In July 2019 Modulisme was born, and it’s been a few months that we are celebrating 5 years of activism. Our platform is offering 1 129 exclusive works showcasing the importance of analog electronic music, and we’re very proud to have surpassed 2 million listens. Thank you for your loyalty !
« Acoustronique » emphasizes the alliance of acoustic and electronic with a collection of works showing that Modulisme isn’t dealing with Modular synthesis only and that what matters is the composition rather than the tools.
The series features music composed of sounds artificially created using the modular instrument, enriched with natural sounds (field recordings/voices) or acoustic material (instruments).
This is volume 8 and the last one in the series…
01. Philippe Petit – Lorem Ipsum fusce orci figuiat (transl. BETTER USE HEADPHONES) (14:10)
Extended Piano + Prepared Piano Soundboard + Tape Manipulations + Buchla & Serge Modular Synthesizers.
When I started to work on my submisson for volume 1, it was important to start this series with a rather long title, as a way of inviting the listener to sit back, take their time and not rush through the listening.
A pause in time, an interval or emptiness in space.
Once again I’m asking the same, offering a spaced out and relaxed start and as the song progresses, the sound will thicken, ending in a sonic deluge.
No artifice the rendering must remain raw, inscribing a musicality through a gesture, immobilizing reality for a short time, capturing and exploring the micro-details or imperfections of a sound event vis-à-vis its environment.
Close-up detail is played-recorded in its essential materiality, a flash of evanescent reality that follows the often ephemeral rays of fleeting light. Whether it’s a note held, a chord struck, a string rubbing, the crunch of a parquet floor, a marble rolling in an abandoned room, an absent flower, the neck of a vase scratched by polystyrene… An ode to life that becomes our memory, forever anchored in the present of our listening.I’m an exhibitionist and I hope you may like to discover the way I like to uncover myself.
02. Juliette Rillard – Acqua Alta (05:57)
Juliette Rillard is a performer, singer and vocalist, musician, author and composer working in the field of live performance. Curious and polymorphous by nature, she seeks out paths common to various disciplines of artistic expression, and thus flourishes alongside a variety of often cross-disciplinary projects (improvised music, song, theater, street, sound arts, circus, magic…).
She is currently studying electro-acoustic composition at the Cité de la Musique in Marseille.
Acqua alta, or “high water”, is the Venetian name given to the phenomenon of a pronounced tidal peak that submerges part of the urban area. The phenomenon is growing and multiplying as climate disruption takes hold, and the technological solutions that protect the Serenissima in the short term could accelerate its submersion in the long term.
« ACQUA ALTA » is a piece I composed in response to a commission to write a show about resilience in the face of rising sea levels in the Thau Basin.The show’s specifications included extracts from Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons, arranged for string trio. As Vivaldi was Venetian, I was interested in and documented Venice and its relationship with rising waters, from the time of its construction. There I discovered the phenomenon of Acqua Alta, which gave me ideas and the desire to do this piece afterwards.
I first chose this very didactic spoken text explaining the Acqua Alta phenomenon, and had it spoken by an Italian actor (Rocco Manfredi). I wanted Italian (if not Venetian), because as a French speaker, you’re more likely to be drawn to the musicality of a foreign language than to understand what it’s saying.I wanted a text that would accompany the entire piece, so that it could become the central material, like a weft, like a trickle of flowing water, of which only the prosody is eventually grasped.
I then used extracts, bits and pieces of the trio playing Vivaldi, as well as an original piece composed by Ivan Gélugne (the trio’s double bassist), who wrote this minimalist piece (Cheaper than AI) for the occasion, recalling Vivaldi’s harmonic colors but taking them elsewhere, always with this idea of a continuous, almost mechanical flow.
The vocal material (Monteverdi’s madrigal) is used here as an island of timbre that slices through, something first celestial, then becoming liquid matter, a cloud of sediment.
I wanted to integrate these Venetian musical references (Vivaldi, Monteverdi) because they are very rich in their energetic diversity, but first and foremost because they have the evocative power of the great (Baroque) era of Venetian apogee.
