The Secret Lives of Electromagnetic Transducers

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2019-09-10

Label: Elli Records

The idea for this work began as an image with no sound. The image was that of a sad party: well-dressed people dejectedly sit alone avoiding eye contact, contemplating their mistakes, while around them coloured LEDs flicker and fade, and half-inflated balloons fill the floor. Though the sound material was yet to be determined, the choice of human material was clear, and soon Yoav, Hagar, Uri, Yoni and Rhona joined the project.

Each player was assigned a unique electronic setup. Electro-magnetic transducers and speaker components were used to transform different surfaces into resonating membranes through which live-electronics and the performers themselves were amplified: some players were amplified through their own instruments, some through other performers’ instruments, some through speakers worn around the necks of audience members, etc.

Over the course of a few months, I worked individually with each performer to compose short duets (solo + electronics) together. We met equipped with electric components, a general idea and several Max patches; through dialogue, experimentation and deep conversations that one can only carry out with dear friends, we shaped the ideas into short structures that allowed us to improvise and forced us to react to each other.

The result was a chain of idiosyncratic yet interconnected short movements, woven together by electronic interludes and supplemented by movements for the entire ensemble. Sound material is transformed throughout the piece, as it emerges from movement to movement, passes from player to player, and is structured and restructured by the electronics.

The 20 movements that comprise this work are performed without a break, flowing from one to the next. Perpetually changing, they are readapted and recomposed with the players for each performance. The recording presented here is from the premiere performance on 27.5.2017.

The six parts of the album are to be played in continuous sequence to experience the complete narrative development of the work. Because of its extended duration, the separate tracks here are intended to provide personal options for later individual selection and re-listening.