A cyanotype exposed by Christian Marclay to unwound cassette tapes. It’s one of several works on display at Paula Cooper Gallery in Manhattan until recently (September 4 – October 11).
More details at paulacoopergallery.com.
Quote of the Week: Dr. Dre’s Anechoic Chamber
BusinessWeek‘s Matt Vella reports on a new pair of noise-canceling headphones designed by Andre Young, aka legendary rap producer Dr. Dre, who, famously, brought the noise (including the sound of gun shots) on such classics as N.W.A’s now two-decade-old album Straight Outta Compton:
A flick of the switch on the side of the headphones instantly muffles sounds of the outside world with an eerie whoosh. The effect is impressive, as a colleague of mine, who wears headgear from a shooting range to escape the din of our boisterous newsroom, happily testified when he tried the Beats.
Full story at businessweek.com.
’70s Nature MP3 (Via Steve Roden)
The sound artist Steve Roden regularly posts MP3s on his inbetweennoise.blogspot.com website, but his is no ordinary “MP3 blog.” The materials consists almost entirely of thrift-store finds (literal, or of the eBay variety), like old Portuguese love songs and ancient bagpipes. As a spelunker of the minimal and the analog, the threadbare and the dusty, Roden regularly comes upon pre-digital audio that brings context to our understanding of sound, technology, memory, and art — he also posts images and text fragments along these lines.
Earlier this month he shared a clip from a nature-sounds 7″ that dates from the 1970s. It’s a document of some rural Florida ecosystem, all tooting birds and light wind, though of course to the modern listener, the persistent crackle of the vinyl is as much a part of the soundscape as the living, breathing organisms — and toward the end, in a moment reminiscent of Wordsworth, bells intrude (MP3).
Roden pairs the sounds with a text by Thomas Merton (in part: “the ‘rest’ which these men sought was simply the sanity and poise of a being that no longer has to look at itself because it is carried away by the perfection of freedom that is in it”). And he explicates the parallels between his selected recorded sound and written word: “when the ethereal notes of a carillon drift into the picture, the whole thing moves from present to distant, fluctuating between the natural and supernatural.” More details at inbetweennoise.blogspot.com. (And special thanks to Roden for his recent shout-out at thewire.co.uk.)
Otherworldly Boston Pops MP3
The Borgesian effect of wandering through the archive of the avant-garde that is ubu.com was easily achieved: the entries aren’t date-stamped. The result is a simultaneity in which “new” work — that is, new uploads of work by — Yoko Ono and Marcel Duchamp suggests them as contemporaries. Yes, the date of the work’s origination is almost always present, but the date on which the material became part of ubu.com is not. Any writing about ubu.com runs the risk of proclaiming as newly presented material that’s, in fact, been lurking in the background. Case in point, the sound art of Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman, much of which is archived at the ubu.com/sound/aa.html. The pair use field recordings and found sounds to dissociative ends, one highlight being a very personal piece in which Bergman transformed a cache of inherited cassette tapes into a droning requiem for a grandparent.
“Bostonpopsreverbformydeadgrandpa” (MP3), with its unwieldy yet straightforward title, takes tapes left to Bergman by his music-enthusiast grandfather, who seems to have been quite a character, and adds extensive reverb — in this particular piece warping the already strings-rich Boston Pops into something gossamer, the echo a sonic symbol of his grandfather’s passing.
Dubby Fisk Industries MP3 EP
The musician behind the dubby electronica of Fisk Industries (aka Mat Ranson) is apparently taking a year off to tour the world, and while we don’t get the proverbial T-shirt, we do get a three-track send-off, courtesy of the web-releases section of the Highpoint Lowlife label. Each song presents a dank, reverb-friendly take on digital dub, from the static-laced, wobbly grooves of “Shadow” (MP3) to the more atmospheric, minimal-techno feel of “Bubblewrap” (MP3), to the estimably downtempo skank of “Cyber” (MP3), the set’s true keeper, thanks to its acoustic touches and understated pace. Get the full set at highpointlowlife.com. More details at Fisk’s website, fisk-industries.co.uk.