Then there are the sounds of a boat engine, a kettle, the field-recording of waves or a stormy landscape… which are treated in much more anecdotal ways.
For this piece, I let myself be carried along by the flow. I ran the voice through a tape recorder, playing with the playback speed, then through a generative octave pedal, then through a delay pedal. This gave me a somewhat “wet” material, very rich in harmonics and tonic sounds, but which above all has the characteristic of inducing varied and marked dynamics, a little like waves. I then built up a bank of sounds with various modular synthesizers, which I made according to their criteria of sounding/sharpness in relation to the acoustic and acousmatic material. And then, little by little, I built up the material, digging in, filtering, trying to bring out what fits together and what cuts apart, first from a rhythmic point of view, and then a balance between the constantly shifting materials. In short, I’ve always kept the idea of a city caught between its environmental characteristics and the contribution of technology, which stalls, blends, accompanies, counters, sublimates or breaks the basic dynamic. I organized the sounds with this in mind.
Extracts :
– Les Quatre saisons, Vivaldi (interprétation : Pierre Malle, Anthony Chéneau, Ivan Gélugne)
– Cheaper Than AI, Ivan Gélugne 2024 (interprétation : Pierre Malle, Anthony Chéneau, Ivan Gélugne)
– Se Pur Non Mi Consenti, Claudio Monteverdi, direction Rinaldo Alessandrini
– Concerto Italiano – Monteverdi : Tutti Madrigali.
03. Illusion of Safety – Improvisation for Piano & Eurorack in 3 parts (12:07)
Since 1983, Daniel Burke and his many conspirators under the Illusion Of Safety banner have over the course of 40+ full length releases traversed most every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, each unique approach bending and reconstituting the expectations and possibilities of each realm, creating uneasy music that is dense and dystopian and yet also beautiful. Currently he is also working with Chicago musicians Erik Sowa & Jeb Bishop improvising as Interim Assassin, recording & performing in a synthesizer context as Soundoferror, in an ambient project, Twilight Furniture, and in singer-songwriter mode as Daniel James Burke.
Performed in 3 takes, then spliced together to form one continuous work, improvised with no editing or overdubs. A 2 part chance to build an interesting self-generating patch and then to interact with it, listening and responding to the synth with piano gestures. An opportunity to be totally in the moment once the synth patch was set in motion, isn’t it great how time flies in the zone? The only external decision was placement of the 3 improvs in the final file. I patched the small Euro system and once I loved what I was hearing (modulated tones, subtle “radio” bits from the Music Thing with filter sweeps + gated delay & echo repeats making good use of the VCA) let it operate on its own with a few minimal knob tweaks during the recording. I have finally begun using VCA’s to have the patches change and transform over time on their own, this is newer territory for me, and allows for hands to be on another instrument, in this case piano. The main modules used were Music Thing Modular Station and 4ms Ensemble Oscillators as source >Mungo D0, 4ms Dual looping delay, SSF Stereo Dipole filter, & Makenoise Mimeophone (yes I love delays) >Intellijel uVCA. All gating and modulations by Abstract Data Octocontroller and Makenoise Wobblebug. Turning on the system and listening to the output gave me the prompts I needed to touch or not touch the piano when appropriate using tonality, atonality, and some minor inside extended techniques (alligator clips, metal bars, pieces of rug, ball bearings, gong, and Tibetan bowl) for extra texture.
04. David Lee Myers – Lamellophonia pt.1 (10:15)
05. David Lee Myers – Lamellophonia pt.2 (07:37)
David Lee Myers is a composer and musician working in New York City since 1977. Over the past forty years he has released more than 70 albums both solo and in collaboration with artists such as Tod Dockstader, Asmus Tietchens, Dirk Serries, Merzbow, and many others. Known for his championing of feedback techniques, recent years have seen him delving more and more into Eurorack modular systems.
I see my music as a whole being largely about processing and transformation rather than instruments, synth voicings, notes and melodies, etc. This has always been true, even with my Feedback Music which indeed is all processing, not even having an originating sound source.
