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On the night of Sunday, May 6, 2001, composer Kenneth Kirschner, as part of a series of pieces documenting the sounds of different New  York City neighborhoods, took his tape recorder to the Financial  District of Lower Manhattan to begin field recordings for a new  piece. The resulting low-resolution portrait captured the sounds of a  deserted urban landscape: the empty, winding streets of old Dutch New  Amsterdam, its modern, towering skyscrapers — and a region of the  city that, several months later, would be renamed Ground Zero.

and/OAR is proud to present “May 6, 2001”, a collection of five interpretations by five renowned  contemporary composers of the aforementioned  field recording portrait.

With excerpts from Kirschner’s original  2001 composition based on the field recording, the CD also includes pieces  by Taylor Deupree (USA), Tomas Korber (Switzerland), Ralph  Steinbrüchel (Switzerland), and Aaron Ximm (aka Quiet American; USA), all utilizing the 2001 Financial District field recording as their sole source material. The result is a project that obliquely and  subtly evokes the source recording and its subsequent meanings, while  also standing on its own as an estimable example of each artist’s  mastery of his craft.

The inspiration behind Northern (including its music, title and photography) comes from Deupree’s recent relocation from the heart of urban activity in Brooklyn to the tranquility of the forest in upstate New York. Inspired by nature and the winter during which it was created, Northern, like much of his recent work, explores Deupree’s interest in stillness and a slowed sense of time. Through quiet textures, subtle movements, faint loops and echoes, it was his goal to create the type of music that comes naturally to him while also highlighting the input from his dramatic new surroundings.

In contrast to the brazen repetition found on Stil., Northern’s
Deupree’s earthbound ideas in the album are rooted in his choice of sounds and studio practices. His now-signature Kyma manipulations are still prominent, but they have been applied to improvised electric piano, melodica, guitar, and field recordings using techniques picked up from his experimental/pop collaboration with Eisi (Every Still Day, Noble Records, Japan, 2005). A careful balance is kept through the layering of synthetic source tones of basic waveforms and long, drawn-out, fragile swells. Northern is melodic, warm and introspective, forming a bed of sound that is simultaneously quiet and noisy, structured and unsettled, looping and chaotic.

In spring 2003 steinbrüchel received an invitation from the Swiss music festival „Taktlos“ in Berne to contribute a track for their listening room equipped with a surround 5.1 sound system. During the two-day festival in November 2003 steinbrüchel’s track entitled „opaque” was played back in cycle mode (among tracks from various other artists). The listening room focused on the experience of being able to listen to music in a very quiet and large environment – unlikely to most home listening situations. Additionally the possibility of working in surround gave the musicians a chance to create very special audio sculptures in the space.

The track „opaque“ by steinbrüchel and five remixes is being released by the Australian label room40. The remixes were created by the internationally well known artists Oren Ambarchi (AUS), Taylor Deupree (US), Frost (AUS), Toshiya Tsunoda (JP) and Chris Abrahams (NZ). Each of the contributing artists was chosen for his unique working method (Oren for his work with guitar, Taylor for processed sounds, Frost guitar feedback, Toshiya for field recordings and Chris for piano). To make the remixes more varied and special, each artist received only three samples/soundfiles from the original track, but none of the artists have received the same samples or even have heard the original „opaque“ track by steinbrüchel before the release of the CD.

This is the first compilation album from Spekk compiled by the label owner mondii. Each of the artists were asked to compose a track with their interpretations of “small melodies” with Keywords like Warm, tender and calm. It was meant to present diversity of minimal-style music in a peaceful “harmonic” way. And it was a coincidence that both Taylor Deupree & Stephan Mathieu created a track dedicated to their child.

The first half of the album is the more “digital” side and the last half more “analog” side encompassing laptop digital processing to field recording materials (For instance, Naph’s track is only made out of frequencies within the wind/air) to band oriented materials.

Participants delivers these great pieces of music from various continents including USA, Sweden, France, Germany, Australia and Japan showing slight relationships between each other which kind of gives us a warm feeling of unity within this ongoing global minimalist scene. It was also my intention to present that nowadays, there are not much differences between the outputs from more digital background artists and more band oriented musicians due to their methods of composing (technology) and interests and such. Evidently, more and more rock labels will release digital processed music and bands will use digital softwares, electronic artists will become more aware of small sounds and warmth of the nature. I take this positive!

I came in contact with Junji Kubo from noble label through my label, Happy, in Tokyo during the summer of 2004. Happy was the result of my long-time interest in unconventional japanese pop, and was quite a different direction from the minimalist microsounds of my flagship label 12k. Little did I know at the time, but the worlds of Happy and 12k would soon merge.

Upon hearing Eisi’s “Awaawa” CD from Noble I was struck by the beauty, simplicity, and unpretentious experimentalism of their sound. I found their use of traditional instruments and the airy, haunting voice of Mujika Easel to be unique and captivating. Due to my growing interest in acoustic sound sources I approached Kubo-san with a concept of recreating “Awaawa” in its entirety using the band’s original tracks as source material for digital manipulation and building them from the ground up. It was an opportunity for me to explore more pop-based production techniques and to take my own sound in new directions.

“Every Still Day” (a phrase taken from the lyrics of “Soshite Hossuru”) was started in the late summer of 2004 and quickly became one of the most challenging projects I had ever worked on. I had to simultaneously balance the integrity of eisi’s original work with my own fresh interpretation while loosely adhering to the “rules” of pop music. Eisi kindly supplied me not only with every individual track from each song on the original album, but also multiple takes of each track as well as outtakes that never appeared on the album. The source material was daunting, but enormously deep. Added to this was a sense of sadness as I found out that Eisi had recently disbanded, so my work immediately became an elegy of sorts.

My initial concept for “Every Still Day” was to take Eisi’s songs, which are acoustic and freeform in nature, and to stretch them in two opposite directions. On one hand, I wanted to add more structure and a sense of “popness” and on the other blending in my own style of digital experimentalism. Given the immense possibility of source material at hand I often chose to keep much of the main instrumentation intact, keeping a direct reference to the original songs, not getting distracted by too many choices and technological possibilities. To this I would add layers and fragments of digitally processed sounds and build new arrangements. In addition to the original tracks I created 3 interludes sourced from eisi’s live recordings. These short pieces appear on the album as an intro, an interlude, and an outro. I also asked San Francisco guitarist Christopher Willits, a friend, collaborator, and artist on 12k to supply some guitar parts using his signature folded guitar technique. His work appears on “Note 1.”

I want to extend my warmest respects to each of the members of eisi for allowing me complete freedom to manipulate their recordings. As an artist myself I know how difficult it is to let go of work and allow someone to change or recontextualize it. For this opportunity I am deeply grateful. I believe that my work offers a unique interpretation of “Awaawa,” approaching it from my own point of view with my own influences, and in the end it was one of the most exciting and important projects I’ve ever had the pleasure to work on. It was my wish that eisi would equally enjoy hearing their songs in a new light and perhaps discover elements or sonic relationships that they had not noticed before. It appears that they did indeed like my work: upon hearing some of the early demo versions the band decided to get back together.

Despite all of the challenges, excitement and creative energy I experienced during the writing of “Every Still Day” I still believe that my work is merely a peek inside Eisi, from a stranger’s point of view, and that the beauty of their original songs and performances can never be improved upon.