Disquiet

The medium of perfect sound forever, the compact disc, is here explored for its textural details. One might think that the CD, its data secure(ish) within layers of clear plastic and bright metal, is distinct from, say, vinyl LPs and cassette tapes, both of which have their well-known reproductive shortcomings. LP and tape surface qualities, the wear and tear, are an implicit part of the bargain. But the CD is different. Debates about its fidelity have to do with high-grain digital verisimilitude, not with background noise (even if the glitch genre/effect did derive in part from the sound of failing CDs).

But this video performance locates something different. By using a CD, at the opening of “we will finally lost in heavy fog,” as a means to play a violin, musician Dong Zhou (born in Shanghai, China, and based in Hamburg, Germany) gets at its hard materials, at the clipped corner of it sharp edge. She then proceeds to use other tools, including a pair of bows, what appears to be a rubber band, and an unidentified if certainly suggestive green object. Furthermore, she begins to process the sounds, so by the six-minute mark, when the green item is employed, she’s also using her laptop to echo and lightly yet radically transform the source audio.

Video originally posted at Dong Zhou’s YouTube channel. It appears that it was streamed during the October Soundwave Festival 3.0, which was held five Saturdays in a row in October 2020 (onnow.tv). More from Dong Zhou at dongzhou.live and soundcloud.com/shimo_zhou.

Opening with the scattery noise associated with wind on an exposed microphone, before fading into what appears to be backward-masked strings, “Found in the Fog” is the first video of the year from Orbital Patterns (aka Michigan-based Abdul Allums). The camera moves around his studio as the piece plays, a glimpse of a synthesizer here, a standalone music-computer there, a guitar pedal, a laptop. (Also, note that at least one of the modules heard, visible at the two-minute mark, is from the Instruō company, whose founder was the subject of an interview I posted last weekend.) It all comes together with Allums’ trademark seesawing ease, a loping quality that is as mellow as it is mysterious, as casual as it is reclusive.

Video originally posted at YouTube as part of Jamuary. More at instagram.com/0rbitalpatterns and twitter.com/orbitalpatterns.

The full performance begins in earnest at the two-minute mark, but I recommend starting at the beginning. This is an ambient set, veering into the realm of space music, from the Amsterdam-based Little Ambient Machine channel on YouTube. I’m posting it as a follow-up to my interview, this past weekend, with the founder of the Instruō manufacturer of synthesizer modules, Jason Lim, who talked about how the company, based in Glasgow, ported its physical modules for use as virtual ones on computers (using the free VCV Rack software). The reason I chose this Little Ambient Machine video is it centers on a module called the Cš-L, a voltage-controlled oscillator from Instruo, as its primary audio source. This means that, for the most part, all the other cables connecting, directly and indirectly, to it are creating variations and treatments on its sounds. In addition, those first two minutes provide a glimpse, with annotation, of how the patch itself came together. (The Cš-L is the module clearly labeled “Instruō,” the sole here with a black faceplate, one module in from the lower left.)