Paul Panhuysen - Partitas for Long Strings (1999)

"I must admit that I have very good memories of Panhuysen and the story is nice yet unrelated to this CD. Paul did concerts with his canarie big band: five canaries in cages and the singing and movements were amplified. I attended one such concert and Dutch television was also present (their topic was, I recall, is government money again spend on silly art events?) and I made sure I was interviewed. So I told them it was better than the concert for 48 vacuum cleaners I once saw. My remark made it into the program and for 2 weeks I encountered people saying: you were on TV! Never knew art programs were watched by so many.

However the main part of the work of Paul Panhuysen is dealing with long strings - unamplified and always site specific. He hangs wires in doks, galleries and outside. The strings are then played by hand. The result is simply beautiful: one long tone, resonating and vibrating in air. Like a huge car alarm going off. This CD, the first to document this kind of work (a 3LP from the mid eighties is now sold out), has three extended pieces. The first one is a simple monochrome work, that in all it's static is a moving piece. The second piece is a total contrast: chaotic with random sounds swirling in and out of the mix. A combination of the first and the second part seems to be the result of the third part. Building around a central theme, there are blocks of tones that seems to appear randomly and disappear again. This third piece lacks the chaos of the second and is the best on the CD." Vital Weekly

"Paul Panhuysen's Partitas are an entirely different kettle of fish, although the first piece here bears some striking similarities in sound [with Niblock's Music By]. The strings heard here are gallery installations centering on wires stretched across the space, with or without the addition of resonators and automated exciters. Panhuysen is therefore as much a part of the artworld as of avant garde music, and one could easily suspect this disc of being one of those "documentation" projects which never really sound good unless you know the larger work of which the sound is a part. There's no fear of this here, however, and what these recordings demonstrate is that Panhuysen is at least as much a musician as he is an artist. There are three here, all lengthy (over twenty minutes) examinations of a particular tuning method: unison, equally diminishing and proportional. The unison piece is the one which resonates with Niblock's quartets. It's even more minimal, however; there's almost no perceptible change in the buzz-saw note the strings produce for the entire duration.

As with Niblock, one becomes fascinated by the detail, although here it's more a matter of trying to be sufficiently attentive that any change is audible at all. The experience is one which will be familiar to lovers of so-called "lowercase" music; it won't be to all tastes, but it's an interesting journey. Things take a radically different turn when the strings are tuned in equally diminishing lengths. The intervals between them are intensely dissonant, and they are played much more actively, with notes audibly coming and going and with harmonics creating clouds of ultra-high pitches above the throbbing beat frequencies of the fundamentals. This will be much more approachable for most listeners, and anyone familiar with Ligeti or Penderecki will hear their ancestral voice in this. The sheer texture of the sound here is ravishingly fine-grained and, as with much minimal art, one is drawn to an unaccustomed involvement with the detailed aesthetic surface of the material itself. On a more conventional level, however, this is carefully-played and distinctive music which sucks you in and doesn't let you go.
The third piece, which uses a proportional tuning system, is similar to the second, but there is a distinct differentiation -- and how this is achieved is a mystery -- between extreme dissonances and a rather cool set of semi-consonant intervals. Again it shifts about restlessly, but there is a much greater sense here that the music is anchored. Indeed, this feels like the most "musicanly" of the three pieces here; that's not to be taken evaluatively, of course". Richard Cochrane

1. Partita For 16 Long Strings Of Equal Length
2. Partita For 16 Long Strings Equally Diminishing In Length
3. Partita For 16 Long Strings Proportionally Tuned

Composed, performed and recorded by Paul Panhuysen in 1997.

Released by XI Records in 1999.

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Werner Durand - The Art of Buzzing (2004)

WERNER DURAND: The Art of Buzzing (Excuse the Delay Vol. 1)

The first solo release by sound artist Werner Durand, The Art of Buzzing was released recently on Podewil's new label X-Tract. Even if this is his debut CD, Durand has a long history (going on nearly 20 years) of integrating the use of resonators and buzzers with various instruments, either solo or in an ensemble (flutes, percussion, guitars, etc.). The first five tracks on this new CD were recorded between 1998 and 2000 in Berlin. For these recordings, Durand performs on superimposed PVC-Clarinets prepared with buzzing resonators, and an Iranian ney flute.
The results are stunning: dense drones with pulsing, buzzing, dizzying movements swarm with an intoxicating cadence. Recorded in multi-track, the sounds are sometimes treated with loops and delays, although the characteristics of the sounds themselves are not altered by filters and additional effects. In the track "Honey", which contains noisier, more machine-like drones than the other pieces, flower pots were used as resonators and tin-foil plates for the buzzing effects. Durand takes the concept of the "drone" and runs with it, his track titles implying the association of drones with bees, and indeed, the incessant buzzing of these pieces suggests the relentless activity in an immense hive. The sixth and final track was recorded between 1990 and 1995, and was mixed in collaboration with Ralf Wehowsky (RLW). This is perhaps the most varied of all the pieces, with a more noticeable presence of the ney flute, and carefully arranged layers of shifting, dynamic drones and strange resonating sounds. Durand's techniques are truly fascinating, his music even more so. Highly recommended. [Richard di Santo]