For Lamellophonia One and Lamellophonia Two all sounds are derived from the kalimba—but they are multiplied, stretched, overlaid through my Makenoise Morphagene and Mimeophon, 4MS Dual Looping Delay, Eventide H9, and other processors. To achieve the deepest tones in the piece I also used the IRCAM TS2 software.
06. Miguel Frasconi – October Blend (09:25)
Miguel Frasconi is a composer and improviser whose instrumentarium includes glass objects, electronics, and instruments of his own design. His glass instruments are struck, blown, stroked, smashed and otherwise coaxed into vibration, while his unique approach to modular synthesis takes a similar approach in the sonic domain. He has composed numerous operas, chamber works, dance scores and performs in many New York based ensembles, including the NewBorn Trio and the electric trio Lampshade. Miguel has recently performed at the Electric Eclectics Festival in Canada, was in residence at Art Omi New York, and performed in Europe with vocalist Kristin Norderval. Miguel has worked closely with composers John Cage, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, James Tenney, Joan La Barbara, Jon Hassell and many others. He has also collaborated with choreographers, including Alonzo King, Remy Charlip, Mimi Garrard, and was music director and composer for dance pioneer Anna Halprin. He was a founding member of The Glass Orchestra, Toronto’s renowned ensemble featuring all glass instruments, and San Francisco’s sound-sculpture band Möbius Operandi. He has also performed as a keyboardist with the Paul Dresher Ensemble and the Philip Glass Ensemble. His music has been released on New Albion, Porter, Clang, and through his own Bandcamp page, frasconimusic.
For “October Blend” I wanted to combine the simplest of synth patch with the simplest glass sound technique. Focusing primarily on timbre over pitch, the synth patch had two oscillators modulating each other while the glass texture came from two glass objects modulating each other.
The 12 x 12 inch bubble bowl was “bowed,” both horizontally and vertically by a 18 inch glass rod. Moving the vertical rod around the inside of the bowl’s rim produces a very dense, noisy sound, while moving the rod at an angle to one spot on the rim can produce specific harmonics of the bowl’s fundamental.
I was not trying to match the electronic sound to the acoustic sound but instead tried to make a steady state conversation between the two, where each would support the other through contrast and imitation.
07. Scientia – The Call of the Whale (06:16)
Lesley Kaye (aka Scientia) is a Boorloo-based musician exploring sonic narratives that question consciousness and human impact through experimentation, collaboration and performance. Working primarily with Eurorack systems, gongs and contact mics she continues to unravel the complexities of sound through improvisation.
« Call of the Whale » reimagines the ethereal beauty of whale song through the lens of a Eurorack setup, transforming sonic biomimicry into musical expression. Every cable and connection within the modular system symbolises the intricate communication networks and social interactions between cetacean pods, serving as a call for unity and peace in our complex, multicultural world. The composition employs additive synthesis to craft deep, resonant drones mimicking the low-frequency calls used by whales for long-distance communication. It also incorporates percussive elements that evoke the grunts and clicks essential for navigation, alongside pulsed calls that represent the social vocalisations between whales.
08. Carlos Santos – Resonance Counterpoint (09:00)
Sound artist and electronic musician, Carlos Santos develops his work around architectural space and acoustic phenomena, employing digital sound technology and using research methodologies of an artistic nature. Presents his work in various formats, including electroacoustic concerts, acousmatic diffusion, site-specific installations, soundscape compositions, and sound performances. Uses a laptop with software he designs in the Max/MSP graphical programming language for sound generation and electronic manipulation, as well as modular synthesizers, small resonant objects, piezoelectric elements, microphones, and speakers.
Since the early 1990s, he has been active in the fields of new electroacoustic improvisation and live electronics, both in Portugal and abroad, collaborating with numerous artists and projects extensively documented on CDs, with more than 40 works published. He has created sound design and music for animation, video, dance, and theater, produced radio programs for Radio Zero, and performed sound pieces in unusual locations and unconventional formats.
