PAULINE OLIVEROS AND ALAN COURTIS
TELEMATIC CONCERT
The Telematic Concert brought together American electronic music pioneer Pauline Oliveros with Argentinian experimental musician Alan Courtis (Reynols), improvising across continents for the Deep Listening Institute’s Dream Festival in October, 2009 — Oliveros in person in Kingston, NY, Courtis piped in digitally from Buenos Aires. The resulting exchange of Oliveros’ accordion drones and expanded instrument system with Courtis’ unstringed guitar feedback, objects, and processing sounds as fresh as ever, both hyper-focused and frenzied. Oliveros’ forward-thinking work with “telematic music”–a term she coined to describe geographically dispersed musical collaborations using telecommunications technology–is yet another facet of her relevance as an important forebearer of the current cultural moment. Recordings of the concert remained unreleased for a decade, until now. This special LP is the first release in Spleencoffin’s new Vault Series, bringing to light unreleased recordings from artists’ archives. Download codes included.
“The two drag out sheets of sound between them with amped-up accordion and guitar respectively, each modifying their instruments until it can be hard to distinguish one from the other. When they do play acoustically recongisable sounds – never at the same time – their signal choice of sounds is instructive. Oliveros blasts a klaxon-like drone that jars with everything around it. Courtis’ feedback howls like Robert Fripp locked in a death-plunge with a Balrog. Whenever the situation threatens to settle into an ambient exchange, one goads the other into something more aggressive and sinister. Towards the end, both musicians suddenly crank up short, high pitched bursts until they create a chillingly evocative soundscape reminiscent of a dockside battening down for bad weather.” – Ben Harper, Boring Like a Drill.
“On the A side, sounds and silences intermingle, with some portions oscillating into a rhythm, and others coagulating into dissonance, evoking Keiji Haino’s more harrowing wails. On the flip, gravelly drones and radio static give rise to a full on noise crescendo.” – Marc Masters, The Wire (September, 2020)
“It bursts with energy, due to the waves produced, the feedback arriving from afar and when playing this is quite the brutal soundtrack. It is deep listening music but one that transports you to some old fashioned noise. I understand this release is the first in a new series of “unreleased recordings from artists’ archives”, and if what’s coming is of equally great quality, I’d say: bring it on.” – Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly.
The noteless void. A raw blanket of frequencies in mirroring sine and cosine values. The Telematic Concert makes it clearly apparent these artists “get” each other. From before this creativity melted together, thoughts were in similar spaces. Now the drone is the common medium. … The Telematic Concert is a beautiful balance between like minded artists, both with pioneering love for sound and thoughtfulness for each other. – Lost in a Sea of Sound
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