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 "Ressuscitant de l'étreinte de la Sirène" is the first excerpt from Robert Curgenven's new solo album out now on transparent vinyl:
SIRÈNE - Selected Pipe Organ Works 1983-2014

Like it? More information and orders at: 
www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_01

RFE_01 SIRÈNE - excerpt 1 - Ressuscitant de l'étreinte de la Sirène

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

Info: www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_02
Video: https://vimeo.com/114122030
Amidst the heat and the dust, in a landscape populated only by the insinuation of characters, settler colonialists’ blind enactment of will and violence against and into an unforgiving, arid interior is manifestation of a mortal struggle.
‘They tore the earth and, like a scar, it swallowed them’ is a very physical negotiation of territories voided by history, rendered via field recordings gathered over 10 years in over 30 remote locations across Australia alongside new work with pipe organ, piano, guitar feedback, dubplates, turntables and low frequency oscillators. The live version has been presented as part of extensive touring across 30 cities in 10 countries including Todays Art Festival (Netherlands), Mozg Festival (Poland), Cave12 (Switzerland) and Site Festival (UK).

Suggested Reading:
1. Human Rights report on Northern Territory ‘Intervention’ including the compulsory reacquisition of all Indigenous sovereign land by the Australian Federal government in 2006 and suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act
http://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/social-justice-report-2007-chapter-3-northern-territory-emergency-response-intervention
2. July 2014: current Prime Minister of Australia (and Minister for Indigenous Affairs) comments that Australia benefited from foreign investment because it was unsettled before the British
www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-says-australia-benefited-from-foreign-investment-because-it-was-unsettled-before-the-british-20140703-zsvby.html
"terra nullius" was disproved by the Mabo ruling in 1992 where the High Court of Australia recognised Native Title

Suggested Viewing:
1. Walkabout (1971) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067959

RFE 02 "They Tore The Earth…" Edited Album Preview

Info: http://www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_02
Video: https://vimeo.com/114122030
"Imagine you have found a new country. To you and your fellow countrymen & women this new country appears empty. Perhaps there are some people living there, but you decide their culture is perhaps "unsophisticated". These people have had a long relationship with this seemingly empty country – for thousands of years – they understand and care for the country and in turn the land cares for them. So, you decide to invade/colonise this country. You need to clear this empty land to make it your own, ready for you to inhabit, maybe even make it more like where you‘re from. The place you left behind. This not only changes the land but also vastly changes the nature of the long relationship of those you’ve displaced. But this story isn't really about "them". Its about you. As you colonise this new country, moving further into the interior, you soon discover that you are very ill-prepared for what turns out to be a harsh and hostile land. This story doesn‘t end well for anyone."

Amidst the heat and the dust, in a landscape populated only by the insinuation of characters, settler colonialists’ blind enactment of will and violence against and into an unforgiving, arid interior is manifestation of a mortal struggle. The album traverses the historical dynamics of the settler colonial trope through the eyes not of the invaded but of the invaders to a harsh, remote land. 

‘They tore the earth and, like a scar, it swallowed them’ is a very physical negotiation of territories voided by history, rendered via field recordings gathered over 10 years in over 30 remote locations across Australia alongside new work with pipe organ, guitar feedback, dubplates, turntables and low frequency oscillators. 

RFE 02 "They tore the earth..." Album Trailer Audio

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

For further info about this live A/V project http://www.recordedfields.net/live/speculative-pataphysics/
Teaser recorded live, Wall Riss Gallery, Fribourg/CH by Marc Zendrini with an iPhone. Video https://vimeo.com/129091486 The gallery's fluorescent lights were removed during the soundcheck when concerns for safety were raised after a light fell from the ceiling due to the architectural bass.

Speculative Pataphysics Teaser

Buy full digital album: https://robertcurgenven.bandcamp.com/album/oltre-transparence-dubplate-extended-trilogy
Bonus track on Oltre/Transparence dubplate trilogy digital album. Previously unreleased, mixed in 2011 from live recording at Blue Note Club, Poznan (2009). Included in "Lateral Listening - Eipsode 9" for National Film & Sound Archive of Australia (2015) [NFSA Title No: 1316292] www.soundcloud.com/nfsaaustralia/lateral-listening-ep9-robert-curgenven/ Remastered 2015 in Cork, Ireland at Sample Studios

“Transparence” resonating dubplate | turntable | field recordings | guitar feedback | ventilator/fan

The “Transparence” dubplate, developed at O’ in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O’, the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audio signal becomes present during playback only at high volume, which subsequently produces, by design, a unique physical response from the room, air and amplification – creating deep undertones and blossoming overtones via these manifold resonances; simultaneously, the action of the stylus gently abraids the soft vinyl surface, causing the dubplate’s sound to gradually disappear and evolve, successively losing higher frequencies whilst acquiring new artefacts and crackle. OLTRE documents this degradation and transformation over two months of live performances. The integrated system of subsonic feedback from ventilators, acoustically gated binaural microphones, modal micro-variations in guitar feedback, field-recordings from across remote areas of Australia and the live, physical interplay of the turntable, dubplate and stylus, combine to create a field which moves beyond the original recordings and their individual spaces.

