prele records has released a CD of revenant : topoló along with 12 page booklet of texts by the artists. Available from December 2008.

revenant : topoló took place on October 19th, 2006 in a forest near the border of Italy and Slovenia. participants in this action were yannick dauby, olivier feraud, john grzinich, hitoshi kojo and patrick mcginley (aka murmer).

 

Special thanks to Pali for putting this together. The cover design really fits the concept and is silkscreen printed. Here is the info from the press release:

First, there was the desire of an ambitious record, then to work with these artists, to bring them together. Unavoidably, a rule had to be set, and everybody had enough taste to bend it somewhat.

Francisco López, jgrzinich+murmer, Rui Costa, Pali Meursault, Tô, Maksims Shentelevs and Helena Gough have given us pieces built from an active listening of their own environment.

Beyond a gallery of subjective pictures of the sound landscape, something different emerged: maybe the very specific way an ear plugs to the world, and makes the energy flow between the outside and the inside.

‘resonant embers’ is a compilation CD featuring Paul Bradley, Maile Colbert, irr. app. (ext.), jgrzinich, Andrew Liles, Colin Potter and Ubeboet who have all previously been released through our parent label Twenty Hertz.

Here we have seven artists presenting seven tracks of drones both stoically austere and uplifting melodic, haunting melodies, beautifully evocative vocals, engaging field recordings and disorientating environments.

There are many things that link these artists together but it is their differences that are more interesting. There is a fundamental contrast in approach and execution with each channeling their creativity in differing ways from drones and soundscapes, through melodic instrumental pieces to environmental recordings and opera. The artists presented here have created individual works that display a unique voice and emotion, all the while creating a collectively involving work that is rewarded with repeated listens.

‘edition sonoro’ are very pleased and indeed darn right proud to be bringing these artists together on ‘resonant embers’ and hope that listeners will enjoy the unique and emotional journey they have created.

Track listing:
1. irr. app. (ext.) – Whickering mechanical parapropalaehoplophorus
2. jgrzinich – Animate structures No.1
3. Ubeboet – Agone
4. Colin Potter – Bella (direct current)
5. Paul Bradley – Kaleidoscope
6. Maile Colbert with Tellemake – Day of Anger act five; A fluid dawn
7. Andrew Liles – The relentlessly banal landscape

Copies are £10 plus postage available from www.editionsonoro.com or www.twentyhertz.co.uk

—–

Reviews:

AUDIO VERITÉ

Resonant Embers compiles Paul Bradley and accomplices previously released through parent label, Twenty Hertz. Seven artists linked by a shared aesthetic (let’s call it “experimental”) with differing takes: a harder outside of sound art and austere ambience with a soft centre of post-Romanticist melodic drones.

First up, NWW collaborator, Matthew Waldron, re-cranks his irr. app. (ext.) vehicle for an discomfiting drive fuelled by a wierd mixture of dissonant effluvia. Inside “Whickering Mechanical Parapropalaehoplophorus” a slowly modulating sound hovers behind an up-close rattle and hum. Twisted moans and a buzz rendered with slapback echo (airplanes? Insect buzz?) infest the sound field. There ensues a woozy stagger attended by an ineffable feeling of fascinated discomfort. There are more corroded metal shapes and post-Industrial wastelands on “Animate structures No.1″, over which environmental collagist jgrzinich scatters a windblown array of field recordings of high tension wires and rummagings from the blasted post-Soviet heath of his adoptive Estonia. His piece sounds less like electronic music than the inarticulate speech of nature’s dark heart.

More palatable musical soundscapery comes from Miguel Tolosa and project manager Bradley. Tolosa’s project Ubeboet offers in “Agone” an ecstasy of haunting ethereality, smartly smudged. Strings at a remove and sub-aqueous operatics whisper forth from within a carpet of delicate pads, a euphonic shimmer of drone guilded by a ghost violin. Tone-poetry in motion. The unjustly unsung Bradley seems lately to have gradually removed the acousmatic veils from his sounds to reveal their guitar-generated nature. He spools out an electraglide in blue of weaving guitar strata not far removed from Aidan Baker, current doyenne of drone-guitarscapism. “Kaleidoscope” is admittedly more synthetic, less gritty, but still imbued with textural detail cycling across the stereofield, further tones being twirled into a mix of pristine steel lightly blurred at the edges. In between, veteran Colin Potter in “Bella (direct current)” alchemises liquid drones from base metal (bells, actually), sounds swelling and relenting, hypnotically heaving. Bradley protegé, Maile Colbert, and mysterious accomplice Tellemake, spins her voice through a series of looping devices and VLF recordings, in a style somewhere twixt a less woozed-up Grouper and a more corporeal version of the vox-spectres from Akira Rabelais’ Spellewauerynsherde.

