Lateral Addition aspires to enrich dialogues among contemporary practices in sound — improvisation, computer music, “sound art,” etc. — and other areas of current media and visual art. In order to nurture the growth of these connections, it serves to further elucidate the often esoteric methodologies and thoughts of artists working with sound through original audio material.
Established in 2013, Lateral Addition releases sets of 4 audio and text contributions from an international roster of artists and writers on a bi-yearly schedule.
Lateral Addition on Library Stack
Remote Viewing (2019 - 2021)
Edited by Eric Laska / email
this computer generated sound is the simulation of something i don't know
- TU
During the month of November pantea and Leonie engaged in a daily conversation. The artists never met each other in person, but had gotten an impression of one another during a presentation and short conversation online.
A one-hour track traveled back and forth between Tehran and The Hague - the artists took turns adding audio fragments to fill this hour. Bits of conversations, field recordings of the surroundings, special moments and the mundane regularity of daily life, thoughts that cross their minds. pantea underlined these elements with the Tar, and Leonie with a Fender Stratocaster and an original 1950s National Slide Guitar. The track could be filled in chronologically or out of order, vertically or in layers horizontally, in order to produce a tapestry of daily life.
November
Act 1: Roggeveenstraat 180, The Hague, Kitchen
Act 2: Soundwalk, from Golshandoust to Fadak Park, Tehran
Act 3: Community Garden “Het Welpje”, The Hague
Act 4: Construction site in Narmak and home in 92nd Square, Narmak, Tehran
Act 5: Suezkade, The Hague
Act 6: Fadaiyane Eslam Park soundwalk with Sonic Tehran group, Tehran
Act 7: Tram 1 from the Peace Palace to Delft
Act 8: Delft Station
Act 9: Gardening in Lavasan, close to Latyan dam lake
Act 10: Apartment Roggeveenstraat 180, The Hague
Act 11: Driving from Pasdaran Street to Narmak, Tehran
Act 12: Corner Roggeveenstraat/Van Spijkstraat, The Hague
Each act represents a place or path in each city where the narrative was recorded. The locations are visualized in these maps: Tehran, The Hague
In 2017 I wrote a piece called Constructed Objects. The piece was the first in an ongoing project of imagining composing or making music as a sort of non-linear sculptural/conceptual project. I wanted to envision sounds as if they were material concepts (even found objects) in space that interrelate, resonate, and co-mingle in rooms. I have both ideas of assemblage or montage here as well as modular constructions.
I then revisited this idea in 2020 with Correspondences. In that project, I wrote a very simple text score based on the concepts I was thinking about in photographic assemblage sculptures I was creating. Each object type in my sculptures was imagined as a rough concept, and each concept would have a hypothetical/theoretical corresponding sound. I then sent the score out to some collaborators to create both sonic and visual realizations. Correspondences helped me realize that I needed all my visual works to have a corresponding sound world and vice versa.
This piece I’m now presenting is the continuation of that whole project. As this venue for sharing is a place for text and sound, I developed a simple text score similar to Correspondences and now have the opportunity to realize the concepts with words and sound rather than objects or images.
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And so the stories here are the real objects. They are performative, a form of verbal art. Attention to their formal properties entails a kind of ethnopoetics—not in the usual sense of analyzing the poetics of a non-Western culture, but rather those of a strange mirror, reflecting and distorting the dominant discourses imploding inside an empire.
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Once even a private memory circulates—as utterance, narrative, discourse—it becomes social. It escapes ownership and becomes a living, growing, changing thing. Then even those who didn’t have the original experience can still take in and “have” the memory, absorb it as a kind of inner speech—and can alter it, transform it, let it express new, latent meanings that outrun and distort the transparent sense of the original experience.
It is completely discouraging to hold a word in sight, and see it spin around, pair with others, join a constellation, like a string of beads; in fact it escapes you like a ball on a playground; others play with it cheerfully, but what are they playing at, what’s their game? It’s a mystery.
An implied space of permutation. To fashion a space out of lines of thread. Rotating the object time and again to reveal the same object in different orientation. Rolling the thread object like dice to see what results. If the cuboid is rendered via thread, it can even be folded to permit further permutations and renderings.
The Lushei, neighbors of the Mara, believe that earthquakes are caused by the people who live in the lower world shaking the ground to see if anyone is still alive up here. When an earthquake occurs, the Lushei run out of their houses and shout, “Alive! Alive!” so that those below will know, and stop the shaking.
Libraries.
Rivers of living water are to be poured out over the whole world, to ensure that people, like fishes caught in a net, can be restored to wholeness.
Noise has an inchoate shape like weather does – we may measure it but its movements extend beyond any identifiable cause. Noise exceeds its own identity. It is the extreme of difference. Noise is the non-knowledge of meaning, the by-product of economies.
a rock false mansion immediately evaporated in fog which imposed an edge to infinity IT WAS stemming from stellar IT WOULD BE the worst CHANCE Falls the feather rhythmically suspended from the accident to bury itself in original foams not long ago as far as his frenzy leapt to a top withered by the same neutrality of an abyss NOTHING of the memorable crisis or it was the event
There is a beach in Empire, Michigan; one of many. The sand of the beach has been eroded away in recent years by strange weather and different water levels. Now on the beach there is an exposed wall of pure gray clay. The erosion of these beach faces makes room for ‘wildly-out-of-place’ tree species like Mountain Ash or White Cedar.
Senga Nengudi’s Water Compositions.
In terms of image-repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents that very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter.
In the plain weave, this intersecting of warp and weft takes place in the simplest possible manner. A weft thread moves alternately over and under each warp thread it meets on its horizontal course from one side of the warp to the other; returning, it reverses the order and crosses over those threads under which it moved before and under those over which it crossed. This is the quintessence of weaving.
Tarkovsky’s concept of time-pressure is like a meteorological time-front that propagates from shot-to-shot and throughout the film, or a cardiopulmonary time-pulse that thrust against the arterial walls of the scenes, bringing temporal oxygenation to the shots and overall meaning to the film-form.
For his book, The Americans, Robert Frank took over 20,000 photographs. 83 were published for the book.
The Robert Venturi designed house known as the Vanna Venturi house (built for his mother) was built between 1962-1964 in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. The house is an early example of what would come to be known as post-modern architecture. Within the architecture is housed a sort of ‘unity of duality’. Venturi writes: “I like elements which are hybrid rather than "pure," compromising rather than "clear," distorted rather than "straightforward."... I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I include the non sequitur and proclaim duality.”
