A1 Avant Le "Viva !"
A2 De L'accommodation
A3 Tambouriner Contemplativement
A4 Pui Tarauder
A5 Le Condyle Alors Concomitant
B1 Satiété De Soupçon Chancelant
B2 Orne Ultérieurement Ses Inouis D'approvisionnement De Callosité Contingente
C1 Importer Des Ermites A La Reputation Contumace
C2 C'est Les Convoyer Sur Un Onguent Grinçant
C3 Esuite Les Truffer Des Tentes Taillées
D1 Munitions Qui Flirtent
D2 Coccyx Jouettent Sur Un Chemin Dechiqueté
D3 Fidritures De Contraire De Fievreux
D4 Consument Une Demande De Peu De Choses
Das Synthetische Mischgewebe jouera le 16 octobre aux Instants Chavirés et les 25 et 26 octobre à Caen, entre ou autour de ces dates Guido Huebner recherchait quelques autres concerts donc au cas où....
In the last ten years I have worked on collaborations with several people - all of which demanded different working strategies. The usual approach is that of exchanging of sounds - one unencumbered by the native language of the artists involved. However, I believe that discussing sound is like choosing wallpaper - together with one's significant other.
Where the possibilities for artistic creation seem virtually limitless, particular in sound, many artists seems to restrict themselves - using limitations as a sort-if creative strategy. For example, using only digitally generated sounds or just using field recordings or recycling pre-existing recordings or just repeating the last success of the sound-art jet-set and so on. Generally these approaches were once efficient procedures of the fine arts - even prior to WWII. So why not continue with these?
But why do we see the utterly elementary reversal of academic music with its pre-occupation with ever more sophisticated compositional procedures, neglecting everything that is sensorial, emotive and emotional? This one-dimensional approach has drawn the blood out of everything (nearly?) Suppose that a significant part of the reward of listening happens in the stomach, not just the head.
Taking a contrarian view, in the area in which our work is appreciated, the word composition seems to have been progressively banned, hardly ever does one come across a review that's talking in such terms. Mostly we have to deal with classification (drownambientnoisefieldrecordingglitchblablabla). This is merely an act of choosing the right drawer (compartment) to get rid of the work in question, replacing it in order to go neatly onto the next one (likely not much different). Composition has shrunken to the same 'onlys' and 'justs' with which the selection of sounds is augmented. Fading sounds in and out, or stack them on each other until the bits and bytes are filled up. It's hardly more but a phenomenological proceeding, counting exclusively on the possible attractiveness, the sensational and seductive impact of the material itself. Sounds collected and held up like postcards of safaris in the dominion of audible distractions, musing on possible references to recognisable tendencies. This fits very well into the liberal commoditization where attitude is confused with art.
It appears to be enough to assemble and display rather than to venture for challenging combinations. Sounds and the aesthetic catalogue from which they derive have become something fetish-like to stand in and cover the deficiency in concept, composition - of structure and withered complexity. Organised as best like a medley of afflicted affinities abiding in the contradicting conventions of newness and recognizeability, furnishing easy associations for whoever it is on the auditory receiving end. Cosmetic bruises. Varnish on an écorché.
Sounds utterly snobbish to say such things such as this doesn't it? And I admit - voluntary - that far too many different intentions are confused in a single media for a multitude of different objectives - and there is no reason to share them all. Rewarding the listener who already assumed a choice is often replaced by a failing challenge, providing only means, but no direction, no statement.
To make a point out of being pointless is just not worth the plastic. It is worth as much as a map of a city that doesn't exist. Well, it's been quite a time since I have heard something that really gets me going, but there's a lot that makes me laugh, sad to say.
One suspects it is understandable for those who know my work that TNB with their anti-everything attitude have been precisely the right thing to come around at the right moment. Something to get rid of the reflections above. My work is certainly not a reaction to the aforementioned, but rather what they would like to listen to - regardless from who it comes from. TNB is the ‘something’ with which DSM felt comfortable with and could imagine a lot of possible options - yet remaining true to the both artists. Because whatever it is TNB kicks out of their domain of noise which is replaced in a split second by a thick antimatter that occupies the smallest gap. This is heavyweight nothingness, Sumo Zero to wrestle with, where others fade to grey, they offer you the fat end of the black hole.
More importantly - it is not just turning knobs and pushing faders. There is a firm hand in the material world (with dirty fingernails). No matter how much a sound may be processed (which often is overestimated) its origin is always somewhere in the real world.
It was decided to create a series of compositions that go completely to the opposite end of the rather continuous flux of scraping and screeching. I considered my part of the collaboration not as the usual mutual interweaving and/or processing of each others sounds, but of dragging TNB's recordings into a completely different territory without necessarily adding one's own share of sounds, but concentrated entirely on the compositional aspects. On the LP there's nothing but TNB to hear, using the recordings provided specifically for this purpose - as well as a good share of what one could call ‘trade-mark sounds’ from existing releases.
Incisive cuts and mutilating pastes in favour of a more organised structure, running against the accidental/incidental. There are TNB sounds that were utterly direct and rolling straight forward with the power of an avalanche that, once put into action, cannot be stopped.
Only on the 7 inch are original DSM sounds used. They are all acoustic in origin, domestic recordings, not actually played/performed, but set in motion in one way or another. Things that were thought to play TNB on their own behalf. Electricity meters, badly working plugs, kitchen tools, etc.
