Creating music that’s like the soundtrack for a building-site documentary, sound artists Anne-F Jacques of Montreal and Kobe-based Canadian ex-pat Tim Olive use magnetic pickups and amplified rotating surfaces to generate industrial-style improvisations. It’s ironic that the work of players residing in two of the world’s most technologically sophisticated countries appears to symbolically reflect theContinue reading “Anne-F Jacques & Tim Olive. Tooth Car.”
Genre Archives
Sound Symposium XVIII.
Audiences at Sound Symposium XVIII in St. John’s, Newfoundland were treated to a full spectrum of improvisation, including free improvisation, graphic scores, and directed improvisation. We heard a vast range of music for electroacoustic soundscapes, Javanese gamelan, contemporary art music, Balkan folk music, and even music made by 3-D printers amplified by CCRMA’s GRAIL (StanfordContinue reading “Sound Symposium XVIII.”
Erin Gee Sings the Body Electronic
SHOULD YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF IN A CONFINED SPACE WITH ERIN GEE, PREPARE TO BE ENTERTAINED, AND PERHAPS ALSO PUZZLED—AT LEAST BRIEFLY. “If someone meets me in an elevator,” she tells Musicworks in a telephone interview from her office in downtown Montreal, “my elevator pitch is that I explore the communicative potential of the human voice inContinue reading “Erin Gee Sings the Body Electronic”
Intersystems. Intersystems.
Released in late 2015 by the Italian label Alga Marghen in both CD and LP formats, the richly documented Intersystems boxes set the bar high for reissuing and critically examining the legacy of one vigorous—however obscured by the ensuing almost half century—branch of experimental sound art, spoken word, visual, and performance art of the lateContinue reading “Intersystems. Intersystems.”
crys cole amplifies personal space
I first saw crys cole perform in a tiny gallery in Winnipeg’s Chinatown. Seated with a contact mike, a pane of glass, and little else, cole reflected the minimalism of her setup in quiet soundscapes and restrained gestures. Immediately, she had the room under her command. There was a charged tension in the air, asContinue reading “crys cole amplifies personal space”
Kaie Kellough Sounds It Out
IT’S 2016,YET I FIND MYSELF SPENDING an inordinate amount of time talking about artistic output from the ’70s and ’80s. It was in the latter decade that esteemed Montreal-based sound poet Kaie Kellough’s favourite band, Bad Brains, emerged on the scene with a self-titled debut that advanced the “hard” in hardcore punk. If you needContinue reading “Kaie Kellough Sounds It Out”
Di Mainstone Fashions a New Sonic Future
Di Mainstone, inventor of the Human Harp, describes herself as a “bridge botherer.” But to be accurate, her bridge-bothering activities are fairly recent. Before bridges (the Human Harp has, to date, played bridges in Brooklyn, Omaha, and Bristol) came mood-sensitive kinetic outfits and prosthetic sound devices. In Mainstone’s tiny studio, perched atop a disused VictorianContinue reading “Di Mainstone Fashions a New Sonic Future”
Anne-F Jacques. Sable ou Sel.
Anne-F Jacques is a Montreal sound artist who plays acoustic noise-music on invented instruments. Mechanical loops are created when various objects are attached to spinning motors amplified by contact mikes, assemblies that Jacques categorizes as her “rotating devices.” Unlike the digital world of perfect repetition, her improvisations are brought to life by erratic variations arisingContinue reading “Anne-F Jacques. Sable ou Sel.”
Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound, 16.
Send + Receive (s+r), a sound-art showcase held annually in Winnipeg, is curated around a different theme each year. Its acknowledged aims are to highlight the contributions of women to sound art, to develop an audience for emerging local artists, and to utilize different venues from one night to the next. This helps focus theContinue reading “Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound, 16.”
Myriam Bleau spins Soft Revolvers
In a darkened room, an artist is manipulating four translucent circular objects on a tabletop, moving from one to another. Audience members gather around. The objects emit light. Their spinning motion activates deep tones and beats that crackle and whir, and snippets of voice that drop in and out. The sounds fade as the spinningContinue reading “Myriam Bleau spins Soft Revolvers”