noise by Gil Sansón (March 2013)
Silence, Environment, Performer - Beuger, Frey, Malfatti, Werder, Pisaro by Yuko Zama (March 2013)
Wandelweiser by Michael Pisaro (Summer/Fall 2009)
Field Recording and Experimental Music Scene by Toshiya Tsunoda (7/7/2009)
Soba to Bara by Ami Yoshida and Toshimaru Nakamura (4/9/2009)
EL007 by Keith Rowe (1/29/2009)
AMPLIFY 2008: light by Yoshiyuki Kitazato (11/20/2008)
Two Worlds by Taku Sugimoto (1/6/2006)
A Philosophical Approach to Silence by Taku Sugimoto (11/11/2005)
REVIEWS
The most potent new music I encountered this week – “GF SUC,” a dignified threnody for our present moment created by Keith Rowe, the veteran British improviser and founding member of the trailblazing collective AMM – appeared online yesterday, with almost no advance fanfare. The title, as might be evident to aficionados familiar with the Venn-diagram intersection of Rowe’s interests and those of Erstwhile Records founder Jon Abbey, stands for “George Floyd Screwed Up Click”—an acknowledgement that George Floyd, long before his murder in police custody on May 25 became a flashpoint for global protests, was Big Floyd, part of the extended posse surrounding iconic Houston hip-hop producer DJ Screw.
Rowe’s new piece is his second contribution to AMPLIFY2020: quarantine, the novel online music festival Abbey is producing in collaboration with two prominent sound artists who’ve recorded for Erstwhile, Matthew Revert and Vanessa Rossetto, with significant contributions from a select few guest curators. (An interview with Abbey published in April on Tusk Is Better Than Rumours unpacks the festival’s premise and guidelines well.)
Since March 20, the series has presented an overwhelming rush of 150 audio pieces newly created by artists in lockdown, including seasoned veterans, prominent names, and promising newcomers. Although a few collaborations have been created by juxtaposing tracks, the vast majority of the festival’s releases are solo creations. The recordings, all of them novel and more than a few revelatory, are posted for free-of-charge collection, with a gentle plea encouraging donations to offset income lost to the present pandemic. Information on Bandcamp is deliberately sparse; most pieces have been introduced concisely on the festival’s landing page on Facebook. (It was there that, in lieu of explanatory notes, Abbey seeded a series of favorite DJ Screw tracks in advance of posting Rowe’s piece.)
What has resulted is an avant-garde advent calendar of mundane sounds, diaristic entries, and recondite gestures and processes: one that often uncannily echoes the free-floating tension, enervation, ennui, and absurdity brought on by extended forced isolation. Along with the anxiety have come instances of ravishing beauty; Rowe’s previous contribution to the series, an assemblage / construct for 45 voices, found an improviser best known for rough-edged fields of textural signal-and-noise transforming a recording of a storied 17th-century choral work, Allegri’s Miserere, into a sublime meditation on time, memory, and the architectural shape of sound.
Signs of change in Rowe’s approach to making music are evident and understandable; at 80, the erstwhile guitarist has been open about his ongoing struggle with Parkinson’s disease during recent years. One remarkable aspect of “GF SUC,” though, is how consistent it is with Rowe’s creative practice stretching back for decades. The most prominent feature in the track is its slow sweep of radio frequencies: a strategy Rowe has employed since his early days in AMM, used here to evoke a plainspoken litany of dread and remorse in the wake of Floyd’s murder, concern over the coming U.S. election, and the still-present threat of COVID-19. (A fleeting snatch of the Go West pop hit “King of Wishful Thinking” seems bitterly ironic.)
The other principal element in the piece is a manipulated recording of a chamber-music performance: here, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15, in an account by the Taneyev Quartet. I solicited that detail from Abbey, who also helpfully reminded me that Rowe has been using classical-music recordings – principally early music and Shostakovich – at least since ErstLive 007 (Cultural Templates), which documents a 2008 solo set during an AMPLIFY festival in Tokyo.
That performance, supremely physical, culminates in a heart-rending incursion of “Dido’s Lament (When I Am Laid in Earth),” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. (Rowe would use a similar strategy of climax and denouement in another essential performance released on Erstwhile, September (ErstLive 011), recorded at The Stone on the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.)
In an essay written for the now-defunct blog ErstWords, Rowe explained in detail the meaning that guided every choice he had made in Cultural Templates. Fascinating for its specific context, the article also provides a glimpse of Rowe’s artistic method that might help an unfamiliar listener unlock how a mix of Béla Tarr, DJ Screw, Dmitri Shostakovich, and a limited, precisely chosen range of unidentified sounds could result in something so deliberate, powerful, and cathartic.
