Sort of dead?

[Øivind Idsø <plateaux@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Someone said electroacoustics are dead. Probably not true, but if the
new releases by Dennis Smalley and Adrian Moore on empreintes is
something to go by acousmatics could be on life support. I still haven´t
listened to the new Jonty Harrison CD (high hopes for that one, so
saving it for last), which is part of empreintes DIGITALes new British
three-pack, but I´m quite/very disappointed by Smalley and Moore.

While both CDs each feature one stand out track ("Empty Vessels" for
Smalley, and "Study In Ink" for Moore), and have their short standout
moments within some of the tracks, there simply isn´t enough invention
going on to justify complete releases. The repertoire of clichés within
electroacoustics has become too evident, proving that while repetition
(in the more extreme version, as found in many so-called microsound
releases, or even in, for example, Bernard Parmegianis "La Creation Du
Monde") is shun by most "academic" composers for being too rigid and not
very useful for the narratives that dominate many electroacoustic
pieces, their solution / counter measure of using the obligatory
crescendos and decrescendos is overused and overdone to such an extent
that they lose their effect, thereby emptying these categories for
whatever musical value they may have had.

In addition, the sound material seems to be produced with the exact same
equipment (or using the exact same synthesis), producing sounds that are
so homogenic that the sound world of Smalley and Moore could easily have
been switched without anyone noticing. This isn´t necessarily a bad
thing -- much the same could be said for some microsound releases, and
these works, ahem, work --, but it´s bad when the sounds, or the
transformations of them, have been heard .so. many times before. I´m not
musically trained, so perhaps the potentially groundbreaking formal
elements of the CDs elude me, but one should get rid of the algorithms
that makes everything sound "glass-like", pristine, sterile, and, well,
too digital. And that vocoder...the talking voice used to be one of the
greatest clichés in pop music, and "wineglassvocoding" is one of the
greatest clichés of acousmatic music. It´s all over Smalleys release,
and it´s all over Moores release, and so things very easily collapse
into the homogenic. Simply said: it´s boring.

Right now I´d much rather go for people like Pimmon (hope people have
heard is Fällt MP3s (astonishing!), and his other releases; I will order
Assembler soon, and I´m already enjoying Kinetica immensely) or John
Wall (listened to his Constructions CD a few days ago -- it´s such a
brilliant release, and if you throw in Fractuur, his previous release,
you have enough sonics to chew on to fill a decade) or Bernard
Parmegiani or Klangkrieg or Autopoiesis or the entire Ritornell or Mille
Plateaux catalogue.

Don´t get me wrong: empreintes DIGITALes has released so much good sound
candy and I´m still a huge fan, but Smalley and Moore seem highly
unnecessary additions to the label´s oeuvre.

Will write about Jonty Harrison later. Hopefully it´ll save the day.

/Øivind/
---
"Silence is so accurate."
            -Mark Rothko