IRIS
GARRELFS
Specified
encounters
CD, Bip Hop
The unique speciality of the human voice and its effect
on the (human) listener has to have its origin somewhere deep in
anthropological reasons. Like animals being able to identify another animal
of their own species. And so even though there are many records using a
single source of sound as their basis (e.g. “Papercuts” by Jon Mueller and Jason Kahn)
using the human voice has always remained a special thing to do. From
Hildegard von Bingen’s metaphysical praise of creation to the exotic
traditional songs of Shainko M. Namtchylak to that CD by Mike Patton on
Tzadik and Björk’s “Medulla” (where Mike Patton also appears on),
maybe the reason is that the human voice is the only instrument whose source
comes from within the body. Next to being the prime source of communication
for our species, the magic of the human voice, able to produce words, song
or undecipherable noises (compare to the distinction of frequency-patterns
into signal, tone and noise), is still a fascinating mystery. Accordingly,
records diving into that mystery, are – even though usually hard to listen
to – also of a lot of interest.
“Specified Encounters” consists only of sounds made
by Iris Garrelfs, but she goes another step forward by computer-processing
her voice as far as she gets them. So some of the tracks on here contain
shining, beautiful voices, others hacked up and distorted voice-bits like
listening to someone having a fit while on LSD, to electronica noise like
cuts and glitches, to noise. Taking the human voice the full round from song
to noise and back again might be the biggest feat of Garrelfs on this record
in a musicological sense. But obviously for her not the progression of music
or the production of a compact conservation of her music is in the
foreground, but the experience of exploring the sounds she is able to make,
laying them over each other, multiplying and manipulating them into
something new and bigger. The tracks on “specified encounters” are named
“encounter 1”, “encounter 2”, “encounter 3”, and so on, marking
special occasions or moments of unhindered workflow. They range from close
to three minutes to an (for our modern times epic) 1 minutes. By the way,
that really long tack has the angelic singing over looped vocals that span
the bridge between Bingen and Björk in a single stride. 18 minutes are not
really long for taking in about a century of music.
I can already see all the reviews either praising
“specified encounters” for sounding like Björk or as writing it off as
being “esoteric”, and both obviously being completely besides the point.
Iris Garrelfs also does photografic work next to her wide occupations in
music (from collaborations e.g. with Kaffe Matthews, Scanner, Freeform), and a little
quicktime movie packed onto the CD tells a little about it.
