[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

re: [microsound] decay



> Stefan Mathieu's "Wurmloch Variationen" has turned out to be one
....

> what intrigues me is the way that it plays with the idea of decay -
dubbing
> the original piece over and over and over again, then presenting various
> stages of this "decay."  One of my questions (and apologies if you feel
put
> on the spot, Stefan, since I know you're on the list):  is this entirely a
> digital process?  I'd presume that if you dubbed from tape to tape, over
and
> over, you'd wind up with a pretty obvious decay of the source material,
> swallowed gradually by tape hiss.  But does digital reproduction really
> work the same way, or is there another process at work in this piece?

good to hear you like the music.
the basic recording was a mixture of digital/analogue processes by chance-

we had this upright piano since some weeks in the livingroom. i'm not a
pianoplayer but one night i wanted to try it to have some tonal material to
process digitally. i hung a pair of in-ear mikes into the instruments body
and recorded to minidisc myself placing fingers to different white-key-
combinations listening to the decay. the window to the street was open,
cars passing by every once in awhile. when i lplayed back the recording i
found out that the mikes battery power was pretty low so i had this hummy
and buzzy stuff. the recording sounded like piano music, i quiet liked it
as it was more about the space i was in as about the tones.
the rest of the night i spent copying the recording over and over through
the room from md to dat, 26 times until i saw that i had a continuous tonal
band. (at some point my neighbour came home drunk listening to the mothers
live at the roxy making my floor vibrate, cars kept passing by the house,
city was breathing in its sleep).
the last track on the cd is the original rec. and the last copy running
syncronized, the other tracks are done by digitally processing the
material.
i also have a dubplate with the original recording and the last generated
version where i was planning to make a 'in the material remix' by playing
off the laquer but, - you know.

( ... sorry if i lost myself on that one ... )

right now i work with  bounces of  fade in/outs which i fade up to the max
over and o. again regarding it as harddisk hiss.

> I guess the second part of my question:  who else has explored this idea

a friend of mine, goetz rogge of beastie shop beach thought for awhile that
he invented this technique because he wondered what happened if he copied
sound from his ghettoblaster through a room.
and the morning when i played the piano entropy to my wife katja she said
'wait, i did this once with my voice just to find out what happens.'
i also did it with video by playing back and filming the screen over and
over again (oh, and also with these copymachines (xerox?). guess thats
pretty much me moving in slightly changing circles)
so maybe the wheel was also invented just out of curiosity or doing time?

there is also roland khain who made a very fine 4cd set based on digital
entropy released on barooni/staalplaat.
and the photographer monika von boch who spent (as far as i know) decades
zooming into photos of layered -.,-.,-.,-.,-.,-.,-.,-., . i love it.

a beautiful review by frans de waard in vital weekly #257
[vital@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

>>>
CM VON HAUSWOLFF - OPERATIONS OF SPIRIT COMMUNICATION
(LP by Die Stadt)
Hauswolff shouldn't be a new name for you. Recentely popping up in Oscid
(see a few weeks back), but his recording career started already two
decades ago. He played with Phauss, as himself, as part of The Hafler Trio
and above all his is a visual artist, creating mostly, I believe,
conceptual art. His solo music is of concept and minimalism too. It has
taken the form of minimalist beats (but then just one short sound being
repeated, rather then anything close to a rhythm machine) on his CD's for
Table Of The Elements and Fire Inc. Here it takes the form of drones.
Knowning a little bit how these things work, it looks like Hauswolff takes
the Alvin Lucier concept of processing sounds (in his 'I"m Sitting In A
Room') for a set of tape-loops of voices (from beyond the living?) or
static sounds by tone generator. By playing them in a space, recording
them, and then playing them back into the space, the sounds erode and
transform. There is a certain 'live' character to the sounds enclosed on
this record (and not just by looking at the cover and the various places it
was recorded in), which sounds like recorded with a microphone. There is a
sense of continuaty in the various spaces this record inhabits, but it
certainly moves around. Not just in your room or head, depending on your
speakers or headphones, but it's divided in smaller tracks, which seem
various generations of the sounds. Highly delicate sounds, which are nice
if not beautiful. But but but vinyl? Crackles around when played for the
third time... why not a CD? Or maybe it's part of the concept....? Great
stuff in either way.
>>>

goodday
 - stephan



 :
 |--- -- | --- | - -| ||
 :
now.
 :
va. needle:trnsmssn. -> beta bodega
 :
va. auch: tomorrow goodbye remixed. -> force inc
 :
va. invalidObject series. -> www.fallt.com
 :
stephan mathieu. wurmloch variationen. -> ritornell
 :
full swing. 11.55.330. -> orthlorng musork
 :
soon.
 :
full swing. edits. 5x 10". -> orthlorng musork
 :
full swing. frequency lib. -> fällt
 :
stephan mathieu and ekkehard ehlers. heroin. -> staalplaat
 :
stephan mathieu. 7". -> bottrop boy
 :
va. clicks'n'cuts 02. -> mille plateaux
 :