ROWE / AMBARCHI / SACHIKO M / YOSHIHODE / AVENAIM

thumb

CD, Grob

If there is a difficult job to be done, let the professionals do it. If the job consists of making you rethink and reshape your listening, then get these five artists, because they’ll get the job done. And they’ll give you: the auditive rockconcert-equivalent of nothing. What a revelation to your ears and brain. True, no one will listen to this on a daily basis, but from time to time “Thumb” might offer the sound-induced hypnosis-trance you needed.

It is impossible to not hear[1]. The least thing you’ll always be able to hear is the noises of your body, your heartbeat, gurgling of the stomach and so on. Some auditive scapes are so familiar that we don’t regard them as sounds anymore. The whizzing of the computer, the slow humming of the amplifier, the sounds of the refrigerator. Especially natural soundscapes have a very high positive impact on modern people, because to lay back in a nature-ressort and listen to the wind in the trees, the leaves rustling on the ground and the singing of the birds is like getting your senses calibrated again. That is why a walk in the woods is so refreshing and relaxing – you get out of the busy and noisy schedule of everyday urban life, kick back a little and get all your senses back. City life is dominantly straining on the eyes and ears, whereas other senses, such as taste, smell, touch and the skin are almost completely locked off. When you get out in the nature you get a chance to experience your senses anew, perhaps by feeling the wind on your skin or smelling the scents of the trees. I am not a tree-hugger, but I need that resetting of my senses once in a while.

Alternative avantgarde artists find their own ways, which are definitely more in sync with the urban energy-cycles of our hypercivilization. Oran Ambarchi and Keith Rowe invited three fellow-avantgardists to sit in under the moniker of Thumb and explore the depths and dynamics of no-sound. They were together on tour with Keith Rowe, using two prepared guitars and a little electronic equipment and percussions, and in Paris they met Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M, who were around playing turntables, guitar and sine wave generators. Except for a steady, really high-pitched whizzing, that will drive you crazy if you concentrate too much on it, there isn’t a lot happening here. Or maybe there is just too much happening here. It is the electric, amplified equivalent of the natural soundscape described before. The computers and electric guitars are whirring, from time to time a string is plucked as if by coincidence, the humming sounds of the electronic equipment flows gently, becoming stronger then disappearing again in the background. You get five artists deeply immersed in their set, listening not only to the notes played (there are none) as “traditionalist” free-form-musicians would do, but mainly on to the noises and sounds generated by their instruments as such. And then trying to manipulate these sounds by very little, tiny movements and small changes in position of the body or knobs on their equipment.

The result is a mesmerizing trance-like state. It is half an hour of getting very deep within yourself, almost like a hypnosis. They start off really soft and silent. And the highpoint of the track is the overwhelming intensity of those really high sine-waves getting more and more intensive. So droney it hurts. I guess, a lot of people in the audience wondered for quite some time, are they waiting for the right moment to begin? What is happening now? Why isn’t there anything happening? Oh, wait – there is something happening. And that is the whole point – there is definitely a lot of things happening, but these are as much coming from the stage as they are coming from the inside of the listener. I remember quite clearly, how negatively I reacted upon the frequency-experiments of Rijoi Ikeda, where at some points during a CD you couldn’t be sure, if you still heard something or if you had been listening to the sound of your blood running through your ears for the last minutes. Nowadays, I like listening to the blood running through my ears. And I like listening to the birds singing and the wind blowing through the trees. And I like the way Thumb make me experience my hearing and listening anew.

[1] Deafness is of course an exception. Nevertheless, even deaf people have sensations that are analogue to auditive sensations, e.g. with noises so loud that the body catches the vibrations. What deaf people actually “hear”, is an interesting question, but this is the wrong time and space for it.

www.churchofgrob.com

03/2003