Static is a new trial (digital download only) sub label of Very Quiet Records. Like VQR, the idea is simple … recordings done from one position, in excess of thirty minutes, no processing. There is no emphasis on quiet in terms of volume.

The quiet here is more to do with stillness, or rather, being still. With sitting in one place for long periods of time, just listening.

The first release is Flow, a 33 minute recording of the River Dart on Dartmoor, Devon UK, recorded on 25 October 2013. Listen and download available below or at https://archive.org/details/Flow-VQRStatic

Review of Placed by Caity Kerr in The Field Reporter http://thefieldreporter.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/318/

Preface

I’ve been listening to two new releases which have so much in common in their treatment of natural material as musical resources that they deserve to be considered together. I’ll also preface this review by stating that I think it’s important to be able to make decisions about whether a work is successful or not and whether there is, or indeed whether there should be, more than mere taste involved in appreciating new music and sonic art. Gastronomic music seems to be very popular in the current era.

I should say that the benchmark for this kind of work is *KO/USK- by Giancarlo Toniutti with Siegmar Fricke, a book/cd publication (purchase) which goes into the compositional processes behind a work made from the sounds of stones. The book also includes a discussion of specific areas of linguistics. The level of complexity is very high, in fact Toniutti’s work is largely an investigation of complexity across several fields, reflecting the fact that life, in both the human and the other-than-human environment, is in fact very complex. I would assume that the intentions behind *KO/USK- (complexity of preparation, planning, concept, documentation and production) are completely different from those of the two works that I want to review, Dah Eum by Una Lee and Placed by Jeph Jerman and Tony Whitehead. Yet despite the difference in intentions I would argue that the detail in the preparation of *KO/USK- results in a much richer listening experience. This isn’t always the case but the context raises questions about the artists’ approaches and their depth of preparation.

Review

Placed by Jeph Jerman and Tony Whitehead, on very quiet records (field recordings of quiet places) is described as a collaboration between Arizona artist Jeph Jerman and Very Quiet Records label owner Tony Whitehead from Devon in the UK. The album presents quiet improvisations recorded with found natural objects recorded in the Arizona desert and Dartmoor.

There is this rather misguided notion going around that you can just pick up any old stuff and make music. However this is more likely to succeed if you’ve been at it for a while, if you know how to listen as you play, if you know your instruments. It also helps to know that if you do this, then that is likely to happen as a result, phenomenologically speaking. I know that both Jerman and Whitehead are very good and experienced listeners – Jerman I know from his work with all sorts of materials and media, some of which is very interesting in musical terms. I’ve met Tony Whitehead personally in a working environment and can vouch for his excellent listening abilities. I’m mentioning this because I believe that it’s at the heart of the matter. Better listeners, in this freely improvised idiom using natural materials, generally make better music. So what I’d say about this album is that as you listen, a very satisfying balance between gesture and timbre comes to the fore as you do so. At times the ear is drawn to the sound, just the timbres, which are well chosen – the first track, Beewater One, which you can hear on the label website, is a good example of this though I should add that the album is reasonably consistent in this respect. Then your attention shifts to the gestural activity, or rather there’s an oscillation between the two listening strategies which comes over as satisfying and highly musical. Above all it should be acknowledged that this isn’t easy to achieve.

I’ll finish by saying that there’s a missed opportunity with many of the manifestations of this simple music, crafted, often beautifully in places, from basic found natural materials. There was a moment, a real living moment, around the turn of the new century (and indeed some of these artists would have been active), when a loosely knit group of artists were sharing original work which investigated what we might call the aesthetic of wabi sabi – a perished, distressed, imperfect aesthetic often relying on low fidelity equipment and a disregard for trends, renown or anything other than a desire to investigate new sonic environments. None of this harks back to a golden age and none of it was necessarily simple or had anything to do with microsound or any of those fashionable schools. The aesthetic was swiftly annihalated quite ruthlessly by a raging torrent of brash personal, institutional and media-driven agendas which are still with us and which strive for supremacy in the political economy of the sonic arts. So I instinctively warm to the efforts of Una Lee, Jeph Jerman and Tony Whitehead and others like them, though I always listen out hopefully for a contemporary equivalent of would have formerly been a trace of the device or perhaps the hiss of tape, something of the imperfect and the unstable.

