Laetitia Sonami / Éliane Radigue
A Song For Two Mothers / OCCAM IX
Acclaimed sound artist and onetime protégé of Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami has been active in sound art and electronic music since the late 70’s when she studied composition at Mills College with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Terry Riley. Remarkably, after all these years, this is her solo debut, recorded on her custom-built “Spring Spyre” instrument, playing its thin springs through Max/MSP patches to generate dizzyingly chaotic machine learning-assisted distortions. Radigue herself shows up on the flip, penning a new longform piece that harks back to her mind-boggling 'Trilogie de la Morte'.
Black Truffle come through with another shocker here, training sights on Laetitia Sonami, who's been innovating within the field of electronic music and performance for decades now. She's perhaps best known for her invention the “Lady's Glove”, a wearable sensor array that allows performers to control audio and visual parameters in real time. After 25 years of showcasing the device, she retired it in 2016, switching her focus to the “Spring Spyre”, a fully-fledged, atemporal instrument made from springs that are connected to reverb pickups that direct the audio to Max/MSP patches. The sound is then analysed and piped thru machine learning models that use the data to control audio synthesis in real time; the springs themselves are never actually heard, but their characteristics shepherd the output.
'A Song for Two Mothers' is the first piece Sonami wrote using the instrument, and fully demonstrates its uniquely unpredictable character. Played and recorded live, the instrument is - by Sonami's own admission - "a bit tyrannical", and vibrates and sizzles through the empty space. Listen closely and you can almost decipher Sonami's pliable plucks and rubs. It isn't an electro-acoustic piece, it's far deeper and more forward-thinking than that; while there are plenty of systems designed to generate chaos, not many can disrupt and even contain that chaos by integrating physical, real-time controls. Here, Sonami's balance is transcendental - the sound is disarmingly delicate, even at its most disordered, but there's a feeling of human unpredictability that helps distinguish it from the established experimental canon. Both jarringly percussive and woozily elegant, it's a piece that sounds as if it's been pulled so far from the grid - and the timeline itself - that anything can happen.
Radically different from its predecessor, 'Occam IX' was composed by Éliane Radigue not just for the Spring Spyre, but for Sonami as a performer. It's the most recent work made for the instrument, and Radigue developed the score with Sonami through a verbal process she's used for all her Occam series, entering into a dialogue designed to set parameters for the composition. A rare Occam entry that uses electronics, 'Occam IX' highlights the Spring Spyre's more manageable intricacies, letting crystalline feedback rub against dense, gong-like drones. It's truly hypnotic gear that's comparable with Radigue's influential ARP 2500 pieces, pooling into droning dissonance before reappearing from near-silence on the back-end in a blanket of waved white noise. Here, we get to hear the Spyre at its most delicate, as Sonami's gestures give way to pinprick glitches and fluttering, percussive chimes that sound so muted and exquisite that they bring to mind Robert Ashley's timeless 'Automatic Writing'.
Stunning, stunning work.
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Acclaimed sound artist and onetime protégé of Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami has been active in sound art and electronic music since the late 70’s when she studied composition at Mills College with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Terry Riley. Remarkably, after all these years, this is her solo debut, recorded on her custom-built “Spring Spyre” instrument, playing its thin springs through Max/MSP patches to generate dizzyingly chaotic machine learning-assisted distortions. Radigue herself shows up on the flip, penning a new longform piece that harks back to her mind-boggling 'Trilogie de la Morte'.
Black Truffle come through with another shocker here, training sights on Laetitia Sonami, who's been innovating within the field of electronic music and performance for decades now. She's perhaps best known for her invention the “Lady's Glove”, a wearable sensor array that allows performers to control audio and visual parameters in real time. After 25 years of showcasing the device, she retired it in 2016, switching her focus to the “Spring Spyre”, a fully-fledged, atemporal instrument made from springs that are connected to reverb pickups that direct the audio to Max/MSP patches. The sound is then analysed and piped thru machine learning models that use the data to control audio synthesis in real time; the springs themselves are never actually heard, but their characteristics shepherd the output.
'A Song for Two Mothers' is the first piece Sonami wrote using the instrument, and fully demonstrates its uniquely unpredictable character. Played and recorded live, the instrument is - by Sonami's own admission - "a bit tyrannical", and vibrates and sizzles through the empty space. Listen closely and you can almost decipher Sonami's pliable plucks and rubs. It isn't an electro-acoustic piece, it's far deeper and more forward-thinking than that; while there are plenty of systems designed to generate chaos, not many can disrupt and even contain that chaos by integrating physical, real-time controls. Here, Sonami's balance is transcendental - the sound is disarmingly delicate, even at its most disordered, but there's a feeling of human unpredictability that helps distinguish it from the established experimental canon. Both jarringly percussive and woozily elegant, it's a piece that sounds as if it's been pulled so far from the grid - and the timeline itself - that anything can happen.
