while i try to avoid inhabiting a stereotype by adding ambient guitar or electronics on top of all the field recordings I have, There’s nothing wrong with it, and I enjoy listening to and making ambient musics. but, despite its increased difficulty, time consumption, and slower payoff, keeping my practice true to my concrete music background now occupies a central priority in my work.
One of the most important lessons one learns working with manipulation of real world sounds in a concrete tradition is how much psychoacoustic meta information is retained, even after heavily destructive editing. In this project I’m trying to move sideways and more into the uncanny valley, hopefully without the uncomfortable connotation, by playing with the meta information and cultural context of the manipulated material.
This finished work forms a kind of recital.
more of a chamber setting in this piece, with aspects of a traditional folk song setting.
From a process view, I’m playing with the parameters and artifacts of pitch correction software, and choosing accompaniments that are abstract approximations of the contextual expectations. As in the first work, a “percussion section” moves between micro and macro sounds – to me, bringing to mind a world a few hundred years earlier when electronic sound first became available.
the feel of this project veers closer to storytelling than i prefer to in my artistic work, But it’s fun sound feels fulfilling.
Basti Aker 