The lithium mines in the Atacama desert in Chile provide a quarter of the world's lithium market. The stark mines provide an image of both grid and gradient amongst an arid landscape. The reason of so-called human ‘needs’ are juxtaposed upon an irregular pattern of pools of changing color. The extraction process uses immense amounts of water which lead to a shortage amongst indigenous communities as well as significant biodiversity loss.
Fernand Deligny created a commune for and spent a good deal of his life working with autistic children. He developed a practice of tracing their movements through their lived environments. These tracings were recorded by members of the commune and were eventually dubbed ‘wander lines’.
Due to our visual orientation toward the solid, we often forget, neglect, or dismiss the fact that the eye has a profound biological, historical, and cultural relationship with the liquid. The eye is, like the rest of the human body, made up primarily of water. The mechanics of sight depend on two liquid humors: the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor, which, respectively, nourish the eye and help it maintain its shape.
- MEW
for four gourd instruments and EBows
For over ten years I’ve been designing self-built devices to produce my own experimental soundworlds. These instruments often re-purposed found materials and used contact microphones or magnetic pick-ups as their primary form of amplification. The focus of these instruments was often on producing micro-sounds and sustained tones that were an acoustic equivalence of electronic oscillators.
A few years ago I was on a fellowship at Harvard University and had some limited access to a wood-shop – which happened to be run by Walter Stanul, who had a lifetime's knowledge of building and playing acoustic instruments. One of the things I was interested in developing was moving away from electronic amplification to see if I could make instruments which used the principles of analogue modular synthesis but were realised in the acoustic domain. Inspired by the work of composers Walter Smetak, Tony Conrad and Eliane Radigue – I imported a number of dried large gourds from California and experimented with different methods of converting them into sound objects by attaching different strings, membranes and cavities. What I ended up with was a family of nine instruments – some of them using traditional strings re-purposed from a cello or sitar and others using non-conventional “found” materials like tomato slicers, springs or metal tines. The instruments are then placed on custom stands and activated with ebows and “preparations”. A concert for these incredibly quiet instruments involves several of them, played with ebows; building up microtonal chords and modulations affected by the resonance of the space and preparations which I place on the surface of the instrument. In "Necropolis", I invited my long-time collaborator and friend Richard Youngs to play the gourds with me outdoors, in preparation for an upcoming solo concert I had been invited to play in Rome. I wanted to test out how these instruments would sound when played and recorded outdoors but was afraid that due to their low volume their audibility would be masked by the general hum of the city. We chose carefully then, a place and time, where we hoped for not too much external interference. In this recording you hear pretty much everything that took place that day. Recorded around ten am on a Sunday morning at Glasgow's famous necropolis, sitting on top of the city, we were pleasantly surprised by the balance we managed to achieve between the voicing of the instruments and their surroundings.
Richard did a very minimal "actuality" edit of the proceedings -intentionally revealing our discussion and the clunky sounds of us “searching” for chords (all by ear and experiment). Rather pleasingly the recording also features the sounds of “chance” interventions; sounds that would not ordinarily be present in a typical studio environment. One observes the jet engines of passing aircraft, the footsteps of dog walkers and the comments of passers-by; including one local who said to Richard- "not trying to listen out for the deid are you?"
July 2022
- LF
Program
Preludes, I-IV (0:00-2:56)
I. Prelude I
II. Prelude I
III. Prelude I
IV. Prelude I
Fantasia 1 & 2 (2:57-4:31)
Toccata, I-II (4:32-7:22)
I. “Standard-speed”
II. “Half-speed”
Fretless piano three hands (7:23-10:06)
Fretless piano eight hands (10:07-11:32)
Tuning break
Finale (selected variations) (12:32-14:13)
Performance and composition by Sam Sfirri.
Recorded Summer 2020 and Spring 2021, composed Fall 2021.
Mastered by Taku Unami.
Sam plays a Crown grand piano (150cm) with Capo D’Astro Bar and uses a Marantz PMD221.
Recent piano work by Sam Sfirri on the Madacy Jazz label:
I have been carrying pocket journal notebooks with me for a few years. Plain layout, never spiral, soft cardboard cover. Reading across them I revisit situations, occurrences and thoughts from specific moments back in time. Through what I had written down then, I can see where I was and when, who I was, what there was; and how it all resonates with my current being. But the value of the journals lies in what they enable directly: to experience time and space through a particular level of attention that unfolds certain aspects of reality. As in listening. I go to a cafe and write down whatever comes to my mind, whatever goes through my ears, whatever calls out my perception in a certain moment. I sit down, and I wait. Then something turns on, a detail. In my memory or in situ.
Attention highlights the continuity between the parts, and discreet elements appear together as a whole. Or is it rather that there’s only one single essence with infinite variations and infinite reappearances? Revisiting the journals, I noticed remarkable connections between something happening at a time in a specific place, and something else taking place a few months later, in a different town. In one of the notebooks there’s a list:
1/ Hotel in 2ème arrondissement, fire alarm. [4, 9, 10]
2/ 13 rue de la Lune. [3, 5, 6, 7, 8]
3/ Calle de la Luna, 14. [2, 5, 6, 7, 8]
4/ Hotel in Madrid, fire alarm. [1, 9, 10]
5/ Someone at the floor landing at the apartment building in Marseille. [2, 3, 6, 7, 8]
6/ Someone at the floor landing at the hotel. [2, 3, 5, 7, 8]
7/ A familiar face at rue des Rosiers in Paris. [3, 2, 8]
8/ The same face at Réformés square in Marseille. [3, 2, 7]
9/ Fire on the side of the road while driving towards Sainte-Victoire. [1, 4, 10]
10/ Fire around Marseille. Red sky. Smoke and ashes in the air for a week. [1, 4, 9]
11/ A musician’s house. [12, 13]
12/ Take away food on Ralph Av. [11, 13]
13/ A photo. [11, 12]
Same elements, different contexts.
As if, as we change, we keep our gaze directed towards the same thing.
There’s a level of experience that slips away from linguistic convention, and that belongs to the unnamed territory of intuition and acceptance. When encapsulated into words, the experienced material becomes something else. It gets reduced. Fades away.
Through the lines I can see something that I cannot name.
By a sequence of events, the last three numbers on the list resulted in a translucent spherical polyhedron ending up in my hands. If set at the right angle, when rays of light go through it, their colour spectrum is revealed and projected on walls and any other surfaces around. One can also look through it and see a multifaceted vision of the world. It came with a name: “present ball”.
My thoughts combined into an object.
There are also pitches and frequencies written down throughout the pages of the notebooks, as well as descriptions of sounds. I went through recordings and materials that I have collected mostly this year. Along with some of the frequencies from the notebooks, I assigned a sound to each element of the list. And then made combinations following the numbers from the list.