A mournful closure comes via doleful occasional black humorist, Andrew Liles, who plays it straight here; the breathy lilt of a violin steeped in Balkan noir emerges from some doom-laden low end-of-pianisms to unravel through ominous tolling. Liles’ “The Relentlessly Banal Landscape” strikes as a rather spare and sad affair, and fails to sound the right endnote for what proves to be a curate’s egg of a collection.
- ALAN LOCKETT, e/i magazine

‘ferric’ is a piece that came out of a series of recordings in 2005 that focused on metal objects and abandoned metal structures found around the village where I live in Estonia. An occasional soundscape recording can be heard as well as a windharp I built. Some of the structures were found some were built in a loose way to be affected by natural forces (wind and rain).

below are some photos from the ‘ferric’ recording locations.

What does this mean for the ‘niche’ zone of experimental music? Not very much except the inevitable. At some point we may face demise of the CD industry (not unlike what happened to vinyl). As the mainstream market for CDs dries up so will the market for CD reproduction, forcing everyone to follow suit and transition into whatever emerges (for now it looks like the internet download model). This is already happening for a number of indie labels, but for now, what seems to be an experimental venture (just because it works for Apple, doesn’t mean it may work for everyone). This also runs in parallel to the development of net-lables, or labels that operate solely as a download service. Will CDs disapear? Probably not, but they’ll fall into the margins of old media like vinyl, cassettes, film etc.

While these topics have been on my mind, I recently received an email announcement for Trivia Records (that’s ‘tri’, or 3 in Slovenian), a new web based “label”. But rather simply being a record label (how many “record labels” release records these days?), it is more a full fledged attempt at distributing, marketing and selling artistic “products”. As the project is run by several artists who do more than music there is a number of different products offered. The music side of it is run by Borut Savski, my old artistic collaborator friend from “transition” times in Slovenia (today is the first day of Schengen accession for both Slovenia and Estonia. Is the “transition” complete? ha!).

Some recordings from our collaborative project the Sound Biotope are being offered on the 3via site. I admire that the “product” that is available is slightly more than a free download item. Its also a potential item for trading or exchanging between artists, what they call a ‘Swap Deal’. What anyone can swap is up to the imagination. As not everyone produces their own music to trade others will have to offer something else. It could be photos, reviews, objects, cookies, broken chairs or whatever. The beauty here is that the creative aspect exists not only in the artistic production but in the exchange as well (which is more than what we can say about most music retailers). It will be interesting to see if people take advantage of this.

Is this the future of niche markets and artistic production? It is not terribly clear what will happen, but its good to see people trying things. When I asked Borut he said, ” as for the business side, it is very much experimental – a concept as in conceptual art. Yes, niche market…”, which I feel is very much the open experimental spirit of his own work.

CD Bobby J/Orogenetics US (1998)

1. incubation
2. through the membrane
3. permeate

mnortham / jgrzinich – ‘stomach of the sky’

CD Staalplaat, Netherlands (1997)

1. eluvium [21:56]
2. remanent magnetism [26:06]
3. geochronologic formation [23:36]

info

two CD releases resulting from the early sound collaborations between jgrzinich and mnortham. extended minimal sound formations slowly evolve and drift out of constructed devices, primitive electronics and field recordings.