"Curgenven uses the dubplate as an instrument in its own right, played back into another space as a means of interacting the original Transparence signal with the acoustics of its new playback venue. Further complicating matters, Curgenven’s dubplate is of course in a constant state of decay, in that every time he plays the signal the stylus erodes at the vinyl surface. On this album you can hear the composer at work, utilising the Transparence dubplate with all its all its booming bass and heavy crackle. You are in effect listening to the sounds of the turntable itself, with the faintest of drone sounds suggesting the original recording before the grooves had been so heavily abraded. Additional layers of site-specific feedback help keep the recordings fresh and interesting from location to location, and the themes of decline and disintegration operate within the same sort of poetic parameters as William Basinski. Highly recommended."
(boomkat.com)

"On this album Robert Curgenven brings together some of the recurring preoccupations of experimental music of the past 20-odd years : signal versus noise; the materiality of sound; the acousitics of particular spaces; playback devices as instruments; the integration of music and environmental sounds. Behind the music—to these ears at any rate—lurk such presences as Alvin Lucier, King Tubby, Murray Schafer, Elaine Radigue and turntablism. At the heart of Oltre is a custom dubplate produced by Curgenven and containing a low-volume signal.

All the careful attention to ‘process’ wouldn’t matter as all, of course, if the end result weren’t so compelling. But the dovetaiiing of harmonics and the beautiful layering of the sounds yeild an incredibly rich textural experience. The relationship between feedback, vinyl crackle and sounds such as cicadas in the bush takes many imaginative shapes.

Throughout the album Curgenven keeps an alert eye on the interaction between space, performer and technology—the effort pays off for performer and listener alike."
(The Wire, UK)

Oltre Transparence Dubplate Extended Trilogy

Allegro In Seguito Oltre

More info on "Climata" & purchase album: http://www.recordedfields.net/records/rfe_03/
Through 2015 the series of recordings that constitute Climata were undertaken across 15 Skyspaces in Europe, the UK & Australia to capture the specific relation between the Skyspaces’ interior space and the ‘outside’ world (or more simply, the World). Each of these 200 recordings is very different, but can be characterised by three elements – the sound in the surrounding area outside the Skyspace including sound’s terrestrial incarnation as weather; the microtonal intervention via two custom-made oscillators and a portable speaker to yield two quiet tones, both of which have in each instance been tuned closely to the resonant frequencies of each of the Skyspaces that bring the air inside into movement against the air outside, drawing the sounds outside in; and of equal volume is the soft swishing and fluttering of the air as it is brought into motion through the phasing between outside and inside the Skyspace. The Skyspaces colour the tones played into them, shaping the air and its exchange with the outside world. Each recording builds a sound atlas of the Skyspaces and their surrounding areas, the movement of air between them and the unique combination of tones.

Turrell views the 87 Skyspaces around the world as manifestations of a singular work and in turn these present a global matrix. The 15 Skyspaces selected and recorded for Climata are indices within this matrix and furthermore, within the project’s recordings, the Skyspaces’ architecture frames the additional matrices of weather, location & duration as the air oscillates in and out of the aperture via the microtonal intervention. From these recordings the resultant archive of over 200 individual recordings, distilled from the sessions in the 15 Skyspaces, itself forms a matrix of these matrices.

Skyspace locations for Climata range from a rural idyll in Sweden to a metropolitan hill amidst the cathedrals and sirens of Salzburg, to a sculpture park in Yorkshire replete with its own quiet population of sheep, from gusty echoes playing out on a tree-lined lake after a Belgian storm, to the quiet edge of the snowline in the Swiss Alps and the world's only light art museum. Climata covers the breadth of Skyspaces, circular, square, elliptical and domed - each with their own “piece of sky” beneath an ocean of air.

A1 - under foreign topologies.