Werner Durand: Superimposed PVC-Clarinets with Buzzing Resonators & Iranian Ney
All tracks composed & recorded by Durand except #6, by W. Durand & Ralf Wehowsky
Recorded in 1998-2000 in Berlin
Released by X-Tract in 2004

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Phill Niblock - Music By (1993)

Phill Niblock's music has always been characterized by a single-mindedness in approach, form and content, and for many years was inextricably linked with its means of production, i.e. dense collations of sound amassed using multi-track tape technology.

So it was with great interest that I have looked forward to see what changes, if any, would be manifest as Niblock has adopted contemporary technologies of computer-based music. In his new series of computer compositions, the aesthetic point of view remains the same, yet the ranges of expression are indisputably extended, both with respect to dynamics and pitch extremes.

While one might have feared that Niblock's turn to computer-based music might have undermined one of the most attractive features of his work heretofore, i.e. the wonderful interplay of nuances of pitch, attack and volume in the materials he juxtaposes, in fact these subtleties are even more in evidence now. In a music otherwise without overt drama, there has always been one grand gesture in all of Niblock's pieces, for as each piece concludes the listener is left with the deafening silence of the absence of a sound that lived, breathed and dominated the listening space. Carl Stone

1. Five More String Quartets

Performed by The Soldier String Quartet

2. Early Winter

Susan Steger: flute

The Soldier String Quartet

Eberhard Blum: bass flute

38 sampled and synthesizer voices, computer controlled.

Originally commissioned by Thomas Buckner in 1991.

Released by Experimental Intermedia Foundation in 1993.

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Oliveros Dempster Panaiotis - Deep Listening (1989)

Deep Listening _ 1989 (New Albion NA 022 CD)

"Band members Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis have captured the fantastic acoustics of the Fort Worden Cistern, a cavernous underground watertank which possesses an amazing 45 second reverberation time producing pure, smooth reverberation which overlaps the original sound. The recording employs composer Pauline Oliveros' accordion and voice; Dempster's trombone, voice, didjeridu, conch shell and garden hose; and composer/designer Panaiotis' voice, whistling, pipes and metal pieces.
"The sound is breathtaking: mysterious, pure, eerie wrap-around sound that sometimes imitates a heavenly chorus and sometimes a distant jet engine...a listening experience like no other."

Melinda Bargreen, in The Seattle Times

------------------------------------------------

Deep Listening

1. Lear _ 24'48''
2. Suiren _ 9'51''
3. Ione _ 17'30''
4. Nike _ 10'36''

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Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings - Nodal Excitation (1982)

"Nodal Excitation is a reissue of a key minimalist masterwork. Dreyblatt's documentation in the past has been slim, with albums on Hat Art, Tzadik and (shortly) Table of the Elements. This album features a 39 minute performance by Arnold's group known as The Orchestra of Excited Strings, recorded in 1981/82. Dreyblatt only had one record (Nodal Excitation, on the mostly post-AACM jazz label India Navigation), before he packed and moved to Berlin, were he concentrated on other activities, making only 2 more records over the next 10 years. But for those who caught the action, Arnold was the man. He was more rock than any of the other minimalists combined, and he was also the only one to really tap into that massive proto-minimal sound that Conrad had squelched out of his tin-contact mic violin in the early 60s. Indeed, in the early 70s, after being in school in Buffalo, where Conrad taught, Dreyblatt moved into Manhattan to work for LaMonte Young, where he witnessed first hand, and listened first-ear to those legendary recordings of the Theatre of Eternal Music. He got interested in long string sounds, and bought a bass that he wired with piano wire. By hitting the strings instead of bowing them, Dreyblatt was able to get those ringing overtones, but he also had added something new: pure rhythm...So what you have here is Dreyblatt's freshman record, a slice of minimal history that is as potent now, if not more, as it was then. It was a lighthouse that was aiming the wrong way when the tugboat came by, but now it's shining right in your face." - Drag City Press Release

Arnold Dreyblatt, Michael Hauenstein: Bass Viols with Excited Strings
Peter Phillips: Midget Upright Pianoforte
Kraig Hill: Portable Pipe Organ
Greg Lewis: Hurdy Gurdy

Recorded & Mixed Dec. 81/Jan. 82
First Release in 1982. Re-release in 1998.