reviews

jgrzinich/mnortham ‘the absurd evidence’ CD

“Two of these collaborators present their second CD, after the well done The Stomach of the Sky last year. Grzinich and Northam are sound collectors – using natural elements (sand, stones, recordings of the wind) which they use in combination with studio electronica to create dense, atmospherical music. They load the music with images (metaphores if you want) of geographical origin that attract the listener into a specific direction – that of a world, a desert or place you have not seen before. There is resemblance between them and others, I call the “more serious avant-garde noise makers”, like Francisco Lopez (but they are more audible), Roel Meelkop (but they focus more on sound effects), Ralf Wehowsky (but they use less computers) or Bernhard Gunter (although they are maybe less composed). Closest they come maybe to Toy Bizarre, but as you can see Grzinich and Northam have a certain quality of their own to make it different. And its not just the sound that makes the difference, it’s also the presence of the aformentioned metaphors that make a difference the the world of ‘absolute music’ with ‘I dont give you a clue what this is all about’ of the others I mentioned.”
- from: Vital Weekly : Sept 1988 (NETHERLANDS)

mnortham/jgrzinich ‘the stomach of the sky’ CD

“Une musique tres riches en detail et en long mouvements quasi immobiles. Une reussite!” – from: Metamkine catalog (FRANCE)

“This is a crafty take on sound art (steel wires, field recordings, found materials, etc.) … It relies on deeply layered drones, but the oddly monikered duo resist the temptation toward puritan cleanliness, and mix things up with cracklings, buzzes and strange pops which suggest the Geiger-counter exploration of a radioactively scrubbed Nevada bomb test site … these hypersonically bonded twins have a deft intuition that sets them apart.”
- from: The Wire : June 1997 (UK)

” … A testament to their industrious endeavors, precision and research. The long (.ian)-note is tampered… resonates and responds to the adheared atmospheric pressure… subtle shifts in perception.. a still wind blows.. fragments.. nanocryptism… thermals… reading the sands of and erg… reductionism…”
- from: Datacide No 3 June 1997 (UK)

“Restiamo a Staalplaat con ancora due lavori: audio-artisti pure il duo mnortham & jgrzinich, che in ‘The Stomach of the Sky’ miscelano suoni isolati raccolti sul campo (il sibilo di un cavo d’alta tensione, lo stropiccio del vento in una particolare locazione, ecc), ottenedo una versione concettuale ma di dubbia utilita dei CD “da relax” con voci della natura.”
- from: Rumore No 68 (ITALY)

“The American Acoustic-Land-Art duo mnortham & jgrzinich create droning monophonies out of “singing” wires, wind, found objects and field recordings… the artists seem to be exlusively interested in micro-processes, that is, the way matter hums, whispers, crackles and moans.. the final mix of the extremely static Musique Concrete was – and I dont belive in accidents (coincedences) – made at Bernhard Gunter’s Trente Oiseux Studio…”
- from Bad Alchemy No 30 (GERMANY)

 

jgrzinich / Seth Nehil – ‘confluence’

CD Intransitive Recordings US (2002)

1. Pneuma
2. The Distant Edge
3. Lohme

Seth Nehil / jgrzinich – ‘stria’

CD erewhon Belgium (2002)

1. Tome Gather [20:00]
2. Arboreal [8:30]
3. The Mirrored Corner [16:15]

info

The works, “Confluence” and “Stria”) are the result of a continual two-year collaboration and exchange between Seth Nehil and jgrzinich. Significant not only as final compositions, these pieces are nearly complete documents of our individual and collective output relating to sound experimentation, recording and composition from1999-2002. Although the listener in the end is left to experience the acoustic presence created by these works, a survey of the elements that comprise what one hears along with some general information concerning our purpose and intent is presented here.

