Friday, 31 August 2007

No Noise Reduction - The Complete No Noise Reduction (1995)




"In a sense Portuguese duo Paulo Feliciano and Rafael Toral put Gunderson's concept and attitude cheerfully into musical practice. They use just about any object associated with pop culture as their instruments. As is stated in one of the pieces, they have "borrowed from everyone else's universe". The forty-six tracks, ranging from zero seconds (it is cued as such) to an exceptionally long 4' 45", defy any description that would attempt to do justice to the variety in approaches and sounds resulting from them, and to the wit and the humor with which this album has been put together.

A few scant examples should suffice. Toral and Feliciano realized a piece that everyone whose musical awareness predates the digital era must have fantasized about: glue the halves of a broken record together so that the playing area has a side A and a side B component, then play the record. On another cut, Groove Grinder, they play scratchy run-out grooves. They make some heavenly sounds with tones of a music box played with serious warpage from a sampler and a sustain guitar. They rebound the whish and whoosh from an amplified spring coil by wringing it back and forth through a sampler and entitle that in poetic jest Sonic Spring. This work is nothing short of inspired. The shining new wheelbarrow pictured on the cover illustrates what may well be their motto: "The tools you use are just as pure and clean as the use you put them to".

René van Peer, Experimental Music Instruments



Rafael Toral: tapes, noise burst guitar, turntables, harmonica wire-jamming, sampler, etc.

Paulo Feliciano: turntables, sampler, bowed cymblas, r5 prog, drums, etc.

See comments for details

link @320

8 comments:

  1. 1. WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING? 1'40"

    excerpt from a 4-simultaneous-texts lecture by John Cage (1961).

    Rafael Toral- voice, filters
    Paulo Feliciano- voice

    2. PEACE BOOST 1'25"

    PF- noise burst guitar, random tape edits
    RT- bowed cymbals, mute switching, mariachi-tuned silvertone guitar

    3. TWISTER BLUESY 2'24"

    Raquel Feliciano- wired harmonica
    RT- harmonica wire jamming, keyboard (sinewave)
    PF- les paul guitar, harmonica wire jamming

    4. CD PLAYERS 1'14"

    the sound source is not the disc, but the mechanical sounds of the player
    PF- cd player
    RT- sampler (cd player)

    5. ARTSCRATCH 1'04"

    RT- silvano turntable, videotape
    PF- sunny-vox turntable, videotape

    6. TWO LOVING GUITARS 1'00"

    PF- two guitars touching each other

    7. VYNIL-A-CRISP (NO NOISE REDUCTION No. 2) 1'17"

    RT- vynil records, sampler (vynil records)
    PF- sampler (vynil records), vynil records

    8. BLACK CDTH 1'46"

    PF- prepared compact disc
    the prepared compact disc is a CD with narrow slices of tape stuck in the back. the laser beam stumbles on them and behaves in very unpredictable ways.

    9. ONE GUITAR . . 1'43"

    one take recorded with us two playing on the same guitar.
    RT- wet finger rubbing, metal scraping
    PF- guitar strings

    10. TWILIGHT ZONE 1'54"

    PF- guitar feedbacks, turntable
    RT- guitar, feedback treatments

    11. STEWART MIX 1'59"

    the first thing ever recorded by nnr
    RT- roland TR 808, guitar, turntable
    PF- guitar, sampler

    12. GROOVE GRINDER 0'50"

    PF- sunny-vox turntable
    RT- silvano turntable

    13. BOOTS RANDOM 1'38"

    RT- 808, processing, turntable
    PF- 808, sampler, hifi switch (turntable)

    14. THE A2000 SPEECH 2'02"

    pronounciation errors were generated by the software, left to itself
    PF- a2000 voice generator and sampling software
    RT- inverted guitar, modulated video monitor radiation

    15. EVERYONE ELSE'S UNIVERSE 1'45"

    RT- sampler, videotape
    PF- drum machine programming, guitar, sampler

    16. GUITAR THING 0'59"

    PF- guitar
    RT- turntable

    17. MOTORWAY 2'04"

    RT- sampler (jeep), beat box, mystery tape recycling, guitar
    PF- guitar solo, fake bass

    18. CARUSO REFLECTOR 1'28"
    PF, RT- shaving machine-excited cymbals, microphone scanning, turntable


    19. SONIC SPRING 1'38"
    RT- spring resonator

    PF- sampler (spring resonator)
    a spring resonator is a long coil spring with a contact microphone attached to one end.