The piece that follows is a reading of the journals, where reading is listening, and not decoding. It’s also a method to avoid human agency in the compositional process, and instead, let the inscrutable logic of the facts be the organisational factor.
- CdA
Northampton, MA
One afternoon in May 2021, amidst rising temperatures and vaccination rates, I went to Child’s Park with my wav recorder. That week, I was feeling stuck and unsure of what to do with my free time and creative projects. I chose the park because it was a place where activity concentrated, which I had noticed during my frequent visits there that spring. Individual people and groups posted up on the grass at sufficient distances from each other to afford some sense of safety, comfort, and privacy, values which everyone’s body language and choice of grassy spot seemed to assert. However, the intention to perceive or even participate in an interaction was also an implication of our choice to visit a public park. Located inside a triangle created by two relatively busy streets and one somewhat busy one, there was plenty to hear. I went to the park feeling open to an encounter.
I am interested in the impulse to document a particular time and place, the special sausage casing that a recording creates around the events that fill it*, and the independence (but not complete separateness) of the recording from the intentions of any of the actors documented within it, including the recordist.
Field recordings are often situations in which multiple actors who don’t share the same goal co-create a work together. This encompasses a huge ethical range. Sometimes, these misalignments, conflicting goals, and power struggles are audible in the recording.
I am attracted to field recording because of its potential for openness, within very strict boundaries of time and space. Openness to coincidence; the result is not (cannot be?) predetermined. I want to treat turning on the wav recorder as a welcoming gesture.
There’s also a certain honesty that recording affords, which draws me to it. The recording is really what happened to the microphone. You’ll have to decide whether or not to trust me when I say I didn’t edit it at all. It feels vulnerable, and I’m honored to share that with you.
- SS
* Gabi Losoncy, Security Besides Love Part II (2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDDMqvGNN4A
These little piano pieces are a selection of 27 of a large catalog of similar fragments that I have been collecting over the past couple of years. In January of 2020, I started to go through hundreds of hours I had amassed of mostly useless recordings of myself playing piano since I was a teenager. I was looking for bits of interesting music in this mass of recordings, which mostly consisted of learning simple songs or some rudimentary and often pretty silly improvisations. I have never really considered myself a piano player and these recordings document the large part of my time spent at the keyboard. Around this time my computer also crashed, and when I recovered what I could, my pirated version of Ableton Live from 2008 no longer worked, so I begrudgingly started using Logic Pro (also pirated) to do music and audio stuff on my computer. I continued listening through these long recordings, cutting out little gestures that were mysterious or compelling for whatever reason. When the coronavirus lockdown began a couple months later, this became the only kind of musical attention I could sustain, and I spent a lot of long nights listening and collecting.
I guess in Ableton, when you drag the right side of a clipped segment of an audio file to the right, the segment extends with the original audio, so you’d hear what came after the clip in the original recording. But in Logic, or at least whatever setting I had it on, dragging the right side of a clip in the same way just loops the clip. This seems very unhelpful, except for that the first time I stumbled upon this, it so happened that the clip was one of these little 15-second piano segments, and the final chord or sonority transitioned to the first in a way that made me hear the entire passage as an interesting phrase or semi-full idea. The idea stayed interesting to listen to for about three or four repetitions, and then started to feel overly mechanical. For the first time in listening to these recordings, it felt like there was something with at least a vague sense of musicality. So this became my way of working through everything: over the past couple of years have listened back to (I think) all of the long recordings and have made a hundred or so of these little ideas that repeat a few times and usually last around one minute, identifying each of the fragments with the letter ‘e’ at the beginning of the file name, which doesn’t stand for anything.
But still, I don’t really know what these are or why I like them. One thing is that I like listening to these long recordings with an ear towards finding these repeatable semi-ideas from the sheer continuity of a mostly-unconscious improvisation. And then, having found something, figuring out how long the idea wants to be before it’s repeated, a natural cadence point, the relationship between that point and the “beginning” of the idea, and, secondarily, how many times it can be repeated before it starts to feel very loopy and mechanical. Some of the little fragments I am actually kind of impressed by, and it makes no sense that they actually came out of me, especially because I have no memory of playing any of these. Being much more “musical” than a lot of the “music” I’ve been interested in making over the past few years, this process has been a nice way to remember that I do really love “musical” music, making it and listening to it and thinking about it. This has also given me the chance to spend a bunch of time transcribing some of the fragments. Transcription was one of my earliest ways to love music, transcribing drum parts to Smashing Pumpkins songs when I was a kid or saxophone solos and choral music as I got older. It turns out that I still get a lot of joy out of listening to tiny slivers of music over and over and over again.
Through transcription, it’s also been interesting to notice what’s happening in these fragments musically that might have made them catch my ear. As you’ll see if you check out the transcriptions shared here, most of these are based in some kind of modal exploration of three scales that involve five black keys on the keyboard: Db major, B major, and F# major. This is pretty obvious, I guess, but because I’m not a pianist, playing around in these three modes allows me to think about the movement of voices, textures, and rhythmic interest between the hands while mostly constraining the modal possibilities because my hands sort of know where to be. So, because of the mostly frictionless feel of modal movement between, say a Gb Lydian space and a Db major space, the interest in a lot of these fragments might come from a single fortuitously placed chromatic tone. In a short idea where Db major is the center of gravity a single D-natural, maybe as part of a Bb major leading to an Eb minor, can provide what minimal harmonic density to make the idea feel like more than just twinkling, consonant gladness. Of course, all of these descriptions are coming much after the fact: none of these fragments appeared as themselves while I was playing through, and that hypothetical D-natural might as well have been a slip of the finger.
Listening to this stuff with a wide frame of hindsight also allows me to hear a kind of ghostly trace of all the piano music that I’ve been interested in learning to play over the past ten years. This is all quite amateurish hacking, but there are a few of these “e”s from I think around 2018, when I was plucking through some Bach two- and three-voice keyboard pieces. I can hear these somewhat baroque-sounding gestures (trills and certain kinds of arpeggios) in some of the fragments here, albeit filtered through hands that can only approximate them as gestures anyways. And there are a few from when I was checking out a bunch of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk transcriptions, although I don’t think that comes through in my playing. And there’s a bunch from a period of obsession with Brahms, which was sparked by reading something that described this one particular chord in a late piano intermezzo of his as some kind of “consolation” for having a basically unsatisfying life. After reading that, I spent a year or so learning that intermezzo, either because I thought that idea was bullshit or because I too wanted some consolation. Anyways, if that influence shows up at all, it’s in the more recent segments (not that they’re in order here) where the two hands are playing in a woozy 2:3 pattern and the right hand is doing these diatonic sixths in whatever key: for example, “ej 0621 10.” I guess the most obvious trace-influence is Satie, whose music was how I learned piano in the first place, starting at age seventeen. I’d want to say that the influence is from his later repetitive étude-like absurdist pieces rather than the saccharine earlier music that he’s more well-known for (maybe “e” stands for étude?). But then again I guess these “e”s are also a bit saccharine in their own way. That’s fine.