He studied painting with António Sena and works as a graphic designer, being responsible for the visual communication of the labels Creative Sources and Aural Terrains. He co-founded the experimental music label Sirr (2000–2003) and was co-founder and responsible for the visual communication of the experimental art association Granular (2003–2015). He is also responsible for the image and communication of Arte no Tempo, an association promoting contemporary music based in Aveiro.
« Resonance Counterpoint » explores the intricate interplay between multiple independent voices, each resonating through dynamic tonal and modulation patterns. Rooted in the tradition of polyphony and counterpoint, the piece layers modular synthesizer performances in a way that allows each voice to evolve organically while maintaining a cohesive harmonic direction. The composition emphasizes the concept of polyvocality, where distinct voices contribute to an ongoing sonic conversation, their relationships constantly shifting and developing over time. Through intuitive exploration guided by a set of rules, the work weaves these voices into a unified, resonant whole. Grounded by the use of field recordings, the composition balances both structure and spontaneity in delicate harmony.
The setup includes Buchla oscillators—namely two 258 models—a resonator (Karplus-Strong style), a pinging filter with cross-feedback patching, a granular sampler for recording and playback, and a spectral freezer. These tools create multiple layers of materials performed in real-time, modulated using function generators, envelopes, and variable-rate LFOs, triggered either manually or via an algorithmic sequencer.
To accentuate the idea of polyvocality, field recordings were incorporated, chosen for their intrinsic connection to memory and a sense of place.These include hydrophone recordings from the Tagus River in Lisboa, the manipulation of a traditional windmill mechanism, and whispered passages of my own voice. These elements broaden the sonic spectrum, serving as a “counterpoint” to the machine-generated sounds and deepening the interplay between natural and synthetic voices.
09. Bruno Bernard – Inconscience (08:41)
Bruno Bernard love to use a mike as much as analog and digital sound synthesis.
He addresses the senses and the emotions to provoke deep listening in the listener, as free as possible of any musical reference. He works with sound as a plastic artist, sculpting textures, densities, lines of force and colors. Particularly interested in sound environments and the complementarity between image/sound and live performance, Bruno Bernard also promotes awareness of the importance of sound phenomena through active listening and the poetry that emerges from it.
He has produced numerous soundtracks for films and museum installations, as well as musical and sound compositions for the performing arts (dance, theater, circus, etc.).
As a performer, he appears regularly in a variety of projects, as well as in interdisciplinary and solo collaborations.
This piece, « Inconscience », was born from the idea of fading, hence the title, of an evanescent state that I often feel when I compose. I started with real sounds, captured in an industrial wasteland, and I immediately felt that this sound material was conducive to escapism, daydreaming and the imaginary. The full potential of microphonic or synthesized sound is revealed, opening up an infinite dream world.
To compose this piece, I used only the real sounds captured in this old factory, and then built a new vocabulary using a modular system comprising granular tools, effects and samplers. Then, in the production phase (mixing/mastering) I used mainly analog plug-ins and peripherals.
The relationship between analog sound (microphones) and electronics is mainly to understand the potential of the source and then develop the electronic material to create an aesthetic universe.
In this piece, I didn’t use any acoustic instruments, only the sound of objects and movements characterizing the recording location.
10. Patch Work – In The Bath (08:46)
« In the bath » is a live extract from Patch Work, who practice only instant composition and like to write an embryonic scenario in which the duo are free to let themselves be drawn. So far, not too different from improvised music, but in Patch Work, the path of a common sound is the only guide.
The system we use presents us with textures that surprise us, and into which we plunge to explore them. Changes of direction come not when a musical idea has run its course, but when a sound texture naturally comes to an end. A situation that profoundly changes our reflexes and pleases us greatly.
We’re vibraphone and guitar players respectively, and we’ve always taken the same approach: confronting our instruments with new situations and trying to evolve the way we play them. We send the signal from the electric guitar and vibraphone with pickups directly into a certain type of patch. Instead of giving dynamic trajectories or distribution types to the diffusion points, these patches apply an effect (pitch, delay, granulation, etc.) to the sound, and this same effect is sent to all the diffusion points with micro-variations on certain parameters. It’s these micro-variations and their frequency that we play with to generate the Patch Work textures.
