Reviews | By Frans de Waard / VITAL WEEKLY
Befreit die Maschinen | Hannes Seidl
One of the things I remember from reading scientific magazines for kids in the seventies was the thing about machines that would make life easier, freeing us from stupid jobs. The future has arrived, and yet we seem to be slaves of devices, looking at our phones or using AI to answer a question for us (or worse, to be honest – I have not yet gotten a review from AI that I liked). Hannes Seidl uses excerpts from German that translates as „Overcoming the Labour Society. A Political Philosophy of Labour“ by Michael Hirsch, from 2016. Seidl has various bits of software, none specified, to generate sounds, and they go along with the computer-processed sound from the lecture. Seidl selects which becomes part of the piece, so it’s not entirely machines taking over; perhaps, as predicted: machines do not easily take total control (I admit I only follow such developments when handed in my newspaper; I don’t dig deeper). The piece is forty-two minutes and was commissioned for radio. […]
Of Wolves and People | Melissa Pons & Nils Mosh
[…] That does mean Pons is about wolves, and Mosh is about people. On the first side, there is something about wolves, mainly through spoken word, in German. In a documentary style, people talk about wolves, along with sounds from nature, at one point, reminding me of cicadas. It all eludes me to some extent. As I write above, my knowledge of the German language is to the extent that I understand what it is about. Still, as with so many of these things, I don’t care much for spoken words/documentary/interview style, not even when the other sounds are pretty interesting. Give me the information on an insert, and let the sounds speak for themselves. In that respect, I much enjoyed the other side: no spoken word but sounds from wildlife and music. The musical side comes via samples of instruments and is a fine bunch of atmospheric melodies. If the other side is the documentary, then this is the uncut soundtrack, not peppered with spoken word. Combined with field recordings and animal sounds, this makes a pretty interesting piece of music. Maybe the whole concept behind the piece kind of eludes me, but in terms of music, I think this is an excellent piece of music.
Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin | Angélica Castelló
Information is available about Angélica Castelló’s new record ‚Catorce Reflexiones Sobre El Fin‘, meaning ‚fourteen reflections on the end‘. She composed this music for an installation at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2019. She uses many field recordings, but according to the label, also she refers to her previous work, including voice work, recorded in very high and very low quality. I assume some recordings include her instrument of choice, the Paetzold recorder. There are fourteen pieces on this album (as they were on display in the installation, hanging from the ceiling), and I admit it also sounds like two long pieces, with the occasional silence occurring. The shuffling of a spade in the first piece, ‚Rómpeme‘, reminded me of digging a grave. There are more of these death references, such as the church bells of ‚Bells‘ or the shattering of glass, also an end. There are lots of animal sounds, and there is an eerie atmosphere throughout these pieces. In ‚Un Homme‘, there is the sound of an old record; there is a marching rhythm, jackhammer or funeral march? Hard to say. Castelló carefully uses reverb to add to the creepy atmosphere. […]
