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structured works |
suspended |
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The next two pieces are part of my upcoming album titled
‘’SUSPENDED ‘’ and it’s the first of five individual parts and the beginning or the end of a story : An individual stuck within the confines of a cosmic – fourth dimensional chimney , watching others escape through various ways , some more magical like John Clare who turns into letters and some more practical like Jerzy Kukuczka simply climbing out of the chimney , seeks a way to escape as well. The main goal in this project is this : To effectively tell a story which contains all of my symbols and perceptions about the fundamentals of life like time, death , transformation , intervention , love etc. and to suspend all the people that ignited , inspired and directed my creativity with their works , their words and their worlds in a safe place , shielded from oblivion , preserved in amber. Going for a pentalogy as an unpublished artist is definitely an ambitious project since the arrangement of the material is a complex process but at the same time it’s a practice : exhaust all of the symbols that you deeply identify with , the themes that you draw from and all the styles of composing and performing , forcing yourself to go nowhere except for new territory. |
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'round the bend |
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This is the last sequence . Jame’s Joyce’s daughter , Lucia Joyce and her roommate William S. Burroughs might have the key to escaping the Chimney : The right words placed in the right order.
The ritual of hypnosis begins with hopes of you escaping on wings but soon becomes clear that this ‘’neither man, neither bird’’ is not you but another one, Austin Osman Spare , one of the most prominent yet overlooked visual artists and visionaries of British culture of the 20th century , the third roommate who is not present since he has long left the Chimney. These three act respectively as the fates in the story. I wanted to create a sense of ‘’ heading to the gallows ‘’ . A strong deterministic feeling to the composition ; since the narrative has already transpired inside my skull. A Cut-Up Technique was also implemented but with sounds and samples instead of words : you should let the song articulate itself in the same manner that the song lets you articulate your ideas and emotions through its frequencies , therefore I find giving up a little control essential even in the framework of a structured work. ‘’ The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. |
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‘’ Half bird , Half man ,
bird’s heart , man’s lungs , bird’s head , man’s eyes . The body bursting with a longing never sated. The body bound by heavy limbs , eyes turning to the sky. ‘’ Riten (1969) , Ingmar Bergman |
A NEW BODY PT.1 |
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IMPROVISED WORKS |
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The ways in we which we use the instruments , approach composition and perceive sound in general were already there before our birth. All of the above are parts of our greater social conditioning. Using improvisation is a great tool to break this conditioning both as musicians and as listeners. To consciously try not to fall to the same patterns and force ourselves to find new pathways to get to the place we are trying to get , even if that’s nowhere. I find this way of expressing myself progressively appealing since I get the chance to witness the birth of an idea , finding myself in a sonic superposition where any sound could take any form, before any kind of predetermined conditioning and forced artistry alters the idea itself. In this improvised approach giving up notions of excessive control is crucial : You only act as the intermediary between space , time and sound.
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the kindness enzyme |
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‘’ There is an enforced change of direction in old people. Like the tide changing in the Thames. The older they get , the less and less they can remember into the future , the less and less they can understand the present and the more they are drawn back into the past. Back there memories become vivid , more alive than anything else. If it is balanced perfectly they reach their birth and their death and the same time. The kindness enzyme that I’m talking about is an enzyme given by God to all men. It removes the horror of approaching death by accelerating the view and the tide that is turning backwards. ‘’
-B.Catling , ‘’ The Erstwhile ‘’ ‘’ If you are in a magical state ; then if you create a piece of art while in that state ; it is a way back into that state. ‘’ - Alan Moore |
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sonic experimentation |
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The following pieces are the result of some of the sonic experiments I’ve conducted recently. The meaning deriving from experimentation is of great essence for me since openness ,both for the creator and the listener, is what one finds at its core and it’s always proportional to what one seeks. Experimentation has also been a great teacher : you can be dead serious about something without actually being dead.
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I am recording in a factory different from the one you are in now . |
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‘’ I am sitting in a room ‘’ is one of Alvin Lucier’s most prominent works in which Lucier records himself narrating a text, and then plays the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. These recordings work as communicating vessels leaving only a swarm of frequencies behind based on the qualities of the space they occupy. I had to try this with some of my own structured work in an effort to move to a new direction : find the silver lining between all aspects of my creativity and try to harmoniously synthesize an all encompassing approach to sound.
This is the first part of ‘’ ‘Round the Bend ‘’ distilled 9 times through the spacial qualities of a factory in my hometown. I was going for 8.000 repetitions but time was not on my side. Same goes for the owner of the factory. ‘’ I know that I hung on a windy tree 9 long nights, wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin, myself to myself, on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run ‘’ Hávamál |
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Jacob’s Ladder. |
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Most of these sounds I hear everyday. I allowed myself only one tool : to cut and paste (maybe that’s two tools) the material that I recorded from my daily life forcing myself to make the most out of the material. Each sound matters.
Space was also a central idea in the process of shaping this piece. I wanted to portray the movement from the external to the internal world. A spiraling inwards and upwards to one’s own self , the sacred threshold of his/her own ideas. |
music for migraines |
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One of the biggest challenges of the experimental approach is to cover the distance between the artifact – the end product – and the process. Try to convey the ideas and the feelings that you are going through the process of creating to the ones receiving your work. Using a language that you only understand can be gratifying since this means only one thing: you created a language. But why use a key that can open a thousand doors to close one?
In this piece I used a field recording of rain and used the field recorder itself as a percussive instrument. I also minimally used a modular synth simply because the piece asked for it. I also have no idea where this piece is going or what this is about except for one thing : it really helps my mother with her migraines. Almost healing a migraine with sound is a testament to the potential of sound itself and I truly believe that after so many centuries of our collective sonic involvement we have only scratched the surface of what is possible through it. |
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Mercurial by nature
the seeker is never satisfied. When we learn how to see the ritual architecture We will know how to ask If the sea is , in fact , deep enough To hold all we would burden her with. Steve von Till , ‘’ Harvestman : 23 untitled poems ‘’ |
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