A wide ranging selection of track extracts from releases on LINE, Winds Measure, Kaon and Recorded Fields Editions.

From maximalist pipe organ works (SIRÉNE) to more minimalist works (Built Through Both Sides with Richard Chartier; WM25) to bass-driven improvisations (Gran Coda Andante) and more dynamic works (Go Outside; Largo Capriccioso) as well as pure field recordings (Grassland). 

Live sets currently focus on custom dubplates/78s/turntables, pipe organ works & custom oscillators.

releases

moebius strip

https://robertcurgenven.bandcamp.com/album/tailte-cr-umha-bronze-lands-live-at-cork-midsummer-festival
Following exactly 7 years after his last pipe organ release, SIRÈNE, with its strong maritime undertones, Curgenven presents this live recording of a new large-scale work for pipe organ and soundsystem. This document combines the warmth of a live audience with the long, full reverb of a cathedral pipe organ – captured and painstakingly assembled from multiple microphones throughout the architecture housing pipe organ and audience.

Tailte Cré-Umha (Bronze Lands) is a solo performance for 32ft pipe organ and a 10ft dub soundsystem, developed during two months exclusive after-hours access to Ireland's biggest pipe organ in St Fin Barre's Cathedral Cork, along with a range of turn-of-the-century unmodernised pipe organs across County Cork and rural Cornwall.
The piece combines live pipe organ with a soundsystem which allows audiences to hear two pipe organs together - each in different tunings - effectively a piece for 4 hands (and feet), sounding together to create a physical and architectural experience. The live part on the venue’s pipe organ in standard tuning works with and against the part heard through the soundsystem. The soundystem part comprises tracker-action pipe organ recordings made in Cornwall and Ireland. These unmodernised pipe organs allow precise control over wind to the pipes - effectively creating custom-tunings. Curgenven's composition extends standard practice, combining these two tuning systems, rigorously working across their enharmonic beating frequencies to find a momentuous solution.The recording is 100% acoustic, all sound is entirely made by these pipe organs, with the exception of an 80-year-old 78rpm acetate which forms part of the piece's narrative structure.

Tailte Cré-Umha (Bronze Lands) - Live at Cork Midsummer Festival

Tailte Cré-Umha (Bronze Lands) - Live at Cork Midsummer Festival - Part 1

from "Oltre" (LINE_042, released 2010)
Jörg Maria Zeger (guitar/fx) & Robert Curgenven (fieldrecs/dubplates)

From this first studio collaboration, Zeger & Curgenven have developed the project to become TSU. 
Straight after a UK tour in May 2011 TSU recorded a full-length studio album which is currently being mixed...

Largo capriccioso (extract)

This extract from "Cornubia" is the second excerpt from Robert Curgenven's new solo album out now on transparent vinyl: 
SIRÈNE - Selected Pipe Organ Works 1983-2014
Orders & more information: www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_01

Robert Curgenven - SIRÈNE - excerpt 2 - Cornubia

Imperial Horizon

Cornubia

Taken from Lusine's "Arterial" EP out August 5, 2014. 

Pre-order from The Ghostly Store here: http://www.theghostlystore.com/products/lusine-arterial

Lusine - Arterial

Extract from "Looking for Narratives on Small Islands" - split 12" with will Montgomery on Winds Measure Recordings
Strictly limited edition of 250 copies only available on vinyl, no digital downloads.
White vinyl with letterpress sleeve; insert and obi-strip by Ben Owen/Middle Press

WM25 Side B preview

Climata 2CD + digital download released 29 April 2016 https://robertcurgenven.bandcamp.com/album/climata
Recordings in this particular extract were made entirely in Turrell Skyspaces in Limelette (Belgium), Norfolk (England), Tremenheere Sculpture Garden (Cornwall) & Zuoz (Switzerland). Photo: James Turrell with Robert Curgenven listening to skyspace recordings in Tremenheere (photo credit: CJ Everard). Interactive sound map with all Skyspaces covered for Climata http://www.electronicbeats.net/skypspaces-map-for-climata/
For best effect and interaction with the sound which you may enjoy or ignore. In the same way one wouldn't shine a torch into one's eyes in order to look at light, this sound is best heard quietly diffused in a room, not listened to on headphones or directly from laptop speakers - the effect works best when one can feel the air move between the speakers and one's ears. For best results use an external speaker, pointed upwards or away from you - perhaps toward an open window to allow the sound to modulate the air from outside, Move about in the room to find the points where the sound is fullest, especially from the walls. Listen not so much to the tones, but the air - the growing awareness of hearing the air itself move, the sound filling the room, as water fills a pool and in turn laps at the sides. 
This extract is from the installation version previewed in 5-7 August 2015 at the National Gallery of Australia skyspace in Canberra. Double album version on CD available now via Dragons Eye Recordings & Recorded Fields Editions. More details about the project at http://www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_03/