Our live shows are multidiffused, which makes the sound feel more alive in the space. Our aim is to envelop the listener, to immerse him or her in a sound universe that we try to direct even if we’re discovering it for the first time.
11. Wang Inc – Waiting For The Apocalypse (06:37)
Wang inc. is Bartolomeo Sailer who has been active since the late 90s and published on Sonig, Thrill Jockey, BiP-HOp, and Context.fm among others. Nowadays, with BXP, he runs the label Random Numbers. His latest works are « Mediterrano » on Random Numbers and « Limbo vol.1 » on Rizosfera with singer Nico Note.
During decades of experimentation, he has developed a unique style of radical improvisation with drums.
For some time I have been thinking about where we are going as a community. Recent overcome in politics, with far-right winning in most of our democracies, is slowly bringing us towards an Apocalypse. Will it be generated by climate change, by war, or simply by capitalism it’s not known but the feeling is we are going full speed ahead in that direction.
This composition features a diddley bow guitar made in France, a small modular system, and an alto saxophone. I discovered the diddley bow at a concert by Nze Nze, and had to get one. In this case, it’s activated by an electric motor. The saxophone is a loan from a friend and has always been one of my favorite instruments. I just started playing it, but I’m not seeking to become a virtuoso. Instead, there is sound research. The solo sting of the guitar and the Sax give you a good sense of what is to wait for the apocalypse and the tension behind it. In this case, the modular system creates the chaos that such expectation may generate.
12. Luc Debeck – The Clock (04:32)
At the end of the 70’s, Luc Debeck got exposed to the radio programme « Music from the cosmos » discovering music by Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, or Brian Eno. He has been doing astrophotography for years and and in parallel he loves to spend time playing with his Buchla 200 system and other instruments.
Buchla has my preference because of the special timbres and sounds that you can make.
Lately I have also been busy making music with acoustic instruments and effects that fit with it.
« The clock » depicts the grand father clock which ticks and tells the time but also that the clock has mechanical sounds inside that are expressively represented by acoustic instruments. It is as if it were alive.
For this work I used different instruments like an electric violin, glasses with water in them, Leafaudio soundbox, cracking paper, accordion (breathing), running water, drops, castanets, harmonica, recorded ticking of the grand father clock, spoons…
The arrangement is recorded live in Ableton with different effects like delay looper and granular effects.
In the future I plan to work more with acoustic instruments in combination with Buchla.
13. Armando Balice – At night in Heng Mountain (06:55)
Armando Balice is a Franco-Italian electroacoustic composer and improviser. He is the director and co-founder of the electroacoustic group Alcôme (loudspeaker orchestra dedicated to spatialized sound), as well as a professor of electroacoustic composition at the Grand Chalon Conservatory in Burgundy.
He draws inspiration from the abstract idea of Black and explores the poetic and cultural references associated with it, including painting, poetry, and various cultural elements. Armando Balice seeks to develop an intense and deep musicality, almost orchestral in nature, drawing influences from contemporary music with a more noise-oriented character, as well as from the extensive repertoire of acousmatic and classical music.
In 2023, he was awarded the Francis and Mica Salabert Prize as part of the SACEM Symphonic Awards. He has received commissions from various institutions and his music has been regularly performed abroad.
Armando Balice studied electroacoustic composition under Jean-Marc Weber and then at the Pôle Supérieur d’enseignement artistique of Paris Boulogne-Billancourt with Denis Dufour and Jonathan Prager before pursuing a Master’s degree in electroacoustic music and sound arts at INA-GRM.
