About a third of the way through Durán Vázquez‘s recent podcast at cronicaelectronica.org, there is a tea-kettle whine to end all tea-kettle whines.
It is high and it is shrill, and it is pitched like a war cry and it is as insistent as a hungry infant. And yet, it is thoroughly enjoyable (MP3). It has, in this context, the quality of a high lonesome yodel in a country song, or of a piercing clarinet solo in a klezmer performance. The context is a roiling whir of mechanized activity — brushed-metal static and turbine roars, fissures of static magnified for the ear. Which is to say, it’s industrial industrial music. And which is to say, it is folk music: like much music made from the sounds of the automated environment, it’s a music that takes the world around us (the world we ourselves made: the built environment) and transforms it into something celebrates those sounds, and frames them for consideration outside their everyday context.
At almost 24 minutes in length, it’s a hefty listen, moving slowly through territory at once alien and familiar. According to a brief note, the recording was made live during a “Tan inauditos!!” (translated: “So unheard!!”) performance at Casa das Atochas, A Coruña City, Galicia (Spain), on August 19, 2010.