3modalbloops

Ecker & Meulyzer “Carbon” (SUB033)

Digital & CD: https://eckermeulyzer.bandcamp.com/album/carbon

Koenraad Ecker and Frederik Meulyzer make their Subtext debut with Carbon. 

Based on field recordings made at Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a secure seed bank located on the island of Spitsbergen, Carbon grapples with the many contradictions that lie at the heart of our shift into the capitalocene. The project began in 2017, when Ecker and Meulyzer scored the performance “Frozen Songs,” a commission by Zero Visibility Dance Company led by Ina Christel Johannesen.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was conceived of as an effort to preserve copies of seeds from key crop varieties, ensuring their persistence in the event of large-scale crises. Yet the area is warming faster than anywhere else on earth, causing the permafrost to melt and putting the seed vault at risk. 

Across from the Seed Vault lie the decrepit remnants of Svalbard’s mining activities of the early 20th century; Carbon wrestles with the incongruities nestled in the town’s landscape. Reflecting on dissonances of stasis and change, closeness and distance, enclosure and expanse, as well as cynicism and hope, Ecker and Meulyzer consider the urgency of our situation while trying to sidestep all-too popular depictions of dystopia. In Ecker’s own words, “we don’t have the luxury to afford that kind of pessimism.” 

From close, supple sounds to cold, brutal sonics, Carbon meditates on the many challenging questions and contradictions raised by the Seed Vault and its surroundings—a landscape that embodies and makes visible the many intertwined phenomena that shape our current predicament.

Ecker and Meulyzer, formerly known as Stray Dogs, have released works such as Wasteland, recorded in deconsecrated church in Antwerp, and Kalkar, recorded in the cooling tower of a former power station in Germany. 

Koenraad Ecker works in the fields of electro-acoustic music, field recording, radio plays, stage performance and text. Together with Andrea Taeggi, he is part of the Opal Tapes-affiliated duo Lumisokea. His output encompasses studio albums, audiovisual installations, texts, performances, and sound design for film. 

Frederik Meulyzer is a percussionist active in projects including Belgian jazz band Hamster Axis of the One-Click Panther, contemporary music and theatre company Post uit Hessdalen, and experimental psych-krautrock band Slumberland.

The ecological impact of the production of this record will be compensated through a carbon offsetting program .

Bandcamp

Ecker & Meulyzer - Growth

Dominique Vaccaro, Overlapped Memories

SIDE 1
Written, performed and recorded by Emma Grace
Mastered and post-produced by Capitano Merletti at Studio Garp, Venice
Produced by Pipapop Records, Artwork album cover by Giorgia Ragnacci.
Upcoming album date February 26th 2020

6 - Funny Nests

87643is(snippet)

from 𝓈𝒶𝓁𝒶𝓉𝒶²²⁰⁵ (charity compilation for Maciek) released by: https://soundcloud.com/xxxglamourxxx

"Hi there!

Sorry to bother you & writing about this so late, but the case is really urgent and important . .

We're running a pretty sexy label called glamour.

A few days ago our friend survived a major accident and he ended up being paralyzed from the waist down. He'd been in a coma for two weeks, woke up and doctors said he won’t walk anymore. He created a fundraising page (zrzutka.pl/s33zx9) so we decided to help him raise the money for everything by making a charity compilation that we would release on glamour’s bandcamp.
We wanted to ask, if maybe you (or any befriended musical project you know) would like (and could of course!) to be featured in such a compilation? For now, we have 70 confirmed artists (including galen tipton, John Object, Dmitri Mazurov etc.), many more to come.
All the money from bandcamp would go for Maciek. We thought of you because we admire your music so soooo much, and still want this compilation to be pure quality! <3

(The track must be unreleased yet, but you don’t have to make a new piece especially for the compilation. You can even give us something you’ve created some time ago but never published it.)

Thank you for your time!

Wiv love,
glamour"

https://xxxglamourxxx.bandcamp.com/album/charity-compilation-for-maciek

credits
released May 7, 2020

Maciek:
zrzutka.pl/s33zx9

artwork by Sam Balfus
www.instagram.com/balfua/

master by Bartek Kujawski
8rolek.bandcamp.com

music video for "3D creek water" by cybernakulum
www.instagram.com/cybernakulum/
youtu.be/QM21UQS9wP8

"Nutmeg" recorded by Filip Marcinkowski

𝒢°07

Insular (from 𝒢°07, 𝓈𝒶𝓁𝒶𝓉𝒶²²⁰⁵ (charity compilation for Maciek)

「Small Stone」

"In Japan during the Covid-19 lock down we saw a movement. It was created from a woman who raised her voice to say NO via SNS to one of the controversial bills, a revision of the public prosecutor's office law* that was about to go through the Lower House without a fair public hearing. This tiny voice of hers went viral and formed an online demonstration to protect our democracy. It is very rare in Japan for the public to be actively involved in any policies. Alas the bill was temporarily suspended because many finally stood up.

“ When we threw lots of small stones, the mountain got moved a little. However we shouldn’t celebrate yet. We need to be calm and grounded and observe what the government will do.” says Kyoko Koizumi, an actress and a producer whom I respect dearly. Her phrases sums up things that do not change so easily. 


