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b/art's Playlist for Friday, May 5 (23:01 - 00:07)
Dallas Simpson | |
| Cut | Artist |
|---|---|
| 25.00:07.16.46 | M2 [1] |
| Country Buggered by Wreck This Mess 03w.19t.99m.exc1 | |
| Abha | Dallas Simpson [2] |
| Urbanisation in Country | Ashley Beedle [3] |
| Waterpump (Aquapump) | Dallas Simpson [4] |
| The Name of the Show is Wreck This Mess | Curd Duca |
| + Polonaise #4, op. 40 #2 [Chopin] | Gyorgy Cziffra [5] |
| Halogen Street Lamp | Tone Rec [6] |
| Settlement | Dallas Simpson [7] |
| + Iberia Eterea | Biosphere [8] |
| + Inbet We Enno Ise | Brandon Labelle [9] |
| + Desert / Camel | Uitti vs Vitiello [10] |
| Relax Relax to Sleep | Hypnotic Diet Loss |
| Going Off Duty Outro WTM Reprogrammed | |
| [1] "Squaremeter.14id1610s" on Ant-Zen www.ant-zen.com . Described as a "scientific bridge between sinetone minimalism and sonic mega-sampling ... digital ambient." Very interesting ventures into electronic marginalism where pure tones and clicks and hums collect into speculative critical mass. The samples, 89% of which are incestuously taken from other Ant-Zen releases which tends to make a very esoteric techno whose beats are morphed and the result begins to undulate into free jazz. | |
| [2] "abha" is a panoramic cut from "Commercial Releases" one of the 2 self-burned cds that Dallas Simpson, www.artistforum.com/dallassimpson master natural sound provoker, recently sent to me. It is a re-EQ'd version of the release that appeared on the Time Recording in Emit series 2296. "It is a collage of environmental and urban fragments describing a spiritual journey." Altho symbolic it can also be seen as a aural pictogram of different aural locations__The opening traffic movements describe 'pi'or p_ Imagine the head of the listener relative to the flow of the traffic - across the front and side passes - this actually describes the symbol__P__with the listener's head between the 2 vertical bars. Pi relates to the mathematical ratios contained within the circle - which is a two dimensional entity, yet at the end of the work we are presented with a symbolic sphere - a bouncing ball. The result of the journey, therefore, must be viewed in the the context in dimensionality - from circle to sphere, from 2-d to 3-d, from physical to spiritual..." Dallas Simpson's background and influences. "I was trained as a scientist and worked for nearly 20 years in the pharmaceutical industry and the pathology department of two large hospitals. As a child of the '60s, I've always been a bit of an intellectual rebel. In 1990 a sense of growing frustration of the excesses of rampant materialism and job dissatisfaction caused me to give up my well paid full time job at the hospital and become a teacher and photographic artist, whilst also awakening my interest since childhood in sound recording. In 1995, having had little commercial success with photography, despite having published a number of innovative articles on various techniques, I started to explore binaural recording techniques using, at that time, inexpensive (50 Francs a pair!) sub miniature microphones inserted in my ears. Excited by my results I started to look for a record label and found that Time Recording existed in Nottingham, my home town, so I took a recording of a bouncing ball recorded under a bridge (the finale of abha) to them. They were equally excited and the rest, as they say, is history. As for influences, my greatest influence is my daily experience of life. | |
| [3] "Urbanisation in Country" a 12-inch on Disorient / Sushi 13, 1998. Chilled dubby ambience and blissed beats where the movement is from the urban to the country, from frantic to chilled, relaxed, open windy beats. It seemed a perfect coupling segue from Simpson's natural meditation to one rendered totally artificially and yet the simulation was able to prosthetically manufacture the extrapolation. | |
| [4] "Waterpump" on "Commercial Releases" is really entitled "Aquapump" and appeared on a Time Recording. The natural beat emited by the waterpump is such a strong primal experience the fusion of nature, mechanics and electronic technology. It was recorded in Shining Cliff Woods, Ambergate, Derbyshire, UK at dawn on May 29 and is part of a larger 45 minute work. This is one of the many [all?] of his pieces which has a duration, a challenge to patience and contemporary molding of mind. It insures that time s is part of the seduction drama which an impatient culture devalues. It is funny, I am a huge fan of /Curd Duca who has totally the opposite philosophy regarding time - his pieces are short, truncated, impatient with narrative and yet I can see the purpose of both extremes. And they do not seem to be at cross purposes in much the same way that music when the BPMs get too extreme, too hi velocity, the beats merge into a hypnotic hum that defines 'slow' hypnotic musics. | |