Climata

Climata Extract

This extract from "Turner's Tesmpest" is the 3rd excerpt from Robert Curgenven's solo album. Mastered and cut by Rashad BEcker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin - 2nd pressing out now on green transparent vinyl:
SIRÈNE - Selected Pipe Organ Works 1983-2014
Orders & more information: www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_01

RFE_01 SIRÈNE - excerpt 3 - Turner's Tempest

ROBERT CURGENVEN + RICHARD CHARTIER
Built Through (LINE056, 2012)

"Built Through Both Sides" (extract) - originally composed by Chartier at Garage Festival in Stralsund, Germany 2004 and Paris, France 2005. Lost, found, and reworked using digital means and field recordings by Chartier in 2011. Processed through: guitar feedback recorded by Curgenven in Milan and London in 2010; turntables and linear series dubplates recorded London 2011; field recordings from Berlin, 2004-2007.  Mixed in London and Cornwall, November 2010-July 2011.

The acoustic architecture of Robert Curgenven and Richard Chartier forms a delineation of space built through dismantling the constitution of internal and external. Beyond dividing space, creating a façade or habitable zone, the perceptibility of the surface is turned back in on itself and with it a shift in the ideological and social context of the space. A seamless integration of digital and analogue, a suffusion which creates a mutual modulation, transforming purpose chosen materials—dense, undulating foundations through to stratified filaments and needle-point framework—defining the approach, the entry, the walk-through, the departure.

Mastering: Giuseppe Ielasi, Milan, Italy, March 2012.
Cover image by Robert Curgenven. 

"a colossal yet minimalist soundscape… This is headphone music — true sound-art whose fascinating creative process is too detailed for this tiny column."
(The Washington Post, US)

"a visceral, engrossing exploration of “acoustic architecture” schemed by prolific sound artist, collaborator, and Line Records boss, Richard Chartier (US), and sound artist/composer Robert Curgenven (AU/UK). As inferred by the title, Built Through is focussed upon the aesthetics of space and features four pieces stemming from original source material (field recordings, older compositions) which was reprocessed/reworked by the two artists in order to further investigate theirs and our perceptions of the material’s internal and extrenal spatial properties. Using seamlessly integrated analogue and digital techniques they create vividly hollowed-out spaces, stratified arenas of dense, vibrating sub-harmonic foundations suffused with filigree surface textures – from traces of distant traffic to needling, micro-rhythmic disturbances – defining the approach, the entry, the walk-through, the departure. No doubt, that all sounds rather academic, and taken as such, it is. But from a purely aesthetic point of view, their sounds are of an incredibly fine calibre and arranged with such a sense of unfolding, albeit abstract, narrative, that we’re sucked in to near-extreme levels of concentration to focus on the slightest fluctuation, and sent reeling by the presence of such overpoweringly physical bass frequencies. Ultimately, what they’re doing is a super advanced version of what’s happening in the mind/computer/bedroom of nearly every young electronic producer looking to get the most space out of their “mixdown”, and for any followers of current electronic music, design, minimalism, this is a deeply refined and engaging recommendation."
(boomkat.com) 

Built Through Both Sides (extract)

Robert Curgenven's work emphasizes physicality, our embodied response to sound & its relation to location, air, weather & architecture; He has produced works for National Gallery of Australia, Palazzo Grassi Venice, Sydney Festival, Maerzmusik & Transmediale Berlin. The Wire (UK) surmises “behind the music lurk such [disparate] presences as Alvin Lucier, King Tubby, Murray Schafer and Eliane Radigue.”

Built Through Both Sides (extract)

Recorded_Fields