SUBMERGED MEMORIES
(or Von Krapp’s Lost Trap)
In a post-Youtube reappropriation of video as audio which lies somewhere between Bad Lip Reading and a Harmonizator radio play deliberately frustrating any sense of dramatic tension or release, the following mix transforms Steven Seagal’s second worst movie, “Submerged”, where his whispered semantics and obfuscation of narrative nuance is repeatedly interjected and undercut by the subtle and unedited timings of Morton Feldman’s “Triadic Memories”, accompanied by Thomas Koener’s bleak yet hopeful sonic horizon “Daikan”. Part Beckett, part subversion of The Music of Sound, part transformation of Hearts of Darkness and one man’s own Apocalypse Now, this lost tape gem transforms the parts into a new whole and a new film genre, the Inaction movie. 
As with Seagal’s worst film. “Attack Force”, this film was completely rescripted and re-edited after shooting and large portions (most) of his dialogue were dubbed by another actor in Seagal’s distinctive style. This radio-play edition preserves the purity of that intent whilst taking the plot in new and hitherto unknown directions where it would otherwise be forced to remain coherent when heard alongside the movie’s visual aspects. 
In a similar fashion to watching “Wizard of Oz” simultaneously with Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”, the different elements in this mix are largely unedited to preserve the dramaturgical parallels which propel the multiple narratives and also the equal purity of Tarkovsky’s theory of “time pressure” to coexist and inform e a freshly nuanced dimension of ‘sound pressure.’ An important difference with “Dark Side…” is that Feldman, like mayonnaise, goes with everything.
“Til I finally died, which started the whole world living,
Oh, if I'd only seen that the joke was on me.” – Steven Seagal
Synopsis
Travel up the river to one man's madness through hearts of darkness as a series of people impersonating Steven Seagal must do battle with a crack team of Goats with Laser-Eyes, their Leader President George Clinton and a rubber Alligator named "Dr Cody Sandro-Campbell" while Morton Feldman stages an intervention to save the plot. Together they must escape the prisons of their submerged memories ("The Sub") while subverting the Goats' mind control machines in a struggle against time and themselves as they fight to stop the dam-wall that holds back their collective sanity from being blown up by an unseen enemy. Soundtrack by Thomas Koener, fight scenes co-ordinated by a drunk 3 year old in a radio play with a plot twist (featuring a night at the opera) that has to be seen to be believed.

Submerged Memories  - Von Krapp's Lost Tape - 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

BABEL - 10 channel audio in 60sq.m maze (2017) http://www.recordedfields.net/installations/babel/
Tongue twisters in 30 languages ecorded in Cork, 2017, with 60 participants (duration variable) exhibited as part of Locate Yourself, 8-30 September, Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork, Ireland
Babel builds on the concepts of spoken language as cultural signifier, mode of communication and it’s direct physiological expression via the body as resonator: particularly the mouth, nose and sinuses. Language conveys a range of information, ranging from the syntactical to the cultural. Tongue twisters, often played as a game around in the kitchen table, present an ideal means to combine cultural information within a discretionary syntactical framework which also serves to express the unique physiological and regional expression of a speaker’s learnt and developed approach to spoken language. The installation re-presents the mythical concept of Babel as a maze, a spatial complex to be negotiated, which functions as a lateral counterpoint to the tower of legend and its vertical and hierarchical architecture. The maze, beginning from the entry to the gallery, transforms the architectural and our experience of it, while the tongue twisters within the maze present a further spatial transformation that navigates regional, cultural and personal vectors of individual and collective articulations of ontological experience, albeit in a playful and engaging manner. The speech varies from intimate to declarative, the frequency distribution of the spoken words also playing upon our hard-wired neural processing of the navigation of our personal space and proprioception, further impacting on our ability to navigate the maze, gallery and broader cultural frameworks.

BABEL Extract

The recording stage for this sound atlas began in Alice Springs in Australia's Northern Territory following an invitation for Curgenven and Howden to realise a project for a series of events running 3-18 May, 2007, "Shifting Ground/Art Land Culture",  an arts incubator in the desert town designed to produce engagement with the arid landscapes of Central Australia. Alice Springs has a population of 28,000 and is a remote yet urban town flanked by mountain ranges, situated 1500kilometres from the nearest coast. The sound atlas was realised through the collection of field recordings and associated data over an 8 day period covering 22 locations in Alice Springs and the surrounding MacDonnell Ranges. Curgenven & Howden’s project sought to survey the range of geographic, social and acoustic environments in a place characterised by an unusual mix of adajcent and encroaching urban and desert areas.

Through the creative partnership of sound artist (Robert Curgenven) and statistician/ecologist (Chris Howden), additional data collected with the recordings was used to form a relational field/matrix in an effort to draw out latent connections between places/environments and their second order manifestations.

