A shot of the stage of Heiner Goebbels‘s human-free performance work at Lincoln Center, Stifters Dinge: “first presented in 2007 at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland, is teasingly described in the program as a composition for five pianos with no pianists, a play with no actors, a performance without performers,” writes Anthony Tommasini in his New York Times review.
Full article at nytimes.com. More at lincolncenter.org.
Non-denominational holiday music — Akira Rabelais‘s contribution to that growing field is available for free download through Christmas (MP3). The track is a mix of material that originated on his album Spellewauerynshere, which was a set of processed renditions of recordings of traditional Icelandic vocal music released a few years back on David Sylvian’s label, Samadhisound. The originals were reportedly haunting unto themselves, and in Rabelais’s hands they’re turned into ghost images — haunting wisps heard at a remove, and almost lost in the wind, all of which lends them an exaggerated sense of endangerment and fragility. They’re perhaps as close to an aura as you’re likely to hear this season.
More on the release at ambientblog.podbean.com.
Some of the best music by Alan Morse Davies has involved taking pre-existing melodramatic audio recordings and rendering something new from them — something glacial and introspective. Often as not, that source music has had at its core the maudlin-sweet sounds of orchestral strings, including reworked pop tunes of old, and classical recordings.
For his own original composition of minimalist orchestral music, “Night Falls Fast,” Davies turned the formula on its head; in constructing the piece, which is full of tersely piping horns and mesmerizingly percussive strings. He has, in essence, applied orchestral resources to the logic of techno (MP3). Staccato beats drop in as if triggered by a step sequencer. Strings jut in and out with an unnerving level of rigor. (This is true of the first half of the piece — after which there is a vocal movement, and one more inspired by impressionism than minimalism.)
“Night Falls Fast” was composed in 2005 for the Milwaukee Ballet and choreographer John Utan, and what’s heard in this recent upload by Davies is a variation on the original material. The ballet was recently performed in Hong Kong, and heads to Monaco in 2010.
More details at alanmorsedavies.wordpress.com.
Come over noise fans, whole lotta static going on. The new record Circuits Channel Airs by Souns (aka Michael Red) is a tour of every corner of every room and of every noise-emitting device at a Co-op Radio Facility in Vancouver. It’s a ghost’s tour, with Red/Souns having done his best to remove himself from the premises. As he writes in a lengthy liner note, “The intent was to collect only non-human sounds, so I used a very ‘hands off’ approach. If I ever touched a piece of gear while recording, it was with the most minimal assertion — moving a switch or nob one piece at a time, with as little intention or energy behind the movement as possible.” The record consists of six tracks, which in the detailed liner notes are annotated, to the second, listing where and what is being recorded. For example, track 4 (“Main Floor. Stereo Box Airs,” MP3) is:
c) 0:00 – bathroom
d) 0:13 – kitchen
e) 0:18 – Control Room A
f) 0:40 – Studio
g) 0:41 – Control Room C
h) 0:42 – Panasonic portable stereo system
i) 1:11 – upstairs
j) 1:12 – upstairs fan
k) 1:16 – upstairs hole in the wall
l) 1:17 – Membership Outreach Office
m) 1:19 – Studio Tech Office
n) 1:20 – alleyway
o) 2:08 – Circuit Test Generator
Those letters are each associated with points along a map provided as part of the release:
Get the full set at the Panospria netlabel (at notype.com) and at archive.org.
