Pushing the Envelopes: Recent Episodes
firefly frequencies
Pushing the Envelopes is an ongoing series featuring experiments in contemporary music by composers and improvisers from around the globe who offer Firefly Frequencies pieces and processes that insouciantly steal across borders between genres, techniques and languages, giving vital and political meaning to music’s need to attack, decay, sustain, release.
Mike Westbrook - an English composer, close friend of a poet Adrian Mitchell wrote this anti-war symphony in 1969. Here's the fragment performed by his Concert Band.
No to war!
A darkest-ever muscovite improve duo of saxophonist Anton Ponomarev and guitarist Anton Obrazeena. And this is Massacre, their tune that was never published before, nor on their forty-five-minute-long eponymous LP (2021, UTECH records) neither online.
Mats Gustafsson on Massacre: The deep sub tremble of 2 creative minds. Image-rich walls of raw energy gushing over us. Holding the instant NOW hostage. A super-intense and cleansing audio-bath of a new era! [...] Radical brutal poetry and in-your-face outer space ROCK! This is an antidote of a massacre – this brilliant BEAST is of healing qualities…
Raag Bhairav (Saraswati Veena)
Keshav Mohta inquires into the power of sound to influence the fabric of consciousness. He is interested in the re-construction of indian ragas (melodic structures) from an embodied state of meditative presence. His music on the veena, an ancient indian classical instrument, probes into the nuances of the micro notes (shruti) and on the subsequent creation of an aesthetic flavour.
For more information on his work:
www.dharmayog.co.in
Hailing from Porto, Haarvöl are a group operating in the best tradition of ensembles such as Morphogenesis, Double Leopards, 3/4 Had been Eliminated and the Starving Weirdos between textured drones, noise, electro-acoustic experimentation and indefinable manipulation of sonic detritus. Firefly Frequencies presents the second of three pieces for dance commissioned by Ballet Teatro for the play Revoluções (Revolutions).
Haarvöl’s three permanent members — Fernando José Pereira, João Faria, and Rui Manuel Vieira — collaborate with Xoán-Xil López, a Galician sound artistic working on field recording and experimental music. Haarvöl develops cinematic soundscapes, with analogue or digital sound sources weaved in complex and detailed compositions.
The Pulsating Waves (Reality)
Pulse tone waves are frequencies embodied in a pulsar that is at the same time decisive for all humans and, metaphorically, for the revolution. Feeling the pulse of events, of agitation, of breaking, is essential for the revolutionary moment. It is this kind of continuous auscultation that determines success or, rather, the inversion of the whole emancipatory movement in the process of pragmatic transfiguration which, by obvious ineffectiveness, becomes implosive. The pulsations of events thus assert themselves as a decisive engine, and yet, in the face of the weakening of the utopian drive in its inevitable collision with reality, everything changes. The passage from one moment to the other brings with it the presence of the now and the consequent structural modifications that the utopian impossibility needs to maintain itself as an emancipatory impulse. It will then be in the programmatic transfiguration of the revolutionary event that its pulsation is played, more or less strong, but never absent. The decisive clash also affirms the reality, stripped of all the romantic drive that forms the revolutionary utopia. The fracture induces realism, and this is never the dreamed face of emancipation. We are told in the last book of the Invisible Committee that “All the reasons for making a revolution are there. There is none missing. The wreck of politics, the arrogance of the powerful, the reign of the false, the vulgarity of the rich, the cataclysms of industry, rampant misery, naked exploitation, the ecological apocalypse ... do not deprive us of anything, not even being informed of this. ‘Climate: 2016 beats record of heat’ says Le Monde in its main title, now already like almost every year. All the reasons are met, but not the reasons that make revolutions; are the bodies. And the bodies are in front of the screens.” Right.
https://haarvol.bandcamp.com/
https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/unwritten-rules-of-a-ceaseless-journey
Enregistrement à partir du texte "Le poids du ciel" de Jean Giono dans la minuscule chapelle de Boussac Bourg, lors du deuxième confinement en Novembre 2020.