In July 2024, I traveled to China, more specifically to the south of the country. During my travels, I always take the opportunity to make recordings, whether captured spontaneously or carefully planned. We had planned to spend a few days visiting one of China’s Five Sacred Mountains, Mount Heng, a magnificent natural site dotted with temples.The recordings heard in this piece were made in this mountain as well as in the city of Hengyang. However, our stay was cut short by an evacuation order: we were in the path of a typhoon, which turned out to be more devastating than expected. I barely had time to capture a few sounds of the local fauna—teeming and organic, with almost electronic sonorities. A single night under torrential rain, a night almost peaceful, yet under an imperceptible threat. That night, the heavy rains triggered deadly landslides.In this composition, I wanted to give nature the acoustic space, offering a meditative approach where electronic sounds sometimes blend with the calls of insects. Only two sound materials were used: field recordings and electronic sounds produced with a Serge Modular system, all assembled through editing, without any sound transformation.
14. Ian Helliwell – The Price of Extraction (09:34)
A self-taught multi-media artist, Ian Helliwell works in music, film, animation, instrument building, collage, installations, live performance, writing and film programming.
He has made over 200 films – one of the largest bodies of shorts in the world to feature electronic music soundtracks by one artist. His Hellitrons and Hellisizers – which he uses to compose and record his music – are a unique series of self-built sound generators.
His film « Practical Electronica », and reference book « Tape Leaders », represent an important contribution to the research of early British electronic music history.
This music is derived from experimental found footage short, « The Price of Extraction », completed in September 2024. The film repurposes amateur plotless, off-the-cuff shooting with super 8 by an oil company employee, while involved in surveying work in Africa around the end of the 1970s. The reimagining of the footage redirects the focus onto ecological interference through deforestation, destruction of habitat, and pollution. Part of the thinking behind the soundtrack was to challenge expectations for the kind of music and sound liable to be considered acceptable to accompany shots of wildlife, forests and natural landscapes in Africa – images and subject matter not traditionally associated with electronic music. The electronics largely replace realistic sound effects, aiming to create an audiovisual documentary narrative told without dialogue, and with the music and film blending into a cohesive whole.
Besides the plethora of electronic sequences made using self-built Hellitron tone generators and Hellisizer synths, some percussion was played for the soundtrack, and this aspect has been expanded to develop this stand alone electroacoustic work. To begin the piece, various Hellitrons and Hellisizers were patched together in different combinations to provide all the melodic and rhythmic sequences for the film, which largely took the place of regular sound effects. In the few areas where more realistic sounds were needed, percussion was played, and for one sequence bicycle noises were incorporated. (These were adapted from the Ian Helliwell composition Bicycle Concrete, from 2022.) Additional percussion involved bongos, a drum and a metal turntable salvaged from a small record player. On some of the recordings, sounds were achieved by dropping a chain onto different surfaces, and the resulting tones were modified by speed changing and reversal. Towards the end of the track, the percussion falls away completely and fierce electronic sounds take over, reflecting images in the film depicting the devastating release of thick black smoke and explosive blasts of orange flame emanating from an oil well. The coda includes a reprise of a melody played on the Hellitronic Switchatran.
15. Alex January – Termini (04:13)
Alex January is a French/Italian musician and video artist, currently based in Paris, France.
While he has long been involved in underground and deviant rock, his enduring love for analog synthesis and sound experimentation has flourished through modular synthesis, particularly with Serge systems.
In recent years, Alex’s music has increasingly focused on feedback phenomena, both acoustic and electronic.
Alongside his practice of the Serge – a true feedback machine – he arrays simple, rudimentary setups that work as compositional and performative maps, whether through the use of no-input mixers and guitar pedals, through interaction between video and audio signals, by setting up closed loops of looping devices or by just placing a guitar against an amplifier/speaker, with slow and subtle movements of the potentiometers and the guitar body as exclusive means of control.
For each of these devices and for the compositions and performances they generate, Alex attempts to reconstruct each time a most suitable language, bringing it forth from the devices themselves rather than from any pre-established intention, and, more and more in recent times, attempting to simplify as much as possible.
Termini is Rome’s central railway station.
The word means “terminals” or “terms”.
Acoustic and electronic oscillations are the two terms between which this short piece travels.