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Texturizer (2003)

Texturizer is:

Nikos Veliotis: Cello
Coti K.: Electronics

.a _ 14'14''

.b_ 08'59''

.c_ 16'17''

.d_ 09'44''

Recorded live at Agios Georgios Church, Halandri - Athens, Greece/ January 2003. Antifrost Records__afro2018

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About Texturizer:

"The Athens duo of cellist Nikos Veliotis and electronic dronescaper Coti K recorded this glacial four-part drift in a local church, and there is certainly something mediative and reverential about the music. It's far from tentative, however, as from the first moment low rasping feedback tones ring out proudly, as Veliotis tries to prise open some space for himself with insistent scratchy harmonics. [...] The bowing of the cello within the brooding stasis of Coiti K's treatments adds a reassuring human warmth to what would otherwise be a rather forbidding experience; in this "Texturizer" recalls the driftworks of Pauline Oliveros, without quite managing to reach the same time-confounding plateaux." by Keith Moline, in THE WIRE (UK)

"Texturizer seems to me a very apt chosen name for the duo work of Nikos Veliotis and Coti K. The first one plays cello and Coti plays the electronic part. Apperentely this new CD was recorded in the Agios Georgios Church in a suburb of Athens, but they could have fooled me. No huge amount of natural church reverb, but a nice set of four pieces. Texturizer, who can it be different, play drone music, using cello and electronic processings thereof and field recordings (maybe those of motors, fans etc, basically anything that sounds drony), and of all these closely related sounds fit together very well. Overall, I found this drone music of a more louder nature, without saying it's aggressive or anything, it's just more present and more audible, and less blurry then some of the other music in this area. Since you may know me as a sucker of good drone music, I can't be wrong this one: very nice work." by: FdW, in VITAL Weekly (NL)

Deep Listening Band - The Ready Made Boomerang (1991)

A stunning second release from the Deep Listening Band's foray into the Fort Warden Cistern in 1988. Band members are Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis. Guests include Thomasa Eckert, vocals, and William O. Smith, clarinet. John Cage wrote a mesostic called The Ready Made Boomerang in reaction to his first encounter with the Deep Listening CD. Consequently, the following appears in the liner notes to the Boomerang CD: "It is with continuing admiration and deep thanks that this recording is dedicated to John Cage for his loving inspiration and wholehearted support."

§ A deep and fascinating electroacoustic musical voyage into the no-mind harbor...

1. Balloon Payment 0:45
2. Metalorgy 2:12
3. Seven-Up 2:39
4. The Ready Made Boomerang 10:28
5. Phantom 8:49
6. CCCC (Cistern Chapel Chance Chants) 19:54
7. Geocentric 10:54

Total: 56:04

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Phill Niblock - Touch Works, for Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (2000)

Niblock achieves his effects through multitracking of live and processed tracks and sampling, all based on original performances on acoustic instruments. He creates an aural illusion of continuity, like the perpetual gush of a waterfall, for instance. In reality, his ingenious layering methods mean that all kinds of infinitesimal but crucial structural and sonic shifts are taking place on a cumulative basis.

The album opens with 'Hurdy Hurry', a stunning hurdy gurdy piece constructed from samples of Jim O'Rourke's playing, recorded in New York at Robert Poss' studio (Band of Susans). This medieval stringed instrument played by cranking a resined wheel seems tailor made for droning, and O'Rourke has been known to drone on himself a bit in ages past. This makes his own early droneworks 'Remove The Need' and 'Disengage' seem like mere practice, but that practice has certainly paid off handsomely. At a cursory listen 'Hurdy Hurry' might seem like fifteen of continuous drone, but Niblock weaves together held tones with exact mathematical relationships to each other, and there is a constant slow evolution and almost imperceptibly gradual increase in mass as the piece unfurls.

It continues with two different versions of what could be Niblock's masterwork, a vocal piece 'AYU'. The letters A, Y and U are hummed by baritone Thomas Buckner and arranged into a continually shifting corridor of sampled sound twenty four voices thick. The second version adds a live throat singing performance from Buckner, pitch shifted one and two octaves down and multiplied fifteen times over. Imagine massed temples of Buddhist monks humming universal nirvana alphabet keys condensed by a sampler into the digital cyberlanes. Niblock is described as 'the forgotten minimalist' in the extensive and illuminating sleevenotes, which include an interview discussing his sound reproduction techniques. After hearing this, it's all the others that'll be more likely to slip from memory. - Graeme Rowland

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