In all honesty, though, no decryption key is necessary. Listen to “GF SUC” – whose roughly nine-minute duration surely isn’t a coincidence – and the dignified expression of rage and remorse Rowe intended is wholly, unmistakably evident.
Rowe’s new piece is his second contribution to AMPLIFY2020: quarantine, the novel online music festival Abbey is producing in collaboration with two prominent sound artists who’ve recorded for Erstwhile, Matthew Revert and Vanessa Rossetto, with significant contributions from a select few guest curators. (An interview with Abbey published in April on Tusk Is Better Than Rumours unpacks the festival’s premise and guidelines well.)
Since March 20, the series has presented an overwhelming rush of 150 audio pieces newly created by artists in lockdown, including seasoned veterans, prominent names, and promising newcomers. Although a few collaborations have been created by juxtaposing tracks, the vast majority of the festival’s releases are solo creations. The recordings, all of them novel and more than a few revelatory, are posted for free-of-charge collection, with a gentle plea encouraging donations to offset income lost to the present pandemic. Information on Bandcamp is deliberately sparse; most pieces have been introduced concisely on the festival’s landing page on Facebook. (It was there that, in lieu of explanatory notes, Abbey seeded a series of favorite DJ Screw tracks in advance of posting Rowe’s piece.)
What has resulted is an avant-garde advent calendar of mundane sounds, diaristic entries, and recondite gestures and processes: one that often uncannily echoes the free-floating tension, enervation, ennui, and absurdity brought on by extended forced isolation. Along with the anxiety have come instances of ravishing beauty; Rowe’s previous contribution to the series, an assemblage / construct for 45 voices, found an improviser best known for rough-edged fields of textural signal-and-noise transforming a recording of a storied 17th-century choral work, Allegri’s Miserere, into a sublime meditation on time, memory, and the architectural shape of sound.
Signs of change in Rowe’s approach to making music are evident and understandable; at 80, the erstwhile guitarist has been open about his ongoing struggle with Parkinson’s disease during recent years. One remarkable aspect of “GF SUC,” though, is how consistent it is with Rowe’s creative practice stretching back for decades. The most prominent feature in the track is its slow sweep of radio frequencies: a strategy Rowe has employed since his early days in AMM, used here to evoke a plainspoken litany of dread and remorse in the wake of Floyd’s murder, concern over the coming U.S. election, and the still-present threat of COVID-19. (A fleeting snatch of the Go West pop hit “King of Wishful Thinking” seems bitterly ironic.)
The other principal element in the piece is a manipulated recording of a chamber-music performance: here, Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 15, in an account by the Taneyev Quartet. I solicited that detail from Abbey, who also helpfully reminded me that Rowe has been using classical-music recordings – principally early music and Shostakovich – at least since ErstLive 007 (Cultural Templates), which documents a 2008 solo set during an AMPLIFY festival in Tokyo.
That performance, supremely physical, culminates in a heart-rending incursion of “Dido’s Lament (When I Am Laid in Earth),” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. (Rowe would use a similar strategy of climax and denouement in another essential performance released on Erstwhile, September (ErstLive 011), recorded at The Stone on the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.)
In an essay written for the now-defunct blog ErstWords, Rowe explained in detail the meaning that guided every choice he had made in Cultural Templates. Fascinating for its specific context, the article also provides a glimpse of Rowe’s artistic method that might help an unfamiliar listener unlock how a mix of Béla Tarr, DJ Screw, Dmitri Shostakovich, and a limited, precisely chosen range of unidentified sounds could result in something so deliberate, powerful, and cathartic.
In all honesty, though, no decryption key is necessary. Listen to “GF SUC” – whose roughly nine-minute duration surely isn’t a coincidence – and the dignified expression of rage and remorse Rowe intended is wholly, unmistakably evident.
Toshiya Tsunoda / Taku Unami - Wovenland 2 (erstwhile 090-2)
by Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine (11/16/2020)
by Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine (11/16/2020)
The first words of Toshiya Tsunoda and Taku Unami’s liner notes to the double CD under consideration here are, “Wovenland became a band.” It should be noted that Wovenland was the name of an earlier album by Tsunoda and Unami, the digipak’s spine still credits this recording to the two individuals. And while it is within Unami’s skill set to pick up a guitar and play a song, nothing like that happens on Wovenland 2. The notes continue: “Our band activities are mainly editing in a studio. Our goal is to focus on acoustic experiments. No more and no less.”
