Electronic Frequencies

Semay Wu
00:27-05:27 Francesca’s_barber (2016)    4’59”
https://soundcloud.com/semay-wu

Julia Eckhardt
05:28-10:29 Speling#5 (2010)    5’01”
10:30-17:16 Speling#6 BXL  (2011)    6’46”
http://www.q-o2.be/en/artist/julia-eckhardt/

Glo + Cuca
17:17-22:17 My Uninhibited Husband (1999)    4’59”
https://soundcloud.com/cucaesteves/sets/glo-cuca-improvisations

Ji Kang
22:17-48:02 Time Folding V5 (2014)    25’45”
http://www.jiyounkang.com

Kaffe Matthews
two tracks from cd Ann (1997)
48:04-53:26 bus with Olive Smee    5’22”
53:26-59:29 advent herring (excerpt)    6’02”
http://www.kaffematthews.net

59:29-59:58 El.Freq. Jingle    00’29”

– – – additional information – – –

Semay Wu    https://soundcloud.com/semay-wu
Semay Wu is a Liverpool born musician and composer. Her main instrument is the cello. Since 1996 she has been exploring a bag of musical styles through recordings with a diverse set of musicians; gigging and touring in festivals and venues in the UK, Europe, Asia and the US with a big bunch of riffraff (“I say that cheekily”) musicians in the guises of Homelife, a 13-20 piece band; The Earlies, a 10 piece band; Mayming, a duet with a vocalist both using electronics to improvise freely; and many others. She has also worked with many visual artists and composed and sound designed soundtracks (and also performed live) with choreographed dance pieces in the UK, Europe and Japan and has worked with large group community projects. Teaching came alongside all of this and she taught at schools through various music services throughout the NorthWest of the UK and in workshops organised by Opera North’s Educational projects. From 2013-2016 she attended the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague and STEIM in Amsterdam where she developed a new instrument for improvisation with electronic means exploring possibilities that direct a new interdisciplinary path of thinking and performing.

Julia Eckhardt    http://www.q-o2.be/en/artist/julia-eckhardt/
Speling#5 (2010) and Speling#6 BXL (2011)

Speling#5
About the audible space in recordings of improvised and composed materials.

Speling#6 BXL
A recording of a trip with Tram 93 in Brussels, all the way from one end to the other and back.

Julia Eckhardt
Julia Eckhardt is a viola player in the field of composed and improvised contemporary music. Since 1995 she is a founding member of and artistically responsible for Q-O2 workspace in Brussels, which was first an ensemble for contemporary experimental and inprovised music, and became in 2006 a interdisciplinary workspace for experimental music and sound art. She has been collaborating with composers such as Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Stevie Wishart, Jennifer Walshe, Wandelweiser-composers, Christian Wolff, Antony Coleman and many of the young generation, has played solo work by among others György Kurtag, John Cage, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Anne Wellmer, Radu Malfatti. As an improvisor she collaborated with musicians such as Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins, Rhodri Davies, Keith Rowe, Arnaud Jacobs, Lucio Capece, Taku Sugimoto, Robin Hayward. Julia grew up in Berlin and lives and works in Brussels.

Glo + Cuca    https://soundcloud.com/cucaesteves/sets/glo-cuca-improvisations
My Uninhibited Husband (1999)

Improvisation at Radio 100 in Amsterdam, 1999.
With Cuca Esteves (text reading, radio) and Gloribel Hernandez (loops, voices, electronics, objects). The text is from Cosmopolitan magazine, a letter from the readers, chosen by Glo. This is what we did on Saturdays mornings at the time…

Cuca Esteves was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied piano, music education, electroacoustic music, composition, film music and creative writing in Buenos Aires, Paris, The Hague and at UC Riverside. She is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
Gloribel Hernandez was born on 14 November 1971 in Caracas, Venezuela. She studied electronic music at the Institute of Sonology and became one of the core figures in the experimental music scene in The Hague, both as the organiser of a free improv concert series and as a member of countless bands and performance projects. Gloribel died way too early on 16 December 2010 at the age of 39 in Caracas where she had moved back to with her daughter Alba.

Ji Kang     http://www.jiyounkang.com
Time Folding V5 (2014)

Those solo performances(Time-Folding series) are of my research on finding the common area between three different sources of sound: Analog/Digital/and Acoustic instrument/object. Each set (except the very first one of my album, which is not including an instrument) has different materials and it helps me eventually find my sense of time/beauty/inner voice on composing -also other- electronic music pieces, considering that those sets are not a fixed composition. I started playing solo sets because I didn’t and don’t have enough commission to compose and to survive, so that I thought this would be the most wise way to continue composing, researching, and presenting my music to the audience. Different from other music compositions where they depend on others including performers, or opportunities to present, this project can go on and it actually keeps me dealing with music every day. Although it doesn’t bring me so much financial benefit, it is the invaluable work to me.

The track Time-Folding V5 is one of those that I had so much difficulty on finding the right enough tune especially dealing with the audio feedback. The spring reverb and the amp that goes together were built by myself, which were not perfect so that it generates a number of unwanted noises and hums, so that my best solution was to emphasize and create a feedback with it by locating a loudspeaker underneath it. You can hear it very well in the middle section of the piece. Here I learned how to embrace the defect and use it as the strength. When such moment comes it becomes very personal. That’s why I love this track although this was only one time performance, different from other tracks. I also think that the musical form and what happens inside show the struggle and the intention to bring it to the end.

Ji Youn Kang (Seoul, Korea, 1977) is a composer and sound artist based in The Hague. She moved to The Netherlands in 2006 and achieved her Masters’ degree both in Sonology at The Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and in Composition at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. Her objectives and interests revolve around the creation of her own musical language that (re)presents the Korean tradition and cultural elements using materials from Korean music as well as newly created sounds. Most of her works have been composed based on the rites of Korean Shamanism, and many of them were written for the Wave Field Synthesis system (Game Of Life) in The Hague (192 loudspeakers), exploring the relationship between musical and physical spaces.

Kaffe Matthews    http://www.kaffematthews.net
two tracks from cd Ann (1997)

(track 17) bus with Olive Smee
Made in winter in a bedroom in Bridlington, East Yorkshire coast.*

(track 5) advent herring (excerpt)
Made at Hollywood Leather, Brick Lane, London, in December.
Paul Burwell on the cooking outside, the music on the inside.*

*from the liner notes of the cd sleeve.
AWcd0001

Awarded sound artist and composer Kaffe Matthews was born in Essex, England and lives and works in London.  Since 1990 she has made and performed new electro-acoustic music worldwide with a variety of things and places such as violin, theremin, wild salmon, Scottish weather, NASA scientists, bicycles, hammerhead sharks, school children, desert stretched wires and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Currently she is introducing and internationally developing bicrophonics ~ interactive composition for outdoor enjoyment with bicycles through the Bicrophonic Research Institute(BRI) which was presented in the Netherlands as part of the iii residency programme in the dunes of Kijkduin in 2015.