1202-2 Murmer:::: Framework 1 - 4

framework 1 - 4
the framework compositions are a series of experiments with untreated field recordings, exploring notions of musicality within the structures of found sound. the compositions were created with differing sets of self-imposed rules: framework 1 (whose sources were all recorded in paris, france in march/april 2003) was recorded, edited and composed entirely on a single minidisc with no overdubbing or alterations to the sounds or their relative levels; framework 4 (originally released on the soundwalk editions blog) is an experiment in sonic perception via the contrasts of resonance in different indoor and outdoor spaces; and frameworks 2 & 3 are both long-form works of multi-layered sonic environments originally commissioned as radio works (for the radia network and silenceradio, respectively). framework 3 also explores the use of voice as a musical tool within a larger public soundscape, and includes sounds produced by a group of workshop participants in an attempt to actively resonate and interact with a specific space, both of which call into question a recordist's position as passive spectator. as an artist working with field recording who considers himself a musician, these works were in some way a reaction against this idea of documentary or objective presentation of found sound. if every microphone is a frame, can the works born via their vibrations be disconnected from a recordist's perspective, decision, action, or emotion? these works could be said to represent a momentary perception of a place and time, or perhaps a conglomeration of overlapping memories and impressions of past moments, activities, and spaces.

all sounds found between 2003 and 2011.
vocal performance on framework 3 [swarm] improvised on a café terrace in the south of france by mari kalkun and piibe kolka.
sleeve design by lewisdoesdesign.com, with images by patrick mcginley.

disc 1
1, framework 1 [paris cuts] ::: 14:19
2, interlude [tengmalm’s owl] ::: 3:00
3, framework 2 [ce soir on va se faire chier] ::: 32:57
4, epilogue [seaside flagpoles] ::: 4:00

disc 2
1, framework 3 [swarm] ::: 35:00
2, interlude [thunder & cranes] ::: 3:00
3, framework 4 [4 spaces] ::: 15:00
4, epilogue [irrigation drain] ::: 4:00

murmer (Patrick McGinley) is an american-born sound, performance, and radio artist based in europe since 1996. since then he has been building a collection of found sounds and found objects that have become the basis of all his work. in 2002 he founded framework, an organisation that produces a weekly field recording-themed radio show, broad- and podcasting around the world. in 2005, he began working closely with the artist-run organisation MoKS in southeast estonia, relocating there permanently in 2009. most recently mcginley has been giving presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound (with the revenant project) and sound as definition of space. in live performance his interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.

murmer's work is about small discoveries and concentrated attention; it focuses on the framing of sounds around us which normally pass through our ears unnoticed and unremarked, but which out of context become unrecognisable, alien and extraordinary: crackling charcoal, a squeaking escalator, a buzzing insect, or one's own breath. he works equally with spaces, objects, resonances, and people, in composition, performance, or simply collective action and experience, in exploration of perception via attentive listening.

2 x Audio CD
110 minutes+
Release date: October 2012
18 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Musically connected
Battus / Marchetti / Petit :::: La Vie Dans Les Bois

Eric Cordier / Seijiro Murayama :::: Nuit
Eric La Casa :::: W2
Lasse-Marc Riek :::: Harbour
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet :::: La Creuse
Eric Cordier :::: Osorezan

Geographically connected
Jason Kahn :::: Beautiful Ghost Wave

Review(s):

Aquarius Records

Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) is a sound artist whose primary tools are field recordings and found objects activated within acoustically interesting spaces. While most of his impressive back catalogue of recordings finds him manipulating and treating those sounds into expressive drones and subtly dynamic collages, this double disc set is far more spacious and open-ended, given a slight shift in methodology. He explains in the liner notes that "the framework compositions are a series of experiments with untreated field recordings, exploring notions of musicality within the structures of found sound. The compositions were created with differing sets of self-imposed rules." Two of the four compositions deal specifically with voice, with "Framework 3" settling into a rather lovely passage of wordless vocal harmonics improvised in an open terrace by noted Estonian folk singers Mari Kalkun and Piibe Kolka. This track begins with a reprise of some of the sounds that McGinley used on his 2012 album What Are The Roots That Clutch, as heard in the dense burbling of water insects, building up through brightly resonant objects that shimmer with the minimalist fervor of an Angus MacLise composition. "Framework 2" is the other piece dealing with voice, with the grunts and wheezes of somebody snoring very loudly at the end of this 30 minute piece, which is mostly comprised of frigid wind-blown recordings and scabrous snippets of activity more on par with G*Park's ice-born recordings. "Framework 4" alternates between interior and exterior sounds emphasizing the psychological impacts of the incessant buzz of late-summer cicadas and the flourescent-tube hum of institutional space. Beautiful wanderings of sound that always have the potential to surprise, frighten, and delight.
- Jim Haynes -


Vital Weekly
Patrick McGinley, also known as Murmer, has built since the mid 90s a body work of that deals with field recordings and electronics - in that order. Some of these works are based on pure field recordings, and these are gathered on 'Framework 1-4', a double disc with a good solid two hours of his work. Pure field recordings however doesn't mean that we have four long pieces of one sound event that goes on for an infinite amount of time. In some cases, for instance in 'Framework 2' and 'Framework 3' various events are layered so there is indeed a composition of some kind and in 'Framework 1' various events are placed in short fragments, one after another. We have the four pieces that make up 'Framework' as well as four interludes, the most recent of the four main pieces.    Pure sound scaping is perhaps not really my kind of music, I was thinking recently, and perhaps I like some 'adjustment' taking place, some interference or perhaps better: some kind of composition. It's perhaps as such that I like this Murmer quite a lot. It's not overtly composed in the strict sense of composing, but there have been adjustments. Especially when McGinley is layering various sound events together, such as in 'Framework 3 [Swarm]'. Then these sound events become music in my ears, they start singing, buzzing, and occasionally making a jump move and change the scenery. I prefer that over the more straight forward documenting of single sound events. A very fine work here, maybe a bit long altogether.
- Frans De Waard -


Monsieur Delire
L’étiquette Herbal International de Goh Lee Kwang vient de publier, dans sa série “concrete”, un double CD de Murmer (Patrick McGinley), maître de l’enregistrement de terrain. Framework 1-4 réunit quatre pièces de 15 à 30 minutes, entrecoupées de courts interludes et épilogues. Chaque pièce suit ses propres règles, ce qui fait qu’on a droit à du field recording pur, à du montage par juxtaposition et à de la superposition de sources. McGinley a l’oreille curieuse et baladeuse – les environnements sonores qu’il propose recèlent souvent une beauté intrinsèque qui ne nécessite aucune explication. Mais c’est lorsqu’il superpose les sources pour tisser une trame narrative (lâche, libre à interprétation, mais réelle) qu’il est à son meilleur, soit dans “Framework 2 (Ce soir on va se faire chier)”.

Goh Lee Kwang’s Herbal International label just released in its “concrete” series a 2CD set by Murmer, aka Patrick McGinley, a true field recording master. Framework 1-4 culls four 15-to-30-minute pieces, interspersed by short interludes and epilogues. Each track has its own rules, so we are treated to pure field recordings, edited and juxtaposed field recordings, and superimposed field recordings. McGinley has a curious and wandering ear – his audio environments are often beautiful in and of themselves, with any explanation being necessary. However, he is at his best when superimposing sources to weave a narrative (a loose narrative open to multiple interpretations, but a narrative nonetheless), i.e. in “Framework 2.”
- François Couture -

1201 Battus - Marchetti - Petit:::: La Vie Dans Les Bois

Pascal Battus : electric guitar
Lionel Marchetti : electricity
Emmanuel Petit : electric guitar

The music was recorded in the forest in Le Richoux castle in France (July 2003) during a Butô danse performance with Yôko Higashi.

Recording, mastering : Lionel Marchetti/CFMI de Lyon

Cover painting: Terre d'ombre brûlée ; bleu de Ceruleum ; Jaune de Naples ; Blanc de Titane" - 2010
Artist: Dominique Lechec

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
40 minutes
Release date: April 2012
12 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Also by Pascal Battus
Pascal Battus :::: Simbol / L'Unique Trait D' Pinceau
Jean Luc-Guionnet / Pascal Battus :::: Toc Sine

Geographically connected
Eric Cordier / Seijiro Murayama :::: Nuit
Eric La Casa :::: W2
Jean-Luc Guionnet :::: Non Organic Bias
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet :::: La Creuse
Eric Cordier :::: Osorezan

