Subvoice

 

”Sub voice” & ”Lunch music”, two new releases of Yannis Kyriakides on the label Unsounds

”Sub voice” contains 9 compositions relative to the relation in between speech, text, instrumental music and computer sounds. Nine experimental pieces which bring us in hallucinating landscapes similar as deep soft dreams.

”… the underlying idea is to explore what happens when material that has a clear semantic form, wether communicated in text or speech, is translated into the musical structure…”  YK

 "Lunch Music" by composer Yannis Kyriakides is a set of pieces for voices, percussion and live electronics, inspired by the 1959 book "Naked Lunch" by William S. Burroughs.

The concept of the music revolves around the idea of the polyphony of voices found in "Naked Lunch".

 

YK - a portrait by Sara Morris

Yannis Kyriakides reaches the composition with an intellectual approach and a formal construction, but the results are not deprive of deep emotion. These two new CDs, ”Subvoice” & ”Lunch music”  prove it again.

”…The ‘perceptual’ in time based arts I define by how we perceive ourselves inside the music. The passing of time. How the space around us is changed by the music we hear. How we reflect on things that have happened a second before or an hour before. How the moment or the ‘now’ is expressed and perceived in relation to the duration that is set up in the music…” YK - 2003

 "...Lunch Music joue avec les sens et l’espace, contorsionnant le temps et les mélodies pour en élaborer un matériau musical aux images fortes et à la beauté radieuse, ensorcelant chaque sillon de leur impossibilité à s’extraire de la folie et des substances hallucinogènes auxquelles fait allusion Le Festin Nu (le roman) ..."   Roland Toress

"...for most of his (YK) work, he encodes the countless fruits of oral expression in immaculate contrapuntal designs. Not just as mere colors; rather, as transformed nuclei of primordial significance containing the keys to acknowledge a subtler level of comprehension..." 
 Massimo Ricci - january 2017

 Complete review by Massimo Ricci here

Sympathetic piano

 

The Turkish sound engineer Gökhan Deneç has developed a sympathetic resonance system for a grand piano, using electromagnets and feedback through its strings. The electromagnets are placed in the piano and hung approximately 2 mm above the strings which are attracted and repelled by the magnetic fields caused by them. By sending the same signal through all electromagnets, each piano string will start to vibrate by sympathetic vibrations and feedback.

This concept was elaborated at Istanbul Technical University Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM).

”My first intention was to create feedback to excite the piano strings and then by manipulating it I would create textures. […] The sound creation is realised in PureData; there is a generative algorithm that I designed to create a very specific type of sound world. […] What you hear in the video is the generated tones that are created to vibrate the piano strings and because of its nature, they are unique in their own time. I can not repeat the same sounds, there are tons of randomization going on to construct this generativeness.”  Gökhan Deneç

Cairo music

The radio show titled "Epsilonia" (on Radio Libertaire - Paris) 

was focused around the Cairo's musical avant-garde last week...
mix by Samon Takahashi & Palix

to listen to here
 
_____________________

 
"EPSILONIA" - Unpedigreed Music Since 1986
  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  L'émission "Epsilonia" est dédiée à la découverte et à la défense des musiques expérimentales, 
musique contemporaine, électroacoustique, improvisée, bruitiste, 
ambiante, progressive, free-jazz, 
ainsi que des domaines comme la poésie sonore ou le spoken word.
Chaque Jeudi à 22H sur Radio Libertaire 89.4 FM (Paris)
Streaming
all podcasts of "Epsilonia" here

Scale of expanse

"Scale of expanse - de l'apparence de l'étendue et inversement"  is a movie directed by Palix in 2010.
movie & music : Jean Jacques Palix
credits design  : Bob Kohn
duration : 26 minutes / MMX - 64 production - Paris 2010

"Ces “paysages“ n‘existent pas avant qu‘un spectateur ne les regarde.
Ils constituent une étendue indéterminée qui ne demande qu‘à être limitée par un regard."

 "Scale of Expanse" has been shot in the wild and unreal landscape of the Parc Naturel de la Narbonnaise in France. It combines real views with virtual and imagined dimensions producing a limitless space waiting for the sight of spectators to exist...
It gives a very personal interpretation of this place, which is jealously cared of and protected from glances and commercialism, composed by natural vegetation and industrial ruins of now distant past. The soundtrack, composed by the artist, contributes to the confusion between abstract and real images and between the perception of distance and the imagination of a machinery composed landscape."
Barbara Litvine - Cambridge (UK) 2011
  

thanks to : 
Laurence Rondoni, Marion Thiba, Eve Couturier who helped and supported the possibility of this movie

R'nR' dancin'

go! go! Johnny go!