Voix improvisées : Christine Shaller et Natacha Muslera
Lecture & composition Natacha Mulsera
Texte: Le poids du ciel de Jean Giono
RADIO SCHREBER, SOLILOQUIES FOR SCHIZOPHONIC VOICES
"Radio Schreber, Soliloquies for Schizophonic voices" investigated the recurring theme of 'hearing voices' in sonic and literary works by paying homage to Daniel Paul Schreber's "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" (Denkwürdigkeiten einen Nervenkranken). Written at Sonnenstein Public asylum and published in 1903, the Memoirs detail and map an alternate delusional world.
For the centenary of Schreber's death, this sound performance gives voice to Schreber's visionary text through a specially created composition that premiered at the Freud Museum, London. As a continuation of his project "Imaginary Hospital Radio", Richard Crow explores a sonic tableaux of phantasmic and disembodied voices embedded in the text as well as in its physical and imaginary locations inhabited by Schreber.
A performance curated by Lucia Farinati with the assistance of Rita Correddu
Recorded and engineered by Colin Potter of Nurse with Wound
Live electronics, sound objects, tapes, live sound mix: Richard Crow
Phantasmic voices of Radio Schreber: Richard Crow, Gabriel Séverin, Anna Teresa Scheer, Nick Couldry, Adam Bohman, Douglas Park and others who remain obscure and unknown...
https://institution-of-rot.org/
Ghost (Given: 1, a drum kit, 2. a room for staying alone)
The parenthetic givens of "Ghost" are somewhat of a provocation. How exactly can one stay "alone" in a room given also that one has a whole drum kit for company? Questions of co-existence (of musician and instrument, sound and its absence, rhythm and interval, action, event and process, sounding, playing and listening) abound in Seijiro Murayama's improvisations, where each sonic gesture or statement engages in the construction of a problem that unfolds along multiple timescales. Not only how to be alone (together) in the room but how to make room for each other (a problem that extends to the individual components of the kit and the sounds they make) in terms of the potential of each for expression or its withdrawal, provocation, conversation, connection certainly but interleaved with moments of mute cohabitation in which what is felt is neither one nor the other but the making room itself.
https://urojiise.wixsite.com/seijiromurayama
Chaos in Order is a piece that documents the results of a chance encounter between a guitar, a recently vacated fishbowl, a padded envelope, various kitchen utensils and a laptop.
“Starflux" started in 2011 with a particular way of playing the cello : the instrument is played horizontally in front of the player. Two gestures are repeated: one intermittent, the other continuous. The right hand strikes the four strings near the nut with the index finger. The left hand makes a very slow glissando from the nut to the bridge, with light pressure from each finger on a different string. This way the strings vibrate continuously resonating their partials, which change as the left hand slides. The resulting sound is composed of a series of strikes and their resonance. Although the mechanism of the piece and its gestures seem automatic and repetitive, the performer is invited to listen to the quality of the appearance and disappearance of the partials, using micro-variations to maintain the resonance. The right hand controls the percussive intensity and the contact angle of the index finger on the strings. The left hand controls the speed, the pressure and the spacing of the fingers.
The idea that interested me was to find expressiveness in a pre-existent model. This concept of finding music, instead of creating it was suggested to me by my dear friend the composer Tom Johnson.
"Starflux III - Pharus Novae" is the result of a post-production treatment by producer Emanuele Battisti. It is a collaborative track, specifically conceived for the “In the room" album series, and also a celebration of a long-standing friendship.
Deborah Walker
Composed, performed and recorded by Deborah Walker
Additional recordings and mastering by Emanuele Battisti
Released in June 2020
https://ellirecords.bandcamp.com/album/starflux
In what has become a cult tradition, Phil Kline goes "electronic caroling" through the streets of Greenwich Village with a parade of boomboxes. Kline creates a euphoric blend of other-worldly voices and bells. For Firefly Frequencies Phil has proposed an extract from the CD version of the work, "Milky Way".
