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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Francisco López - La Selva (1998)

"La Selva is an immersion into the sound environments of a tropical rain forest in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica. An astonishing natural sonic web created by a multitude of sounds from rain, waterfalls, insects, frogs, birds, mammals and even plants, through a day cycle during the rainy season. A powerful acousmatic broad-band sound environment of thrilling complexity. And above all, a tour de force of profound listening".

Much against a widespread current trend in sound art and the customary standard in nature recordings, I believe in the possibility of a profound, pure, 'blind' listening of sounds, freed (as much as possible) of procedural, contextual or intentional levels of reference. What is more important, I conceive this as an ideal form of transcendental listening that doesn't deny all that is outside the sounds but explores and affirms all that is inside them. This purist, absolute conception is an attempt at fighting against the dissipation of this inner world.



[From the liner notes of the CD “La Selva. Sound environments from a Neotropical rain forest” (released by V2, The Netherlands).
Extracted and modified version of parts of the in-progress larger essay “The dissipation of music”]

+ info about La Selva @ http://www.franciscolopez.net/env.html

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track 1 _ 1:10:50''

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Lionel Marchetti - Portrait d'un Glacier (Alpes 2173m) (2001)

"Some of the best concrète, environmental works you could hear, weaved location recordings I guess from the Alpes, adorned with sound sources that come from far away to the left or right occasionally. You are always traveling, there's always movement, seamlessly, calmly, not sudden switches of environment, but a steady flow of change and new characterization. I like the use of one time sounds that don't get repeated. You want to click back and hear it again but then some other current scenario is making your mind work by then. These works are great, not since some of the best Eric La Casa or the Liminality comp have I been transported so completely. The wind, the crunch of snow underfoot, the bent branches left behind, the far away hail of a fellow trekker." ~ Manifold Records

Lionel Marchetti has blended field recordings with electronic drones and other sounds to create an incredibly dramatic recording. Recorded on the Glacier de Tré-la tête on Mont-Blanc, in France, at an altitude of 2173 meters we hear low rumbles, creaking, water splashing and sounds of footsteps crunching the icy surface all appearing out of the silence. Voices in the distance...a small propeller rescue plane overhead?

"Portrait d'un Glacier is a Series I release which puts it in Ground Fault's quiet category. While most of the CD is relatively quiet, there are moments at the middle when things get a little nerve wracking. It's very cold, dark and dramatic.

This is one of those CDs that are great to drift asleep to in a darkened room only to be awaken by the sudden "events" that occasionally happen.

"I used to hike mountains, (the Alpes), and the first time I descovered the Glacier "Tré-la tête", on Mont-Blanc, in France, with my friend Bruno Roche, I realized that we met a strange "vivacity". This glacier is coverd with stones, on 5 "kilometres" at less. It's a sort of desert where it's possible to see, on the floor, near our feet, a strange blue eye looking at us, saying : - do you want to know more about my face ?"...

In "Portrait d'un glacier (Alpes, 2173m)", I tried to find beauty of the mountain when it is able to give us an incredible geomorphic entity as the glacier; I tried to represent the breath of who is walking in a such beauty, dealing, in that way, with more than only his human condition - "the most difficult area"; but without forgetting this idea of "panic" I can feel that the mountain is danger too, an archaism I can feel under my feet, and sometimes could destruct me only with a breath..." Lionel Marchetti

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Glacier de Tré-la tête (2173m)

Ce matin, réveillé vers cinq heures

couleurs métalliques et vertes
lumière, force
tournoiement de l'esprit projeté
psychisme, sécrétion
lente humeur animale

soudain sonore

aurore en montagne

intelligence.

L.M.

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Track 1 - Portrait d'un Glacier (Alpes 2173m)..........28'40"

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Ellen Fullman - Body Music (1993)

"Body Music is music for Ellen Fullman's unique Long String Instrument, an eighty-foot long instrument with approximately eighty strings. Fullman has been developing this instrument for longitudinally vibrating long strings over the past thirteen years. Having received a BFA in sculpture, her interest in music began with the resonance of materials used in making sculpture. When she started making the Long String Instrument, she saw it as "sculpture as music;" now she has come full circle in conceiving "music as sculpture." For the most part, the music in Body Music relies harmonically on the diatonic scale. Because of the prominence of overtone content, more complex harmony is suggested. Through her studies of extended harmony, Fullman has come to realize that harmony is "dimensional."

"Composer/sculptor Fullman has been developing the Long String Instrument since 1980. An 80-foot long ax with 80 strings, concert presentation requires two to four players and a large room. The title refers to the players' need to use their whole bodies in performance, walking around the instrument, stroking and stroking and striking the strings. Tuned in just intonation and relying harmonically on the diatonic scale, the long strings create a wash of drones and overtones. - Mark Sullivan, Option

Searing, shifting textures seep into the air. Shimmering webs of overtones evoke an otherworldly string section." ~ Josef Woodard, Option

"Five more astonishing compositions on long string sculpture-instruments, including the marvelously flowing "Work for 4," performed on a 145-foot-long string installation, already a modern classic. "Space Between" surprisingly produces some sounds normally associated with electronic music, and "Body Music" suggests a kind of celestial Delta-blues with its bar chording technique. A CD that will appeal to many listeners. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide

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1. Bass Song (14:27)
2. Over and Under (1:31)
3. Work for 4 (20:00)
4. Space Between (3:50)
5. Body Music (19:12)
6. Departure (4:04)

© Ellen Fullman : 1987, 1989, 1992
1993 Experimental Intermedia Foundation, NYC.