*A proposed legal revision that would raise the retirement age for prosecutors became the centre of controversy this week when it was taken up by the Lower House. Unlike officials in other administrative organizations, prosecutors have wide powers to investigate, arrest and indict anyone, even prime ministers and other high officials. They must remain highly neutral and independent from other authorities and political powers. Since the proposed revision could allow the Cabinet to intervene in the personnel affairs of prosecutors’ offices, many experts fear it could jeopardize the independence of prosecutors and the separation of powers.

「Serene」

The music of Eric Dolphy lives with Breathing.

We never forget the day May 25th 2020 for the world we can freely breath in and out. 

「Two Blue Kites」

June 4th 1989 , it is a very memorable day for me. 

31 years ago I took part in a demonstration for the first time ever in my life. It was a small resistance held in Tokyo. I was with the Chinese people raising my voice out loud in the crowd. I couldn’t do anything but I felt that I had to do something. 

In the beginning of the 90s I was going back and forth between Tokyo and Hong Kong making music. I was offered to make music for a film portrait the night before the Chinese Cultural Revolution called “ The Blue Kite”. The producer of this film invited me to make the music for the film. The film director was banned from making this film in mainland China and he escaped to Japan via Hong Kong. The film was finally completed in Japan. Hong Kong was still in British colony then. This film made my film music career begin. 

June 4th 2020 The Hong Kong government banned the public to organise and attend the candlelight rallies to mark the Tiananmen Square massacre. Despite the harsh policing and the Covid-19 regulation many people (still) defied the ban and tried to attend the commemoration. I was thinking of many of my friends there at the moment.  

I wonder how this little country, Hong Kong, that “brought me up” and “ shaped me who I am today” will be from now. My heart is full of concern for its future.

The film The Blue Kite is still banned in China to this date."

- Otomo Yoshihide



In Japanese / 日本語訳

「Small Stone」

日本では、ステイホームの期間中の5月8日、一人の女性の発言をきっかけに、現

政権がやろうとしていた三権分立をゆるがすようなひどい法案(検察庁法改正案)に対し多くの人々

がSNSを使って異を唱え、それがデモのような効果をもたらし、5月18日国会で

の法案決議を阻止するに至った。

「小さな石をたくさん投げたら山が少し動いた。が、浮き足立ってはいけない。

冷静に誰が何を言い、どんな行動を取るのか見守りたい。」敬愛する女優であり

プロデューサーの小泉今日子が5月19日にSNSで呟いたこの発言は、そのうねり

のことと同時に、しかしそう簡単に現状は変わらないことも表している。

「Serene」

エリック・ドルフィーが作る曲は呼吸とともにある。2020年5月25日は忘れては

ならない日だ。みなが伸び伸びと息ができる世界のために。

「Two Blue Kites」

  6月4日は個人的にも忘れられない日だ。31年前のこの日、わたしは初めてデモに

参加した。東京でおこなわれた小さなデモだった。東京に住む中国人たちと一緒

にわたしも声をあげていた。いてもたってもいられなかったのだ。

90年代初頭、わたしは香港と東京を行き来して音楽をつくっていた。そんな中

1993年、文化大革命前夜の北京を描いた「The Blue Kite」という中国映画の音楽

を作ることになったのが、わたしが映画の世界に入る切っ掛けだった。中国で作

ることを禁じられ、香港経由でフィルムを持って日本に脱出した監督が東京で完

成させた映画で、香港のプロデューサーがわたしを誘ってくれたのだ。当時香港

はまだイギリス領だった。

2020年6月4日、香港では天安門事件31周年の集会が新型コロナを理由に禁止され

ていたにも関わらず、多くの人たちが集まり追悼集会が開かれていた。きっと多

くの友人もそこにいるのだろう。わたしを育ててくれた香港はどうなっていくの

だろうか。「The Blue Kite」は今でも中国での上映が禁止されている。

TR045 - Otomo Yoshihide - 'Small Stones 2 (The Diet May 18th 2020'

The Light Of Setting Suns

"Alpha Beta Eros" (2020) __/ A composition by Michael Pisaro-Liu (USA)
__/
Philippe Lauzier (CAN): bass clarinet
d'incise (CH) : electronic, loudspeakers
__/
Opening this serie, Michael Pisaro-Liu, emminent member of the Wandelweiser composers collective & residing and teaching in Los Angeles, delivered a score where words and (love) letters transform into notes,  revealing in their dialog a delicat conterpoint, two voices slightly appart at the begining get soflty intertwined in the last third. Philippe Lauzier, clarinetist, improvisors and sound artist, from Montreal, precisely fomulated its reading on its intruments while d'incise, obstinate sound explorer and co-founder of Insub, reincarnated the score, and its electronic interpretation, by plugging it into various non-neutral, tenderly distorting, loudspeakers.
__/
More : http://insub.org/insub-distances/
Video : https://youtu.be/JrA0oXQGxkI
HD audio : https://insub.bandcamp.com/album/michael-pisaro-liu-alpha-beta-eros-insub-distances-1-8
Interview about the piece : https://youtu.be/CnlyVrooKmA
__/
Insub.distances - a project by Insub.asso & Insub.records - 2020
__/
Supported by : Prohelvetia ("Close distance" programm) / Fondation Suisa / Fondation Nicati-De Luze

modular sketchbook 11-22-20

BLogic