The time of the white nights is quickly passing. In this part of the year I try to make regular excursions out into the countryside to record during the late evening and early morning solitude. One of my favorite places to visit is an embankment on the western shore of Peipsi lake (bordering with Russia). If the air is still enough, the subtly changing colors of the sky reflect beautifully off the surface of the water. The photos above are just a humble tribute to this magical display of light. On this particular night, it was so quiet, there was almost nothing to record sound-wise except for the occasional fish leaping up to catch insects. Below are two excepts from longer recordings made in the past month.

This first recording was made by a small pond in the forest. There are frogs moving around directly in front of the mics, but you can hear many soft sounds in the distance from the forest and a remote farm.

This recording was made after the traditional mid-summer day (St. Johns day or Jaanipäev), when the evening soundscape shifts dramatically from bird life up in the trees to cricket and grasshopper life in the grassy open fields. Unfortunately there are mosquitoes present nearly all the time and they seem to like the furry wind covers on my microphones.

Here are several field recording made during a recent visit to Portugal. These recordings were made in several different spaces throughout the Convent of the Order of Christ, inside well preserved castle of the Knights Templar. When the castle opens at 9:00 there are few people in the off season. For the sake of discreetness I used the internal mics of the Sony PCM-D50.

Small chapel off the first cloister (sounds of cleaning women)

Convent small chapel

Main cloister (water fountain and bird sounds)

Convent main cloister

Third cloister (with circling sparrows)

Convent cloister with sparrows

 

animate structures #4

Click here to view the embedded video.

this video features a set of specific locations where aspects of the land, abandoned structures and forces of wind come together.

 

just some of the materials and textures to be found in the areas around the headlands.

Travel support provided by Eesti Kultuurkapital.

It was a busy week in Berlin but one of the nice surprises was a visit to Teufelsberg, a former NSA ‘listening station’ that has been abandoned since the wall came down. This small complex of buildings sits on top of an artificial mountain of rubble left over from the second world war. A group of us went to listen to something else, the space itself. Actually there were multiple spaces that included some old concrete military buildings and a series of geodesic domes, which I imagine, must have housed the surveillance equipment. The highest dome, sits at least 7 stories up, has a fiberglass shell that offers many sonic possibilities with its unique acoustic properties. The video below is composed of a few clips I filmed (in very windy conditions) while the sound is excerpted from a straight recording of a 40 minute improvisation of 5 people. Special thanks to Natalia for suggesting this and for Dusan to drive us out there in the snow.

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

There will not be much to report for a few weeks but I’ll be posting some material from my archives.

 

Some recordings in the space:

Riga power station binaural sound walk mp3 file

Riga power station internal water tank drones mp3 file

MYSTERY SEA 51 CD (Belgium, 2009)

TRACKS

01. dispersion trajectory
02. membrane formation
03. spectral remnants

INFO

Three tracks of moderate fluctuations of sound in temporal space, infected by the occasional far from equilibrium interventions to diversify the stasis. Research notes: Most structural compositions of phase inversion have focused on slow shifts in macrotonal formations, while the rich microstructure has received little independent attention. Presented here is a mystified and emotive soundscape of possible microstructures formed on the basis of margin transformations, kinetic ties, and spatial considerations. Special attention is given to the microstructural features resulting from a three-stage phase separation. Subsequently, these considerations are extended to the microstructure of the inner ear and that of its corresponding neurocellular boundaries. Finally, the features of actual phase inversion structures are heard, imagined and hence interpreted. Phase inversion can be regarded as a form of the instability in the composer, the stability of the process being least at the point of mental projection. On the other hand, knowledge of the phase inversion point is essential in the preparation of dispersions in order to obtain the desired listening effect. The fundamental difficulty in understanding phase inversion lies in the problem of conceptualising the actual mechanism behind the process. Various recording and sound assembly methods are used to generate a trajectory in phase space, which samples from a chosen array of possibilities. This constitutes the random motion of the sounds within the dispersion lattice.

 

REVIEWS

For Mystery Sea, John Grzinich has plunged deep into its own creative process to come back with “phase inversion”, an haunting & soothing thorough sound litany… Sinking slowly within, oscillating slightly, in a continuous imperturbable movement at the heart of an unseen core lies a point of entry, a source of multiple diffractions… Rubbings, vesperal sighs, microcollisions, metallic asperities, elemental debris, tiny fragments recombine in a wordless score… “phase inversion” turns things upside down, makes Below becoming the Above, draws a precise, refined outline where each detail is like the echo of a new path… a cognitive retraction… > Daniel of MS