RIP Chuck! and thanks for one of your record which was the first LP of my youth.

Chuck Berry, father of Rock'n'Roll (an advertsising by a french radio)

London sound survey

What does London really sound like?

The answer is in the "London sound survey" , a growing collection of "Creative Commons-licensed" sound recordings of people, places and events in the UK's capital.
Different catalogues are proposed as : "Sounds of the musical Museum", "The sirens of Hampton", "Economic actions", "wild life", "social life" ... etc ...

A huge collection of good quality recordings and an study on Historical references to London's sounds.


Here is an archive from 1912 with the "violin machine" (click on the picture below)

 

£££ 

Quatuor Béla

Fondé en 2006 par quatre musiciens des CNSM de Lyon et Paris – Julien Dieudegard et Frédéric Aurier, violons, Julian Boutin, alto, Luc Dedreuil, violoncelle –, le Quatuor Béla s’est réuni autour du désir de défendre le fabuleux répertoire du XX^e siècle ainsi que la créa­tion contemporaine.

"Le Quatuor Béla est une jeune formation pratiquant le répertoire pour quatuor à cordes des Xxème et XXIème siècles avec un engagement et une exigence rares. Mais c’est aussi une association d’instrumentistes extrêmement curieux de croiser leur expérience avec d’autres musiciens provenant de territoires musicaux singuliers, qu’ils viennent du rock, du jazz, de la musique improvisée ou de l’univers des musiques traditionnelles." Arnaud Petit, compositeur.
 
“The Quatuor Béla has this grace, this «je ne sais quoi» which speaks Jankélévitch, this irreducible thing, we can not capture or imitate in sound distinction, the hairline of the performance, the clarity of the subject. Of course, there is the technical virtuosity, which is no longer rare. The young French musicians today have often breathtaking technical level. There, before, there is musicality. These people do not flirt, they love.”
Jean-Marc Warszawski, Musicologie.org, May 2009

Curieux et enthou­siasmés par la diversité des courants musicaux d'aujourd'hui, les membres du Quatuor Béla s’asso­cient souvent à des figures artistiques emblématiques parmi lesquels le jeune maître du oud Ahmad Al Khatib, la chorégraphe aixoise Josette Baiz et sa Compagnie Grenade, la chanteuse Elise Caron...

"Jadayel" : Le Duo Sabîl et le Quatuor Béla


"Spectres" : avec la Compagnie Grenade de Josette Baiz


L’ensemble se produit en France sur des scènes éclectiques et se distingue par sa volonté d’être à l’initiative de nouvelles compositions et de nourrir le dialogue entre interprètes et compositeurs. Il a créé des œuvres de Philippe Leroux, Francesco Filidei, Benjamin de la Fuente, Jean-Pierre Drouet, et bien d'autres ……

Mais aussi le quatuor noue depuis quelques années une collaboration avec le discret et inclassable musicien et chanteur français Albert Marcoeur, expérimentateur notoire depuis son premier opus éponyme en1974.
Leur nouveau CD "Si oui, oui. Sinon non." vient de sortir en France ce mois-ci.

"Les valises à roulettes" : avec Albert Marcoeur

Women and strings (5)

Harvard University? women band

Wanda Jackson

 

Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo - NYC - 1910

 

unknown Spanish guitar player

 

Patsy Montana

 

Memphis Minnie

 

Melba Montgomery

 

Mary Pickford

Greta Garbo

 

Alförjs

Alförjs is a Lisbon based trio playing music in fields of jazz, tribal laments, and free improvisation.
This trio is formed by Bernardo Alvares on double bass, Mestre Andre on sax/electronics and Raphael Soares on drums.

"Jengi is the name of our first album. Jengi is the Baka pygmy spirit of the forest, he is in our collective conscious, on our constant look for the wild and the unknown."

Marseille, vieux port

 

Dans les bouillonnantes années 1920 et 1930, le militant radical de la modernité et directeur du Bauhaus László Moholy-Nagy commence à réaliser des films à partir de 1929.

"La plupart ont trait à l'agitation de la ville, à l'architecture, ou à l'activité humaine. Il y utilise la lumière afin d'établir une dialectique sociale, de mettre en relief certains aspects du quotidien, pour éveiller le spectateur au politique."   source: "Light Cone"

En 1929, il réalise ce film muet sur Marseille, son port et son transbordeur, sa population et sa vie.