reviews

“John Grzinich and Seth Nehil have been asking a lot of questions about the nature of sound, about patterns in their groupings, about the dynamics of listening, about the resonance which hangs in the air. In 1998 they made a series of recordings involving a group of people making a great many sounds, all at once, with a variety of found objects. Perhaps they found in the behaviours of sounds, when grouped and performed in this way, an analogy with the behaviours of people, in a social environment, when grouped with others of dissenting opinion, or of common cause, in any given situation, commonplace or pivotal, artistic or political, professional or casual. In any case, they continued to work on their ideas over the years, developing methods of experimentation and exploration, all the while exchanging questions and findings about their work, corresponding across continents. Stria and Confluence are companion discs that have been released simultaneously on the Erewhon and Intransitive labels, respectively, and represent the culmination of their collaborations from 1998 through 2002. Stria is perhaps the more ‘ambient’ of the two records, with three long pieces of deep resonances, multilayered drones and long, gradual progressions. These drones push their way through any distractions and come face to face with the listener who attempts to discern patterns in the waves, in the layers, in the long and droning resonance plates. Confluence is a very different sort of record, and for me is much more demanding as an immediate and commanding presence. ‘Pneuma’ climaxes in a din of metallic scrapings, multilayered, high-pitched and shrieking sounds, only to be carried suddenly on the momentum of its own resonance, as a bird which, frantically beating its wings against the current of the wind, finally finds flight and is able to course through the air with ease, wings reaching out steadily on either side, gliding on the surface of the winds in a gesture at once beautiful and serene. ‘The Distant Edge’ captures the tension of a gathering of dissonant elements, and if the previous track directs the listener’s gaze skyward, this one returns him to the unceasing activity on the ground. Recordings from a demonstration in Belgrade were used for this piece, dominated by a feeling of claustrophobia, of chaos, of being lost in the noise, in the movements, the tensions, in the anger of one’s surroundings. ‘Lohme,’ the third and final piece, takes a step back from the madding crowd, yet maintains a sense of urgency, of cluttered spaces, of conflict and agreement, but finally finds a place to rest, to slow down and drift slowly away, back into a recess of silence, from which all this beautiful noise was born.”
- from Richard di Santo on www.incursion.org

Beautiful music from these two sound poets who will make their organic drones resonate at the margins of an immobile time. Like thick currents of matter slow motions of these sounds offer strained and strangely serene landscapes made from creaking, gratings, broad waves and sparkling resonance majestically uncovering their gracious surroundings in the time. You penetrate into this heavy flow like a gigantic animal, taking its ease, letting yourself being taken away by the current, leaving a certain heaviness for another, more subtle. The current takes us into obscure cavities, in the open gigantic pools other echoes appear, inhabited by the phantoms. With this dense music of shifting the titanic masses you stop shy, observe and in the end you are not deceived by the voyage.
- Manu Holterbach, revue&corrigée no 54, december 2002 (France)
(translated from French by Meta Stular)

“Released at the same time as JGrzinich and Seth Nehil’s “Stria” (that one on the Belgian label Erewhon), “Confluence presents three more electro-acoustic pieces resulting from their collaborations between 1998 and 2000. Their stated intent was to “study evolutionary patterns of sound dynamics through various methods of live generation and recorded mediums that focus on multiplications and groupings.” In other words, the interaction and resonance taking place between smaller parts of a greater whole — a sound organism of sorts. These pieces involved a long process of gathering sound sources which included the use of group recording participants reacting to sounds played to them by playing themselves (on small percussion instruments and objects like bowls). This is an interesting concept, but you can choose to ignore it all and just listen. Each piece contains layer upon layer of sounds moving at different paces, creating rich but not too dense textures that allow you to focus on a different “region” of the sonic space each time you press the play button. Somewhere between musique concrète and very detailed drones, the music opens up and sucks you in. Both artists collected the material, but Jgrzinich composed “Pneuma” and “Lohme,” two 20-minute pieces, leaving the 5-minute “The Distant Edge” as Nehil’s sole contribution (the situation is reversed on Stria). The latter piece features car horns and other street sounds that make it sound more aggressive than the other two, so it works as a kind of interlude between JGrzinich’s quasi-ambient pieces. In its last minutes, “Lohme” threatens to turn into one of Francisco Lopez’s sound constructions. Recommended”.
— François Couture, All-Music Guide.

