My late night listening this week has come courtesy of Cecilia Lopez, whose work draws on the drone and noise music traditions while incorporating techniques from the field of sound installation.
Originally from Argentina, Lopez studied at Bard College and Wesleyan University in the U.S. before joining the cadre of New York artists associated with Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Her new double CD is from the latter’s house label, XI Records, and features two inventive electroacoustic projects.
The first piece, Red, isn’t about colors, but is the Spanish word for web or network—in this case an array of miniature loudspeakers and contact microphones that are suspended by wires, allowing the components to swing toward and away from each other, producing variable feedback. Synthesizer drones reinforce some of the feedback frequencies, while other tones slide up and down or fade in and out. The ambiguity between chance and intention in the sound production is a key part of the listening experience.
The other piece, Machinic Fantasies, features complex synthesized drones played through loudspeakers wrapped in homemade baffles that are then inserted into 55-gallon steel drums. These contraptions are rotated by two performers, creating an effect like a guitarist’s phaser pedal, but less predictable (you can see them in action here). Long tones from a trumpet and a trombone add emphasis to individual pitches, producing a soundscape notable for its simultaneous sense of movement and stasis. It reminds me of Deep Listening Band, including the way that the physical resonance of the performance venue is allowed to shape the overall sound.
Machinic Fantasies, which lasts 73 minutes, has a written score, but like the multiple tracks that comprise Red, it feels less like a determinate composition than a sonic environment whose streams flow languidly along their natural currents. Lopez calls these works “performed installations”, as if to emphasize that her input happens mainly during their design phase. They demonstrate that despite all the portable and inexpensive digital tools available today, one can still make relevant music with such crudities as oscillators, cables, and speakers.