Musically connected
murmer :::: framework 1 - 4
Lasse-Marc Riek :::: Harbour

Review(s):
The watchful Ear
Tonight’s CD is an interesting one, a release by the French trio of Pascal Battus, (Electric guitar) Lionel Marchetti (Electricity) and Emmanuel Petit (Electric guitar). Titled La Vie Dans Les Bois (Life in the wood/forest?) the disc captures a live recording of a concert made alongside the Buto dancer Yoko Higashi as long ago as 2003. Why the recording has only appeared now, some nine years later I am not sure.
This is a curious piece of music. The structure of the improvisation is an unusual one, and its interesting to hear Marchetti improvising, which I don’t believe he does that often, at least in groups like this. His “electricity” seems to consist of some field recordings, but (I think) also some electronics, but as the two guitars seem to be primarily only really used as feedback generators it is hard to tell which sound is coming from where. At the start of the disc there is no question that Marchetti is involved as the first thing we hear is the twittering of birds, presumably in a forest. Usually I get very bored very quickly when musicians introduce birdsong into proceedings lie this, but for some reason, the birds on this release, which start as the only thing we hear, very clearly, and then never actually go away completely through the entire CD, work very nicely indeed. So there are twittering birds, and then little swathes of tonal feedback which rise and fall in and out of silence for the most part of the disc, gradually building in frequency and intensity until at one point roughly halfway through the forty minute album the noise levels rise enough to make me turn the volume down slightly. There are other little scribbles, bits of identifiably guitar pick-up interference, and also some other grabs of field recordings, with what sounds like people talking over radios floating about quietly for a while, some sort of dull wooden clatter of some kind, and a single very quiet car passes by amidst one extended silence.
La Vie Dans Les Bois feels quite unusual because of the strange collision between the field recordings and the guitars. Normally when you combine these kind of instruments things tend to naturally evolve into laminal music with the field recordings meshed into continual sounds. Here there is a clear definition between all of the sounds involved, and although it isn’t always easy to tell where each sound is coming from they do not all merge together and the music feels like a set of small events positioned beside each other in interesting ways rather than any continuous flow. Never once listening has the music felt aggressive, but then also it has never felt settled, always that little bit awkward and unwieldy, but in a good way. Maybe its because this recording is almost a decade old now, but it sounds oddly fresh and unusual, perhaps because of the way the field recordings work, because they do not feel quite so embedded into the strata of the music like they so often are these days.Oddly old school and curiously intriguing then, I am pleased this recording has been unearthed now. I wonder how many more archive pieces there are that could sound so interesting presented now after the music has all settled into familiar ways of working? On Herbal.
- Richard Pinnell -

Monsieur Delire
Dans la forêt d’un château français, Battus, Marchetti et Petit accompagnent de leur toile sonore les mouvements d’une danseuse de butô. La Vie dans les bois propose la faction sonore de ce projet: une improvisation de 40 minutes entre l’électricité (deux guitares électriques et “l’électricité” dont est créditée Marchetti) et la nature (chants d’oiseaux, vent). Une musique spartiate, faites d’événements sonores qui se fondent avec les bruits environnants et les uns dans les autres. Interactions limitées mais réfléchies.

In the forest of a French castle, Battus, Marchetti and Petit are accompanying a Butô dancer. La Vie dans les bois documents the audio aspect of this project: the trio’s sonic fabric, a 40-minute improvisation between electricity (two electric guitars and the “electricity” Marchetti is simply credited for) and nature (bird songs, wind in leaves). Spartan music made of sound events that blend in with environmental sounds and with one another. Limited but thoughtful interactions.
- François Couture -

Improv Sphere
La vie dans les bois est une étrange pièce de 40 minutes enregistrée il y a presque dix ans à l'intérieur d'une forêt, pendant une performance butô de Yôko Higashi. Outre ces quelques spécificités circonstancielles, il y a également cette surprenante accréditation de Marchetti à l'électricité. Et étant donné que les des autres musiciens jouent de la guitare électrique comme d'une source de larsens, on a du mal à distinguer si Marchetti joue vraiment de l'électronique avec eux ou s'il s'est simplement occupé du groupe électrogène... Ce que j'ai du mal à croire.
En tout cas, cette pièce a quelque chose de très absorbant, figuratif, et de très concret. On y entend tout d'abord les sons de la forêt, principalement ses oiseaux mais quelque fois aussi le bruissement des arbres et le vent. Puis le trio Battus/Marchetti/Petit commence à produire de longues nappes sonores, à jouer avec les sons de la forêt dans une forme de questions-réponses où les larsens peuvent prendre la forme d'un chant d'oiseau. Une musique très axée sur l'ambiance et l'atmosphère, mais également sur la figuration, toute variation de la nappe servant surtout des buts imitatifs et imagés, ou servant de réponse au chant de la forêt; mais ne servant que rarement un but musical ou formel.
Une musique calme et contemplative, où les sons électriques dialoguent et communient avec les sons naturels. L'osmose n'a pas seulement lieu entre les musiciens (et la danseuse), mais également avec la forêt elle-même, qui tend à revivre sur ce disque par la réponse que le trio propose à sa vie sonore. Une longue piste progressive, qui ne suit pas une montée linéaire, mais qui suit invariablement le cours de l'environnement, qui suit La vie dans les bois. Une progression calme et envoutante, poétique et sensible, minimale, patiente, et surtout, charmante. Un bel exemple d'improvisation et d'interaction entre la musique et l'environnement.
- Julien Héraud -

Vital Weekly
Life in the forest is the translation of the title, and it is a recording of two electric guitars, played by Pascal Battus and Emmanuel Petit and Lionel Marchetti who gets credit for 'electricity'. In the beginning we hear bird calls in the background, but will they survive what's coming? Here we have Lionel Marchetti in his role as an improviser, which we don't get to hear much on CD, I think, and this concert is certainly a strange one. The recording is already from 2003, and the guitarists play mainly long sustaining feedback like sounds which die out, followed by silence (birds in the background) and then start again. Marchetti's role is play shorter sounds from his electricity boards and sometimes sets out to sound like a bunch of birds. The birds are not scared away, which I thought was pretty interesting to notice. I would think that the relative musical force this trio puts up in a forest would be enough to scare them away, but it didn't happen. The environmental quality of the recording certainly enhances the appreciation of it. Purely from a musical point of view, I am afraid I am less convinced about the work. Its not bad, but also not the most brilliant thing I ever heard in improvised music. Great idea, occasionally fine music, but ultimately not too convincing for the entire forty minutes.
- Frans De Waard -

1103 Goh Lee Kwang:::: 反之亦然 _, and Vice Versa

1. jUctIOn 01:46
2. wEIghtOfwAx 37:28
3. AclOsErlOOkOnwhItE 04:39
4. tOuchpOInt 00:29
5. wEIghtOfdUst 15:07
6. EndlEss 04:48

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
60 minutes+
Release date: 10 December 2011
12 Euros + shipping order

Buy digital

Related resources:
Also by Goh Lee Kwang
Goh Lee Kwang: The Lost Testimony of Rashomon
Goh Lee Kwang: Hands
Goh Lee Kwang: Draw Sound
Goh Lee Kwang: Good Vibrations

Review(s):
The Watchful Ear
 Its been a while since I wrote anything about the music of the Malaysian electronics musician Goh Lee Kwang. To be fair, its been a while since I was sent this newish album by him on the Herbal International label, and its only really the last few days I have got to it. I have always found his music a curious affair, somewhat raw, with an unfinished quality to it, and often very difficult to figure out exactly how the music might have been made. This new solo album, entitled _, and Vice Versa hasn’t really helped me with any of this. I quite like it, or at least most of it, but I am still in the dark about how it was made or really, who it was made for.

There are six tracks here, each with a title, though you have to go to the label’s website to discover what they are. The first of them, titled jUctIOn is a stream of what sounds a lot like long wave radio distortion mixed with the sound that early personal computers would make while slowly loading software via cassette tapes. Like much of Goh Lee Kwang’s music it feels oddly inhuman, and yet somehow also quite natural, as if a by-product of some process or other captured here. The track lasts a fraction under two minutes, but is followed straight away by the album’s longest track, the thirty-seven minute long wEIghtOfwAx which is a very different affair, a long lazy drift of vaguely ambient sound that feels like a mix of heavily reverbed, dramatically slowed down percussive sounds. Its a dreamy, sleepy piece of music that to be honest lost my attention a few times, but then perhaps that is the point, to lure the listener into a kind of dream state, particularly as the four minute track that immediately follows it is a vicious sheet of loud, piercing, noise. The track keeps stopping and starting, but essentially is a clean, metallic blast that lasts for a few minutes and clears out the sleepy cobwebs before another tiny track, the half-minute long twittering, squeaky tOuchpOInt leads us into another fifteen minutes of quiet drift in wEIghtOfdUst. The album closes with a vaguely looping, semi-technoesque pulse called EndlEss that is a lot nicer to listen to than that description might suggest, particularly as it slows, fades and gradually falls apart over its four minute duration.