http://www.fluid-radio.co.uk/2013/10/sebastiane-hegarty-eight-studies-of-hearing-loss/

Nathan Thomas reviews Eight Studies in Hearing Loss for Fluid Radio

The second instalment of Sebastiane Hegarty’s ‘Four Walks Around A Year’ was recently released on Gruenrekorder to favourable reviews, but traditional location-based field recording is only one of many strings to this artist’s bow. For his new release on Devon-based label Very Quiet Records, he took various ancient objects — pieces of chalk, ammonite fossils, a dinosaur egg — and dissolved them in vinegar, capturing the sounds they made as they fizzed away.

If I didn’t know what I was hearing, I might have identified these eight tracks as recordings of rainwater dripping through a gutter, or fizzy drinks being poured into glasses. Sounds of ordinary, unremarkable things. It is only through reading Hegarty’s notes (and track titles helpfully naming each object being dissolved) that one becomes aware of the prehistoric provenance of the sounding materials. In this sense, I guess it’s fair to say that the work’s concept isn’t audible in the work itself (if we take ‘the work itself’ to be merely what is heard), in the way that the ‘Four Walks’ are audibly outdoor meanders through different seasons. The ‘extra information’ regarding the nature of the sounds is what lifts them out of the ordinary and opens them to wider ideas of loss and the inevitable passage of non-human, geological time. Yet they do not bend under the weight of such heavy themes, remaining detailed and intricate enough to be interesting in and of themselves, seemingly in resistance to the enchanting narrative of transformation imposed upon them by the concept.

I raise this point because I struggle to see Hegarty as a purely conceptual artist in the orthodox sense, yet at the same time his work could hardly be reduced to a concern with ‘pure sounds’ or some other unreflexive notion. ‘Eight Studies of Hearing Loss’ is a record about loss and the passing away of all things, yet it is also both more and less than this; the concept and the sense data do not match point-to-point. It is perhaps for this reason that I find it both more interesting and more affecting than music that sets out to convey a sense of loss or decay directly, through some form of musical metaphor or plea to the emotions. For some, a quick read of the notes and a single playback will be enough to ‘get it’, but I find myself compelled to listen again and again.

There’s an interview with me talking about Very Quiet Records over on the British Library Sound and Vision blog here. Thanks to Cheryl Tipp for asking!

There’s an interview with me talking about Very Quiet Records over on the British Library Sound and Vision blog here. Thanks to Cheryl Tipp for asking!

Very Quiet Records releases are now available at the Ftarri store in Tokyo.

Website here

Image: Jeph Jerman

Placed is a collaboration between Arizona artist Jeph Jerman and Very Quiet Records label owner Tony Whitehead from Devon, UK. The album presents quiet improvisations recorded with found natural objects recorded in the Arizona desert and Dartmoor.

The album is available as a digital download and as a cassette tape.

You can find out more about Jeph here:

http://soundcloud.com/jeph-jerman

http://web.archive.org/web/20100808132830/http://www.jerman.littleenjoyer.com/

Field recording of old trawler beached on a sandbank adjacent Starcross, Devon, UK. It sits in the wind, the tide passing in and out of its wooden hull.

http://thefieldreporter.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/302/

The british label Very Quiet has allowed artists and composers to produce and publish works under the ‘very quiet’ premise and this time the turn is for Francisco López. Because of his relevance in the sound art and and acousmatic compositions fields I was curious about what he would do working under this premise. Fortunately the result for me as a listener was very rewarding and in some extend, surprising.

Quietude is usually associated with stillness and steadiness but on this work López seems to approach the project in a novel way, working quietude as a matter of distance.

On ‘Untitled #308′ seems like the events occur far away to the point we can barely listen to them. Distance seem to transform sonic events that resonate on different frequencies into a single subtle low sound which is what we can hear on the Part 2 of this work.

