Pointillism for sine wave No.12

fever

a fisherman does not break a reed

A recording from Kirtimų Kultūros Centras, "spiečius" event.
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MUST CHECK:
https://soundcloud.com/sholtodobie
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all the recordings from the event:
soundcloud.com/palanga_street_radio/sets/spie-ius-23
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link to an event:
www.facebook.com/events/132335206541322
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editing by Mavros

SHOLTO DOBIE @SPIEČIUS

Piano 20230608 + Stones

loom soundtrack

outro

Donnie

guitarra de sopro é um instrumento típico

http://blowinguptheworkshop.com/project/unchained

TRAINTRACKS - WRITTEN (LUIS)
    (UNRELEASED)
UNCHAINED - 12 CAESARS
    (UNRELEASED)
MATT FRANCO - PASTA SUNDOWN
    (FROM THE BITTER ALBUM)
NOA - DR. MACCOY
    (FROM TRI-LOGIC)
TRAINTRACKS - VOS TAMBIEN (CHARLY)
    (UNRELEASED)
UNCHAINED - WASHINGTON AVENUE
    (UNRELEASED)
CARLOS MARIA TRINDADE - GUIAR
    (FROM MR. WOLLOGALLU)
PHIL MANZANERA - RITMO DE LOS ANGELES
    (FROM PRIMITIVE GUITARS)
TRAINTRACKS - SUITCASE (KAHN)
    (UNRELEASED)
STEVE HACKETT - THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY
    (FROM SPECTRAL MORNINGS)
UNCHAINED - GRINZING
    (UNRELEASED)
VON DEYEN/SCHÜTZ - APACHE’S PAIN
    (FROM INVENTIONS)
TRAINTRACKS - CHILD IS (LUIS)
    (UNRELEASED)

37 ◆ Unchained

Adumbration: to suggest, disclose, or outline partially; to foreshadow vaguely; overshadow, obscure.

Adumbrations goes through a series of statements towards a sensibility of ideals and shadows, utilizing female voices reciting a series of tongue twisters that iterate sibilant, fricative, and bilabial sounds. If spoken incorrectly, the sound qualities of these tongue twisters are heard as curse words. Therefore, there needs to be consistency in the process of speaking these tongue twisters explicitly. In the English language curse words can function as multiple parts of speech, and as the saying goes, people who curse more frequently are more honest. 

This piece explores the dichotomous relationship between certain ideals and shadows, i.e. consistencies and inconsistencies, actuality and potentiality, and the explicit and the honest, as it goes through a series of musical adumbrations that “halo” the process of these tongue twisters. Through these adumbrations, the contradictory can be either one or the other of the ideals or shadows turning on itself, and at times the appearance of the clarity and the inaccuracy are in an indefinite flux through these halos.  This occurs as inconsistent phonemes are turned from inaccurate iterations of the tongue twisters into something sounding consistent.  The halos are supplementing the voice within varying simultaneous parameters that include shimmering, radiating around the iterations and vice/versa, and existing as a spatial supplement revolving in different stereo planes around and as a process, and out of the immersive comes our personal perception of the contradiction.  One can think of this adumbrated halo, in this sense, as a place where the dichotomous relationship becomes indistinguishable, and laughter for a flawed system. 

This piece is partially inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s movie Persona.

Thank you so much for the wonderful voice recordings:
Elizabeth Gartman
Caroline Mckinzie
Logan Piker

Adumbrations

Recording by Loris Bini at PIC Télémaque in Marseille, November 17, 2019.

Programme note:

Know unknow xeknow is a transcription for voice and ensemble of a work for voice and electronics that I developed in close collaboration with soprano Sarah Albu entitled Xeno-. In that work, the singer imitates recorded sounds of animal vocalizations ad libitum. ‘Xeno’ being a greek prefix meaning ‘other’, the work examines the idea of onomatopoeia and empathy with the other through mimesis. When we imitate, something of our source filters through, but it is always reshaped by the imitator. In transcribing these imitations into written notation, a further layer of filtration is added; the work advances from a kind of oral tradition, to a written one, and finally returning to the aural as the musicians interpret the notation. As steps of transmission are added, we gain ways of knowing as much as we lose knowledge, or ‘unknow’. Through the act of transcription, I allowed my reactions to take their own shape, and the work has become something completely new, including the drawing of new source material inspired by Venezuelan electronic musician Arca’s work Piel.
	As with its parent work, Know unknow xeknow is structured in reaction to one of Zeno’s paradoxes: where that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal. These successively shorter half-way points are presented in reverse, where the musical energy of the piece unfolds through bursts of noise separated in successively greater distances. These kinds of ‘big bangs’ which unfold all the materials of the piece into a warping menagerie of being-transformation. 

Know unknow xeknow was co-commissioned by Ensemble Télémaque and Groundswell with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Know unknow xeknow - Ensemble Télémaque, Raoul Lay

James O’Callaghan is a composer and multimedia artist based in Berlin. His work has been described as “very personal… with its own colour anchored in the unpredictable,” (Goethe-Institut). It spans chamber, orchestral, live electronic and acousmatic idioms, audio installations, video-music, site-specific performances, electronic dance music, and interdisciplinary collaboration — most recently with choreographer Edouard Lock and artist Lois Brown. In 2016 an album of his acousmatic works, Espaces Tautologiques, was released by empreintes DIGITALes, and his extended collaboration with Ensemble Paramirabo resulted in a portrait album of his works in 2019, entitled Alone and unalone.
	His music has received nearly forty prizes and nominations, including the ISCM Young Composer Award (2017), the Salvatore Martirano Award (2016), and the SOCAN Foundation John Weinzweig Grand Prize (2014). Significant nominations include those for the Gaudeamus Award (2016), Prix Métamorphoses (2018), and two JUNO Awards (2014, 2020). In 2021 he received the Prix Opus for “Composer of the Year.” 
	Active as an arts organiser, he co-founded and co-directed the Montréal Contemporary Music Lab. Originally from British Columbia, he lived in Montréal for 11 years and since 2022 has been based out of Berlin.

Know unknow xeknow - Ensemble Télémaque, Raoul Lay

James O'Callaghan

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