Again, its hard to know what to do with this album. I find that it leaves me devoid of any emotion, neither adding tension or energy to my state of mind, and yet it somehow is attractive, if only because of its own curio value. Goh Lee Kwang makes music that doesn’t sound like anyone else right now, using sounds that veer wildly between inhospitably ugly through to sleepily soft and dreamy, avoiding any real sense of progression or musical narrative and making its mark on the listener through jarring shifts between the dynamic of adjacent tracks. Its hard to (k)now what to make of it. listening all the way through three times tonight wasn’t all that easy, partly because concentration proved to be difficult during the longer, flatter periods, but also because when it flares up the album has you reaching for the volume dial in a hurry. A curious one then.
- Richard Pinnell -

Le Son Du Grisli
Ce que Vice-Versa renferme : l’électronique inquiète de Goh Lee Kwang. Six pièces, composées entre 2007 et 2011, qui requièrent l’attention de l’auditeur quelques secondes seulement, sinon plus d’un quart d’heure.
Pour les plus courtes d’entre ces pièces, parler de chants minuscules frappés de frénésie expressionniste : leur domaine de prédilection est le bruit, la boucle, le parasite, leurs interférences enfin. Pour les plus longues – les plus intéressantes sans doute –, évoquer ce quart d’heure de bruitisme des sphères en cinquième plage, au cœur vrombissant, et, plus tôt, ces trente-sept minutes d’éléments épars et sifflant qui évoluent en satellites autour d’une mécanique prête à les broyer, et l’entier disque avec.
- Guillaume Belhomme -

Monsieur Delire
Un disque aride, abstrait, mystérieux - très belle pochette, aucune information, pas de titres de pièces, jusqu’à ce qu’on insère le disque dans un ordinateur et là - paf - des titres. Six pièces de musique à base électronique et bruitiste - mais essentiellement un bruitisme délicat, zen. Les pièces vont de 30 secondes à 37 minutes – et justement, “wEightOfwAx”, 37 minutes, propose une sorte de drone discret qui devient rapidement trop long. Les pièces courtes, par contre, offrent des textures minimalistes fort intéressantes. Les albums solo de Kwang sont toujours confondants (dans l’intention et les techniques utilisées). Celui-ci suit cette veine.

An arid, abstract, mysterious record - beautiful cover artwork, no credits, no track titles, until you put the disc in a computer and then - ta da - track titles. Six pieces of basically electronic/noise music, though of the delicate, Zen kind. Pieces range from 30 seconds to 37 minutes, and the 37-minute “wEightOfwAx” features a kind of discreet drone that quickly goes on for too long. However, the short tracks present very interesting minimalistic textures. Kwang’s solo albums are always puzzling (in terms of intention and techniques used). This one too.
- François Couture -

Vital Weekly
Yesterday I fell asleep while playing this new CD by Goh Lee Kwang, which in the world of John Cage is probably a compliment. It happened during the long piece 'Weightifwax', which is curious ambient piece for electronic insects and mild feedback like sounds. An excellent piece I think. Not because I fell asleep, but something I noted when fully awake. Its not easy to say what Goh Lee Kwang is doing here, in relation to what I heard previously by him - turntable and no-input mixer - but the general quiet mood worked excellent. As said its a long piece, well over thirty-seven minutes, after which 'Touchpoint' works as a nasty wake-up call. Although not as noisy as some of his previous work, this loud block of high pitched sounds, nervous, is not so much my cup of tea. The other main tour de force, although 'just' fifteen minutes, is 'Weightofdust', which is even more subdued and sounds like metal wires being played which an extended use of reverb, pushed to the far end quiet side of the sound spectrum. 'Endless' closes down the CD with a strange bouncing rhythm that slows down over the course of the piece, and is a bit like a cover version of Alvin Lucier's 'Clocker'. Plus there are two more pieces that are so short they go by hardly noticed. Without that 'Touchpoint' intermission, I think this is by far the best work I heard from Goh Lee Kwang. A great variety in approaches to sound material, resulting in some very fine and refined music. Maybe a bit more info on the cover wouldn't do no harm though.
- Frans De Waard -

Just Outside
More strange electronica for the redoubtable Mr. Kwang. Four shortish tracks surrounding two lengthy ones, totaling an hour. The initial one a 2 minute flurry of squelchy bleeps, mildly annoying, which segues into 37 minutes of the ethereal. It's all gentle echoes, a chirping (insect variety) background, soft, watery. it's...long but ok enough, very placid. We then lurch back into rollicking electronics for a few minutes, then a mere 30 seconds of squeakitude before heading off into the other longish track, about 15 minutes of low, far-off hums and rumbles, like an airport behind a large hill; my favorite track. Lastly, a slow bit of roundly popping electrics, ping-pongy, amidst metallic reverb.

Odd stuff, interesting but not for everyone, not always for me but nonetheless intriguing.
- Brian Olewnick -

1102-2 Pascal Battus:::: Simbol / L'Unique Trait D' Pinceau

Simbol is a composition realised with recordings of cymbals, using specific techniques which enable me to sustain the sound and allow pure frequencies selected from the cymbals' upper partials to emerge.

The pieces on L’unique trait de pinceau are close in spirit to improvisation, recordings often made at home in the heat of discovery, with no particular project in mind. Instant writings, unrefined yet complete and more or less unadulterated.

Simbol and L'Unique Trait de Pinceau differ at both the formal and conceptual level - though chance plays an important role in both - but are in the same heuristic vein regarding the notion of sounding gesture and the question of the instrument. A whole host of tools, détournés, taken apart or extended, pushed to their limits, their identity as instruments no longer clear.

Operational chains often present themselves in the act of playing, which, by dint of their complex synergy and the innumerable parameters involved, provide a margin of indeterminacy sufficiently wide to cause the excessive and the delightful unforeseen.

Gesture before it becomes action is an opening onto the moment and its potential, furthermore, by not working with the same tools, stable and controlled, I'm forced to find and reinvent gestures I can use, which inevitably lead to accidents and events that take me by surprise.

Simbol has been played, recorded, assembled and mastered by Pascal Battus between November 2008 and June 2009.

L’Unique Trait d’ Pinceau has been recorded and mastered between December 2007 and September 2009.

Special thanks to Frederic Blondy, Edward Perraud , Dan Warburton, Les Instants Chavirés.

Disc 1: Simbol
1 Limb
2 Mobil
3 Soil

A work based on specific sustained cymbals recordings

Disc 2: L'Unique Trait D' Pinceau
1 L'Unique Trait D'1
2 Percussion Verticale
3 L'Unique Trait D'2
4 Percussion Horizontale
5 Bouteille Magnétique

Outlaw sounds played out of composition nor improvisation view.

2 x Audio CD
140 minutes+
Release date: June 2011
18 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Also by Pascal Battus
Battus / Marchetti / Petit :::: La Vie Dans Les Bois
Jean Luc-Guionnet / Pascal Battus :::: Toc Sine

Geographically connected
Eric Cordier / Seijiro Murayama: Nuit
Eric La Casa: W2
Jean-Luc Guionnet: Non Organic Bias
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet: La Creuse
Eric Cordier: Osorezan

Review(s):
Paris Transatlantic
In recent times, French improviser Pascal Battus has abandoned his table guitar – or "guitare environnée" as he used to call it – in favour of new sound sources. On last year's Ichnites (Potlatch), with Christine Sehnaoui, he disembowelled a Walkman with spectacular results, and on this new double album he turns his attention to, respectively, cymbals ("using specific techniques, some known to percussionists, others of my own invention"), polystyrene and a contact-miked bass drum.
It's by no means easy listening. One feels throughout that the experimentation, the search, is as important as – maybe more important than – the result: as Battus's intention seems to be to take listeners with him on the journey rather than merely present them with a beautifully painted picture of the landscapes he's travelled through. On Simbol it's a polar wilderness, icebergs of steely sustained tones floating in a sea of deep, dark hum; in L'Unique Trait d'Pinceau ("a single brushstroke" – titular homage to Shitao) an arid desert region with withered trees of inscrutable thuds and scrapes sticking up out of the silent sand. But listening casually to either album there seems to be something missing – that's not a put-down, by the way – a feeling that if we could just see Pascal at work, all might suddenly make more sense. Having had the pleasure of playing with him on several occasions, take it from me that that's not the case (fun though it is to watch him tinkering with his tiny trinkets) – if it were, I suspect he'd have released a DVD. Nope, this is music, and what's missing is your input: you have to join the dots and make the required effort to appreciate its subtle secrets.
- Dan Warburton -

Just Outside
Battus here offers two cds worth of cymbalic material, one suite of three parts ("Simbol") and one of five ("l'Unique Trait d'Pinceau"). The sounds on the former seem to be largely derived from the instrument being stroked in one manner or another but the salient point to these ears is the separation into striae of relatively pure pitches, very high to very low, the middle ground often occupied by coarser sounds. When everything gels, the results are rapturous as on the third section of "Simbol", titled, "Soil". I think having a strong low pitch is the key, anchoring the work deep in the ground, so to speak, enabling the higher, rougher pitches to be read as chaotic escaping gases (!), organic excreta unfurling out into the air. Really a wonderful track, one that manages to entirely avoid the sameness that many adventures in cymbaling encounter.

