Performed by Hamish Jamieson, November 30 2021.

Commissioned by the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) as part The ANAM Set (2021) and written for Hamish Jamieson and given its world premiere on 30 November 2021 at the Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne. The ANAM Set was funded by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government Initiative. 

Upcoming performance at The ANAM Set Festival May 13 to 15 2022, Melbourne (AU)

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In flesh is a work about body, contact and tactility. 

The composition and electronics take on a Frankenstein-esque approach, composed entirely from samples of the cello; field recordings, which are stripped down, taken apart and put back together.

There is a gestural persistence and compulsiveness in the work, a desire for sound to envelop, enter, leak or seep through, to completely embody one’s own skin.


For more:
www.kittyxiaomusic.com
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Photo credit: Sandra Kennel

In flesh

for oboe, percussion & electronics
written for the Weinfield-Zells
finished writing April 2018
recorded May 2018
edited November 2022


« Je vois bien l’autre comme tel—je vois le tel de l’autre—... »

“I see the other thus—I see the other’s thusness...”

Roland Barthes
Fragments d’un discours amoureux
(A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments)
(trans. Richard Howard)


credits

recorded by
catherine weinfield-zell, oboe
mike weinfield-zell, percussion

thanks for help from André Mestre & Georg Kári Hilmarsson & Joshua Fineberg

thusness

Cascade

D6+A13 / Percussion: Bb3 - hammer rapidly 10 ten times to slightly stagger a warped and elongated sus. cymbal sample

D0, D1+V & D5+G (after D6+A13 off) in various combinations to cycle the sample at various speeds, pitches, directions, to improvise on. The timings affect each staggered sample differently, scrambling them as setup for the next part

Above a resistance threshold of ~120ohms, V+A13, 14, 15, 16, 17 speeds up the cycle greatly, which sounds like a fast scrub through pitches/timbres/durations

Below the threshold, the cycles seems to freeze and loop on a small (~.100ms to 1s) subsection. Because the ten samples are all scrambled, they make a complex polyrhythm by freezing at different pitches/timbres/durations

Right at the threshold (very precisely, a few ticks on a 10 turn 100 ohm pot will tip it over), the cycles will freeze, jump to a new subsection, and freeze again. How long it freezes for is random, possibly due to slight fluctuations in voltage causing it to tip over

While this is going on, G+A12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 in various combinations lets you exclusively change the timbre. With 10 turn 100 ohm pot, you can tween between the timbres with white noise in between

The limiting factor is mainly that you cannot connect an Address line to both G and V at the same time (this would cause a short circuit and turn off the keyboard)

However, certain combinations of A+V and A+G produce the same sound. So in order to smoothly explore the variety of interesting sounds in this mode, you need to weave between combinations and use these certain special combinations as pivot points

The challenge was finding a balance between sounds I wanted to explore and how reasonable the path to get there was. Last slide is the map of combinations (above) led to the path (below) with steps

Lastly, the 'bells' part uses A0-A12 + G to change 'frequency quality', and the ending was a lucky random effect caused by slowly short circuiting between V+D6+A13+G using a pot

Some edits were done in audacity - crossfading, editing of takes together, compression and eq, but can be performed live