I’m happy to share these in this way, all laid out and kind of unmusically over-described, as is my preference. I still have vague ideas about ways for these specimens to come to life somehow: as a source for future collaborations, or arranged for some kind of brass and wind ensemble, or sampled, or used in some other way (feel free). For now though, just a long, neat row of these little shells of possible music in a display case.
- DB
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
heteronomy is the condition of all things
[ g, e, i, s, c, t, n, y, n, h, o, l, n, s, n, a, i, h, l, e, t, i, o, o, i, o, t, f, o, h, t, d, r, m, e ]
[ t, o, d, r, o, m, y, i, t, o, i, n, l, h, n, l, s, s, t, h, n, e, i, c, i, o, e, g, e, t, a, h, n, f, o ]
[ f, d, e, a, l, o, t, s, t, n, o, c, h, s, o, i, i, g, o, t, i, l, i, y, h, o, n, n, e, t, h, r, m, n, e ]
[ y, m, i, o, c, t, h, i, e, i, i, h, n, e, o, a, n, t, l, n, o, r, e, s, f, n, t, o, o, s, d, l, g, h, t ]
[ t, o, r, i, s, l, n, g, e, t, h, n, e, e, i, d, f, c, t, n, y, t, m, l, o, o, o, o, i, a, i, n, s, h, h ]
[ i, m, t, r, i, n, i, l, e, h, n, e, n, f, i, l, c, s, t, o, t, o, n, o, y, o, e, a, s, d, h, h, t, o, g ]
[ t, r, o, o, e, o, h, f, n, i, t, n, e, y, t, l, i, e, m, n, h, c, s, s, d, a, i, i, l, t, o, o, h, n, g ]
[ g, y, i, n, h, f, s, i, i, n, t, r, n, i, o, a, l, h, o, n, e, c, s, e, t, o, o, e, h, t, t, m, l, d, o ]
[ h, s, i, l, t, n, t, o, t, i, y, f, c, r, o, g, o, o, t, e, n, i, a, n, n, h, e, m, l, o, d, h, i, e, s ]
[ f, e, t, s, n, o, n, g, i, i, m, c, e, a, h, i, o, y, o, i, o, l, h, t, h, d, t, l, e, o, t, r, n, n, s ]
imdolinsno toiatenf h o iscthe rgtylnh eo
gnmtontsloo i eenh ioteynisc rohaftdilh
taotim oethiho r eoefhs dsiicyngnln otnl
imc totetolfehy tihnrno glnnao hdioessi
int hfoatoenmn eigyrs ioeonit otldhhslc
omlnsy oaegen sicodihhttrtei finlotohn
antlnootciht el ongteo e miyoir ifhssnhd
otiodhagn islynm flethhice t nin ootesor
t hhthdoiytomcoo olfnsiiie n nsrgnlee ta
fee nmihho ntoricion tn theosgtlly osaid
This new work was created for Lateral Addition between March - June 2021 in Berlin using the SuperCollider audio synthesis programming environment, then edited in a timeline. The source is a synthesized ‚siren‘ sound, which was recorded out and loaded into nuPg (New Pulsar Generator*); following manipulation of the sound file, the recorded output was then loaded into a custom-coded granular synthesis instrument for further transformation before finally entering the timeline. All material in the composition was generated from a single audio file.
On the macro-compositional level, heteronomy is the condition of all things presents alternations of sections and materials in an evolving manner, working with time proportions and repetition to both organise a sense of rhythm and to support processes of aural definition and retention, and more broadly to align with the artists’ pursuits into understanding the extent to which external forces create our notions of self.
* The New Pulsar Generator by Marcin Pietruszewski is based on the original Pulsar Generator from Curtis Roads and Alberto de Campo.Pulsar synthesis is essentially a train of filtered pulses generating signals that emit frequencies in the range between rhythm and tone; these filtered pulses transform sound samples through cross-synthesis. The novel program was originally named after ‘the spinning neutron stars that emit periodic signals in the range of 0.25 Hz to 642 Hz.’- from Microsounds by Curtis Roads (MIT Press, 2001)
Hi Fan Services,
Thanks for getting back to me with regard to performances of the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium. I have not been back to a home game since COVID-19 regulations have changed, and while I’m a big fan of Dieter Ruehle’s organ, I’m glad to hear that on-field performances are back!
With that in mind, I’d like to submit my friend and colleague Caroline Portu for your consideration as a performer of the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium.
I recently met Caroline on the set of a Christmas film near Boston where we were both working as actors, and have since become aware of her tremendous singing ability — especially as it relates to The Star Spangled Banner. I learned that, back home in New England, she frequently sang at sporting events for Boston College (graduated ‘17) and also sang at Fenway Park.
Caroline recently moved to Los Angeles and I think a great introduction to the city, and vice versa, would be to put her skill and expertise to work in the service of our local team, singing the song on the field before a home game.
Would this be possible?
We made the attached recordings as a demonstration. The first file includes a long delay and a slight emulation of a PA — an idea of what Caroline might sound like in the big outdoor space at Dodger Stadium, minus the crowd.
The second version is clean.
Thanks for your consideration, and please let me know if you would like more information or if there is a more specific or appropriate address to send this query.
Go Dodgers!
- TM
vocal performance and editing by Caroline Portu, engineering by Chris McLaughlin
Writing About The Names
A statement
The Names is a new Berlin/Amsterdam collective of creative musicians playing open, yet melodic, pieces in a Cage/Oliveros informed spectrum of improvised strategies and open-ended compositions. Giving homage to the Chicago tradition of AACM music as well as praise to progressive thinking in society, highlighting people such as Angela Davis, Michelle Alexander, Audre Lorde and composers such as Anthony Braxton, Eva-Maria Houben, and George Lewis, whose names, along with the names of band members and friends, have been used as the melodic or structural impetus of each composition.
Shaped by the ideas of critical music, listening and sounding practices, and the position of the post-musical, the group combines playing musical material with reflections on public space, society, and the world of ideas at large. For now, the music revolves around the open-ended compositions and arrangements of Koen Nutters, which serve as a conduit for each member’s personal and musical expressions. Each member, as a composer in their own right, is invited to contribute material to the collective’s repertoire.