“With the proliferation of amazing software packages and ever more powerful machines, making electronic music today is, in theory, easier than it ever has been, and the recent slew of unimpressive (to say the least) remix albums seems to be depressing proof that increased sophistication of resources has not always led to a corresponding raising of the stakes when it comes to quality. It’s comparatively rare to find composers of electronic music who are prepared to really take their time in working and reworking their sonic material, which makes these two exceptional companion albums by Seth Nehil and John Grzinich, one on the Belgian label Erewhon, the other on Howard Stelzer’s Boston-based Intransitive imprint even more worthy of your attention.
Using sound material sourced from various objects played (Nehil prefers the word “manipulated”) by large groups of people, the two composers “trade, treat and trade” sounds again until, as Nehil writes, “because of the very long composition time (more than two years) it becomes impossible to claim ownership.” Rather than trying to fit their material into a pre-conceived architecture, Nehil and Grzinich “allow the sounds to dictate the overall form,” and the end-product manages to combine a naturally breathing sense of form (in a manner not dissimilar to much electroacoustic improvisation) with a sound surface of extraordinary precision and complexity (“anywhere from one to over a thousand layers may coexist in any one moment”). Listening through headphones – recommended unless you happen to have a state-of-the-art stereo system and a listening space large enough to enjoy the music at the necessary volume – reveals the extraordinary lengths to which the composers go to interleave, crossmix and develop their sound material. At times the source sounds seem easily identifiable, but once the layers of crackles, rustles and clanging pots and dishes have been superimposed and set back into the middle distance of the mix through masterly and subtle panning, they assume different, multiple identities. What could start out as a gentle tap on a piece of wood ends up as distant thunder – or is it gunfire? The steady accumulation of sonic events inevitably recalls the stochastic pile-ups of Xenakis, who, you will recall, in his 1966 interview with Marc Blancpain (which accompanies the Fractal reissue of his “Persepolis” – not the shoddy job released by Asphodel last year), explained his interest in mass phenomena as a means to obtain “form, a completely new plastic sonority that no longer behaves according to polyphonic or tonal or serial rules, but rather a completely new concept that can be found in calculating probability, or in theories such as the Kinetic Theory of Gases which [..] plays an important role in astrophysics today.” Many composers today pay lip-service to Xenakis while apparently understanding neither the sheer difficulty and complexity of his music nor the compositional strategy behind it (I’m thinking particularly of those who participated in the disappointingly shallow above-mentioned Asphodel Persepolis remix project), but works such as Nehil and Grzinich’s “Pneuma” (on “Confluence”) and “Arboreal” (on “Stria”) are the authentic descendents of “Bohor” and “Concret PH”.
“The Distant Edge” (on “Confluence”) was sourced in recordings of a 1999 street demonstration in Belgrade, and superimposes recognisable sounds of mass protest – blaring car horns, chanted slogans and angry cries – to form a huge pulsing cloud of sound about an octave in range. If Xenakis comes to mind once more (and we should not forget that his experience of public uprising during the occupation of Greece during the war was a formative influence on his concept of mass sound), so at times does mid-period Ligeti (specifically a piece like “Clocks and Clouds”) – the music appears to drift by slowly until you focus your attention in on the detail and find it to be teeming with activity like a beehive. Simply put, these two albums contain some of the most technically accomplished and awesomely beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard, as infinitely complex and infinitely simple as light. Any self-respecting new music enthusiast can’t afford to pass them by.”
– Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic.

Cut 018 , Switzerland (2006)

1. Cast
2. Weald
3. Glaze

info

The three compositions on Gyre were formed from varied location-based sound actions, which were then processed and composed in the studio. These acoustic recordings bear the trace of empty barns, forests, fields and hills. Material origins of wood, glass, air and metal are transformed into abstraction. The result balances tangibility with disassociation, focused microscopy with breathy expanse, and raw physicality with ghostly glimmer.

Cast sources recorded at Bard studios, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, summer 2005 by SN.
Material for Weald and Furl recorded in Mooste, Estonia autumn 2005 by JG/SN.
Additional material for Weald recorded in Saaropera, Estonia by JG (with mnortham and Koz).

First mix of Gyre presented as 4 channel sound piece for Correnti Sonore 05, Tarcento Italy.

the ‘gyre’ forest in estonia

reviews

This is the point where sound art and traditional Western composition slowly converge.
Thank god for the internet! Let’s forget about those cultural pessimists for a while, who see the free dissemination and publication of art as a problem, not a blessing. But aside from the question, whether there can ever be too much music, the digital data highway has allowed for some collaborations, which would never have seen the light of day only two decades ago. Such as with Seth Nehil and John Grzinich, who have kept their artistic bond intact, despite putting it to a strong geographical test. With Nehil residing in Portland, where, among other activities, he publishes the “FO A RM” magazine on sound art and Grzinich working at the center for art and social practice in Estonia, the distance between them on the map has never been bigger. Yet the homogeneity of their joint work has increased accordingly.

