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to orient themselves with coastlines

by lee noyes & radio cegeste

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1.
2.
3.
ion and bird 12:58
4.
19 hz 09:26

about

ISR2-12 lee noyes & radio cegeste - to orient themselves with coastlines

1. broken only by the need for breath
2. to check their homeward progress
3. ion and bird
4. 19 Hz


comprised of two site-specific recordings captured in the latter half of 2011 on a windswept hilltop in Maia, near Dunedin, Lee Noyes’ and Sally Ann McIntyre’s, to orient themselves with coastlines is a confluence of sparsities, a sound world where an empty sampler and mixer in cyclic converse with a microphone in a series of feedback loops join the most delicate of whispered percussion, and a micro radio station operating as a largely contentless narrowcast framework becomes portal to a molecular, materialist audiblising of the aetheric electromagnetic.

Together these pieces emphasize situation, location, the close-in, spatialised listening of small speakers and small receivers. Each is an acoustic map of a moment which layers other adrift presents within itself, but remains live and open to the cues radiating from its materiality, the steep sided topographic features, the small intentionalities of gestural selections.

a certain physicality; acoustic gestural behind percussive elements meets a more deliberate restraint in the electronics - filigree tones are inherently fragile and quickly turn ugly with a heavy hand. a musical approach at the level of communication is underpinned by an attention to materials and a near-scientific enquiry : the sound artist as primary, empirical observer (physicist? botanist? cartographer?), grasping sounds ahead of their names.

samples from a broken accordion, prepared music boxes and other sound-objects are combined with the aleatory incidental sounds of the radio spectrum, in both FM and shortwave bands, the audible range of frequencies in the room being influenced not only by the mini fm transmitter but also a theremin, a shortwave valve radio acting as an amplifier, and from 3 – 20 small radio receivers, layered with rain and birdsong existing in the space, a simultaneous field recording. live sampling from 78rpm records takes in snatches of souvenir shellac discs from 1940s American popular radio shows featuring live birds, the ‘Ha rtz Mountain Radio Canaries’, themselves orchestrating on-air warbles in the studio with human accompaniment on organ and violin, an anonymous amateur pianist, a poem read by post war German writer Karl Krolow. finding a frequency in the room, it is held for a moment, only to fall outside itself, each point of stasis sliding into a wavering volatility, in a constant gathering of lines and threads, untaught airwaves sitting alongside environmental phenomena, between-frequency oscillatory chirp, the white flash and expand of electronic sound flaring like the electromagnetic pulse of an intense solar storm, opening out the hearing range of the sonic ecosystem, only to compress it to flatness. as though burning out. the frame.

these dynamics and those of the broken accordion connote the low tones of foghorns, obliterating an amateur, de-monumentalised community hall Beethoven, trailing off to lush thickets of birdsong, sine tones, electronic tracings, torn snatches of piano, ghost voices released and falling. the small scribbled details of these frequencies echo themselves in aftereffect. glissandi. bird, bird, bird. traced again and again, on sky’s avenue, where, as Krolow says in his most potent moment of audibility, “the roses of air. open”

-Sally Ann McIntyre and Lee Noyes, November 2011.

credits

released January 7, 2012

"On to orient themselves with coastlines, Sally McIntyre and Lee Noyes send their signals from a hilltop outside of Dunedin, New Zeaand. Dunedin was Noyes' home until his recent relocation to Sweden. As Radio Cegeste, the duo wield a micro-FM station and a battery of electro-acoustic instrumentation to create clouds of static, feedback, sonic interference, barely decipherable ghost-whispers, and a steady flow of crackle and hum. Noyes, the free-improv percussionist, here folds and subsumes his contributions into the whole. Reminiscent of Jason Kahn's Beautiful Ghost Wave, similarly shaping sound from the instability of short and long-wave radio signals, the duo's environment is at once alien and entirely familiar. If this is, as I think it is, Noyes' leave-taking work, it is a strange coda, and his life-long home is captured in strange frequencies that sing with electricity, charged, charred, singeing frequencies from home. The liner notes by the duo close with a line from the prolific poet Karl Krolow, who wrote elsewhere, in his poem Departure, Besides, who needs to/be anything now but/a traveler going below/Time for one last lovely song." Jesse Goin: crow with no mouth

"Some recordings are meant to be listened to only late at night or with headphones. Such is the case with to orient themselves with coastlines, a subtle collection that contains sub-level hisses, crackles and other tiny endearing features. Blasting it from a convertible? Impossible. One would never catch the radio waves, the transmissions attempting to break through. At times the recording seems to be searching for survivors like a rescue team that has found the spot of a submersion, but no debris. It’s the sound of magnetic currents and the feedback of stars, the empty pockets between what is said and what is meant, the unexpressed words, tumbling into silence. As such, it’s an intensely lonely recording, a record of dropped connections, missed opportunities and shipwrecks, one in which the invisible protagonists, attempting to orient themselves with coastlines, find the geography to be as intimidating as the lack of land.

There’s no indication in the field recordings themselves to indicate that the project was actually birthed on land; the album was recorded “on a windswept hill in Maia”. Those familiar with the TV show “Lost” may think of the scene in which the survivors climb a mountain in an effort to get a signal from an antiquated transponder. But there’s more going on here than simple field recordings; disorienting samples and live musical elements are woven in as well. The birds may sound live, but there’s a good chance they’re not; the rain arrives from a pre-recorded source, and the foghorn is an accordion. This additional layer of detachment – the thought of environmental sounds not being environmental – adds to the sense of dislocation, making the screech at 8:05 of “to check their homeward progress” feel like punishment: the friendliest response one receives is the sound of feedback, the crossing of wires. One wonders if a traveler in space might feel the same way, encountering a friendly voice only to discover it to be an echo of a distended, long-lost radio show.

In the end, the title turns out to be deceiving. Orientation is sought, but none is found; the ground below seems less stable than the air around it. Neither sights nor sounds can be trusted; there’s a void in the center of the universe, and the only certainty it provides is that there is no certainty. The old music may still playing, but without intention. The sounds are rotating without direction, folding endlessly in upon themselves. Richard Allen: A Closer Listen

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