Printed Matter And Unwanted Sounds

Fieldrecordings of my own environment AUDIO

Ça vous intéresse l'architecture? Botanical vibrations travel through the air tangled as wires, attempting to play with the rhythmic structure

 

 

Notes on the recordings, the production, the album.

https://sonicpoet.bandcamp.com/album/fieldrecordings-of-my-own-environment

The idea of transposing my music (on the guitar etc. as described before) to a classical composition with a contemporary ensemble, is chasing through my imagination and loses grip when it will actually become reality. That is now. I will not and cannot describe the music, nor the way to get there, the process. Or maybe I do, but only in fragments. I can write something about it, something that would be different from the moment I write it down.
In the band I play with every week, Dan Browne, we unwillingly look for a monolithic impro with crazy guitars, rhythmic voices, subsonic basses and turbulent drums. A weekly pill, psychedelics without the Acid. A musical high.
In the sessions I had with Thomas (De Prins) it could be anything, rhythm, tempo, delay, feedback, harmony, play, searching, tone, noise, anything worked fine and well enough to include in the composition, as long as you kept playing focused but without a premeditated outcome, and kept listening and you stopped in time and repeated one part or another… I felt like a psychologist’s patient, on the couch. Analyzed, stripped, uncovered of my underlying musical contemplations, my musical measures and scales. Being an uneducated self-taught musician I am not able to write all this down in a comprehensible form, a music score. This was Thomas’ job, at the piano, with a pen and some sheets of paper.
On the piano, a completely new world was discovered and explored through rhythmic intensity, the delay of the guitar and amplifier, the spacious harmonies, the dryness and noiselessness. And this, in turn, undoubtedly had its effect on the workflow of the various sessions… The transcription for the classic production became very abstract and illegible to me. Quite an intriguing barrier… When hearing the music played by the SPECTRA ensemble, the magic blew me over and gave me a sense of pure ecstasy, as if the pit we dug in my musical soul during the sessions in the studio was slowly covered by the finest powdery snow, both cold and hot, and very light, without pulse, completely vanished whether in the strings or percussion, changing turns together with the arms of the conductor, no rhythm as we know it in rock music, no heartbeat, but a universal concatenating thread. The guitar playing was tangible, touchable in its venation, though it seemed as if it was equipped with the strings of a sitar, considering the pallet that came to surface here.
This was no longer improvisation, the field recordings, the scripture of the studio, of everyday playing, was now fixed to 18 minutes, give or take. During this period I have always regarded Thomas as an architect, being able to translate my playing with building stones to a stone building – in a way that I would not have been able to. As a tool that cuts your plywood boards, with a very sharp cut. Try that with your bare hands.


Music: Joris Van de Moortel
In a composition by Thomas de Prins for Violin, Cello, Alto, Flute, Hobo, Clarinet and Percussion
Performed by: Spectra Ensemble for Contemporary Music conducted by Filip Rathé

Release November 2015

Audio CD
500 copies
Images & Sketch Joris Van de Moortel
Graphic design CD Joris VdM
Graphic design Sleeve Tom Besters

All images © JVdM