OOO4

Joe Formanek (drumset and laptop) with Mick Beck (saxophone) and Herve Perez (saxophone).

kingfield session with Mick Beck and Herve Perez

This is a collection of pieces done by Joe Formanek (drums and laptop) and Herve Perez (saxophone), which started an online collaboration with the musical approach to blend composition and improvisation through file exchange.  After a few compositions, they decided to have a recording session together, which turned out to become a rich blur of electronic manipulation on acoustic improvisation and the creative playback management of prior recordings and compositions.  

Joe Formanek (drumset and laptop) with Herve Perez (saxophone).

7.29.8

A conversation with the past self, like a reflection in the water, is changing gracefully in meaning even as words flow out.  We escape ourselves even with documented recollections of our memory in our own hands.  Recorded evidence is the art of creating our identity, which ironically does better to remind us of who we are than our own thoughts.

42 Is The New 30s

Artist: Mirror Shards 
Album name: Ghost Improvisations - an invisible quartet

Ghost Improvisation is a conceptual approach that provokes new forms of improvisation - a group of improvisers are to record themselves, alone,  improvising to a selection of (ghost) tracks, which are to be removed from the final product, leaving only the improvisors together, though they had never played together nor heard the improvisations of the others.  The results create moments of phenomenological interactions that would have otherwise never taken place if these improvisors had been listening to one another, and though the outcome is unpredictable yet eerily rewarding, it eliminates all opportunities of improvisational clichés, forces new forms of musical communication, and creates reflection on new ways of improvisation.  

Though Mirror Shards (Joe Formanek) has been developing and exercising the approach of Ghost Improvisation for more than 5 years now, these five pieces is the first attempt to create a new database of improvisors; instead of doing several Ghost Improvisation takes on acoustic and digital instruments, in this session Joe is on only on acoustic drumset, being one of his most instrumental projects to date.  Three friends and like-minded improvisors hailing from three different countries were invited to participate: Herve Perez (saxophone and shakuhachi) from Shefield, England, Camille-Alban Spreng (piano) from Brussels, Belgium, and Akito Van Troyer (drones) from Cambridge, USA.   Though these three have never met in person, their musical esthetics align and unconsciously compliment each other, which can be heard in their unprecedented interplay.  

Joe Formanek (Mirror Shards) on drumset Herve Perez on saxophone Camille-Alban Spreng on piano Akito Van Troyer on drones


Credits:
Drumset recording by Matthieu Lits
Mixing and mastering by Joe Formanek
Album art by Joe Formanek

20a9.27

@.B.$ 4.1

13FriVal

(000) 1

NwEarsEve

a composition using field-recordings, gongs, Tibetan bowls, and processed drum-set.

Gozo (unmastered version)

don't cough

Mirror Shards can be interpreted as the result of all the artistic development based on the self-interests of composer/percussionist/improviser Joe Formanek, such as amplified micro-sound percussion instrumentation, electroacoustic laptop-drumset improvisation, experimenting with recording and mixing techniques, free improvisation, modern electronic music, and composing with field recordings just to point out some salient ones.

Another way Mirror Shards can be interpreted is to consider its strict yet unique conceptual and technical approach to creating music.

Conceptually, there are four principle disciplines being exercised with their own techniques and aesthetics while complimenting the others : improvisation, composition, electroacoustic techniques, and, what Joe has invented, the concept of auto-history. The innovative concept of auto-history can be understood as a methodology to improvisation and composition that keeps constant sonic contact with the artists former self, thus the music being not only a composition of a single moment but of several moments throughout the artist’s life, allowing a new kind of reflective insight into the time-based evolution of the artist’s personal development.

Technically, employing an electroacoustic apparatus (aka Mirror Shards), which is at once a laptop-drumset using digital signal processing and a history-database DJ station. With a massive collection of recorded improvisations and compositions organized onto a database, all of which are at a fingers touch during a live improvisation and in the studio, the most distinctive characteristic of Mirror Shards is the quality of improvising with the history of one’s self. The experience of “driving” the apparatus is a surreal encounter with one’s previous stages of artistic development, forcing a critical reflection and interaction with one’s past.

Another interpretation could be on how Mirror Shards is rooted in similar disciplinary mindsets as musician/composer Anthony Braxton, Steve Lehmann and Vijay Iyer, tackling the age old question of combining improvisation with composition.  After many years of honing conventional and especially unconventional skills as a drummer and as an electronic musician, Joe demonstrates an exercise of concepts, such as the interplay of time and non-time based styles, traditional and extended instrumental techniques, field recordings, micro sampling, and sophisticated software resampling.

This is a highly collaborative project and has been involved with Francisco Lopez (composer), Chris Formanek (composer), François Ducat (film director), Hervé Perez (sax, composer), Elm Records Collective., and Mangoest Records.

 

Mirror Shards

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