"Unsilent Night" is a free, mobile outdoor sound sculpture in which the audience members are also the performers, carrying the music played on boomboxes or smart phones. Phil Kline created it in 1992 as a sort of Christmas Caroling party for his friends. Since then it has become an international event with 40 or more cities participating each year.
http://unsilentnight.com/index.html
The composition "Goodbye, White Rhino!" by the Russian improv-jazz-core trio BROM was composed after they read this piece of tragic news:
"The last male white rhinoceros from the North African population was put to sleep in Kenya after a long illness (he was 45 yo). Only two females of this subspecies of large mammals are left on the planet, second only to elephants in size.
The rhinoceros, called Sudan, has long suffered from diseases associated with its advanced age."
Well ... Hopes for the survival of this subspecies on Earth are now linked to test tube fertilization techniques and this composition, therefore, is a kind of tribute to this majestic, rare, and unfortunately dying out animal!
https://trostrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dance-with-an-idiot
Radio Amateur Ensemble is a process-based work initiated by an artist Anton Kats in 2019. The project explores Minneapolis’s ham radio enthusiast community, taking the sonic, social, and technological aspects of ham radio communication as a starting point for music scores, notations, improvisation and the sharing of new sound compositions. Considering listening as a generative act, Radio Amateur Ensemble transforms the Goethe Pop Up space in Minneapolis’s skyways into an open studio and a walkable audio-visual score featuring musical performances, recording sessions, set design, and an accompanying podcast.
First version of the Radio Amateur Ensemble, arising anew in different contexts and locations, is a collaboration with musicians Cole Pulice, Noah Ophoven-Baldwin, and Patrick Marschke. Developed in conversation with ham radio operators Dan Fish (call sign KB0XC) and Scott Woelm (call sign WX0V). R.A.E. invites the wider audience to take part in the ongoing dialogue exploring amateur radio as a sonic strategy and a tool manifesting new social constellations, networks and organisms.
Translating research findings sonically and rhythmically during the duration of the project, the compositions developed by the Radio Amateur Ensemble are performed and recorded live during several public events in an open studio working environment.
Releasing the recordings on a limited edition 7-inch vinyl marks a dynamic reference point for the Radio Amateur Ensemble allowing for it to be taken up and carried out in other contexts and beyond the specificity of the Minneapolises Skyway System
Radio Amateur Ensemble is a process-based work initiated by an artist Anton Kats in 2019. The project explores Minneapolis’s ham radio enthusiast community, taking the sonic, social, and technological aspects of ham radio communication as a starting point for music scores, notations, improvisation and the sharing of new sound compositions. Considering listening as a generative act, Radio Amateur Ensemble transforms the Goethe Pop Up space in Minneapolis’s skyways into an open studio and a walkable audio-visual score featuring musical performances, recording sessions, set design, and an accompanying podcast.
First version of the Radio Amateur Ensemble, arising anew in different contexts and locations, is a collaboration with musicians Cole Pulice, Noah Ophoven-Baldwin, and Patrick Marschke. Developed in conversation with ham radio operators Dan Fish (call sign KB0XC) and Scott Woelm (call sign WX0V). R.A.E. invites the wider audience to take part in the ongoing dialogue exploring amateur radio as a sonic strategy and a tool manifesting new social constellations, networks and organisms.
Translating research findings sonically and rhythmically during the duration of the project, the compositions developed by the Radio Amateur Ensemble are performed and recorded live during several public events in an open studio working environment.
Releasing the recordings on a limited edition 7-inch vinyl marks a dynamic reference point for the Radio Amateur Ensemble allowing for it to be taken up and carried out in other contexts and beyond the specificity of the Minneapolises Skyway System
Radio Amateur Ensemble is a process-based work initiated by an artist Anton Kats in 2019. The project explores Minneapolis’s ham radio enthusiast community, taking the sonic, social, and technological aspects of ham radio communication as a starting point for music scores, notations, improvisation and the sharing of new sound compositions. Considering listening as a generative act, Radio Amateur Ensemble transforms the Goethe Pop Up space in Minneapolis’s skyways into an open studio and a walkable audio-visual score featuring musical performances, recording sessions, set design, and an accompanying podcast.