"l'Unique Trait d'Pinceau" dispenses with any vestige of drones, hurtling into a series of attacks wherein the overt nature of the cymbal is camouflaged within a mass of hisses, screeches, groans and flutters. It's still a cymbal, of course, and one can, if so inclined, trace hesitant pathways back to that folded and flattened piece of metal but similar to how how might approach a post-Tetreault/Yoshihide recordless turntablist, better to just sit back and immerse oneself to the extent possible. Battus doesn't make this an easy venture either, the music both assaultive and irregular, an incessant stream of "difficult" noise, perhaps a bit non-reflective for me (he mentions in the notes that this section is more improvisational than the former, "often made at home in the heat of discovery") but generally holding interest. On the final cut, "Bouteille magnetique" (magnetic bottle), he produces a sound that seems for all the world to derive from guitar strings; how a bottle, magnetic or otherwise, in interaction with a cymbal created such tones is beyond me but the result is transfixing enough. Here's a kind of post-Bailey music that really works, perhaps in part due to its non-guitar nature? Lovely track, in any case and an album well worth your time.
- Brian Olewnick -

Vital Weekly
Work by Pascal Battus, as reviewed in Vital Weekly, is usually recorded in combination with others, for Battus is someone with a background in improvisation. His work is with people like Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Christine Shenaoui Abdelnour, Michael Johnsen or Jean-Luc Guionnet (to dig out some old Vital Weekly reviews). I am never sure what its that Battus, but on the first disc, ‘Simbol’, he realized recordings with ‘cymbals, using specific techniques which enable me to sustain the sound and allow pure frequencies selected from the cymbals’ upper partials to emerge’. The three pieces which result from this are excellent pieces of singing cymbals: rich in overtones, but without gliding into mediocre drones. Battus rubs against the skin of the listener, with occasional noise outbursts, high pierced tones, as well as singing bowls like chimes, and deep end bass sounds of the bigger cymbals. This is an excellent first disc.
The second disc is ‘close in spirit to improvisation, recordings often made at home in the heat of discovery, with no particular project in mind. Instant writings, unrefined yet complete and more or less unadulterated’. No instruments are mentioned for this disc and there are five pieces here. As said, no particular instruments. I think ‘Bouteille Magnetique’ is with a guitar. For the four other pieces its almost impossible to tell. I listen very carefully, and don’t know. Throughout this second disc, save for that guitar piece, a lot more noisy and direct than ‘Simbol’. I scribbled ‘tortured tuba’ for the first track. I really liked ‘Bouteille Magnetique’, but the other four pieces are a bit too improvised for my taste, and make this second disc more into a sort of bonus disc to the great ‘Simbol’ disc. Not bad, I’d say. One and a half great disc.
- Frans De Waard -

Improv-Sphere
Pour ce double CD publié par le label malaisien Herbal International, l'artiste Pascal Battus nous livre deux albums assez différents mais, selon les notes du musicien, guidés par le même geste heuristique. Ce geste consiste en une exploration électroacoustique du son, faite entre autres de détournements d'instruments, de sélections de fréquences, et de techniques étendues.

Ainsi, le premier album, Simbol, réunit trois pièces basées sur l'utilisation de la cymbale. Pascal Battus utilise des enregistrements de cymbales et sélectionne des fréquences pures et des harmoniques stables issues de ces enregistrements. Sur ces trois magnifiques pièces, les frontières sont complètement brouillées entre l'électronique et l'acoustique: on reconnait autant les cymbales que l'impossibilité d'obtenir naturellement un tel son, mais aussi entre l'improvisation et la composition: si l'évolution paraît spontanée, l'organisation des sons n'en semble pas moins nécessaire. Une technique surprenante qui nous amène dans un territoire très riche, entre noise et minimalisme, où la texture prend une ampleur et une profondeur démesurées et envoutantes. Car Pascal Battus sait disséquer le son avec une habileté singulière et surprenante, les fréquences choisies sont très justement sélectionnées et très intelligemment agencées. L'échantillonnage du son prend très vite une dimension spatiale et architecturale, les différentes textures sonores qui se succèdent, s'opposent et s'enchevêtrent, se soutiennent et se confrontent, se déploient toujours de manière optimale et atteignent dans ce déploiement une dimension sacrée et rituelle. Il y a comme une teinte de mysticisme et de spiritualité dans cet album, comme si ce geste heuristique était motivé par une sorte de panthéisme sonore ritualisé à travers une sacralisation du timbre.

Le deuxième CD, L’Unique Trait D'Pinceau, réunit cinq pièces beaucoup plus hétérogènes, mais aussi plus confuses et moins réussies. Les notes ne précisent pas quels instruments ou procédés sont utilisés, et il est souvent très difficile d'identifier les sources sonores: qu'elles soient mécaniques, numériques, acoustiques. Les frontières sont encore plus brouillées entre les différentes manières d'obtenir, de travailler et de créer un son quelconque. Par contre, les cinq pièces sont beaucoup plus clairement axées sur l'improvisation en tant que réaction spontanée, Battus prend des risques,explore et travaille de nombreux univers sonores de manière très singulière et personnelle, à travers des vents, des percussions, une guitare, des installations, et il semble réagir à un résultat incertain ou même inattendu parfois. Beaucoup moins profond que Simbol, ce deuxième disque réunit certainement trop de matières, ou bien travaille des idées floues pour l'auditeur. Ceci-dit, il y a des moments très riches, telle la première pièce qui explore un son proche d'un cuivre extraterrestre dans un jeu de dynamismes plutôt intense, ou la dernière qui travaille l'interaction entre le timbre de la guitare, le silence et le larsen, ces trois éléments étant apparemment indépendants l'un de l'autre durant cette piste. Mais ce qui se trouve entre ces deux pièces est plutôt inégal, parfois même ennuyeux, le ton n'est pas toujours assuré, et la recherche sonne comme un travail incertain, mal assumé. Pendant ces pièces, j'ai souvent été frustré, car il y a de nombreuses trouvailles riches et passionnantes, mais elles sont malheureusement trop peu développées et ne prennent pas assez de consistance, hormis sur la dernière piste.

Comme Frans de Waard (Vital Weekly 786), on peut prendre le deuxième disque comme un bonus, car il est certain que Simbol est LE véritable bijou de cette publication, un chef d’œuvre d'une profondeur et d'une richesse hors du commun, qui sait développer et déployer une texture sonore de manière abyssale grâce à des outils et des procédés assez réduits. Du coup, je trouve vraiment dommage que l'inventivité et le talent de Pascal Battus perdent en consistance durant L'Unique Trait D'Pinceau, aussi riche qu'évanescent. Difficile d'écrire sur ces pièces, un premier disque magnifique et merveilleux, proche de la perfection, et un deuxième groupe de pièces très originales certes, mais plutôt appauvries par des réflexes spontanées, par cette spontanéité à laquelle Battus accorde certainement trop d'importance. En tout cas, je recommande vraiment l'écoute de ce disque, au moins le premier, qui nous offre un paysage sonore absolument splendide, intense, spirituel, chaleureux, aventureux et inventif.
- Julian Heraud -

Monsieur Delire
Cet album double de l’artiste sonore Pascal Battus propose deux pièces très différentes. “Simbol” est une fascinante œuvre faites d’enregistrements de cymbales – trois mouvements de délices harmoniques. “L’Unique trait d’ pinceau” propose cinq parties beaucoup plus bruitistes, un bruit entre le grattement et la râclement, pas agréable du tout, exploré sous ses diverses facettes et entremêlés de pauses équivoques. J’ai beaucoup aimé le premier disque, très peu le second.

This double CD set from sound artist Pascal Battus features two highly different works. “Simbol” is a fascinating piece made with cymbal recordings – three movements of partial delights. The five-part
“L’Unique trait d’ pinceau” is much more noisy, in a range between a scratching sound and gritty sound, not enjoyable at all, and explored in all its aspects, with equivocal pauses interspersed. I really liked disc 1, but disliked disc 2.
- François Couture -

11XX Goh Lee Kwang:::: The Lost Testimony of Rashomon

Choreographed by Yukio Waguri (JP) & Lee Swee Keong (MY)
Original composition & sound by Goh Lee Kwang (MY).

1. Rain
2. The Spirit of Rashomon (excerpt, vbr mp3)
3. Masago - Extorting A Confession
4. The Witches
5. The Hair Stealer
6. The Judge (excerpt, vbr mp3)
7. Rashomon Stuck by Lighting

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
50 minutes+
Release date: Jan 2011
12 Euros + shipping order

Buy Digital

Related resources:
Also by Goh Lee Kwang
Goh Lee Kwang: Vice Versa
Goh Lee Kwang: Hands
Goh Lee Kwang: Draw Sound
Goh Lee Kwang: Good Vibrations

Review(s):

Cyclic Defrost

Music for a multimedia stage production loosely based on Rashomon, a short story about moral ambiguity written in 1915 but based on a thousand-year-old tale from a Japanese collection of thousand-year-old tales. It is far more well-known and celebrated around the world as a classic film by Akira Kurosawa, though he borrowed only the name and a fragment for his story about the subjectivity of memory.

Kuala Lumpur-based Goh Lee Kwang is one of southeast Asia´s most fascinating and prolific multimedia artists. He produced this score for Nyoba Kan, a postmodern dance company that ”showcases ugliness and indecency, while integrating it with philosophies of yoga, Buddhism, qigong, modern dance and other forms in its ongoing meditation on inner wisdom and universal compassion and mercy”. The Lost Testimony of Rashomon proves to have a life beyond the stage, as his ambient soundtrack relates the tale with vibrant detail and great restraint – Goh is otherwise not normally shy about making quite a racket. ´Rain´ and ´The Spirit of Rashomon´ are light and beneficent, but then things turn ugly. ´Masago – Extorting a Confession´ is twelve minutes of deliciously drawn out and tortured tones, death by a thousand cuts in stereo. Goh proceeds to ingeniously harness the muscle of Anglo-European industrial music in order to conjure a coven of ´Witches´ glimpsed distantly across wastelands and through thick fog. ´The Judge´ is a pitch black, unrelenting, stentorian rebuke; finally, a thunderstorm washes it all away.