What makes this a band is an overlap of aesthetics and intentions. Both Tsunoda and Unami employ field recordings, and each is quite mindful of the influence that different recording choices exert upon the sound being recorded. But neither treats these concerns as ends. Tsunoda captures essences of place; Unami, who also plays packing materials, synthesizer and guitar in other settings, invites the audience to be aware that they are directing attention to something. Their first recording presented, according to Dusted’s Marc Medwin, “jump-cut juxtapositions of environmental conglomerations, or inter-weavings… with location recordings overlayed or subjected to more radical manipulations.” In other words, the sounds of unrelated places and things were woven together.
But now that they’re a band, they’ve focused their investigation on the interactions between accurately captured sounds and the human processes that interpret and distort them. The first disc, subtitled Mad Patissier, runs similar inputs through related but contrasting processes. The first two tracks, for example, take the same recording of a fishing spot and runs it through a series of analyses. The variables include changes in sound, who often that change is measured and outputted, and who frequently the output was split into three layers. Maybe your band talks about who gets to solo when; apparently, these guys discuss what numbers go into the equation. Depending what numbers Unami and Tsunoda select, the same source material might reveal pigeons in a birdhouse, or a fine spray of gray noise. A recording of a public event might reveal crowd sounds, or the loudest part of firework explosions.
The second disc, entitled Speed Freak, captures the band in boys-will-be-boys mode. Readers who grew up with turntables will likely recall the hilarity that ensued when they and their friends started playing records at the wrong speed. Well, imagine the possibilities when you’re working with digital recordings and playback technology. They did. What if you take those fireworks and run them at 64 times the original speed? What happens if you double that? What do you get when you slow down a recording of cicadas grinding out their night songs? These questions are all premises for individual tracks, but the results are not as academic as you might expect. For just as a good song-oriented band doesn’t just play any song any old way if it wants to keep making records, Unami and Tsunoda have only shared the cool sounds on Wovenland 2. It turns out that slowed-down crickets are pretty hypnotic, and that fireworks played at 128 times their original speed still deliver a jolt.
What makes this a band is an overlap of aesthetics and intentions. Both Tsunoda and Unami employ field recordings, and each is quite mindful of the influence that different recording choices exert upon the sound being recorded. But neither treats these concerns as ends. Tsunoda captures essences of place; Unami, who also plays packing materials, synthesizer and guitar in other settings, invites the audience to be aware that they are directing attention to something. Their first recording presented, according to Dusted’s Marc Medwin, “jump-cut juxtapositions of environmental conglomerations, or inter-weavings… with location recordings overlayed or subjected to more radical manipulations.” In other words, the sounds of unrelated places and things were woven together.
But now that they’re a band, they’ve focused their investigation on the interactions between accurately captured sounds and the human processes that interpret and distort them. The first disc, subtitled Mad Patissier, runs similar inputs through related but contrasting processes. The first two tracks, for example, take the same recording of a fishing spot and runs it through a series of analyses. The variables include changes in sound, who often that change is measured and outputted, and who frequently the output was split into three layers. Maybe your band talks about who gets to solo when; apparently, these guys discuss what numbers go into the equation. Depending what numbers Unami and Tsunoda select, the same source material might reveal pigeons in a birdhouse, or a fine spray of gray noise. A recording of a public event might reveal crowd sounds, or the loudest part of firework explosions.
The second disc, entitled Speed Freak, captures the band in boys-will-be-boys mode. Readers who grew up with turntables will likely recall the hilarity that ensued when they and their friends started playing records at the wrong speed. Well, imagine the possibilities when you’re working with digital recordings and playback technology. They did. What if you take those fireworks and run them at 64 times the original speed? What happens if you double that? What do you get when you slow down a recording of cicadas grinding out their night songs? These questions are all premises for individual tracks, but the results are not as academic as you might expect. For just as a good song-oriented band doesn’t just play any song any old way if it wants to keep making records, Unami and Tsunoda have only shared the cool sounds on Wovenland 2. It turns out that slowed-down crickets are pretty hypnotic, and that fireworks played at 128 times their original speed still deliver a jolt.
Choi Joonyong / Jin Sangtae - Hole in My Head (erstwhile 089)
by Michele Palozzo, esoteros (10/18/2020)
by Michele Palozzo, esoteros (10/18/2020)
The only true non-places are those of the mind: but being able to give them a tangible form doesn’t always equate to the delineation of a balanced, pictorially satisfying landscape, nor does it solve the inner mystery from which it originated. In the creation of an audio document, even the simplest sonic occurrence derives from an idea and a gesture, even if only pressing the record button: and it’s precisely the gesture – be it overt, dissimulated, concealed, or mediated – the absolute protagonist of the free exploration conducted by South Korean sound artists Choi Joonyong and Jin Sangtae in their latest collaboration under the aegis of Erstwhile Records, after twenty years of activity still firmly presiding over the territories of the most radical expressive otherness.