That’s easy to say...
Of course name dropping is easy; but maybe this is what it takes for a European, white, cis male with some kind of conscience to dare to even get near what used to be called Jazz music. I am aware. I am cautious to speak. But I won’t be paralyzed by guilt. I am trying to do something right through music, and through community, through society, through being socially conscious without feeling hip about it. And even if I am; I hope something good will come out of it anyway. What I’m saying is: the only way I can engage with this music, this inspiration from my teenage years, is by making it about the originators of this very material. Composing the melodies by taking their names and connecting them to our endeavors to make collective, creative music. Our band: The Names. We are not imitating, perhaps referencing, hopefully mostly being inspired to do our own thing, our own music, our own expression of unity, hope, and creativity. Reflecting on how we would like society to improve itself through our collective engagement in doing what we love to do under fair conditions and making it available for anyone who wants to hear it, in concert halls, streets, squares, squats, anywhere...
Quote
Much propaganda is being done for the view that people are motivated by self-interest, the desire for money or fame or both. This is not true. The majority of people have a definite need to feel that they are serving the community in some way. We need the feeling that we are performing a useful function in society and not just living off society or other individuals in a parasitic way.
Cornelius Cardew - Stockhausen Serves Imperialism pp. 60-61
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“You will notice that I do not use the word ‘jazz’ to speak about my music. However, I like the word ‘jazz,’ It sounds good, it’s a great invention as a term, but I don’t consider myself to be a jazz musician—and I’m in the process of asking myself if I’m even a musician at all.”
Anthony Braxton quoted in George Lewis’s A Power Stronger Than Itself p. 328
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[It] is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.
...the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.
Audre Lorde - Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, 1978
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“Sonic agency is expounded upon as a means for enabling new conceptualizations of the public sphere and expressions of emancipatory practices - to consider how particular subjects and bodies, individuals and collectivities creatively negotiate systems of domination, gaining momentum and guidance through listening and being heard, sounding and unsounding particular acoustics of assembly and resistance.
Brandon Labelle - Sonic Agency p. 4
Wants and interests
I wanted to give musicians a starting point for getting together. As a band, as a creative unit. Not just the fact that we live in the same city, not just outlines of finished products to (re)create, not fully formed ideas to actualize. But potential in its purest form. Then, when the pandemic hit, I was in Amsterdam. Rehearsing with more than 2 people was out of the question, and everyone is always too busy in Amsterdam anyway. Nobody has time to get together for vague promises. So I started an overdub project, like every musician in the world. But to me it was actually creatively very liberating. I found a way to merge my different interests together, the Cagian, semi-independent layering I’ve always been interested in found its way into the dubs. I would ask people to make overdubs just by looking at a rough score, and only perhaps by listening to what was played before. Of course I was clear about what I thought was needed from each particular musician. What kind of playing would work in this context. And it always worked. I mostly just layered it on top, and adjusted the volume a bit from phrase to phrase. Here and there cutting things out. (This last bit of text refers to a set of pieces soon to be released on the label: Editions Verde.)
https://editionsverde.bandcamp.com/
I am interested in playing music with a group of dedicated people willing to spend some time working together to create a language which can be used to communicate intentions and positions to each other in flexible environments and malleable structures.
I am interested in playing music as a sort of code, to communicate with fellow players as well as the audience. Structural and melodic messages that can be accompanied by words, by certain names, sometimes spelling out these messages, sometimes simply adding sonic or metaphorical layers on top of the sonic structures.
I am interested, as a white European cis male to make something clear about my position on the political spectrum. I am saying: I do not agree with fake fascist agitators, and I stand up against racism. I still believe in the social-democracy I grew up in, and I believe in creating a fair and just society. I am willing to give up power, money, and fame for this. And I do not expect to be taken seriously by anyone, not just yet. Maybe one day, and maybe along the way I will inspire some other (white) people and artists to stop being silent about these issues, these issues that need to be addressed in art as well as in life. And perhaps a mixture of the two is what I am trying to conjure up with this project. A way to project a political opinion, a social instruction, without taking away the mystery, wonder, and joy of creativity and art.
Quote
“I have an ambivalent relationship to the term ‘allies’ because when it comes to challenging racism, I think white people should know that they have as much of a stake in purging the society of racism as people who are the immediate targets.”
Angela Davis
A Conversation Between Michelle Alexander & Angela Davis (10/20/17)
Melodic codes
Harmonic messaging, structural roadmaps, names turned into melodies.
Melodies embedded in a flexible, sonic, environment.
At some point I started using a little self-made system that turns the letters of the alphabet into pitch classes. Then I started using it on people’s names. The people that were going to play the pieces. So the pieces were personalized, in a very direct way. They were meant to be played by certain people whose names made up the pitch material. (The last piece I made with this system is called: The names have been changed to protect the innocent.) Then I started to write dedications to people, people that were not necessarily going to play these pieces, using their names to create melodic and harmonic material and naming the pieces using their initials and full names. Early examples of these are AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis), JK (Joseph Kudirka), MA (Michelle Alexander), and QT (Quentin Tolimieri) as well as musicians who influenced me a lot at a younger age like AB (Anthony Braxton), and more recent discoveries like GEL (George E. Lewis) whose book ‘A Power Stronger Than Itself ’ was a major influence on the resurgence of my interest in Afro-centric American experimental music.
A renewed interest in Afro-centric American Experimental Music.
I have developed an interest in 1960’s Jazz harmony as a means to fill in the blanks. Impressionistic harmonic structures rather than serial pointillism. More fitting as a communication of structural whereabouts between musicians. Not excluding pointillism and the atonal but at the same time filling in the gaps between notes by means of scales. Pathways towards recognition and harmonic color consistency between players.
The harmonies and strategies of the mid 60’s Miles Davis quintet was a particular stream of music I analyzed and utilized to create a number of frameworks The Names could operate in.
And not only this kind of harmony, but also the colors of Debussy, the scales of Xenakis, The sudden up and down runs of Lachenmann, the weirdness of Ablinger and Barlow...
Jazz music was a practice of self expression and self determination. I’d like to extend that to a current practice of communication within understood and agreed upon structures by a diverse group of individuals. Both musical and social, giving an example towards the political...
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All music reflects the political lines and embodies the ideas of definite social classes. In composing music the political aspect is of paramount importance. In performance and criticism of music the political aspect is of paramount importance. Every attempt to produce music that is politically progressive shows up more glaringly the necessity for the musicians to integrate with the [people] and support their struggles practically.