First version of the Radio Amateur Ensemble, arising anew in different contexts and locations, is a collaboration with musicians Cole Pulice, Noah Ophoven-Baldwin, and Patrick Marschke. Developed in conversation with ham radio operators Dan Fish (call sign KB0XC) and Scott Woelm (call sign WX0V). R.A.E. invites the wider audience to take part in the ongoing dialogue exploring amateur radio as a sonic strategy and a tool manifesting new social constellations, networks and organisms.
Translating research findings sonically and rhythmically during the duration of the project, the compositions developed by the Radio Amateur Ensemble are performed and recorded live during several public events in an open studio working environment.
Releasing the recordings on a limited edition 7-inch vinyl marks a dynamic reference point for the Radio Amateur Ensemble allowing for it to be taken up and carried out in other contexts and beyond the specificity of the Minneapolises Skyway System
ILYICH is a semi-fictional alter ego of an artist Anton Kats and his electronic music project. Drawing on the correlation between neon street signs and night club electronic music the sculpture refers to a sign-language gesture "and" prioritising it as a quintessence of synthesis and a liminal, body-attentive practice. Beginning with the body as a language evoking rhythms, rituals, and sound, the performance is an improvised set of gestures responding to the forces of separation through analog synthesis and electronic music in particular.
Embracing cosmism as a sonic strategy capable of recapturing collective urban imagination, the sculpture creates a ritualistic space reacting to the gradually unfolding changes in light and motion, and can be activated by the visitors. Emphasizing music as a momentary experience lived through interventions and social interactions the performance introduces a series of compositions developed specifically for the event and responding to the question: How can live electronic music transport a complex and dynamic content that can be simply accessed and shared by others?
ILYICH is a semi-fictional alter ego of an artist Anton Kats and his electronic music project. Drawing on the correlation between neon street signs and night club electronic music the sculpture refers to a sign-language gesture "and" prioritising it as a quintessence of synthesis and a liminal, body-attentive practice. Beginning with the body as a language evoking rhythms, rituals, and sound, the performance is an improvised set of gestures responding to the forces of separation through analog synthesis and electronic music in particular.
Embracing cosmism as a sonic strategy capable of recapturing collective urban imagination, the sculpture creates a ritualistic space reacting to the gradually unfolding changes in light and motion, and can be activated by the visitors. Emphasizing music as a momentary experience lived through interventions and social interactions the performance introduces a series of compositions developed specifically for the event and responding to the question: How can live electronic music transport a complex and dynamic content that can be simply accessed and shared by others?
ILYICH is a semi-fictional alter ego of an artist Anton Kats and his electronic music project. Drawing on the correlation between neon street signs and night club electronic music the sculpture refers to a sign-language gesture "and" prioritising it as a quintessence of synthesis and a liminal, body-attentive practice. Beginning with the body as a language evoking rhythms, rituals, and sound, the performance is an improvised set of gestures responding to the forces of separation through analog synthesis and electronic music in particular.
Embracing cosmism as a sonic strategy capable of recapturing collective urban imagination, the sculpture creates a ritualistic space reacting to the gradually unfolding changes in light and motion, and can be activated by the visitors. Emphasizing music as a momentary experience lived through interventions and social interactions the performance introduces a series of compositions developed specifically for the event and responding to the question: How can live electronic music transport a complex and dynamic content that can be simply accessed and shared by others?
ILYICH is a semi-fictional alter ego of an artist Anton Kats and his electronic music project. Drawing on the correlation between neon street signs and night club electronic music the sculpture refers to a sign-language gesture "and" prioritising it as a quintessence of synthesis and a liminal, body-attentive practice. Beginning with the body as a language evoking rhythms, rituals, and sound, the performance is an improvised set of gestures responding to the forces of separation through analog synthesis and electronic music in particular.