When listening to music written specifically to accompany images on stage, screen or video monitor, the original story is reduced to fleeting shadows and the music is forced to recall its own version of events. Goh´s recording succeeds admirably as a vivid parallel cinema of sound.
- Stephen Fruitman -

Monsieur Delire

Voici la musique d’un spectacle de butoh de Lee Swee-Keong. Kwang utilise ici une esthétique bruitiste pour rendre l’expressionisme du butoh, danse lente aux gestes et expressions d’un tragique suramplifié. Incidemment, approché comme une œuvre musical en soi, The Lost Testimony of Rashomon est plus expressif et varié que la plupart des autres disques de Goh Lee Kwang, parce que moins conçu en fonction d’une idée, d’un mécanisme ou d’un modèle spécifique. Bref, on a droit ici à un Kwang étonnamment lyrique, toute relativité conservée.

This is the music for a butoh performance by Lee Swee-Keong. Kwang uses noise esthetics to translate the expressionism of butoh – a slow dance with overamplified tragic gestures. Incidentally, taken as a stand-alone musical work, The Lost Testimony of Rashomon is more expressive and diverse than most of Goh Lee Kwang’s other records, because it is less designed around a specific idea, mechanism or template. In other words, this is a surprisingly lyrical side of Kwang, in all relativity.
- Francois Couture -

1101 Jason Kahn:::: Beautiful Ghost Wave

The title "Beautiful Ghost Wave" occurred to me as I was composing the piece from different recordings I'd made in my studio during 2010. In order to keep track of all the working material I gave the different sound files names, and in this case "beautiful ghost wave" was one of them. This particular file struck me for the beauty of the peripheral sounds occurring, a kind of sonic aura hovering around the more central sounds in the recording. Thinking about this more I began to see this title as a model for the entire piece, where the partials of a sound, something analogous to "hearing between the sounds" (as in "reading between the lines") became the focus for my compositional choices.

Beyond all this "Beautiful Ghost Wave" is a bit of a departure for me in that it deals more with dramaturgy than other work of mine. I wanted to extend a sense of movement to the sounds and create a feeling of the piece expanding and contracting, both through dynamic modulation and an emphasis placed on spatiality in the stereo field. Although the piece retains a sense of forward movement and an allusion towards an impending resolution, I wanted the feeling for the listener to be of an open system, where the actual ending or further continuation of the piece beyond its actual cessation on the CD could be filled in, much as one fills in meaning when reading between the lines of a text.

I recorded the basic material using analog synthesizer, mixing board, contact microphones, short wave radio and electromagnetic coils. The recording was made with microphones placed in front of the loudspeakers and in the room directly behind where I was sitting, thus lending a sense of acoustics to the sounds I generated and recording my movement as I made these sounds. These recordings were then edited and used to compose with on the computer.

Jason Kahn
Zürich
December
2010

(excerpt, vbr mp3)

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
30 minutes+
Release date: Jan 2011
12 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Musically connected
Goh Lee Kwang:::: Good Vibrations

Geographically connected
Murmer:::: Frame Work 1 - 4

Review(s):
Vital Weekly
Now here's a change. Over the years we have learned to appreciate the music of Jason Kahn as something that is minimal, slowly moving music composed using percussion and analogue synthesizer. Drone like, introspective, derived from slowly unfolding improvisations - alone or in combination with others. This is not the case on 'Beautiful Ghost Wave'. Still at his disposal is the analog synthesizer but also a mixing board, contact microphones, short wave radio and electromagnetic coils. Kahn goes noise here. This thirty seven some minute work is divided into various movements (as one track), separated with acoustic rumbling - Kahn recorded this work through a microphone in front of his speakers and from the room directly behind - I assume the latter is when he uses only those. Feedback like, noise based sounds, static hiss and such like rule this work, which has a much more dramatic play than much of his previous work, if not all of his previous work. Kahn fans will be alarmed I guess. Its not the kind of blast of noise that say someone like Merzbow would do - maybe that would have been the work if it was directly taped from the mixing board - but it has a distinct different quality that makes it quite good and also different from the other trouble makers. I guess it has to do with the amount of variations Kahn employs in this work and the somewhat curious way of recording it, bringing in a certain amount of acoustic noise. An excellent work and a brave move for Kahn. Hopefully to be followed by more such work.
- Frans de Waard -

Just Outside
I've doubtless simply been missing one or more plies of Kahnian activity in the past couple of years, but recent examples of his work that I've heard show a decided step away from what I'd come to think of as his sound-world: insistent (one might say, obsessive) percussion-centered rhythms augmented by pitch-shifting devices. Along with the recent disc on balloon & needle, this one finds him more positioned in the broken electronics school, albeit with a fairly steady substratum that may indeed refer back to his earlier concerns.

Kahn, in his notes, mentions the piece having "a sense of forward movement" and indeed it does, pretty much hurtling through its length in a welter of acid-drenched electronics, scouring one's ears as it does so. It's very rapid. When it relaxes, it's with a sense of re-coiling, amassing energy for a further assault. But as with the drones above, there's always a level of detail that keeps me absorbed; I always have the sense that there's parts I'm not hearing, that remain to be discovered. That's a good thing.
- Brian Olewnick -

The Watchful Ear
Hmm, now this one has been a bit of a surprise… While certainly not uniformly the case, recent solo material by Jason Kahn has been mostly linear in form, often softly drone-like and layered. The title of this new release on the Herbal label, Beautiful Ghost Wave certainly pointed me in that direction as well, but on playing the CD I was surprised to find it a far harsher, seemingly wilder affair. In the liner notes that accompany the disc, Kahn mentions that this single thirty-seven minute track “deals more with dramaturgy than other work of mine”. Certainly while an element of the drone is still there, plenty more in the way of sudden events are present here than on Kahn’s other solo work.

The music here was constructed by Kahn on a computer using a number of soundfiles pulled together throughout 2010. While the final composition has been digitally collaged together, a range of analogue based electroacoustic elements were used to forge the source material- Kahn’s familiar analogue synth, contact mics, shortwave radio and electromagnetic coils. The sounds then are mostly not that beautiful, ghostly or wave-like and are often more ugly, direct and abrasive. Recently Kahn has been working from time to time with various members of the South Korean improv scene, and the edgy, harshly scoured textures of that small scene’s music definitely seems to inform the music here. It is indeed often quite dramatic, not only through the forceful nature of some of the more full-on, noisy sections that we are presented with but also through the sudden jump cuts that occur here and there as Kahn’s composition leaves viciously abrasive sounds hanging in mid air.

The sensation provided by the music is one of danger and nervousness. If the more gradually layered and softer finished sounds of Kahn’s more familiar work leans itself towards a more predictable, if very beautiful air, so the sounds on this CD feel erratic, on the edge of breaking down. Easy listening it certainly isn’t and in places the music touches on what might be referred to as the noise genre, with fiercely scoured fields rubbing themselves quite severely over small shrieking synth sounds and screeching feedback-esque slithers. It shifts gear frequently and abruptly, and doesn’t allow you to rest and relax while listening. Beautiful Ghost Wave is unsettlingly brash, almost bullying the listener rather than embracing them, not the kind of music to listen to on a quiet evening alone.

The move away from gradually building drones is a welcome one for me. The appropriation of the harder, often quite brutal sound palette also works well but only because it is arranged so nicely into the acutely divided, often violently juxtaposed brackets. In the past the group of Swiss improvisers that Jason Kahn was aligned with were often accused of making easy, flowing music that demanded less of the listener. I personally never saw all that much to agree with in that appraisal, but this new album blows away any doubts all the same. Bracing, bit not purely adrenalin fuelled stuff, this is a very nice and thoroughly welcome new feel to Jason Kahn’s music.
- Richard Pinnell -

Improv-Sphere
Le label malaisien de Goh Lee Kwang nous offre régulièrement des recherches électroacoustiques de qualité et originales, et le dernier Jason Kahn - Beautiful ghost wave - ne déroge pas à cette règle. Après de nombreux enregistrements teintés de minimalisme, voire de formalisme ou de conceptualisme, cette nouvelle œuvre du compositeur suisse a quelque chose de plus rude et âpre, de plus brutal et frontal. L'atmosphère toujours saturée de cette unique pièce d'une trentaine de minutes est proche des productions harsh noise par certains aspects: une matière sonore parfois très agressive et une énergie virulente. Sauf que Jason Kahn ne se contente pas de superposer un maximum de fréquences inaudibles dans le seul but de former un mur de bruit blanc censé être joué le plus fort possible, afin de faire réagir l'auditeur de manière purement physique et épidermique. Au contraire, le traitement minimaliste que Jason Kahn pratiquait antérieurement sur les matières sonores l'amène aujourd'hui à juxtaposer les sons de manière très sensible, en accordant une place capitale à leur interaction et à leur mouvement respectif. Beautiful ghost wave est tout d'abord fondée sur une seule fréquence/bourdon(-nement) qu'on peut percevoir presque sans interruption du début à la fin, puis viennent se greffer des vagues successives, hétéroclites et dissemblables qui ne s'entrechoquent qu'avec délicatesse. Car ce compositeur suisse sait apprécier les sons à leur juste valeur, il leur laisse toujours le temps de se déployer, de vivre et de s'intégrer à la structure globale du morceau; de même l'apparition de chaque évènement sonore est minutieusement déterminée afin que jamais le changement ne soit trop brusque, ou tout au moins qu'il ne noie pas ce qui se passait précédemment. Cependant, Kahn n'hésite pas non plus à utiliser de nombreux contrastes dans les timbres ainsi que des reliefs au niveau de l'intensité, plusieurs fois, tension et saturation se résolvent presque dans le silence, puis de nouveaux éléments se superposent progressivement dans un mouvement incessant et éternel (peut-être est-ce pourquoi nous ne sommes pas face à une énième production électroacoustique aussi violente que soporifique).
Une pièce vraiment intéressante, riche et créative, qui laisse place à la sensibilité quand bien même elle se meut sur un territoire d'une violence austère.
- Julien Héraud -

Monsieur Delire
Une pièce solo étonnante de la part de Jason Kahn. Il s’agit d’une construction studio à partir d’enregistrements faits à l’aide de synthé analogique, console de mixage, micros contact, radio ondes-courtes et bobines magnétiques. Aussi bruitiste qu’à son habitude, mais beaucoup plus bruyante que ses travaux d’improvisation et beaucoup moins formaliste que ses travaux de composition (comme Vanishing Point). On sent même une pointe de théâtralité dans le flot de la pièce, assez prenante. Dans le genre “orchestration de sons bruitistes”, c’est très réussi. Kahn, toujours si mesuré, fait preuve ici d’une spontanéité rare (ou du moins donne cette impression).

