David Tudor - Monobirds

From Ahmedabad to Xenon, 1969 / 1979

In December 1969, David Tudor made a series of recordings at the Electronic Music Studio at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, using Moog Synthesizers that he himself had brought from the United States and installed there. Ten years later, on March 1, 1979, Tudor used one of these recordings, which he now called Monobird, as the primary source track for a recording session at the New York discotheque Xenon. 

This album includes two 33rpm vinyl records of these works and an essay by You Nakai, When David Tudor Went Disco, that provides an in-depth study of Tudor’s performance at Xenon and its relation to Monobird.

monobirds-3min

Personfølsom Musik (Personal Sensitive Music) is a series of live sonifications in which Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard translates the numbers of NemID-keycards into music using various musical instruments. 

NemID (EasyID) keycards came into use in 2010 and contain a list of one-time codes that one uses as a level of security when logging into private and public digital platforms to access services like banking, health care, and other services vital to individuals in Danish society. 

When an individual uses all the codes on a NemID-keycard, the keycard remains as a record of the person’s activities over a period of time. It is also an expression of privilege, since the NemID [system] facilitates access to the benefits of the Danish welfare state in one of the world’s richest societies. 

Through his Personfølsom Musik (Personal Sensitive Music) series of works, Løkkegaard explores the NemID-keycard as a phenomenon which is on the one hand anonymous and alienating and on the other, private and personal. 

This release features the recordings by Løkkegaard playing two different NemID-keycards, W807-345-296 and Y453-199-562, on a church organ. 

Recorded at Koncertkirken in December 2020. 

Conceptualized by Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard and released by Topos, in collaboration with Nets 2021. 
Cat: TOPOSXNETS
Thanks to Koncertkirken and DOKS

Personfølsom Musik (Excerpt)

2:53-minute excerpt from Side D on double LP

It is a piece of music, Variations VII, indeterminate in form and detail, making use of the sound system which has been devised collectively for this festival, further making use of modulation means organized by David Tudor, using as sound sources only those sounds which are in the air at the moment of performance, picked up via the communication bands, telephone lines, microphones together with, instead of musical instruments, a variety of household appliances, and frequency generators. John Cage (1966)

John Cage: Variations VII
Performed at 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, 69th Regiment Armory, New York City, October 15 and 16, 1966
Performers: David Behrman, John Cage, Lowell Cross, Anthony Gnasso, David Tudor
Performance engineer: Cecil Coker

Variations VII: Duration 82 minutes
Original tape recording courtesy Julie Martin, Experiments in Art and Technology
Mastering for vinyl by Topos
Schematic for Variations VII by Herb Schneider
Cover photos by Adelaide de Menil
Graphic design by Andreas Korsgaard Rasmussen
Made at Eldorado Media
Variations VII published by Henmar Press Inc
Licensed by NCB, Denmark
Produced by Topos in cooperation with Julie Martin, 2019
Topos 01

John Cage - Variations VII (TOPOS 01)

1:44 minute excerpt 

Egis Ce Asc is a solo piece for pipe organ and a calibration of the human ear. Across 6 movements the listener is presented to a series of sonic plateaus which ascend from the low range to the high range frequency spectrum. In many ways Egis Ce Asc is thought out to be an abstraction of a sine sweep for the human ear.

Music for pipe organ
Study of the major third No. 6-11
Performed and composed by Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard
12” + 10” + 7”
Recorded in the Brorsons Church, Copenhagen 2017
Released 2019
Supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, KODA & DOKS

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard - Egis Ce Asc (TOPOS 02)

1-minute excerpt 

A text and sound work released on 12” vinyl
based on near-field recordings of febrile flies combined with texts by both Kirstein and Kasper Opstrup who researches on the occult, magic and radical countercultural movements.