Unlike many free impro sessions, in the credits for Hole in My Head the objects and instruments used by the two artists are not specified, while to them is more generally attributed the ‘music’ of the album, recorded by Taku Unami between February 7 and 10 of this year at two cultural venues in Seoul (the Dotolim space and the Oil Tank Culture Park). But although these sessions can easily fall within the field of an alleged non-music – that is, foreign to a more or less canonical “playing” –, it’s suprising how the duo manages to create a compelling dramaturgy based almost exclusively on the juxtaposition of concrete sounds produced live in variable relationship with the surrounding space, here and there crossed or surmounted by alienating collages and electronic incursions.
For the purposes of individual listening, the acousmatic quality of the sonic instances involved remains essential: in the larger picture of the work, in fact, even recognizable phenomena such as a handclap, or a ping pong ball bouncing on the ground, comply with the process of abstraction through which Joonyong and Sangtae give equal dignity and depth to each discrete element. Industrial clangours and para-rhythmic interventions on heterogeneous materials, minute glitchy punctuations and obtundent noise saturations become the indistinct traces of their passage, non-significant in the same way, a shapeless theme of the urban periphery and a counterpoint to the natural resonances and the birdsong that occasionally repopulates the gloomy open-air views.
Despite the emotional detachment and the objectifying yearning typical of the Far Eastern experimental scene, the spectre of anthropic abuse of the landscape, albeit involuntarily, seems to make its way through the folds of Hole in My Head, a sense of bitter artificiality that persists precisely because of the context in which the sound gestures are forcibly inscribed, among the concrete barriers that identify and delimit the ever-expanding domain of modern civilization.
If Toshiya Tsunoda’s field recording archive captured the invisible changes in the port ecosystem through the detail of strategic microphonations, Choi Joonyong and Jin Sangtae exhibit the violence – sometimes quiet, other times brutal – of a senseless and insatiable human action, the apparently reassuring facade of a decay of which, sooner or later, we ourselves will be the ones to pay the price.
Unlike many free impro sessions, in the credits for Hole in My Head the objects and instruments used by the two artists are not specified, while to them is more generally attributed the ‘music’ of the album, recorded by Taku Unami between February 7 and 10 of this year at two cultural venues in Seoul (the Dotolim space and the Oil Tank Culture Park). But although these sessions can easily fall within the field of an alleged non-music – that is, foreign to a more or less canonical “playing” –, it’s suprising how the duo manages to create a compelling dramaturgy based almost exclusively on the juxtaposition of concrete sounds produced live in variable relationship with the surrounding space, here and there crossed or surmounted by alienating collages and electronic incursions.
For the purposes of individual listening, the acousmatic quality of the sonic instances involved remains essential: in the larger picture of the work, in fact, even recognizable phenomena such as a handclap, or a ping pong ball bouncing on the ground, comply with the process of abstraction through which Joonyong and Sangtae give equal dignity and depth to each discrete element. Industrial clangours and para-rhythmic interventions on heterogeneous materials, minute glitchy punctuations and obtundent noise saturations become the indistinct traces of their passage, non-significant in the same way, a shapeless theme of the urban periphery and a counterpoint to the natural resonances and the birdsong that occasionally repopulates the gloomy open-air views.
Despite the emotional detachment and the objectifying yearning typical of the Far Eastern experimental scene, the spectre of anthropic abuse of the landscape, albeit involuntarily, seems to make its way through the folds of Hole in My Head, a sense of bitter artificiality that persists precisely because of the context in which the sound gestures are forcibly inscribed, among the concrete barriers that identify and delimit the ever-expanding domain of modern civilization.
If Toshiya Tsunoda’s field recording archive captured the invisible changes in the port ecosystem through the detail of strategic microphonations, Choi Joonyong and Jin Sangtae exhibit the violence – sometimes quiet, other times brutal – of a senseless and insatiable human action, the apparently reassuring facade of a decay of which, sooner or later, we ourselves will be the ones to pay the price.
The Berlin-based songwriter’s bleak and coruscating new album feels like a call to hold fast and love hard.