On Part 1 something similar occurs but the perceptual distance seems to be established by density rather than space. Here we can recognize some action and movement but it sounds like a thick and dense wall separates us from the sound-producing events.

Both approaches to distance, and quietude, seems particularly valid and interesting to me in terms of the way it relates with many experiences I have had when loud events are transformed when we move away from them or when an object is placed between the sound source and the listener.

Recently I walked to a mountain close to Bogotá where you can watch over the city and I was amazed by the subtle and quiet but highly noticeable rumble that the city produces when you hear it from above. Similar things have happened to me in beaches and areas close to the sea when one moves towards or against the sea waves and the way it affects the sonic perception of the rumbling sea. Likewise when the neighbors move heavy stuff around or speak loud and one listens to it through the walls the imagination is triggered and one can’t avoid to eavesdrop expecting to hear further details of what is happening on the other side.

All of these experiences raised questions and reflections that were meaningful for me and I when I hear them imprinted and reflected on ’Untitled #308′ they acquire a more universal and yet personal meaning.

‘Untitled #308′ is not an easy listen in part because of its duration (over 75 minutes) and also in part because there is no sense of detail and the frequencies palette are all in the low end. Anyway this doesn’t diminish the formal value of this work, otherwise I found the listening experience of this release very rewarding.

Finally what I find more relevant and praiseworthy about this release is how it takes on a subject and develops it in a surprising, unlikely and novel way, raising questions about important matters.

When is quiet?

When there is no movement?…

What happens when we isolate ourselves from the sounds that movement produces?…

We might not be able to stop all the movement around us but we might be able to perceptually isolate ourselves and ignore the sound that the surrounding movement produces, that in order to immerse ourselves in a private and personal state of quietude…this sense of quietness is what I feel this work is all about.

http://www.vitalweekly.net/894.html

FRANCISCO LOPEZ – UNTITLED #308 (CDR by Very Quiet Records)
It’s perhaps nothing strange to see a release by Francisco Lopez on a label called Very Quiet Records. After all his main claim to fame came in the mid 90s with a release like ‘Warzawa Restaurant’, which was surely one of the quietest releases ever. The whole idea was, if I remember Lopez’ reasoning well, that the listener had more freedom to fiddle around with the stereo, adding mid/high/low frequencies and more options with the volume control to set the music at such a level that he would seem best. Lopez’ concerts where quite loud affairs, but saw him fiddle around with all of the notions himself. Stuff you wouldn’t do easily at home I would think. It brought on a vast amount of releases, which explored this territory quite in depth. Many of these releases were called ‘untitled’ – as to give no indication what it was about, the difference between absolute and programmatic music – and had one piece. Here we have an ‘Untitled’ disc with two pieces, part one and part two, with an explanation what we hear: “unprocessed unedited piezo-disk pieces”, one recorded in Calakmul rainforest, Yucatan, Mexico and one in Hverfjall crater, Island. As usual with Lopez releases I open these in an audio editor on my computer, because it allows me to do all that fiddling with his music. One noteworthy thing straight away: there is actually something to see in these sound waves, but that not necessarily means there is much to hear. But once you normalized it, put up the volume a bit more, these pieces of raw material turn out to be very nice. We peak into the Lopez kitchen, and see what kind of sounds he finds fascinating. In the Mexico piece this is something very dark, wind on a metal roof perhaps, picked up with a piezo microphone? Or maybe just the wind and a microphone like that? Hard to say, but it sounds intriguing for the entire length of this piece. Nothing static about it, as it moves back and forth. This piece would have been enough, in its forty-two minutes of length. The Iceland piece lasts thirty three minutes and picks up a likewise far away hum; events happening outside the field of microphone. A piezo ceramic microphone has only a limited range when attached to a surface. But if nothing happens on the surface directly, it can also pick sounds from somewhere else. Maybe that’s the whole thing that happens here? The Iceland piece is equally fascinating, once you adjust the parameters to your own liking. Very nice indeed. Both of these raw building blocks. (FdW)