Midaircondo make eclectic electronic music, with a flute, computer, sax and voice. Mari Luz is unusually subtle and elegant.
28/10/2004
27/10/2004
Far Side Music
Far Side Music has a slot on Resonance FM. FM3 were on it today, who use traditional Chinese instruments and laptops. Christiaan Virant is the main protagonist, an American living in China, and he seemed like a very pleasant and interesting guy.
Working with lo-fi computer software and a host of home-built instruments, FM3 distills ancient Chinese folk tradition into a barely-there organic glow.
They have a few tracks out on BipHop and Staalplaat, and will be playing in London on the 10th November.
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26/10/2004
John Peel
John Peel has died. I talked about this with friends on the Internet who aren’t from the UK or listen to his show, yet still recognise his importance, mainly because of the Peel Sessions. It’s sad, but his legacy will continue to entertain and educate people long after his death. I hope his attitude of open mindedness and love for music will live on with the next generation of DJs, fans and musicians.
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25/10/2004
Asian Art
I’ve started to collect links about Asian art. I found a gallery in Shanghai that has a useful website:
The first installation design here looked interesting:
I didn’t know that Australia played a large part in helping Asian galleries. There’s a good article here:
The Australian: Cultural revolution [October 23, 2004]
That article also mentions that photography is currently very popular in China:
Photography is probably the dominant art form, with a sense of melancholy and nostalgia wafting through the works of many of the Chinese artists here.
I’ve also just read about Gwangju 2004:
The provincial Korean city of Gwangju, about an hour and a half south of Seoul, entered the biennial sweepstakes ten years ago. Bearing the scars of a government-led massacre of student and citizen protesters in May 1980, the city has tried to reinvent itself as an arts center, in part because it has failed to attract industry.
Gwangju’s biennials have been ambitious from the start, attempting to link familiar western curatorial notions (”globalization,” “identity,” “information networks”) with eastern sentiments such as the traditional basic elements (earth, fire) and the oneness of beings. The exhibitions have never shied away from the political, founded as they were in the shadow of extreme civic unrest.
I had already noticed the political tendencies of Chinese artists. Since censorship is becoming less of an issue for Chinese artists, surprisingly graphic works are being created:
In a stairwell between the first and second floors is the egregious and highly offensive video, Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other, 2003, by two Chinese artists, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. The tape shows dogs that have been harnessed and placed on running machines facing other dogs. They become increasingly aggressive and agitated but are prevented from attacking their opponents. These dogs have been forever changed, trained in the ways of violence.
The video should be removed immediately. . . and confiscated. Why this equivalent of a snuff film is placed on the main stairwell, making it the most unavoidable piece in the entire exhibition, is incomprehensible. These same artists display a long white column leaning against a wall of an upper floor. The structure is made from human bones. Someone in China is not paying attention.
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Robert Schwartz
I’ve never seen his paintings before, but I identify with his seemingly psychological explorations. I found an article about him which said this:
This is why his images look insane — they picture the insanity behind the facade of everyday life, an insanity that often breaks through it, as he shows, disrupting our sense of its reality. Thus, while Schwartz may be in esthetic control, he is not in emotional control. His formal consciousness can be understood as a defense against unconscious conflict, but the defense becomes the stage on which the conflict is presented.
Archipelago - Bibimbap
A new release by a group of musicians known as Archipelago, trying to establish a unique form of collaboration. There’s a review of Bibimbap on Igloo Magazine.
This core group call themselves the Archipelago, latching onto the idea that while musicians may be solitary islands operating in a distinct vacuum from other artists, they do eventually become aware of other islands near them and send out exploratory boats. Lines of trade and communication open up between these solitary spaces and, for these musicians, the communication is all about collaborating with each other, constantly looped and editing themselves in an effort to discover new ways to look at the same material.
24/10/2004
Deathprod - Morals and Dogma
This is the last CD, chronologically. Each piece is epic, between 8 and 18 minutes long. They feel like improvisations.
When I listened to the first track, Tron, I imagined it would suit a dance, and the sleeve notes actually say this.
