STUK

Performances by Toshiya Tsunoda, Manu Holterbach & Michael Northam and Mieke Lambrigts.

Japanese composer Toshiya Tsunoda (1964) has introduced innovative concepts in the arts of "field recording" and of "collage". His field recordings consist in capturing the sound of inert matter, which sounds like a contradiction until one studies Physics and realizes that everything radiates vibrations. Each object has a "sound": it is just a matter of finding a way to render that sound so that it can be appreciated by the human ear. Tsunoda's music is thus one of minimal subsonic vibrations. It is also one of extremely conscientious cut-up: sonic events are pasted together in a carefully choreographed design. Finally, Tsunoda's music is also poetry, because, far from being a mere scientist collecting specimen, the artist carefully his creatures so to concentrate the lyrical power of the world we inhabit.

Manu Holterbach and Michael Northam met on a crossing country skiing trip near Grenoble, France in 2001. Since this time they have continued a friendly dialogue that intertwined their mutual obsessions — collecting obscure music, researching sound-traditions from around the world, observing everyday natural phenomena and the application all of these explorations towards the creation of their own suspended music. After nearly ten years of exchange, they are meeting in the spring of 2010 to realize their first performances together. During these performances, both Holterbach and Northam take a ‘hands-on’ approach—creating a live, immediate music using only simple resonate objects, traditional instruments, pure tones, field recordings and basic processing. An approach that enables them to explore immediate surface tensions and fragile micro-tonal clusters in real time and in context of the live situation.

The performance will be an assemblage of their individual techniques—shifting easily between solos and duets. Holterbach’s delicate layering of lacework tonalities from guitar, oscillators and distant sounds one on top of the other quietly forming crystalline sonic structures. Northam’s ‘actionistic’ approach evoking animistic textures, breath and tones generated from flute and voice.  A pendulum arching between two universes, bringing the listener through a kind of loom—weaving rich tapestries of sound.

Soundartist Mieke Lambrigts works with subtle manipulated recordings and sound-generators. The decoding and recycling of every day sounds form the starting-point for the manipulation and orchestration of recordings.

i.s.m. Kraak

www.displacedsounds.com