A surprising solo piece from Jason Kahn. This is a studio construct from recordings made using analog synth, mixing board, contact mikes, shortwave radio and magnetic coils. As noise-based as usual, but quite noisier than his free improvisation outings and a lot less formalist than his composition work (like Vanishing Point). He even dabs in drama with how the piece flows - quite gripping. In terms of “orchestration of noise sounds”, this works out really well. The always poised Kahn here displays a new level of spontaneity (or at least gives this impression).
- Francois Couture -

Music Emissions
Jason Kahn is an alchemist who seems to prefer using the radio wave as a starting ingredient for his melancholy buy meaty sounds. "Beautiful Ghost Wave" wanders in and among sounds both harsh, subtle, conceived and eavesdropped upon. For those who are either unfamiliar with ambient noise or tired of it, the emotional power of this single 37 minute song will be refreshing and inspiring.

There is the familiar variation of tone and volume, the silences used strategically, the pulse serving as a sort of rhythm section, a base for tangents and explorations common in ambient electronica or noise, but Kahn uses them in surprising ways; maybe it is the use or implied use of radio waves, a kind of found sound and field recording at once, that gives this piece an organic, slightly acoustic feel; there is a warmth and immediacy missing from similar tonal explorations. There is an artist who is being affected by the sounds being created here; this is what makes "Beautiful Ghost Wave" an emotional experience.

The recording, according to Kahn, "was made with microphones placed in front of the loudspeakers and in the room directly behind where I was sitting, thus lending a sense of acoustics to the sounds I generated and recording my movement as I made these sounds. These recordings were then edited and used to compose with on the computer." Usually such explanations are as close as electronic compositions come to a human element. Not so with Jason Kahn's latest. This has the warm, passionate feel of an artist intimate with and invested in its seemingly random tones.
- Mike Wood -

Felthat Reviews
New York-born Jason Kahn has been growing up in LA and now relocated to Zuerich, treads since 1990's the path of multi-dimensional artist revolving around sound design and sound installations derived from the colliding percussive elements which he grounded as being a percussionist himself originally with electronic sounds based on granular analogue modulations, radio frequency shifts with the edge of lo-fi DIY guerilla filtered through cautious and elaborate editing. His work for Herbal International from Malaysia bears an imprint of losing time sequenced layering and broken loop of time continuum. The feel and the edge to it owes a lot to Jason's past sound installations and energetic but not agressive electro-acoustic well controlled noisey improvisation. Dense and refined through digital processing gives no chance to get bored with the composition which lasts a little bit over 40 minutes which is just exactly what I needed this morning.
- Hubert Napiórski -

1006 Zbigniew Karkowski / Kelly Churko :::: Infallibilism

All Tracks recorded live
Track 1 Recorded August 12, 2008 at Super Deluxe, Nishi Azabu by Cal Lyall.
Track 2 Recorded May 3, 2008 at Soup, Ochiai by Taro Noguchi.
Track 3 Recorded September 28, 2008 at Soup, Ochiai by Taro Noguchi.
Track 4 Recorded February 8, 2009 at Roots, Keonji by in-house sound engineer .

Edited at Higashi-Nakano, Tokyo.
Mastered at C Squared, Los Angeles, California.

Thanks to www.kenaxis.com for software.

Artwork & design by Yoko.

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
30 minutes+
Release date: Sept 2010
12 Euros + shipping order

Review(s):
Monsieur DelireUn disque court (30 minutes) offrant quatre pièces enregistrées à trois occasions. Un duo ultra-bruitiste - la manière de Karkowski est bien connu: un mur de bruit blanc. Mais Infallibilism est un disque coup de poing, très puissant, douloureux mais chirurgical dans ses interventions sur nos émotions et perceptions. Du solide.
A short album (30 minutes) featuring four pieces recorded on three separate occasions. An ultra-noisy duo - we all know Karkowski’s modus operandi: a wall of white noise. Infallibilism is goes straight to the guts. A very powerful record, painful but its interventions attack our feelings and perceptions with surgical precision. Strong stuff.
- Francois Couture -

Paris TransatlanticNo need to tell you who Karkowski is – anyone who's spent time listening to computerized harshness will be familiar with his no-nonsense, chip-on-a-shoulder attitude and a handful of good to almost great recordings – but I had to google to find out that Churko is a (younger) Canadian based in Japan who's worked with artists as diverse as Ilios, Tim Olive, Harris Eisenstadt and Paal Nilssen Love. Infallibilism, recorded live in Japan from May 2008 through February 2009, is exactly what you would expect: 32-plus minutes of white (grey, black and pink..) noise and crazed fragments of granular ball-gripping distortion – the lone exception being the subterranean tremors of "The Pleasure Of Interval" – with the customary threat for the ears if you try to raise the volume a bit more than necessary. Not an overly shocking record, but definitely up to standard in a genre that needs serious homework to be considered worthy of respect. Test passed.
- Massimo Ricci -

Vital WeeklyFour tracks - Track one.. "sustained pressure", very harsh (whiteish) noise overload. beautiful torrent .. two .. "subjective probability". Partly similar part disconnected hum three. "The pleasure of the interval". Begins with very low bass & volume hum and glitches building or morphing into drone gong and ending in glicthy high pitched noises. Four .., "de-vein". industrial air conditioners fairly static process of filtering to lower frequencies very unlike track 1's incoherence. All these we are told are live tracks, but makes little difference as with the exception of the first track the hand or mind, sub conscious (or not) is clearly at work, perhaps under the guise or old pretext of being "experimental" or psychological or psycho-acoustic or even 'industrial' surrealism.. there is sufficient 'surface' - as in made surface or space - authorship- to attach a label . 'Not that there is anything wrong with that' proviso added here, if you want 'music' of some sort then its to be found easily with the exception of track one. I suppose why you would want to find music is your own thing, and as such should be respected, but as someone said somewhere else - liberal toleration is a form of totalitarianism just like anything else, the failure of metaphysics was more than an act of enlightened integrity but gave the chance of religiosity to re-emerge unchallenged, as such I suppose those who prefer tracks two, three, and four should be dragged screaming from their houses and burnt alive?
- Jliat -

1005-2 Eric La Casa:::: W2 [1998-2008]

"We think that we « make a journey » but soon enough it's the journey that makes – and unmakes - us." (Nicolas Bouvier, "l'usage du monde")

When I listen today to these pieces, I hear, of course, a geographic inventory of all the places I encountered. Above all, though, and as if by default, I hear the sonic journal of twelve years spent recording sound.

My relation to the sites wasn't based on a desire to « document » but it is worth noting, however, that a « sound story », more trivial perhaps, has instituted itself, expanding and commenting on my musical journey: that of a man listening.

Moreover, it has never seemed more obvious to me that listening is always situated in what I would qualify as the extreme present, that is, the instant when listening, landscape and time become one.

Bouvier was right : the more we journey, the more the journey transforms us. Fascinated by water and by wind, these agents of transformation, activators of change, became, during those twelve years, my principal, almost exclusive, subjects, wherever I happened to be. Progressively, a methodology, informed by cartography, gave my way of working a certain determinism without, however, breaking my intuitive relationship with the landscape. This also informed my conception of that which is sonic (le sonore), and its importance: being inside, at the very heart of movement. Listening, without drawing breath, led me beyond my preconceptions – and into the depths also, along with all my recording gear: I remember very well my fall into the cold water of a waterfall's plunge pool. That was in 1991...

Listening to water or to wind is to bring one's attention to bear on the perpetual motion of things, a living alchemy, the pulsing of the world.

