Category Archives: #41

Show 703: Ardesia + El Gat soundworks by Chloé Despax

Two soundpieces, multiple languages, one producer.
Chloé Despax is a producer and sonic author able to balance herself in between reality and imagination, documentary and poetry in a multilingual texture that blends voice, electracoustic sounds and soundscaping.
Guided by Chloé Despax’s voice we dive into the listening of Ardesia and El Gat opening a window onto her own production process.

Ardesia [2017-2018, 10’41”]
Ardesia is a piece that brings a tactile, poetic and sensorial approach to the mediterranean landscape.
The listener is taken into a constant movemente between a mineral space – represented by the Slate stone typical of the Ligura region in Italy – and an encounter with the Genius Loci, talking through the natural elements. The ligurian soundscape blends in with its inhabitants’ voices and the black slate stone becomes a vehicle for social interaction and imagination for the whole Mediterranean area.

For months Chloé has travelled with three pieces of ligurian slate stone: one taken from the mountains, one from the beach and one from the sea; she put them in the hands of several people and asked them to give their own personal and tactile reading of the slate. Common thread among these people: they all came from the mediterranean area.
Ardesia puts them together in a voyage where sounds and voices from eastern Liguria, entwine with the Mediterranean languages and imaginations.

Ardesia is thought in several different forms: as and interactive installation, as a polyphonic piece and as a radio piece.

Production, recordings and editing : Chloé Despax
Piece finalized during Phonurgia Nova 2017 residency at Groupe de Recherches Musicales de l’INA, Paris (FR).
Mix : Benoît Bories
The sound installation (2017) has been pruduced by Biennale des Jeunes Créateurs d’Europe et de la Méditerranée (BJCEM).

El Gat [2016, 9’38″]
In the middle of the Rambla del Raval in Barcelona, you will meet El Gat: a monumental bronze sculpture by artist Botero. 
El Gat listens to its surrounding soundscape, the passers-by’s voices, their secrets…and he spills them.

El Gat was conceived as a polyphonic installation, here we can listen to its radiophonic version.

Music creation : Damien Magnette
Mix : Christophe Rault
Produced by Empreinte / ACSR (BE) and Galerie La Place (ESP)

www.chloedespax.com
www.radiopapesse.org

 

Show 702: “Tractatus illogico-insanus” by Mark Kanak (Radio Helsinki)

“Tractatus illogico-insanus” is a mixture of parody (of Wittgenstein’s famous „Tractatus logico-philosophicus“ which he wrote exactly 100 years ago in the summer of 1918), also influenced by Walter Serner’s “Last Loosening” and Hermann Burger’s own “Tractatus logico-suicidalis”. In short, it’s the author’s musing on the surveillance state – a situation that is at once absurd, manic and cutting, inherently illogical— wherein all participants acquiesce to being monitored, spied on, surveilled—and in the end, do nothing. In this tractatus, the author is travelling through a night time soundscape where the “Program” is always running, everything is being watched on the hiding everywhere—even in your own head.

In short: the limits of the surveillance state are the limits of our world.

Based on the book “Tractatus illogico-insanus”, upcoming early 2019, Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt (AT). Full German and full English version.

By Mark Kanak

Listen to the show here: Link

Show 700: “We all emerge some hours later, baffled” by James Greer and Neil Luck (for Resonance FM)

Photograph by Keita Ikeda

Tokyo is a city in a continual state of performance, a panoply of lives compressed into a dense metropolis. Underneath all the glossy commerce, all the confronting pop culture, all the tourists, however, is the city’s strange and fascinating underbelly – a rich strata of human subcultures. Over one humid, woozy summer weekend James Greer and Neil Luck traverse the marginalia of Tokyo at night, negotiating its train lines, visiting deserted bubble-era ghost towns, underground jazz venues, salaryman drinking spots, and a tiny bar repurposed as a theatre. “We all emerge some hours later, baffled” is their disorienting mix of reconfigured field recordings and half remembered reflections.

James Greer: www.jamesagreer.com
Neil Luck: http://www.neilluck.com/about/about.html
Resonance FM: https://www.resonancefm.com/

Show 699: “What is existence?” by Martin Anastasovski (Kanal 103)

What is existence?
Existence is what?
Is existence what?

Martin_Anastasovski

A woman of errant composure trudges on a tiled walkway, head bowed forward, eyes peering down. She is looking for discarded, half-smoked cigarettes. She has to, in order to endure Existence.

The 35 year old skateboarder says, “this is the only thing I have,” and kicks his foot forward to send the wooden plank rolling on the platform.

The call to prayer resounds, cutting the blocks of stale air that have become lodged between the building blocks. To put thoughts into people’s heads is the meaning of existence for the navigator of the minaret.