Not Fire is the first album from Berlin-based songwriter Dean Roberts in 12 years, and his comeback arrives during apocalyptic times. It’s not an album about someone who’s found hope or love despite everything; Roberts sounds exhausted, and his album is as ugly and as bleak as life often is. For those who’ve been in the pits and succumbed to self-destructive nihilism, Not Fire is a reminder of how hellish it all can be.
Sonically, Not Fire is murky and battered and melancholy. Guitars clang incessantly, drums lurch without vigor—there’s hardly a moment where one doesn’t feel placed in a barren wasteland, left to wander aimlessly. On “Say After Me,” a melange of noisy guitar strums and plucks constantly ring out without any impression of oncoming closure. In the song’s final passage, Roberts slides his pick down a guitar string, the resulting sound a thunderous roar, the final bellowing of bottled-up feelings. Not Fire can sound a lot like a pained desire for release, a wish to scream into the emptiness like Roberts does on the album cover.
Nothing here feels cathartic, however. If anything, every note just propagates uneasiness, something that’s fiercely evident on the nearly 10-minute centerpiece “Heron.” Reed instruments and wolf-like howls imbue the piece with anxious tension. Frightening as the music may sound, Roberts sings of acceptance (“There is no blistering sun ’cause the summer’s just gone”). The song’s final third is wordless, but you can still sense his mournful presence.
Even when the songs aren’t harrowing, Roberts’ weariness and irascibility are clear. On the bluesy folk song “Paul,” he speaks of the titular person as a thorn in his side—a burdensome figure who’s always there at the worst of times. He concludes with a confession: “I always run into you Paul/And say I’ll call/But I don’t want to.” This longing for solitude becomes an unwelcome reality on “Kids,” where he talks about the crumbling of a long-term relationship. “Would it have changed anything if we’d had kids?” he wonders. You can tell, from his wavering voice, that he doesn’t think so.
Throughout Not Fire, Roberts feels numb. A summation of his downward spiral appears on the title track. “It’s not fire; love is something else” he moans. His voice quivers amidst droning feedback and heaving drums, the song exuding the shut-in mystique of Jandek’s early works. As the song builds, Roberts never finds healing; he only sounds tormented, broken.
There is one hopeful song on Not Fire. With “My Diviner,” Roberts delivers anguished expressions of gratitude. The mythical figure of the title leads him to water in a period of drought, and proves to be a steady light in his life (“You’re not one to quit, that ain’t how you live”). The sweetness is a salve from the misery that looms over everything else. In a time when gods feel ever-absent, when futures seem increasingly dim, “My Diviner” serves as a thoughtful reminder: life’s shittiness is promised, but so is the nourishing comfort that comes when receiving persistent care. It sounds like a call to hold fast and love hard.
Not Fire is the first album from Berlin-based songwriter Dean Roberts in 12 years, and his comeback arrives during apocalyptic times. It’s not an album about someone who’s found hope or love despite everything; Roberts sounds exhausted, and his album is as ugly and as bleak as life often is. For those who’ve been in the pits and succumbed to self-destructive nihilism, Not Fire is a reminder of how hellish it all can be.
Sonically, Not Fire is murky and battered and melancholy. Guitars clang incessantly, drums lurch without vigor—there’s hardly a moment where one doesn’t feel placed in a barren wasteland, left to wander aimlessly. On “Say After Me,” a melange of noisy guitar strums and plucks constantly ring out without any impression of oncoming closure. In the song’s final passage, Roberts slides his pick down a guitar string, the resulting sound a thunderous roar, the final bellowing of bottled-up feelings. Not Fire can sound a lot like a pained desire for release, a wish to scream into the emptiness like Roberts does on the album cover.
Nothing here feels cathartic, however. If anything, every note just propagates uneasiness, something that’s fiercely evident on the nearly 10-minute centerpiece “Heron.” Reed instruments and wolf-like howls imbue the piece with anxious tension. Frightening as the music may sound, Roberts sings of acceptance (“There is no blistering sun ’cause the summer’s just gone”). The song’s final third is wordless, but you can still sense his mournful presence.
Even when the songs aren’t harrowing, Roberts’ weariness and irascibility are clear. On the bluesy folk song “Paul,” he speaks of the titular person as a thorn in his side—a burdensome figure who’s always there at the worst of times. He concludes with a confession: “I always run into you Paul/And say I’ll call/But I don’t want to.” This longing for solitude becomes an unwelcome reality on “Kids,” where he talks about the crumbling of a long-term relationship. “Would it have changed anything if we’d had kids?” he wonders. You can tell, from his wavering voice, that he doesn’t think so.
