So i am not going to blog about today’s happenings (or I guess it’s yesterday’s, now) but instead talk about Thursday.  I moved all day Thursday, so the only event I made it to was Francisco López.
It was an amazing show, which took place at the Kitchener-Waterloo Children’s Museum (which is wonderful because there are child-sized doors as well as adult-sized doors).  There were four large speakers set up in four corners of the space, and the chairs faced out from eachother in all four directions, with Mr. López in the middle.  There were blindfolds, and there was sound.  All different sounds, some recognizable as his famed field recordings, but many just pure Sound. The word that popped into my head while I was listening was “visceral.” I’m not sure why, as upon looking it up in the dictionary it means “of or pertaining to the soft internal organs of the body,” but I think perhaps it reflects on how physical the sound was.  It surrounded us, and I felt like I was hearing something palpable.  It wasn’t a soundscape, it wasn’t an imitation of anything, it existed as a thing unto itself. And since I was blindfolded (so my eyes were closed), and sitting still in a dark place, and exhausted from moving, I listened to this sound in that hazy place between sleep and awake, and I am left with sensations rather than memories.

I did a short email interview with Francisco López several weeks ago, which I never ended up writing up nicely and sending to Peter (I am sorry Peter!), but here it is.

Q: Do you create your music for yourself or for the audience?

A: First and foremost for me, but then the choices I make and the way I
preset live is definitely designed and worked out with an audience in mind.

Q: There is a complicated lineage of electronic musicians and composers.
Who do you consider your influences and artistic forbears?

A: I wouldn’t think of artists I admire in those terms but here are some
names anyway: Asmus Tietchens, Jani Christou, Alan Splet, Lull, Crawl Unit,
The Hafler Trio, Whitehouse, Gianfranco Pernaiachi…

Q: What is the difference between noise and sound? Sound and music? How big
of a part does intention play in these distinctions?

You might be aware that these questions occupy volumes and many many years
of discussions in Western and even non-Western music / sound practices, but
to put it somehow in simple terms: sound as a category includes noise,
which is for some people an annoying sub-category of sound, and for others
(much more minoritary) a type of “artistic” practice. Music would also be a
sub-category of sound, although going beyond technical considerations I
always liked best Cioran’s way of referring to music:

“Without the imperialism of concept, music would have taken the place of
philosophy: we would have had a paradise of inexplicable evidence” [Emile
Cioran]

Intention? Well, I’d say that is precisely “intention” –will, perhaps- what
actually makes music out of sound, instead of musical education or skill to
play an instrument, as most people would take it.

Q: What has been the project you are most proud of–the one you feel is
either the culmination of your work or a representation thereof?

A: For a passionate composer like myself this is like asking which one of
your kids you feel more proud of Anyway, there’s this piece I did with
recordings from Costa Rica (where I lved for a few years), called “Addy ien
el país de las frutas y los chunces” that I absolutely love, and that was a
very crucial work in relation to my experience in ranforests.

Q: What other kinds of music are you interested in? Do you have a favourite
composer or artist?

A: A recent list of “pick-10-albums/songs” favourite recordings I did for
Dusted Magazine included Eraserhead’s soundtrack, Joao Gilberto, Meshuggah,
Werkbund, Mnemonists, Crawl Unit, Luis Miguel, Incapacitants, Gianfranco
Pernaiachi and The Residents. Just to give a few examples.

Q: What kind of sounds do you hope to record when you do field recordings?
Is it more the atmosphere of a place, or  specific sounds?

A: Definitely more the “atmosphere”. I’m very interested in sound as space,
but we should keep in mind that a sound recording is precisely that and its
features as a representation of reality are, to me, the least interesting
ones.

Q: What is the purpose of restricting your audiences vision by performing
in darkness or distributing blindfolds?

A: A very straighforward one: to allow them to discover all what we
normally miss when we can see. Sense deprivation is a strategy to enhance
and explore the tremendous potential of our perceptive, synaesthetic and
phenomenological capabilities.

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