#66. A program with independent sound-art, radiophonic projects and other audio-non-visual misunderstandings.
1. Dark August Variations (from the WORM/Klangendum Horspil series
I don’t want to pre-load the listener with a listening guide but to me there’s something enigmatic about this hörspiel. Perhaps the dissonant gong like chords at the very beginning cast a large dark question mark over the entire thing. Its fairly mercurial or chameleonic, it shifts in time and space and as it does so it also shifts in timbre. Appropriately, then, it is also partially a travelogue featuring fragments from three audio diaries that my colleagues and I maintained whilst recording this project in Rotterdam.
There are multiple layers of sounds; tape manipulation, amplified acoustic objects, analogue synthesis and sound processing, field recordings, speech. Some of the sounds have a raw, brute quality. Miscellaneous formats and techniques were used for recording in order to create timbral variation and diversity, and real physical presence. There is, as mentioned previously, much in the way of transformation. The script is a poem composed of fragments from absurd adverts for luxury products, descriptions of wines, directions, text appropriated from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, transcribed dialogue from a straight to video American horror movie and texts which have been arrived at via OuLiPo-lite algorithmic approaches and collage. Lines chosen randomly from multiple sources like Rudolf Rocker’s "Anarcho-Syndicalism" to "The Mabinogion" were sculpted into what sounds like coherent speech via multiple languages using translation apps. So, what started in English is translated into Spanish, Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, Dutch and then back into English. This work is most evident in the last 25 minutes of the piece. Dark August Variations ends with a sequence of soliloquies for three voices, it seem’s dark and austere which is just what most of Europe look’s like right now. Enjoy.
(Richard Thomas, November 2014)
Dark August Variations
Written and performed by Secluded Bronte (Adam Bohman, Jonathan Bohman, Richard Thomas) and Peter Fengler, Lukas Simonis, Daniela De Paulis, Bebe Beliz.
Produced and edited by Richard Thomas.
Thanks: Lukas Simonis, Mariëtte Groot, Hajo Doorn, Nina Hitz, Jan Hiddink, Florian Kramer, Giovanni Simonis, Artyom Kocharyan.
2. Machinefabriek – Exhausting Edit (from the Stubnitz compilation)
3. Bertin – Summer Wind (from the Stubnitz compilation)