Eric La Casa, Summer 2010

WATER
1. Les pierres du seuil part 4
2. Les pierres du seuil part 5
An exploration of the wide variety of water territories (from droplets in a cave to powerful ocean waves), in two movements, forming a single composition.
3. Les pierres du seuil part 2
At the emergence of a body of water and air, an effervescence
4. S'ombre part 1
The alchemy of water and stone, summer
5. Spirale 3
The geophony of a river : a meandering journey, marked out by windmills
6. Les oscillations part 2
Waves, oscillations .... an opening up of the landscape
7. L'Inspir du rivage part 2
Ressac... when the sea and the rocks come together
Total running time : 74 minutes

WIND
1. Dans le feuillage du lointain, la clameur d'un bruissement
At the boundary with background noise, an ineffable tumult
2. Les pierres du seuil part 6
Listening to the wind's journey through the landscape
3. Quelque chose de cela, le désert part 1-2
A distressed wind in a still life landscape
4. Les pierres du seuil part 8
A factory entrance, air expelled by machines
5. L'air au fond rouge
The density of air, a city's distant rumbling
6. Les aubes sont navrantes
A false northern landscape, cold and hostile... a drama
Total running time : 75 minutes

Credits
Water
1. (1999)
2. (1999) from "Les Pierres du seuil 4-7" CD . Edition… (USA). September 2000
3. (1998)
4. (1999) excerpts from "The stone of the threshold" CD. Groundfault Recordings (USA). November 1999
5. (2003) Unreleased. Commissioned by The River House [?] at Saint-Georges-de-Montaigu (France)
6. (2004) excerpt from "Les Oscillations part 1&2" CD. Fringes Recordings (Italia). May 2005
7. (1999) from Explorer series, 7". Production : Povertech (USA). September 1999

Wind
1. (1998) from "The sound of nature - the nature of sound" compilation. Kaon (France), July 2001
2. (2000) from "Les Pierres du seuil 4-7" CD . Edition… (USA). September 2000
3. (2000) from "Quelque chose de cela, le désert part 1-3". Collection Mémoires (France), May 1999
4. (2001) Unreleased. Originally composed for Halana magazine (USA)
5. (2001) from "Sul" compilation, a tribute to Chris Marker. Sirr.records (Portugal), June 2002
6. (2008) excerpt. Unreleased. Originally composed for Clédat & Petitpierre's performance

Locations [1994 - 2007]
France
Water
Ardèche (steps in the Pissevieille brook / rain on a car / summer rain)
Athee-sur-cher (river Cher in full spate)
Bedoues (river Tarn)
Berry (oozing in a watertank)
Bruxelles, Belgium (machine for rinsing out photographs)
Choisy-le-roy (artificial rain in an industrial zone)
Crotelles (Rain, under an umbrella / brook and brook pipe)
Darnetal (rain on container)
Dieppe (music school organ)
Dunkerque (swelling sea with lighthouse / dunes / sand in wind)
Dunkerque-Sollac (air-cooler / ore in motion)
Epeigné-sous-bois (outflows in trenches and reverberating pipes / water, air bubbles, at the edge of a field)
Grenoble (wall dripping in the 102 venue , during a soundcheck for Cellule Metamkine)
Haute-Savoie (Nant Bruyant brook / violent rain on a car)
Hennequeville ("tubular sea" / heavyflood-tide on a concrete platform)
Le Semnoz (rain falling on a small covered market)
Lozere (Gorges of the river Tarn)
Nouvellière (in a farm, rain after a storm,)
Paris (hail on window / rain and storm in inner courtyard / oozing in a tunnel / outflow in inner pipe / the Ircam anechoic chamber : hand sliding on skin and microphone in mouth ) Paris (in a cemetery, rain, under an umbrella)
Plaisians (foot in dried herbs)
Pordic (distant helicopter / wind in a cornfield )
Port Jehan (waves and peebles)
Vendée (the "Grande Maine" and "Petite Maine" rivers)

Wind
Céré-la-ronde (in a wood)
Choisy-Le-Roi (airplane flying overhead, water cleaning station : electrical waves, water-pump engines / ventilations)
Dieppe (music school : organ)
Dunkerque-Sollac (ore in motion / foundries / hot rolling mills / blast furnaces)
Epeigné-sous-bois (in an oak forest)
Hennequeville (North Sea)
Lussault-sur-loire (fir forest / grinder in the distance / a windy day in a forsaken house / a stormy )
Montlouis (a stormy night / train in the distance)
near Neuil (a forsaken farm)
Paris (Salpetriere chapel and Notre-Dame-des-champs church : organs played by Jean-Luc Guionnet / portable DAT recorder motor / Strasbourg-St-Denis metro station : electrical waves / seeds in motion)
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges (empty goods trains)

and three locations in Europe :
Water
Rovinj, Croatia (lightning / rain and storm in an inner courtyard / rain on an open window frame / along the sea shore)

Wind
Rovinj, Croatia (inner courtyard and wind under door / thirty-story tower, radio waves / strong wind in marina)
Anvers, Belgium (a pedestrian tunnel and elevator)
Dundee, Scotland (in the harbour)

2 x Audio CD
140 minutes+
Release date: November 2010
18 Euros + shipping order

Related resources:
Also by Eric La Casa
Eric La Casa / Cédric Peyronnet: La Creuse
 
Musically connected
murmer :::: frame work 1 - 4
Lasse-Marc Riek :::: Harbour

Geographically connected
Battus / Marchetti / Petit: La Vie Dans Les Bois  
Eric Cordier / Seijiro Murayama: Nuit
Pascal Battus: Simbol / L'Unique Trait D' Pinceau
Jean Luc-Guionnet / Pascal Battus: Toc Sine
Jean-Luc Guionnet: Non Organic Bias
Eric Cordier: Osorezan

Review(s):
The Silent Ballet
April showers bring May flowers. That's what makes this time of year a perfect time to experience W2. For Americans who may be thinking, "W2 is the the name of my tax form, due April 15," there's no need to worry; this W2 is one disc of Water and one disc of Wind.
Eric La Casa has been making elemental field recordings for over a decade. Most of the tracks here have been previously released, which makes this project a sort of "greatest hits" compilation. Not that anyone is likely to say, "this 1999 track is obviously outdated; today's rain is so much better." Thankfully, the recording quality is consistent throughout. The sounds are crisp and three-dimensional, never isolated to a single speaker.
Those who are only familiar with field recordings due to relaxation tapes and sound effects are in for a surprise. The letdown of those recordings is that they manage to make nature sound bland and benign. Consider for example the various "sleep boxes", with settings for "gentle rain", "heavy rain", "wind" and "waves". Most of these are simple variations on white noise, with no discernible beginning, middle or end. The thunderstorm discs are especially maddening, reducing the EQ until the frightening becomes flat.
Now think back to some of the memorable storms of your own life: a windstorm that shook the rafters and toppled the oak in the front yard. A sudden hailstorm that dented the mailbox. A lightning storm that began with a rogue strike. A flash flood that cleared the beach. A hurricane that knocked out power, and its quiet, subtle eye. You may remember what some of these sounded like; you may wish you'd found some way to capture them.
This is exactly what La Casa manages to do, in tracks that range in length from three to twenty minutes. He records the sound of droplets in a cave, reverberating pipes, the sea by a lighthouse, flood tides on concrete, even "artificial rain in an industrialized zone"; a blast furnace, electrical waves, seeds in motion, wind beneath a door. The artist intentionally selects a variety of locations and sound sources, increasing his range of aural treasures. One suspects he's also performed a bit of studio manipulation in order to produce coherent tracks - either that, or he can run really fast between sound sources. Other noises pop up from time to time - a dog, a factory, a helicopter - but these are wisely kept in the mix, as they provide an extra serving of territorial grit, operating in the same manner as guest instruments at a concert.
Fans of instrumental music will likely be led to make structural comparisons. The architecture of these pieces often simulates that of post-rock, which itself imitates the classical: ebbs and flows, anticipatory builds and cathartic climaxes, quiet-loud-quiet-louder still. But it's fair to say that the wind and water came first. Years ago, before reviewers began to compare dramatic music to soundtracks, they compared symphonies to storms. So perhaps here we are hearing echoes of the first music: the Spirit of God, like a mighty wind, moving over the face of the deep. This primordial essence is W2's secret strength: on the surface, it's just water and wind, but at its essence, it's wild and unknowable.
- Richard Allen -

Just Outside
I am, unfortunately, only minimally familiar with La Casa's previous work, so I have little direct idea how this set fits in though given that the recordings selected here were apparently amassed over some period of time, I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't more or less representative. Whatever the case, they're marvelous and present, at least in part, the other extreme, where the field recordings are all that is the case, however much they've been processed, layered, etc. (which I'm assuming is often the case here, though I could be wrong).
Two discs, one of water sounds, one of wind. Why they sound so fantastic is, as I said above, rather like figuring out why an Eggleston snapshot is similarly so. The choices made, obviously--picking this set of sounds as opposed to that one, the sculpting involved, the ability to focus the observer on one or several foci (the amazing, metallic resonances in "Les pierres de seuil, part 5" on the water disc, for example). The sheer drama of the moment (or contrived moment), what La Cassa, in his notes, refers to as the "sound story". The wind disc immediately offers sounds that seem more wind-caused than purely aeolian. But so, so full and...windy. And, I must say, an awful lot of drama. The arc and tension of these pieces may betray the compositional actions taken but they're so finely limned, one doesn't care. Describing them seems fruitless--something about the wind tracks is very special, maybe their sheer presence and seemingly endless variation within the form. Difficult to say; they seem to sum up the gist of an entire slice of the world, maybe the way Eggleston's teenage employee pushing a shopping cart manages to sum up his.
Among the best of this area that I've heard.
- Brian Olewnick -