Some technical notes follow below :
Improvisation on a friend’s uprigth piano, recorded with the XY mic capsule of a Zoom H6.
The audio file was transferred to an Electro-Harmonix 2880, in order to tweak the speed and direction of the stereo track.
The EHX 2880 outputs went through a Serge Ring Mod, Wave multipliers and Triple Waveshaper, with the left and right channel outputs of the EHX going through separate paths on the Serge (albeit interacting together through electronic feedback) and with the Serge outputs going into 2 guitar amps, a 12w Fender Princeton Reverb and a 5w Epiphone Valve Junior, thus closing the circle by releasing the sound back in the air and by capturing it again on the Zoom H6 through a couple of Shure SM57 microphones.
16. Ahad aka Zsolt Sőrés – MUT NAQ FO MUS (IC) – Beyond the Aquila Rift (08:01)
Zsolt Sőrés is a Budapest-born composer, sound ontologist, improviser (viola, voice, electronics) and intermedia artist, who has been living in Berlin since his DAAD Artists-in-Berlin fellowship in 2021.
His experimental music and sound art is characterized by further reflection on the possibilities of conceptual/metamusical free improvisation: by unleashing the power of sound to model alternative sonic realities, and intuitive music brought to the surface during the creation of a resonant-dynamic live music space (“inner virtuosity”, form “crushing” techniques, and the creation of finely layered metarepertoires).
His work explores the personalisation of musical instruments, since 2024 he plays the PolyViola, a newly developed polyphonic electronic experimental instrument.
One of my main interest is how to develop a viola-based string instrument that is truly personalised for the artist. One that is able to open up the widest imaginable range of sound. One that helps the experimental composer to develop his own meta-repertoire and unique playing style to achieve the most complex sound possible… Well, the first iteration of the PolyViola builded for me by the sound artist, instrument builder and engineer, one of the spirit of the legendary STEIM (Studio voor Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek, 1969–2021), Sukandar Kartadinata: a project to replace a suitcase full of pedals with a laptop and a small controller, while adding new sonic possibilities and gestural control via sensors. The current setup: a ZETA pickup with custom preamp per string, a BOSS GK-5 for multichannel digital transmission via A2B, a sensor hub based on Teensy with I2S signal insertion, sensors are 1) IMU 2) touch slider as ‘6th string’ 3) pressure sensor below neck 4) ‘MouseBow’ optical tracker (more to come!), an Audio&MIDI-Controller with A2B receiver, an 8-channel audio interface, and a bunch of knobs&buttons, plus a MacBook Air running MaxMSP.
The piece was composed and recorded in October 2024 in Vienna, during Zsolt Sőrés’ fellowship at TONSPUR Kunstwerein Wien / MuseumsQuartier.
The composition series « MUT NAQ FO MUS (IC) » for PolyViola in the analogy of the sum rule for transitions between energy levels, attempts to model this anthropic attunement in a specific transcendent sound process.
In the Temporary Autonomous Zone vision of the ontological anarchist Hakim Bey, the direct relationship between the musician-performer and the audience in a site- and situation-specific situation at a particular ’nomadic’ point in space-time (e.g. at a concert or a sound performance event) can reveal the full continuity and morphogenesis of the ‘objet sonor’, its flow-like existence and at the same time its flux ontology.
The debate on the ’concreteness’ and mediability of sound has long revolved around the well-known question of the mimetic nature of sound and its representational possibilities. Instead, « MUT NAQ FO MUS (IC) » proposes a performative perspective that explores the material potential of sound to create forms through the relationships and interactions between the newly builded PolyViola, the musician’s body, the sound textures and the futuro-nomadic ideas.
17. David First and Charlie Morrow – Ears Outt (17:33)
Recorded at Ear Inn Studios — Paul Geluso engineer
David First: high frequency signal generators, function generators, transistor radios, slide whistles, harmonica.
Charlie Morrow: moog, firebell with bass drum kit beater, reading jerome rothenberg’s Vienna Blood, old telephone bells on string, turtle ocarina, breath and brazilian bird call, trumpet mouthpiece.