Review by Brian Olewnick, from Just Outside

John Grzinich’s Phase Inversion is a giant murmuring, always on the verge of blooming, though largely because it seems always to be fading, growing darker the deeper it dives, where steel scrapes and gray glitches break its surface and paradoxically makes the cold, barren atmosphere more intimate. If the climate of three works here is somewhat cryptic, it is a good deal more inescapable. Pieces pass with an incessant, circular motion, but it’s a motion done on the spot, heading nowhere. The first selection is the strongest. A solemn undertow spaded with placid tones hovers in the distance. A deceptively mischievous manner appears to hold it in place, though steadily it encroaches, not so much transforming as revealing a network of growling mechanical distortions occasionally pocked with echoing synthetic pings. The closing pair of works are hewn from the same dark matter, but their rubbings are more feint, corroded, as though they now stood at a certain distance from themselves. As fine as they are, there is a sense in which they aren’t quite heavy enough to fully make good on the potential of the albums initial stirrings. This remains, still, a fine example of Grzinich’s never overwhelming, but far from benevolent, rattling streams of sonic distillation.
Max Schaefer http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/?p=3213

jgrzinich is a name that’s been hovering around the edges of my attention for quite some time now but it took the ever wonderful Mystery Sea label to finally wave him in front of me. Phase Inversion is a set of three contrasting compositions. The first, ‘Dispersion Trajectory’, is a long undulating drone marked by the addition of skitteringly amorphous insectile sounds. The second, ‘Membrane Formation’, is a melding of washing tone and drone with clattering and sawing instrumentation and the third, ‘Spectral Remnants’, is a short, gentle set of gong-like tonal ripples. I found the first to be a little too cold and remote for my tastes the slow addition of the scuttling extra sounds helps open the track up but I prefer a little more warmth in my music. The second is easily my favourite track here. It seems fairly minimal in it’s strategies but there’s a humanity to it’s composition that envelops the listener. The final track offers a small coda to the album that’s perfectly formed and full of interest but is a little too brief to fully immerse oneself in. If I have seemed a little negative towards this album then I apologise. It’s fair to say that Phase Inversion isn’t my favourite album this month as, for the most part, it all feels a little too clinical for my tastes and I struggling to hear the composers personality but, it is extremely well made and most definitely a worthwhile listen as are all Mystery Sea releases.
- Ian Holloway from Wonderful Wooden Reasons

Among the genuine masters of this game, acquired Estonian John Grzinich gives a showing of his strength with a gorgeous accumulation of drones and found objects, the latter mostly verging on the softly metallic/distantly clattering side of concreteness. The record presents exactly what was expected, this commentator well acquainted with a good number of the artist’s past releases (published on the best labels in this field, from Cut to Sirr, to Elevator Bath – you name it, he’s been there); yet there’s something distinguishing his work which is called class. I don’t know how to explain it, this has probably to do with a deeper perception of the vibrating particles of a particular source, or the shape of a chosen environment, or maybe just comes from a highly developed inner ear. A Jgrzinich drone sounds dissimilar from a regular buzzing hum: it appears more like the layering of a thousand desolate murmurs bathed in amniotic liquid.

The static façade hides hundreds of inherent movements, muted throbs, sub-harmonic changes that nevertheless make the whole sound as an immobile stifled choir, silently spreading resonances which, in conjunction with the dissipating energies represented by those faraway rattles and clangs, represent a memento of how to behave ourselves in front of the vague, a symbol of the unconcern we should always demonstrate when the worst is approaching, be it the fear of an uncertain future or the sheer notion of death. Perhaps a record like Phase Inversion could help someone to get in touch with that inside dimension which is inevitably left aside when one is intent in “living” by filling the brain with figments of imagination and innumerable illusions, only to be given a final bill at the end, still ill-equipped and even more frightened.

In actual fact, life itself is a phase inversion. On the contrary, many people are convinced of giving lessons to others, not realizing that what they believe to have “invented” is just the chewed-up remnant of a truth that everybody sees in a wholly individual way – all of them completely wrong – and that will finally rape everyone’s abstruse beliefs concerning human evolution and a presumed afterlife – not to mention reincarnation – except for the obvious transformation of the corporal matter into food for worms (or ash, if you’re sophisticated enough) and energy into some substance that might be useful or less, according to the quintessence of that erstwhile “being”.
- Massimo Ricci

These are some images I captured yesterday after a fairly cold evening (-10c) left ice crytal formations around our yard. Reading up on the process of crystallization gave some insight into these amazing forms. The “growth” of crystals is built on a complex layering of structures embedded within structures implying fractal-like behaviors that begin at the molecular level (although there still some mystery surrounding this). The knowledge of artificial crystal production is quite vast yet difficulties in producing the perfect conditions is often cited. This puts a different perspective on my tolerance of the cold weather knowing that it is also the ideal conditions for the delicate process of ice crystallization, a sublime expression of nature formed from one of the most commonly available substances.