(from the introduction to Stockhausen Serves Imperialism)
Feels
I was getting the feeling I needed to fill a large gap in my knowledge of music theory. Something I never had a use for before. Dealing with melodies and modal harmonies...
I went from seconds, sevenths and ninths to a more fourth and fifth based harmony. Logically the next step would be sixths and thirds. And indeed here we are, seconds and thirds form scales. Scales create modes, modes create moods and colors. Seeing harmony not as function but as color. Colors that can shift anywhere, anytime…
I find it interesting to combine Wandelweiser style playing and Ablinger/Cage/Oliveros style concepts with simple major, minor, and altered scales. The results are still abstract and flexible enough to be interesting for the listener, no obvious tonal center, but for the players it becomes much more malleable; controlling the colors as they make decisions on where to go next, and in which octave… (A good example of this is the piece: Song for Angela Davis. Versions of which will be released soon on Editions Verde and KN’s bandcamp)
I like to think of the melodies and the harmony in this project not as a definite structural totality, but as a means for a player to communicate where they are inside of the flexible structure.
Other players can then join them there. Or stay where they are, even if it is a different part of the structure. It is not against the rules to play 2 harmonies on top of each other. It’s all a matter of arranging things, agreeing on a set of circumstances. As such there are no definite rules.
So the idea of variation doesn’t just apply to the melodic structure, but to the structure of the whole idea of the piece. It can fall apart, and be put back together again in a different way. Players can play from different starting points, get stuck at different points, and join each other wherever seems appropriate. There is no fixed structure that is more right than any other structure that is made up on the spot. As long as it can, at certain points, be communicated where one is, it is all good. Even when the message is not always received.
Miles Davis did something like this. On Live Evil he included the Hermeto Pascual pieces. Slow, drawn out melodies, gorgeous harmonies, colors, colors, colors, warped percussion, semi-similar melodies that are hard to tell apart. Are Selim and Nem Um Talvez actually the same piece? Need to revisit them again, and again, impossible to tell from here.
In The Names, the repetition of the melody makes it a geo-musical marker for both the musicians and the listeners. Being familiar with the territory, it is easy to keep track of these markers here and there. Even if they don’t make the kind of sense they do in linear music. We recognize where the other is, maybe we’ll go there too. Going slower and slower it starts to make more and more sense… Maybe the roads don’t connect the same way anymore. But that’s ok. As long as we get there in the end, and towards the end.
Improvising with a melodic guide seems like a more fair way of beating the odds. Four note pitch sets are not as strong as a melody in a harmonic context. Though the clarity of harmonically colored melody notes is intoxicating, overwhelming, too much, and perhaps dangerous stuff. Better be sure to dilute it enough with post-musical strategies; with the structural thinking of Anthony Braxton, or the strategies of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Referring to the liberation of the Cagian layers, different things going on, not necessarily in a one-on-one connection with each other, maybe just a side-ear. Make your decisions based on the structure that is given, not on what the other players are doing at the time. But the material is all matched, it is a given that things will be OK, if your definition of OK, for music, is broad enough to make that happen. This is where the whole thing about post-music comes in. To be OK with an outcome that might not sound like music to some people. Or even like bad music to some people. That’s the tricky thing about moving into areas like melody, where some people think they know how it is supposed to go, how it is supposed to sound. Just listen to the ‘Music for (number)’ series from John Cage, to see how beauty can appear in unknown connections with semi-known material. (Particularly an obscure recording of Music for Three for violin, cello, and piano. Or the recording of Music for Four by the Arditti Quartet. You can hear the same material floating around in there in both renditions.)
- KN
Quote
Paul Berliner's encyclopedic study of the creative process among jazz musicians discusses the use of harmonic sequences or "progressions" as a basis for improvisation. The author asserts that improvisers liken a harmonic sequence or "progression" to "a road map for charting the precise melodic course of a rendition" (Berliner 1994, 71) - remarkably similar to Cage's already cited notion of a performer's function with regard to indeterminate scores as "filling in color where outlines are given." Thus, a strong case could be made for the contention that, just as chance operations can constitute one method for realizing performer indeterminacy, performer indeterminacy may be one method of realizing an improvisation.
George Lewis, Improvised Music After 1950 p. 16
The rehearsal recordings (mastered by Taku Unami)
Along with the track included in this issue of Lateral Addition: ‘AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis)’, the rest of the rehearsal recordings fit for human consumption (3 versions of ‘QT’ and ‘Song for A....’) will be available on Koen Nutters’s bandcamp page.
https://koennutters.bandcamp.com/releases
AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis)
A melody, repeated, in octavated unison, going slower and slower, until it becomes a texture.
A short passage of just plucked bass and guitar, continuing the melody. Then, after a significantly slower rendition of the unison melody, it becomes a swamp, a texture, so slow it’s almost static. But the players can still hear the next notes coming. The melody still works as a roadmap. As a way for players to signal where they are. Or to deviate and create harmony. Everybody at their own pace. Nothing forced. Having heard the melody a few times now the audience is also part of the listening process, of the search for the next thing to play. The slowing down is also a process that helps the group make collective decisions. To take a second to think about a place the piece can go, which we’ve sort of agreed on. Instead of soloistic / solipsistic action, we see a group effort to change the material from one thing to another: a process.
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OC: Normally I begin by composing something that I can have them analyze, I play it with them, then I give them the score. And at the next rehearsal I ask them to show me what they've found and we can go on from there. I do this with my musicians and with my students.
Jacques Derrida interviews Ornette Coleman, 1997
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If working-class people are not in a position of awareness to accept any music in the service of socialism except the inevitable patronage offered by composers like the later Cardew, working in a deliberately simplified and banal idiom, then this is the fault of the processes of exploitation and stultification dealt out by the ruling classes to serve their interest. It is not good enough to assume that people who are expected to make rational and informed political decisions are at the same time incapable of being rational and informed about the culture of their projected society. It is unfortunate that most people are not in a position to come into contact, let alone sympathize, with radical musical ideas.
Richard Barrett - Cornelius Cardew (CCR p. 352)
The Names are: (in alphabetical order, August 2021)
Sara Campos - voice
Seamus Cater - harmonica
Heather Frasch - flute*
Marielle Groven - violin, piano, melodica
Morten Joh - Just Intonation vibraphone
Carina Khorkhordina - trumpet*
Jeroen Kimman - guitar
Koen Nutters - upright bass*
Han-earl Park - guitar*
Gert-Jan Prins - percussion
Germaine Sijstermans - clarinets
Aimée Theriot-Ramos - voice, guitar, cello
Quentin Tolimieri - melodica*
* playing on this version of AYD (Angela Yvonne Davis)
Answer now, the shipping forecast is you, by the Met Office, on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and WA15, on Thursday the 14th of May.