Throughout Not Fire, Roberts feels numb. A summation of his downward spiral appears on the title track. “It’s not fire; love is something else” he moans. His voice quivers amidst droning feedback and heaving drums, the song exuding the shut-in mystique of Jandek’s early works. As the song builds, Roberts never finds healing; he only sounds tormented, broken.
There is one hopeful song on Not Fire. With “My Diviner,” Roberts delivers anguished expressions of gratitude. The mythical figure of the title leads him to water in a period of drought, and proves to be a steady light in his life (“You’re not one to quit, that ain’t how you live”). The sweetness is a salve from the misery that looms over everything else. In a time when gods feel ever-absent, when futures seem increasingly dim, “My Diviner” serves as a thoughtful reminder: life’s shittiness is promised, but so is the nourishing comfort that comes when receiving persistent care. It sounds like a call to hold fast and love hard.
Toshiya Tsunoda – Extract From Field Recording Archive (ErstPast 001-5)
by Michele Palozzo, esoteros (1/21/2020)
by Michele Palozzo, esoteros (1/21/2020)
What has distinguished Toshiya Tsunoda’s research on natural sound for over twenty years now is the virtuous pursuit of a middle way between its pure documentation and its recomposition based on the same. In the art of field recording, in fact, two extremes can be identified by approximation: one more purely “ecological” or descriptive, to which, for example, the interventions of Chris Watson and Éric La Casa historically refer; another, instead, ascribable to the domain of abstract sound art, represented in particular by the numerous “untitled” suites of mature Francisco López, sequences and collages of sources whose appearance is drastically manipulated and distorted.
In the middle, we were saying, are found Tsunoda’s recordings on the verge of microsound, as well those by American pioneer Alvin Lucier and by Steve Roden, which often cannot be attributed to the acoustic source that they reproduce, thus revealing an “ulterior” and potential world inside of the existing one, without ever practicing artifices apt to depart from it.
The quintuple boxset Extract From Field Recording Archive, inaugural publication of Erstwhile‘s archival series ‘ErstPast’, is both a recovery and completion (at least to date) of the “sub-sonic” investigation work carried out by the Japanese experimenter since his debut. The first three of five volumes in progressive numbers – remastered together with the illustrious colleague Taku Unami – had already appeared years ago in as many catalogues: in 1997 with WrK, a self-produced, short-run label; in 1999 with Swedish label Häpna, open to many other types of musical hybridization; and in 2001 in an unrepeatable joint venture between Intransitive (USA) and Fringes (IT), renamed for the occasion in the contracted form Infringitive).
The two remaining volumes, previously unpublished, are the parenthetical complements of the aforementioned three, as they present pieces dated between 1994 and 1995 (#4), therefore previous to the first published extracts, and finally a corpus of “reinterpretations” undertaken between 2007 and 2018 (#5), that is new inspections in the areas concerned by the early works from the nineties.
As Tsunoda himself declared, behind his interventions there is no intent of scientific demonstration, as if they were empirical essays on sonology, but an instinctive curiosity in relation to the ecosystems and objects that surround and often intersect the territories marked by human action. Therefore they are primarily studies intended for personal use, tools of knowledge, deepening and decoding of many different acoustic realities which are not immediately accessible.
In this sense, the use of a microphone placed inside a bottle does not represent the application of a filter aimed at distorting the sound delivery of the natural element, but rather of an echo chamber useful in capturing phenomena which otherwise we wouldn’t be aware of, compared by the artist to “the vague images existing in the lowest layer of our perception”. The precise descriptions that title the tracks are therefore essential to spatially locate the measurements and possibly make explicit their material identity, to then delve into the most recondite sound angles, harbingers of singular results directly deriving from their intrinsic ability to intercept and transmit certain frequency spectra.
Tsunoda’s research opens up to many minute epiphanies, summarized if possible in a truly crucial one: the sphere of the inanimate – whether it is steel or concrete surfaces, pipes or fence nets – acquires a reflected life through sound, it unexpectedly becomes a window on far more extensive and detailed perspectives than those contingent on the relatively limited “framing” of the microphone.
“The very little phenomena of vibrations are related with vast space. If a contact mike is set on a building wall, one can hear vibrations of far places and at the same time, one’s consciousness of space stretches to that place.”
[from an interview with Yuko Zama, © 2007 p*dis]
On several occasions, the acoustic detail thus projects us towards an entire panorama on the horizon, albeit inevitably partial and hinted at with blurred features. The port environment was the first and most recurrent field of investigation for Tsunoda, because of the possibility of spontaneous dialogue between the seabed, the quay above and the submerged parts of the ships. In fact the transmission of frequencies underwater returns to inspire him in the latest selection of extracts, which also involves the mooring ropes of fishing boats, together with further surveys on the asphalt and inside some pipes adjacent to the shore.