“Gyre”, in fact, never sounds like a collision or a battle, but more like the result of two different minds working on the same wavelength, complementing one another and filling in the blanks. In three pieces of between ten and almost twenty minutes length, the duo totally encapsulates the listener with sound, building up a world, which label owner Jason Kahn accurately describes as “acoustic recordings (…) transformed into abstraction”. While the opening “Cast” still offers some harmonic guidance, with little drops of rain trickling into the picture and subaquatic murmurs moaning behind a transcendental drone, which breathes like a static choir, the remaining tracks entirely turn to processed field recordings: Gentle knocks on wood, grinding stones, distant rumblings, metal being hit, birds chirping and objects drifting inside a liquid-filled basin in “Weald” and smouldering and crackling noises, as well as impressions of a lonely worker in a huge warehouse on “Furl”. And yet, “Gyre” is never satisfied with merely presenting all of these recordings and of using them as a showcase for the possibilities of technological treatment. In all cases, the source material has been moulded into a flowing piece of music with subtle changes, multiple layers.of aural events and a vast deepness. Behind the natural appearance of these compositions lurks a galaxy of infinite proportions, an endless pit of hollow structures, which lend them a majestic.aura. Just like one were stepping into a thousand year old cathedral, the mystery remains wordless and intangible. If the mooing of a cow can equal a chord change, if a drop of water can resonate like a melody and if an empty barn can take the place of an orchestra, then this is the point where sound art and traditional Western composition slowly converge.

It should be amply clear, that this kind of music takes up a space of its own and does not require for its actors to be in the same room at the same time. It therefore bears no surprise, that this album, despite its closeness, was mixed and remixed in three different countries. Still, as the air-line distance was increasing, Nehil and Grzinich could have easily lost sight of each other and have gone their separate ways. The internet and regular mail prevented that and made “Gyre” possible. Again: Thank god for that.
By Tobias Fischer for Tokafi

For more than a decade Seth Nehil and John Grzinich work together, playing highly processed acoustic recordings of them playing together. You can imagine them sitting together in the woods, in a cave or on the top of a hill with a small array of wood, glass or metal, and producing sounds with that. The natural acoustics also play a role: the acoustic space or the wind or the rain. Recordings of such pieces are combined together in the studio and formed into lengthy pieces of drone music. ‘Gyre’ is their third release, following ‘Stria’ (see Vital Weekly 360) and ‘Confluence’ (see Vital Weekly 353), which were companion releases. On ‘Gyre’ we find three of these pieces, in which the environment sinks into the playing of the musicians, such as in ‘Cast’, which has the rumbling of acoustic objects, gradually fading over into the sounds of wind and rain. The drone music of Nehil and Jgrzinich may not have changed since their first two releases, but it’s quite still a highly captivating journey and a strong, personal view of drone music. That makes this most worthwhile.
- Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, 7.2006

“Gyre” implies circling, an ambit of some kind. The best parts here orbit around the listener, never quite providing a steady handhold but always enticing one in deeper. A strong recording, well worth hearing. – Brian Olewnick
full review on bagatellen >>

Seth Nehil and John Grzinich are two sound artists, both having worked with audio and video on various CD´s, performances and exhibitions. “Gyre” is their third collaborative release and was recorded in Finland, Estonia and Italy.
The facts sorted out, it´s time to write about their recordings, which were composed using location-based “sound actions” which were later shaped in the studio. On the first track, this sounds like a combination of processed field recordings and improvised playing on found, self-made or imported items whose sound could best be compared to rhythmic instruments like the Kalimba. A hollow and gusty drone forms the backbone, over which Nehil and Grzinich “play”, scratch and shake these items. The duo manages well to build a tense atmosphere and structure their elements in a way that keeps the listener attentive.
full review by Stephan Bauer, Foxy Digitalis, 10.2006 >>

Gyre is highly textural music, almost palpable in the way it inspires visions in the mind’s eye. Like the dream world’s reconfiguration of familiar artifacts, Gyre spins a web of hallucinatory sound forms, and to the mind that’s willing to enter, the album’s ambience can be quite enveloping. Users of field recordings are sometimes said to play their environments, and for Nehil and jgriznich , this statement might be applicable. But what seems more appropriate is the idea that the duo are not just playing their surroundings, but redefining the context in which they’re heard. The duo don’t engage their recordings passively, and they’re in constant interaction with their environments, both during the recording process and in the studio. Luckily, the album is as immersive for the listener as it likely was for the artists.
full review by Adam Strohm on Fake Jazz >>