Good morning for girls in Viking.
Since 2014, I have been engaging in a new set of practices that I describe as
site-responsive sonic art. This involves developing technologically-mediated sonic
responses to site through human, material, and environmental considerations.*
Forth Fisher to foggie Fitzroy.
‘Sounding Out Spaces’ looks to theoretical movements within the arts to disrupt
the notion of audience-as-passive-observer or consumer.*
Soul Shannon, Farrell, and fairies turn off the upstairs;
1800 play bingo, just west of Fitzroy. 1010.
Common to the collection of practices that has been developed is the
theme that sound is produced in response to certain perceived or
measured attributes of a particular site. These features may be
acoustic, environmental, historic, and, perhaps, even imagined.†
997 by 1800, Wednesday. Pharaohs. 1022 by same time,
Ferro 994, moving steadily. Stand dissipating, Fastnet.
‘Sounding Out Spaces’ explores how we can use digital means to participate
directly in our environment, leading to novel and inclusive experiences. These
ideas are developed through iterative practice. The series began in 2014 with a
focus on guerrilla performance using portable analogue technologies, and has
evolved to involve, most recently, large-scale public installations.†
6 showers at fast, good dogger.
The temporal and ephemeral nature of such works, formed out of interactions
between participants in a particular scenario, resonates with Small’s idea of
music as something that happens through the negotiations of people with and
within a space. A site-responsive sound art practice both acknowledges and
allows for investigation of these dynamic relationships.‡
Steering southwesterly, 5 Morris Autos;
5 mainly fair, moderate, or good.
In ‘Lucky Dip’ (2015), audience members were offered multiple modes of
participation within the sound-environment field. Taking place during a
busy arts festival that was hosting several site-specific multimedia works,
the piece consisted of live electronic music that could be experienced both
underwater in a large swimming pool, and above the water through
loudspeakers. A total of nine performances took place over the course of
the three-day festival in Phoenix, Arizona.‡
Fitzroy's 56 North–rain in northwest–moderate, or good;
Fitzroy soul 620, perhaps to be a girl.
Sound is always situated socially, culturally, and perceived within a particular space.†
Occasional rain: good, becoming moderate, or poor:
cheap bastard Irish Sea.
Self-built hydrophones were positioned in the pool so that the movement
of participants could be made audible and be further transformed using
digital signal processing. This layering of possible experiences set up
various mutually affecting relationships within the environment and
provided different points of access to the piece.‡
Occasionally Gail–a tin salmon–good, occasionally poor.
A live electronic performance practice demands that the performer be able to
respond to the specificities of a given situation. But rather than attempt to control
the particulars of a performance environment, I suggest that it is fruitful to
embrace the improvisational nature of such work.‡
Gail 80: northeasterly 5; showers–at first good–is pharaoh’s.
‘Sounding Out Spaces’ contributes to cybernetics-driven arts practice through its
modular and portable approach to the development and organisation of hardware
and software components within a network.*
Rising quickly, wake! Northwest 5: intermittent fly drain.
In closed-loop homeostatic systems, changes in state are determined by
variances in the environment. Autopoietic systems, being initially concerned with
the cellular level, but later expanded to deal with the entire nervous system,
determine their activity on internal, rather than external (environmental) factors.
Changes in the external world cause perturbations, yet the organism always acts
upon its own internally-determined rules.*
Situation low-pressure–scented close to Shetland–
will drift East towards Norway, slowly losing its identity.
Working with autopoietic systems makes explicit the role of
environment—or medium—in which the work is undertaken.*
Occasionally gay, late at first, northeast 45th: Berwick-upon-Tweed to Whitby.
These musical systems are necessarily constructed by means of
culturally informed choices of materials, hardware, and importantly
the embodied actions of the artists and other participants involved.*
Good find: Regis to Lands End, including the Isles of Scilly.
Working with adaptive dynamical systems, the goal is to create audible
ecosystems that unfold over time with coherent characteristics which are
determined by their internal structures.†
Terrible three becoming Easterly, then South Easterly later.
As autopoietic systems themselves, humans may be present in the
specific environment, but are not the prime cause of musical activity.*
45–occasionally six later–in far west.
In such cases, the audience is not directed to experience the work
in a particular way, but is invited to explore their own trajectory
through a variety of access points.†
Fur: good.
Some participants chose to lie in the pool and let their ears move in and out of
the water; others preferred to listen purely through air, but were able to hear the
movement of those in the water.‡
Easterly 3 or 4. Southeastern E45, occasionally six-letter in West.
The various implementations of second-order cybernetic ideas lead to new
musical aesthetic experiences, while simultaneously offering alternative modes of
understanding musical activity—as embodied rather than necessarily formalistic.*
St David's Head–including the Bristol Channel–won’t be coming.
The project generates responsive sonic environments that have the potential to
unfold over time in non-random, yet unpredictable and compelling ways.*
1023 Cineworld.
Here, the multisensory experiential modes are not enforced, but are
optional, subtle and dynamic. This exemplifies the link between audience
participation and site-responsiveness: the piece could be performed in
other similar sites, but this type of performance ecosystem affords
participation that gives agency to the listener (through multiple modes of
listening chosen by participants, ability to affect the sound and so on).‡
Rising is the weather forecast for the inshore waters of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, valid for the following 24-hours.
- LSH
* Hayes, L. 2019. Investigating Autopoiesis in Site-Responsive Sonic Art. Interference Journal, 7.
† Hayes, L. and Stein, J. 2018. Desert and Sonic Ecosystems: Incorporating Environmental Factors within Site-Responsive Sonic Art. Applied Sciences, 8(1), 111.
‡ Hayes, L. 2017. From Site-Specific to Site-Responsive: Sound Art Performances as Participatory Milieux. Organised Sound, 22(1). 82-92. Cambridge University Press.
The Shipping Forecast was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, produced by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Tuesday the 12th of May, Wednesday the 13th of May, and Thursday the 14th of May, 2015. Transcribed by dictation.io.
