Minimalist Swiss journeyman Zimoun - a collaborator of Oren Ambarchi and Helena Gough on his Leeraum [ ] label - follows up 2022’s ‘Guitar Studies’ for Room 40 with a brooding new suite of voluminous tonal shadowplay for Lawrence English’s label.
“This album is entirely based on sounds generated by the guitar. I’ve been interested in the guitar as a sound source for some time and have explored it on previous editions including Guitar Studies I-III. On this work, I’ve experimented with different methods and materials, specifically a Magnatone tube amplifier from the 1960s, and various speaker membranes covered with dust, soil, or small stones. The friction of these materials on the vibrating speaker membranes produced slight distortions and irregularities in the sounds, alongside the warm tube tones of the vintage amp.
With these recordings as a starting point, I replayed these sounds into various containers and spaces, re-recording them to capture and integrate natural reverb. In the final iterative step, I used a multiband equalizer to make gentle and slow live manipulations in the microstructures of the sounds throughout the composition, and recorded these as well.
This approach aimed to create soundscapes that, despite having a rather static character, exhibit much liveliness and gentle transformations in their textures. It is the sense of vast space, the sparse landscape and its apparent emptiness, or the psychedelic atmospheres that start to manifest in the heat, twilight, or blur, that I associate with the composition.”
View more
Minimalist Swiss journeyman Zimoun - a collaborator of Oren Ambarchi and Helena Gough on his Leeraum [ ] label - follows up 2022’s ‘Guitar Studies’ for Room 40 with a brooding new suite of voluminous tonal shadowplay for Lawrence English’s label.
“This album is entirely based on sounds generated by the guitar. I’ve been interested in the guitar as a sound source for some time and have explored it on previous editions including Guitar Studies I-III. On this work, I’ve experimented with different methods and materials, specifically a Magnatone tube amplifier from the 1960s, and various speaker membranes covered with dust, soil, or small stones. The friction of these materials on the vibrating speaker membranes produced slight distortions and irregularities in the sounds, alongside the warm tube tones of the vintage amp.
With these recordings as a starting point, I replayed these sounds into various containers and spaces, re-recording them to capture and integrate natural reverb. In the final iterative step, I used a multiband equalizer to make gentle and slow live manipulations in the microstructures of the sounds throughout the composition, and recorded these as well.
This approach aimed to create soundscapes that, despite having a rather static character, exhibit much liveliness and gentle transformations in their textures. It is the sense of vast space, the sparse landscape and its apparent emptiness, or the psychedelic atmospheres that start to manifest in the heat, twilight, or blur, that I associate with the composition.”
Minimalist Swiss journeyman Zimoun - a collaborator of Oren Ambarchi and Helena Gough on his Leeraum [ ] label - follows up 2022’s ‘Guitar Studies’ for Room 40 with a brooding new suite of voluminous tonal shadowplay for Lawrence English’s label.
“This album is entirely based on sounds generated by the guitar. I’ve been interested in the guitar as a sound source for some time and have explored it on previous editions including Guitar Studies I-III. On this work, I’ve experimented with different methods and materials, specifically a Magnatone tube amplifier from the 1960s, and various speaker membranes covered with dust, soil, or small stones. The friction of these materials on the vibrating speaker membranes produced slight distortions and irregularities in the sounds, alongside the warm tube tones of the vintage amp.
With these recordings as a starting point, I replayed these sounds into various containers and spaces, re-recording them to capture and integrate natural reverb. In the final iterative step, I used a multiband equalizer to make gentle and slow live manipulations in the microstructures of the sounds throughout the composition, and recorded these as well.
This approach aimed to create soundscapes that, despite having a rather static character, exhibit much liveliness and gentle transformations in their textures. It is the sense of vast space, the sparse landscape and its apparent emptiness, or the psychedelic atmospheres that start to manifest in the heat, twilight, or blur, that I associate with the composition.”
Minimalist Swiss journeyman Zimoun - a collaborator of Oren Ambarchi and Helena Gough on his Leeraum [ ] label - follows up 2022’s ‘Guitar Studies’ for Room 40 with a brooding new suite of voluminous tonal shadowplay for Lawrence English’s label.
“This album is entirely based on sounds generated by the guitar. I’ve been interested in the guitar as a sound source for some time and have explored it on previous editions including Guitar Studies I-III. On this work, I’ve experimented with different methods and materials, specifically a Magnatone tube amplifier from the 1960s, and various speaker membranes covered with dust, soil, or small stones. The friction of these materials on the vibrating speaker membranes produced slight distortions and irregularities in the sounds, alongside the warm tube tones of the vintage amp.
With these recordings as a starting point, I replayed these sounds into various containers and spaces, re-recording them to capture and integrate natural reverb. In the final iterative step, I used a multiband equalizer to make gentle and slow live manipulations in the microstructures of the sounds throughout the composition, and recorded these as well.
This approach aimed to create soundscapes that, despite having a rather static character, exhibit much liveliness and gentle transformations in their textures. It is the sense of vast space, the sparse landscape and its apparent emptiness, or the psychedelic atmospheres that start to manifest in the heat, twilight, or blur, that I associate with the composition.”