    20. GHOST 0'45"

    PF- sampler
    RT- guitar
    Raquel Feliciano- clusters guitar

    21. GOING UP? 1'32"

    RT- contact microphone-recorded elevators
    PF- early tape, mxr noise gate

    22. NEGATIVE SUNDAY 2'05"

    PF- prepared guitar, sampler (bells)
    RT- turntable, sampler

    23. LANDSCAPE GENERATOR 2'03"

    RT- computer games
    PF- computer games

    24. NOT ENOUGH ATOMS 1'05"

    PF- korg synthesizer, sampler
    RT- aliased guitar, r5, midi jamming

    25. SCRATCH FILTER 1'19"

    RT- roland r5 beat box, turntable, filtering
    PF- turntable, filtering

    26. THE INCREDIBLE MARVIN 1'02"

    PF- prepared compact disc

    27. A, PATTI, B 1'21"

    a 7" single found broken in two halves glued back facing opposite sides
    RT, PF- turntable

    28. FEET PIECE 1'25"

    no hands here
    PF- guitars (played with the feet)
    RT- foot pedals, footswitches

    29. DIE AND LIVE 4'45"

    RT- guitars
    PF- voice, sampler (bass)

    30. HAM-A-RING 1'36"

    PF- prepared guitars
    RT- prepared guitars

    31. STOP LOOPIN' AROUND (exit) 0'06"

    RT- 808, sampler
    PF- records, sampler

    32. THE SECOND GHOST 0'39"

    PF- guitar
    RT- guitar

    33. JIMI SETS THE SAMPLE ON FIRE 1'02"

    RT- guitar
    PF- sampler (fire), guitar

    34. NO NOISE REDUCTION 0'33"

    PF- noise
    RT- noise

    35. TOY CLOUD 2'32"

    RT- guitar
    PF- sampler (little music box)

    36. PLASSTICK 0'20"

    PF- mouth-taped plastic mic
    RT- radio

    37. TALKING HEADS 1'43"

    hand-held tape playback heads gestually reading magnetic tape panels on the wall. a mono recording.
    RT- tape head
    PF- tape head

    38. YR BACKYARD 0'52"

    PF- prepared guitar
    RT- field recording, prepared guitar

    39. INTRO, THE GROOVE, 2'00"

    RT- turntables, sample edits, midi
    PF- scratch eq, r5 prog

    40. 0'0,060" FOR A ROCK'N'ROLL BAND 0'06"

    tina and the top ten blasting at full volume for 60 milliseconds.
    PF- guitar
    Falcon D- drums
    Captain MD- bass
    Johnny "boy" Santini- guitar
    Mimi - silent
    RT- precision edit

    41. SHOOTING ASLEEP 3'17"

    two e-bowed guitar duets; paulo actually fell asleep while recording one of them
    RT, PF- guitars

    42. SOUTH WARP 6 0'43"

    RT- revox A77 tape recorder

    43. LICKABILITY 2'44"

    RT- drone guitar
    PF- sampler (his voice), guitar

    44. ECHO DOGS 1'37"

    PF- television, field recording
    RT- drums, field recording, processing

    45. SWEETEST VOLTAGE 3'00"

    RT- resonating fender jaguar, analog delayed ibañez.
    PF- prepared gibson les paul deluxe, fender jaguar

    46. NO NOISE REDUCTION No. 3 0'00"
    open

    ReplyDelete
  2. arzan of the apes said it - bravo. it's a bit hidden, ha? you announced this + a Mondriaan Strings on Fuzzy. i assume you know how to change the date of a post ("options" at the bottom, if you edit a post).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Actually, I didn't know that. Thanks for the suggestion.
    But I must confess I'm not sure I like the idea of changing the post date. No doubt it would bring a lot more attention to the post, and it is true that reposting this way rarely compensates for the work - this will probably not get more than a handful of downloads. But I don't even like retouching old, clumsy posts.
    It's irrational, I know, but rationality is not my strongest trait...

    Anyway, thanks for your attention, and glad you liked this hidden repost.

    Saúde!

    ReplyDelete
  4. i understand - it's like "retouching" (french) the past, isn't it? you could announce re-posts in a simple text-post, maybe with links to older posts. but since you announced it already on fuzzy, interested visitors will search anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  5. There is a lot information about music theory on guitar. It's easy to find a truly substantial collection of downloadable guitar music for beginners as well as for professionals. Our custom paper services are 24/7 to help you with any type of research!

    ReplyDelete

Insult Them