Chapters were created in the flux wherever a change occurred - significant enough were the conventional becomes strangely bizarre. Sounds that could be considered as solos opposed to ensembles, sounds that stay up-front, opposed to others that are rather an unspecific amalgam, a quizzical mixture of ingredients. Miniatures of evident patterns became perceptible, imposing themselves, but remaining static. A display of possibilities: but mostly without any particular progression. These came in by transferring significant elements from one chapter to the following one independently of the quality of the sound, actually imposing it regardless of what was going on sound-wise.
A collaboration at a distance, but not with the person involved at one’s side. A negotiation with each other's mutual silence, insinuating ones personal strategies into one of the other. Infectious and epidemic.
Enough garbling. Listen!
Guido Huebner
In the words of Das Synthetische Mischgewebe (DSM) founder Guido Huebner, a collaboration with The New Blockaders (TNB) seemed to "have been precisely the right thing to come around at the right moment." I posit that this may very well be the case, but despite the fact that both projects have been active for over twenty-five years and have both become stalwarts of the European experimental music underground, it is an otherwise odd pairing. While the bulk of DSM's work has been concept-oriented and decidedly artistic multi-media compositions, TNB have become the de facto poster-children for anti-art nihilism. Perhaps because, or in spite, of these fundamental differences this project works as well as an alchemical wedding. Huebner is at the helm here, so it's not a collaboration in the sense that the two groups got together and made a record. He's taken the raw material of TNB and sculpted it into a meticulously constructed musique-concret composition much like a remix artist would. If you're looking for another chapter in the full-blown noise tomes of TNB, you may be disappointed. I for one relish the way that the noise is placed in an entirely new context, with equal blasts of silence that are just as powerful and even give the harsh textures a renewed significance. The proper listening sequence involves alternating sides of the twelve-inch and seven-inch records, but I've chosen to discuss each record independently for reasons I hope to make apparent in the process.
The LP comes housed in a heavy-stocked color offset-printed laminated jacket and contains both the first and last parts (sides A and D) of "The Monosyllabic Bicycles Tri-Coloured Quadruples." For both parts Huebner employs only the sounds of TNB; some exclusively prepared for this project and others culled from existing recordings. Despite the track listings (which are vaguely demarcated), both sides also flow as self-contained singular works at just over twenty minutes each. Despite DSM's Teutonic origins, I sense an affinity more with the French aesthetic towards electro-acoustic music whether it be the classic work of Pierre Schaeffer or such later practitoners as Lieutenant Caramel. Side A subdues the trademark noise of TNB without rendering it impotent. Instead the textures are placed under a sonic microscope in which all the scrapes and hisses are exposed at a molecular level. Bursts of machine noise and percussive rustlings are erected like crystalline pillars of acousmatic beauty enshrouded in a landscape of quiet clouds. Even at the music's most dense moments, there is a flow and undeniable sense of attentiveness; this is not sloppy work, but absolutely dramatic. Every sound is presented on its own terms and is simultaneously related to what precedes and follows it. Generally nothing is ever acoustically or electronically obscured as the cut-and-paste work of Huebner actually further illuminates the timbres of the source material. Top- shelf concrete work that ends, appropriately enough, with a flourish of classic TNB noise.
The second side (side D) of the LP kicks off with isolated bursts of junk percussion and is punctuated by small actions of noise that are both brought into play structurally through the use of silence as a compositional construct. Avalanches of violent sound are kept in check by the context in which they emerge. A squeaking wheel is juxtaposed over a malfunctioning machine part while an erstwhile carpenter works his day away in vain. Handicapped locusts chirp their last gasps amidst the impending doom of a nascent summer heatwave in a cloud of DDT. At times the editing work almost calls to mind The Hafler Trio's work circa “A Thirsty Fish.” It's clever yet foreboding with a remote sense of optimism amidst an imminent apocalypse so to speak. Spiky barbs of sounds are bandied about that accumulate to create a wall of noise threatening to eventually take the work over, but are subdued by oil barrel percussion edits. Quite an impressive composition.
The diminutive record bears the distinction of including source recordings made by Huebner: “electricity meters, badly working plugs, kitchen tools, etc.” I imagine that the use of these sounds is intended to forge an aesthetic kinship with TNB. At any rate, it works. Side B is just over eight minutes of raw collage music. The dynamic interplay amongst the dispersion of the various sounds is creative and dramatic. Again, noise and silence meet in harmony and coexist on equal footing. The latter half of the side tends to be a bit noisier and has a more consistent flow of material until the very end flirts with silence and harsher textures bringing the whole thing full circle. Side C clocks in at nearly seven minutes in length and is aesthetically more akin to the second side of the LP. Every noise is exquisite and placed meticulously in relation to its relative quietude. Honestly, nothing more can be said about the work here except that an old steam radiator seems to be gasping its last breath. Not a bad thing to hear. In all likelihood this edition, as is to be expected from such artists, is already sold out. There are only 305 numbered copies of the set (97 on clear vinyl). The quality of the pressings and full-color packaging are impressive enough, but the music really stands out far beyond typical noise recordings. Here's to hoping that these folks keep on keeping on, regardless of whether or not they collaborate again. Top-notch effort, mates.
Heathen Harvest
sold out visit The New Blockaders, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe (here or here) & Equation Records
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