Some people say there are only 609 days left for human kind (according to the Maya calendar). Others pretend the Last Judgment is ongoing. Then that is little time to read again Mathew (24-25) or the Book of Revelations.
This work started with the will to use the words of a preacher i recorded few years ago in Basel (CH).
Not that i wanted to discuss the relevance/rightness of an apocalyptic preach, but something in that speech had to be pursued.
That led me to associate the vehemence of the first part with a second one more breathing and rather speechless. Now, that breath of air could either sketch an interpretation of the Noah’s journey on his arch (mentioned by the preacher), or be a response to the alarmists passion, or be a free space of no-response needed.
The second in a series of ‘unradioplays’ by the RW crew. The theme of this one is ‘In A Meeting’. The material is partly found footage, partly self generated, partly self-recorded. The aim of the music in this piece is as an ‘anchor’ for the ‘real’ sounds.
The whole piece just asks one question (or tries to avoid it); ‘So this is real lfe? What quality of recording did you use?’
People who (sometimes involentary) collaborated; Ver 2012, Laslo, nina, Snelwegproject (fire!), Peter Wiesnthaner, H Bakr, Lg 6, Porno 8tr, William Jennings Bryan.
There are two main approaches to my artistic output. One is based on ideas. Thinking, considering, rejecting, building, destroying – everything inside my head. Mostly without notes, definitely without interim results. And then sooner or later the whole „product“ comes out like a chicken egg, ready to be published, staged….. or thrown away. The other approach is based on experiment. I simply throw myself into a situation with no ideas how to deal with them and work from there. It’s a bit like blindfolding myself and slowly removing the blindfold by running into things with my head.
For „Epic fail No. 9 mit Paukenschlag“ I followed the second approach. I had old but never published material on my computer. Mostly short notes (loops) of noise and beats. So I used chance operations to determine the length of every single track to be used („track“ as in multi-track-recording) and to determine when in time it would appear in my piece. There were over 130 tracks of lengths from a few seconds to several minutes. It all made no sense.
Up to this point I hadn’t used my ears to compose the piece. Then I listened to this first „result“ and it was…… well…… interesting. So I listened again and again and each time shortened some tracks or changed their volume. It was like tidying up a room where „a bomb had exploded“. At first I didn’t allow myself to delete any tracks at all but later changed that rule. My work here could be compared to having a sheet of paper full of random characters and then deleting some to build words of the remaining ones. Without the possibility to get them back after deletion. You have to be very careful not to destroy better possibilities for not so great ones. And you must be very careful not to lose the overview of the whole piece. Often my mind zoomed into the music to work on details and I had to force myself to regularly zoom out again for that overview.
The result is something that I first made just to entertain myself (very much me and my tastes) then „destroyed“ by chance operations (nature and not caring about whoever’s taste it may be) and finally broke down to….. have a tidy room where I could sleep and dream of sheep.
Actually I (and I guess you too) do that many times every day in real life. And usually am as unsuccesful at it as I was with „Epic Fail No. 9 mit Paukenschlag“.
“Epic Fail No. 9 mit Paukenschlag” is presented by Radio Helsinki.
CROSSINGS is an emporium of memories documenting Naples and New York along the imaginary 41°parallel that ties them on the same latitude line. Two cities in continuous metamorphosis, revealing how fragile the fringes between reality and the imaginary may be. Analog and digital meet to witness sounds of strangers, unknown horizon, private memories and crowded streets.These sound collecting events are aimed at creating a dislocation in the listener’s uncertain perception of space through sound: a sort of unerasable ‘shadow zone’ for the imaginary city walker to inhabit a no man’s land where the boundaries between the two cities are hardly palpable, proposing a displacing where gaps between audio fragments become for a few instants a sole ‘modified’ city.
credits: most sounds have been gathered in New York and Naples (sometime between october 2009 and february 2011) then manipulated filtered and and re-worked. The track makes use of field recordings, found sounds, synthesizers, filters, Luigi’s Pizza Fritta conversations; liturgical rituals at Napoli Dome (during the days of San Gennaro’s blood miracle) Akira Kasai ‘s Buthoh Performance at the National Museum, Napoli; Porta Capuana Fruit market; Peppino reading excerpts of ‘Alzaia’ by Erri de Luca; Banda and voices during the San Rocco Parade in Nyc; Coney Island subway stations and library sounds from the american radio archive, The Naked City, Union Square Farmer Market (nyc); student’s protests in Napoli; Marc Ribot concert at the Rose-Brooklyn; New York and Napoli harbours/seagulls/ships; open/broken cables, children; vocal and spoken words and cries, casual frequencies and a few more sources…
Recorded with MD Sony, telephone, Zoom digital recorder with a stereo microphone and in-ear binaural condenser mics, Edirol R4 Pro and Rode Shot-Gun mic.
short bio Soon Apres (Barbara De Dominicis) likes to record natural or urban sounds and merge them in her music. Her projects include Cabaret Noir (with Pasquale Bardaro), The Body exposed, Poe-Si (with Mirko Signorile and 99 Posse dubber Marco Messina); Kuul-Ma, an audio-visual project in collaboration with the media artist Davide Lonardi. In 2008 she wrote and produced the songs of her album Anti-Gone based on a narrative theme of Greek mythology. In the same years she met the canadian cello player Julia Kent; together they brought into existence Parallel 41a musical/visual/improvisatory project. Her growing interest in Sound Portraiture, led her to work on A tale of two cities, an audio collage documenting Naples and New York. In 2011 with a dozen of other artists, she gave life to Exquisite-What! a collective web/project based on surrealist’s Exquisite Cadaver pratice. At the moment she is working on a new solo album under the moniker Apres Soon: an assemblage of drones and field recordings, electronics, voices and string instruments.