Dead People’s Things is dark and solemn. It’s typical of Deathprod, the violin rising above and falling below static sounds, the test oscillator, natural flowing composition. You can hear a slight ringing sound in the drone in the background, as if 33khz samples were used to create it.
There’s a lot of subtly in Orgone Donor marred by the violin, and as the background chords rise and resolve, the violin seems to become more agitated. At the end this is all resolved and concluded harmonically, with the violin’s sustained E.
Cloudchamber is another slowly evolving epic with a dense background littered with a strange combination of natural and unnatural sounds.
23/10/2004
Deathprod - Treetop Dive
treetop drive 1 - This uses a similar dualist repeating pattern as found in reference frequencies. I wonder if Deathprod is actually tearing down dualistic tendencies in this piece? That would make sense if the feedback sounds, violin and crashing filtered noise coalesced into a singularity. They don’t however. Deathprod explores different frequencies with the feedback and uses effects to develop other parts of the piece.
The atmosphere of the piece is desolate, but with a suggestion of imminent warmth from the string sounds. The feedback sounds act as if to quash this notion. The movement alludes to waves on a shore, with occasional chaotic behaviour as you would experience on a cold shore in the Autumn.
As the booklet suggests, there is a sense of majesty in the second piece. However, I personally interpret this piece as a possible soundtrack to a hard sci-fi novel, but with subversive and unusual themes as you might find with Brian Aldiss’ novels. I’m not sure if Deathprod intended anything ’sci-fi’ in treetop drive 2. It feels more restrained than treetop drive 2, but less desolate.
I find treetop drive 3 most interesting, there’s some great touches such as the click at the end of the narrative on death (which makes me think of a coffin lid or morgue door shutting), and the gradual noise crashes that build towards the middle of the piece. These appear to be more like singularities than notes, sometimes you catch a glimpse of detail within them. There’s a definite sense of going somewhere.
Deathprod - Imaginary Songs From Tristan de Cuhna
The sleeve notes are very handy for this CD. They explain that Tristan de Cunha is the most remote island in the world, and Deathrpod has created imaginary music for this place. Field recordings were used of Ole Henrik Moe’s violin, in a Norwegian woodland. What I’m inspired by here is that the recordings were transferred to phonographic cylinders to make the sound broken and frail, to create an air of deterioration and loss.
The idea of damaging sounds to create a sense of loss is a wonderful metaphor, reminding me of Boards of Canada’s concept of setting pieces in a particular era by recreating the quality of recordings possible at the time.
I love these sentimental pieces, the strange flute-like sounds are subtle. The epic piece at the end, The Contraceptive Briefcase II, is live and contains many different sounds, from synths to vocals. This is definitely something you have to sit down and listen to, the atmospheric sound would be spoiled in the wrong listening environment (such as the commute).
Deathprod - Reference Frequencies
6:15 reminds me of someone’s reactions to Eastern philosophy such as Buddhism, but there’s irony and jokes littered within that keep me amused throughout. “We see change but don’t see it at all, it’s strange that change is strange at all” - this reminds me of Buddhist philosophy.
reference frequencies #7 reminds me of some kind of mechanical system with two parts. One part follows a simple pattern with a long cycle, and the cycle is marked by a slight delay. Perhaps a wheel with spokes that trigger a sound. The second part of the machine is a chaotic oscillator that occasionally introduces too much energy into the system.
reference frequencies #8 is a similar machination. What I find most interesting about these pieces is that there’s very subtle high-frequency sounds in the background, and occasional glitches in the patterns. Deathprod seems to elongate sounds on occasion allowing the listener to experience and savour them. He also uses distinct frequency ranges for each perceived timbre group. I particular like this kind of structuring, it creates an extra dimension for exploration as you listen.
It’s obvious Deathprod is speaking in a highly focused language based on timbre and frequency groupings - something I identify with.
reference frequencies #7 is another small piece with a lot of information (without being serialist) - the kind of thing I’ve been interested in recently.
dora 3 is rather beautiful. An ambient-feeling piece, the sleeve notes say Ole Henrik plays violin and that this is typical Deathprod. This stops the world getting in and ruining your solitary perfect moments and gives you space to contemplate and fuel for inspiration.