David First and Charlie Morrow have known each other for decades, having met each other the same way everyone would always meet—at Phill Niblock’s loft. But they hadn’t seen each other for quite a while when one summer evening in 2023, Morrow, in Vermont, accidentally called First in Brooklyn. They’re still not sure how it happened, but an hour-long call ensued during which they caught up on many things. One thing First mentioned was his Dave’s Waves Sonic Restaurant, and plans immediately began forming to have Morrow participate in the upcoming iteration of that project at the Sunview Luncheonette the following October. Their collaboration went so well they decided to take another step and Morrow arranged to have the two of them do a recording session a few months later at Ear Up—a recording facility on the 2nd floor of the legendary Ear Inn in Manhattan’s West Village.
This recording is part of what transpired that night.
David First (US, 1953) has always been fascinated by opposites and extremes. At 20 he played guitar with renowned avant-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in a legendary Carnegie Hall concert. Two years after that he was creating electronic music at Princeton University and leading a Mummerʼs String Band in Philadelphia parades. He fronted The Notekillers and has played in raucous drunken bar bands, semi-legal DIY basements and in pin-drop quiet concert halls with classical ensembles.
As a composer First has created everything from finely crafted pop songs to long, severely minimalist droneworks. His opera, The Manhattan Book of the Dead, was staged at LaMama’s Annex Theater (NYC) in 1995 and in Potsdam, Germany in 1996.
He was the recipient of the Herb Alpert/Ragdale Award for Music Composition for 2019 and a 2019 NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship. He has also received a Grant to Artists from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, as well as grants and commissions from the NEA, the Copeland Foundation (in 2010 & 2024), the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Meet the Composer Commissioning USA program.
Charlie Morrow (US, 1942) is a composer, sound artist and sound specialist, poet, publisher, graphic artist and event organizer. He has called himself ‘multi-hatted’ (although he mostly wears a signature bowler hat) and a ‘frame-maker’, authoring a multitude of works and events, from intimate breathing chants to city-wide musical extravaganza, film soundtracks, museum sound installations, hospital sound environments, and advertisement jingles.
Morrow studied under composers Stefan Wolpe and William Sydeman and ethnomusicologist Willard Rhodes. Morrow has also worked alongside numerous artists, including Derek Bailey, Joan La Barbara, Jerome Rothenberg and Allen Ginsberg. He won the UAHC prize for And Thou Shalt Love, premiered in the San Francisco Opera House by actor Edward G. Robinson and the Oakland Symphony.
In the early 1970s Morrow gave up the concert hall and linear composing. In 1974 he and poet Jerome Rothenberg launched The New Wilderness Foundation, which among other things published EAR magazine, released experimental music on Audiographics cassettes and vinyl…
His latest compilation of works, titled America Lament, features works from throughout the past 50 years. He also has a new retrospective exhibition titled Charlie Morrow: A Gathering which opened autumn 2020 in Helsinki’s Kohta Arthall and will tour.
He was awarded grants from Meet the Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Council for the Arts and funds supporting his projects around the world. He is winner of the 10,000 euro Sibelius 75th Anniversary prize in 2021 for a long form chamber work awarded by the Sibelius Foundation and Finnish Composer’s Society.
VIDEO BONUS
Uiko Watanabe & Philippe Petit – The Emperor Tomato Ketchup
As with each volume, I wanted to end with a video, but as I hadn’t received one for a particular title as with the previous volumes, it seemed appropriate to pay tribute to the “En Chair et en Son” festival (in the flesh and in sound).
This project, born in 2015, introduces a new practice: the originality here is to “give to dance” musical pieces composed for the acousmatic concert. It’s a real challenge for the dancer, who must ‘interact’ with this music: embodying it or, on the contrary, opposing it in order to exist. “Sound reveals flesh, flesh sublimates sound”…
In November 2024 I was invited to play my composition « The Emperor Tomato Ketchup » on the MOTU Acousmonium while a Japanese Butô dancer – Uiko Watanabe who now lives in Brussels – was performing.