Hysteresis ii

Work realized in the Studios of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges / IMEB.
Anastasis is a five channel composition realized in the Studios of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (IMEB). The work is programmatic in its representation of Christ's Descent into Limbo, a frequently treated subject in Medieval art. The majority of sounds used are derived from concrète sources, some of which carry conceptual weight. For example, the recurring sound of wax being scraped away from the metal surface of the candle trays at Bourges ' Cathedral St. Étienne: the residue of prayer — its removal, a daily chore (or performance ritual) captured in sound. Also, the emergence of a field recording of windmills at the work's close: transformation, by man, of nature's breath into energy as a storm blows in on the mountainside.
The piece itself is a stormy, transformative descent. Sounds of friction and resistance represent the interpenetration of spheres of existence. Long intense strokes of sound such as the dragging of wood along wood, glass on glass, and the grinding and scraping of metal against metal are fractured by abrupt, pointed declamations which lead, ultimately, to a representation of the breaking of the gates of hell. The only purely electronic sounds used in the composition are dense, bristling textures that occur as interruptions of the long descent. They represent the accumulation of a mysterious, electrical energy in the empty tomb above — static glimpses of that middle sphere.
Technical notes:
The orchestration of sound objects in the field of five loudspeakers adheres to an elastic gravitational plan assigned to each point in space. Generally speaking, the field of five speakers is “weighted” so that rear point sources support sounds lower in pitch than those occurring in the front of the projection plane where frequencies are raised. The relationship between each point source and its corresponding interval of transposition is in constant flux and its size serves to emphasize the degree of spatial depth present at any given moment. Sound sources are decorrelated to support and exaggerate the listener's experience of space.
— John Mallia


Anastasis

Husk, with aura (2015) is in four connected parts:

1) “I dream of the dead…”
A ritualistic exploration of a resonant soundfield comprised of hanging metals. Points aglow like stars. The resonance of metals becomes liquid (elixir of life) and transforms, via ‘touchless’ recorded eBow technology, into the resonance of an object not yet touched (dulcimer). The percussionist mentally ‘speaks’ the words “I dream of the dead,” periodically, throughout this section, articulating speech rhythms on the hanging instruments, as if attempting to conjure a spirit.

2) Tremors.
In Celtic Mythology, the harp was thought to provide a means for, among other things, summoning spirits or animals, manipulating emotions, and inducing sleep. In “Husk, with aura,” the hammered string instrument stands in for the harp to summon the spirits of the Dead. The hammering is incessant, unrelenting — a focused intensification of the wider range of gestures and colors explored in the first section of the piece.

3) Starkness.
The frame drum is the first instrument actually touched by the player’s hand. With this point of physical contact comes a dramatic shift in texture and implied ‘space.’ The rhythmic complexity of gestures played on metals in the first section of the piece (based on a background structure of very slow, layered polyrhythms intuitively decorated at the surface) are snapped to an accelerated grid of evenly–spaced articulations (dulcimer), and are then reduced to points in isolation with sparsely positioned, but aggressive, frame drum and tambourine articulations. Between the cracks in the music’s surface, a distant resonance seeps into the listener’s field of hearing; one that seems trapped in some remote region of previously inaccessible space. Voices, presences. Barely audible responses to the incantation that led up to this section. 


4) “The lost return to us…”
The rhythmic material of this closing section acknowledges conjured presence. It is a repetitive, celebratory chant and is somewhat akin to a participant in a ritual achieving a trance-like state. The performer plays rattles — instruments devoid of resonance — some held in the hands, others touched while resting on a table. Recorded sounds provide an ambient ‘ground’ and include grains poured onto, and sifted across, a dry, wooden surface — intimate touching of materials. Also, a layer of sound recorded inside the mouth with a tiny microphone capsule — withheld breath, inner resonance.

This work was written for, and is dedicated to, my friend Scott Deal.

— J.M.

"Husk, with Aura" for percussion and electronics (Scott Deal, percussion; John Mallia, electronics)

Physician, Heal Thyself!

Flotsam, Jetsom: Pick One

doing my first ever circuit bending. Everything tends to come out like Jimi Hendrix as his most spacey but its fun and I did get some interesting sounds. 

CircuitBending

oscillations

song written by Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan

guitar & vox - John Holland (christodoulou)
everything else - Billy Prosise (Ok Housecat)

http://www.okhousecat.com
http://christodoulou.bandcamp.com

opís helpus

circuit bent casio mt-240
cryptwarblr.net
https://www.instagram.com/cryptwarblr_/

Hysteresis ii

Cryptwarblr

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