"Untitled discrete arbitrary input functions" is dedicated to my two nieces and my memories of their early-developmental oligodynamic and repetitive cluster-thudding diatony on my father's piano. Unsure if they were intending to annoy my father or merely amuse themselves—or both—the rhythmic qualities of their piano playing as obediently, reflexively gravitational—as if the keyboard were magnetically attracting the undisciplined, quasi-hostile actions of temporarily blithesome children—came to mind when listening back to early drafts of this piece. Upon simul-crashing the piano—in the sense of 'crashing the party' of piano music, a 'crash-course' in piano technique mutated after Ustvolskaya, and literally physically crashing down upon the keyboard—in their mostly harmonically diatonic yet rhythmically microtonal manner they perhaps failed as musicians, but succeeded as composers of a transient form that could not develop beyond its punishing reiteration. I have some sort of memory of trying to stupidly suggest they impute more accidentals into the diatonically-saturated crashings redundantly being spread across registers of the tetrachordal hellscape. But why? To appease my facile 'learned' intuitions of global structural coherence (between, say, rhythm and pitch-class structure)? Probably, given that I'm a dumb bitch with no relationship to children. At the time of this writing, I haven't had any communication with my nieces in years. Why's that, Kieran? Do they even exist? What is this little narrative about your so-called "nieces" plonking down on the keys—some sort of pitifully vain 'domestic anecdote' in-group signaling? Excuse me, sorry, that was my cousin Kaden chiming in to denigrate Me and My Work again.
Q: What is this piece about?
A: Generally, it's about divergent periodic sequences of repeating sets of time-point classes distributed across similarly divergent registral spans. Such divergence is intended to define a global polyphonic texture that maintains structural independence between sequences while simultaneously defining contrast and similarity among them.
Q: That's so abstract, I'm considering petitioning for your cancellation.
A: Fair enough. As one might be able to observe, many of the sequences projected by each 'hand' of the keyboard are repeating sequences. These repeat in order to determine temporal and overall textural definition and distance between adjacent sequences. Thus, while the work is totally polyphonic, each sequence is defined as a texture parametrically non-intersecting—whether that parameter be register, pitch-class structure, or tempo—not only in relation to its antecedent but also the sequence to which it is polyphonically 'simultaneous'. Dissonances are established both through displacement of synchronous downbeats between voices and the structural distance between adjacent sequences within each voice. This is to elide any salient metrical boundaries that might supervene and thus 'condition' how such concurrent sequences are structurally grouped.
Q: How was this piece composed?
A: Quite arbitrarily, as indicated by the title. Each 'hand' of the harpsichord was composed independently. And by composed, I mean improvised on the guitar and converted in real-time to MIDI data. Once one track was performed, another would be performed in the same manner and superimposed. Then each track was significantly edited, primarily to elide unintended artifacts resultant of the voltage-to-MIDI conversion process. Finally, each track i.e. 'hand' was tuned a quarter-tone apart from each other.
FURTHER READING
Johnson, W. M. (1984). Time-Point Sets and Meter. Perspectives of New Music, 23(1), 278-293.
Polansky, L. (1996). Morphological metrics. Journal of New Music Research, 25(4), 289-368.
Tenney, J., & Polansky, L. (1980). Temporal gestalt perception in music. Journal of Music Theory, 24(2), 205-241.
Thomas, M. (2000). Nancarrow's "Temporal Dissonance": Issues of Tempo Proportions, Metric Synchrony, and Rhythmic Strategies. Intégral, 137-180.
Song & Transcription with References
7:47
To decide what to write is a problem of a different order
Part 1: SORT IT ALL OUT AND END UP WITH A SICK OBJECTIVITY
Part 2: ARE YOU RELENTLESS OR UNRELENTING?
Part 3: CRUEL TAXONOMIES
- AS
Like many musicians, I have been particularly interested in the music recording medium and its relationship to live performance. In its history, the format shifted from a document of an actual event (ie. a ‘record’) into an idealized construction.
Through the usage of various reverbs and spatialization, producers construct an artificial sound stage. Like the films of Georges Méliès, the medium places the listener in an idealized position, front and center before the theatrical stage, without the interference of other audience members, environmental sounds, or any hint of the quotidian function of music. Even in the ‘live recording’ (now a necessary distinction between the fictional ‘record’), a fader on the mixing console can reveal the sonic evidence of an audience before quickly diminishing it.
While reverb frequently invokes architecture such as rooms, halls, chambers, cathedrals, etc. (convolution reverb allows for the acoustic modeling of specific real spaces), the presentation still duplicates the modernist orthodoxy of the ‘white cube’: hypothetically without historical or geographical context. In “Room, Chamber, Hall”, reverb is not simply considered as a neutral, physical phenomenon utilized to place sounds on the ‘stage’. What is the significance of augmenting a music performance with the architectural reverberation of a cathedral? Does this space mean something different than a small room?
Accepting the myriad of functions of music outside of an idealized, empty concert hall, “Room, Chamber, Hall” presents its locales with the presence of bodies attending to their physical needs and desires such as eating, dancing, sex, etc..
- WS
PRESENTISM
Within the philosophies of time, three oppositional schools compete: Eternalism describes the phenomenon of time like a strip of film - the past and the future do exist, are real, but the present is merely a human concept. The growing block theory, maybe the most intuitive of the three, states that the present continually creates the past, but the future is unwritten. Presentism on the other hand argues that the only thing irrefutable is the present and that the past and the future are both unreal. By applying these three concepts to music, we may end up with a number of strategies to rethink what we consider as given.
I would like to propose that there has been has been a slow shift in how music was perceived. Improvised music, prior to notation, can be considered as presentistic, manifesting itself only in the present, it’s only traces of existence written in memory. With interpretation and notation, the perception shifts more to a growing block. The mind got a hold of the past, but the future still remained a very unstable realm - once the hand made a mistake with an instrument or the voice was interrupted to catch a breath. Obviously the advent of the recording introduced an absolute future and with it the concept of eternalism in music. Furthermore the introduction of the loop, applied in its most extreme way within techno, embeds the listener in a coherent body of past and future, even with a view of the timeline - first on the record, later on the waveform. A car, racing on the Autobahn, free to move in both directions. Of course, one could argue that the state of ecstasy in which techno is consumed compresses time into a perfect present, the psychological present, which is defined as 2-3 seconds with the equivalent of 1 bar by 120 bpm…
But staying for the moment with the first thought, we can ask the questions: is the loop the defining property of techno? What happens if we remove the certainty of the next kick, eroding the temporal and structural integrity of the genre? Presentism is a project based on one temporal randomised pulse, denying our ability to foresee the next kick and obscuring the possibility to form loops. Yet it upholds timbres and instrument references common to the genre. The aleatoric function acts like an agent of presentism in an eternalist domain. Like improvisation, it has the ability to remove a stable future and at the same time blur the memory by forming insignificant patterns. Intensification usually benefits from a balance between control and the prospect of collapse. The temporal shuffle of techno is the attempted surrender of control of the past and future to the present.
- JAT
collaborative record forthcoming Spring 2021 on Diagonal