Radically different from its predecessor, 'Occam IX' was composed by Éliane Radigue not just for the Spring Spyre, but for Sonami as a performer. It's the most recent work made for the instrument, and Radigue developed the score with Sonami through a verbal process she's used for all her Occam series, entering into a dialogue designed to set parameters for the composition. A rare Occam entry that uses electronics, 'Occam IX' highlights the Spring Spyre's more manageable intricacies, letting crystalline feedback rub against dense, gong-like drones. It's truly hypnotic gear that's comparable with Radigue's influential ARP 2500 pieces, pooling into droning dissonance before reappearing from near-silence on the back-end in a blanket of waved white noise. Here, we get to hear the Spyre at its most delicate, as Sonami's gestures give way to pinprick glitches and fluttering, percussive chimes that sound so muted and exquisite that they bring to mind Robert Ashley's timeless 'Automatic Writing'.
Stunning, stunning work.
Acclaimed sound artist and onetime protégé of Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami has been active in sound art and electronic music since the late 70’s when she studied composition at Mills College with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Terry Riley. Remarkably, after all these years, this is her solo debut, recorded on her custom-built “Spring Spyre” instrument, playing its thin springs through Max/MSP patches to generate dizzyingly chaotic machine learning-assisted distortions. Radigue herself shows up on the flip, penning a new longform piece that harks back to her mind-boggling 'Trilogie de la Morte'.
Black Truffle come through with another shocker here, training sights on Laetitia Sonami, who's been innovating within the field of electronic music and performance for decades now. She's perhaps best known for her invention the “Lady's Glove”, a wearable sensor array that allows performers to control audio and visual parameters in real time. After 25 years of showcasing the device, she retired it in 2016, switching her focus to the “Spring Spyre”, a fully-fledged, atemporal instrument made from springs that are connected to reverb pickups that direct the audio to Max/MSP patches. The sound is then analysed and piped thru machine learning models that use the data to control audio synthesis in real time; the springs themselves are never actually heard, but their characteristics shepherd the output.
'A Song for Two Mothers' is the first piece Sonami wrote using the instrument, and fully demonstrates its uniquely unpredictable character. Played and recorded live, the instrument is - by Sonami's own admission - "a bit tyrannical", and vibrates and sizzles through the empty space. Listen closely and you can almost decipher Sonami's pliable plucks and rubs. It isn't an electro-acoustic piece, it's far deeper and more forward-thinking than that; while there are plenty of systems designed to generate chaos, not many can disrupt and even contain that chaos by integrating physical, real-time controls. Here, Sonami's balance is transcendental - the sound is disarmingly delicate, even at its most disordered, but there's a feeling of human unpredictability that helps distinguish it from the established experimental canon. Both jarringly percussive and woozily elegant, it's a piece that sounds as if it's been pulled so far from the grid - and the timeline itself - that anything can happen.
Radically different from its predecessor, 'Occam IX' was composed by Éliane Radigue not just for the Spring Spyre, but for Sonami as a performer. It's the most recent work made for the instrument, and Radigue developed the score with Sonami through a verbal process she's used for all her Occam series, entering into a dialogue designed to set parameters for the composition. A rare Occam entry that uses electronics, 'Occam IX' highlights the Spring Spyre's more manageable intricacies, letting crystalline feedback rub against dense, gong-like drones. It's truly hypnotic gear that's comparable with Radigue's influential ARP 2500 pieces, pooling into droning dissonance before reappearing from near-silence on the back-end in a blanket of waved white noise. Here, we get to hear the Spyre at its most delicate, as Sonami's gestures give way to pinprick glitches and fluttering, percussive chimes that sound so muted and exquisite that they bring to mind Robert Ashley's timeless 'Automatic Writing'.
Stunning, stunning work.
Acclaimed sound artist and onetime protégé of Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami has been active in sound art and electronic music since the late 70’s when she studied composition at Mills College with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Terry Riley. Remarkably, after all these years, this is her solo debut, recorded on her custom-built “Spring Spyre” instrument, playing its thin springs through Max/MSP patches to generate dizzyingly chaotic machine learning-assisted distortions. Radigue herself shows up on the flip, penning a new longform piece that harks back to her mind-boggling 'Trilogie de la Morte'.
Black Truffle come through with another shocker here, training sights on Laetitia Sonami, who's been innovating within the field of electronic music and performance for decades now. She's perhaps best known for her invention the “Lady's Glove”, a wearable sensor array that allows performers to control audio and visual parameters in real time. After 25 years of showcasing the device, she retired it in 2016, switching her focus to the “Spring Spyre”, a fully-fledged, atemporal instrument made from springs that are connected to reverb pickups that direct the audio to Max/MSP patches. The sound is then analysed and piped thru machine learning models that use the data to control audio synthesis in real time; the springs themselves are never actually heard, but their characteristics shepherd the output.