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Michel Redolfi - Sonic Waters #2 [underwater music] 1983-89 (1990)

Michel Redolfi makes real atmospheric music, in this case, on his second volume of underwater music -- and his first on CD; this is music to be recorded, played, and listened to underwater.

Redolfi hangs microphones underwater, leaving them there for years at a time, records sound, then records other sounds from near-silent or silent auditory environments above the water, processes them -- with the help of Pascal Gobin and Michel Pascal -- with synthesizers and then plays them back to an audience, who is sometimes underwater!

What does it sound like? Like music made in the deep stillness of time. The keyboards add something, like a very subtle trance-inducing effect while the underwater sounds, such as on "Effractions," which was played to an audience seated outside, suggested a marriage of sea and sky, evoking the notion of a lost civilization, or the lost traces of some passage. They shimmer and sweep, irregularly wash over, and disappear just as suddenly.

On "A Sunny Afternoon at Bird Rock," sounds from the air are melded and even collaged with the sonic pulses. Water and air joining together, held in mid-space by the synthesizers -- so minimal they almost aren't there -- and whistle and wave through each other as well as the listener. The effect is heightened tenfold through headphones as gulls cross from one speaker to the next, and formations of water bubble up from the depths and move in the other direction.

Finally, the amazing "Full Scale Ocean," which has been performed dozens of times in tide pools, oceans, ponds, lakes, and rivers, becomes the overwhelming experience that joins technology and the natural world together as one inseparable universe. Over half-an-hour in length, this is music as atmosphere because that's what it is. The sheer technical manipulation of those natural sounds that most affect the human mind and body are edited together and mixed into a whole that echoes deep within the human psyche.

This is what Brian Eno only dreamed of doing, and what those other environments records wish they could pull off. Truly amazing!

ARTISTS
Ensemble Ricercar: Pascal Gobin, Michel Pascal; Lanie Goodman (flutes); Melissa Morgan (harpe); Michel Redolfi (synclavier synthesizers)

[more info @ jazzloft.com]

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1. Effractions (9:40)
2. Sunny Afternoon At Bird Rock Beach (13:10)
3. Full Scale Ocean (32:17)


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Terry Fox - ATARAXIA : Works with Sound (1979-1981)

"Sound is a means of communication, a universal language. It enters the healthy ear without impediments of language or prejudice it is perceived by every culture in the same way: via the auditory canal. It enters the ear without consent of the listener. It vibrates the eardrum. It requires no intellectualization. No intelligence is necessary. No common language need be spoken. Illiteracy is irrelevant. Sound pauses as pulses in the air.

Performance is, for me, an attempt to discover a language or method of communication which bypasses these barriers as sound does. The most important aspect of performance is the elimination of media or mediating or condition. The action is performed live and in front of its receiver. It exists only on these terms and in this context and no other: like eating. My work with the labyrinth led increasingly to the almost limit less sculptural possibilities of sound."

—Terry Fox

"In the field of the now quite famous (at least to the more attentive "Blow Up" readers) "Wire Music", the name of Terry Fox is probably less celebrated that the ones of Ellen Fullman or Paul Panhuysen and his rare incisions on vinyl are really hard to find, and a cult object for collectors. But this Seattle artist is a veteran of the genre, and a seminal figure for the performance and sound installation world. For these reasons, this first edition on CD is almost an event! As a true nomad, Fox has lived in various parts of the world, also in Italy (Rome, Bologna, Napoli, Firenze), realizing his installations in various strange places. "suono interno", the first excerpt of this cd, only 2'50'', is taken from three six-hours performances that the artist gave in the former Santa Lucia Church in Bologna, 1979. In the completely empty and abandoned church, two piano wires of the church's lenght were stretched from a point of the big wooden door. The audience was looking at the performance from a single hole in the door. The same door was also working as resonance projecting the sound outside. Also in the other tracks site-specificity is a key element. The almost 25 minutes of "Berlin attic Wire" are a great example of pure sound art, this time the piano wires exploring the resonances of the attic of the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. What seems incredible is the fantastic electronic character of the pieces, also because no electronics at all were used, except the use of a microphone for recording! The exceptional side in Terry Fox's sculptures is in the ability to transfigure sound sources and space, creating an art textured for the moment and the sound space achieved events convey minimal, but with very strong emotions."

in "Blow Up", Italy, July/August 1999.
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ATARAXIA - Works with Sound (79/81)

1 Suono Interno (2:50)
2 Rallentando (2:50)
3 Lunar Rambles (9:24)
4 Culvert (9:24) (Featuring - Bill GIlbert , Bootz Hubbard)
5 Berlin Attic Wire, Beating (24:44)
6 Berlin Attic Wire, Bowing (15:07)

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