Sometimes the Disquiet Downstream takes a break from music and sound art for talk, albeit talk about music and sound art. Suzanne Anker brought together for conversation three art-world figures with an interest in science for one of her “Bio-Blurb Show” audiocasts at wps1.org. In addition to art critic Ciaran Bennett and artist/arts administrator Adrienne Klein, Beryl Korot participated. Kortot is Steve Reich’s wife and collaborator, having provided the high-tech visuals so central to works like Three Tales, which she talks about here (MP3). The file, first broadcast on May 15, 2006, runs for half an hour.
Silent-Industrial MP3
The tonal aspects of Asher‘s contribution to the Homphoni netlabel (homophoni.com) are just a few held notes amid a broader, but still decidedly sparse, range of what seem to be field recordings. It’s amazing how static, water, small motors and distant industry can become indistinguishable from each other, even at 207kbps. The track, titled “The Anguish Is Not the Same” (MP3), cycles in and out, with extended periods of silence. It’s unclear if those occasional tones, first heard on their own, then below the light noise, are tonal centers of the found sounds or generated notes added later. That ambiguity brings creative tension to a piece that might, on first glance, appear to be willfully devoid of it.
Archive.org Detritus MP3
The audio stacks of the Internet Archive at archive.org are less a record store than a thrift store, these spare pieces seemingly randomly dispersed, most without enough packaging material to explain the contents. Sometime in the past few days, a musician by the name of Tafkanhos uploaded something described as “free improvised quasi-ambient experimental audio,” a half hour of sound caught in limbo between shimmering and dank, claustrophobic and epiphanic (MP3). It would have been mysterious even if it weren’t unencumbered by virtually any sort of causal, interpretive or contextual data. In an age when every conceptual artist seems to have his or her own internal dramaturge, this can be very refreshing indeed.
Noise Continuum MP3
There’s so much of interest broadcast on Resonance FM that it’s almost absurd. Segments pop up as part of the website/radio station’s podcast, including, in mid-July, a segment of Pete Kemble‘s show, The Heard World. An entry titled “A Collection of Distorted Noises” is exactly that, with Kimball fracturing the sounds of a preacher and a dating program, among other sources (MP3). There’s also stunted comedy and much that is not so much noisy as indistinct, which when it comes to audio arguably has the same effect. It’s easy to state that spontaneous experimental radio isn’t dead, it’s just gone online. But the fact of the matter is that Resonance FM isn’t just online; it’s also broadcast in London, England. This is not what your father plays on the radio in his Oldsmobile. More info on Kemble at petekemble.com and on the Resonance podcast at resonancefm.com.
Time-Release IDM MP3
If the first of three promotional MP3s being released in advance of Clark‘s forthcoming Body Riddle album provided a taste of what’s to come (the song, “Herr Bar,” is the first track on the album, due out October 2), the second such promo MP3, “Dead Shark Eyes,” is a taste of what Body Riddle is not. That’s because “Dead Shark Eyes” doesn’t appear on the album, or at least it doesn’t appear in the track listing for the album at bleep.com, the online music retailer owned by Warp, the label releasing Body Riddle.
What is “Dead Shark Eyes”? It’s five and a half minutes of elastic percussion with an ear for shifty beats (MP3), rarely sticking to a given segment long enough for it to settle into a groove, the sort of thing usually termed “IDM,” or “intelligent dance music.” The track takes a pause at the four-minute mark, from which it never quite returns; instead it ventures into an ever so slow fade, dissolving in plain view. For more info, visit throttleclark.com.
By the way, these scheduled MP3 releases are getting more common by the day. Not quite a podcast, they’re pre-announced special downloads of the limited-edition variety, along the lines of the dozen segments that constitute the radiogallery.org series (web-broadcast sound art, with a few more episodes due before the series concludes on September 18) and the Tate Modern’s tatetracks.org.uk (which features the response to modern art by various musicians, including Chemical Brothers on Jacob Epstein, Graham Coxon on Franz Klein, and Union of Thieves on Cy Twombly). The latter is due to begin online the first of October, after which new entries will appear monthly through April 2007. (The month preceding each track’s online release, it’ll be heard only at the Tate Modern in London on a pair of headphones “in front of the art that inspired it,” according to the museum. How’s that for limited edition?)
Oh, and the third and final Clark promo MP3 is due out (or is it “due up”?) on September 18. Set your calendars. In the meanwhile, read about the first Clark MP3 in a previous Disquiet.com downstream entry (here).