VARIOUS ARTISTS
The noise
& the city
2CDR/download, autres
directions in music
This release is definitely the absolute highlight of
the great work that Stephane of autres directions in music has done up to
now: a double-CDR/download-compilation of thirty renowned avant-garde /
noise musicians and artists complete with a multipaged booklet with
extensive liner-notes and photos -
done by the artists themselves - to support the underlying theme of the
whole thing. That is a damn high mountain-top that has been reached and it
will be even harder to top that in the future. You will understand that if
you read on, and then go to autres directions’ website to download this
thing.
The whole project revolves around the idea that every
place has its own sound, coming from natural or mechanical sources, a unique
aural fingerprint that permeates any kind of experience. Now those thirty
artists were asked to go out, record sounds in their hometown and to produce
music on the basis of these sounds alone. The results are marvellous. Each
and every participant has produced a fine piece, I have to say. Of course,
the tracks all range in-between the borders of electronica, ambient (which
is not a surprise especially) and noise, mixing the parts. Some are more
broken and discordant, others are beautiful, subtle pieces of music. All in
all the feeling is not as harsh and brutally demanding as e.g. Justin
Bennett’s “noise map” (who of course has a full CD to realise his
visions) due to the variety of styles and ideas and atmospheres.
The most interesting part for me is the way in which
each track and therefore each city has its own distinct feel and sound to
it. A lot of times I have expanded within these pages on the effects of the
outside surroundings on the music we perceive. As soon as you get deep into
the whole area of ambient music and noise music, these aspects become
important. After all, when you have reached a point where you are not sure
anymore, if you are listening to the music or noise recorded on a CD or to
the blood rushing through your ears, you know that you have made a distinct
step to open your consciousness towards the knowledge that whatever you hear
is produced inside your mind. And when you have reached the point, where you
can enjoy the random interplay between the music coming from your stereo and
the noise of the traffic outside coming in through your window as a
completely new and exciting piece of music written especially for you by
chance right here and now, you have managed another distinct step towards a
completely new understanding of music.
How many people, finally, are aware of the fact that
living in an urban metropolis (if you can call Vienna that…) you get used
to the constant hum of cars, public transport, electric cables, the wind
between the walls and so on, that you actually live with a constant doses of
tinnitus. As soon as you get out in the country and try to fall asleep on a
cold night – so there are no insects and no birds about and it gets really
completely silent – you’ll notice.
Moreover, it gets you to think about the concept of a
city in general. What is it, that makes millions of people come to live
together in one single place? Crocodile Dundee believed that New York hast
to be the most beautiful place on earth, if so many people want to live
there. Well. Wang ChangCun from Daqing in China comprises a completely
different mindset into another beautiful theory: “The city is a mechanism
… it is not a factory, because there aren’t any workers … it is
“ready made … Citizens do everything on an oversized and useless level
… So now it’s time to refrigerate the firecracks.”
Most artists on the compilation have gone out of their
way to find sounds aside those expected (sirens, bells, people talking, …)
while those that still use them, find a special reason to do so. Like the
bell in Colophon’s “uji” (San Francisco) that he has recorded in a
Buddhist Zen-centre where he uses to hang out for years now. Or like
Aquaboogie from Wellington, who by chance recorded a busker playing a
strange version of “Stairway to Heaven”, which of course got modified
and heavily filtered before being used in here. This way you’ll get short
glimpses into the psychogeographic notions people have of their, mostly,
hometowns. Which also provides an interesting insight into the way they live
and think about their cities. The fat booklet reads like a DIY-fanzine for
people interested in sound-recording without most of the technical chatter.
Some spent quite a lot of time processing, cutting up and re-arranging
sounds, while others just stuck their mics out there and left it to chance
what they could get.