Gyre was originally presented as a four-channel sound piece for Correnti Sonore 05, Tarcento Italy. Seth Nehil and John Grzinich recorded the source material in New York and Estonia through 2005, and the resulting three pieces all cleave fairly strongly to post-processed, gently dislocated field recording “composition.” It’s not exactly an under-populated field, and at times Gyre struggles to distinguish itself from similarly-minded recordings. The duo are fascinated with resonance, tracing and testing the properties of spaces through “sound actions” and then building new architectures through juxtaposition and a cool editing hand. These recordings offer a kind of psychogeographic hauntology, the displacement caused by manipulation rendering the original spaces somehow absent, yet present: you’re constantly trailing an idea of an origin without recourse to any “real” referent. Nehil and Grzinich are smart composers, though they do often rely on wind-tunnel atmospherics as scaffolds for their compositions: not a bad thing, but they sometimes risk over-homogenising their creations.
Jon Dale, Paris Transatlantic Weekly, 9.2006

Gyre is a sound art project which investigates, and then renders abstract, acoustic experiences of place and location. The collaboration of Seth Nehil and jgrzinich has no doubt been informed by the vast distance which separates their homes in, respectively, Oregon and south east Estonia. The pair work acoustic material from “empty barns, forests, fields and hills” into heavily processed passages. The process is most recognizable in “Weald”: sparse, echoing taps and gongs sketch out the contours of their surroundings, as they ring and report back from distant surfaces. But Nehil and jgrzinich also invert such notions. For “Cast”, they use their source sounds not to imply or describe any kind of space, but to build a gathering slew of thickly textured sound, which enters into the listener’s space like a concrete object.
Sam Davies -The Wire, Oct. 06

contact mics on old oil tanks

seth experimenting with an improvised wire installation

deep in the forest

the glass jars heard on ‘glaze’

the composers before the performance in Tarcento, Italy

photos by jgrzinich

1. kinetic sense [12:42]
2. sinking tides [15:50]
3. sun in hand, stone in water [19:00]
4. fluid itinerancy [08:32]

info

‘intimations’ began as a series of piano recording experiments in the spring of 2001 in Austin, Texas and continued as a sonic diary of life in transit throughout Europe. The resulting CD came from a culmination of experiences, continually worked through as dynamic and personal electro-acoustic reflections. ‘intimations’ is comprised of recordings from Texas, Croatia, Italy and Germany and was composed at numerous locations from the Balkans to the Baltics. The CD includes an extended essay by the composer. “These are intimations of a different kind; as if listening was no longer about finding references in a mediated culture but is about sensing the coordinates of ones position through a set of precise signals present in the environment.”

reviews

Where Meelkop keeps the secrets of his locations and his processes very much to himself, the long essay accompanying John Grzinich’s Intimations goes into a little (though not much) detail about how some of the source recordings of a grand piano were recorded in an unheated and unlit chapel. But it’s a long way from the raw recordings of attackless piano clusters, birdsong and footsteps to the dense, rich tapestry of sound that Grzinich weaves from them. Like his friend and occasional collaborators Seth Nehil and Michael Northam, Grzinich works slowly, building a labyrinth so irresistibly beautiful (the end of “Kinetic Sense”) we walk inside (“Sinking Tides”) without a second thought. “Lying in complete darkness with the locus of a stereo sound field positioned in the direct center of the head, the music sinks in deeply to saturate the senses,” he writes. “In time the body settles into a stasis somewhere between being awake and asleep. Hearing takes over in its totality as touch, taste smell and sight manifest through a complete ‘listening’ body. A conscious being, immobilized in a quantum reality, is left without doubt as to the singular inseparable relation of time and space.” It’s the kind of writing that will have the Ben Watsons of this world reaching for their well-thumbed copies of Adorno, but if you ain’t tried it, don’t knock it. Whether or not you consider such so-called deep listening as some trippy, hippy cop-out, the fact remains that the only way to engage with music such as this – not to mention much latter-day sound art and electro acoustic improvisation – is by getting inside the sound, either by clamping a set of headphones on (a shame in this case, as Grzinich’s sounds need space to breathe) or by finding a time and place where the sensory stimuli of the rest of the world can be filtered out as far as possible. If approached in the wrong frame of mind, the slow, shifting drones of “Sun in hand, stone in water” would likely as not come over as mere soporific ambient fluff, but pay attention and you’ll find they reveal a sense of timing and structure as impressive and moving as Eliane Radigue’s.
- Dan Warburton, November 2004, Paris Transatlantic Magazine

