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'| |_________\ :/ /. -bC! |'
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| music for body and soul |______________________|| |
| |
.| |
-|-------------------- - |
|| release infos |
'| |
| |
| + artist ........... Oblaat |
| + album ............ Q Con |
| + label ............ Velcrot Muzaki |
| + cat .............. velm-001 |
| + year ............. 1999 |
| + genre ............ Electronic |
| + source ........... CDDA |
| + quality .......... VBRkbps / 44,1Khz / Joint-Stereo |
| + release date ..... 08.04.2005 |
| + size ............. 37,0 MB |
| + link ............. n/a |
.| |
-|-------------------- - |
|| tracklist |
'| |
| |
| 01.Q 00:49 |
| 02.Drip Shadow 04:38 |
| 03.D 08:40 |
| 04.Here Else 05:39 |
| 05.Muted View 07:00 |
| 06.Q Con 02:35 |
| |
| |
| (t!) total 29:21 min |
| |
.| |
-|-------------------- - |
|| release notes |
'| |
| |
| < o >blaat [KEIKO UENISHI] |
| |
| Oblaat considers herself not a musician, but "a sound-making |
| artist who makes environments." Taking her name from a Japanese |
| word for a substance wrapped around medicine to conceal its taste |
| that ultimately dissolves inside the body, she aims to disappear |
| from the stage. She curates the electronic music series |
| "electroluxe" at Tonic in New York, where she can be found |
| blending in with the space as she creates the "opening ambience." |
| Electroluxe is her personal research, a way for her to provide |
| artists who make obscure music "with no dance beat" with a space |
| to play. Oblaat ensures that electroluxe isn't a typical concert |
| series, but instead is "an environmental effect where people come |
| in and walk around and run into the object or the atmosphere being |
| made." In addition to her numerous solo performances, she performs |
| in the pitchbrite duo with percussionist Christine Bard; she also |
| performed with the Cinsi project at the Roulette Festival in New |
| York this spring. |
| |
| Oblaat's recent opening ambience pieces at Tonic have consisted of |
| her manipulations of streaming sounds from a live ping pong match, |
| noises from cash register purchases at the bar, and sounds from |
| the coat-check. The sounds are picked up from a contact microphone |
| ("made with a bunch of stuff from Radio Shack"), then fed through |
| her mixer and sent through the various effects processors, which |
| she is constantly tweaking, set up on her handy ironing board |
| table. The sonic terrain is simultaneously familiar and |
| otherworldly, and the act of performance is successfully |
| dissipated from the "performer" in that the audience is a |
| necessary participant in the formation of sound. Her email |
| invitations to the events always encourage audience |
| participation--if you purchase drinks at the bar, hang your coat, |
| or join in on a ping pong match, you become part of the music. |
| |
| Oblaat's beat formations are so abstract, they elude beatness; yet |
| they certainly are not without rhythmic or textural excitement. On |
| dealing with the flowing stream of ping pong noises at the March |
| electroluxe, she explained: "I'm collaborating with these sounds, |
| but they are not collaborating with me! They are just coming in." |
| She pointed out, with satisfaction, that the harder people tried |
| to "make a beat" while playing ping pong, the more miserably they |
| failed. |
| |
| Her passion for this sort of unpredictable and irregular beat |
| stems in part from her background as a tap dancer. Frustrated with |
| mainstream tap dancers' resistance to thinking about beats in |
| innovative ways, she began to use electronic sound art as a means |
| of incorporating tap concepts with a more avant garde method of |
| performance. Her performance setup occasionally includes what she |
| calls her "electrotap board effector," a floorboard made of |
| variously textured pieces of plastic, wood, and metal she's culled |
| from the funky plastic shops on Canal Street, rigged with contact |
| mics. She taps the board to make the initial sound effect, and |
| then twists the sound through her effects processors. |
| |
| Here's more of what oblaat had to say on her concepts and methods: |
| |
| "For me, the sound is a mere element included in the various |
| elements which altogether form the environment, so I cannot make |
| just sound without considering or thinking about the entire space: |
| in what type of space I'm going to perform, how the light goes, |
| where is the audience, how can I place myself with the people |
| coming in... |
| |
| "My original setup is already weird, because of the ironing board |
| as a table. It's just for convenience, because for electronic |
| performers, a table is essential. So many people are taking it as |
| a kind of metaphor for something [like] is this your comment |
| toward the domestic woman, or something? It's really just the |
| right size and really light to carry. [My setup] started as just, |
| how am I gonna make sound from feet? Most people are making sounds |
| from hands, playing keyboard or something, but since I'm |
| triggering sounds from my feet, my hands are free. The only thing |
| my hands are doing is manipulating the sound. So I trigger the |
| sound and make a certain pattern. One can consider that as a beat |
| pattern. |
| |
| "Thinking about the beat concept, one of the reasons I started |
| this is I never agreed with typical tap dancers' attitudes. They |
| make the beat, and then they tend to compete with each other: how |
