Continuumix #12

Continuumix #12 – Slower ligh-years
Mix by Continuo, March 2012
Total time 57:26

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00:00
Jeremy Couillard – Over And Over Again (2012)
In this video from Brooklyn, NY, artist Jeremy Couillard,  your personal avatar will guide you through a supernatural, Second Life-like world inhabited by uncanny 3D artifacts. A staunch adept of reincarnation theory, the avatar narrates a progressive acquaintance with painful reminiscences from the past and memories from other people, all channeled through the artificial, genderless voice of the Google translator and text-to-speech routine.

04:25
Chris Vaisvil – Electronic Dream #1 (2002)
In addition to being a microtonal and Just Intonation music composer, American Chris Vaisvil likes to experiment with as many different instruments as possible, from modified guitar, synthesizer or piano, to self-build instruments, among others. This scintillating ambient electronic track uses the Casio CZ-101 and Korg MS2000 synthesizers only, and was recorded live in 2002. Chris offered the mp3 on his blog in 2011.

09:45
Jean-Marc Montera – guitar solo (1987)
Great, if short, guitar solo from Jacques Diennet’s Mante LP, 1987, as posted earlier on the blog.

10:40
Harri Hertell – Isät Levällään Maailmalla (2011)
Finnish poet Harri Hertell spreads his poetry through readings, slam contests, collaboration with rock bands and YouTube videos, like this wonderful reading with electronic accompaniment. He’s a familiar figure of the Helsinki Poetry Connection public readings.

12:20
La Chambre de Swedenborg – Le Long Couloir Blanc (2012)
La Chambre de Swedenborg is the reunion of Swedish vibraphonist Linda Edsjö, Danish singer Birgitte Lyregaard and French multi-instrumentist Jean-Jacques Birgé (formerly of Un Drame Musical Instantané). Named after Swedish, Christian mystic Swedenborg, the trio was introduced during a live performance as part of the Europe and the Spirit World exhibition in Strasbourg, France in 2012. The excerpt (archived on Drame.org) features the voice of Jean Cocteau reading his occult manifesto Le Discours du Grand Sommeil (full text in French here), in which a dead man explains how he can have contact with feverish, sick livng beings, as their internal speed has slowed down to that of deceased people.

J’ai une grande nouvelle triste à t’annoncer : je suis mort. Je peux te parler ce matin, parce que tu somnoles, que tu es malade, que tu as la fièvre. Chez nous, la vitesse est beaucoup plus importante que chez vous. Je ne parle pas de la vitesse qui se déplace d’un point à un autre, mais de la vitesse qui ne bouge pas, de la vitesse elle-même.
Jean Cocteau: Le Discours du Grand Sommeil, 1922
[I came with important, sad news: I am dead. I can speak to you this morning because you are dozing, because you’re sick and feverish. Our speed is much higher than yours – not the speed from one point to another, but motionless speed, or speed itself.] (own translation)

21:05
Georgios Karamanolakis – For Cello and EMS Synthi E (2010)
The duo of Greek experimental music composer Karamanolakis with cellist Aigli Drakou (nice video here), this track is a mindblowing exploration of radical cello tonalities ala Xenakis with noisy and psychedelic sounds from an EMS Synthi E. Via SoundCloud.

25:13
Aidje Tafial – Symphonie Diagonale soundtrack (2008)
Svenska Filminstitutet commissioned this new soundtrack to Symphonie Diagonale, Helmuth Viking Eggeling’s visual music masterpiece, to French percussionist Aidje Tafial, who composed a wonderfully intricate web of small percussion, drums and mysterious vocal samples.

27:27
Per Nørgård – A Light Hour (2008)
A Light Hour is an hour-long composition for percussion by Danish composer Per Nørgård (born 1932), here interpreted by ensemble Percurama on a 2010 Da Capo CD. The 4 movements also include improvised parts.

32:30
Christian Pegand – La Carmensijazz ( 1982)
Rock solid drum solo from a RCA April Orchestra LP (vol. 46) titled La Carmensijazz, by Christian Pegand and Thierry Mineau. This is the drum solo from the title track, with Pegand on drums.

35:50
Unidentified (date unknown)
Great techno effort from a single-sided, 10-inch single found in a second hand record store. The flip bears a multitude of hand-written engravings, but no record label name or track title I could identify.
[Actually, artist name is: Pnau, and track title is: Again. See Discogs. Thanks to reader A Cheffe, who identified this in the comments]

40:21
Victoria Vinamaragui  – Secretos
A Mexican artist born in 1987, Vinamaragui‘s work encompasses various techniques, be it drawing, painting, installation or film. Despite her young age, she already launched an art gallery titled La Galeria de las Pistolas, or The Gun Gallery, in her hometown Ciudad Juárez. Secretos is a sound installation based on intimate secrets told by volunteers on small pieces of paper, and read aloud to form a tapestry of confessions.

43:00
Supersilent – 10.3 (2010)
In 2010, after the departure of drummer Jarle Vespestad, Norwegian supergroup (!) Supersilent was reduced to a trio. Their music then took a more chamber-like orientation, especially thanks to the collaboration with pianist Ståle Storløkken. On this evanescent excerpt from album #10, both piano and syntesizer evoque Olivier Messiaen, with almost exact quotes from Fête des Belles Eaux on synthesizer and Catalogue d’Oiseaux on piano.

48:28
Tony McPhee – The Hunt (1973)
Guitarist with British blues-rock band The Groundhogs since the 1960s, Tony McPhee also has a prolific solo career with a dozen albums under his name. The B-side of the 1973 “Two Sides of Tony McPhee” LP is an epic, side-length composition for synthesizer and voice, of which some of the electronic rhythms sound more like 1978 than 1973. Included in this mix are 3 excerpts from the 18-mn track The Hunt.

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