The long journey ends with a complete emersion to the surface, and for ten minutes the stereophony makes room for the entire sound inventory of the port, in a long shot that from the placid seething of the sea on the shoreline reaches the echo of seagulls and a barking dog, while some cars pass quickly on the road, dissolving the illusion of a scenery exempt from historical time.
Toshiya Tsunoda’s archive fills the gap towards an apparent practice of abstraction with the conquest of an “augmented” sound reality, offering pre-existing phenomenological instances the opportunity to manifest themselves more clearly to the human ear: an epistemological approach which, in the artist’s words, does not correspond properly to a ‘survey’ or ‘documentation’, but rather approximates the concept of ‘depiction’, a term that in itself summarizes the nuances of both ‘watching’ and ‘portraying’.
Ultimately, what might appear to be an expressionistic interpretation of reality is nothing more than the manifestation of properties that already pertain to natural and anthropic elements – and to which only a few devotees dare to dedicate themselves with such a zealous passion.
In the middle, we were saying, are found Tsunoda’s recordings on the verge of microsound, as well those by American pioneer Alvin Lucier and by Steve Roden, which often cannot be attributed to the acoustic source that they reproduce, thus revealing an “ulterior” and potential world inside of the existing one, without ever practicing artifices apt to depart from it.
The quintuple boxset Extract From Field Recording Archive, inaugural publication of Erstwhile‘s archival series ‘ErstPast’, is both a recovery and completion (at least to date) of the “sub-sonic” investigation work carried out by the Japanese experimenter since his debut. The first three of five volumes in progressive numbers – remastered together with the illustrious colleague Taku Unami – had already appeared years ago in as many catalogues: in 1997 with WrK, a self-produced, short-run label; in 1999 with Swedish label Häpna, open to many other types of musical hybridization; and in 2001 in an unrepeatable joint venture between Intransitive (USA) and Fringes (IT), renamed for the occasion in the contracted form Infringitive).
The two remaining volumes, previously unpublished, are the parenthetical complements of the aforementioned three, as they present pieces dated between 1994 and 1995 (#4), therefore previous to the first published extracts, and finally a corpus of “reinterpretations” undertaken between 2007 and 2018 (#5), that is new inspections in the areas concerned by the early works from the nineties.
As Tsunoda himself declared, behind his interventions there is no intent of scientific demonstration, as if they were empirical essays on sonology, but an instinctive curiosity in relation to the ecosystems and objects that surround and often intersect the territories marked by human action. Therefore they are primarily studies intended for personal use, tools of knowledge, deepening and decoding of many different acoustic realities which are not immediately accessible.
In this sense, the use of a microphone placed inside a bottle does not represent the application of a filter aimed at distorting the sound delivery of the natural element, but rather of an echo chamber useful in capturing phenomena which otherwise we wouldn’t be aware of, compared by the artist to “the vague images existing in the lowest layer of our perception”. The precise descriptions that title the tracks are therefore essential to spatially locate the measurements and possibly make explicit their material identity, to then delve into the most recondite sound angles, harbingers of singular results directly deriving from their intrinsic ability to intercept and transmit certain frequency spectra.
Tsunoda’s research opens up to many minute epiphanies, summarized if possible in a truly crucial one: the sphere of the inanimate – whether it is steel or concrete surfaces, pipes or fence nets – acquires a reflected life through sound, it unexpectedly becomes a window on far more extensive and detailed perspectives than those contingent on the relatively limited “framing” of the microphone.
“The very little phenomena of vibrations are related with vast space. If a contact mike is set on a building wall, one can hear vibrations of far places and at the same time, one’s consciousness of space stretches to that place.”
[from an interview with Yuko Zama, © 2007 p*dis]
On several occasions, the acoustic detail thus projects us towards an entire panorama on the horizon, albeit inevitably partial and hinted at with blurred features. The port environment was the first and most recurrent field of investigation for Tsunoda, because of the possibility of spontaneous dialogue between the seabed, the quay above and the submerged parts of the ships. In fact the transmission of frequencies underwater returns to inspire him in the latest selection of extracts, which also involves the mooring ropes of fishing boats, together with further surveys on the asphalt and inside some pipes adjacent to the shore.
The long journey ends with a complete emersion to the surface, and for ten minutes the stereophony makes room for the entire sound inventory of the port, in a long shot that from the placid seething of the sea on the shoreline reaches the echo of seagulls and a barking dog, while some cars pass quickly on the road, dissolving the illusion of a scenery exempt from historical time.
