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from Archive.org,
25 April 2006
Arches of a String : Wolfgang Peter Menzel
by Larry Johnson
One of the most remarkable things about electronic
music is that seemly insignificant objects can be used generate
astonishing sounds. In this new 69-minute beautiful excursion
into minimal acoustics, Wolfgang Peter Menzel use the infinitesimal
vibrations and “no sounds” of a length of fishing
line connecting two trees as the source material. Subtle
and delicate one moment, boisterous and robust in another,
a variety of new sounds are coaxed from the fragile noises
generated by the randomly vibrating arches of a simple piece
of string. Accidental sounds along with deliberate processing
interact with one another to give this extended composition
a variety of textures and a sense of both spontaneity and
structure. Visually, I’m reminded of the works of
M.C. Escher who exploited the topological properties of
space and toyed with metamorphoses of geometric shapes to
create new ones. -LAJ-
from ambient-review.livejournal.com,
22 March 2006
Past Andromeda : Peter Koniuto
by Gurdonark
The rise of the netlabels revolutionized ambient
music. Some labels operate in much the same way that traditional
labels did, except with a business plan based on internet-only
marketing. Others utilize digital downloads in pursuit of
sales. The term "netlabel" itself, however, has
acquired a secondary meaning, in that a netlabel tends to
release its material for free download. A good number of
fine ambient labels arose which net-release wonderful material
available for free download, including, to name but a couple,
Webbed Hand and Darkwinter.com. The use of Creative Commons
licenses, which can be structured to give a broad permission
to copy the work on a non-commercial basis, places netlabels
in the position of seeking to make their impact through
recognition rather than through financial renumeration.
The rise of this phenomenon is in part an
inevitable outgrowth of the rapid improvement in home recording
technology. The distance between what a consumer can do
at home and a professional CD still exists, but the chasm
is less gaping than in former days. In the field of ambient
music, among others, the distance between fan and artist,
never entirely remote, has narrowed, as listeners become
participants. The ambient music listener base now includes
listener participants, a participant audience who better
understand the rigors and risks in each pole vault and high
jump. The old religion of rock gods and worshipping fans
melts in the face of a new egalitarian faith.
Some bewail this evolution of electronic music
from a specialist's field to a mass consumption participation
field. People worry that a plethora of material drowns out
the quality. One sympathizes with the sentiment every time
one hears a Casio-esque Moog emulation playing "ambient
music" that would not be out of place in a very cheap
hand-held video game a decade ago. My own view, though,
differs from the "drowning out the quality" view.
I believe we are entering a new time in which traditional
distribution mechanisms for music, particularly for "niche"
genres, are going to disappear. The old construct in which
a large (or small) record company signs the artist to a
form of financing contract, with a small royalty incentive
upon repayment of a disastrously structured loan, will fade.
The price-per-unit of compact discs will eventually reduce,
particularly as digital downloads make prices of two and
three dollars each disc not only possible but economically
advantageous for label and artist. I further believe that
the more revolutionary concept of donationware music, in
which the fan pays the label and artist on a voluntary basis,
offers a viable distribution mechanism once people adopt
the idea that music distribution can be handled in a new
way, consistent with the new technology and Creative Commons
ideas arising. I believe in this idea sufficiently strongly
to have released my own work (certatinly the work of a listener
who creates rather than an "ambient artiste")
on www.disfish.com, which uses an entirely donationware
model for distribution.
The foundation of my faith is established
by releases such as Peter Koniuto's Past Andromeda on Stasisfield.com.
Past Andromeda is a fifty-nine minute piece which traffics
in the intersection where atmospheric space ambient meets
systems electro-acoustic music. Mr. Koniuto creates a central
melodic drone theme, underlays it with deep and satisfying
drones, and then intersperses the piece with samples ranging
from piano sections to radio transmission waves. As with
the best ambience of this type, the piece repeats its themes
with slight variations, creating an effect that is sedate
and yet never boring. The term "meditative" is
arguably overused in ambient music reviews, but I find that
this is ideal background music to soundtrack one's thoughts
on an otherwise hectic drive. This is indeed an "ambient"
music, because it does not intrude upon one's consciousness
in the way that a Motown classic can do, but instead hovers
on the edge of one's active attention.
Mr. Koniuto's device is to use the background
spaces surrounding his melodic themes to introduce his many
small thematic "found samples." In other works,
this device proves annoying, as the samples some artists
use tend to cloy through their obviousness or tend to have
a joke-burdened quality not in keeping with the work. Mr.
Koniuto commits neither sin, introducing instead effects
and subtle themes that fit well with his main melodic drones.
Past Andromeda has its antecedents in 1970s ambient music,
from that heady time when the notion of sound as sound had
been rediscovered with a tent revival enthusiasm. Yet the
work never feels trite or tamed. Instead, this is a subtle,
integrated listen—nothing less than the kind of mature,
capable work that reminds us why we listen to ambient music.
So long as artists like Peter Koniuto make
subtle ambient music for netlabels, this movement will thrive.