| [5] "Chopin: Polonaises" on Philips Tresors Classiques This was written by Chopin in 1836 when he was having fond amorous thoughts of Maria Wodzinska at the dawning of their relationship. But it was as a song that the Polish people played on radio and in their homes that it interests me. When the Nazis were fabricating the Plish attack on their territory to give them the excuse to attack Poland and after the Nazis invaded, "Warsaw held out," according to Ed Sanders in his great new book "America: A History in Verse" [Black Sparrow, 2000], "for 3 weeks / its radio playing Chopin's 'Polonaise[s]' around the clock / till, nearing the end, / it played his 'Death March.'" | |
| [6] "Tone Rec v/s Scanner" a 12-inch on Quantum / Sub Rosa www.subrosa.net | |
| [7] "Environments" contains 2 long pieces recorded live on location in the UK. All improvs wer recorded live in a single take with no rehearsal and using only found materials.. "Settlement" is one of simpson's first major thematic location performances. It is environmental sounds gathers from the shore and promenade of the coastal town of Port Erin, Isle of Man. He proposes to lead the listener [headphones recommended][ from a small freshwater stream flowing out onto the beach, which is recorded as the site of the first human settlement at Port Erin, along the shoreline, up steps to the promenade and around to the back of the hotel where there is an intuitive improv on found things like a wooden palette, wheel barrow, empty beer barresl, bricks ...He then returns su to the shore and sea. The piece is filled with organic symbols of 'spritual development.' | |
| [8] "Cirque" on Touch www.touch.demon.co.uk biosphere@tromso.online.no is a great disc from a great generator of beautiful sounds. It is pure northern sound which to me is the 'polar' opposite of say, Berber / Moroccan / Sahara music but in many ways the stark meditative waves and horizontals come back to the point where they are very similar. Apparently Biosphere = Geir Jenssen who rejected the acclaim he was receiving for previous discs and chose the hermetic over hype or 'mountain climbing over train spotting'. What is beyond ambient? Well, speculative - exploration, music that unravels itself. Music that not only rides and caresses a surface but penetrates it until we get some sense of what its dimensions and intentions are. It is about exploration rather than mimicking. Anyway, it is inspired in part by the story of Chris McCandless who "in April 1992 hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness, only to be found dead 4 months later have ing made a tragic error with his food supply." | |
| [9] "Clear / No Name" on Effe effe@mpd.biglobe.ne.jp is a Japanese label of noises and soundings also includes Carl Stone, John Hudak, M5BR, Sukora, Toy Bizarre and others. Labelle relates that in some obscure coastal part of England [I forget the name] there is a big concrete 'ear'. This concrete 'ear' was used during WWII to hear / monitor incoming Nazi planes. This concrete structure would harnass any sound like a prosthetic extension of the human ear and funnel it into an electronic monitoring device which a man with very good ears would listen to while waiting for suspicious sounds that might indicate an enemy bombing mission. It is here that Labelle went to gather his soundings. Lavbelle is one of the main practitioners of sonic scraping, a process of capturing the earth's natural ambiences and where sound mutates and mutates like crystals and viruses until - be patient - patterns evolve because our own human needs require patterns make something out of randomness. "Site of Sound: Of Architecture & The Ear" on Errant Bodies Press www.smartartpress.com is a book/cd edited and compiled by sonic explorers Brandon Labelle & Steve Roden. This is a very ambitious package of writings and musical investigations on how sound defines space and vice versa. | |
| [10] "Nameless Camel Desert" on JdK Productions by Frances-Marie Uitti en Stephen Vitiello. The American/Dutch cellist, Uitti, has developed a worldwide reputation in improvisational circles as well as in composed music circles. She has been asked to perform the composed music of Scelsi, Feldman, Andriessen, and Cage. But she has also improvised with many musicians such as Scanner and Elliot Sharp. Here she works together with Stephen Vitiello who has worked with among many other, Pauline Oliveros. The dynamic style of her cello-playing, sometimes using 2 bows and the sounds of her Mongolian viola are reworked electronically by Vitiello where the sound references and associations move from sound collage [Fluxus?] and the NY illbient sounds. This limited edition mini-disc is a very strong work. | |