Embracing cosmism as a sonic strategy capable of recapturing collective urban imagination, the sculpture creates a ritualistic space reacting to the gradually unfolding changes in light and motion, and can be activated by the visitors. Emphasising music as a momentary experience lived through interventions and social interactions the performance introduces a series of compositions developed specifically for the event and responding to the question: How can live electronic music transport a complex and dynamic content that can be simply accessed and shared by others?
radio stilts
sonic sculpture / radio laboratory / improvisation ensemble
2018
Contribution to the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-In Radio Archive and Platform for Listening Knowledge, House of World Cultures, Berlin
Radio Stilts is an experiment in moving over an unstable ground. Considering radio as a complex intersection between social relationships and technology, it is an exercise in making political and micro-political choices, developed and facilitated by the artist and musician Anton Kats.
Unfolding over the duration of five working sessions, the visitors of the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, were invited to improvise along an ambiguous listening protocol. Each session has initiated a new sonic ensemble working with concrete listening methods and choreography. Collectively making and interpreting a score through radio technology and modular synthesis Radio Stilts is a study of listening as a political and aesthetic project rooted in practices of improvisation.
Five compositions orchestrated this way from within of artist’s narrowcast studio at the HKW favour radio as sonic strategy creating organisms instead of images. Every composition is a process of collective solving of challenges posed to our participation and a way of establishing new networks, rethinking and appropriating a site and the rules governing it.
Translated into its momentary sonic and rhythmic equivalent the compositions recorded during the project are released in Spring 2019 on a limited-edition vinyl record.
Further Links:
Radiophonic Spaces
Radio Stilts
Photography: Maria Vittoria Trovato / A.K.
Videography: Timur Alexander El Rafie
radio stilts
sonic sculpture / radio laboratory / improvisation ensemble
2018
Contribution to the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-In Radio Archive and Platform for Listening Knowledge, House of World Cultures, Berlin
Radio Stilts is an experiment in moving over an unstable ground. Considering radio as a complex intersection between social relationships and technology, it is an exercise in making political and micro-political choices, developed and facilitated by the artist and musician Anton Kats.
Unfolding over the duration of five working sessions, the visitors of the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, were invited to improvise along an ambiguous listening protocol. Each session has initiated a new sonic ensemble working with concrete listening methods and choreography. Collectively making and interpreting a score through radio technology and modular synthesis Radio Stilts is a study of listening as a political and aesthetic project rooted in practices of improvisation.
Five compositions orchestrated this way from within of artist’s narrowcast studio at the HKW favour radio as sonic strategy creating organisms instead of images. Every composition is a process of collective solving of challenges posed to our participation and a way of establishing new networks, rethinking and appropriating a site and the rules governing it.
Translated into its momentary sonic and rhythmic equivalent the compositions recorded during the project are released in Spring 2019 on a limited-edition vinyl record.
Further Links:
Radiophonic Spaces
Radio Stilts
Photography: Maria Vittoria Trovato / A.K.
Videography: Timur Alexander El Rafie
radio stilts
sonic sculpture / radio laboratory / improvisation ensemble
2018
Contribution to the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-In Radio Archive and Platform for Listening Knowledge, House of World Cultures, Berlin
Radio Stilts is an experiment in moving over an unstable ground. Considering radio as a complex intersection between social relationships and technology, it is an exercise in making political and micro-political choices, developed and facilitated by the artist and musician Anton Kats.
Unfolding over the duration of five working sessions, the visitors of the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, were invited to improvise along an ambiguous listening protocol. Each session has initiated a new sonic ensemble working with concrete listening methods and choreography. Collectively making and interpreting a score through radio technology and modular synthesis Radio Stilts is a study of listening as a political and aesthetic project rooted in practices of improvisation.
Five compositions orchestrated this way from within of artist’s narrowcast studio at the HKW favour radio as sonic strategy creating organisms instead of images. Every composition is a process of collective solving of challenges posed to our participation and a way of establishing new networks, rethinking and appropriating a site and the rules governing it.