Close to a decade ago, two emerging sound artists living in Texas thought it clever to compress their names into unpronounceable monikers. Hence, we now have mnortham (Michael Northam) and jgrzinich (John Grzinich). While the meanings of such monikers may no longer be relevant, they’re permanent fixtures for both artists, like faded tattoos. Throughout his career, Grzinich has played second fiddle to a handful of acousmatically minded composers, including Northam, Seth Nehil and Rick Reed. ‘Intimations’ is his debut recording despite a wealth of those collaborations. This album began as a series of recordings for piano, with Grzinich quieting all of the attack from whatever he was performing and stretching into sustained drone undulations. The incessant chorus of cicadas and the calm lapping of the Aegean Sea interject distinct environmental overtones amid the ephemeral and amorphous flutter of Grzinich’s heavily processed tonalities. ‘Intimations’ sleevenotes flip back and forth between a philosophical cry to reorder the nature of perception and a personal exposition of the construction of this music. Where the former is tentative in its questions and answers, the latter is poetic in its sombre, solitary mood, more in keeping with the spirit of the music to be found here.
- Jim Haynes 2004, The Wire #244,

This is among the top most mind numbingly ethereal recordings I have ever heard in my life, ranking high up there with Nurse With Wound’s ‘Soliloquy for Lilith’. The ambient drone is something born out of hyperventilation and cascading emptiness. Jgrzinich’s Intimations are personal dark entries into the wondrous crossing between vapory industrial sound and delicate field recordings with experimental piano. His past work has included duo recordings with peer acousticians Seth Nehil and MNortham. The hushed ambience of these sounds is actually quite piercing, with just a paranormal presence, only a permeable sense of realism, providing a textural aura –Mute crackle, wispy crunch, still crumble. The track “Sun in Hand, Stone in Water” has a menacing circular tone that curls like chronic vertigo. Oblique mist that snakes as the disc closes with an organic leak of water that sounds as if it is falling atop a glass piano, causing a fountain.
- TJ Norris, USA, 2004, Igloo Magazine

Multimedia artist John Grzinich has a remarkable series of releases under his belt in collaboration with mnortham, Seth Nehil (who indeed helps with some recordings on one track of this cd) and the Frequency Curtain trio, but oddly enough this is his first solo album. Co-released by CMR (New Zealand) and Maaheli (USA/Estonia, where Grzinich currently lives and works), “Intimations” immediately stands out as one of the best 2004 releases. Grzinich reaches a synthesis of field recordings and electronics which is, simply put, trascendental beauty. This kind of delicate, yet extremely powerful “acoustic ecology” reminded me of Lionel Marchetti’s “Portrait d’un glacier” – textured organic drones created with a perfect merging of concrete sounds (running water, cicadas, blowing branches…) and electronic processings. The mystical intensity of “Sun in hand, stone in water”, based on resonating grand piano clusters, also brinds to mind Osso Exótico’s equally moving “Church organ works”. Grzinich’s writings in the inner sheet also offer interesting insights and theoretical reflections about sound, composition and listening experience. A truly awesome release.
- Eugenio Maggi, Italy 2004, Chain DLK

intimations is a coproduction between CMR Records (New Zealand) and maaheli studio (Estonia/US)

1. evening bleariness and quiet discontent [19:45]
2. the stone transmissions [16:16]
3. recurrent territories [07:36]
4. call of a brazen corona [16:32]

info

‘equal and distant lines’ grew out of a nomadic state of living, a period of transitory existence. In this state one assumes the identity of a nomad, a survivor traveling on the substance of movement. Through these periods of instability structures of understanding emerge, from conceptual ideas to practical realization. Reference for fixed points become strings attached to remote locations. Locality is defined by purpose of mobility, focus comes in the in-between…

CD designed by mnortham with special fold out booklet

reviews

coming soon…