SoundCloud Weekly .3649346

Leden and Laura's live performances are based on a real-time processing of saxophone’s sounds, using digital devices designed by Fabris himself to sculpt, mould and generate their own sonorities. Laura's playing involves different extended techniques and the use of the mechanics of her instrument, the only sound source of their live set.Their new repertoire combines the emotional power of melody with experimental ambient soundscapes.

LEDEN / AGNUSDEI live electronics

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From forthcoming collaborative release with Stuart Chalmers - Awkward Objects on Fractal Meat Cuts.

Releases November 19, 2018 

Music by Tom White and Stuart Chalmers. 
Release notes by Joe Murray. 
Mastered by Jac Beloeil.

/ / 

Tape-music grandmasters play chess with eternity! 

OK (pause) 

Phew ... (wipes damp palms, mops shining brow) ... I’m a little excited here OK. (gasp for air, clears throat) 

Fans of modern tape wonk will already know the names of the righteous Tom White and Stuart Chalmers. For you lot at the back (and please try and keep up) Tom plays the large reel-to-reel tape machine manipulating the thick vintage tape with electronic effects and spectacularly hands-on physical loop-age systems. 

Stuart favours the household compact cassette and carefully takes these fragile babies apart making short micro loops that he magically extends with a dusting of effects pedals, fairy lights and a deep mystical understanding. 

Similar set ups for these gentlemen for sure but their work is clear-voiced, distinctive and individual. For Awkward Objects Tom brings a textural crunch that aches with the sound of sound itself. Each subtle click and whirr of the reel-to-reel is elevated to be a star in the show; a gentle hiss is looped into angels gossip, a tidy mechanical clunk becomes the snoring of a sleeping god. Stuart’s gift is for layering fragile sonic time-tissues. Each soft envelope of memory draws electrical activity from my hippocampus triggering flashbacks involving Blake’s Seven, Moonbase Alpha and the hot fug of a sleeping bag. 

This is heady stuff; circular, ever moving - a dignified collapse leading to a raw re-birth. Tom and Stuart’s styles merge and mesh perfectly into what some are calling Cubist sound collages. To my cloth ears it’s a great description as the angles are slightly askew, the colours muted and subtle. This recording is a beauty that’s hinted at, inferred, rather than presented as a garish centrefold spread. 

Expect to be drawn into a soundworld of new sensations, warm embraces and deft ear-fingering. 

So, in my best fairground barkers roar... 

”Here they are ladies and gentlemen. Together for the first time, Mister Tom White and Mister Stuart Chalmers proudly present their Awkward Objects for your edification and listening pleasure. Take it away gents...”

Awkward Objects

Tom White & Stuart Chalmers - Flux | From Awkward Objects (Fractal Meat Cuts 2018)

When I read the parameters for this week's project, I realized I already had a completed track.  I made this ambient version of Gymnopédie No. 1 back in 2013.

More on this 363rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Gymnopédie Rats: Make over Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” in your chosen genre — at:

https://disquiet.com/0363/

Many thanks to Peggy Nelson and Alex Hawthorn for having proposed this project, at the tail end of last week’s project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0363-gymnopedie-rats/

There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.

Gymnopédie No. 1 [disquiet0363]

Known to many through his collaborative works with Oren Ambarchi, crys cole, Kassel Jaeger, Klaus Lang, Joe Talia, and many others, this LP is Rushford’s first solo release in a decade and the very first he has composed, performed, and recorded entirely alone.

Primarily recorded in Los Angeles in 2017, The Body’s Night is a single electro-acoustic suite stretching over thirty minutes, utilizing field recordings, flutes, ocarina, microphones, organ, percussion, piano, tape, analog synthesizers, viola, and voice. True to its title, the record immediately ushers into a nocturnal, intimate, claustrophobic space where the hyper-amplified rustle of clothing and vocal mumbles are shadowed by uneasy synth tones, fluttering white noise and distant filigrees of ultra-high-pitched tones at the edges of aural perception. While the influence of contemporary composers such as Klaus Lang and Jakob Ullmann (both of whose music Rushford has performed extensively) makes itself felt in the music’s attention to the liminal space between sounds, Rushford also draws on the bedroom synth explorations of ’80s acts like DDAA and the harmonies and production values of black metal, drawing a common thread between these influences in terms of their shared interest in atmosphere and deliberate retreat from perspicuity. Relief from this claustrophobic atmosphere comes through the episodic structure of the piece, where like an already dark shot fading to black, each sequence retreats from your ears before you can properly grasp it.

Rushford uses classical electro-acoustic techniques and plays elegantly on the fundamental ambiguity of the acousmatic situation in which you can never be sure of the source of the sound you are hearing. But rather than a tribute to the masterworks of musique concrete, this is defiantly idiosyncratic and personal music. Meticulous in production values and exploratory in timbre, tonality and form, The Body’s Night is a key work from one of the most singular young composers at work today.

Stunning artwork by O.B. De Alessi. Design by Lasse Marhaug. Mastered for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

BT047 - James Rushford "The Body's Night" [sample]

Tom White is a London-based artist. His multidisciplinary practice spreads across sound, moving image, installation and live performance. Past projects include commissions and appearances for Radiophrenia, Glasgow (CCA); BRAUBLFF (KRAAK & De Player); Whitechapel Gallery, London & Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton. Collaborators include Maya Dunietz, Kieron Piercy, Ben Knight, Stuart Chalmers and most recently in Al Fresco with Lia Mazzari & Sholto Dobie .

He won the British Composer Award in 2014 (Sonic Art) for Public Address, commissioned by South London Gallery. In 2016 he founded Apologies in Advance; a platform for artists presenting work in progress performances.