Translated into its momentary sonic and rhythmic equivalent the compositions recorded during the project are released in Spring 2019 on a limited-edition vinyl record.
Further Links:
Radiophonic Spaces
Radio Stilts
Photography: Maria Vittoria Trovato / A.K.
Videography: Timur Alexander El Rafie
radio stilts
sonic sculpture / radio laboratory / improvisation ensemble
2018
Contribution to the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-In Radio Archive and Platform for Listening Knowledge, House of World Cultures, Berlin
Radio Stilts is an experiment in moving over an unstable ground. Considering radio as a complex intersection between social relationships and technology, it is an exercise in making political and micro-political choices, developed and facilitated by the artist and musician Anton Kats.
Unfolding over the duration of five working sessions, the visitors of the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, were invited to improvise along an ambiguous listening protocol. Each session has initiated a new sonic ensemble working with concrete listening methods and choreography. Collectively making and interpreting a score through radio technology and modular synthesis Radio Stilts is a study of listening as a political and aesthetic project rooted in practices of improvisation.
Five compositions orchestrated this way from within of artist’s narrowcast studio at the HKW favour radio as sonic strategy creating organisms instead of images. Every composition is a process of collective solving of challenges posed to our participation and a way of establishing new networks, rethinking and appropriating a site and the rules governing it.
Translated into its momentary sonic and rhythmic equivalent the compositions recorded during the project are released in Spring 2019 on a limited-edition vinyl record.
Further Links:
Radiophonic Spaces
Radio Stilts
Photography: Maria Vittoria Trovato / A.K.
Videography: Timur Alexander El Rafie
radio stilts
sonic sculpture / radio laboratory / improvisation ensemble
2018
Contribution to the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-In Radio Archive and Platform for Listening Knowledge, House of World Cultures, Berlin
Radio Stilts is an experiment in moving over unstable ground. Considering radio as a complex intersection between social relationships and technology, it is an exercise in making political and micro-political choices, developed and facilitated by the artist and musician Anton Kats.
Unfolding over the duration of five working sessions, the visitors of the Radiophonic Spaces: Walk-in radio archive and platform for listening knowledge at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, were invited to improvise along an ambiguous listening protocol. Each session has initiated a new sonic ensemble working with concrete listening methods and choreography. Collectively making and interpreting a score through radio technology and modular synthesis Radio Stilts is a study of listening as a political and aesthetic project rooted in practices of improvisation.
Five compositions orchestrated this way from within of artist’s narrowcast studio at the HKW favour radio as sonic strategy creating organisms instead of images. Every composition is a process of collective solving of challenges posed to our participation and a way of establishing new networks, rethinking and appropriating a site and the rules governing it.
Translated into its momentary sonic and rhythmic equivalent the compositions recorded during the project are released in Spring 2019 on a limited-edition vinyl record.
Further Links:
Radiophonic Spaces
Radio Stilts
Photography: Maria Vittoria Trovato / A.K.
Videography: Timur Alexander El Rafie
Blaupiksu is a solo piece by Anton Ponomarev, a moscow-based experimental jazz musician. Blaupiksu was written for flugelhorn and recorded in Matthäuskirche in Basel (Switzerland) on January 7th, 2019. Anton says: I had several concerts in Switzerland and had no hope while writing to this church...perhaps I could play there or just record some material for personal purposes, i asked them. The response from the administration surprised me and made me happy at the same time. They didn't even mind me playing a concert for the parishioners there. In the end, it turned out so funny that I played there on Orthodox Christmas - 7th January. In winter, churches in Switzerland usually do not work every day, but only when there are services and on some other special days. They actually told me that on 7th January they have a kind of charity day and it would be great if I did a concert on that day! That's the deal! All the money from the entrance went to charity! It was my dream to play in a place like this. Is it worth saying how cool it is to play there, with such incredible acoustics inside! Absolutely indescribable sensations! The concert consisted of two parts - the first with a flugelhorn and the second with a saxophone.