Recording by T.R. Kirstein
Drawing of Beelzebub photographed by TRK from Dictionnaire infernal
(1863 edition), by Jacques-Albin-Simon Collin de Plancy,
and illustrations by Louis Le Breton
Cover design Kasper Vang
Liner notes by Kasper Opstrup
Thanks to HRMS and Leif Elggren

Tobias R. Kirstein - BEELZEBUB (TOPOS 03)

Four excerpts in one file of: 
Opus Morturarium, Opus Autopsia, Opus Crematio & Opus Putesco. 

Opus Mors is four listening spaces for one of the existential and natural aspects of being alive, which is death. The project portrays four sound environments that the human body commonly will be surrounded by or exposed to in the immediate post mortem: a morgue, an autopsy, a cremation and the decomposition - events that no one will ever get to sense on their own bodies because of the very fact of death.
The work is an immersive, intimate and powerfully detailed sonic meditation into these four significant death spaces.

OPUS MORS 
A sound work on four significant death-spaces

Four listening spaces for one of the existential and natural aspects of being alive, which is death. The project portrays four sound environments that the human body commonly will be surrounded by or exposed to after dying: a morgue, an autopsy, a cremation and the decomposition - events that no one will ever get to sense on their own bodies because of the very fact of death. OPUS MORS is an immersive, intimate and powerfully detailed sonic meditation into these four significant death spaces. 
Opus Morturarium
Two ambient recordings made inside two morgues listens within the deep tones from the facilities that keep the corpses cold

Opus Autopsia
Detailed near-field sound recordings of a full autopsy starting with opening the corpse, following the removal and slicing and cutting open all the organs and brain, to finally returning all the organs, closing and washing the corpse. This work reveals each unique sonic timbre of the human organs. 

Opus Crematio
Coffin being rolled into the oven, the oven's different burning stages, the removal and relocation of the ashes into the ash cooler and then to the bone crusher. Finally, the ashes being poured into the urn. Vibration sensors placed on the surfaces of the oven reveal the inside sound environment of the oven. 

Opus Putesco
Sound recordings made at a forensic study facility where donated corpses are placed in an enclosed nature area to decompose
while being studied. This work was made from near-field sound recordings of decomposing corpses recorded with
measurement microphones placed 1 cm above - as well as with vibration sensors inside the corpses. 

Exclusive deluxe release of 4 LP set in 180g black vinyl. Packaged in archival handmade box, bound in linen and embossed, including five unique prints on Tyvek paper. Signed and numbered limited edition of 250.

Graphic Production by Eks-Skolens Grafisk Design & Tryk
Mastered and cut by Mike Grinser at Manmade Mastering
Pressed at Pallas.

Recorded, designed, composed and mixed by Jacob Kirkegaard © 2019

Jacob Kirkegaard - OPUS MORS (TOPOS 04)

Music for Krügerrand is a quartet piece written for eight gold bullion coins and eight oscillators, in which the materiality of bullion gold coins and the sonic properties of gold are investigated.

The quartet piece was commissioned by the G((o))ng Tomorrow festival and was premiered at Copenhagen Contemporary on November 7th, 2018.

Music for Krügerrand was performed by an ensemble which featured Danish billionaire Lars Seier Christensen alongside Ying-Hsueh Chen, Jaleh Negari and the composer of the piece, Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard.

The following gold bullion coins where used:

Krügerrand, 1 oz. (1978, 1980, 1981, 1983) 
American Eagle, 1 oz. (2017) 
100 Corona (1915, 1915) 
50 Pesos Centenario (1947)

The purity of a gold coin can be determined by the sound emitted when the gold coin is struck with another gold coin. The sound generated is a high frequency tone with a verylong sustain, and depending on the diameter, thickness and alloy of the gold coin, a tone with a specific pitch and timbre is given.

Music for Krügerrand –Quartet for gold bullion coins studies the materiality and the sonic properties of gold, and moreover it deals with man's age-old fascination with the precious metal; what could be described as the psychology of gold.

TOPOS

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