01 Message Sans Soleil (10:07)
02 Message La Jetée (9:58)
Total time: 20:05
Cassette released by Sound Holes, 2008
UUHUU is one of Berlin artist Marcel Türkowsky’s various music projects, that he describes on his MySpace as: ‘an imaginary soundstringfigure solo project’. Türkowsky is a sound artist with regular shows in Berlin and abroad. In 2008, he took part to a sound art group exhibition titled ‘Lieber Künstler, erzähle mir!’ in Hildesheim, Germany, also including Joseph Beuys (with his soundwork ‘Ja ja ja ja ja, nee nee nee nee nee’, 1968) and Tacita Dean. Türkowsky is a visual artist as well, making concrete poetry drawings. But as he claims to be a ‘parapsychic magnetic tape researcher’, I was understandably curious about the present ‘Organ Figures for Flynt’ cassette. The 2 tracks, ‘Message Sans Soleil’ and ‘Message La Jetée’ (after Chris Marker’s films, the latter uploaded on YouTube), consist of dense, layered accumulations of bell-like sounds. The music is static, thick textures build from metallic resonances, as if collected from bell peals with transients removed (the transients are the attack of sound). This is probably actually made from guitar samples and loops – hence the soundstringfigure tag –, but the result is certainly evocative of, say, Westminser Cathedral bells (check video below). While the minimalism at work here would nicely fit on John Cale’s guitar experiments as released by Table ot the Elements, the reference to [Henry] Flynt escapes me – this is closer to Tony Conrad or John Cale. On a side note, I’ve heard similar bell-sounding guitar on Jim O’Rourke+KK Null’s 1992 ‘New Kind Of Water‘ CD. ‘Organ Figures for Flynt’ is a fascinating release for its gorgeous sonorities, elaborate sound construction and ambitious references from avantgarde or experimental film. Marcel Türkowsky is a promising sound artist if we are to judge from this tape and the mouth-watering excerpts on his MySpace. See Türkowsky’s discography here.
This cassette was released on Scottish CDR and tapes label Sound Holes, run by Daniel Hadden formerly in Glasgow, Scotland, now in London. Thanks to Daniel and Marcel to allow this tape to appear here.
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Westminster Abbey bell ringers:
3 responses so far ↓
jan // July 14, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Continuo,
My girlfriend isn’t familiar with sound-art, but she recognised the bells!! Being an historian, I wasn’t at first convinced that ‘the sound of bells carresses your memories as the undertones begin to pull you back into a time drenched in the past….. the bells will ring forever…’ (see Soundholes). But yes in a way it does! So while thinking on it, i reminded a reading by Steven Feld on his ‘anthropology of sound’, wich includes a vast study on bells (4 sound volumes). I didn’t give it further reading or listening, but I take this as a first introduction: http://www.voxlox.net/
greets,
jan.
continuo // July 14, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I personally wouldn’t swear there’s any bell recording in the cassette above, since it might as well be mere guitar samples. The magic of ‘Organ Figures’ is to sound like something from above, be it bells or other heavenly sounds.
Thanks for the interesting Steven Feld link, Jan.
jan // July 15, 2009 at 8:17 am
I agree. ‘Bells’ not being bells and yet drawing lines between time, history, memory, ‘rites’, researching and capturing sounds, a cassette… that, for me, is the art of it. I’m going deep on this one :-).
Thanks to you!
Jan.