My own hope, and belief, is that the day will soon arise
when we spend our dollars in donations and small-per-unit-sale
quantities. The end of the Recording Industry Association
of America labels should not be attempted through civil
disobedience, but through mass diversion of resources to
places like netlabels and net artists. When the day comes
that the ambient community has devoted it resources in this
more targeted way, then ambient artists rather than corporate
artist marketing departments will receive the economic benefit
of the work that ambient artists do.
While we wait and work for this halcyon day,
however, I commend to you Peter Koniuto's Past Andromeda
as a subtle soundtrack for the conceptualization of this
velvet revolution.
from disquiet.com,
7 November 2005
Past Andromeda : Peter Koniuto
by Marc Weidenbaum
On Halloween, the Stasisfield netlabel (stasisfield.com)
released a single, hour-long piece by musician Peter Koniuto
titled Past Andromeda (MP3). As the name suggests, it's
an exercise in space music: slow blooms of galactic sound
that stretch from ear to ear like a blissful smile; sonar
blurps that bring to mind how Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry
imagined submarines, rather than airplanes, as the Starship
Enterprise's most significant predecessor; and occasional
flurries of digitally messed-up speech, suggesting the space-enabled
psychosis of Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris. There's also
a patiently plucked melody that sounds like the opening
from the theme to Deliverance played at quarter speed, and
each time it cycles through it grounds the track's otherwise
heady stew of aural effluvia. The version of Past Andromeda
on Stasisfield is a stereo reduction of an eight-speaker
installation project by Koniuto, who first staged it at
the University of the Pacific's Conservatory of Music in
Stockton, California, back in September 2002 as part of
the school's annual Music Beyond Performance series. The
music's source materials include electric bass guitar, field
recordings, children's toys, glass vases, harmonica, among
other household objects. More on Koniuto at the website
of his upstate New York studio, redsunsoundroom.com.
from Improv.hu,
25 February 2005
Prisma : Ernesto Rodriguez
by Dusted Hoffman
A portugál Ernesto Rodrigues és
közeli zenésztársai Prisma címu‡
kislemezével nyitotta negyedik évét
a Stasisfield nevezetu‡ mp3 netlabel, melynek honlapjáról
díjtalanul töltheto‡ le néhány
egészen kiváló - és néhány
egészen rossz -, lényegében kísérleti
indíttatású felvétel-sorozat.
Bár a mini album Ernesto Rodrigues neve alatt jött
ki, valójában egy családi vállalkozásról
van szó, hiszen az ido‡sebb Rodrigues (hegedu‡, mélyhegedu‡)
mellett fia, Guilherme Rodrigues (cselló, zsebtrombita),
valamint a család barátja, a német
Michael Thieke (klarinét, alt klarinét) is
játszik a lemezen. Ennek a felállásnak
Carlos Santos-szal kibo‡vített változata nem
régen jelentetett meg egy Kreis címu‡ albumot
a Creative Sources mini-labelnél, amiro‡l - ha minden
igaz - hamarosan az Improv.hu oldalán is lehet majd
olvasni...
A trióformáció lemezén
akusztikus improvizált zene hallható, ami
2004 március 29-én került rögzítésre
a lisszaboni Tcha Tcha Tcha Stúdióban. A Prisma
két jól elkülönítheto‡ hangkeltési
metódussal dolgozik: az egyik a preparált
húros hangszereken való szöszmötölés,
nyeszetelés, a másik pedig az extrém
módon bemikrofonozott fúvósok orkán-szeru‡
"suhogtatása". A hegedu‡k, valamint a cselló
jól hallhatóan idegen, oda nem illo‡ tárgyakkal
van feldíszítve, ezek neszezése és
csörömpölése - nagy hangero‡n hallgatva
a kislemezt - tökéletesen kihallható;
ezeket az apró, másodpercekig fel-fellvillanó
hangocskákat a húros hangszerek vonóval
való elnyújtott megszólaltatása,
illetve a fúvos hangszerek hosszan kitartott éles
sivítása, vagy éppen érdes zúgása
ellenpontozza. Bár nyílvánvalóan
a (szó szerinti) öntörvényu‡ szabadzene
tökéletes mintapéldájával
van dolgunk - és mint ilyen, kevés fogást
enged arra, hogy bele lehessen kötni -, a három
improvizáció mégis mintha csupán
egy-egy befejezetlen, végig nem vitt próbálkozás,
ám továbbgondolásra kétségtelenül
érdemes kezdeményezés lenne. A három
rövid felvétel semmiféle ívet
nem épít, de egy-egy számon belül
sincs "valahonnan-valahová", a 18 perces
kislemez mindössze slendrián módon elpotyogtatott
és céltalanul kószáló
hangokat mutat, amik összességükben lehetnének
akár lehengerlo‡ek is, de erro‡l sajnos most itt
nincs szó, hiszen a Prisma számomra nem több,
mint egy elo‡zetes koncepció és kigondoltság
nélküli stílusgyakorlat.
Érdekes és kellemes kislemez
a Prisma, de sajnálatosan nem sokkal több ennél.