The Wire
Compositions using field recordings of wind and water are ten a penny these days. As portable digital recording equipment falls in price, it feels like every other new release attempts to document natural soundworlds and turn them into music. So given their current ubiquity it would take a particularly fine set of such recordings to grab the attention. W2, a collection of pieces gathered together over the decade between 1998 and 2008 by French field recordist Eric La Casa is just that.
Eric La Casa notes on the two CDs included here, one containing water sounds, the other wind, he does not seek to document nature as much as his personal journey through what he describes as a sound story. Certainly the narrative found in the 14 tracks here, the sense of drama flowing through them, sets La Casa's work apart. Just five minutes into the opening track on the Water disc, as a crash of thunder cuts across streams of running water recordings, the music becomes more than just documentation - it takes on an almost symphonic form. From the thunderous force of water thrashing against stone on "S'Ombre Part 1", to the seething effervescence of fierce rushes of air on "L'Air Au Fond Rouge", these 14 compositions are alive and present in the room. It is testament to La Casa's sound choices and his placement of them into simple but highly effective structures that these tracks feel so fresh and exciting. If the composer's journey has a tale to tell, it is full of twists and turns, one minute vibrant and colourful, the next quite bleak and hostile, as with some of the more sombre recordingd on the Wind disc.
Rather than merely presenting audio snapshots of nature, La Casa's work over the last decade reflects something of the human condition in the environment that surrounds us. A beautiful collection of pieces from a vast and significant body of work, W2 engages the listener far beyond documentary voyeurism. A personal journey for La Casa maybe, but it is impossible to listen and not be swept along its path.
- Richard Pinnell -

Crow With No Mouth













Eric La Casa has spent 12 years listening to the wild, 10 of them documented on his 2010 2-CD release W2. With acutely attuned ears and intuitively placed microphones, La Casa focused from 1998 to 2008 nearly exclusively on the sounds of water and wind. He describes his work as improvisations with the sonic locale, less interested than many of his contemporaries in capturing and evoking a location, more interested in what he calls, variously, the pulsing of the world, an ineffable tumult, and the alchemy of water and stone. You won't be far into W2's chronicle of La Casa's last decade of traveling, listening, and recording, before you are pole-axed by the drama, intensity and elegance of what he heard. Some of the pieces own tensions and frissons akin to any orchestral works I could cite; several are laminal and offer an envelopment rivaling that of machine-made drone works. How does La Casa create work so distinct from mere field recordists? I couldn't tell you, but I can offer a few reflections that arose as I listened to W2 with the best suspension of discriminating between instrumental music/location recordings I could muster.

Like Snyder's immersive and immediate effects when he writes about the elemental, La Casa has a sensibility and approach that regards all that he records [and shapes with some post-production] as alive, sentient, and thus co-equal with the poet/sound artist. In other words, he is pointing his mics with a specific, from my perspective, rarified, state of listening. Beyond technical protocol, La Casa writes, listening becomes tied up in the surfaces of the world. What a fantastic articulation of the sort of mind it requires to hear the constant music in the natural world. While Snyder obviously cultivated, in part, his attunement to the music of water, wind and stones with formal zen training, La Casa's words might as well be a page from a similar sutra - Listening is always situated in what I would qualify as the extreme present, he
said in one interview, the instant when listening, landscape and time become one.

















wind - void - word


The two CDs bear the rubrics Wind and Water; you will hear both forces on both CDs, even, occasionally, humans and machines. The ineffable tumult La Casa references is pervasive across both discs; these are not recordings offering a tamed natural world, much less a soporific one. There are startling moments of hell-raising racket [there is, as well, the percussive play of the plinks and droplets of water's small, patterned sounds, and some assuaging, at least temporarily, breezes]. It is the wind disc, however, that most strongly evokes for me the idea of La Casa's orchestration of the rawest elements - while the water disc offers a range of sounds from pointillistic [droplets] to thunderously symphonic [great cataracts and torrents are loosed!], the wind music is terrifyingly forceful at times, impossible to gild with romantic or lyrical associations. La Casa shapes the high-pressured, gathering power of a wind storm like a hair-raising, ascending orchestral work. In one piece the wind is exciting and agitating some sort of metal structure, and the resultant protesting groans and howls of metal, well, bring that aforementioned pole-axing I promised.














Your water is light/to my mouth

The water music La Casa presents from various locales reveals how inadequate a descriptor
water music really is; most such signifiers strain to convey what a sound sounds like - words like location recording, electro-acoustic improvisation, modern classical, et. al. La Casa's water music, in other words, owns such a vast range of sources and sonics, how could they all be contained in water? You are presented with sections and movements of engorged rivers, rain pelts, cave-reverbed drips and plonks, oscillations and waves that sing and cease altogether. La Casa's contemporaries, at least those who approach this level of richness, sonic diversity and uncontrived drama, are Toshiya Tsunoda, Chris Watson and, with a gusto akin to both Snyder and La Casa, Jeph Jerman. In literature, there is Gary Snyder, the poet who, as he put it long ago, moves in and makes home in the whole.

I wanted to say something about Snyder's deep connectedness to the elemental by drawing attention to his most lived-in face; his incantatory poetry speaks for itself. I also wanted to say something about how disconnected most of us who listen to this music are from the practice of the wild, at least a practice that includes actual exposure to the elements heard in La Casa's music. Perhaps another time I can write about the strangeness of our listening to the heaving, pulsing cataracts of the natural world through stereo speakers, rather than being engraved, as both Snyder and La Casa are, with the sources of this music. Some of us clearly want to be moved by these forces, seeking them in the music and poetry of these watchful and elegant minds. Eric La Casa's W2 is essential, elemental music, give it your ears.
- Jesse Goin -

Monsieur Delire
Eric La Casa est l’un des grands artistes de l’enregistrement de terrain (field recording). W2 est une compilation double regroupant les essentiels de sa production de la dernière décennie, sous deux thèmes: l’eau (disque 1) et le vent (disque 2). Un généreux menu de prises de son délicates, riches, composées avec soin, où les mystifications sonores se glissent entre nos oreilles au lieu de survenir. Notons particulièrement la présence de plusieurs pièces de la série “Les pierres du seuil” (à l’origine sur The Stones of the Threshold et Les Pierres du seuil 4-7). Et trois inédites. À déguster quelques-unes à la fois en immersion totale, ou en fond sonore continu, question de se dépayser.

Eric La Casa is one of the greatest field recording artists out there. W2 is a 2-CD compilation of his essential works of the last decade, organized into two themes: water (disc 1) and wind (disc 2). A generous helping of delicate, rich sound art works composed with care, where sonic mystifications quietly slip inside your ear instead of marching in or deafening you with surprise. I’ll point out the inclusion of several pieces from the “Les pierres du seuil” series (originally published on The Stones of the Threshold and Les Pierres du seuil 4-7). And three previously unreleased tracks. Immerse yourself into a few at a time, or use as background music to alter your environment.
- Francois Couture -

Vital Weekly
This double disc is a collection in at least two ways. Firstly its a collection of pieces that have been released before on various compilations and secondly they are thematically grouped. On the first CD we find pieces that deal with water sounds and on the second pieces of wind sounds. All of that to be taken literally. For many years Eric LaCasa has recorded sounds of water and wind, and built pieces out of that. How he does that is not entirely clear, I must say, but no doubt I said that before. Is a piece of music here a straight recording of water running down the stream, or wind blowing through tree tops, or is it a combination of sounds, mixed together to make a piece of music? That's the question, and my best guess at answering that question is that its the latter. The water disc has pieces recorded from streams, but perhaps also rain and/or a combination of both. Its not easy, I must admit, to enjoy these discs. The water pieces at one point made me want to run for the toilet. A bit more variation, such as short and curiously EQ-ed 'Les Oscillations Part 1', was perhaps needed to be the perfect counterpart to the water pieces. In that respect the wind CD is much more interesting. Here too I am a bit clueless as to what I am actually hearing, but the wind seems to be moving objects around - objects of origins unknown obviously - and there are other noises moving around too, like street sounds, car passing and other motorized objects. This makes the whole disc more varied and when you don't look at the CD display, it almost makes a seventy minute soundscape piece, slowly moving from section to section. This 'Wind' disc is pretty damn fine listening experience, perhaps more mysterious than the 'Water' disc, or maybe more 'obscure' is the appropriate way to say that. Mixed feelings here about the whole thing, but throughout quite enjoyable.
- Frans De Waard -

Felthat Reviews
Really taken aback by the possibilities of rejuvenating and processing the field recordings I had a stroll with Eric's La Casa new cd from Herbal International which sets yet another groundbreaking frontier for further development of musique concrete genre in new context.
Eric is just but a few of the field recordist along with Marchetti, John Grinzich,and a few others who really transmutates the very thin tissue of raw sounds into soundscapic scenario of impossible possibilities and curves it down to the limit so the listener doesn't really distinguish the "road itself" from "the road taken". As in the quote from Nicholas Bouvier brought back by Eric himself - the journey we make unmakes us - in this sense unmakes the perceptive process to a point of great sensitivity.
It may sound a bit pretentious but these recordings do really investigate our listening process - so dim and blank overwhelmed by the magnitude of invading means of today's culture, that you may find a totally different angle of getting yourself to NOTICE what's been all around you...really important collection of music.
- Hubert Napiórski -