Ron Kuivila – Fidelity

In the mid-1980s, the name of US sound artist Ron Kuivila, born 1955, was familiar for his appearances on a number of Slowscan and Tellus compilation cassettes (e.g.: Tellus #2 ; #9 Music with Memory ; #22 False Phonemes). His first release was the 1982 Lovely Music LP he shared with Nicolas Collins, posted earlier on this blog. Along Collins, Kuivila was a student of Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University, where he is now Professor of Music and Director of the Electronic Music Studio. Like Collins, Kuivila is a circuit bending pioneer and his music is full of modified synths and self-build electronic devices. Kuivila is mentioned in Collins’ book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking, Routledge, NY, published 2006.

♫ Deconstruction seems the order of the day on a number of tracks on Fidelity, released 1984. On #2, A Keyboard Study, the simple sounds of an electric piano are submitted to radical, endless repetitions through a self-build filter duplicating each sound 2 times faster and 2 times slower at the same time, creating a ghost-like sonata of disembodied sounds. On the opener, Household Object, Kuivila mercilessly hijacks a defenseless Casiotone to produce disfigured, squealing sounds, radically deconstructing the little synth’s preset tones. Track #5, Time, is also about deconstruction and disfiguration, using a talking clock as sound source. Other tracks like Working Title Deleted, TI Intends (from Tellus #2) and Hatchmarks, are more like electronic music studies focusing on frequencies, harmonics and progressive tonal modifications.

01 Household Object (9:39)
02 A Keyboard Study (6:49)
03 Working Title Deleted (5:45)
04 TI intends (7:45)
05 Time (4:57)
06 Hatchmarks (5:58)

Total time 40:53
LP released by Lovely Music, N.Y., 1984

Download option 1

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