Variables include: landform, dominant sound of the site (nominal); sound density of the recording, openness of the site with respect to infrastructure and landform (ordinal) These were combined with weighted variables: GPS (latitude, longitude and elevation); time of day of recording. Relations were determined between the sites/recordings for a layered sequence in a four channel performance or installation. The CD, RF001, is five tracks in an adaptation of this installation/performance. The recordings are unprocessed and taken directly from DAT. This application of a statistical analysis with the field recordings seeks primarily to explore non-linear relations within land and space as well as ontological and sociological issues arising from these. These issues are of particular interest when juxtaposed with ancient indigenous epistemologies concerning the land and the recently developing urban environment in this arid rangeland. Of secondary interest is the impact on the acoustic ecology of the region.

Grassland (extract)

Remix of "Go Outside" (3" CD, Kaon, 2012) for the Signal/Void compilation.
http://recordedfields.net/records/go-outside/
http://signalvoid.tumblr.com/

Go Outside 60sec ADD remix (analogue digital digital)

Robert Curgenven
Oltre

LINE_042 | CD + digital | Edition of 500 | January 2010

“Transparence” resonating dubplate | turntable | field recordings | guitar feedback | ventilator/fan

Gran Coda Andante (07:42) - Aria 1, 13th movement, recorded live at NRD, Torun, Poland, 25 March 2009

The “Transparence” dubplate, developed at O’ in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O’, the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audio signal becomes present during playback only at high volume, which subsequently produces, by design, a unique physical response from the room, air and amplification – creating deep undertones and blossoming overtones via these manifold resonances; simultaneously, the action of the stylus gently abraids the soft vinyl surface, causing the dubplate’s sound to gradually disappear and evolve, successively losing higher frequencies whilst acquiring new artefacts and crackle. OLTRE documents this degradation and transformation over two months of live performances. The integrated system of subsonic feedback from ventilators, acoustically gated binaural microphones, modal micro-variations in guitar feedback, field-recordings from across remote areas of Australia and the live, physical interplay of the turntable, dubplate and stylus, combine to create a field which moves beyond the original recordings and their individual spaces.

"The best 12k/LINE release in ages – dark, Lynchian eroded tape-loops and analogue menace. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE!

The starting point for composer Robert Curgenven’s work is his Transparence dubplate, developed as part of the O’A.I.R. Artist In Residence program at O’Artoteca, Milan. The dubplate was created from feedback recordings that were run through the O’ gallery space, resulting in a drone signal capturing the subtle resonances of the room. Curgenven uses the dubplate as an instrument in its own right, played back into another space as a means of interacting the original Transparence signal with the acoustics of its new playback venue. Further complicating matters, Curgenven’s dubplate is of course in a constant state of decay, in that every time he plays the signal the stylus erodes at the vinyl surface. On this album you can hear the composer at work, utilising the Transparence dubplate with all its all its booming bass and heavy crackle. You are in effect listening to the sounds of the turntable itself, with the faintest of drone sounds suggesting the original recording before the grooves had been so heavily abraded. The pieces here document two months of touring and capture Curgenven’s sound in various stages of its decomposition. Additional layers of site-specific feedback help keep the recordings fresh and interesting from location to location, and the themes of decline and disintegration operate within the same sort of poetic parameters as William Basinski. Highly recommended."
(boomkat.com)

"On this album Robert Curgenven brings together some of the recurring preoccupations of experimental music of the past 20-odd years : signal versus noise; the materiality of sound; the acousitics of particular spaces; playback devices as instruments; the integration of music and environmental sounds. Behind the music—to these ears at any rate—lurk such presences as Alvin Lucier, King Tubby, Murray Schafer, Elaine Radigue and turntablism. At the heart of Oltre is a custom dubplate produced by Curgenven and containing a low-volume signal.

The album documents five live playback situations with the dubplate. With the volume cranked up, the turntable stylus picks up its own signal from the speakers and starts to fee back. The colour and pitch of the feedback are shaped by the acoustics of the space on each occassion and the positioning of the deck relative to the speakers. Curgenven adds live EQ to the warm, spreading tones produced in this way and combines them with more layers; guitar feedback, subsonic sound from an electrical fan, the signal from gated binaural mics dunked in drinking glasses, and field recordings made in the Australian outback (where Curgenven lived for a number of years). Each of the performances builds on the core dubplate sound to produce distinct realisations of the piece. The dubplate, meanwhile, degenerates with each successive play, losing high frequencies and gaining crunchiness. All the careful attention to ‘process’ wouldn’t matter as all, of course, if the end result weren’t so compelling. But the dovetaiiing of harmonics and the beautiful layering of the sounds yeild an incredibly rich textural experience. The huge low end of “Gran Coda ANdante” underscores the ‘dub’ in ‘dubplate’, the ambiguous harmonies of “Largo Capriccioso” never quite settle, and the relationship between feedback, vinyl crackle and sounds such as cicadas in the bush takes many imaginative shapes.