| fast you are, how technical you are. Their moves and |
| improvisations are so old to me, because they just think about how |
| you divide the bars: how much you divide, how interestingly you |
| can divide, that's about it. They don't go beyond that, most of |
| them. I don't say everybody, but that's a kind of mainstream tap |
| dancer's way of thinking about it. Music history-wise, John Cage |
| was a way long time ago! We are talking post, post, post, |
| postmodern in terms of how we can deal with the sound and |
| everything. And for the dance field? Trisha Brown is really old |
| now; and she and others [like] Merce Cunningham, they did such |
| unbelievable things with movement and exploring space with the |
| body. But all in all, tap dancers are really staying in like 1920s |
| ideas. Some exceptional people didn't, like Anita Feldman, 10 |
| years ago or more... She did amazing things, and started notating |
| all the tap choreography she did so the musicians could |
| collaborate with her and [she could] collaborate with new |
| composers. And she did unbelievable things, but most tap dancers |
| would say: 'She's not a tap dancer, she can't swing!' I was so |
| tired of this kind of attitude, their narrow-mindedness. |
| |
| "And also, gradually I felt all in all that dance forms just make |
| me so tired. Even postmodern dancers still are so self-conscious. |
| They think about how to present themselves onstage. They are |
| really obviously thinking about how the audience is looking at |
| them. So I thought, I want to do some [kind of] performance but I |
| don't want to present myself like thinking about the movement or |
| anything. Like I want to do some tap, but I'm not gonna do any |
| technique or anything; how can I do that all together? |
| |
| "In the late-80s and throughout the early 90s I was deep into the |
| so-called experimental downtown improvisational music, like a good |
| student following all those things at the Knitting Factory, like |
| John Zorn's stuff. And I respect them still, but I was tired of |
| how those improvising musicians also have the attitude of how good |
| they are, kind of show-offy. And the audiences typically are so, |
| so serious. Improvisations are really tricky, really difficult; |
| you don't want to fall into this self-satisfying way. So I decided |
| I wanted to erase myself from the stage while I'm still on the |
| stage. I want people to ignore me, and then say, what is that? |
| |
| "Then in the mid-90s I started meeting with some underground DJs, |
| and they were doing completely entertainment [oriented] things, |
| like beats where kids can dance, but at the same time, in such an |
| underground, sneaky way. The textures put on top of the beat can |
| be super-weird in this really sneaky, subtle way. So I thought, |
| this is a really nice concept; they are onstage and they're giving |
| such a funky groove, but at the same time, they're doing such |
| abstract forms of sound art... I never had thought about |
| electronic music; this is the first time I thought this was |
| interesting... |
| |
| "My big influence about making environmental [sound] is coming |
| from DJ Olive. He not only makes sound; he's a [visual] artist who |
| studied sound afterwards. He and his friends made really |
| unbelievable events, like in the late 80s/early 90s until last |
| year. They make a huge space in a completely different way, so |
| people coming in are shocked. They've explained that when they |
| were in art college and saw a bunch of museums and galleries that |
| were so powerful, the shape or container was really powerful and |
| was overwhelming the piece itself being presented inside. You are |
| always aware you're in a museum and you're supposed to be 'getting |
| something out of it.' They were so tired of placing something |
| inside of the heavy-duty container, so he and his friends decided |
| they wanted to make a container, rather than make a piece |
| inside... |
| |
| "So my idea, I wanted to make myself disappear from people's |
| attention, and melt into somewhere, but still offer something that |
| they can hear or feel. In the beginning I was still doing some tap |
| sections, to make a more dynamic movement, but [lately] I've |
| started just scratching a little bit here, a little bit there, and |
| almost nothing. There's no real technique at all... and if I |
| trigger the sound and set the effect really high... you can do |
| [what sounds like] a superfast step, millions of times faster than |
| what a human can do. So it doesn't matter anymore how fast you |
| are... |
| |
| "I easily get tired of using one kind of beat. That's why a long |
| time ago I never would've gotten myself associated with any kind |
| of dance music. I was narrow-minded about it. There's nothing |
| wrong with making a constant beat, and making people happy, |
| keeping them dancing. It's something everybody can associate with. |
| But my preference for the beat--I'm constantly thinking about the |
| beat--is something that is always changing time signatures and |
| tones and everything, sometimes really stretched out so that you |
| cannot really consider it as a beat anymore." |
| |
| |
.| |
-|-------------------- - |
|| group notes |
'| |
| mbs is a new and free music lovers association on the net. |
| we only share the music we love, with the people we like. |
| keep your mind, your body and your soul open. peace. |
| |
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