The hot car rolls down the street. The bicycles hit the subtle bumps on the track, bells ringling involuntarily. The person in the doughnut and coffee store winks his eyes few times, at a long interval, while the droning of the machines is filling the ambiance with the stuff of sound frequencies.

The river of existence coils into a vortex, and uncoils again. Who is in the eye of the vortex? Do my eyes help move this thing or does it exist on its own.

Show 698: “Goats learning to swim” (Radio Zero)

Wherever the earth is crag and scrub, the goats are there—the black ones, girlishly skipping, leaping their little leaps from rock to rock. I’ve loved their nerve and frisk since I was small.

Once my grandfather gave me one of my own. He showed me how I could serve myself when I got hungry, from the full-feeling bags there like warmish wineskins, where I’d let my hands linger some before bringing my mouth close, so the milk wouldn’t go to waste on my face, my neck, even my naked chest, which did happen sometimes, who knows if on purpose, my mind dwelling all the while on the savory-smelling vulvazinha. I called her Maltesa; she was my horse; I could almost say she was my first woman.

TEXT BY EUGÉNIO DE ANDRADE
TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE BY ATSURO RILEY
SHOW CURATED AND PRODUCED BY PAULO RAPOSO

Show 697: Assisi Machine by Kerry Priest (Soundart Radio)

If we could hear the voice of nature, what would it say? And could humans use technology to strengthen their connection with nature?

Starting with the music and letting this guide the story, the Assisi Machine is a thrilling murder mystery which puts electronic sound technology at the heart of the action.

The show features three drone music sound collages which help move the plot along.

Parts of the play are written in dramatic verse, a favourite form of Shakespeare and Goethe, which is almost unknown in recent times.

Script and poetry by Kerry Priest

Sound design by Tin Moth

Actors:

Dr Farley – Antonia Eastwood

2nd Academic & Dr Hamilton – Tom Eastwood

Seagull & Raven– Tom Eastwood

Reporter – Linsey Fryatt

Blackbird – Linsey Fryatt

Contact:
kerrypriest.com
@kes_priest

Show 696: Cold Cuts by bauhaus.fm (guest producer)

During the shortest night of 2018, ten students from bauhaus.fm set out to make slow radio from various locations in the city of Weimar in Germany. The recordings of these six hours are chopped up and recombined for Radia, using Dieb13’s software ‘Schnitzel’. Laura Dang and Lefteris Krysalis interlaced a random Schnitzel cut with a more musical one. The outcome of this process is called “Cold Cuts”.

Produced by Dieb13, Laura Dang and Lefteris Krysalis.
Idea by Knut Aufermann.
Original image by Patty Ventura, edited by Laura Dang and Lefteris Krysalis.

Participants of the Slow Radio Show for bauhaus.fm: Julius Baars, Konrad Behr, Laura Dang, Jan Glöckner, Lefteris Krysalis, Grit Lieder, Johann Mittmann, Janine Müller, Severin Schenkel, Anton Worch, Knut Aufermann & Martin Hirsch

Show 695: Tatin ! – Radio Grenouille

TATIN !
Let’s start with the recipe !

Collective realization of a sound-culinary experience

The practice of sound can be conceived, thought and realized in a body, in a spirit, an author, an artist.
But the sound can also be shared.
And what’s better than the pleasures of the mouth to get in touch with the sound material.
These sound materials brought by the participants of the Sound Studies of this season, are staged, implemented within a recipe that has become a graphic score.
Everyone bringing their ingredient and finding the right balance, to feast your ears and your spirits.

Antonella Fiori came to read excerpts from her magazine : « Le Chum Rose n° 3 » revue courtoise et ménagère parmi cet univers sonore. (Journal intime, théorique et pratique de la couturière CITY Météor | Antonella Fiori (extraits)).

Les Études Sonores, cycle of workshops co-produced by La Cité de la Musique and Radio Grenouille-Euphonia.

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TATIN !
Commençons par la recette !

Réalisation collective d’une expérience sono-culinaire.

La pratique du son peut se concevoir, se penser et se réaliser en un corps, en un esprit, un auteur, un artiste.
Mais le son peut également se partager.
Et quoi de mieux que les plaisirs de la bouche pour entrer en contact avec la matière sonore.
Ces matériaux sonores apportés par les participants aux Études Sonores de cette saison, sont mis en scène, mis en œuvre au sein d’une recette devenue partition graphique.
Chacun y amenant son ingrédient et trouvant l’équilibre juste, pour régaler vos oreilles et vos esprits.

Antonella Fiori est venue lire des extraits de sa revue : « Le Chum Rose n° 3 » revue courtoise et ménagère parmi cet univers sonore. (Journal intime, théorique et pratique de la couturière CITY Météor | Antonella Fiori (extraits)).


Les Études Sonores, cycle d’ateliers co-produit par La Cité de la Musique et Radio Grenouille-Euphonia.