Throughout the album Curgenven keeps an alert eye on the interaction between space, performer and technology—the effort pays off for performer and listener alike."
(The Wire, UK)

Gran Coda Andante

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)

6channel spatial audio + subwoofer - MUTO gallery, Budapest, Hungary
Part of UH Festival: 2-6 October 2019 - Commissioned by UH Fest & MUTO

Details at https://www.recordedfields.net/installations/spectres/
In-situ recordings made across 8 sites in Poland & 1 in Hungary between 19-29 September 2019. 

"upon a threshold, where bodies corporate stand, Spectres’ vapours stood"

Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa. Alles Ständische und Stehende verdampft…

Recordings in each location made with 2 oscillators, Bose portable speaker, 2 Rode condenser microphones, recorded direct to harddisk - made through an open window which frames the location and its context, the oscillators set the air in motion between inside & outside the location whilst creating an audible phasing anomaly in the room & distinctly within the recording. The combination of these anomalies across the recordings and locations is a key aspect of the installation and the experience of visitors to the gallery.

Presenting a conceptual and concrete undertaking which encompasses the vicissitudes of an epochal concept, from its declaration-as-theory to its Becoming as a “post-“, where the concept proposed is now only a period that follows what once was. The architectural framing of post-Communist eastern-European realities, to create a threshold where the parentheses of two epochs book-end a present, is enacted through a recording process which draws the surrounding air and present manifestation of contemporary society into the buildings – the very monuments of those that stood and are standing, the dwellings and inhabitations of the corporatised bodies – of a period now past. Each location surveyed through this process becomes a layer, emergent from their layering in this exhibition piece is the schism arising in ‘post-Concept’ from ‘Concept’ - an audible movement - an inhabitable zone framing the context of a living, breathing, contemporary society.
----
The recordings forming the installation were undertaken in a range of architectural environments in urban, metropolitan and rural areas across a range of 'Eastern European' regions – these were done adjunct to touring and performing a series of concerts with two collaborative works from 19-29 September 2019. All that was required was an open window and the provision of the architecture itself as a platform. No special changes, requests or modifications of the behaviours of occupants or nearby inhabitants were made.

The piece is working on a similar technique to a previous project recording in 15 of James Turrell's Skyspaces - the Climata project had an emphasis on using the architecture of the Skyspace itself to frame but the contextless sky but instead the acoustic aspect of the location and context of the Skyspace itself. Climata was realized as an installation version, double album & a sound atlas.

This project aims to extend those techniques and, unilke the Skyspace recording project - in the opposite aspect to the relative hegemony of Skyspace architectonics - for this new piece the broader diversity to the architectural and locational contexts resulted in a greater the range of textures that combine to form the piece. The recordings were be used to make a multichannel audio piece which will be shown at MUTO gallery in Budapest during UH Fest and be installed to work with the gallery acoustics.

Recordings in each location with 2 oscillators, Bose portable speaker, 2 Rode condenser microphones, recorded direct to harddisk - made through an open window which frames the location and its context, the oscillators set the air in motion between inside & outside the location whilst creating an audible phasing anomaly in the room & distinctly within the recording. The combination of these anomalies across the recordings and locations is a key aspect of the installation and the experience of visitors to the gallery.

SPECTRES

Robert Curgenven's first release on Irish label Fort Evil Fruit and first release in over four years, Ar Ais Arís (pronounced ‘ar ash areesh’ - “back again” in Irish) compiles tracks from limited releases, installations, reworkings and unreleased tracks spanning the last 15 years. The pieces combine live performance, environmental and studio recordings made in 7 countries he has spent significant time in over these past 15 years. The album as a whole traverses (in a non-linear fashion) lines of flight across his native Australia, across Europe, to Cork and his current home on an island in Connemara, Ireland.

from Ar Ais Arís, released December 4, 2020
Recorded: Cork, 2016-19. Remixed: Connemara, Ireland, 2020, from works “Unbalanced Architecture” & “Babel” exhibited at: Palace of Culture (Warsaw, 2016), Wandesford Quay Gallery (Cork, 2017), Les Brasseurs (Liege, Belgium, 2019).

Ar Ais Arís

Gruen Transfer #4

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.”

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