Toshiya Tsunoda’s archive fills the gap towards an apparent practice of abstraction with the conquest of an “augmented” sound reality, offering pre-existing phenomenological instances the opportunity to manifest themselves more clearly to the human ear: an epistemological approach which, in the artist’s words, does not correspond properly to a ‘survey’ or ‘documentation’, but rather approximates the concept of ‘depiction’, a term that in itself summarizes the nuances of both ‘watching’ and ‘portraying’.
Ultimately, what might appear to be an expressionistic interpretation of reality is nothing more than the manifestation of properties that already pertain to natural and anthropic elements – and to which only a few devotees dare to dedicate themselves with such a zealous passion.
Áine O’Dwyer / Graham Lambkin - Green Ways (erstwhile 088-2)
by Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine (7/9/2019)
by Bill Meyer, Dusted Magazine (7/9/2019)
Green Ways is the first recorded artifact of the ongoing sonographic partnership of Londoner Áine O’Dwyer and Graham Lambkin, most recently of London after sojourns in Folkestone and Poughkeepsie, which began with a concert in Brooklyn at the end of 2016. In 2018 the duo went to Ireland, O’Dwyer’s home turf, to record the sounds of places that meant something to her. On their own, both parties’ work makes liberal but not exclusive use of field recordings. O’Dwyer’s Music for Church Cleaners used them to capture the tensions and rhythms of place and community, and one person’s interactions with them during a season of playing the pipe organ. With Jason Lescalleet, Lambkin has made emotionally resonant work out of the literal sounds of home. But on Amateur Doubles, he trolled us all with two LP sides that documented a drive with some French synth music on the car stereo. Yes, it made clear that the artist’s life and work are one; and while I admittedly was not especially moved by that statement, no, you can’t have my copy of the thing. Lambkin may have several strategies for getting under your skin, but he always finds a way.
The first disc opens quietly, with the duo’s voices making small sounds to find the measure of a room. At some point the masculine voice splits into an electronically distorted double; did this happen on the spot, or after the fact? How faithful is this document, or should that question be faithful to what? They’re not telling, but they’ll give you the chance to ask. In the third track, the exploration of space becomes more direct. Someone tests the keys of a piano, some of which sound notes while others just go thunk. Moving on, you get a pocket-stashed microphone’s perspective of a mushroom hunt, the sound of approaching machinery, O’Dwyer throat singing in a tiled public space, and a murkily registered lecture whose delivery seems quite undeserving of the enthusiastic applause that greets it. As you head into the second disc people sing old folk songs, mull over the age of boulders, and a dog makes it clear that the sonographers are treading where they should not go.
This music emits a myriad of small signals. Some are pretty cryptic, while others reasonably clear. Ireland is a place where you can hear the intersection of past and present. Traffic and crockery sound about the same there as they do in your neighborhood. You can find some marvelous sounds in the great outdoors, but also some pretty mundane ones. The prominent bemusement factor aligns this Green Ways more with Lambkin’s back catalog than O’Dwyer’s, but it’s definitely a joint endeavor woven together from his “it is what it is, but what is it?” aesthetic and her attunement to the history and relationships that are embedded in unscripted sound.
The first disc opens quietly, with the duo’s voices making small sounds to find the measure of a room. At some point the masculine voice splits into an electronically distorted double; did this happen on the spot, or after the fact? How faithful is this document, or should that question be faithful to what? They’re not telling, but they’ll give you the chance to ask. In the third track, the exploration of space becomes more direct. Someone tests the keys of a piano, some of which sound notes while others just go thunk. Moving on, you get a pocket-stashed microphone’s perspective of a mushroom hunt, the sound of approaching machinery, O’Dwyer throat singing in a tiled public space, and a murkily registered lecture whose delivery seems quite undeserving of the enthusiastic applause that greets it. As you head into the second disc people sing old folk songs, mull over the age of boulders, and a dog makes it clear that the sonographers are treading where they should not go.
This music emits a myriad of small signals. Some are pretty cryptic, while others reasonably clear. Ireland is a place where you can hear the intersection of past and present. Traffic and crockery sound about the same there as they do in your neighborhood. You can find some marvelous sounds in the great outdoors, but also some pretty mundane ones. The prominent bemusement factor aligns this Green Ways more with Lambkin’s back catalog than O’Dwyer’s, but it’s definitely a joint endeavor woven together from his “it is what it is, but what is it?” aesthetic and her attunement to the history and relationships that are embedded in unscripted sound.
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