Felemás produkció.
from disquiet.com,
24 August 2004
Andrea Polli: Retina Burn
by Marc Weidenbaum
SUN-KISSED MP3: One of the beautiful
things about electronic music that's derived from conceptual
art is that it provides its own readymade metaphors. In
other words, in the absence of traditional musical form,
we have the musician's m.o. to lend sense to something that
is otherwise abstract. Case in point, Retina Burn, the new,
half-hour long piece by Andrea Polli, available as of last
month as a free download from the Stasisfield netlabel.
Polli's work ˜ 27-plus minutes of low-level interference
and broken whirs ˜ takes as its source "soundwaves
generated by the sun." Polli then manipulates this
sonic information, transforming it with what she's termed
"intuitive ocusonics," or computer-aided musical
interfaces that track eye movement. Why does she choose
to shape the sound with her eyes, and not with fingers on
a keyboard, or on a six-string? Conceptually, Polli's point
is self-apparent: by manipulating sound from the sun with
her eyes, she's doing what we otherwise must not, which
is to look directly at the sun. What's interesting, though,
is that the resulting sound art, as heard on the overtly
slow Retina Burn, doesn't suggest the scorching, brilliant
center of our solar system (although the crackles do bring
it to mind) so much as it sounds like data being processed
meticulously in the name of science: pristine data sets
published for peer evaluation.
from disquiet.com,
17 November2003
Neil Jendon: Live at Buddy in Chicago [Aux-In]
by Marc Weidenbaum
AVANT GUITAR MP3S: On the cover Neil
Jendon's new album, Live at Buddy in Chicago, Jendon stands
on a stage, the image slightly blurred, as if he's in constant
motion, as if he's contorted by rock'n'roll, as if he's
more interested in bending his guitar than playing it. From
a listen to the album, only the third of those conjectures
holds any water. The music is expressly still. Aside from
the centrality of the guitar, Jendon's music here has less
in common with rock'n'roll than with the sort of ambience
more generally associated with synthesizers and tape loops,
found sounds and computer equipment. Many musicians experiment
with the guitar as an ambient tool, from Greg Davis to Fennesz
to Steve Roach to Robert Fripp, but few let the sonic trappings
of the instrument — the sound of a strummed chord,
a picked string, a discernable riff — take a backseat
to resonance. Live at Buddy is over half an hour of rigorously
experimental guitar music that will appeal to fans of Glenn
Branca's robust "guitar symphonies," but also
of Japanese noise, and of laptop composers' elegant, fragile
glitch.
The album's three tracks, each over
10 minutes, are wholly distinct from one another. "Part
One" traces a path less whisper-to-scream than silence-to-hum,
building from quiet (so quiet that it probably makes more
sense on headphones than in a live venue) to a psychedelic
hymn. "Part Two" summons bracing, invigorating,
piercing sounds that, over time, become comfortable, less
like static and more like a fuzzy wool blanket. "Part
Three" is by far the liveliest of the set, getting
downright symphonic at times, in terms of depth of sound;
it's also the most varied, with segments of bell tones,
pastoral hum, industrial noise, oscillating catharsis, and
fuzztone drone. The album was released November 10 on the
Stasisfield label's Aux-In sublabel (mission statement:
"live music, straight from the soundboard to your digital
turntable"), and was recorded live on January 29 of
this year. Download all three tracks for free from the album's
webpage (here). For more information on Stasisfield and
Aux-In, visit stasisfield.com.
from Kathodik,
Decdember 2002
Sawako : 'SIS'
by Luca Confusione
Sawako è un'artista giapponese
(vive a Tokyo) molto attiva in rete, il cui lavoro è
stato notato anche in Italia nonostante la reperibilità
del suo materiale sia molto difficile (ma la rete aiuta,
fortunatamente).
Questo lavoro del 2002 è liberamente scaricabile
(con tanto di copertina e booklet) dal sito della Stasisfield,
etichetta che rende disponibili lavori di difficile collocazione
sia in formato mp3 che con uscite in cd-r e cd audio.
"SIS" è lavoro curato e emozionante, a
dispetto di qualsiasi preconcetto possiate esservi formati
in testa.
In 3 stories la costruzione del pezzo è coerente
con il titolo: un drone cupo fa da base e minimi intarsi
pianistici e a field-recordings. Sembra di vederla in interno
asettico mentre ci dona poche note e l'environment fa il
resto.
uta sono gorgoglii che vengono direttamente dalla pancia
del mac, interrotti dai pochi secondi di Tanana, samples
di oggetti metallici.
N e chiude l'EP con ronzii e buzzing moderatissimi nel volume
a lasciar spazio ancora a registrazioni sul campo (sembra
un giardino zen dove un solo uccellino è ammesso).
Elettronica per meditazioni coscienti; ci immaginiamo in
una zona verde all'interno di Tokio, dove per la magia di
qualche nuovo processore audio i suoni dall'esterno arrivano
magicamente filtrati e ricontestualizzati secondo l'estro
di Sawako.
Piacevole veramente il suo cervello.
Download consigliato per giornate in cui il sole appare
leggermente velato.
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