'A Song for Two Mothers' is the first piece Sonami wrote using the instrument, and fully demonstrates its uniquely unpredictable character. Played and recorded live, the instrument is - by Sonami's own admission - "a bit tyrannical", and vibrates and sizzles through the empty space. Listen closely and you can almost decipher Sonami's pliable plucks and rubs. It isn't an electro-acoustic piece, it's far deeper and more forward-thinking than that; while there are plenty of systems designed to generate chaos, not many can disrupt and even contain that chaos by integrating physical, real-time controls. Here, Sonami's balance is transcendental - the sound is disarmingly delicate, even at its most disordered, but there's a feeling of human unpredictability that helps distinguish it from the established experimental canon. Both jarringly percussive and woozily elegant, it's a piece that sounds as if it's been pulled so far from the grid - and the timeline itself - that anything can happen.
Radically different from its predecessor, 'Occam IX' was composed by Éliane Radigue not just for the Spring Spyre, but for Sonami as a performer. It's the most recent work made for the instrument, and Radigue developed the score with Sonami through a verbal process she's used for all her Occam series, entering into a dialogue designed to set parameters for the composition. A rare Occam entry that uses electronics, 'Occam IX' highlights the Spring Spyre's more manageable intricacies, letting crystalline feedback rub against dense, gong-like drones. It's truly hypnotic gear that's comparable with Radigue's influential ARP 2500 pieces, pooling into droning dissonance before reappearing from near-silence on the back-end in a blanket of waved white noise. Here, we get to hear the Spyre at its most delicate, as Sonami's gestures give way to pinprick glitches and fluttering, percussive chimes that sound so muted and exquisite that they bring to mind Robert Ashley's timeless 'Automatic Writing'.
Stunning, stunning work.
Includes a 4 page booklet with photos and liner notes by Laetitia Sonami, Éliane Radigue and Paul DeMarinis, plus a download of the album dropped to your account. Design by Lasse Marhaug.
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Acclaimed sound artist and onetime protégé of Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami has been active in sound art and electronic music since the late 70’s when she studied composition at Mills College with Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and Terry Riley. Remarkably, after all these years, this is her solo debut, recorded on her custom-built “Spring Spyre” instrument, playing its thin springs through Max/MSP patches to generate dizzyingly chaotic machine learning-assisted distortions. Radigue herself shows up on the flip, penning a new longform piece that harks back to her mind-boggling 'Trilogie de la Morte'.
Black Truffle come through with another shocker here, training sights on Laetitia Sonami, who's been innovating within the field of electronic music and performance for decades now. She's perhaps best known for her invention the “Lady's Glove”, a wearable sensor array that allows performers to control audio and visual parameters in real time. After 25 years of showcasing the device, she retired it in 2016, switching her focus to the “Spring Spyre”, a fully-fledged, atemporal instrument made from springs that are connected to reverb pickups that direct the audio to Max/MSP patches. The sound is then analysed and piped thru machine learning models that use the data to control audio synthesis in real time; the springs themselves are never actually heard, but their characteristics shepherd the output.
'A Song for Two Mothers' is the first piece Sonami wrote using the instrument, and fully demonstrates its uniquely unpredictable character. Played and recorded live, the instrument is - by Sonami's own admission - "a bit tyrannical", and vibrates and sizzles through the empty space. Listen closely and you can almost decipher Sonami's pliable plucks and rubs. It isn't an electro-acoustic piece, it's far deeper and more forward-thinking than that; while there are plenty of systems designed to generate chaos, not many can disrupt and even contain that chaos by integrating physical, real-time controls. Here, Sonami's balance is transcendental - the sound is disarmingly delicate, even at its most disordered, but there's a feeling of human unpredictability that helps distinguish it from the established experimental canon. Both jarringly percussive and woozily elegant, it's a piece that sounds as if it's been pulled so far from the grid - and the timeline itself - that anything can happen.
Radically different from its predecessor, 'Occam IX' was composed by Éliane Radigue not just for the Spring Spyre, but for Sonami as a performer. It's the most recent work made for the instrument, and Radigue developed the score with Sonami through a verbal process she's used for all her Occam series, entering into a dialogue designed to set parameters for the composition. A rare Occam entry that uses electronics, 'Occam IX' highlights the Spring Spyre's more manageable intricacies, letting crystalline feedback rub against dense, gong-like drones. It's truly hypnotic gear that's comparable with Radigue's influential ARP 2500 pieces, pooling into droning dissonance before reappearing from near-silence on the back-end in a blanket of waved white noise. Here, we get to hear the Spyre at its most delicate, as Sonami's gestures give way to pinprick glitches and fluttering, percussive chimes that sound so muted and exquisite that they bring to mind Robert Ashley's timeless 'Automatic Writing'.
Stunning, stunning work.