Cool Concepts



Onomatopeyas,
Pablo Elinbaum and Pablo Díaz
Scatter Archive (Bandcamp)

Photo_Tone Live at MUMOK Vienna 29_09_2023

, Mia Zabelka
Nachtstück Records (Bandcamp)

Eight Studies for Copulating Blippoo Boxes, Richard Scott
Nachtstück Records (Bandcamp)

‘There is no cool concept or creative process behind this work, sorry… we just went to a studio and started to play.’ So say Pablo Elinbaum and Pablo Díaz in the notes to their album, Onomatopeyas. Of course, in a way, they’re contradicting themselves. They describe the actual concept behind the album as: ‘try[ing] not to play for the sake of playing: it’s a simple idea but not so easy to execute’. However, when it comes to music-making, I reckon that’s one of the coolest concepts going. So, no apology necessary.  Then there’s the album title. There’s no getting away from it: I’m sorry, but the idea that one’s instrument is an extension of one’s voice and the sounds it makes, words that describe themselves is another, er, pretty cool concept (and one which would’ve appealed to another South American artist, Jorge Luis Borges, and it doesn’t come much cooler than that).

I know what they mean though. There are no concepts at play that might plant preconceptions in the listener’s mind about the music. One of the great things about improvised music is its potential to make new discoveries, to take both performers and listeners into totally unexpected places. For it to do this, preconceptions need to be kept to a minimum. I have more than a soft spot for what one might call ‘absolute improvisation’: music made that leaves the door open for me to find whatever’s there for me to find. We’re going on an adventure. Don’t draw me a map!

So, having read the notes, I felt, as you can imagine, positively disposed towards these two guys even before I started listening. I was not disappointed. There are six untitled tracks, six wordless, musical conversations between Díaz’ prepared guitar and Elinbaum’s percussion. It’s no coincidence, I think, that in addition to their musical work,  Díaz has worked in dance and Elinbaum works as an architect. They both arrange sounds in time with the kind of sensibility one might bring to bear on placing gestures or objects in space.

When Stockhausen wrote, in May 1968, ‘Spiele eine Schwingung im Rhythmus Deiner kleinsten Bestandtelle’ (‘play a vibration in the rhythm of your smallest particles’) , he was, I think, intending his instruction to be understood intuitively, not literally. Mia Zabelka’s composition, Photo_Tone, aims to interpret the idea literally. A violinist who improvises, composes and uses electronics, she describes what she makes here as  ‘scientific music’. The album, she tells us in the notes, is based on subatomic processes, letting – as the notes put it – the ‘modulation, elimination and the oscillation of elementary particles tell their own mysterious stories’. Of course, there are different ways one might go about achieving this: one could work at a micro-level, representing sub-atomic processes as waveforms, so that even the timbre of the sounds used in the piece are a representation of the sub-atomic world. Alternatively, one could work at a macro-level, using the processes to order the sounds in the piece and perhaps their durations. Once could do both, or even devise another system for representing them (as Rob Hordijk did for chaos theory with his Blippoo Box – more below). What isn’t clear from the notes is exactly which option Zabelka takes. It would’ve been interesting to know! What is certain, though, is whatever approach you take, you end up taking at least a few executive decisions. What limits are you going set for the sound-world you create? You could use the processes you want to represent to create music resembling anything from Satie-like piano pieces to industrial music. You’ll have to decide, too, on the speed at which you want each process to unfold.

So much for my quibbles. However Zabelka goes about it, though, it works! The end result is a texture, often noisy, sometimes frenetic, at others almost lyrical, held together with drone-elements. It’s an absorbing listen. Stockhausen would’ve been intrigued, I think.

I must say I approached Richard Scott’s Eight Studies for Copulating Blippoo Boxes with a certain amount of unease and, I must say, listening to these tracks does leave one feeling a little like a voyeur, or more accurately, an écouteur. In his album notes, Scott explains how he thought it best to leave them to it: ‘I have tried to keep myself out of the way as far as possible; as the great Serge Tcherepnin once put it; to allow the machines to speak for themselves. I believe that what the Blippoos have to offer, as well as being a very special kind of audible liquid mathematics, is also in and of itself a musically interesting listening experience.’

The Blippoo Box (the ‘oo’ is pronounced ‘oh’ in Dutch) was invented by Dutch synth designer Rob Hordijk. He died in 2022, aged 64, and Eight Studies is dedicated to his memory. He’d set out to design ‘an electronic sound generator based on the principles of chaos theory’, as he put it, and the Blippoo Box was the end result. One can either leave the machine to produce soundscapes, or attempt to ‘play’ it, although it’s impossible for a player to control it the way one might a conventional instrument. As Hordijk has said, ‘to play a Blippoo Box means to anticipate what the box is doing and not vice versa, as the behaviour can only be predicted in a broad sense.’ (If this all sounds interesting, Dutch trombonist Koen Kaptijn has invented a VCV Rack version of the box. VCV Rack, for those who don’t know, is a downloadable virtual synth. I can’t vouch for it myself, but I’ve included a link below in case there are any VCV aficionados out there who want to check it out).

Eight Studies is definitely worth a listen. My only criticism would be that some of the tracks could be shorter. Of the eight, my favourites were probably DrmmrsDtRhthmcll and Strkng. Overall, a fitting tribute to an imaginative an innovative synth designer.

 

.

Dominic Rivron

LINKS

Onomatopeyas:
https://scatterarchive.bandcamp.com/album/onomatopeyas

Photo_Tone Live at MUMOK Vienna 29_09_2023:
https://nachtstuckrecords.bandcamp.com/album/photo-tone

Eight Studies for Copulating Blippoo Boxes:
https://nachtstuckrecords.bandcamp.com/album/eight-studies-for-copulating-blippoo-boxes

The Blippoo Box (background and VCV Rack version):
https://community.vcvrack.com/t/blippoo-box-by-rob-hordijk/19842

Jorge Luis Borges:
https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-quote-borges-on-exactitude-in-science/

 

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